This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 058 / Languishing & Re-entry with Lisa Kalmin

Episode Date: June 2, 2021

Are you feeling hopeful as things start to open up and excited to travel, hug people, and have full schedules? Or are you worried, hesitant to go back to your pre-covid way of living/working, and feeling overwhelmed? Wherever you land on the spectrum I promise there are lots of us with you. I wanted to dive into these conflicting thoughts and emotions, and asked my coach Lisa Kalmin to join me. As a Transformational Speaker, Trainer and Coach, and Author of “The Problem Is How You See The Problem”, Lisa shares with us how best to make yet another transition into what she calls “re-entry”. It is important that we feel our feelings, honor them and give them space...we’ve earned these feelings over the last year. But we aren’t meant to languish for too long. You have important work to do. So do what women have done since the beginning of time: honor your emotions, leverage and support your people and your community (and ask for support too!) and when the time is right, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back into action. This is Woman’s Work. To learn more about Lisa and her work you can visit her website at: www.lisakalmin.com To learn more about what we are up to outside of this podcast, visit us at NicoleKalil.com

Coming up on this episode of This Is Woman's Work. If you're listening to this, you are someone who has taken one of the most difficult years of any of our lives and transcended it with grace and beauty, even with the hard parts. I've been noticing a pretty common theme in so many of my conversations lately, which I'll be honest, has aligned closely with my own feelings over the last few months. So I figured it was worth a conversation in case you're feeling this too. And it goes something like this. I'm feeling hopeful as things are starting to open up and excited to get back to a new normal that involves seeing other people, getting my kids out of the house, and dare I say, traveling for vacations.

But for some reason, I'm also feeling worried about losing some of the things I gained or lessons learned and not sure I want it to all go back to the way it was before. I feel like I should be super motivated and grateful to hopefully be getting on the other side of the fear and loneliness and stress of the last year. But honestly, I just feel blah. Maybe not depressed, but also not jumping for joy like I feel like I should. I just am blah. I am Nicole Khalil, and if you're feeling any of this too, I promise there are lots of us out there that are with you. Adam Grant has even coined this feeling and has called it languishing. And it goes so far as to say it's the dominant emotion of 2021. And I'll share that it's come up multiple times with

my clients and coaching calls. And I've talked about it on almost every one of my conversations with my coach, Lisa Kalman. So let's talk about it. I've asked Lisa, transformational speaker, trainer, and coach to join me so we can all benefit from some coaching about how we get to make yet another transition. And I don't know about you, but I'd like to do it a little bit more gracefully than I did the transition into COVID, but also with more mindfulness around what I want to carry forward, what will serve me to let go of, and what boundaries I want to keep and which ones I want to create and ultimately how I can move out of languishing and toward living. Lisa, thank you so much as always for joining me. And I'm excited about

this conversation because as I said, we've talked about it a lot and I know it's on your mind because you're hearing it a lot too, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for having me again. I'm thrilled to be here. And yeah, I call it, I've been calling it re-entry. And as a kid growing up in Houston, I grew up in Houston in the 60s and 70s, I was a maniac about the space program. So I would watch every launch, every touchdown, all of it. And so in reentry, when the capsule comes back through the Earth's atmosphere, it literally catches on fire. And the astronauts lose contact with Earth. And so I had this experience as I was coming out of COVID and coming out of more quarantiny, isolation life that I was going through the fire and losing some connection. So that's why I started to delve into this and think I have some support for your listeners. Good to be with you.

I think it's been surprising, at least for me, I thought it was all going to feel like sunshine and rainbows being on. And I don't know if the other side is the right term, but I like re-entry this. When I thought about entering back into this next normal, I thought it was all going to be joy and excitement. And I've been surprised and sort of shocked by my own feelings. Yeah, absolutely. I think, first of all, we get to be connected to what's occurred over the last year. And my experience is all of us got to reinvent ourselves, let go of so much that we thought we were attached to that you're coaching and your listeners did a pretty good job of getting surrendered to this is what I have. How do I make the most of it? came. So many opportunities came, whether it was to learn new things, I certainly did, whether it was the sweetness of having my family really connected for several months. So as we now shift that again, any disruption to what we've surrendered into is going to feel kind of actually kind of funky. Yeah. I actually think that's one of the

bigger things that I am, you know, feeling on fire about and that I've heard from my conversations with some of the women I coach is yes, there's been hard parts of it, but we sort of surrendered and there were good things that came out of all this time with our family unit, um, or whatever bubble you chose throughout all of this. And Jay and I actually, we don't really argue or fight very often. Um, but we totally were missing each other with this is we, he started coming home and saying, we have this event on this evening, or I, they're going to do a trip this weekend or that event, you know, and I started getting really anxious and frustrated and, and I full disclosure did not handle it well I I went in the like this is work stuff it should happen during work hours it's you know not something they're trying to take

over our personal lives and and and you know that was my stuff right um but what I didn't say at first and had to kind of circle back was I'm afraid of losing this connection, this like we made it through COVID with our marriage intact and stronger. And like, and I just got afraid of. Yeah, I absolutely get it. So one of the things I wrote a blog about this is in terms of reentry. One of the points I made was to two things. Number one was honor your feelings and experience. Like I'll be okay with your feelings and experience. example, if going to your mom's house for a gathering, whether it was, you know, Easter and now coming up Memorial Day, whatever it is, with, you know, 15 people plus all the kids seems overwhelming to you, then either duck out early, find another way, or if your girlfriends are finally getting together and going to a crowded bar at happy hour rather than, you know, say, well, can we take a walk on the beach?

Like there is an opportunity to notice what is going to resonate with my internal well-being right now. And you may get there, you may get to the fun, big barbecues, you may not, but really to honor your feelings and experience. So that's, that's number one. And, and maybe a secondary part, Lisa, would you agree is okay. Honor them, but communicate them and choose vulnerability and transparency and honesty. You know, I can say that now because I didn't, I, you know, I think if those things are coming up for us, it's an opportunity to share like, Hey, I'm nervous about this, or I loved this about the last year and I'm afraid of losing it, or I'm excited about this, but nervous about that,

whatever it might be for us. It's just an opportunity to yet again, communicate. Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. And to, you know, as we've all, we've talked about throughout many podcasts is to be personally responsible for your, whatever you're experiencing and then communicate it from a place of responsibility rather than any kind of upset or blame. And the other piece around what you're saying is that to take stock of who you resonate with. One of the things I've noticed over the last year with COVID is all of us had to consciously choose who we were connecting with, whether we were connecting by Zoom or whether we made our little pod of people that we felt okay physically being with. We consciously chose what relationships to be connected to and to nourish.

And we consciously chose what to maybe not nourish. And so as we reenter, you know, in reentry, really notice who you resonate with, stay connected to those relationships that have nourished you and you feel you are nourishing to them. And then it's really okay to let other relationships fall away. It doesn't mean you're not a nice person. It doesn't mean you're not kind. It doesn't mean you don't say happy birthday but there was a parsing out that occurred naturally that may serve people as they move forward so or at least for me I noticed that yeah I agree completely and this has come up a couple times in in conversations um COVID sort of gave us a legitimate excuse or or what felt like a valid reason to not hang out with certain people or not go certain places or not engage with.

And sometimes it can be a struggle now that the excuse or the reason is not there anymore. anymore, how do we communicate or how do we protect or how do we choose that boundary without that valid reason? Is my question making any sense? Yeah, of course. I don't think you need a valid reason. And my trust of the bigger picture is that if you have kind of had that relationship fall away, they probably have too. If they're not like knocking your door down, then they're probably okay with it too. And it goes along with the first thing we talked about to honestly communicate, you know what, here's where I am in this process. I really had, I had a friend of ours who's not a client, but actually a friend called me up in tears because it got like the re-entry was so overwhelming for her. She's very sensitive. She's highly sensitive. And so she really got to, I get to give myself grace and be okay with this.

So another thing that I've seen pop up quite a bit throughout the whole experience, but, but now for new reasons is still the judgment that people have of us and our choices and the judgments we have of others and their choices. So for example, you mentioned, you know, going to the family for a holiday, like some people might still not feel comfortable doing that. Some people might still not feel comfortable going back into the office and being in a conference room with so many people. How do we navigate through that judgment piece? Yeah. I think first of all, reminding ourselves that everybody's doing the best they can,

given what they know. You know, whether it's, you know, there are still people, we went to a restaurant last week and we're all vaccinated. So personally that works for me and I'm happy about that. And, and, you know, the, the bus boy was like, his mask was under his chin, you know, and I don't have so much worry about myself, but I noticed I was in judgment because there's actually still a law about servers where I live. So really, number one, being responsible for your choices in the moment. You know, last summer, we were somewhere and it was still in the middle of COVID and the restaurant was supposed to have, it was like our one restaurant out, was supposed to have distancing and they plopped somebody literally within a foot of us. So what we did, we just,

we just got up and left. We just like, we made our choice. We got up and left. That was what was going to work. So making your choices without having to blame the other person, without having to say, you know, that jerk, that asshole, whatever. And knowing that even from the very beginning of this process, it has been polarizing. I think a lot from a lot of political rhetoric, et cetera, but just, you know, choices that people have made that are personal, some consider it moral, whatever it is. So knowing that your choices for you are totally fine and being okay that their choices are, and if it doesn't work for you, responsibly handling it. Now, if it's within your family, then you may get to talk about it, negotiate it, say,

here's what would work. Can this work for you? Rather than just get pissed off and angry. Yeah. And in fact, one of the things I talk about, and I noticed it's several, it's not as I was saying before, it's not as edgy as it was for me at three or four weeks ago. But my first foray into reentry, people were unbelievably reactive. Like people were just downright crappy, you know, angry, this guy was yelling at the

barista. I mean, it was a Starbucks, it was crazy. So one of the things I want to remind people is that, well, one, we forgot our manners. We've been isolated for a year. Second, it has been so much internal stress, whether it was financial for people, political, social, our kids at home, figuring out how to navigate, that we are on edge and we're just coming out of that. So my antidote for that is number one, have compassion. Don't react to their reaction, walk in their moccasins. Like what would it be like over there? Because it's, it's there. Don't be shocked if people are just a little bit rude, you know, and reactive. I'll speak for myself.

I think I am a little bit more reactive or on edge. And I've been noticing that as I go out or interact with people, that that comes up for me a little faster, a little stronger than it normally does. So I love the mind your manners. We have, we've forgotten. This is kind of a funny story. So Jay had three of his work people, people that work with him over in the backyard and they were doing a planning meeting. And I'm in here getting my work done. And I go out to say hi, uh, as I was heading to get my first vaccine. Um, so I go out to say hi

and I swear, I don't know what happened. I was like, I tried to make a joke and then, and then it didn't go. And so then I tried to double down on it and it was all sorts of awkward so much so that when I came back later, Jay was like, what was that? And I'm like, I don't go. And so then I tried to double down on it. And it was all sorts of awkward. So much so that when I came back later, Jay was like, what was that? And I'm like, I don't know. I literally forgot how to talk to people. I forgot how to make small talk. I forgot how to be a good host. I forgot all of it.

And so it's funny. These, some of these skills have gotten a little rusty. Yeah. How to engage. And I think we've been, other than our family has been very internal. And so there's some peace to that and, and calmness and, and I think very positive outcomes to it. And then there's also the, oh my gosh, like I feel, yeah, I feel naked out there in the world again. And, and so just be ready for that. And, and rather than react, especially if other people

are reactive, just, you know, walk in their moccasins again, have compassion, empathy. People have been through a lot. And I don't think any of us know what each person has, how they've navigated this and made it, made it through. And, and some people not well, as we know, as we know, a couple of things I think are super important is number one is whatever healthy habits that people that you have, or, or your listeners or any of us have started, keep it up. You know, I noticed at the beginning of COVID, I was super rigorous about my eating. I was super rigorous about my exercise. And then I got a little sloppy. And then at the beginning of the year, I started again in a rigorous, more exercise routine. So that's been super helpful.

So if it's meditation, exercise, eating well, maintain those because it's grounding and it's helpful. And yeah, I think that's, that's number one. So would you suggest taking some time and really thinking consciously about what is it that I want to keep? What do I want to keep doing? Or even like, what are some of the boundaries that I've set that I want to keep? Or as you suggested earlier, that the people in my life I want to keep. And then potentially having a conversation with whoever might be part of that equation, whether it be a spouse or a best friend. So how do we consciously decide what to carry forward?

Great, great. Yeah. I would first sit down with yourself and even journal out what's really been the blessing of this, this time. You know, what have I started to notice about myself? What have I started to be? What qualities have I brought out of myself? Resilience, reinvention. What are the, what are the experiences I've had that I've really nourished and cherished? Whether it's time with family, time with your kids, family nights, whatever that is, habits, including exercise, nutrition, you know, meditation, things like that yoga, maybe. And then what is it that I'm, I would look at, look at it from what am I now yearning

for? What is it that I want to add in a, you know, I want to add in, you know, being with my family physically, you know, once a month, twice a month, I want to add in time with my girlfriends. I want to add in travel. Yeah. We're set to go to Hawaii. We go every year and we didn't go last year. It's like, we're yearning to, to go back to Hawaii. So what is it I want to add and how do I do that in a way that's going to serve my, my, me, my family, my vision, my purpose, et cetera. And then how do we, I don't know, measure is not the right word, but as we do that, how do we take stock of what is working or not working? So if I think I want to add 17 things back in, might be too much too fast. Or I might think I want something because I've missed it for so long. Example travel is like top of my mind and we can't afford to

not financially as much as time wise and all that to just go on trip after trip after trip after trip. So how do we, I don't know, integrate? I would, I would start by starting literally, like you start by starting, like if it's to meet up with people or have a family gathering habit, see how it goes for you. Set up a weekend away, you know, you can, you can manage time for a weekend and you can do that for people on a budget. You can definitely do that in a way, you know, whether it's you head to camping or it's the beach or something like that. See how that is.

See how it is to go outside your community that you've been used to and travel in that way. Or, you know, if you have an office that people are actually participating in person, you know, maybe go in once a week for a couple of weeks or twice a week and see how that goes. So start by starting and doing it and seeing how it feels for you and how it resonates for you. So that would be my suggestion there. And then I think, you know, the overriding conversation, we've talked about this as well, but is extreme gratitude, like extreme, extreme gratitude. So, you know, first of all, if people

are listening to this, and I'm very present to this myself, then you're alive. You know, hundreds of thousands of people in the United States and millions of people in the world are not. So extreme gratitude for all of it, for all of it. And that requires both the practice of gratitude, but also surrender in the moment. Like this is, this is this, and I'm completely grateful. Because gratitude and resentment cannot live in the same space. Or gratitude and frustration or blame or guilt cannot live in the same space. So really giving yourself permission to just, yeah, you know, I really believe that, especially the people listening to your podcast, if you're listening to this, you are someone who has taken one of the most difficult years of any of our lives and transcended it with grace and beauty, even with the hard parts. And so the gratitude of that and the resilience we've taught our kids in that way. And I think it's just really a precious time to surrender to that. I'm so glad you said that.

That I think needed to be heard, at least on my part. Is there anything else that you're noticing as we talk about re-entry that may be coming up for people or may be a unique to this time type thing? Yeah. You were talking about, you know, you started out talking about languishing and not being super motivated. Be okay with that. I, So many people I know have reinvented their lives in a way where they stepped into their purpose or a new adventure. Like I know so many people have moved to Costa Rica or Belize or taken a year off and traveling

or whatever they're doing. And so this has become a pivotal moment for us to look at what am I up to? I think it is also forced. We got off the hamster wheel. We got to stop, look, choose, vote, as you know those words from our trainings. But to stop and look, get off automatic,

choose, make choices that aren't based on what we think we're supposed to be doing, aren't based on what the path was like already set. And then to take action on what matters to us. So I think this is a time not to be in, you know, judgment of yourself for not being motivated and passionate and let's go out there and rock the world, but to go, what, what matters to me? If I looked at where I really want to be, given what I know now that I didn't know a year ago, who I want to be five years from now, where I don't want to be, then I think, I think it's that time, you know, I looked at my, I've had a pretty like fast paced career life and I still

do really powerful work, but I've really gotten to like, you know what, that season might be over for me. And I'm really looking at what's this next realm for me. That's, that's more around the, uh, living being contributing, you know, a little less like high energy paste, you know, I think that's been, uh, learning for a lot of women that I've talked to, and we talked about this on the first time I had you on the podcast, the culture of doing this that exists, especially in the United States, it's, or culture of do, do, do, there's not a problem. We don't try to outwork, grind it out. You know, hard work is the answer to everything. Push harder, push harder. Yeah, exactly.

The last year didn't, for a lot of us, allow for that. And thank goodness, because I think it created an opportunity for us to just be more conscious of how we're being, as opposed to what we're doing all the time. And I'd love to keep that. I want to carry that forward. So. Well, and what I'll say to that, Nicole, watch out for how quickly and easily we can get back into the doing this, the I'll call it the rat race for a better word, better way to watch out for how easily we can get swept up into that because it's cellular learning at this point for most of us, especially very hardworking, very motivated, very committed women. It is so easy to get back

into that. And there's a lot of pressure, I think, coming towards a lot of women to do that, even if they don't totally want to. Again, I've had conversations with a lot of women where it's like my boss or the leaders at my organization are expecting me to come back in, start early, work late. And I don't think I want to do that and I've been highly productive and and figured things out how to make it work in the last year so not only do I not want to but I don't think I need to anymore which might have been a question mark a year ago yeah and then I would invite them uh to advocate for themselves and to step up and use their voice, as you talk about so often, to say, I'll get the results.

And it may not look the way it used to. I think I can understand this more individually, but I'd love to have a conversation about it collectively. I feel like the last year was so much a reminder that there are people who are hurting. There are people who are dying. There is pain in our country. There is division. There's all these things. And at least personally, I hope this has been a time also of healing and an opportunity, as you said, to choose how we reenter. How might we think about this more globally or collectively about the opportunity we have as we reenter? Yeah, one of the things that I think the pandemic woke us up to, and if not, please wake up to, is like, we're not separate.

Like, it did not really matter what country you were from, how much money you had, what your upbringing was, it was indiscriminate in its impact. And so out of that, I think it's no accident, we've had not only the political stuff come up, we've had all of the Black Lives Matter conversation come up. We've had, you know, work at home, work at school, everything got revealed. And in my experience, what got revealed wasn't just the disease of coronavirus, was the dis-ease underlying our psyche as a culture. And so it got illuminated. And I think we're really in the midst of that illumination. Some people recognizing it, and this isn't any judgment about people, people are just, again, wherever they are, but some people recognizing it and some people trying

to push it back down as if it didn't get illuminated. Because it's hard. Because it's difficult. Because it changes the way we look at life. It's not convenient to care about humanity. It is not comfortable to care about humanity. It is not necessarily financially beneficial personally to care about humanity. It doesn't mean you can't generate abundance by caring about things like Tom's shoes, you know.

So I think we're struggling with this. And I would invite all of us along with the, we can't just take care of our four, you know, the four people in our house, you know, or the three or the six or however many it is. It's who, what's the citizen of the world I want to be? What is my, what's the legacy I want my children to see in who I've been in the world, whatever your faith is, whatever your political beliefs are, whatever, you know, and we can't do it without talking and coming together and having conversation. And I have strong beliefs a certain way, socially, politically, etc. And as do other people. And if I can't have that conversation with somebody and, you know, simply hear their point of view and hear why it's like that for them, then why would they listen to me? Why would we ever be able to do that? So I don't think there's

an easy answer to what you're saying. I think we're in it. And I think knowing we're in it and being okay that we're in it and truing up to who's the human being I want to be, like I said, who's the sister of the world I want to be, I think is about, it's a good question. I don't have an answer, but I got a good question. I think that piece that you talked about is personally the most challenging for me is creating a space to have empathy for, listen to, be open to somebody's thoughts and opinions that are in stark contrast, polar opposite of mine. And reminding myself that I can be open and I can listen. And then I get to choose. Just because I'm open and listen doesn't mean I agree. Doesn't mean it's what I think or that I'm going to take that on

or that I'll be manipulated or anything like that. I still get to choose. But I will say, you know, I'm working on that because that is a harder part. There are a lot of things I know I don't know. And then there are some things that I just in my core believe are right for me or right from where I'm standing. And that can be really hard. Yeah. Oh, no. No. I mean, in our brain, we're like, how can you think this? And they're saying that about us, me too. Where are you? How is that possible? And that's where we got to go, okay, that my brain is screaming, but can I open my heart and hear the, whatever that is. Yeah. And not be so dismissive. That's what I tell myself. Cause my brain goes, that person's an idiot or there's like, I just, it's so confusing to me that they, the seemingly intelligent, productive human would see something so differently than I do.

And so it's much easier to get dismissive. Right. Much more courageous. Yeah. The moment we use the label, we don't have to experience the experience. We don't have to feel the feelings. Yeah. The moment we use the label, we don't have to experience the experience. We don't have to feel the feelings. Yeah. Soon we label somebody, whatever we label them. Yeah. Well, I feel is like being at the top of a roller coaster and just bombing down and you're sick to your stomach,

but top of a roller coaster and just bombing down and you're gonna stick to your stomach. Woo! Put your hands up. Buckle in. We're going for the ride. Buckle in, put your hands up, give it a shout. I love it. Lisa, as always, thank you. Before I close this out, any other thoughts that you think are important or that I didn't ask?

Here's what I'll say. Really, look in the mirror, give yourself a big old self hug or what. Congratulations on being somebody who not only navigated the year, but you're now listening to a podcast to grow yourself, to learn, to expand who you are. And we all did, we did a great job. And now what's next?

Like gratitude, gratitude, gratitude. That's what I would end this with. I second that. If you want to learn more about Lisa or follow her, you can visit her website at lisakalman.com. So L-I-S-A-K-A-L-M-I-N. Or you can visit inspirecoachingworkshops.com to learn more about some of the live events or virtual events that are coming up for Lisa in the next year. You can follow her at Lisa Kalman on Instagram or Facebook or wherever you, wherever you like to go, wherever your places. Um, and then let me just give a quick plug for her book. The problem is how you see the problem. It is an awesome and, and great, easy read. It's, you know, life changing. And I think 110 pages or less. I read it, handed it to Jay, read it again. So Amazon or wherever you buy books. And I want to close out by saying, I don't know about you all, but I always feel better,

more empowered when I talk my feelings out with somebody who has empathy and will listen, but also will challenge. It is important that we feel our feelings, honor them, and give them space. We've earned these feelings over the last year. And I also want to lovingly remind you that you're not meant to languish for too long. You have important risks to take, love to give, laughter to be shared, hugs to hold, places to visit, impact to be made. You have important work to do. So do what women have done since the beginning of time. Honor your emotions, leverage and support your people and your community. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back into action. This is woman's work.