Are you trying to do it all and losing yourself in the process?

Efficiency Is Doing The Right Things Without Doing It All With Melissa Leon

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

drinking, women, people, podcast, kids, life, good, feel, alcohol, started, husband, work, love, figure, week, happy, spend, day, book, listening, nonalcoholic, zero proof cocktails, efficiency is doing the right things, productivity is doing all the things, keep the stuff you love, outsource, generation of women, boundaries, impostor syndrome, people pleasing, rewarded, smile, never complaining, promotions, efficiency, sober curious, ikigai, doing the right things, without doing all the things

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson + Melissa Leon

00:02

Welcome to the Hello Someday Podcast, the podcast for busy women who are ready to drink less and live more. I’m Casey McGuire Davidson, ex-red wine girl turned life coach helping women create lives they love without alcohol. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was anxious, overwhelmed, and drinking a bottle of wine and night to unwind. I thought that wine was the glue, holding my life together, helping me cope with my kids, my stressful job and my busy life. I didn’t realize that my love affair with drinking was making me more anxious and less able to manage my responsibilities.

In this podcast, my goal is to teach you the tried and true secrets of creating and living a life you don’t want to escape from.

Each week, I’ll bring you tools, lessons and conversations to help you drink less and live more. I’ll teach you how to navigate our drinking obsessed culture without a buzz, how to sit with your emotions when you’re lonely or angry, frustrated or overwhelmed, how to self soothe without a drink, and how to turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

I am so glad you’re here. Now let’s get started.

Hi there. Today we’re talking about

 

How ambitious women can have it all without doing it all.

 

My guest is Melissa Leon, we actually met at a podcast conference in Las Vegas. We’re both podcasters and we were sitting next to each other.

 

I mentioned that my podcast is for Sober Curious women who are high achieving, are often working moms, are women who are highly successful, but also, sort of, doing all the things and drinking to numb out or quiet down all the things. And Melissa leaned over to me. We started talking. She actually quit drinking. 3 and a half years ago, we had a ton in common and so, I wanted to have her on the show.

 

Melissa is a 20-year Finance and Accounting professional. She’s passionate about teaching women to manage time and money. She co-owns Two Sense Consulting, which is a bookkeeping and fractional CFO firm, and is the podcast host and author of the #1 Best-Seller, Efficiency Bitch: How Ambitious Women Can Have It All Without Doing It All.

Melissa says,

Climb the corporate ladder while raising three small children and use B.I.T.C.H. (Bank, Inbox, Time, Connection, Harmony) to teach the five pillars of having it all without doing it all.

 

So, Melissa, welcome.

 

02:52

Thank you. Hi, I’m so happy to see you again.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  02:55

Yeah, I’m happy for you to be here. I know this is a topic that so many women who listen to this podcast deal with and I read your book and love how it was described as Efficiency bitches for any woman feeling the pressure and asking herself, Can I have a happy fulfilling life with kids family, an amazing career? And I know so many women are trying to do that and yet are feeling stressed out and burned out and kind of settling for less than they deserve.

 

03:33

Yeah, and that was me. I mean, well, I wasn’t ever me. How about you?

 

Yeah, I, well, okay, I live in Arizona. Born and raised here. I’ve lived all over the country but eventually migrated back home. I have three small kids who today are 8, 10 and 12. Built a big business, climbed the corporate ladder, wrote a book, started a podcast. I mean, I do, I do all the things I love, love, love to be busy, definitely a high achiever.

 

It’s definitely in my blood, you know, to be busy. And once upon a time, before I wrote the book, and kind of before I had my epiphany, I was doing even more, and I was doing the things that I thought I needed to do. Not the things that I actually wanted to do.

 

And some examples of that were, I was PTO President of my kids school. I was a Kindergarten room mom, I was Girl Scout troop leader like, all at the same time, while I had a corporate career that was forcing me to travel 200,000 airline miles a year pregnant with two toddlers.

 

Then I had an infant who I was pumping on airport bathroom floors for I mean, I got real good at making you feel bad for how busy I was. And I felt really bad for myself too.

 

But I kept piling it on. There was like, this invisible audience saying oh yeah, now can you spin that on your toe? Well, you know while jumping like I was taking. Get it all on.

 

If you saw me, if you knew me during that time, you probably had no idea what was going on inside. But I was miserable, awful. I was drinking a lot. I was taking antidepressants. I was hanging out with the wrong people. My marriage was suffering. My health was suffering. I had migraines constantly. Like all the things that if you hear me say it, it’s like, you were doing too much. But at the time it didn’t.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  05:27

And you were probably doing all that with a smile while drinking too much while being miserable. And everyone was like, yeah, she’s so happy and competent. And all the things Yeah,

 

05:38

She’s such a badass, right? She’s looking at all the things she’s doing. Yeah, I certainly was. And I wore that busy with, with pride, and I thought it was good. And look, I’m still super busy. Like, don’t get me wrong, I can still rattle off my “to-do” list and make it sound intense. But I’m doing the right things now. And I’m, more importantly, not doing the wrong things.

 

Now, I get help when I need it. I take breaks when I need it. I have figured out a lot of things about who I am. And who I am, who I want to be, versus trying to be with that invisible audience that was telling me I needed to do, and it was really powerful. And I get on soapboxes about it quite often. Because if I could have heard my story 10 years ago, things may have turned out a little bit differently.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  06:29

So, I have to ask you, when you were doing all that? Were you worried about your drinking? Did you feel like it contributed to that? Or at the time? Were you like, No, this is helping me or this is my reward for doing all of this?

 

06:46

It’s such a good question. I was not an everyday drinker. But if I drank I drink a lot. And at the time, I would tell you, I don’t drink that much. It’s not that big of a deal. But I I was getting drunk at least three times a week, sometimes four, and then the hangover and the stuff that came with it.

 

I certainly felt alcohol was helping me it was getting me very social. I have a lot of friends. And all this like mommy juice, culture, like, you know, we’re going to have a playdate with the kids and the moms get sloshed. It’s like, Yeah, this is the way it was for us. Right? Yeah. So, it felt good. It felt like, these are my people. I found my village like, this is awesome. But it was not awesome.

 

And it, it turned out to be pretty ugly. And I’m really glad now that my kids don’t remember me that way.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  07:39

So, when you stopped, your kids were like, sort o,f 4 1/2 and 6 1/2. And is that right?

 

07:47

Yeah, that’s exactly right. So, the last time I had a drink was in December of 2020. And so, they weren’t quite in kindergarten, and 2nd and 4th Grade yet. They were still pretty little. They’re still little, but they don’t remember me that way. And I don’t like. I don’t judge alcohol as the thing that hurt me, I don’t. That’s not my message.

My message is, 

I didn’t realize it was hurting me until I fell. I did.

And a lot of that just kind of came through clarity. And it was the domino that started the whole thing in motion. It helped me figure out that I wanted to be a business owner and helped me figure out that I wanted to write a book and it being sobriety, helping me get there.

 

So, it’s been a cool journey. And I will gladly tell my sobriety story anytime because it changed my life.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  08:36

Yeah, I mean, I feel the exact same way. And yet I fought against the idea of stopping drinking for a very long time. And you might have to if you were hanging out in the mommy wine culture, you told me that you started in sobriety with a dry January, is that right?

 

08:57

That’s absolutely right. Yeah. It was November, December of 2019. And everything I touched was like try Dry January. Okay, like, why does this keep coming up? I mean, a podcast I listened to.

 

I was reading Brené Brown’s book at the time, and she was talking about how she quit drinking. And then I opened a Women’s Health magazine and the centerfold cover piece of it was mocktails for Dry January, and it was like, okay, universe, I hear you.

 

09:29

I love what is happening. I think, 5 years ago, 7 years ago, 10 years ago, that was not a thing. And this last Dry January, I think 35% of American adults participated in it in some way or another. So, I just think that the fact it’s in magazines and people are talking about it is so awesome.

 

09:56

Yeah, I did too. And it I thought, no way I can do this. Right, like, there’s no way I can, I can do dry January, I will screw it up, it will be embarrassing. I told my husband I was going to do it. And he was like, okay, good luck was like, Well, we’ll see how that goes. And I messed up. I was like January 22. I went on an international trip for work. And I drank a lot. And I woke up the next morning, and I thought, I’m never doing that again. It just, it took three weeks, I screwed it up. And then that one time, I realized, wow, that was really dumb. So, I just didn’t, all of a sudden, the light bulb went on that that didn’t feel good anymore.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  10:41

Do you think part of that was you had those three weeks? So, you were like, Oh, it doesn’t have to feel this way.

 

10:50

Yeah, I really do. The light bulb turned on in that three weeks, I started feeling better. My skin cleared up. headaches were going away. You know, I tricked myself to thinking that my stomach issues and my headaches were a symptom of stress. But really, I was hungover. So, you know, I tricked myself into thinking that was the thing.

 

And I have not had any alcohol sense. And I tell everybody that I quit drinking in December of 2020. And really the last time I had any alcohol was January 22, of 2020. But it’s that one blip was something that caught my attention. And I know so many people who are like, I tried Dry January, and I messed up. And so, then I gave up and I thought, wow, it just didn’t happen that way for me, you know, and I think this the story for everyone is so different.

 

Your relationship with alcohol, for everybody’s, different. How it impacts your family can be different for some people. I know some people who’ve told me, they’ve tried to quit, and their spouse did and their spouse kind of shamed him into continuing. I’m in a position now where my husband still drinks, and I get frustrated now that he drinks, so it’s not that he shames me into drinking, I’m like shaming him and not do. I want him to not drink. And everybody, you know, gets their own choice, are their own scripts to life. I suppose we all do this in different times and different phases.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  12:11

Yeah. Did you? Did you get any support, read any books, podcasts, anything like that, when you were going through the process of sort of breaking up with alcohol?

 

12:23

Yeah, this naked mind got me. I read it in the beginning of January of that year. And I think I was either just finishing it or almost finished with it when the January 22 issue happened. And I think that was a big part of me going, Oh, I don’t want to actually do this again.

 

12:42

Because then you had the information of Yeah, how true is this, that I believe about alcohol. And yeah, it really did make a big, a big impact on me.

 

And other than that, I didn’t have any help. I discovered nonalcoholic beer was a huge help for me. I like beer I always have and having the ability to have a beer. And Grace’s book taught me that right. Like that endorphin rush that you get when you order your drink is really what you’re after, it’s, and that still happened when I ordered my NA beer, I still got that hit of, Oh, this feels good. I’m going to get to relax. And I felt my body relax in the same exact way as I thought the alcohol was doing. But really, it was just that dopamine. It’s, it was so cool. And it was so real. Then I realized that was it. And so, people still will say to me, well, like, why do you drink half a dozen NA beers? Well, because I like it. And B because every beer is the first beer. Every beer feels good like that. It’s not like you numb out the way that you would if you’d had your six beer.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  13:50

I love nonalcoholic beer too. Like I’m a huge fan. And some people, you know, think that it’s it’s not helpful or it’s triggering, I think everybody is, you know, if it makes you want to drink alcohol, you shouldn’t do it. But I believe it’s the substance itself that’s obviously addictive and hits your brain in your bloodstream. It’s not the taste. And so, you know, we have emotional reactions, like you said to the idea of, I’m going to sit around a firepit and have a beer and I love doing that with something that’s totally nonalcoholic. So, I know for a lot of women in sobriety, whether it’s nonalcoholic cocktails, you know, zero proof cocktails or not, I call it “theory”, even nonalcoholic Prosecco, or bubbly, rosy or whatever it is. There’s such good stuff. It’s actually that’s what, that’s what helps them, and you know, none of the good stuff was around when I quit drinking 7 years ago, we had really crap selection. So, I didn’t start with nonalcoholic options. I was like, No, I’m not drinking. O’Douls, you got to be kidding me. You know, I started with lots of sparkling water and ginger beer and ginger ale and all that good stuff. But now I just think it’s incredible.

Casey McGuire Davidson 

Hi there. If you’re listening to this episode, and have been trying to take a break from drinking, but keep starting and stopping and starting again, I want to invite you to take a look at my on demand coaching course, The Sobriety Starter Kit.

 

The Sobriety Starter Kit is an online self study sober coaching course that will help you quit drinking and build a life you love without alcohol without white knuckling it or hating the process. The course includes the exact step by step coaching framework I work through with my private coaching clients, but at a much more affordable price than one on one coaching. And the sobriety starter kit is ready, waiting and available to support you anytime you need it. And when it fits into your schedule. You don’t need to work your life around group meetings or classes at a specific day or time.

This course is not a 30 day challenge, or a one day at a time approach. Instead, it’s a step by step formula for changing your relationship with alcohol. The course will help you turn the decision to stop drinking, from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

You will sleep better and have more energy, you’ll look better and feel better. You’ll have more patience and less anxiety. And with my approach, you won’t feel deprived or isolated in the process. So if you’re interested in learning more about all the details, please go to www.sobrietystarterkit.com. You can start at any time and I would love to see you in the course 

 

15:21

Yeah, it’s great. And it’s, it’s nice how available it is really. I was at a convention last week. And I went to the, my husband went to the bar, and he was like, What do you want to drink? And I was like, oh, whatever they have, I suppose you know. And they had an A beer. And I was so excited that this giant Convention had something available that wasn’t just beer or wine or water.

 

But moving back to ambitious women, you talk about how, you know, sort of sobriety was the first step and kind of getting out of that rut of trying to do it all and sort of ending up miserable, right?

 

Because I mean, I don’t know how the hell you worked full time had three kids, and was a PTA president, much less Girl Scouts or anything else. I mean, that, to me sounds like a total nightmare. But you talk about how to help women stop wasting time and money and her amazing potential.

 

So how do you do that?

 

20:46

Yeah, I think, for me, I had to really distill it down to what was important to me.

 

And I just, I thought, why am I doing this? Why am I doing something that I think I’m supposed to do, even though it feels awful for me inside, right? And so that was kind of one of the first things that came up was, why am I spending my time doing something that the invisible audience is telling me to do? I have enough on my plate, I don’t need to do it. And when I say the invisible audience, it was that. That pressure, I don’t know where it came from. It wasn’t a single source.

 

It was social media and TV and books and magazines and history and all those things that said, a good mom is super involved with her kids. A good mom is leading the charge for playdates a good mom is breastfeeding till they’re 17. I mean, a good mom is doing all that crap. And that’s what I was trying to convince myself that I had to do but I loved my job and loved it and was really good at it. And I never wanted to be a stay at home mom, it wasn’t something that was on my heart to ever be. And so, I was like, oh, work life balance, like I got this. And so, I would work like crazy. And then I would like to fill up my plate to match that at home.

 

So, I was like, balanced, right? And it just was all ridiculous. And I once I started realizing that I could back out. I did. And I’ll tell you today, my kids are super involved in a lot of things like they do piano and basketball and volleyball and like art classes, and they do stuff, I just don’t do it, too. I will sign them up for the course. And I will take them there and go and like little secret of mine. I haven’t brought snack to a softball game or a volleyball game in two years, because everybody else seems to run to volunteer for that shit. And I don’t anymore.

 

24:10

It took me a long time to figure it out. And I what I’ve realized is that I can contribute to community and to society in a way that is appropriate and aligned with who I am. And I do that today. I’m on the board at Planned Parenthood Arizona, a really important thing to my heart. It’s not right for everybody, and that’s okay. But like, that’s how I feel I can give back to the world. I don’t hold all my talents in and not give it to anybody. But my talent is not well spent. With little kids. It’s just not so that was like one of the big things for me was where am I spending my time? And how do I want to give it back?

 

And then, I learned the concept of Ikigai, which was taught to me as the secret of happiness. It’s a Japanese concept that if you imagine four circles kind of overlapping each other a bit. The first one being what you’re good at. The next one being what the world needs, the next one being what you can get paid for. And the final one being, what you can get paid for what you’re good at what you enjoy. And it’s the cross section of those four. So, it’s that thing that lights you up, you’re good at it, you can get paid for it, the world needs it, and you enjoy doing it. Right? You’re good at it. That was what that cross section was. And when I started thinking about that, it’s my mentorship. It’s the lessons I’ve learned.

 

And that’s where efficiency that was born. I thought. I have something to say. I have something to tell 25, 35, 40 year old women who haven’t learned this lesson yet, I have something to teach them. And that’s where my podcast was born. And so, through the podcast, I even uncovered more of, of really my secret sauce and my methodology. And then I wrote a book about it. And it just has been an incredible journey. And I’m not a Coach, like, it’s not something that I sell my easiness. It’s a podcast, and it’s a book. And that’s about the extent of it.

 

I do have a business where I’m a fractional CFO to small business owners. But I enjoy getting up on stage and talking about my personal story, getting on podcasts, and talking about my personal story. I want other women to feel as good as I feel right now.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  26:24

Yeah, yeah. And so, question for you, when I hear the word efficient. In my, I mean, I always prided myself on being able to multitask and be efficient and be productive. Like, that was kind of how I justified my worth and got positive feedback. But if you do that constantly, do you ever get to relax, like is being efficient? Is the goal to then have time to be content and enjoy life? Or how do you see that?

 

26:57

Yeah, I love that. So, for me, and there’s, you can find a million different people’s versions of efficiency.

For me, productivity is doing all the things and efficiency is doing the right things.

 

 

33:05

Yeah, so you keep the stuff you love. And you outsource the crap you hate. Right? And that is the key message I think. I think is don’t try to do it all by yourself. Because you’ll go nuts, and you’ll numb out. If it was not with alcohol, it’ll be something else.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  33:55

I mean, I remember my husband saying to me at some point when I was coming home and you know, unloading the dishwasher really angrily and oh my god, you didn’t start dinner after my long commute. And I picked up the kids and my husband’s like, if you’re doing this for us, like all the things, you can just stop because nobody likes living with a martyr. And I was like, out. you know, but I also was like, Yeah, you’re right. I’m freaking not happy. So, let me stop with the like performative. I do everything and just figure out how to do less.

 

34:37

It’s crazy, because I think it’s very broad generalization, but you’ll understand where I’m coming from. Men for generations have been working, and then they come home, and they chill. And so, our men and our modern society, like, know how to do that it’s been handed down for generations that they know how to do that.

 

Women then, on the other hand, for generations have been busy throughout the day doing stuff and then never stop, because their job has always been at home. And so, the dishes and the cleaning and the children, but it was also spread out in a way that was manageable. And when you try to infuse things that you don’t want to do, or a job, or several of those areas traveling like I was doing, or trying to build a business, all these other things, too, like you can really suffocate yourself.

 

I read a Brodsky’s Book Fair play after I wrote my book.

 

And it’s really kind of a deeper dive into this invisible load that women carry. And it’s often very proportionate. I read some stats recently that more women than ever before almost 50% are breadwinners, which is phenomenal. Women are reaching higher levels and careers than ever before, which is phenomenal, but we’re still carrying the majority of the household duties, which explains why burnout is such a thing right now. It was a huge part of my message of efficiency bitch was. I want you to say, If you want to have, okay, like, if you want to have a career, you should be able to have it and have your family and not be afraid that you’re going to burn out. I don’t want particularly the 20 Somethings of the world, who are, you know, have this ambition to go to College and then have a career that they say, I can’t have kids, too? Like, you can have both? You absolutely can. You just have to know how to get there.

 

And I don’t think our generation of women was, I mean, my mom, my mom had a career. And she had us before cell phones, which blows my mind. I don’t know how she had three kids and a full time job without a cell phone, I don’t know. But she also said no to a lot of things. And she also didn’t take promotions. And she’ll tell me that I didn’t take promotions, because I couldn’t also do that. And so, I think we have an opportunity to change the way it is for the next generation of women and make the world better for the boys and the girls like we’ve got sons I want my son’s to have badass careers and families to write. I want everybody to have all of those things and, and women need to learn how to turn down the noise in their own heads. We need to learn how to come home and put our feet up.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  41:09

And some of that, too, is boundaries and impostor syndrome and people pleasing and what we’ve always been rewarded for, which is saying yes, and doing it with a smile and never complaining. You know what’s funny is, so my mom worked, too, full time. And I was Gen X, which is the latchkey kids who made their own like Chef Boyardee dinners, and, you know, the, the code on the garage to get in and saw our parents at 730 at night. And that was me. So, my mom worked. But I don’t know if she ever came to one of my field hockey games ever. Like I tried to be it. Every one of my kids games, including like, leaving work when I was leaving work, to pick up my son to take him to a 4pm baseball practice when he was like a kindergartner, first grader and second grader and then trying to jump back on the computer afterwards. And so that’s insane. You know what I mean? Like, that’s really hard to do. And is just, you know, that I think the men of our generation are better. They definitely do a lot, or at least my husband does. But you’re right. I know so many women, myself, included, who both was the primary breadwinner. And it was unspoken, that when a call came in from daycare that your kid was sick that you were the one to leave and pick them up. And you were the one to stay home the next day. Or, you know, yes, you’re the primary breadwinner, but you’re also the one figuring out all the dentist appointments and the camp schedules. And you know, those things are magical creatures that enter your home on Christmas and Easter and tooth fairy days. I mean, we took all of it. Yeah.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  43:03

Or like it’s spirit week, my husband is. Or the teacher or Crazy hair day, it just doesn’t happen. Yeah. So, tell us. I know you in your book, in terms of how women can build efficiency and stop wasting time and money. And also, you know, doing the right things right doing the things you care about. You talk about. Bitches think in box, time connection, and harmony. Talk to me about connection. What’s that for you?

 

43:40

Yeah, connection for me is the people, the people in your life, I learned the hard way that who you are around is just as important and how you spend your time. I’m a big believer that you become the average of the people you spend the most time with. And it, it really changes everything. If you’re with people who are drinking, you’re going to drink if you’re with people who don’t drink, you’re probably not going to drink. If you are gossip with a certain group of people, but you’re not with others, like that stuff rubs off on you. And sometimes that’s a good thing. And sometimes that’s a bad thing. And you just have to weigh those pieces. And so, connection. I mean, the chapters is there’s multiple units to that chapter. But I’d say the most important message there is who you’re spending your time with. And it doesn’t mean you have to not spend time with people, it just means you have to spend time with them in appropriate settings. So for example, I have a friend who’s a loves wine should a big drinker. I’m not anymore. I like to go have lunch with her because we probably won’t there won’t be any alcohol on the table at lunch. But if I had dinner with her, it would be a very different story. Right?

 

So, I had to shift the way I spent time with people in the people who I love. And so that piece of it is really important. And then the other part for me is the way you connect with some When the way you speak to them, making sure that they can hear you. So, if you have something you want to talk about with your spouse, or your children or your friends or your boss or whatever, you have to speak in a way that they can hear you. And if you show up defensive, or you show up assuming that you’re right, or you show up with a loud volume, they’re not going to be able to hear you. And so those are really the two big pieces for me is the way we communicate, both are our good and our bad. And then who we spend time with are so important to figuring out the clarity that you need in order to get it all done.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  45:38

Yeah, I totally agree. I’m completely about, you know, you become like the five people that you spend the most time with, and that people can either lift you up or drag you down. And I mean, it is really hard to have a positive life if you’re surrounded by negative people. That doesn’t mean I mean, for so many of us, like you don’t get to pick your family, right? You love them, but maybe they’re hard to be around, etc. Or you have not yet found the people who lift you up or you don’t you know, they live across the country when I stopped drinking, not only with I listening to sober podcasts, and I had a sober coach, but also, I started listening to you know, I used to when I was drinking, like, I used to listen to like freaking cable news in the morning, like watching the shows, and it would just make me angry and anxious. All the time. Like immediately my, my nervous system was in fight or flight first thing in the morning. And I started listening to music in the morning like I don’t watch any of that cable news shit anymore. Full stop, I get my news from reading, you know, the New York Times NPR. You name it, like, I want it. I turned off all the news alerts on my phone. And I started listening to like Jensen Cerro who wrote all the you are badass books. And that’s what I listened to in my car. And it just, it shifted my mindset. I also you know, even if you aren’t around a million people who lift you up, like I love vision boards, you can present things in front of you that inspire you that shift the way your automatic thoughts were. So, I completely agree. And also like you’re allowed to edit your own life. And that doesn’t mean ditch your mother, your sister, you know, this person, but like, there was a toxic woman at work who used to constantly come over to like our area, meaning me and the people I worked with and just bitch about what was wrong and who sucked. And she just had a negative thing to say about everyone. And I just like stopped going to lunch with her was suddenly like, oh, no, I want to go for walks during lunch, it. It helps me feel happy. And when she would come over, I’d be very nice. But I’d immediately leave, you know, just like, I’m going to limit the time I spend with you. It’s so

 

48:14

right you are what you eat. And that includes the media you consume. It includes what you see on social media. If you are watching someone on social media, and they make you feel like shit, stop following them. It’s really that easy. But it doesn’t seem that easy, right? It seems like unfollow them. They’re my sister or like you can you don’t have to see that stuff all the time. You can you have the ability, but you have to go out of your way to think what’s making me feel bad. You talk about cable news, like I couldn’t agree more, particularly over the last several years. But I really used to love, like Criminal Minds and CSI and like all the scary stuff. And it started to freak me out to the point that I was like, paralyzed. So, I just stopped watching it. Yeah, I used to think it was so cool. And so, and maybe there’ll be a time in my life where I’m ready to watch it again. But you are what you eat and what you consume on a daily basis from a media perspective is critical. I’ll tell you, your vision board comment. I had a vision board that I created January 2020. So, like during my sobriety three weeks, it was like this is where I’m going every single one of those things on my list has been done.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  49:24

And what was your vision board? I need to know. Yeah, well, write a book, start a business. And both of those things have been phenomenal. Become a professor. So, I’m not a university professor, but I guest lecturer at university pretty often public speaking, which I’m doing on a very frequent basis. Now. Yoga was on there. My husband was on there. I mean, we had really lost a lot of our connection. We still loved each other, and we still had our life together. But you know what I mean that, like, I want to be around you kind of thing was he was on there. So, a lot of pieces like that just to figure out how I was going to improve my life and all of those things have been done.

 

I knew that I wanted to move to a house with a swimming pool and an in ground trampoline now like, I live in Arizona, right. So, everybody in their mom has a swimming pool here. So not super weird. But this in ground trampoline thing was something I wanted my kids to have, because I wasn’t allowed to have a trampoline as a kid that was on there. I mean, I just found all these things that I wanted. And I needed, it was my vision for myself. And every single one of those things came true. So, I know that when you put positive things in front of you, somehow your subconscious, like guides you there, it sounds really hokey.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  50:35

I did, I’ve cast on vision boards and how they can help you manifest your life, I will link to it in the show notes. I also interviewed Annie grace, who wrote this naked mind. So I’ll link to that as well. But I truly believe that, you know, everybody makes these great resolutions, or has these moments of inspiration. And then they fade as you go through the mundane parts of life and the responsibilities pile up. And if you put something in front of you that you’re going to see two or three times a day, you start feeling like it’s positive, like it’s possible, it’s familiar, and you will unconsciously sort of filter your choices to make that happen. Even if it’s like you want to go to Italy, it might take you three years to save up the money to go to Italy and yet, you know, all of a sudden, you start talking to people about Italy and where you should go and you know, your life, just if you put something in the bottom of the drawer, you’re never going to execute it. But if it’s front and center, you know, you’re more likely to do it. I mean, I put up the art for my podcast, probably three years before I created my podcast, I felt absolutely ridiculous putting my picture on this, you know, thing with a name. And yet, you know, after a while you’re like, Oh, that’s not impossible. I’ve seen it enough that that doesn’t like completely freaked me out.

 

52:09

Yeah, it’s crazy how those things can really start to take shape. You know, and I think, like, you talked about the toxic person in your work environment, or if you have someone in you’re listening to this, and you’re like, I love that person, but they’re, they’re bringing down my average, consider that as you increase your average, they will to like you’re helping bring them along to by improving your own life. So, you know, I had some friends who were bringing me down in my average, but I didn’t want to leave them behind. I loved them. And so, I shifted the way I spent time with them, I maybe spent a little less time or I was a little bit more deliberate about a coffee or lunch versus evening activity. And very soon I started to see that some of their behaviors that I wanted for myself, were rubbing off on them. And so, you can improve the lives of your friends and your family just by improving your own.

Casey McGuire Davidson  53:05 

I love that. So, talk to me about harmony. What do you mean by that?

 

53:10

I mean agreement. Harmony, the definition of harmony is agreement, it means beautiful voices coming together in agreement to make a beautiful sounds, it’s the opposite of balance. It is everything being in the right place at the right time in the right quantity. And I tried so hard, as I mentioned earlier, to have that work life balance. I thought it had to mean I was working so much over here, I had to work so much over here. So, it was imbalanced. And for me the visual never. It never worked. I could never get myself balanced. And so today I would tell you, I do things like take three days to be in the pool with my kids where next weekend, I may have to work on Saturday.

 

And so, it’s all about having that balance, that it’s not attainable and realizing that you can just shift it a little bit and say, Okay, I might have to work a little bit extra here but I can relax a little bit more over here. Or I can have a house cleaner, but I have to think about other areas that I can pull, you know, some funds over to do so it’s just about like giving yourself that flexibility. And recognizing that it can change over time. It’s okay to change your mind. It’s okay to modify it’s okay to say Stop watching scary TV right now and then maybe come back to it later. Like you can live in agreement. You can live in harmony, you can flow with life, it doesn’t have to be rigid. That was That still is something I think for me. And probably most of your listeners if they’re high achievers, rigidity routine feels good for us. We like things that we can grab control of, and like hold on to. But there’s a time and a place for those pieces. And there’s a time and a place for that fluid agreement harmony of life.

 

55:34

Yeah, by the way, I just want to say in terms of babysitters, and house cleaners, my first month not drinking, and pretty much every month thereafter, I saved $550 Just not drinking in 30 days. So, like, you can hire a house cleaner every other week, and probably a few more than a few hours of babysitting with 550 bucks. And absolutely over and you’ll feel better, and you’ll sleep better and your skin will be better and all the other things.

 

56:07

Yeah, and it’s such a good feeling. I mean, you fill your time with whatever you want. Fill it with volunteering, maybe Girl Scout troop leading is your thing. But if you want to start a side hustle, or you want to write a book, or you want to write a pod, start a podcast or like, read a magazine in a coffee shop with no one.

 

56:24

Oh my gosh, I’ll totally Yeah, do all of those things, any of those things. Let it shift over time, be flexible with those things. Start your vision board. I mean, it’s real. And it’s so possible. And it’s the thing that lights me up the most is that I figured it out. I know how to make it all happen now and I want it so badly. For old me, I want it so badly for my daughters. And I want it so badly for those who are feeling really stuck.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  56:55

Yeah. Yeah. So, if you had some advice for someone who is currently trying to do it all, doing way too much stressed out, burnt out and drinking too much. Which is where I was, what would be some? Like, where would she start?

 

57:19

Honestly, stop drinking a little bit. It’s amazing the clarity that comes, it doesn’t feel good for maybe the first two or three days while your body is detoxing, and you’re trying to figure it all out. And even if you’re not an everyday drinker, it takes a little bit of time to maybe let’s start with read Anna Grace’s book, because that for me was a huge one. So like read this naked mind. Let’s start there. And if sobriety complete, complete that complete sobriety is not something that you’re interested in. And maybe you’re just interested in how to start. I’d say start with that for a minute. Just try to get some of that clarity.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  57:58

Maybe take a 30 day break, right? Yeah, definitely, a month off, see how you feel you will get back so much time. And Claire feels.

 

58:08

So good. Yes, it feels so good. So, I’d say start with that. And then maybe make a list of all the things that you’re doing that don’t make you feel great. You don’t have to change them just yet. You just have a list of the things that like in my case, the PTO thing, or the wrong people, or all the different things that you’re just like, Man, if I never had to do that shit, again, I’d be cool, like, make that list, and then figure out how you can get rid of it. Maybe it’s hiring somebody, maybe it’s asking your parents or your neighbors or your spouse or your children or figure out one of those things that sucks. And then tomorrow will be a little bit better. And then the next day, do it again. And then the next day do it again. And it doesn’t have to be the whole damn elephant at one time, like one bite at a time. That’s all we’re looking for. And know that if you just take that one teeny tiny step today find the five minutes today to make tomorrow 10 minutes easier. 10 minutes faster. It really happens quickly. It’s like It’s like the concept of compounding interest, right but it for your happiness and your life and you and your well-being. I love

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  59:14

that. And I was smiling because I unconsciously I did not have a system or a vision but did that when I started not drinking so I actually did this little bit before because I wasn’t very happy and I I made a list. You know, there’s like a quote that says to do this that I found it says Make a list of things that make you happy. Make a list of things you do every day, compare your lists, and adjust accordingly. And I literally did that I was like okay, seeing my friends makes me happy going out for coffee makes me happy working out in the morning makes me happy being alone, right when You have young kids, you’re just like I loan, picnics, really novels, whatever these things make me happy. What do I do every day, I wake up with a hangover. And I watch cable news. And then I get angry and agitated. And then I’m hungover and like driving my kid to school. And then I run into work with this pit in my stomach, and my boss stresses me out in my eat at my desk, and I run out of there late to pick up my kid, you know what I mean? That was like, Alright, let me start adjusting. And it can be as small as listening to music in the morning. And as big as not drinking, which is big and hard to do. But you can start with taking a break. And everywhere, you know, I started blocking off my calendar and going for a walk at lunch. And, you know, listening to a podcast while I walked outside is an eating snack before I left the office, like all these little things. So that was something I like literally did was make a list of things that make you happy, make a list of things you do every day, compared to just the other quote I had. And I had it right in my kitchen, in the pantry door. So, every time I opened it, I saw it, it said, create a life that feels good on the inside, not just one that looks good. On the outside. That sounds like where you were to it looked really good. And yet you were miserable.

 

1:01:31

That’s exactly right. I was so afraid of missing out on things like that FOMO was so real for me, it was like my friends are going to go do all this stuff. And, and I’m going to miss it. And I was also living in a really small town when I was at, like, at my, my super bottom. And I guess that’s another thing to point out is like, for me, it wasn’t like, I was riding high. And then it was a crash. It was I don’t know that I was ever super high. But I certainly was in a like a downhill trajectory for a very long time. It was like, I don’t know, 10 years, maybe longer that I was like, slowly rolling downhill. And I did hit that rock bottom phase eventually. But the rock bottom is different for everybody. The way

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:02:11

it felt for me was like the death of 1000 cuts. Yes, you know, it wasn’t a moment. It was like a slow slide. Like, yeah, describe. Before I stopped drinking, I was like, I’m unhappy. My life should be wonderful. Nothing is wrong. And yet, why am I unhappy? Why do I feel trapped? Why do I Why am I angry? I’m not an angry person. You know what I mean?

 

1:02:38

Yeah. And it’s so easy to just feel like, well, this is it. Like, this is what my life is, this is how it’s going to be. And it just so doesn’t have to be. I don’t know why people gravitate that way. I don’t know why we are maybe it’s what we’re supposed to learn. While we’re on Earth. I don’t know. I mean, you can philosophize in a lot of different ways about that. But so many people like you, like I have a podcast and you talk to people who have these stories who have these stories of hitting rock bottom and rising back up and, and they’re uplifting, and they’re exciting. And I think we gravitate towards those stories, because, well, one, once we’ve gone through it, we don’t want to go back down again. But then when you’re on that downhill, slide it you need somebody to help lift you, you need somebody to show you that there’s a different way.

 

And so, listening to podcasts, finding different people who have overcome those, those hard parts of life, gone through those different seasons. And I recognize that there’s a lot of rough road ahead, right. I mean, I’m 42 years old, like my life is far from over. And there’s certainly going to be things that get harder as my children turn into teenagers as my parents age. I mean, I recognize all of that stuff comes through. But I also recognize that I will be able to handle them a lot better today than I could have when I was drinking. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t quit drinking before COVID Because that was – Oh my gosh. Oh, I know. It was a whole crazy monster.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:03:59

I completely agree. I did it quite a while before COVID. But I know from working with so many women that COVID made drinking so much worse for all the reasons and I think women’s drinking during the pandemic increased by like 32%. And for women with children under five years old. It was 323%. It was insane and had real repercussions like truly real like the death rate year over year from alcohol usually increases by about two to 3%. And the year after COVID It had jumped 25% Like this shit is real, and it’s dangerous.

 

So, anyone listening to this podcast is so far ahead of the game in questioning your drinking, whether you’re still drinking or not. What you’re doing is super brave and important then There are so many people sort of trapped in the drinking cycle who aren’t aware of how to get out or listening to things that are that are giving them tips and tools. So, I hope even if you’re, you know waking up with a hangover and trying to stop and then not or just curious about it that you’re proud of yourself.

 

1:05:19

Oh, I so agree. It was so far ahead if you’re just even thinking about it.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:05:23

Yeah. Well, so where can people find you? Where can they get your book? Listen to your podcast, all the things?

 

1:05:30

Yeah. Efficiency Bitch. So, if you if you look up efficiencybitch.com you’ll find me. I’m @EfficiencyB like just the letter B on social media, because Meta didn’t like the word bitch for a very long time. Efficiency, which is where it’s at. So, you can find me on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, my website all over the place. I’d love to connect. And my podcast is all the places podcasts are fab.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:05:51

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I feel like it was perfect that we happen to sit down next to each other and then I happened to raise my hand. Yes, it was whatever session it was and say what my podcast was about. So, this has been awesome.

 

1:06:07

Wonderful. Thank you so much for having me on. It’s been a pleasure.