The Unburdened Leader

We watch leaders crash & burn all the time.

We watch with morbid fascination as leaders fall out of grace because their unaddressed pain led them on an unsustainable path of poor choices–even dangerous and deadly choices–to avoid feeling the vulnerability of rejection.

Those times when you experienced the pain of rejection leave their mark because rejection hurts. Like, physically hurts. Neuroscience teaches that this kind of emotional pain is processed similarly to physical pain.

The burdens of social rejection of any kind can become all-consuming in an effort to do whatever it takes to never go through that kind of pain again.

But stepping into leadership means stepping into rejection and being misunderstood. It is just a part of the physics of leading and putting yourself out there in any capacity.

If you are stepping into the title, the power, and the access of leadership as a way to bypass the pain of rejection, it will not go well.

My guest today is an expert–personally and professionally–on addressing the trauma wounds of rejection versus bypassing the pain of vulnerability.

Dr. Frank Anderson is one of the nation's leading mental health professionals as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist. Committed to promoting compassion, hope, healing, and non-violence in the world, Frank specializes in the treatment of trauma and dissociation and is passionate about teaching brain-based psychotherapy and integrating current neuroscience knowledge with the Internal Family Systems model of therapy. He also travels around the world as a proponent and instructor of the IFS modality.

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It is time to stop living a divided life.

When your life is divided between home and work, personal and professional, you're vulnerable to all sorts of relationship troubles and everyday friction.

When you separate yourself from your values and see your business and life divided instead of integrated and unified by your purpose and values, you will break from the pressure of it all.

You feel out of alignment with what matters most–your health, your values, your most important relationships–and feel at the mercy of responding to every need like it is an emergency, further sacrificing your clarity and confidence.

My guest today has done the work to get clear on how she leads herself and others and not letting fear divide her from what she values and who she loves most.

Stasia Svasuk is an entrepreneur, mama, speaker, adventurer, thrifter, and science-of-style expert who thinks bodies are just about the coolest things on earth.

She is the founder and creator of THE REVEL-YOU-TION––an online community of crazy-brave women who are using their closets to heal their shame, flex their brave muscles, cultivate their creativity, and create some wildly fabulous outfits while they’re at it.

Stasia has inspired many thousands through her Tedx talk, her wildly popular (and now retired) Stasia’s Style School, her numerous podcast recordings and guest speaker gigs, and her ability to cultivate a community where collective braving and collective healing are the name of the game.

We cover some incredible territory in this episode around work, life, and family integration.

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Boundary barriers become leadership barriers.

What gets in the way of setting and maintaining boundaries gets in the way of leading well.

Our polarized culture, along with so many demands on our time and energy, make it so important to get clear on what gets in the way of setting and maintaining boundaries…and what they are protecting.

Do you know what your boundaries are protecting?

You have to know why you are laboring through the work of setting and maintaining boundaries. Without this clarity and focus you will flounder and feel fed up–often giving up on your boundaries and yourself.

We get so focused on when and how people violate our boundaries that we lose focus on the reason we are fighting for them. This leads to boundaries becoming barriers - no longer protecting what is important: our time, our relationships, our wellbeing.

What helps you stay the course when you set boundaries? Your clarity of values and clarity on what your boundaries protect.

When you are clear on what you are protecting and fighting for, you have more confidence in navigating the work involved in setting and maintaining boundaries.

My guest today loves to teach and talk about boundaries.

Alison Cook, MA, PhD is a counselor, speaker, and the co-author of Boundaries for Your Soul. For over 15 years, Alison has helped women learn how to heal painful emotions, develop confidence from the inside out, forge healthy relationships, and fully live out their God-given potential. Each week, she encourages over 30,000 subscribers to her email newsletter and blog at alisoncookphd.com.

In our conversation, Alison unpacks a powerful perspective on setting and maintaining boundaries.

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Our capacities are at an all-time low.

Between the pandemic and politics and injustice–not to mention our already overflowing lives and schedules–we have access to far fewer resources for staying calm, beating back anxiety, or holding space for others.

It’s in times like these that leaders like you need to know what trips you up--so you can take better care of yourself and continue to lead those who depend on you.

Knowing what trips you up requires a lot of curiosity and deep respect for feeling out of sorts, but so often, the message to keep cool and never let others see you struggle shuts down any curiosity about what is at the root of inner struggle.

Staying calm and showing up with care is exhausting--especially when the world is on fire. You don’t want to stop… but it’s tough!

Now, I know everyone is used to hearing about “triggers,” but I like to use a different term-- trailhead.

Trailheads, according to the founder of Internal Family Systems Dick Schwartz, are an emotion, image, inner voice, thought, physical sensation, or impulse that, when brought into focus and followed, often leads to a part of our inner system that is in distress.

Understanding our triggers and trailheads is a path to knowing ourselves better and provides us with direction on what we need to create and informs our body of work.

My guest today built an incredible career based on following her triggers and trailheads.

Sunni Brown is a social entrepreneur, best-selling author, story architect, and book coach.

Her TED Talk has drawn more than 1.5 million views and she is the author of Gamestorming and The Doodle Revolution, forthcoming book–Being Confident: In Any Situation and When it Matters Most.

Sunni has developed a company that has a powerful cultural impact on how we learn and work. She has started this movement based on the data offered from her own personal triggers and trailheads.

Sunni has redefined what it means to arrive as she deepens her awareness of her inner system.

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Too often, we exile the parts of us that hold complex emotions and difficult parts of our story at the expense of our wholeness. And not respecting our own wholeness in favor of living a compartmentalized life is perpetuated in the spaces we live and lead.

So, we hide away the things that we’ve been taught to believe are not acceptable—and what we hide is often rooted from the soul of what makes us unique and feel most alive.

Making space to lead complexity means signing up to navigate emotions, beliefs, and perspectives that do not fit into a tidy box.

This is the call right now. To dig into nuance and hang out in this place of complexity requires awareness that cannot be put back into the proverbial toothpaste tube.

This is super vulnerable.

But remember, respecting the whole person still requires boundaries, honoring core values, and developing systems that move you and your business forward. The fear of chaos is more about the fear of change–and what that change means for our own safety and status.

What we are seeing is how leadership that respects the whole person is rewriting the rules on what is professional and appropriate.

Oh, the rules.

You know the rules... the shoulds about what is professional and ok for business and work and what is not.

These rules crush our souls along with our clarity of voice and desire to create. And they continue to dehumanize and marginalize.

Approaching business and people with a perspective that values all parts of those they lead requires doing the inner work to navigate the complexity of emotions and lived experiences with compassion and curiosity instead of shame and correction.

My guest today lives this work and this approach.

Megan Auman is a jewelry designer, metalsmith, educator, and entrepreneur with over a decade of experience in selling art through a variety of channels.

Currently, Megan is running her eponymous jewelry line and the online community Artists & Profit Makers for fellow creatives who sell high-end products. A best-selling CreativeLive instructor, Megan’s designs have been featured in Elle Decor, Better Homes & Gardens, Cooking Light and on top-rated blogs like Design*Sponge.

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Never underestimate the power of your decisions.

Especially the little decisions you make each day.

How you go about making decisions offers so much data about you and what you believe about yourself and the world around you.

Many of us second-guess our decisions because we're unsure of ourselves in the first place. Maybe you underestimate your ability to do hard things or give added weight to the judgement others might pass when they learn about your decision.

Most often, I suspect you second-guess your ability to do hard things and feel hard things. Or maybe you question how those around you will respond to your decisions.

If you are too protected from feeling vulnerable or your worthiness is wrapped up in metrics or the opinions of others, then you will be disconnected from your purpose and your courage

More importantly, you will be disconnected from making the decisions that support the life you are building and those you are leading.

My guest today never underestimates herself or saw a problem she could not tackle with zeal. Her sense of responsibility towards those in her charge combined with a deep, early born desire to never be beholden to anyone fuels her approach to the decisions she makes and how she problem solves.

Audrey McLoghlin founded luxury clothing brand Frank & Eileen. Borrowing her grandparents’ names, Audrey sourced traditional suiting fabrics from the finest family-owned mills in Italy to reinvent the women’s button-up—a category that had previously focused solely on men.

Frank & Eileen quickly became a favorite with cultural icons such as Meghan Markle, Oprah Winfrey and Kamala Harris, and is now a global retail brand. She is a four-time entrepreneur who has bootstrapped all of her companies, without ever taking outside funding.

You are in for a masterclass conversation today. This may be a conversation for you to listen to on repeat—I know I already have!

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Caring about those you lead means caring about the harm you may unknowingly be doing.

Many of us who fit western standards of beauty and live in conventionally abled bodies don't understand how our choices can cause pain. We've internalized ableism and fat-phobia to the point where we can't even grasp how our words & deeds cause harm.

In particular, in the last year, and perhaps for a while longer, many of you have come to terms with the way you operate in the world and cause pain or harm in a way you have no idea.

Talking about beliefs around body, health, size, and beauty can feel like a tenuous social quagmire. Perfectionism and shame love to hang out and have a party with both mindset and mental health when tackling nuanced and vulnerable topics like this one.

We breathe in the many conflicting messages on what it means to be enough, to be strong, to be worthy. Our bodies carry the burdens of these messages and beliefs.

Recognizing how collusion with systems and toxic beliefs affects too many means taking action to alleviate this pain and suffering.

Because accepting these standards unchecked and at face value is dehumanizing and devaluing.

It’s time to choose the socially and morally responsible path to learn what it means to cultivate an environment that supports rathan than harms.

While many companies and organizations are stepping up and making an effort towards this, my guest today shares how the good intentions are often missing the intended - and needed - impact.

Lindsay Kite, PhD is co-author of the new book More Than a Body and co-director of the nonprofit Beauty Redefined, alongside her identical twin sister Lexie Kite. They both received PhDs from the University of Utah in the study of female body image and have become leading experts in body image resilience and media literacy.

Today, Lindsay and Lexie continue to help girls and women recognize and reject the harmful effects of objectification in their lives through their new book, their online Body Image Resilience course, social media activism, and regular speaking engagements for thousands of people of all ages.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Self-objectification and body resilience: These are the game-changer in how you can change your outlook and approach to body anxiety.
• Dr. Kite unpacks what gets in the way of how we see ourselves and how that impacts our courage and how we show up in work and life.
• The call Dr. Kite puts out for all of us—especially those with privilege—to challenge our bias around body size personally and in our places of work.

Learn more about Lindsay Kite, PhD:

• Morethanabody.org
• beautyredefined.org
• @beauty_redefined on Instagram
• Beauty Redefined on Facebook

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• Sign up for the Weekly Rumble Email

Resources from this episode:

• Binge Eating Disorder Association (BEDA)
• Binge Eating Disorder: The Road to Recovery and Beyond (Book)

There is nothing safe about catalyzing the much needed changes we need in our world today.

Speaking your truth feels loaded right now. I’m not talking about speaking your truth as a way to say whatever you feel whenever and wherever.

I’m talking about the deep knowing inside of you that is you without the armor, the spin. The you that doesn’t absorb the projections onto you from the world.

The pull to dim what you know to be true as a protective response is real.

Sitting on the fence is a protective response. It also keeps you small and led by the burdens of fear.

I have been rumbling with this truth in my own writing and speaking, noticing the years of protecting internally that push me to placate and keep things vague when there is a lot to lose or a chance to get hurt.

The more I unburden the hurts I have held for so long, the more my capacity to move through the vulnerability of leading from my truth and speaking my truth increases.

Sure, leading from your truth is scary... especially In a world that cancels and criticizes in a heartbeat.

My guest today knows a lot about the challenges and costs of leading from your truth.

With 25 years of experience, Chevese Turner is an internationally recognized eating disorders, weight discrimination and social justice activist who founded the Binge Eating Disorder Association (BEDA) in 2008.

Chevese is dedicated to moving beyond the current dominant weight-focused paradigm in public health and healthcare delivery to one that is weight inclusive, promotes well-being free from weight stigma and discrimination, and views our understanding of the social determinants of health as an important way forward for individuals who find themselves at the intersection of oppressions and repeated denial of healthcare based on their body size, color, ethnicity, age, gender, socio-economic status, etc.

This is a conversation about so much more than food and body issues. It is about coming home to your truth. It’s about healing from your pain and the traumas of betrayal and constantly being misunderstood. It is about courageous leadership.

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The quickest way to crash and burn your business and life is to place your worthiness and safety with the opinions of others.

This may sound like a captain-obvious statement but the pull to care what others think is something fierce. And it is sneaky.

The competitive drive is no stranger to many of you. In fact, it is often the norm.

Honoring your boundaries around healthy competition is hard in a world that constantly tells us we’re not enough. It does not help that our own self-talk attacks our sense of enough, too.

When not checked, healthy competition and ambition leads to the protectors of scarcity and comparison overwhelming you. This happens quickly when you are not clear on your values, when you are not clear on your definition of success, and when you are not clear on your boundaries.

Without these anchors in place, the powerful drive to win and achieve can quickly warp to a singular focus on another person or another business. Success is then based on comparison and moves you away from what matters most.

However, staying aligned with your personal version of success is possible—and it requires that you constantly recalibrate and live your values.

My conversation with Natalie Borton in this episode of The Unburdened Leader digs deep into these life-long tensions around navigating where your definition of success lies along with the power of staying clear on your core values and taking care of your well-being.

Natalie is a San Diego-based mom, wife and entrepreneur that is passionate about positivity, authenticity and simplicity. She designs minimalist, California-inspired jewelry for everyday wear and educates on making the most out of your wardrobe, living more confidently and pursuing your dreams honestly and whole-heartedly.

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