The Most Important Thing We Need To Know About Ourselves

What Else Are We Here For Than To Become

INTRODUCTION:
You’re listening to Tiller-Hewitt’s Leadership Lens Podcast. If you’re a leader - or an aspiring leader - who wants to stay relevant and impactful… YOU’RE IN THE RIGHT PLACE. At Tiller-Hewitt we believe it’s faster, smarter -- and less painful -- to learn from leaders who have walked before us. That’s why we invite top leaders to be our guests on the Leadership Lens.Your host is Tammy Tiller-Hewitt – Founder of Tiller-Hewitt HealthCare Strategies. Let’s jump into the podcast.

INTRODUCTION:
This leadership podcast interview blew my mind!  I have two guests - a scientist and a healthcare executive to bring real life to the interview and topic.  Listen, given the term self-awareness has become such an overused cliché – I didn’t even want to use that in the title, in fear some leaders would think it was too fluffy or a feel-good interview, when in reality – it’s a gut-punch level interview around neuroscience and how to easily unpack and uncover so much about yourself – it’s crazy!  That’s all I’m going to say – because I want you to hurry up and hear this life-changing interview.  

TAMMY:
Kimm and Dr. Scott, welcome to the Leadership Lens Podcast.

CAROL:
Thank you. So glad to be here.

KIMM:
Same.

TAMMY:
Awesome! Well today, as I told you in our introduction, we have two guests who are really going to bring this subject to life. I'm talking real-time, real-life examples that everyone is going to be able to use. 

So just as a quick introduction, Kimm, professionally, you are an executive at Penn Medicine, which is a very large and prestigious health system in Philadelphia. While personally you're a mother of two young children, trying to juggle and model the way, and navigate and squeeze 40 hours into a 24-hour day, every single day. 

And Carol, you are an author, speaker, and coveted TEDx talker, sharing your expertise literally across the continent. And I love the recent launch of your newsletter Rise and Stride, which I will put a link in our show notes to. It's funny I subscribe to a lot of things, and every morning as they come in, I'm swiped delete, delete, delete. But when your Rise and Stride emails come in, I always save them to read because you do what Tiller-Hewitt preaches… BE BRIEF, BE BRILLIANT, BE DONE. And you always give first of all and sometimes it's a real sucker punch like “Oh, Whoa, she called it out right there” and so it's awesome. If you've not seen or read or subscribed to her newsletter... Do!

As I told my listeners, I wanted to have both of you here today, it's the first time that I've had two guests on the podcast together because I just think between the two of you, you're going to be able to drive this message home and almost see a session of a professional coach and expert talk to somebody who's real life’ing it. And I know Carol, you're going to share some of your real-life examples as well. 

So let me start because I’ve already called you Carol. So, Carol, I want to make sure Dr. Scott, it's okay, that I call you Carol.

CAROL:
Absolutely.

TAMMY:
Okay, good deal. So, in your eBook, which is titled Become Your Sassy Self, and SASS is an acronym for Self-Aware Success Strategies, something that spoke to me quickly is when you wrote, “self-awareness is required for the process of dismantling our blind spots that limit our success.” That was a sucker punch to me. I'm like, okay, self-awareness, as you know, it's kind of starting to become kind of a cliche word. But you're going to really dismantle the myths around, that it is not cliché - that is a real deal, and maybe equally important, you reminded us that it's never too late for a do over, which set me free, and I hope it will set a lot of people free.  

Then last, before I pitch the mic to you is, I’ve heard you quote Reverend Shuler when you challenge us… “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”

And that's pretty freeing. I don't know, Kimm. If that, too, spoke to you to say there's a lot I would do if I knew I wouldn't fail, and I think I need to approach things more about that. So.

Carol, I'm going to ask you to tee up this entire conversation and interview around self-awareness strategies, and I know you have a lot to say so I'm going to be quiet and give the mic to you.

CAROL:
Thank you so much, Tammy. I'm so excited to have this conversation with both of you. I think it's going to be amazing. And so, I want to say that perhaps the most important thing to be aware of about ourselves is some basic operating system stuff about our brain and our central nervous system. If I don't understand how my behavior is sort of automated within me without my permission, it's very difficult to change it. So first I have to become a self-aware of the pattern. I have to see it in myself, and so I like to boil that all down to a simple mental model that is neuroscience for the layperson basically. 

So, think of your brain, your central operating system for your nervous system. Think of it as containing these 3 characters that run your show every day. 

The first is your lizard, which people know sometimes as the amygdala in your brain. It's the part of your brain that tells you that there's a problem that there's a threat to you personally. And so, when we talk about a stress response, fight, flight. freeze fawn, those 4 stress responses start with the lizard hitting a panic button to say, DO SOMETHING, WE'RE IN DANGER.

Then you have this chimpanzee part of you. The chimpanzee is what we refer to as the mammalian part of your brain. It's the part of you that wants to herd up, tribe up, you know, sort of troop together with a family.

Chimpanzees are a primate that live together in not just herds like cows, but families where they help each other, they give each other food, they help each other solve problems. So, you have a part of your brain that wants you to do that, wants you to cozy up to other people that look like you, other beings that look like you and create bonds. 

And then, finally, you have the human part of your brain which is exclusive to us. It's the storyteller, the novelist.

Your lizard, your chimpanzee, and your novelist are always active, all the time in your life, and they are part of your automated response to the world. It's part of your autonomic nervous system that amygdala response. That stress response is something you don't have any control over. 

The lizard hits the panic button, and all of a sudden, your mouth goes dry, your stomach heaps over your palms sweat and your heart starts beating faster. You're not in charge of that moment. And in fact, it's hard for the novelist to come up with anything to explain what's happening right then because you're just living in the fear of the lizard. 

Okay, so those 3 sorts of interior metaphors for how you are, lead to the question, the self-aware question which one of them is running my show right now 

Which one of them and am I engaged with. Personally, I'm engaged with my novelist and my chimpanzee, because I really like you gals. I want to cozy up to you, and you know, comb your fur and play.

KIMM:
Can you fix my hair while you’re at it?

CAROL:
Alright! You fix mine. I'll fix yours.

So, our self-control, our ability to control all of that, to manage to notice, respond to connect to that messaging system in our bodies. That kind of self, what we call self-regulation is something that develops in young children from birth to age 7 fully. And most intensely from birth to 3 which none of us remember. And a lot of things can happen during that birth to 3 period even if you don't have parents who delivered what we call the adverse childhood, experiences. The forms of abuse and neglect and family dysfunction, like parents who drink and use drugs, parents who physically hurt each other in front of the children. Those kinds of experiences from birth to 3, wire you up a nervous system that is pretty much run by the lizard, and you spend a lot of time trying to calm the lizard down with your novelist telling them that it's okay.

So, the loss of our sort of planned social and emotional strategies to have a lizard we listen to sometimes, and a chimpanzee that we let guide our social relationships, and a novelist that doesn't run amuck and write science fiction, we develop other strategies if we don't use the ones that are natural in that framework, then we create alternatives. And most of the time those are a lot less effective. 

So Kimm, I wonder if we might talk for a minute about how some of those less than effective alternative strategies have played out for us in the workplace, and I'll start.

KIM:
Okay.

CAROL:
So, I'll reveal that I come from a childhood background in which there were many, many of those adverse childhood experiences. 

There are 10 on this research-based list of experiences in young children that can have very long-term effects, not just on mental health and interpersonal life, but also on physical health. People with more of these adverse childhood experiences which we shorthand to ACES. They're more likely to get cancer. They're more likely to have heart disease. They're more likely to get diabetes. Because experiences in the child's life become social determinants of adult health. Which is something that we now know pretty consistently from research. 

So, my childhood, my early childhood up to age 7, had 7 of those 10 adverse childhood experiences. I was definitely entering adulthood as the walking wounded, and as a young professional, one of the things that I did was I got triggered into anger. My lizard got scared and my stress response was to fight.

That's another way to say that. I would get angry, big at small things.

And I remember talking to my therapist about the experience that it was as if the other person had a little electrical plug, a little cord with a plug on the end of it, and they plugged it into something inside of me, and behind that wall that they plugged into was a gigantic reservoir of rage that was being held back for my whole childhood and adulthood at that point. 

Something minor that I could just talk about calmly would turn into a big deal because I would explode in anger, and it was completely automatic. I didn't have any control over what my nervous system was doing back then. I was 20 something just starting out. So, there's 1 from me. And it's a kind of self-awareness looking at how I react without being able to stop it, helps me stop it. I don't know if that makes a lot of sense. But recognizing the alternative strategy is driven by the automatic part of my nervous system allows me to once I see it, it allows me to self-regulate around it. So that's the good news. 

Any examples like that from you around things like delegating to other people is a common one, building a relationship with upline people. You know, using some ineffective strategies there. What else you got?

KIMM:
So first of all if I can reiterate what Tammy said, because I read Become Your Sassy Self - and it's a page turner - and I don't have a lot of time and usually at the end of the day after work, after the kids are in bed, I'm tired. I'm like, I want something to distract or just entertain. I like to think I'm a fairly self-aware person. I have also had therapy through the years. 

It's funny what you think of as normal. When I look back a great childhood, you know, I have great parents. It's like my dad is Mr. Rogers. However, when you look more deeply at that, and so I had 5 of the ACE experiences in my childhood.  My idyllic childhood and how that manifested for me is I became a - I think this is a fairly common trait in many women - a pleaser, a fixer, let me help. Not as overt as anger, right? You know. It's like, oh, they're a nice person. They're helping their… you know. But to the detriment, as you become an adult and really have a deeper level of understanding of, you know, where those motivators come from. And so, I always sought to have constructive feedback. And you know I want to know where my blind spots are. I think I'm really self-aware. So, to answer your question, one of my blind spots at work does come from delegating or not trusting that other people can do it as I think it should be done. So that was a huge one for me. 

I'd rather do it myself, and I shouldn't say I'd rather do it myself, because I really wouldn't rather. So again, building in that awareness but I don't ask for help. And I don't receive positive recognition and feedback very easily. Definitely working on it. But those are some examples that I've noticed in myself at work.

CAROL:
And I love that you framed them, using the word trusting. Trusting other people to do it and get it done, because that is the self-aware success strategy that we come into life with first is trust.

Think about a newborn baby that they can't do anything at all to help herself when she's born. She can't feed herself; she can't keep herself warm, safe. And so, her only social strategy from birth is to trust that other people will take care of her. And what we learn in the first 6 months of our life is, is the world there for me or not? Basically. 

And so, we develop a pattern. And this doesn't mean that we have terrible parents. I want to say my mom followed all the advice that Dr. Spock gave her. It was bad advice, you know. And it was 1950’s advice, and we know a great deal more now about what children need. And so, parents have better ideas about how to respond to infants. You don't feed them on a schedule that you make up for yourself. You feed them when they're hungry, right? You respond to them. We come into the world with this ability to say, that’s your, Byron Katie says, your business, your business is over there, and my business is over here, right? I can let you do your business. I can trust that your business will not interfere with what I need, and that it will meet my needs. When we have a conversation about that and at work trusting people to meet your needs is stuff like, get it done. Tammy.

TAMMY:
I am shocked that, Kimm, you had 5 of the 10 only because I know your parents, and I know your it's like Mr. Rogers neighborhood. So, the fact that you said that says that don't think that these childhood experiences are, you know, just for somebody who's, you know, from some messed up family, some messed up situation. It's from normal life.

Carol, can you talk about that just for a second, so that people didn't check out earlier like, oh, they're going to talk about people who have problems. No, these are normal people that have 50 and 70% of the adverse childhood experiences.

CAROL:
It’s really simple to see the first few. The presentation of these ACES is usually in 3 boxes: 

• The first one is abuse. 
• The second one is neglect.
• The third one is family dysfunction, forms of family dysfunction. 

Well, in the category of abuse, one of them is physical abuse, and in many, many generations not mine only, physical abuse of children is sanctioned in the United States. We hit children as punishment, we spank them, we slap them, we hit their hands, we pinch them. Adults hurt children intentionally as a way to discipline them. That is physical abuse. And it doesn't matter that we think that it's okay. It's not for the child. It does things to the nervous system.

Then, in the category of neglect, emotional neglect is one of the most common experiences of young children. All it means is that you don't see me as a person.

You manage me as a commodity. You control me. You discipline me. You teach me. But you don't see who I am as a unique individual with her own emotional life. And that's an experience that a lot of kids have, and that's called emotional neglect.

And then in the arena of the dysfunctions, one of the remaining five items is the loss of a caregiver to death or divorce. Given the divorce statistics these days, most people start out with three right there. Physical abuse, emotional neglect and the loss of a caregiver. And then all you have to do to get another one is your parents argue and fight really ugly in front of you. Even if they don't hit each other, they yell and scream and call names in front of you. Or you have a caregiver engaged in something that's illegal.  That's not hard to find these days, either.

KIMM:
Substance abuse.

CAROL:
And substance abuse. Yeah. When those experiences start from infancy and run up through 3 years of age, you do not get to develop your ability to trust other people to meet your needs. You wind up, thinking that the world is not there for you, and you have to do everything yourself.

So, you micromanage as a business leader. You might also do, I think, what I heard you say Kimm, is assign and then take back. I'm delegating to you. But two days later it's like, never mind, you know, I'm going to do that myself. I can do it better. So, we don't learn to trust people to meet our needs and to have the world respond to us. 

And we also learn that who we are as an individual, our independence as a person, our unique selfhood is not really of interest to anyone else. That's a common experience for the toddler, and independence is when we learn that what we think, what we want and what we feel emotionally are important to other people. And that they're willing to have a conversation about that. Then we move into the 3-year-old who is the child who thinks she can grow up to be a unicorn. That's where we learn to dream big in our business lives, to think innovatively, to go outside the box that is outside the box, that everyone else is trapped in and come up with a new idea. That kind of faith is what I call the 3-year-old success strategy is very important in our corporate lives and our business lives. So, trust, independence and faith. I know that I can get stuff done. People will help. I know who I am, and I dream big.

What would your life be like as a woman in leadership if you had all 3 of those like rock solid in your pocket?

KIMM:
he reminder too of, you know, as we get older and have more responsibilities at work, and in our personal lives, we lose that childlike ability to dream. I mean, not entirely, but it's great to be reminded. You're asking the question, and I'm like my Gosh, when's the last time I sat down and made time in my busy work schedule to like dream or think big, I mean, and I think that kind of deliberate prioritization is so critical in our work life and our personal lives. 

CAROL:
And these are the kinds of things that I do with leaders in my laser package and passages package for coaching is pick something specific and look at the impact of these things. Like the ability to dream and think big. Like the ability to really just know who you are and be confident and comfortable in your own skin.  That's a 2-year old's job, and mostly we don't help them much with that, because we want them to be like us.

TAMMY:
I think that's part of a leader's responsibility, too. I know we're talking about us personally, but knowing that that's an opportunity Kimm, even for you. You know that we're allowing time and encouraging that within our own team to have time to think, have time to plan. I remember a leadership retreat once at a health system that I worked, they were talking about if you walk in and somebody is staring out the window, you need to celebrate that because they're processing and thinking. And they're not, like, you know, entangled in the current situation. But they're trying to expand it, and I remember just looking at that a whole different way then.

CAROL:
And that's one of the things that the development do-overs can do is let you let your novelist come up with a new explanation for stuff that isn't about you suck.

Pardon me, right, but we tend to take on the blame of that. We're just bad. We're wrong. We're built wrong. We're broken. We're damaged, whatever. We all have work to do. We all have ways that we can strengthen and be more authentic and show up in a way that is more effective and more productive in our lives. I think everybody can do that. Nobody's perfect. What the do-overs do is focus that energy, for I sort of think, what else are we here for if not to become.

That's sort of one of my life mottos. If you agree, then what is it that I can do right now to change how I respond from this place of fear, from this place of lack of trust, what can I do differently? And so, the development do overs that I use in my coaching ask you to raise your self-awareness through mindfulness, meditation, reflection, journaling. They're all processes that turn your view inward and ask you to look at, what is it that you actually do? Face it. Face it squarely and say, Okay, not great.

Yeah. I broke down and cried in that meeting when I shouldn't have. Or I yelled at that person when I shouldn't have. Or I didn't delegate that task when I should have. It's like the things that we do we have to be able to look at them and say, that doesn't make me a bad person that doesn't make me insufficient in any way, it just teaches me something about how to be different.

TAMMY:
That's pretty powerful… What else are we here for then to become? That was good. That's almost a permission statement. 

CAROL:
I kind of think of it as one of my life mottos that I live by like I have that one, and I have MISERY IS OPTIONAL.

TAMMY:
So, for those who are listening to this and thinking, okay, this is a bunch of you know, Mambo Jumbo stuff that seems too fluffy, I'm an executive… What would be some kind of sucker punch things you would just say quickly back to them. I mean, you said it once, nobody's perfect.

CAROL:
Yeah. And I think the thing that is really important for everyone to know is that I'm a scientist. And I'm using science.  This neuroscience that I have boiled down to this simple little mental model of a lizard, a chimpanzee and a novelist, is a huge, huge field of neuroscience that I'm sort of just giving you the essence of. And so, it's important to know that mindfulness, meditation, journal reflection, those are activities that are scientifically documented to increase self-awareness.

TAMMY:
Oh!

CAROL:
Yeah, it's not "woo woo", I often will say, even in the Rise and Stride newsletter, if you've ever heard this "woo woo" term “shadow work”. Well, what that really means is you look at the things that you're ashamed to talk about, and you admit them to yourself. That's all shadow work is, and it’s scientifically documented to be something that makes you a better person. 

If you can get past the fact that a lot of this has a lot of this reality, this science has been popularized in you know, like People magazine kind of language. I'm sorry People magazine; I shouldn't say that about them. But it's popularized, it's turned into popular media consumption language. And so, it sometimes loses the sense that it's science, and it's helpful, effective science that makes us, makes our lives better. I find my life to be more joyful, more productive, and just all around more enjoyable, the more self-awareness I have.

You know, coming out of the childhood that I have, codependence is a pattern wired into me at the deepest levels. With the thing that you said, Kimm, about wanting to fix it for other people taking care of solving problems. That's codependence and it's about the success strategy of independence. It's about gaining more sense of who I am as a person and confidence in myself, and then I don't have to fix you.

And I have gone from saying literally gone, my self-awareness has taken me from saying you should to you could, to in my experience I have…and that is the difference on a continuum from codependence to independence right there.

KIMM:
I love that! I'm in the middle.

CAROL:
Good. That's progress. See? You're becoming. Good for you.

KIMM:
A lot of those strategies you just mentioned too are what I'm I think of, like the opposite of being busy. Right they are. They are taking the time to be, instead of doing like the traditional definition of productivity, right? And so, it's like reframing your perspective around why these things are so important. They are just as important as that PowerPoint, or that budget report you have to get out. If you don't make the time and the space for them, you know, with time it impacts your productivity and your ability to create good work in the traditional sense. 

TAMMY:
We have a society to that thinks we get a trophy for being busy, when busy doesn't say anything. In fact, it could say a lot of bad stuff. But I like Carol what you said, don't we all want to be more joyful and productive? It's like you can have both. You don't have to give up one for another. I love that, I remember my mom used to say, and I'm sure someone probably more famous than she invented it, that if you're in a rat race, you have to be a rat and who wants to be a rat. And so, we need to stop celebrating that and celebrating results, and not the busyness and the lack of joy we get from the rat race or the busy trophy.

CAROL:
And you know everybody knows that you are more productive in your day. You have more energy for your work. You think more clearly. If you do things like, eat healthy food, workout, walk, run, do something physical, Yoga, whatever it is that you do. Those things are accepted as this is an investment of time in myself that makes my job better, makes my work better. Well, you know what, so is this investment. You need to invest in your mind as well as your body, and not just teach it things, but teach it to look at itself, to look at you. We very early on, stop looking at ourselves and start looking at other people a lot more.

KIMM:
Exactly. I was just thinking that as you said that because I'm like!  I think and you could probably ask my team. Tammy knows them like, I think I do a good job of like checking in on them and giving them the space and you know the framework to be thinking about that. What do they want in their careers and their next step? Not so much myself.

And you get to a certain level in your career. It's not necessarily like you have somebody who's doing that same coaching for you as well. Which is why I need you.

CAROL:
It doesn't, and it doesn't have to take hours. You know. One of the activities that I recommend is a 15-minute exercise, where you start writing about a particular topic and you just keep writing, you don't stop, no matter what. 15 to 20 minutes. It's an incredible mind turner to find what you think at the deeper levels that aren't conscious for you. It comes out once you start writing and don't let yourself stop the words come, and then you're like, wow, I didn't know I thought that. Wow, that's how I'm feeling!

TAMMY:
So, you give a topic like how you're feeling? I mean how do you know what to write about?

CAROL:
The most recent assignment that I gave to someone I was coaching was, if a year from now, if I was going to say that I had a really successful year. So, a year from now, if I'm successful, it will be because.

Kimm Dinsmore:
Hmm.

CAROL:
And what happens is you write that at the top of the page, and then you stop for a second. You go well, I don't really know what would make me feel successful. So, you write that down. This is a stupid exercise I don't know why Carol makes me do this. You know, so you just keep writing all the things that come into your head, and if you completely run dry, you go back to the sentence at the top of the page and start again. So, if I was really going to think that I was successful a year from now, what would that be like, and I just keep going. And usually by the time you get past 5 min, unless you're incredibly resistant, you will find yourself writing things that you did not, weren’t aware that you were there. It's this basement you're unpacking the basement of your mind when you do that.

TAMMY:
That's good.

KIMM:
That’s Just 15 minutes. Yeah. I can do that.

CAROL:
Yes, you can. 

So, I just want to say before, because I know we're getting close to wrapping up. I just want to name the other four self-aware success strategies for folks, because we've talked about trust and independence and faith because they're the first three, the most important 3. 

Those 3 are the heart of who you are. Trusting people, knowing who you are, and believing that anything is possible, that's like the center of you. And then you take that out of the world and as a 4-year-old, you are supposed to develop this strategy of negotiation, being able to get what you want, the toddler knows what she wants, and the 4-year-old gets it. And so, you learn win-win negotiation problem solving

At 5 you learn vision, which is the first real leadership position in the preschool is a 5-year-old. And so, what they do is they have a great idea. It's not like the big dream of I can grow up to be a unicorn. But it's like, let's take this stuff and build it into something. You know. It's like a small, a small local idea instead of a take’s years dream. And then engages other people. They enroll people in their vision. And that's why I call it vision because it’s the leader holding up the light going follow me. That's a 5-year-old and being good at engaging other people in your ideas is important when you're an adult.

And then the last 2 are compromise and acceptance. 

At 6 and 7, we learned that we don't get everything we want. There's a win-win situation for some things and some things you just have to let go of because you prioritize them lower. It's the beginning of values led life. I value this more than this. And so, I'm going to let go of the thing I value less and not get that.

Then finally acceptance. You learn that things are just random, you know. You just have to let stuff happen in life sometimes. Bad things happen to good people. That's an easy lesson to learn when you're 7, but that good things happen for bad people, that's way harder.

And so we just have to learn to accept that the roller coaster goes up and down, the wheel goes round and round, the surf comes in and the tide goes out, and there's really nothing we can do about most of it, and to get on all engaged in anger or upset about all of that stuff we can't manage is not productive, and especially it's not productive in the workplace.

TAMMY:
So, all that 0 through 7. Now apply it to a 30, 40, 50, 60-year-old leader.

CAROL:
Yes, exactly. Do they trust people to meet their needs? Do they trust that the team members will meet each other's needs? Do you talk about that? Do you know who you are, or are you hiding?

Are you curating who you really are, so that you'll look more attractive to other people? Are you hiding things that you think will make them like you less? You know that phrase that you'd hear sometimes if they own, if they really knew me.

If they really knew who I was, dot, dot, dot. And usually what the end of that is is, if they'll think less of me, they won't like me. They won't respect me kind of thing. That's your independence. So, you need to trust that people are there as a team to work with. You need to be able to show up for yourself without feeling you have to hide anything about yourself. And you need to be able to take the brakes off when it's appropriate, and say, let's just pretend like there is nothing to stop us from doing exactly. You know, it's like the Robert Shuler thing, if there was nothing holding us back, what would we try to do and get that kind of faithful energy going.

TAMMY:
I like the way you said the vision at 5. I have literally heard my children and grandchildren around that age use those words. I have a great idea. Hey - I've got an idea. What about you, Kimm - With your kids? 

KIMM:
Absolutely!

TAMMY:
And that's what they're doing. They're engaging us, trying to get us to implement their idea.

CAROL:
Way at the beginning of my career I ran university laboratory preschools which are research and teaching centers, but also, they ran a preschool program for little kids. We had 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old kids together in a classroom, and we'd go out on the playground for the last 30 min before their parents came to get them, and all my 5-year-olds would go form this little huddle in one corner of the playground and start planning how to play.

Somebody had the vision. And back in the 1980s this was so it was usually something Star Wars. And so, the 5-year-old who's the leader starts saying, I know, today let's play about when the millennium falcon takes off from, you know, and they just like go nuts, and they assign roles. You're going to be Darth Vader, and you're going to be Han Solo. Then this is going to happen, and then that's going to happen, and 30 minutes later when their parents came to pick them up, they'd still be doing it.

They'd still be planning and engaging and visioning what they were going to do. And they never cared that they didn't do it. That comes later.

TAMMY:
Isn't it crazy that all this stuff is so built in, wired in when we're so so young, and then we get to adulthood, and it's gone.

CAROL:
Yeah, sadly, a lot of... go ahead, Kimm.

KIMM:
I was going to say, and exactly what point does that happen? When do you lose it? Because I have young kids and I'm trying to instill that in them, and like, protect it as much as you can. But I've also learned because I'm like thinking back to what you were saying, each stage and being a new mom, and it's like, try to do everything perfectly because you're going to protect them from… You're going to impact your kids with whatever you have, go your and your team at work, like everywhere. So there really is no planning or trying to avoid or protect from, it's really embracing who you are and what you bring and learning from that.

CAROL:
And it's never too late for the do over. So, if your kids are 10, 12, 14 years old, and you think Oh, my gosh, I missed those first 7 years, and I messed a lot of this up. I didn't help my kids learn to feel confident in who they are. I didn't help them learn to dream. I told them to be realistic, or whatever you did, you can start now doing it differently.

And you know, with older kids. You can even say, you know what I've been learning some new stuff I didn't know when you were little.  I'm going to start asking you some different questions, and offering you some different opportunities, now.

KIMM:
Saying that as a leader at work, I, after reading Become Your Sassy Self, like I now see people at work so differently, and I don't get frustrated because it's like I see the 4-year-old or the 3-year- old, or I know where that's coming from, and it's not personal just what they bring to the workplace.  So, it's helped me to work with them and try to compromise in a way to like, get what the ultimate outcome is. None of its personal.

CAROL:
I love that I love that feedback. Thank you.

KIMM:
It's great!

TAMMY:
So that you know we bring it in close to a close, I think about priorities for our audience. That are you saying, Carol, and then you can revamp and say, No, none of that's right. But number 1 self-awareness is priority. Number 2, becoming self-awareness will also help you help others identify what's happening with through their behavior.

And then, 3rd I think people just need to get access to the resources that you have, starting with your eBook, starting with signing up for your newsletter. And then where do they get things, where they can understand what are those 10 ACES that adverse childhood experience list that they can look at.

CAROL:
You know I have my own tool, a handout that I give to people when we're talking about that in coaching. But you can just Google Adverse Childhood Experiences. And there are hundreds of images. They make a little graph out of it. And everybody's got one. 

TAMMY:
Okay. 

CAROL:
Mine, of course, is the prettiest and the nicest and the best.

TAMMY:
Yeah. And if they wanted to reach out to you for to hit, learn more about your one-on-one coaching, and I can also put it in the call notes, but is the best way to reach you through an email address?

CAROL:
Yeah. Why don't we put in the call notes? Why don't we put a Calendly link that'll let them sign up for a discovery call and just talk it through for 15-20 min with me.

TAMMY:
Oh, even better. Okay. That’s great!

KIMM:
I would just add to that a 4th, if people aren't ready yet, or again, thinking back to where people are in their own, you know, professional and personal journey, One thing I'm going to take away is trying to dedicate 15 minutes out of every day to be not busy, and focused on myself and my own growth. And as simple as I'm going to pick up a pen and paper, maybe a pencil and paper. 

CAROL:
Nice! Nice!

TAMMY:
That’s good, Kimm. And I think that’s, you know, another way that your such an awesome role model both personally and professionally.

Well ladies, I want to thank you so much for being a guest and maybe after people start downloading that we do a regroup on this to see. And Kimm I think you’re really going to go through Carol’s program, so you’ll be able to come back and really talk about how that has changed and maybe improved a self-awareness. Whether it’s personally or helping, Kimm you have a very large team that your responsible for so how you’ve implemented personally in the workplace. 

KIMM:
I would love to. Yeah. I’m excited.

TAMMY:
Alright. Thanks so much!

KIMM:
Thank you!

CAROL:
Thanks for having me, Tammy. Thank you! Thanks, Kimm!

CLOSING:
Tiller-Hewitt works with leaders who want to consistently deliver strategic growth and measurable results. The organization is recognized as the leading experts in strategic growth, network integrity, and physician engagement. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Leadership Lens. For more leadership resources and strategic growth solutions, visit tillerhewitt.com.