Leadership Junkies Podcast: Jeff Nischwitz and Craig Mathews Interview Imogen Roy
In this episode of Leadership Junkies with Jeff Nischwitz and Craig Mathews, we discuss unconventional strategies for navigating burnout and how to protect your most valuable business asset – your energy.
“We’re not designed to be consistent. We’re not designed to be machines. The moment you let yourself off the hook, not performing at the same level every day, is the moment that you break free.”
Further Explore Finding Your Genius, Cyclical Living and Energy Management:
Learn more about coaching with Imogen
Listen to Imogen's podcast, A Year of Magical Living
Start harnessing the full power of your cyclical energy with Imogen’s free Could-Do List template
Revolutionise your productivity, banish burnout and flourish in life and work by letting your body lead in Imogen’s group program, Align + Flow
Read the Transcript:
Imogen: This is one of the principles which I teach which is: Fuel first. Essentially it's a simple reframe, which is in the morning you get up and I ask people to do what I call a Daily Alignment Check-in, and there are three questions.
The first question is: What will you do to fuel yourself today? Now many people, that is not the question that they asked themselves.
Jeff: What do I have to do today?
Imogen: Exactly. Go straight into the doing without ever asking, “Well, where am I going to get the energy from?”
Jeff: Welcome to the Leadership Junkies Podcast, brought to you by Cardivera, a leadership development ecosystem that helps you grow your people, grow your business, and grow your life. We have an intriguing guest today, Imogen Roy, is with us coming to us from Bordeaux, France. The title today is Finding your Genius: The Journey to More Energy, More Productivity, and More Presence. Early in her career, Imogen had an experience that transformed her thinking about work, about energy, about burnout, about productivity. She was doing what she loved and that's supposed to solve all of our issues, but she experienced profound burnout. And that has brought her to the work she does today, helping people become more productive, more purposeful, more present so they can have more energy and more enjoyment and effectiveness in their lives. She's going to talk about the importance, as we talked about in the title, finding your genius, what it means to be a Time Bender, something I'd never heard of before. And stay tuned to the end of this episode; she is going to drop such a wisdom bomb, talking about the foundations for integrated leadership and living.
We are so thrilled to be back here today. I'm particularly thrilled because we have Imogen Roy with us today, and in my little mini thrill areas that Imogen is coming to us from Bordeaux, France. If you know me and you know Bordeaux, you know we're talking about wine. We may not talk about wine today but I got my wine mojo up.
But today we're going to talk about something different. We're going to talk about energy. Imogen Roy is a Business Mentor, and I love this, she says she helps unconventional people – I think we're one of those, Craig – to be more purposeful, productive, and my lovely word here, Craig, present, more present in our lives and business. After experiencing burnout, while doing what she loved Imogen realized that she had to take a more proactive approach to protect her most valuable business asset, which is her own energy. And today, again love these words, she is an accomplice of founders, artists, consultants, and visionaries, who want to create unstoppable success in their work and life without burnout or compromise. Welcome, Imogen.
Imogen: Thank you.
Craig: Welcome. I love your messaging already.
Jeff: So give us a little bit of the Imogen story.
Imogen: The Imogen story is, perhaps, a very common story for many, in that I had a very strong sense of who I was as a child. At seven or eight years old, I was very artistic, I was very confident, I had a lot of self-trust. I knew what I wanted and I was set on getting it.
Then the world seeped in, and slowly but surely with every year, I learned that there was a right way and a wrong way to do things, that there were certain metrics of success or achievement that were more socially appropriate than others, and that it would be good to shave off the parts of yourself that are a bit weirder a bit more unconventional to fit in. So I find myself in my late 20s striving, pushing, forcing, chasing after one achievement, accomplishment after another, adding more and more and more to my plate until one day the center would no longer hold. I went on a process of actually remembering who I was, underneath all of that, and then reconnecting with it. My journey was maybe shorter than some other people's, you can call it a quarter-life crisis or a mid-life crisis, or your Chiron Return if you're into astrology. But I think we all know what I mean here, which is that moment of reckoning when you realize you've come very far off your center, and it's time to come home to reconnect, to reassess, and step out into the world again in the right sized clothing.
So that's my story. And now, like many people, I help others navigate that transformation for themselves.
Jeff: Now Imogen, I'm curious, in your bio you talked about you were doing something you loved and burned out so what exactly were you doing in the beginning?
“True freedom is not the absence of all rules, constraints, boundaries, or office hours. True freedom is getting to choose the perfect constraints for you.”
Imogen: At that stage, I had become self-employed for the first time, and I had been working in corporate marketing but a sense that I was being squashed into more and more specialized roles. I really identify as a generalist; everything interests me. The last thing I want to do is wear a role that feels pite, and in marketing, there's very little room these days for generalists or strategists. It's all about technical specialties. Are you a Digital Marketer? Are you a Media Buyer? Are you this, that, or the other? I wasn't loving that so I decided to leave and set up my own shop, and I decided to do something I'd never done before – which is not a strategy that you're encouraged to do in self-employment when you're starting out as a consultant. I was a Brand Strategist. I was working with startups and small businesses who are going through a pivot to come home to themselves, to really assess, who are we, what are our values, what are we doing in the world? And it was a process that I absolutely love because it combined all of my passions: psychology, people, communication. But what I didn't know was that true freedom is not the absence of all rules, constraints, boundaries, or office hours. True freedom is getting to choose the perfect constraints for you. I didn't have any sense of what was enough to give to my client and what was giving too much all the time. I burned out and it really took me by surprise because I didn't know you could burn out doing what you love.
Craig: Wow, so good.
Jeff: I think that's a great piece of wisdom because I have people regularly say to me, and I know I'm one of them, that would say, “Well if I'm doing what I love, it’s not work.” And I know that I fell into that trap and found myself driving myself into the ground, telling myself, I'm just doing what I love. What I realized was I actually still loved it, and this is why I'm so fascinated by your topic, because I tend to live so much in the present, I wasn't having the traditional signs of burnout. I had to learn to take the foot off the pedal, not because I needed to because it was just the right thing to do, so it's a really interesting intersection.
Imogen: Yeah. And many people believe that burnout happens when you're under the thumb, when you're working for someone else, but what I see with my clients and what happened in my own story, is burnout is more a product of what happens when we care too much for too long without caring for ourselves.
Craig: So good. It's so easy to over-deliver on an ongoing basis, and to your point, not set those boundaries. What is it that I'm clearly defining as my deliverable and not just keep giving and keep giving? Because we do have to take care of ourselves, like you say.
Imogen: Yeah, and that caring too much for too long was happening in my consultant work, because I wasn't just consulting and operating in these people's businesses, I was taking on a lot of other people’s emotional baggage: their fears, their anxieties, their stories. This was not a dynamic that I had experienced before in corporate. I was holding all of this energy for other people and was not fueling myself first. This process of suddenly being unable to work, what happened was, I really left it to the last minute. I was literally hours from hospitalization, at the point where I was sitting backstage at a conference that I just had convulsions at, looking at my phone googling ‘what are symptoms of burnout’. The article coming up, but I'm going, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, oh yeah, yes. Okay, maybe I'm burned out. Is that was this is?” I was totally naive, I had I was totally ignorant of what it meant. I think only a year or two ago it was classified as a professional disease in the World Health Organization's
Craig: Really? I would say if you're searching for that the first thing it should say is, “If you're searching for this, you're burned out.”
Jeff: I do love that one. So, Imogen, you said something early on that I wanted to explore a little bit. You said something about something being more socially acceptable and I think it was about success if I remember right. Can you say more about what you mean when you're saying something is more socially acceptable in terms of success?
“Your genius is not your strengths, it’s not your skills, it’s not necessarily other things that other people value or recognize in you. Your genius is the unique seeds of lifeforce that you were born with; this innate flavor of what makes you YOU, that comes up in a very raw expression, often as a child.”
Imogen: Yeah. so one of the topics or areas that I coach around today is what I call, finding your genius. Your genius is not your strengths, it's not your skills, it's not necessarily other things that other people value or recognize in you. Your genius is the unique seeds of lifeforce that you were born with; this innate flavor of what makes you you, that comes up in a very raw expression, often as a child. Because it is such an innate part of who you are, it doesn't need to be cultivated, it's just there. This can be in a little girl who's very outspoken and ballsy. It can be in a little boy who's deeply sensitive and empathic and can feel other things deeply. Yet we live in a society in which is very common for such traits in those genders, for instance, to be seen as risky, as a threat. Many times these expressions of genius we have, whether it's deep feeling or artistic ability or something that seems kind of unconventional or dangerous so out of the ordinary, out of love our caregivers, encourage us to tamp it down, to stop, to change, or to hide. Because for a very long time, obviously it's changing now, but the conditioning we're carrying is millennia old. For a very long time, if you were in a small community and you will weird, your physical safety was at risk. Often these really genius parts of ourselves are very deeply buried. There’s shame around them, there's repression, there's anxiety, there's a sense of danger, and so we hide these parts. I believe that we'll never be able to truly contribute at our fullest potential if we're not consciously using our genius because it's such an innate part of us that it is expressing itself except if we're not conscious of it, it tends to express itself in sometimes unhelpful ways.
That is the part of people I'm trying to cultivate, to overcome that idea of trying to fit in. You picked up on that I work with unconventional people, and they're unconventional in all sorts of ways. I work with neurodivergent people, I work with people who are unconventional simply because their lifestyles are unconventional, or they have unconventional geniuses but there's something about them that they were told very early on that was not acceptable, it was not adequate, that they should change. I believe that's precisely what they have to offer the world. It’s giving them the tools to reclaim that.
Craig: That is so good. I was fortunate enough to have gone to a magnet school which is basically where weird is normal. So I had a lot of friends who had a variety of different things, everybody was accepted and so that was really good, but not everybody has that benefit. It's so important that you find where that source of energy is for each person.
Imogen: Yes, and I love how you pick up on energy because it really is a source of energy. The energy that's required to tamp something done that wants to be expressed is exhausting. When as soon as you take your foot off that thing you liberate so much more energy, not just to actually use that thing and be able to enjoy it and be able to share it, but it liberates energy in all the places of your body. So yeah, that's a, that's a great point that you raise.
Jeff: So I'm curious, Imogen, going back here to this whole childhood thing, the idea of when you say ‘genius’ the word that comes to mind for me is ‘gifts’. That's the word I would use, and I believe we all have gifts that are beyond skills, and they might get improved but they're just this natural thing. For a long time, it was hard for me to even talk about them because it felt arrogant, and I know that I'm really good at a lot of things but I have a few gifts. I have to say as I'm listening to you, I'm not connecting the dots from my childhood. It may be that I just don't remember that experience well. I feel like I show up so differently today than I did as a child, and most of my career I was showing up similar the way I did as a child, which was constrained, rule-follower, by the book, just show me the path, I'll knock it out. I'm curious about what you've experienced with folks about the innateness and the transformation that happened.
Imogen: Yeah and I think you you pick up on the nuance of this because everyone's childhood is different. We're all socially conditioned by our communities, our caregivers, our educators. Some of us are conditioned a little bit earlier or we pick up on a little bit earlier because as kids we understand very early on, ‘what kind of behaviors are going to keep me safe in this community?’. We replicate those. Or, ‘what kind of behaviors will get me rewarded?’, so we replicate those. Some people may feel that they fully flourish and blossom into their full potential later in life because perhaps as a young child they learned very quickly, they were very attuned to what was the right way to do things. Other people, perhaps they were free to be themselves at home but when they arrive in school that's when they really learn, ‘Oh I can't show up like this here, otherwise I won't be accepted.’ I'm definitely not a child psychologist, I have not conducted thorough research in this area so I think everyone's experience is fully valid. What I have noticed is especially because I tend to coach and teach women, that a lot of them do have very clear, strong memories of being a certain way, of thinking a certain way, as a kid, and have fundamentally different it was as they went into their teens, and as young adults. So maybe there are perhaps nuances or distinctions that go across gender lines or socio-economic lines.
Jeff: Actually, it’s interesting you say that because just those few moments caused me to have some connection around I'm aware that most of my life, I have felt that I didn't belong in the box that I was put in. When I look at my education I was an athlete, but I was also a singing performer. So there was a lot of pressure from the athletes and being teased by the athletes about being in the choir or the show choir and the people in the show choir seeing me as the athlete dude. And so that part is certainly true and I think a big part for me was learning a lesson: don't be vulnerable, put on a show. I’m safe if I put on a show but if I'm vulnerable then I’m vulnerable.
Craig: How much do we have to be able to laugh at ourselves to fully embrace that?
Imogen: Jeff, that example of being the athlete and the singer, the performer, the artist. This is a classic example of the false boxes that we put people into. You have to be this or that. You have to choose sides. You can't be both. And it's ridiculous. There’s no such thing as this or that as a human being.
Craig: Labels.
Imogen: One of the things that I work with my clients is often when it comes to their personal brands, identity, sharing their work, or promoting themselves, is that a lot of them fall into paralysis. They go, “Well I don't really know what my niche is. I can't decide. I don't know what to call myself.” I say, “Well, because you're a human being. You can't be a personal brand as a human being because a brand is essentially to create a box around something.” I think the next generation that’s coming up is already pushing the edges of these boxes, these constraints. It's really interesting to watch and I really hope that all of us start to really question, the boxes, the titles, the roles, the things that we're in. How does this feel? Does this fit right? Does this feel like the right size container for me or can I just step out of it?
Craig: Yeah, I would say isn't any container too small?
Imogen: The right size container can make you feel really safe and healthy. But yeah, again, freedom is getting to choose your perfect size constraints.
Craig: Good point.
Jeff: I like that. The whole thing you've talked about boxes. Recently on social media there was someone who was writing about boxes, being inside the box, outside of the box, and to me, it's beyond cliche. It's so predictable and I really expected this person to say it. They said, “I live every day outside the box.” When I read that I go, ‘You have no idea the box you're in because that's a belief system.’ To me, I see that and I’m like, blind spot, blind spot! And what’s the attachment to saying that, that's another box. To say ‘I’m always outside the box.’ Therefore, there’s another box. It's a fascinating topic.
I want to come back to energy for a moment. You talked about it being the most important asset, and I think that's something I've just realized the last five or 10 years, I always thought about my time. And to me, my energy is much more important than my time. Can you talk about the role of our energy and why it is so important to pay attention?
“Not all time is created equal. The one thing about time is that it cannot be controlled. It flows without us no matter what we’re doing. Whereas we can manage our own energy. When you are able to match your energy to the appropriate task or action that requires that energy, that’s how you really get to wield this, what I call being a Time Bender. Not all time is created equal because we are energy beings. And what I mean by that is we are, as human beings, a dynamic process of energy.”
Imogen: Yeah, and I love that you've come to this realization, organically, because you will have noticed, of course, that not all time is created equal. The one thing about time is that it cannot be controlled. It flows without us no matter what we're doing. Whereas we can manage our own energy. When you are able to match your energy to the appropriate task or action that requires that energy, that's how you really get to wield this, what I call being a Time Bender. Not all time is created equal because we are energy beings. And what I mean by that is we are, as human beings, a dynamic process of energy. Like everything else in the universe, we are expansion and contraction. We have all these different cycles running in our bodies, some of them hormonal, some of them chronobiological, we’re affected by the seasons, we’re affected by the sunlight. Our energy shifts all the time from moment to moment, throughout the day, especially for people who menstruate, you have that hormonal rhythm that’s affecting your moods and your energy throughout the month as well. We have high energy states. We have low energy states. We have states in which we're naturally more strategic, more vigilant, more focused. We have states when we're more open and social and we want to be influenced. When we are able to not just become present and aware of how energy is moving through you but also understanding how we can use what's there and go, ‘Oh I’m feeling this way. This would be a great time for me to do this.’ Or, ‘This would not be a great time for me to do this that I’d plan to do, but I can give this a go instead and stay in my flow without pushing myself too hard.’ I really believe that by understanding that we are cyclical energy beings and that we're not machines, then we can really start to play with life. This is where the productive and the present part of my bio comes in because you start to wield your energy like this, matching your energy to the task at hand, using the best of what you have, and getting connected with yourself and those low moments. That is when you can become super prolific and super productive because there's no time wasted.
That's really what all my work is about. Us remembering essentially what is the oldest and truest thing we know, which is that we are energy, and this superpower is right there for us to use if only we can connect with it.
Craig: Sounds like we're connecting to our personal brand of magic.
Imogen: Yep, exactly. What I call Magical Living.
Jeff: Oh I love that. You've talked several times about the role of being present. We've talked about this, Craig and I have talked offline, we've talked on different episodes. I think there's a lot of confusion around what being present is. I think today in our culture, it's often seen as, what I would describe as just less distracted. ‘I put my phone away. I walked away from my computer. I'm here listening to you, but I've got 10,000 things going on in my head but I’m not really present.’ So talk about what is being present means to you.
Imogen: Presence is essential when it comes to leadership, and of course this is the Leadership Junkies Podcast. Presence is attention, and there are three different kinds of attention. There's the dominant state of attention, which is outward facing where your attention is on the other person, like I am now because I'm speaking from my experience. But what I'm actually doing is I'm watching you both, and I'm seeing. ‘Oh, he wrote something down,’ or ‘Oh, he looked up. Okay, great. I'm gonna keep talking.’ I'm seeing how it lands, and then I'm adjusting what I'm saying accordingly. I'm totally taking in you both.
There's also the submissive state of attention where I'm receiving. I'm receiving instruction, receiving experience, I'm listening to you. I'm thinking about how I feel about it. When you ask me a question I'm going, ‘How do I feel about that question? What experiences or memories is that bringing up for me?’
Then you have the third state which is meditation, which is attention or attention itself. So you're not dominant, you're not submissive state, you're focusing your attention on the experience of attention.
So there are three different ways in which you can be present. I think what you're describing, Jeff, is that very common phenomenon where someone is halfway in either state. They're here to listen but they're also thinking about something else. They're not really paying attention or they've got 10,000 thoughts in their head. What we often see in terms of bad leadership is someone thinks that they're in the dominant state of attention so they're instructing, they’re commanding, they’re telling people what to do, but their attention is actually on themselves. ‘How do I sound? What do they think? Am I doing this right?’ The consequence is that it’s highly confusing and you never feel like that person is really there. Being present means being fully in one of the states and being committed to it. Being able to take all the benefits of where you are. ‘Am I listening and drinking in? Am I focused on watching and instructing? Am I meditating – am I really meditating, or am I neither here nor there? Where this intersects with time, as I'm sure you've noticed as all of us have, this state of permanent distraction, where you're nowhere, really, you're hanging in and out of several. It's impossible for your brain to record a full memory. This is why people who are very busy, very distracted, can end up in this very destabilizing, anxious space where a whole day goes past and they don't remember what they did, who they met with. Where did my time go? It’s a common consequence of this lack of presence. You can't even remember where you were, because you were not there.
Jeff: Well that one’s pretty obvious. To piggyback on that, you didn't use this word, but the one that came to me as you were talking was ‘multitask’, which I find to be fascinating. I'm not always about data, but there is a mountain of data that says we don't multitask. Something like less than 1% of the population can actually multitask, but 99% of the population believes they're in that 1%. I'm curious what you found in terms of the attachment to multitasking. I listen to conversations that I'm not even a part of, and I'm going, ‘Wow you guys really all believe you're multitaskers.’ Then there’s the ‘women can multitask and men can't.’ Well, okay it's .5% versus 1%. What are you finding and how are you working with folks around this myth of multitasking?
Imogen: I previously spoke to the experience of not being present in either state of attention. Obviously, you're not present, but one of the other experiences of that is that you feel very disconnected from yourself, disembodied. It's very hard to trust yourself when you're disconnected, when you’re disembodied. I believe this attachment to multitasking is often because there's a profound lack of trust in oneself to get everything done. When we don't trust ourselves, we're anxious, we're antsy. We’re trying to self-protect, being super busy, justifying, ‘Look how busy I am, I'm getting things done.’ But essentially we're not connected to why we're doing it, what we're doing. One of the sad impacts of that is that we actually waste a lot of time because exactly as you said, the brain is not wired to multitask. You look at the fundamental structure of the brain, there is no way in which it is wired to do two things simultaneously. And those 1% of people I do wonder how much of it is a learned stress response. It's become a chronic stress response that’s become so hardwired that now it's baked into the brain. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's healthy for the brain, and doesn't necessarily mean that those people are multitasking well. So, I think we really have to understand that we're not wired to multitask. It’s an impossible state, and the solution to getting things done on time is to be fully present in what you're doing and to bring the right energy to it.
It's so revolutionary what happens when I teach someone to start aligning with their experience of energy as it's available to them at the moment and then seeing how they can use that energy, because it unlocks so much time. Most people are totally oblivious to both their really expanded high energy states – when it’s a really good time to do hard things, to think of things strategically, to have a difficult conversation – because these are very high energy tasks. We want a high state of energy to accomplish them.
Craig: So we don't want to have a difficult conversation when we come home after a hard day of work?
Imogen: You've got it.
Craig: That's when your spouse wants to talk about it.
Imogen: You’ve got it. A lot of us are going home so depleted, so exhausted, that we have nothing but leftovers for those dynamics that require a level of presence, attention, and care. That is not easy.
Likewise, many people are in their contracted states, which are states of needing rest and recovery. The cycles of expansion and contraction, the energetic cycles, the energy builds and then breaks down, and you can't have one without the other. You can't have those awesome expanded, ‘I'm a Superman. I’m a Superwoman. I can get anything done. I feel unstoppable. I feel great.’, unless you also accept that that what goes up has to come down?
Craig: Is this Ayurvedic?
Imogen: I think this is the fundamental philosophical building blocks of all wisdom traditions, so yes, probably. In Taoism, as well, the yin and the yang symbol. It's the same dynamic that what goes up has to come down so you give out a lot of energy, you expend a lot of energy, and at some point, you will feel that sensation of, ‘We're running low. Time to come to home base and recharge.’ Come to yourself, take a step back, rest your body, regenerate. That's the part that most of us miss because we live in a culture where that's not allowed. Where we measure ourselves against the performance of machines. That, ‘Okay time to take a break. Time to celebrate my wins and relax for a bit.’
Craig: Celebrate. Wow.
Imogen: Exactly, celebrate at work, who does that? Isn't it tragic that we live in a culture where we no longer celebrate even our greatest victories?
Jeff: I'm curious, I guess this is a bit of a chicken in the egg question about energy. You're talking about these flows of energy and understanding where we have the greater energy and where we can be more productive, and I love that you said unlock time. You also talked about being Time Benders. I also believe that when I'm present, I have greater energy, mainly because I'm not using my energy to do all the other things. To multitask, to try to manage all these things. You were talking about the person who believes they're present, but it's really about them and they're wondering, ‘what do people think of me?’ Well, it takes energy to wonder about that. There's a natural flow of energy, but I guess what I'm saying, Imogen, is do I create energy when I'm present? Or do I do present differently and it allows energy? How do you see that?
Imogen: You're absolutely right. We are, as I already described, energy beings. We are a biological dynamic process, but we also interchange and interface with other processes of energy. We both give out energy that others can tap into. We take in energy from others. When you know what it feels like when you're in the presence of someone really passionate, really inspiring, you feel lit up, you feel excited to go and do something, to take action, to get involved. My world is expanded, I feel so great. I feel buoyed up. And all you did was sit in their presence, or even watch them on Zoom. Simultaneously, you know what it's like when you're in the presence of someone who is draining the energy out of you. The way that you use your attention is not just the energy given through you but also to others. When you're in the presence of someone who is very present, that also feeds. There are plenty of other ways that we can generate energy. There are the basic ones like sleep, food, exercise, but also many other things. Art, music can give us energy.
Craig: Water for me.
Imogen: Yes, water is highly energizing. Walking through the forest. This is one of the principles which I teach which is: Fuel first. Essentially it's a simple reframe, which is in the morning you get up and I ask people to do what I call a Daily Alignment Check-in, and there are three questions.
The first question is: What will you do to fuel yourself today? Now many people, that is not the question that they asked themselves.
Craig: What do I have to do today?
Imogen: Exactly. Go straight into the doing without ever asking, “Well, where am I going to get the energy from?”
Craig: Great point.
Imogen: Each of us has a great recipe for fueling. And again, we change a lot; we change like seasons. Some days what's going to fuel you best is going to be different from another day. So I get people to create logs, lists, and menus of things they know give them energy so that they can find and get their body to decide: what do I want to do today? Is it a quick meditation? Is it taking the time to cook a nourishing meal? Is it spending time in the presence of someone who's funny and lights me up and makes me see the world differently? What's going to fuel me today?
The second question is: What do I feel like doing today, and how can I honor that even in a small way? How many of us ask our bodies, ‘I know what I have to do today or what I believe I have to do today, but what does my body actually feel like doing? And then, how can I honor that?
Craig: With that one, it seems like you have to have a little bit of extra space in order to work with that one. Because if I have a jam-packed schedule, I don't have the flexibility to say, ‘What do I feel like doing right now?’
Imogen: This is where the second part comes in, which is: How can I honor that and even a small way?
Let's say you have a jam-packed schedule of meetings, but you check-in in the morning and you realize that all you want to do is lie in bed all day by yourself. You can't do that, right? But maybe what you can do is even lie in bed for an extra five minutes. Or in between a couple of meetings, you can go into a room, shut the door, lie down on the floor for five minutes, breathing.
The purpose of this exercise is not necessarily to do the thing exactly as our body asked. It's more to start to reopen this mind-body channel. To open a conversation again, so that our body actually realizes that we're hearing it, we’re listening to it, and we are even acting on some of its feedback. This is how we become more embodied and this is the natural prevention of burnout. When you can feel how energy is shifting and you can feel where you're at, you can’t get burned out because the mechanism, that conversation between your mind and your body, is so active that there's no way you're going to miss those signals that you're pushing too far for too long and end up as I did. It's, how can I honor this in a really small way?
Craig: So that's really the foundation of self-care then.
Imogen: Yes.
Jeff: What is the third question? I think you've given us two, Imogen. What’s the third question?
Imogen: The third question is: Where am I feeling resistance? How can I honor that and even a small way? We have a bit of a binary relationship with resistance in our culture. You either run from it, hide and wait for it to go away, or you push through.
Craig: Fight or flight.
Imogen: I'm gonna crush the resistance. I'm gonna power through it, I'm going to overcome it. But both of those options feel terrible. And they're very energy draining because the pushing and powering through is exhausting, and the hiding and shaming are also exhausting because shame requires so much energy to manage.
So I have a third way, which is you get curious.
Craig: There you go, Jeff.
Imogen: ‘So I'm feeling resistance to something. Hmm, I wonder if there's something here for me to know or understand?’
There is a stat that never fails to blow my mind, and I know you love a lot of data about the body when we were talking about multitasking. Something that absolutely blows my mind is that our conscious mind, how present we’re able to be, can only process about 50 bits of data per second. They do these tests with things like, how many numbers you can remember in a telephone number, and it’s usually it's like four or five numbers. Hardly anyone can remember more than that. Yet our unconscious mind, our whole body, the sensory data it's taking in is processing in any given second is 11 million bits.
Craig: Wow.
Imogen: What that essentially means is what's available to us mentally, in the rational, logical part of our experience is 0.00005% of what our body knows.
Craig: So we need to get good with our gut.
Imogen: You can imagine that with all of that information that's hidden, and our body is resisting something, it may have something really important it’s trying to tell us.
Getting curious about our resistance is about trying to unlock even just a tiny amount of that wisdom. To try and figure out: Is there a better way for me to do this? Is it because it's not actually my job to do this? Wait, I don't want to do this on my own, that sucks. That's why I'm resisting. I don't have the resources for this. I don't have the right energy for this; I'm exhausted, depleted. I don't have enough information. As soon as we can start to get curious and start asking resistance questions, we go, ‘Ohhh, maybe that's what it is.’ Or at least we start to approve of the resistance. That's where self-shaming or trying to constantly fight against it becomes irrelevant because suddenly the path becomes clear, or at least, is less covered up.
Jeff: I love that. I hadn't thought about that so much. I think I show up in many ways, but I didn't realize the energy impact. As you said earlier, it takes a lot of energy to hold things down. The idea of pushing through something – it takes energy to do that. Craig knows this, one of the things that I talk about a lot is this idea of beach balls. The beach balls are light and airy and fun, except when you try and hold them under the water. When you try to hold them under, the beach balls are not so much fun because all it takes is attention and energy. If you have multiple beach balls, which we all do, then there are only two solutions. One is to just let them go, or the other is to let some air out of them. To me, the idea of curiosity, it doesn't take energy to be curious. It takes some courage because I may not want to know the answer. But the energy is the pushing through or holding it back, or at a bay, and so I really love how that ties to energy.
The thing I want to ask you about that’s related to this, Imogen. I love a couple of words you used. I love words because I believe words are super empowering or disempowering, and I'm realizing I think the words also create energy or use energy.
You have repeatedly used the word ‘honor’.
I think that is a super empowering word. How can I honor what I feel like doing in a small way today? How can I honor the resistance in a small way? So can you speak to the role of words and energy?
Imogen: So, ‘honor’ you picked up on. I also use the word ‘reverence’ a lot. I use the word ‘process’. I say, “Honor or have reverence for your own process.” I use the word ‘wisdom’ a lot, and language shapes culture. Language shapes our reality, the story we tell ourselves.
You're in the leadership-productivity-business game, so you are no strangers to the fact that we use the language of war a lot in the business world.
Craig: Right.
Imogen: Even ‘strategy’ comes from war language. We use ‘crush it’, ‘kill it’, ‘attack it’. It's everywhere and it’s the language of violence. It’s the language of dominance. When we borrow that language and talk to ourselves like that, we're integrating and internalizing this very aggressive, very dominating point of view. There is definitely a time and a place to be dominant, to take action, and to strike when the iron is hot, but there's a whole other side to our experience.
We talked about time earlier. One of the most frustrating things about being human, maybe it's like the big cosmic dope, is that we get to experience time in two different ways. We have this quantum experience of time in our imaginations, where you can think of an idea, you can build a future, you can build a world in your mind within a few seconds. A goal, a dream, a desire. It’s there. You can visualize it all. You can feel it. You're like, yes, I want this.
Then we have the gestational momentum, which is the pace of our bodies. It's slow. It's a process. It's not linear. It's cycles and spirals. Sometimes you take two steps forward one step back, sometimes you take two back one forward. A lot of resistance occurs in this very frustrating space between the quantum momentum of your imagination and the gestational momentum of your body. Thoughts and ideas move very fast. Emotions move fast, but not as fast. Then the body moves slowest of all. So trying to honor those three experiences of time is very difficult. You have to have a great sense of humor. You have to use language. You can honor your big vision, your dream, and your passion, and you must also honor the pace at which your body, and the bodies of other people, are capable of actually realizing it. I love that you raised this question because it's something I ask the people I work with a lot.
Analyze the language that you use to talk to yourself. Is that language creating the sense of rushing, anxiety, and shame? ‘Never enough.’ ‘I’m always behind.’ ‘There’s so much to do.’ Or is the language you're using also speaking to that part of you that needs to be coaxed, encouraged gently, and given space and time to process and feel its way through? We talked about boxes. Well, again, there is no this or that when it comes to a human being. You have to understand both.
Language is very important and I feel like we don't have enough language to truly express the richness of the human experience. I love people who are out there inventing new words for us to use.
Jeff: I had a conversation about that in a very unique place about five years ago. I was in Vancouver, British Columbia, actually on Vancouver Island, in a huge forest with some friends so it was perfect. We were surrounded by these giant trees; we were hugging trees that day. For those who don't know what that is, don't knock it till you try it. I was talking about what you just said, Imogen, about our language. I feel so constrained by it. The person I was with said, “The problem is that language was created from a binary mindset. Everything's an either/or. It's black or white. It’s good or bad. It's hot or cold.” I've resisted that so much because it doesn't describe my experience so I make up words. I made up a word actually because so many people say, “I'm feeling overwhelmed.” I thought, well that's not helpful. If I tell myself I'm overwhelmed, that means I'm out of control. But it resonates with me sometimes. So now, I freak people out by saying, “Today I'm actually feeling some whelm. I’m feeling some whelm today, and I'm just paying attention to that whelm and doing some things differently.” They chuckle and then they usually go, “Actually, that's probably helpful.
Imogen: Yeah, because we don't want to be underwhelmed, either. What is that sweet spot of whelm? I'm feeling whelm, it's not too much, it's not too little, it's good.
Jeff: I'm gonna try that one out. Next time something comes up, I'm gonna say, “I am right in the sweet spot of whelm.”
Craig: I feel like Goldilocks.
Jeff: I am like a perfectly ripe peach of whelm. I'm just letting it drip down my chin.
Craig: Fuzzy on the outside.
Jeff: My god, so good.
As we get near our time here, Imogen, there's so much here. I guess what I would ask you is, you work with folks, unconventional folks. And I'm guessing that's because unconventional folks face some unique, not totally unique, but some different types of experiences. You’ve given us questions, tips, wisdom. What's that core message for folks today? The one big takeaway of how they can navigate their journey differently with more energy, purposefulness, productivity, presence, all those things. What does that boil down to?
“You are an energy being. Your energy is going to shift each moment, each day, and that is entirely natural and good. We’re not designed to be consistent. We’re not designed to be machines. The moment you let yourself off the hook, not performing at the same level every day, is the moment that you break free.”
Imogen: I've said it already, I guess I'll say it again, is remembering that, whether you identify as unconventional or not, you are an energy being. Your energy is going to shift each moment, each day, and that is entirely natural and good. We're not designed to be consistent. We're not designed to be machines. The moment you let yourself off the hook, not performing at the same level every day, is the moment you break free.
That's the world I want to live in, and it really does start with, how am I using my energy every moment, every day? And am I choosing to use it well? That would be the one thing that I ask people to do. You can use the Daily Alignment Check-in, the three questions. It’s a great way to start the day for your listeners, and I do it several times a day. It's a great exercise to check-in and go: actually, do I still want to do this? Actually yeah, the resistance has gone from this morning. Victory!
That's something that you can use.
Jeff: We always want our guests to have an opportunity to share something in particular that you want to highlight or promote. What is that for you today?
Imogen: A lot of the tools or ideas I've shared today are part of my energy management program which is called Align + Flow. I just wrapped up a cohort, but what I learned from teaching that recent cohort was that some of these tools – tools for ending stress cycles, how to recover from burnout while in the thick of it, the daily alignment check-in, the resistance tools – I want to share these with more people and have them be available at a lower price point because I think that these things are so valuable and they can be used every day. So what I'm doing currently is creating an Align + Flow Toolkit, which is about 10 of these energy management tools. It's not ready yet, at the time of recording, but if you go to my website, you'll find instructions for how to get there. So that's what I'd like to share today.
Jeff: Wonderful. You mentioned your website. Is that the best way for people to connect with you or are there other ways?
Imogen: You can find me on Instagram. You can find me on Facebook. I also have a podcast called A Year of Magical Living. On the podcast, I share a lot of practices, tools, and reframing techniques to unlock more magic in your day-to-day life.
Jeff: Love magic. We always wrap up with a couple of signature questions. The first one is, Imogen, what's the book, of all the many books out there, what's the book that you would invite our listeners to check out?
Imogen: Yes. Hard to boil it down to one, but this book is very close to my heart. It came out this year, it’s called Unbound – A Woman's Guide to Power by Kasia Urbaniak. Now, I know that maybe some of the listeners immediately hear me say, “a woman's guide to power,” and think, well that's not for me. But I beg you to reconsider for a moment because there is no other book that I have read that breaks down the mechanics of power as it's happening in a conversation. We talked a lot today about energy and how it fluidly switches and changes. Power is exactly the same. It’s a practical manual, breaking down how power is not a function of your status, your role, or how many toys you have. It’s relational. It's all about how you're showing up in a dynamic with another person.
Jeff: So the last question is, Imogen, role models. Who's been a critical role model for you? And what was the key that made them such an important role model for you?
Imogen: Jeff, I had a lot of resistance to this question. This is why I chose it because I wanted to get curious about why I find this question so hard. My interpretation of the resistance, at least at the moment, was that it was the word ‘role’ that was tickling me. I was thinking about yes, leadership is a role but is it always a role? The most inspiring leadership that I've been witnessed has been more of a state of being than a role.
Craig: Great point.
Imogen: And maybe interrogating, what kind of leadership is that? And it's a leadership that is very much about emotional mastery, about feeling what is there for you, and then most importantly being able to use it in a constructive way. So if that's anger, it’s optimizing it into passion and then using that to inspire others to make social change. Or if it's sadness or grief, it’s really letting that emotion take you somewhere deep and profound and then creating compassion and connection with others. Leadership is also that description of power that Kasia Urbaniak makes, which is when you really know who you are and what you want and you can inspire others to get on board with that with you. It's playfulness. It’s using curiosity and getting really interested in the world of other people. It's less about knowing what is good or bad or right or wrong, and more about where is the life here? Where is there something that's worth saving, worth excavating, worth exploring, worth going after? And then also, what is dead? I've talked a lot about cycles and one of the things that we are very unpracticed at as western industrialized humans is knowing when to end things. Knowing when something needs to die, needs to end, so that we can create new life somewhere. I think a good leader is someone who can really sense what is alive, what is dead and acting accordingly.
I think of times in my life where I've seen someone who didn't necessarily have a leadership role, status, or title, but in a moment when a rank or title failed, there was a vacuum, or someone was not able to show up in their role. It was the person who could feel what was needed, who could step in, take the reins and lead the others. Or someone who goes back into a situation where it feels like things are impossible, and yet is able to reinvigorate something, release some energy that was trapped, release stagnation. I see it in my clients. I see my clients who have turned a longstanding Nemesis into a creative ally. Or they have had a deadbeat job that they were going to leave and instead they have gone back in, and convinced their boss to create a brand new role in the organization that's never existed before because they're so passionate that this is the work that they're supposed to be doing. So for me, that is the leadership that inspires me. It’s that leadership that is a practice. It's not an identity. It's not a role. It's, ‘I decide to follow what's alive and practice this art of leadership every day in small ways.’ That's what I find is the most effective type of leadership and the one that I want to see more of on this planet.
“That is the leadership that inspires me. It’s that leadership that is a practice. It’s not an identity. It’s not a role. It’s, ‘I decide to follow what’s alive and practice this art of leadership every day in small ways.’ That’s what I find is the most effective type of leadership and the one that I want to see more of on this planet.”
Jeff: Well, I'm really glad we asked that question. And for those of you listening, if you had any doubt before that last answer about whether Imogen is the real deal or not, she just answered it. What she just modeled is what she's talking about. Feeling that resistance. I love that. And saying, let me go explore that. Let me see what I'm gonna learn. Out of that comes learning, comes growth, and also comes a perspective that what you just shared, Imogen, couldn't have come out if you had not been willing to go and embrace that resistance to say, what is it got to teach me here? So I got goosebumps from that, witnessing it, and what you shared. Thank you for that. Thanks for everything you brought today. I know everyone who's listening and will listen has been blessed, will be blessed. Thank you for honoring us with your time and presence.
Imogen: Thank you so much. Thank you for letting me play with your state of attention. Thank you for honoring me. Let's use this word more often.
I’m Imogen, a Business Mentor who helps unconventional people to be more purposeful, productive and present in their life and business. I do this by developing and teaching strategies and tools that break cyclical beings free from toxic, unsustainable, and disempowering narratives about work and business to create unstoppable success without burnout or compromise.
If you’re ready to take a more proactive approach to protect and replenish your most precious resource, your own energy, learn more about my online course, Align + Flow, or book a free call with me to talk about coaching.
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