TRANSCRIPT 🔗
Yasmin London: Hey there, first movers. What a fun episode I've got for you today. Because if you were watching on YouTube or on video, you'll notice something a little bit different about what I'm wearing today. And that is that I have a very fancy and gorgeous halter monitor on. Now, if you've never heard of a halter monitor, it's basically a portable heart rate monitor that monitors your heart rhythm, I should say, over time. So about 24 hours. And of course, everything is fine, but my doctor and I decided that there were perhaps a few things worth checking out given my age and stage of life. And something important happened in happened in the organizing of this monitor that I think might resonate with you as well. And it had nothing to do with the device itself, but everything to do with the fact that I very nearly postponed the appointment. And it wasn't because I didn't think it was important. It was simply because there was so much else that was a priority today. There were meetings to prepare for and emails to answer and deadlines to meet and a dozen other very, very important things that felt much more urgent at the time and time, I should say. And driving there, I caught myself thinking about how ridiculous. Ridiculous that actually is. You know, I spend a lot of my life talking about being a high performer and well-being and digital resilience. And I encourage other people to pay attention to the signals that their body is trying to give them. And yet, my very first instinct today was still, maybe I'll just do it next week. And the thing is, I actually don't think that I'm unusual in this. I think that so many women. Have become so accustomed to being capable that we've actually stopped noticing how much we're taking on. That somewhere along the way, some of us develop an identity about being the person who can just simply handle things. The person who always is able to say yes. And that person who just can continue to absorb just that little bit more pressure than we've. Already got because I guess in many ways we've done it before. And eventually what we find is that it stops being something that we do. And in many ways, it starts becoming something that we are. And while I was sitting in the doctor's office today and getting this heart rate monitor strapped to my chest, I was reminded of another really important conversation that I witnessed a couple of weeks ago when I was hosting an event for Commonwealth Bank called The Women in Leadership Elevate. Conference. Now, this was a room of absolutely extraordinary women. They were executives and founders and CEOs across pretty much every industry that you can think of. And during one particular session, a panel discussion, one of the speakers, a woman named Ruth Limkin, who is the CEO of the Banyans Healthcare, asked a very simple question. She asked the audience to raise their hand if they were the eldest child. Now almost instantly, most of the room's hands shot up. I would say at least 85% of the room. And I was definitely one of them. And I remember looking out and just thinking at that audience that this can't be random. Like this is disproportionately interesting in terms of the amount of older child or eldest child children that were in the room. And You know, just this week, ⁓ co-founder of of Women's Agenda, Tala Lambert Patel, reflected on this in an article and she called it the eldest daughter phenomenon. And it was a very well received article on their platform too, which really just shows how clearly this kind of phenomenon is starting to resonate with women all around Australia. And You know, of course, nobody's saying that your birth order suggests or determines your future, but it does say something about a pattern that was undeniably familiar for many women in that room. These were women who had spent decades being dependable, women who were known for getting things done, the women who had become extraordinarily comfortable with responsibility. And it got me wondering whether the very qualities that help so many women succeed. Can also become some of the qualities that stop us paying attention to ourselves. So here's something that is really worth knowing. When it comes to cardiovascular disease, the relevant link to the halter monitor that I'm wearing right now, it is the leading cause of death for women globally. It is responsible for 35% of all female deaths. And in Australia, coronary heart disease kills around 20 women every single day. And Australian women are more than twice as likely to die following a heart attack than men. Just let that sit with you for a minute. Those stats are really, really significant because more women Are delaying seeking care. A lot of women are dismissing symptoms or they're convincing themselves that they'll get to it later. And again, it's not because they don't care. It's often because they have something just more important to do first. So one of the things that I believe is that this sort of responsibility, this sort of identity, it starts long before adulthood. In fact, I've got a belief that it starts in childhood. Think about the child who was. mature for their age in your household, or the one who could always be trusted, or the one who was constantly praised for being the sensible one or the reliable one. Perhaps that child is you. For many eldest daughters, those qualities become their identity very, very early. They learn that being responsible is something that gets rewarded. And they learn that stepping up, it really feels good. And that I guess none of that is bad, but What I want to raise an alarm to is that those qualities, while they become genuine strengths later in life in helping you lead and build and become people that, you know, others trust, it can actually be a problem because it starts to become part of our identity. You see, the issue isn't responsibility itself. The issue is when responsibility becomes i inseparable from our sense of self, our
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self-worth, when our value Becomes linked to being useful when we feel most comfortable when we're solving problems or fixing or helping other people. Because eventually you stop asking whether you need to do something. You simply notice it and you notice that it needs doing and you take ownership of it. And that of course it's a it's a powerful skill, right? But it's also A very exhausting way to move through the world. And what fascinated me back in that room for that with that Elevate conference, it wasn't just the number of eldest daughters that were there. It was, I guess, the number of those women represented too, you know, the founders, the executives, the high performers. Many had spent many years proving that they could handle pressure. That connects to something that I've spoken about before, and that is that research consistently shows a significant majority of female CEOs played comp competitive sport when they were younger. And it's not because sport magically creates CEOs, but it does teach those same things that discipline, resilience, ⁓ performance under pressure of of team before self, all of those skills are the same that we get taught. So if we combine that with someone who has already learned early to be responsible and dependable, ⁓ you've created, of course, someone who's very exceptional and capable, but that is also a person that can be vulnerable to believing that they can keep pushing through hard things indefinitely. Now, Ruth also said something at that conference that I thought was important to share. And she said, sometimes our identity becomes woven into our responsibility because Capability is one of those qualities that nobody warns you about. People talk about the dangers of perfectionism and the dangers of people pleasing, but capability is a little bit different. Capability gets rewarded. The more capable you are, the more opportunities come your way, the more trustworthy you appear to be. And, you know, you're given those responsibilities. Until one day you realise you're carrying on an invisible assumption that says, I can handle it. Another project, sure, I can handle it. You know, another commitment, I can handle that too. Another challenge, I can handle it. You know, another sport that my child might want to play, sure, I can handle it. And usually you can, but that's not the problem. Because every time you prove yourself right, that habit gets reinforced. That capability becomes a cage and a blind spot. You push through exhaustion, you delay the appointment, you tell yourself to slow down or that you will slow down after a certain point, after a project is finished, after the financial year ends, after a quarter is completed, after a season is over. But there's always another project. There's always another quarter. There's always another season. The body keeps the score, whether we're paying attention or not. And one of the most dangerous habits of high-performing people is that they develop a way of treating their well-being as something that they can just put off until later on. And the problem is that that later on, it rarely arrives. Another issue is how the system loves people like this. Our workplaces love people like this. You know, they actively reward these behaviors. The long hours become, you know, a a call to commitment. The constant availability becomes a great leadership skill. Being busy becomes a status symbol. And if you're already someone who finds identity in being dependable, that environment probably feels very familiar to you. In fact, it probably feels very comfortable for you because you may have been operating in it for years, perhaps even. Decades of your life. The challenge is that high performance and self-neglect, they look very, very similar from the outside. Both involve sacrifice and pushing through discomfort in many ways, but only one of those things is sustainable. The other, well, it's going to eventually ask for some type of payment. And that payment often is, you know, elements or full blown burnout that you might be experiencing. Sometimes it's anxiety. Sometimes it's disrupted sleep. I know so many women who are waking up at that 2 and 3 a.m. saying that, you know, they're not wired, but they still can't sleep. Sometimes it's our physical health that starts to decline. And often, you know, the signs appear a lot earlier than we're willing to acknowledge them. And so we do need to make sure that we normalize those warning signs where we can. Because for many high performers, burnout doesn't arrive dramatically. It actually arrives really gradually. And gradual can be confused with normal. As I mentioned, the 3 a.m. wake up, the inability to switch off, the feeling of constantly being behind, even though you've completed pretty much every task that you set out to do during a day. It's the health appointment you've been meaning to book for months. It's the gym membership that you're paying for, but you never actually get to, you know, that feeling that rest has become somewhat uncomfortable. You don't really know what to do with it. The Banyans has seen significant increases in people seeking support around stress and burnout and interestingly, increased alcohol use, particularly by people who don't seem to think that they have a problem. And it's not because they identify as you know, particularly problematic, but because they're trying to manage a relentless and ongoing consistent and persistent pressure in their lives. And this is where a lot of capable women they miss the signs because they're still functioning, they're still succeeding, they're still delivering on the projects. But functioning is not the same thing as thriving. And achievement is not necessarily evidence that you're doing life well. You see, to me, I guess the maths, it doesn't really work anymore because so many women are now trying to fit so much into their lives, you know, definitely more than previous generations ever attempted.
They've got to cover career, family, community, relationships, aging, parents, personal growth, financial freedom, you know. The list is absolutely endless, let alone the amount of WhatsApp groups that we have to deal with if you are a parent of a school-aged child. And it makes me think about the concept of the village. You know, the village is not just about childcare. It's about shared responsibility for a life. It's about shared effort. It's about shared recovery. And when that disappears, we compensate it by trying to control situations, by becoming more efficient, by becoming more organized, by becoming optimized and productive. But productivity can't solve every problem. Every human being, not human doing, eventually needs that restoration, not optimization. They are absolutely not the same thing. You see, when I reflect back as A person who was a competitive swimmer, who swam for Australia for a few years, who lived that life of an elite athlete, you know, this is a part that I reflect on that's quite fascinating because even when it comes to elite sport, no athlete trains at maximum intensity every single day. It's not because they're weak, it's because they're smart, because recovery is an essential part of the program for an athlete. It's scheduled and it's protected and your coaches actually ensure that it's expected of you because without it, our performance would decline dramatically. In sport, you know, this is obvious. In leadership, I don't know, somehow we've completely forgotten it. I mean, our homes, it's exactly the same thing. Rest should not be a reward for doing enough because. There is no such thing as enough. That list is absolutely endless. It never, ever, ever ends. So if you're waiting for everything to be finished before you allow yourself to have that moment, you're going to be waiting for something that simply doesn't exist. It's not the opposite of productivity when we think of the word rest. It is what actually makes productivity sustainable. It's not indulgence, it's preparation. And for so many high performing women, it's a skill that really needs to be relearned. And I will put myself in that same category. But I am making the effort and trying to take those steps with small things like, you know, the time for my health. So what can we do? What can we do about this? I think the first thing is to remember that this isn't some, you know, dramatic life overhaul. It starts with simple awareness by checking in with ourselves, by Paying attention to what we've automatically taken ownership of and what we've let slide us by. You know, one of the things that I think is helpful is sometimes writing these things down. So if you could commit to a day or a week, writing down all of the things that you do, you noticed and took care of without anybody else being involved, not to judge yourself, of course, but just to notice how many things you're doing. or not doing. Secondly, you can identify one of those areas where you can release ownership, right? You can delegate to someone else, you can find a way to to raise your voice, to say that you want to prioritize yourself. And you'd be surprised that people will often pick up the slack when you voice it. And the third one is one that I really, really like, and that is what we call the ⁓ friendship test, to apply the friendship test. So if your closest friend described her week, ⁓ the way that you've experienced yours, especially if it's a particularly stressful week that you've experienced, what would you tell her to do? Would you tell her to relax? Would you tell her to take time for herself, to book the massage, go for the walk, to go to bed early, to do the things we all know inherently we should be doing, but choose not to. And perhaps we can take that advice ourselves. Finally, one of the best things that you can do is scheduling in that recovery. Not when everything calms down, not when everything feels like it might be an okay time to do that. Put it in the calendar now, book it and protect it. Treat it as seriously as any other meeting that you would be going to, because in the end, your future self deserves that same level of care that you knowingly extend to everyone else. So as I sit here recording this, still wearing my lovely monitor, I guess one of the things that I'm reflecting on is that even though it's uncomfortable and annoying, I'm grateful for it because it's reminded me what's important. You know, I know that hopefully nothing is majorly wrong, but it's forced me to pause, to pay attention. To ask whether I've been extending to myself the same level of care that I would encourage others to take for themselves. And I do keep reflecting back to that room at Elevate, to Ruth's question, to the sea of raised hands of the eldest daughters. And again, it's not to say that that explains everything, but it did reveal something that many women I think recognized in themselves: a golden thread of a lifetime of responsibility. ⁓ a lifetime that they could prove that they could handle hard things. And while those qualities, of course, are real strengths, the question is whether we've become so comfortable being capable that we've stopped noticing what it's costing us. Your value has never been determined by how much you can carry or how much pressure you're able to absorb. The people who love you. They don't necessarily need your competence. They need your presence. They need your energy and they need you in their future. So I want to leave you with this. What is your body trying to tell you right now that you've been too busy to hear? What appointment have you been postponing? Because if there's one thing that I know for sure tomorrow is promised to no one. And looking after yourself is not a distraction from the important work. It actually Is the important work. So thanks for listening today, First Movers. I hope that that was a genuine reflection moment for each and every one of you. And if this is a conversation that resonated with you, send it to someone who immediately came to mind while you were listening. Because I have a feeling she might need to hear it too. That's it for today's episode of the First Movers podcast. If this hit home for you or you think someone else needs to hear it, share it and subscribe. That's genuinely how this show grows and how these conversations reach the people who need the most. Keep an eye on yasmondlondon.com or follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram, and I'll drop the links in the show notes. Until next time, be first, be brave, and be a first mover.