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Many high achieving women carry the quiet myth that rest is something you can earn after the work is done.
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But what if that belief is exactly what is keeping so many brilliant leaders exhausted, disconnected, and quietly overwhelmed?
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What if rest is not the reward, but the strategy itself?
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Welcome back to Healthy Mind, Healthy Life, the space where we talk about everyday mental health, personal growth, and the small shifts that helps us live and lead with more balance and clarity.
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I'm your host, Yosef, and today we are joined by Lakisha Moslik, founder of Soft Simple CEO and the LM Experience, where she creates leadership conversations and communities centered on mental wellness, entrepreneurship, grief, faith, and sustainable success.
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Lakisha believes something powerful that boundaries have businesses.
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And they do save businesses.
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Calm is not complacency and leadership does not require burnout.
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So today we are exploring what it means to build a leadership style where the rest becomes part of the strategy, not an afterthought.
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With that, I welcome my guest Lakisha to the show.
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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I'm so excited to be here.
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Perfect.
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Lakisha, I'm curious about the personal side of this.
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When did you first notice that the way of that the way many of us are taught to succeed, especially high-achieving women, was not actually sustainable?
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Well, I will tell you, Yusuf, that's a very great question, number one.
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But I will tell you, it really started with me.
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I noticed back in November of 2025.
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So this is really recent that I really kind of came to this realization of it.
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But back in November, I literally had a breakdown.
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And it was a turning point for me because I noticed that as someone who owns their own business but also works a nine to five, I was doing a lot.
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And I noticed that I was always tired.
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I noticed that I felt like I couldn't rest.
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Even when I was sleeping eight hours, I still was not resting.
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And I began to notice that not only was I that way, but most of my friends were that way.
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Most of the people in my community who are either entrepreneurs or who are leaders, we are in these high-achieving statuses, but we were not resting.
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And so after that breakdown, I just kind of, you know, did a whole brain up of like, what can I do?
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What can I do to make this better for us?
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But it really started with me and having this kind of come to Jesus type point where either I was going to figure out a way to survive, stop surviving, I mean, and start thriving in what I was doing, or I was literally not going to be here anymore because my longevity was going to be cut because I wasn't resting as I should.
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Yeah.
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And Lakisha, something you say really stands out.
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You say that softness is not a lack of authority.
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I'm curious, why do you think so many people, so many women, especially in leadership feel they have to trade softness for credibility?
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I love this question because we're taught that softness is weak.
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Um, we're taught that if you are soft, you are pushover, and that people could just do anything to you.
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So we're told that we have to be bold, we have to be strong, especially as women.
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When we are in the workplace, we are told that we have to show up loud and brash and and be aggressive.
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When honestly, Yusuf, we don't have to be.
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Softness to me is a it is a strategy that we use.
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It's a sophisticated leadership skill that most of us need to require because it really allows you or requires you, I will say, to lead yourself first before you can lead anything else.
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It shows how you honor your own capacity, you honor your own being before you try to lean lead anyone else.
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Yeah.
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And that is powerful because it sounds like when what often gets labeled as strength in leadership is really just endurance and people surviving pressure rather than leading with clarity.
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Right, right, exactly.
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And if we look a little deeper, where do you think this burnout-driven leadership model originally comes from?
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Is it culture, exp, expectations, or the way success is measured, or something else?
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I think it's a combination, Yusuf, of all of those, but honestly, let's look at what people kind of turn things behind.
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We're all on Instagram, we're all on LinkedIn, we're all on Facebook, and any of these other social media platforms, and we see the end result of what someone has.
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Nobody's sharing with us those breakdown moments, no one's sharing with us how that it took them five redirects.
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Because I hate
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this, you know, for us to say failure so much.
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Failures are really only just redirects that we need to do something different.
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But no one shows us that they they failed or redirected at something 10 times before they got that end result.
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So when we're looking at someone else's life and we want to model their leadership style or what we think is their leadership style, we're only seeing the end result of it.
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We don't see the in between.
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So I think a lot of times that's where we get that from.
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Or you will hear people say, Oh, well, I'll sleep when I'm dead.
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Oh, you got to grind hard, you got to hustle 24-7.
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Well, honestly, you don't have to.
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Softness gives you a way of honoring your capacity, knowing when you're regulated, when you're dysregulated, knowing when there are misaligned opportunities, knowing how to honor boundaries and choosing rest over performance.
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To me, that's an extraordinary level of strength that we are not taught.
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We don't get to see that.
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We get to see the hustle culture, and that's what needs to stop.
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It's interesting how many of those patterns start long before someone becomes a leader.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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Yes, yes.
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It starts early on.
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Think about culturally, depending on what culture you're in, you could be taught that that is what people do, women, men, whatever.
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You're taught to be this, this, and this before you even get to that level.
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And then when you get to be a leader, you embody what you've been taught.
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And sometimes you really alienate your teams, and then you burn yourself out.
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Yeah.
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And Lakesha, when someone is leading a business, a team or a community, or even household while running on exhaustion.
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I want to know what are some of the subtle signs that their leadership system is not sustainable anymore.
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I will say, first, you will notice that there's a level of irritability that may show up from the slightest things.
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It could be something as simple as someone may have missed an email or not followed instructions to whatever degree, and the way that you respond to them is with such irritation.
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It kind of creeps up that way.
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Even in your relationships personally, because people feel like we can cut off business and personal.
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No, I am still the person that shows up in the business meeting, and I still got personal problems.
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So that doesn't cut off.
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I just have to figure out a way to navigate through that when I'm in a business setting.
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But you'll notice even in your personal relationships, you're snapping, or maybe you get distant.
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Maybe you don't do the things that you once wanted to do.
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If you enjoy taking a walk every day after work and you no longer do that because you're tired, you're exhausted.
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Those are other kinds of subtle signs that people can just tap into, like, oh, I'm not doing the things that I used to do, or I'm not as enthused about those things that I used to be enthused about.
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I'm in isolation.
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We tend to isolate ourselves.
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So those are like some subtle ways you can tell, like you're getting to that point.
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And what tends to be the moment when people finally realize that something has to change?
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I know for me, it was literally a breakdown crisis moment where I was literally sitting in my bed and just wondering like, what's next?
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Like, what is it that I'm not doing?
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And it wasn't because my business was failing, Yusuf.
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My business was quite successful at that time.
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But it just felt like I was unfulfilled no matter how many accolades that I got, no matter how much I felt like the success was good, the numbers were going up, the revenue was coming in.
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I still seemed unsatisfied.
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So unfortunately, most people have to hit rock bottom.
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They got to be in the ditch, they got to be in the dirt, they got to be at this point where there's nowhere to look, you know, but up and try to figure out what's going on for most people to recognize it.
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I will say when we talked about those subtle signs, when you begin to see them, then maybe you should, you know, maybe go and talk to someone.
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Maybe you should kind of figure out, like, hey, am I going into this kind of dark place?
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Are these signs that something more is going on before you get in the pit?
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Because sometimes in the pit, it's hard to come out.
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It takes you a while to come out.
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And what is your business going to do in the interim?
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If you haven't set up proper systems or support, if you're in the pit, your business
stops.
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Yes.
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The moment of realization it can be uncomfortable, but but it it is also often the beginning of something healthier.
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Because I think once awareness appears, people start asking different questions.
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Right.
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Right.
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Exactly.
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Exactly.
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I fragility to me has always been weaponized against anyone.
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And I feel like, of course, because I'm a woman, I feel like, especially women, it's been weaponized against us.
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You know, most people see it as being weak or unreliable.
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Or for women, oh, you're too emotional.
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But I like to reframe it as what if it's me feeling like I'm in a not so safe container right now?
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What if fragility is not about feeling everything, but feeling some things very deeply and how it's very powerful in a lot of places?
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I want people to think about their fragility as not being a liability.
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It is something that people often can really connect to you on.
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When I feel like most posts that I see or people I follow, I am impacted by their vulnerability and their fragility about what is going on with them.
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Because if I don't know that you have these same issues, then how can I relate to you?
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Fragility is relatable.
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It's also what connects us.
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People feel like, oh, she's fragile, she's weak, she's this.
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But when you talk about your fragility in a way that is, you know, designed to impact and empower someone, it really connects me to you.
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It makes me see you as human.
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It makes me see you as someone that I can relate to.
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Again, softness is not the absence of strength.
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It is really strength that has stopped pretending.
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I'm pre- I'm no longer pretending that I can handle this thing.
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I have now restructured it, reframed it in a way that I can handle, and I have put down the pieces that are no longer in alignment with where I should be.
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What does that look like in practice for someone leading a business or building a career?
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I think it first starts, Yusuf, with us reframing what rest is to us, what we have defined rest is, because a lot of times we are stuck because we have been, we've taken on someone else's definition of rest and what that really means.
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The problem with that is we do treat rest as recovery from work.
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You know, we crash, we sleep it off, but then we get back up and we do it all again.
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That's not rest.
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We're just refueling ourselves so we can deplete ourselves again.
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That's all it is.
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That's all that we're doing.
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But to me, true rest is proactive.
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It's not reactive.
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I don't rest because I'm broke down.
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I don't rest because I'm just super tired.
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I rest because I know that that is the maintenance that is required for my body.
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It's actually quote unquote cheaper to maintain something than to repair it.
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So if I schedule rest like I schedule these client meetings, if I schedule rest like I schedule my oil change before the engine fails, to me, that is infrastructure.
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That's not indulgence.
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And as a leader, it helps me build these kind of mental muscles that my body knows when I'm going, when I'm outside of that rest era.
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My body can tell me, Yusuf, when I haven't had enough sleep or when I picked up things that I haven't, that I'm not supposed to pick up, because I have strength in that muscle that automatically builds in rest.
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Because when you do that, your best ideas happen, your clearest decisions happen.
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And guess what?
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You're one of the most magnetic leaders.
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People gravitate to you because they know that you come to them restored and rested, and your nervous system is regulated, and you're not being very reactive to things.
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Okay.
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Are there any small shifts maybe in boundaries, schedules, or decision making that start to change the entire energy of how someone leads?
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Yes.
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So a lot of times we're taught that boundaries are, you know, ways to keep people out.
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But when you think about a boundary, boundaries actually keep you in.
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Yeah, it may keep people out, but it's a protection, quote unquote, around you.
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It's not a protection that to me, in some in some ways, are that really talk to us as leadership or that talk to us as a way of that people can still tap into us.
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We don't want to put up walls that keep people out or really shut down connections or even make us seem difficult to work with.
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We want to look at boundaries as things that help us accommodate people
more.
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And so people may say, okay, Lakeisha, you're saying a boundary helps me accommodate people more.
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How is that?
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Because when I communicate my boundary to you, I let you know what my capacity is.
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That's not a way of me controlling you.
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So for instance, I give clients this example all the time.
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I don't take any calls after 9 p.m.
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Actually, after 8 p.m.
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By 9 p.m., I try to be in bed.
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I'm not saying to you, you said, you can't call me at 8 p.m.
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You can call me at 8 p.m.
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But guess what?
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I'm not answering.
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That sets a standard of, okay, Lakeisha has said she don't take calls after 8 p.m.
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If I need to communicate with her, then I need to communicate with her before 8 p.m.
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That's not me cutting you off, that's letting you know that these are the time frames in which that you can reach me.
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So, as leaders, we have to have some of these things in place, but it also gives people kind of a upfront glimpse of this is how Lakeisha operates.
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And because I want access to her and I want good relations with her, then I have to make sure that I'm operating within those confounds of what she's given me.
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Okay.
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I I I love that idea because that leadership is not just about how we perform outwardly, but also about the internal rhythm we create for ourselves.
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Because when the rhythm changes, everything else starts shifting as well.
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Right.
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And I love that you said that because a lot of times a lot of us do not honor or pay attention into that internal rhythm.
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Which the internal rhythm is what guides us, it's not the calendar, it's not the deadline, it's not the client or the algorithm.
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None of those things actually give us direction.
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It is that internal rhythm that gives us our direction.
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It helps us create, you know, routines that are that are helpful instead of ones that, oh, okay, I need to get up at five because you gets up at five.
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No, is that good for you internally?
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Does that work with your nervous system?
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So I really love that you brought that up because I don't think we pay attention internal internally to things that help guide our decisions and how we make them.
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Lakisha, for someone listening right now who want to connect with you or just want to know more about your work, where can they find you?
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You can find me on all social media platforms as Lakeisha M.
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Mosley.
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I'm mailing on Instagram.
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I'm DM friendly.
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You can definitely reach out to me in the DMs, or you can shoot me an email at hi at lakeisha mosely.com.
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Perfect.
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And to everyone listening, all these links are in the show notes.
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So just go and check those out.
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Lakeisha, is there any last message that you want to leave us with?
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Yes, first I want to say thank you for um this opportunity.
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I really enjoy um having this conversation.
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But I also just want to leave people with let's just redefine the way that we look at things and let's look at softness and rest as a leadership skill as opposed to things that can be negative.
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Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us today on Healthy Mind, Healthy Life.
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And I thank my guest Lakisha for sharing her expertise so calmly and in such a fashion that people can understand and resonate with it.
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And if this conversation actually resonated with you, take a moment to pause and reflect where in your life might rest actually be the strategy you have been missing.
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If you found value in this episode, share it with someone who might need the reminder that success and well being can coexist.
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Until next time, take care of your mind because a healthy mind truly creates a healthy life.