Earning Rest, Burnout & Being "Ambitious About Balance" with Lizzy Pennock

"Effort is the disease, not the cure." Environmental attorney and burnout coach Lizzy Pennock joins Hustle Rebels to talk about why overachievers feel like they have to earn rest — and what happens when they finally sit down. Renae and Lizzy get into burnout, people-pleasing, why women sometimes hold each other back, coaching vs. therapy, and the nervous-system science behind why growth feels uncomfortable.

About Lizzy Pennock:
Lizzy Pennock is a carnivore coexistence attorney based in Montana and the founder of Her Bold Life Coaching, where she helps high-achieving women stop performing and start living in alignment with who they actually are. 

Grab her free guide, Stop Running on Empty, at herboldlife.com/hustle.

Connect with Lizzy:

Website: herboldlife.com
LinkedIn: Lizzy Pennock
YouTube: @HerBoldLifeCoaching

Renae's Resources

📩 Join the Weekly Recharge newsletter, out every Wednesday: [https://wayward-wellness-coaching.kit.com]

Book a Brainspotting Session: [https://calendly.com/waywardwellnesscoaching/packages/eb0c0772-56b6-47a0-9510-cb0187ed0dec]

Book a call with Renae: [https://calendly.com/waywardwellnesscoaching/connectwithrenae]

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

That feeling of earning rest is like this nagging feeling. I can't sit down. And then we sit down and it's a crushing weight of all the shit that we haven't been dealing with because we've been busy and productive and doing all the things. And it's a tough balance. At this point in my life, I am trying to be ambitious about balance. I have been singularly ambitious about my career and I made a lot of sacrifices in other areas of my life. But now that I'm here, I feel like I have a different vantage point. And it's like I want to be ambitious about having a good job that's in its appropriate boundaries. I want to be ambitious about having a full social life and healthy relationships. I want to be ambitious about snuggling with my dogs and taking them on a walk. And I want to be ambitious about doing something that matters to me.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

This is Hustle Rebels, the podcast for people who still want to win but are starting to question the cost. I'm Renee, your host and burnout recovery expert. I help overachievers get out from under-the-grind culture, stop sacrificing themselves to a system that literally never gives back, and actually live a life that they worked so hard for like they deserve. Before retirement takes their decrepit body. Alright, everyone, welcome back to Hustle Rebels. I'm Renee, your host, and today's guest is going to wreck your idea of self-care and what it actually means in the best way. Lizzie Pinnock is not your typical life coach. By day, she's practicing environmental law based in Montana, a carnivore coexistence attorney who fights to protect wolves and grizzly bears for a living. That's on top of a marine science degree from the University of Hawaii, a law degree from Lewis and Clark, 10 months living out of a backpack across New Zealand, Australia, and Southeast Asia, and because apparently regular risk wasn't enough, a vertical skydive off an 850-foot building in Vegas. But here's the part that actually matters for this particular conversation. Lizzie spent years being the reliable one, the high achiever, the woman who people pleased her way through rooms and relationships while quietly losing track of herself. She's been honest about surviving things that would have given most people a permanent excuse to stay small. But instead, she built her bold life coaching, a practice for women who are done waiting for permission to bet on themselves. She's also the woman behind a guide called Stop Running on Empty. And the core idea in it is basically the whole ethos of this entire show. You don't need to earn rest. You need to remember who you actually are. So, Lizzie, welcome to Hustle Rebels.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

I'm really excited to have you on because you just have such a wild resume, to be completely honest. And when I read it, I was very impressed and very excited because you're just such an adventurer. And at the same time, you obviously have accomplished so much in your life. Marine science, world traveler, environmental attorney, and now a life coach helping women. So when did you first notice that high achieving lawyer and the women underneath her wasn't actually the same person?

SPEAKER_00 3:17

It took me a long time looking at the resume and looking at it all. Sometimes I'm like, is that me? But that professional ambition was always my North Star. And that started when I was in high school. I was just going about life, a middle class, privileged white kid in the suburbs near Denver. And I read this book about industrial animal agriculture. And it blew my mind. I just had no idea what this was. And it it I love to learn what is the moment that somebody got radicalized. And for me, that was the moment that I got radicalized. And it just opened my eyes to where is the justice for these animals and what's happening to the environment and the people that are working in this industry that's super dangerous. And that's how I got started on like, I want to advocate for the environment professionally. So that was when I was a teenager. My personal life then and my family life was beautiful and challenging. And the North Star of summoning the mountain of like environmental attorney, I didn't know I wanted to be an attorney. At that point, I thought I want to do science. Once I got inspired and radicalized, I started trying harder at school. And I realized that I was really smart because I got tutoring and somebody actually taught me how to do chemistry instead of me guessing how to do chemistry and just feeling like the dumbest person on the planet. And I was like, okay, I could do this. And I loved the ocean. And I also had learned about industrial fishing, which is just a disaster for the environment. And that just lit a fire in me that drove me. I'm 32 now, almost 33. And that was when I was 17, 18. So it's been a long time that I have been following that North Star. And so that high achieving person, sometimes it feels like the professional high achiever and the personal life coach and the things that led me to want to help women, it feels like two parallel lives that happened at the same time, sometimes to different people. Even when I was having panic attacks or wondering why am I still in this really unhealthy relationship or why am I so scared to stand up for myself or say what I need. At the same time, I was at the top of my law class and just succeeding in every way on paper that you could think. So it wasn't until probably like five years ago, four years ago, that I really realized those may not, those don't always feel like the same people. But I feel like I've been working on this integration in the past few years to because those are the same people. That's me. If I can do those things in both of those arenas, I can bring those things together and be my whole self and just show up as that instead of curating the self that I think is appropriate for wherever I am or whoever I'm talking to. Like I can just show up as the whole me, which includes all of those things.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

It is such a crazy paradox. And really, especially with women, and the more women that I speak with that are hustlers, high achievers, overachievers, the more it is very evident that we have that paradox in our lives that we are usually top in our class, we are usually very high achieving, yet we find it very difficult to ask for our needs and our desires in either relationships or we find ourselves in either mild or very toxic relationships. You know, like it's very difficult for us to put ourselves as a priority. Yeah. And it's very ironic that we find ourselves in these high-performing positions in our work, but then almost, I hate to say like submissive lifestyles in our personal lives. And it's very, it's very paradoxical.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

But you're so right. I have noticed that too, like with coaching clients and talking to people going into rooms with networking and entrepreneurs, and it's these incredible women. And then you start talking to them about their personal life, and you're like, wait, what? Like, how are those two the same

Why We Feel We Must Earn Rest

SPEAKER_00 7:35

thing?

SPEAKER_01 7:35

It's so crazy. And then speaking of that, we also have this inherent guilt, I feel like, that we can't take time to ourselves and to rest. So you talk about this belief that we have to earn rest and that it isn't a personality trait, it's like a programming. So, where do you think that this program really identities get installed into us?

SPEAKER_00 7:59

I think as a society, like a Western society, I think capitalism is like the driver of I need to produce, I need to be productive, I need to make money, I need to buy all the things. I think all of us experience that pressure. But I think women have a unique pressure where we're also expected by society and by those around us, and we expect ourselves to hold up the emotional tone of the room and keep track of the household and the appointments and all this mental and emotional labor that we do because we're women. It's because we live in a patriarchy. We are just expected to do all of those things. And then we can't complain. We have to smile, we have to look pretty. And yeah, I think it's really ingrained in our society. And that's why I think it can be so hard to unlearn it, to unlearn that pressure and those lessons that we have internalized. And it's part of the narrative we tell ourselves about who we are, is that I need to be this person for others. I think that's one of the reasons I wanted to start coaching, is because it took me way longer than I would like to admit to recognize what I was experiencing as someone living in a patriarchy, as a woman who's loud and ambitious and opinionated, constantly running into others, including myself and other women, trying to keep me small and figuring out that doesn't feel good, but we have to recognize it and then you have to unlearn it, and then you have to learn something else in its place. And that's almost the hardest thing is the stepping out of that box, that comfort zone. And I think that's where we have this ability to build community and support each other and talk to each other. And I think that's a strength that we can all as women lean into.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Yeah. I feel like you brought something up that was very interesting about how other women try to keep us small too. And I coming from the first responder world, especially in firefighters, I mean, I worked with like 90% men, right? But when we would go to the ERs and stuff, or when I did my clinicals as a paramedic, a lot of them were nurses and females. And it was very interesting because I felt like I was always clashing with the females, but I always worked a lot better with the males. And I never quite understood it. And it was very interesting. And then I was having a conversation with a good friend of mine, how she was saying how she's been fighting for a raise for quite some time now. And after a long period of time, she finally found out that the person that was she her immediate bosses are all men, and then the person that was actually stifling her from getting that raise was the higher up, was a female. And she was like, of all the people, you would think that she would understand, I'm a mother that I'm trying to like do better for my family and trying to do work and family at the same time, you know. So it's it's really interesting. But then I had another guest last week that I released, and she talked about how she experienced that too. But taking a step back and realizing how that is also coming out of our own hurt, the women that act like that, because we have to feel like they, women who are coming out of that feel like they have to prove themselves in many ways. And in order to get where they need to get, it's almost like, well, you have to prove your worth too.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

So it's so interesting how we it's like the patriarchy or the powers that be, it's like they want us to pit each other against each other. They do. It's so crazy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

And patriarchy is in us all, regardless of gender. Like that's that's the water we're swimming in, you know?

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Yeah, the powers that be, whatever the system is, it's just genderless at that moment, right? It is the system.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Absolutely. And that's why it's so hard to go against it. And it's like when I was younger and I was really insecure and I was seeking validation from all the boys, and I wanted to be liked. And we'd all be like, I'm not like the other girls. And it makes me cringe that I ever said that competently, like that was a good thing. I want to be like the other girls. The other girls are badasses and incredible and the creators of source and life. And like, why would I not want to be like that? But it's because we feel that, you know, the men, because it's a patriarchy, have like this power and we want to be close to it. And so we do what we need to do to kind of get in the good graces of that. And even if it's like putting down other women or not uplifting women, it is going against the grain to kind of, you know, if that boss instead had been like, I see you, I see your worth, I want to give you a raise, she might have had to put up with some shit from other people giving her the side eye. But at the end of the day, that's just what we have to do. I also realized I didn't answer the part of the question about like earning rest. And this is something I really wanted to talk about because I still struggle with this. And it's a conversation I have with myself a lot. And I think high achievers, yeah, it makes sense that we would talk about that on this podcast because you know, the programming is there, like we just talked about. But like, what does that mean for us? And I think we'll talk about like burnout and overwhelm more later, probably. But that feeling of earning rest is like this nagging feeling, like, I can't sit down. And then we sit down and it's a crushing weight of all the shit that we haven't been dealing with because we've been busy, busy, busy and productive and doing all the things. And I think it's a tough balance. At this point in my life, I am trying to be ambitious about balance. I have been singularly ambitious about my career, and I got where I wanted to go, and it required me to be singularly ambitious. And I made a lot of sacrifices in other areas of my life. But now that I'm here, I feel like I have a different vantage point. And it's like I want to be ambitious about having a good job that I like that's in its appropriate boundaries. I want to be ambitious about having a full social life and healthy relationships. I want to be ambitious about snuggling with my dogs and like taking them on a walk. And I want to be ambitious about doing something that matters to me, like starting a life coaching business for women, so I can be one of those women that helps reach up and like, you know, the hand, pulling the hand of the other woman who's like crawling out of the bullshit that we're all stuck in. That's important. And it all takes time. Adulting is like, how does anyone do it? It's like cooking and cleaning and staying healthy. We have all these things going on, and that's where earning rest, I think, or letting ourselves have rest is so important. And I think it requires us to be patient with the life coaching business because it is not my full-time job. I have to give myself a lot of grace. I only have so much time and energy. And so this is things go slow and we do things a little bit at a time, and that needs to be okay, which for type A high achievers is really hard because we want to be like doing it all all the time and throwing ourselves into it. And I think you do that enough and you have the opportunity to learn. I don't like how I feel, maybe at the end of that, or the rebuilding I have to do of my who am I? What do I like to do? Who am I outside of this thing I've been chasing? Like it's easy to lose sight of that when we don't let ourselves rest and be still.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

I also love that you call it being ambitious about balance. I've had this same revelation recently about taking your time. I've been having this really big struggle about exhaustion lately. And while I'm not a novice to tiredness and exhaustion, this is a totally different feeling of exhaustion. It was almost essential, right? Like it just feels like it's in my bones. And when I was talking to, I work with a coach once a month, and I was telling her, I'm like, this everything, the part of it is like we go through a mindset thing. I was like, it's just so hard to work on things when you're so exhausted, like physically depleted. And I'm just going through like these are the things that I do every single day to try to mitigate the exhaustion. And she's just like, stop trying so hard.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

And I was like, I need to stop being tired. So I need to keep doing things to stop being tired, to find out what's wrong, you know? And so my initial reaction was to fight her against it. But I let those words kind of simmer. I took a shower afterwards, and then I'm like, after putting lotion on. I don't know if you can relate to this, but usually I'm like get out of the shower, put lotion on, quickly putting it on my face and just on my arms, and then call it a day. But I found myself just putting lotion all over and actually taking my time. Like those are the words. Take your time. And I'm like, I don't think I know what that means. Yeah. Taking your time. And this is like I've been working on myself for quite some time. You know, I've been doing this business for the last year and helping others. And I was like, I had to take my own advice, like, take your time. And so it's really interesting when you have to take a step back. And I was like, I want to just enjoy things. Yeah. Don't just take the dogs out for a walk just to get their energy out. View it as I'm getting their energy out and I'm enjoying going outside. And it's like a meditation for me. Yeah. I get to enjoy going outside. I don't have to listen and do a masterclass at the same time. I can just listen to the birds. Right. I can take the dogs out to go get the groceries and they can enjoy going outside with the windows open, taking our time and enjoying and being ambitious to enjoy life.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

I think what you're saying is so important too, because I think we feel like I need to do more and I need to have this meditation practice and I need to journal every day. And there's all these things you could find a list online of how to rest, of all these things you can do, but really it's those little moments that we already don't have to do extra, we don't have to research it. We need to just slow down, literally. Not like plan a day where we slow down and do nothing, but in those moments, like putting lotion on after the shower or taking a shower or going on a walk or just sitting on your couch for five minutes with your cup of coffee in the morning in silence. Like there's all these things we could easily make a little shift in these moments we're already experiencing that ground us or reconnect us with our body. So it's not this huge barrier of like, if I'm not a Zen master, then how will I ever be able to relax? I better work on my Zen mastery and go to a 10-day meditation company. I know.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

But like we're like working to health. It's like we're always working to do something. Like I did like my newsletter the other day. It's like our effort is the disease, not the cure.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

I had this moment that you made me think of, which I think demonstrates like our programming. I did a solo trip to Belize, and I was on an island on a four-acre island, and they make all the food for you. They do everything. You're just there to relax. And I was eating dinner, and I was just eating normally. And one of the guys that worked there was like, slow down. Yeah. And I realized how fast I was eating. I was eating like it was my job to finish this burger, this chicken sandwich as fast as I possibly could. And when he said that, it was like your coach saying to you, like, take your time. I was like, wow. But then I get home and I notice myself doing that all the time. So like having those little moments, those things we can remind ourselves of like slow down. Yeah. Enjoy. Absolutely. Take the bite, put it down, enjoy your meal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

You don't realize how fast you eat. I always blamed it on my boyfriend would always laugh at me because I would eat so incredibly fast. And it was really mostly because of work, because we would just eat so fast, we never know when we'd get the next call. Right. After I had left the fire department and I was doing my life and health certifications. Part of it was like time yourself because I got holistic nutrition and stuff through it. And like time yourself eating, because that is a huge part. Digestion and rest and the parasympathetic is a huge part of it. And so time yourself eating and just not fixing it, just see how long it takes you to eat. So I was like, I set the timer. I was eating a six-ounce steak. It took me like 30 seconds. It literally, like, I inhaled a six-ounce steak in like 30 seconds timer. I was like, How did I do that? Like, how possible? Like, how is my stomach even big enough to just inhale that so fast? I wonder why I feel like I'm gonna throw up after I eat. Like my brain doesn't even register that I ate that. And so, like, to get to eating eight minutes, it's hard, you know, when we're so ingrained to just like go, go, go, go, go. Right. You don't realize the same thing with when you start counting calories. We don't realize it's not the matter of counting calories and being obsessive about it. It's just because there's so many things we don't realize how much we're consuming in everything, how much we're consuming on our phone, how much we're consuming news, how much we're consuming food. We're just consuming because we don't stop, right? We just never stop. We don't allow it. Right, it is autopilot. We don't allow our brain to just compute, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Well, and that's how we end up burned out, right? Because you're there once you realize it's happening, you're already there. Exactly. And you don't realize it until all your

The Cost of Grind Culture

SPEAKER_00 21:48

systems are collapsing and you're just so not okay that you cannot possibly ignore it for one more second. And our goal is to avoid that, right? But that's a constant maintenance, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

So It makes me think about how in your guide you asked people to name the cost of the grind. So like in health relationships, sense of joy, sleep and peace. What did that end up costing you before you started doing this work on yourself?

SPEAKER_00 22:13

Yeah. I made sacrifices when in I think law school and the bar exam and like that, those three-ish years and like the beginning of my career, that was a level of burnout I have never experienced in my life. And I remember preparing for finals or studying for the bar exam. And I was also publishing this paper, like which was a really big deal, but I was also working as a bartender like two days a week. So I'm doing all the things. And I remember just sitting at this desk doing the edits on the paper because I'm like beholden to somebody else. It's a deadline of the editor, and I'm just crying at my desk and I'm doing it anyway. And I'm like proud of myself. For law school, did this not that I should have been proud of myself, but I was, and that's something to sit with. Like, why was that a source of pride for me that I pushed myself so hard and then didn't give myself a break? I just kept pushing. And in law school, I think, or other high-achieving careers, like it's hard not to. Like that's the system and that's the way to succeed. My field is super competitive. If I hadn't done what I had done, I don't know if I would have made it. So I look back and I'm like, I'm not upset that I made that sacrifice. But there were sacrifices. And I think sometimes we sacrifice sleep. I think our health, that feeling of chronic stress, like being stressed all the time. And when we are fighting that burnout and we keep going, I think we're really living from here up, right? If you are existing in your body, you just can't keep doing that. And I think we just learn to ignore those signals. Or we never learned our body's language in the first place. I think those, like my physical health, my mental health, like my individual identity just got absorbed by my ambition to achieve this dream job. And it took me like six months after the bar exam to remember what I liked doing for fun. And sometimes I'm like, maybe I could have done that better. It certainly influences the way I live my life now. And sometimes it's okay for us to make sacrifices too. Like I think circling, going through this sheet, the most important thing is that we are aware. We're aware of what we're sacrificing. We're aware of the areas in our life where we're maybe pushing to the side to make this other area bigger. Like sometimes there's nothing wrong with that. I think when we're not aware, is when things can spiral. So part of the guide is just having that conversation with ourselves. Because so much of this, like eating a steak in 30 seconds or eating my chicken sandwich, like it was my job to do so. We just don't even know we're doing it. And I think reflection guides like this guide is an opportunity to sit down and ask yourself, what am I sacrificing? Do I want make it a choice? Not just I'm running around and I'm making all these sacrifices and I'm not gonna know I'm sacrificing them until my whole life blows up or my partner breaks up with me, or whatever it is. We deserve to make a choice. And first we need to have the information in front of us, and that means we have a conversation with ourselves about what we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

Yeah. It's so true because awareness really is the first key. A lot of the times we're not we're either not willing or we're not, we don't know that we should sit down and have that conversation with ourselves. And like what you were saying, we don't know, we've been so trained out of knowing what our own intuition sounds like. Yes, that we've been fed all the information from outside sources, yes, external sources that we don't know what the internal source sounds like. Yes, it's just crazy. Yes. I even grew up in a very Christian household, and we were just always told to get our answers from God and make those decisions based off of that. And while there's nothing wrong with spirituality, I feel like there is an element of that does out train you to listen to your internal source, which

Meditation Misconceptions

SPEAKER_01 26:15

could be God speaking through you too, right? But the way that you might be taught is that it's not internal, you know, it's external, right? So in all senses, we are just trained to listen to external sources, so it's very difficult for anyone to sit down, and it's interesting too because people get a misconception of what meditation is. People think meditation is sit down and clear your mind and blah, blah, blah, you know, but that's not what meditation is. Meditation is just learning to sit with your body and learning to be in tune with what it's trying to say to you. Yeah. And it's really all it is, you know, it's very simple, but we're so I don't know if we're scared of doing that or if we're scared of knowing what it's going to say. It's just a very interesting thing.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

I think it is fear because it's uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

Like working on yourself is uncomfortable, and it's maybe inconvenient for others in your life. So there's this, well, what are people gonna say if I change?

SPEAKER_01 27:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Because of that external pressure comes from everywhere of like who we're supposed to be, or what box we're supposed to fit in, or what role we're supposed to play, or how we're supposed to show up. There's all these shoulds. Yeah. And none of them come from ourselves. And I think that's what we need to re-un and then relearning is what you're saying is how to listen to yourself. What are you saying? What is yourself saying? And that means sitting with yourself, yeah. Which can be uncomfortable, especially if

Growth Without Guilt

SPEAKER_00 27:44

it's new.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

And I think too, a lot of the times we interpret it as something wrong with us. Like if something comes up, yeah, we immediately think something is wrong and that's a bad thing. But in reality, it's just the way that we have been surviving and it's been a coping mechanism that has kept us safe, which is fine. And you can thank yourself for however long that that did that, and then just say, All right, now I made the decision that this is what I want to do now. There's nothing wrong with the way that I had been performing in that manner, but now it's no longer serving me, and I want to do something different. So it's very interesting. Even as I'm changing myself and I come out with like different stories or something. I have people in my life that will come out and be like, they feel bad because of how I am now coming out with different stories or something. And I'm like, no, I don't want you to feel bad because it wasn't how you were doing something to me, it was just how I might have absorbed it back. Yeah, how I was however I was absorbing it, you know, because that was the person that I was. You were just acting how you were acting because of how you were absorbing things, you know. Yep, that's just how life goes. This is nothing that you were doing, it was just how I was absorbing. Now I'm just learning something different. There's nothing inherently bad in anything. We're just all learning different things, but we all are learned to then feel guilty about certain things, but there's no reason for it.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Yeah, yeah, especially feeling

Lawyer Meets Coach

SPEAKER_00 29:11

guilty about growth and change. It's such a funny, tragic, tragically funny thing that we experience.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

I know, and that stops you from growth. Yeah. But I want to switch gears a little bit because I want to get to what you do now and kind of like mash it up a little bit, but you're fighting this is the exciting part. You're fighting for wolves and grizzlies by day and helping women stop performing by night. Do the lawyer and coach in you ever kind of like argue with each other?

SPEAKER_00 29:40

It's definitely like on my mind because they can be two different things. And I think logistically, I do have to be careful that my coaching agreement is very clear that this is not an attorney-client relationship. Like, there are things I have to consider ethically as an attorney, but I think they don't fight so much anymore because I have done that integration work. And I think one of my goals in life is to be uncomfortable, not in an unsafe way, but like take controlled risks that I want butterflies. I just wrote a blog about cultivating butterflies. That is something I'm ambitious about. And I think we should all do that more because that's where we grow. That's where we learn who we are or who we could be. And my job, I get to do that all the time. I speak publicly and I teach interns. And I had to deal with so much imposter syndrome. And I was like, they want to learn from me. And I think all of that really informs how I show up as a coach because those experiences that I have, it's an opportunity to practice, like asking for a raise or having those difficult conversations. Like on my website, you'll see my goal is to help women get out of their comfort zone, which could be is different for everybody. Sometimes it's asking for the raise. Sometimes it's going up to the podium and public speaking. Sometimes it's having a hard conversation with your partner or your parent or a friend. Sometimes it's just, I want to go get a cup of coffee and I don't have anyone to go with me, and that makes me uncomfortable. So I think being a lawyer and this career has really just helped me become the person I need to be in order to be that coach and in order to kind of walk alongside someone as they explore that on their own. And it's given me this rich experience of failing by myself or feeling like, oh my gosh, I just talked to the media and I said something so stupid, and I'm not gonna sleep for two nights. But recognizing it's okay to be embarrassed, it's okay to mess up, taking that pressure off myself. I have a lot of opportunities to practice taking pressure off myself for being perfect. And it is a practice. And so I really think the lawyer and the coach don't fight so much as like they're good friends and they kind of support each other in kind of being the best version of themselves. And sometimes I coach myself all the time as a lawyer and as a coach. So I think they really blend together in a way that kind of lets me be the best version of both.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

Yeah. You gave a few examples of how you kind of help people and helping yourself. And people mix up coaching a lot with therapy. And I had seen on your website how you say that, you know, it's not therapy, it's not mentorship, but in your own words, what's actually the difference between what you do?

SPEAKER_00 32:32

I mean, I think coaching is I'll start with therapy. Therapy is like, and I've done a lot of therapy and I love therapy, and it has changed my life and made me the person that I am. And it's like that deep emotional work. It's a lot of like what happened to me in the past and how is that in my body today, or how is that impacting my life today, and kind of facing some of those things that we've been living with and maybe not knowing it. I think coaching is really forward-looking. And coaching can't sometimes therapy is needed for some things, like trauma or whatever it is, therapy might be the right answer. But I think coaching comes in where someone is ready to look forward and ready to ask themselves hard questions. I think a lot of coaching is kind of walking alongside somebody and trusting that they have their own answers. They have that intuition. I don't know what's best for you or what's best for somebody else, even the people I know the best. Only they do. And coaching helps somebody pull themselves out of that. And I was talking about reaching down to grab somebody's hand and pull them out of the bullshit. Sometimes we reach down and grab our own hand. And I think coaching can give people like the courage and the support and feeling like I don't have to do this by myself. Because stepping out of your comfort zone is scary. Going against the grain is scary. And there may be people in our life that don't understand what we're doing, and that makes it really hard. So coaching gives people that. And I think it also creates this container, like, especially as women, we very rarely have spaces where we can just sit and focus on ourselves or we feel guilty when we do that. And so if somebody else is there saying, You deserve this, you have permission to just sit here and focus on working on yourself and thinking about yourself and being your best self, you deserve to do that. Sometimes that's all we need to hear. And then have somebody support us as we do that. I think that's really where the strength of coaching.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

I completely agree because I feel like when people look at coaching, they just have this idea that it's just kind of like a lot of fluff and just surface level stuff, but they don't understand how it really is walking alongside someone and digging deep with how can we push you forward into a life that's in alignment. And people don't understand too that it's okay to enjoy life, like what we were just talking about. It's okay also to have someone alongside with you that's not just a friend. It's okay to invest in yourself, to be for someone to be accountable to as well. Like, not just have a therapist that you can tell your deepest, darkest secrets to to help you emotionally and help you fix some of that trauma and that stuff in the past. But at the same time, it's okay to have someone that is helping you with your current issues and being like, hey, I'm struggling with this one particular person at work and I want to navigate through it. It's okay to have someone to be there because we don't always have that person. I heard this thing the other day where we've been ingrained as a society for women, particularly, to think that our significant others, our men particularly, have to be our everything, right? They have to be the provider, they have to be our best friend, they have to be our husband, like everything, the father. But in reality, they are really meant to be certain aspects of that. They're not meant to carry our emotional burdens, they're not meant to be exactly our best friends, you know. So it's hard when they don't quite understand the emotions that we're going through all of the time and they can't carry all of the burdens that we're trying to want them to do that. But we have other people that can help us through those things, yeah. That don't make us feel rejected, you know? Yeah. So it's like if we're feeling rejected by our spouses when we're trying to be like, hey, I need help navigating through X, Y, and Z. And they're like, I have no idea how to help you with that. It's okay to outsource that to someone else and have that coach with you do that.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

Absolutely. And I think anyone that knows us or is in relationship with us is filtering everything we say through their own lens of how they experience our relationship. Right. A coach doesn't do that. A coach is just there for you. And I think the other thing, coaching pushes people forward. I think it pushes people inward and it gives us a space to dream. I've noticed with clients, it's like, really, what is the gap? Who are you now? Which is where guides are so important to do, to take stock. Who do I want to be? How do I get there? That how do I get there is why we have coaches. I've noticed with clients, like saying the thing out loud is really hard to do, but giving them a space to say, like, this is who I want to be, or this is what I'm dreaming about, or this is what I'm striving for. Like, we're embarrassed to say those things to people for whatever reason. We feel guilty for ambition or for wanting something for ourselves. And the coaching container is a space where we don't have to feel that way. And we can start being accountable with somebody, but also it it allows us to be accountable to ourselves because we have to say the things out loud instead of them just living in our head where they're just a little less real.

SPEAKER_01 37:56

It's true. So you asked people to describe a version of you I miss. What's that moment usually like when someone actually sits with that reality and that question and answers it themselves?

SPEAKER_00 38:11

I think it's often really emotional because you're recognizing it, but there can be like some grief with it. Yeah. Because you have to first be to answer the question, you have to be aware of like maybe I've lost a part of myself that I used to love. And when we're busy, busy, busy and being everything for everyone else, it's easy to ignore that. But when we sit with it, which I think we need to do to be like the best, fullest versions of ourselves for ourselves, it can be hard. I've had those moments. And I have cried, but it's also freeing. It's like a wait because it's seeing it is really impactful. Like, who did I used to be and what did I used to love? And those things change. We change, we should change, and we should allow ourselves to do that. But sometimes we get wrapped up in the career or being a wife and a mother or whatever it is, and we are things for others, and we forget who we are. And when we sit and realize what we've lost, we can decide do I want that back? Or is there a new version of that I want? And it's empowering. It's like, okay, I see this. I can do something about it now if I want to. Like it's a choice. Again, it's having that information about ourselves and being able to decide who do I want to be? Does it include someone part of me that I used to be? Or was there a new way I can be that? So it's a lot of things at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

I think that's the tricky part about burnout. There's so many components about it.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 39:41

And it's what I always say is that there's so much grief surrounding burnout because we have this idea of grief that it only surrounds people dying or losing something in particular. But in reality, when you're burnt out, you are grieving an identity that you're losing, whatever that might be. And one thing I've just come to learn in my own practice is that maybe the version of you that burnt out isn't necessarily the one that has to be revived because there was something about it that was broken before it burnt out. There was a reason why you got burnt out. But it's okay to grieve that version of you because there was something in you that obviously was a part of you. Yeah. I loved how you had said you can pull some of those pieces. It's still you, right? And having that question, the version of you that I miss, I've been going through that a lot lately since I went to this event retreat type of thing in March. And um, it's funny, I found this penny on the floor of the hotel, and I wouldn't generally like pick up a penny, but I felt drawn to pick up this penny, and it had the year 2006 on it. And for some reason, it just brought me back to when I was 16 in 2006, and it reminded me of that's who I want to be again. Yeah. That spark of when I was 16, and I was just full of life, and I would fight for people, like in a good way, and just for justice, and I would speak my mind, and it was a time where I would remember I was very confident in myself, and it was before I started to lose my voice. Yep. And that's the version of me that I missed and I wanted to get back to. And it was such a powerful moment because it was at the perfect time in that event type of thing. And I love that you had said that, like bringing back the pieces of the version that you miss.

SPEAKER_00 41:34

Yeah. Thank you for telling me that. Yeah. Sometimes the universe just gives us these little nudges.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

I know it's great and perfect timing. It's always

Bold Step and Resources

SPEAKER_01 41:43

perfect timing. Yeah, it is. I just have one last question for you. For someone listening right now who just recognized in themselves in this whole conversation. What's the one bold step that you would love for her to take this week?

SPEAKER_00 41:58

Great question. The bold step to take is either getting the reflection guide and giving yourself permission to sit with it, or even without the guide, just giving yourself permission to sit for five minutes or 10 minutes or 15 minutes, close the doors, put headphones on if you need to, but don't listen to anything. Just sit with your body. Because I think that's really the first step. And I also think it can be really informative if that feels uncomfortable. Or if you hear me saying this and you're like, I don't need to do that. Stop and ask yourself, why does your brain not want you to do that? Or why not? What do you have to lose? And if you do feel discomfort, just sit. It's okay for us to feel uncomfortable. We're gonna be fine. We're gonna survive. And we might learn a lot about ourselves along the way. So however you do it, give yourself ideally 15 minutes to just sit with your body however you want to do it, whether it's meditation, whether it's journaling, whether it's the guide, but connect with yourself and figure out how that feels. I think that's really the first step that we need to take, especially as women who are everything for everyone all the time. Give yourself permission to be everything for you. And that starts with listening and connecting with our intuition and our bodies, because we're so disconnected from those things, and it's not to our benefit. So I encourage everybody to just take that first step and just see where it goes.

SPEAKER_01 43:31

Yeah. And I'll add to feeling uncomfortable in that safer space is a good sign that your nervous system is rewiring and relearning. Yeah. I'll add to that too, is I'm so I had my most recent surgery was back surgery. And prior to that, I had waited so long to get the back surgery that my left leg had lost a bit of neuroplasticity. And so even though the strength is there, and through my PT, it I didn't realize that we had learned that when I would do single leg things with my left leg, the strength was there, but it wasn't speaking to the neurons. So it was very interesting. So as I was learning, we were learning that when you when your leg shakes, when you're working out, it's your nervous system relearning how to speak to the muscles. And so in order to push past that, you have to push through the shaking in order for your neurons to reconnect the muscles to the nervous system. So as I'm going through physical therapy and retraining my left leg to have that strength and mobility again, I have to push through, I have to count through 30 seconds of the shaking to reconnect my nervous system. I'm not a physical therapist. I don't know the actual terminology of all this stuff, but that's basically the layman's terms of how it's happening. But it's pushing through the uncomfortable scenario of what's going on in my left leg so that my nervous system can retrain itself to basically feel safe and know that, yeah, the strength in the muscles is present. My brain just has to trust that it's there. And it's been a radical transformation. It's been two years for it to be able to figure that out. So that the strength is there, it just needs to trust it. So it's the same mentality. I mean, our brain is the same in every aspect, whether it's safe in an environment or safe deadlifting 200 pounds, you know. So it's so crazy. If we're just sitting in a safe place, being vulnerable in these situations with these questions that you're presenting. If we're feeling uncomfortable, it's like our mind vibrating or shaking, you know, just pushing through it, allowing that uncomfortable feeling to just push through and it'll rewire and reconnect.

SPEAKER_00 45:54

There's no more perfect analogy, I think, than that. I love that. The shaking is good. That's where we learn. Yes. Our body learns. Allow the shake. Yes, allow the shake. And I think when we see discomfort or feel discomfort, we're like, ooh, we don't want to do that, but lean into it.

SPEAKER_01 46:11

I always thought that too. We always thought that the shaking was weakness and that you should stop, but it's not. I had to retrain my knowledge that it's actually your nervous system retraining itself, it's reconnecting. I love it's almost like the vibration. You have to let the vibration do its thing.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

Yeah. We know we're strong enough. That's the thing.

SPEAKER_01 46:31

We have it in. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 46:37

Perfect.

SPEAKER_01 46:38

I know. This has been such a great conversation. I really enjoy it. And before we sign off, I would love for you to tell the listeners about your specifically designed guide, the stop running unempty.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

Yes. So you can go to herboldlife.com slash hustle. I made a landing page just for the hustle rebels of this world. And you can sign up to get the free guide. And really, it's some of the stuff we already talked about. Starting to ask yourself those hard questions, naming the cost of the burnout that you're having right now, figuring out like, why are we doing that? What might we need instead? And just getting familiar with the things we're doing in our lives might be draining us and what we could connect with instead. How can we fill our cup intentionally and be aware of those things that drain it and at least start to make decisions about what we want to do? So I really encourage everyone to get that guide and start having those tough conversations with themselves. And I truly believe that all of us have this innate strength and power within us. And it really starts when we allow ourselves to feel that. And this guide helps us do that.

SPEAKER_01 47:53

Love that. And then Lizzie, where can people find you to work with you and follow your work?

SPEAKER_00 47:57

Yes. So herboldlife.com is my website. So you can find me there. And then LinkedIn is where you can find more about both my coaching and if you're interested in my, you know, that's where my other persona, my attorney life is also very present on there. And then my YouTube, I think it's Life Coach Lizzie, but you'll link it. So you can find me on YouTube where I have some videos. Some of them are geared towards law students. So if you're listening to this and you're curious about law school or you're a new attorney, you will find resources on there for you. But it's also for the bigger coaching audience to kind of talk about some of these skills and some of these things that we can learn. So you can find me in all of those places.

SPEAKER_01 48:41

Yeah, all of those links that Lizzie just mentioned are going to be in the show notes and description as well. So you'll definitely have all the access to that. That is it for this episode of Hustle Rebels. If this conversation hit a nerve, if you've been circling all of the above that we just talked about on your own, then go check out Lizzie at her boldlife.com that she mentioned. Grab that guide. And if you're ready to start burning your own blueprint, you know where to find me. Subscribe to Hustle Rebels wherever you're listening. Leave a review and then tag us, follow us, share, whoever might need to listen as well. So we'd love to keep having you guys follow along and make sure you're enjoying these conversations too. We'll see you guys next week. Thank you.