The Soulful Leader Podcast
The Soulful Leader Podcast
Boundaries and Beliefs: Leading Without Losing Yourself
Have you ever wanted something more for someone then they want it for themselves?
It can be painful and heartbreaking - for both people. And it can decimate a relationship.
Today, Maren and Stephanie dig into every aspect of this from both personal and professional perspectives. They cover control and codependency, arrogance and boundary issues, internal dialogs, the external world as a mirror and how so much of what we say to ourselves is actually not our own voice.
Through two personal stories comes - wisdom, insights and thought provoking guidance for leaders and business people alike.
This is a jam packed, short episode with a great practice toward the very end - so be sure to stay tuned.
Please share it with a friend and join us on Facebook and/or LinkedIn. We’d like to hear your comments, questions and thoughts.
- 00:31 Wanting more for another
- 04:31 CoDependency & Control
- 06:14 Perpetuating what we learn
- 08:02 Inner Critic in the Outer World
- 10:44 The Inner Voice is Not Us
- 12:12 Practice: Watching It Like a Movie
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In a world where we have everything and it's still not enough, we're often left wondering, is this really it?
Maren Oslac:Deep inside, you know there's more to life. You're ready to leave behind the old push your way through and claim the deeper, more meaningful life that's calling you.
Stephanie Allen:That's what we invite you to explore with us. We're your hosts, Stephanie Allen and
Maren Oslac:Maren Oslac, and this is The Soulful Leader Podcast.
Stephanie Allen:Yay! Hi and welcome to The Soulful Leader Podcast. This is Stephanie, and I'm here with Maren, and the topic today is when you want something more for someone else, and they actually may even want it for themselves. And how that just completely, oh, it just wrecks us, doesn't it? I mean, I've had experiences with that. I know you have too, Maren, and I'm sure some of the listeners have also had that.
Maren Oslac:So I'm not sure you can be alive, right? I don't know if you can be alive and not have had that experience of wanting something more for somebody else than they wanted for themselves. And you know what? One of the things that comes up for me when I think about that is a level of arrogance that we think we know better. And you know, like this is full on personal experience of how arrogant am I to think that I know better for somebody than they know for themselves. And yet, I do it all the time.
Stephanie Allen:Yes, we do. I often think, you know, I have a kind of a boundary that I have with myself. It's not so much with my clients, but I often say I cannot care more about someone's health and well being more than they're willing to care about their own health and well being, because I know what's happened to me in the past. I become attached, and then I get really upset when they don't take the actions that I gave them for God's sake, because I'm the 'be all and end all' right? I have all the arrogance and I haven't made space to really listen to where they are in their life and what their needs are. And sometimes, when I have made that space and they said, hey, this is what I want, then I get all excited for it. And I think I must be their personal cheerleader to keep them over that finish line. And sometimes they're just having a moment to reflect. They might need to hear it themselves, and they're not even recruiting me to be that cheerleader. So it's a really interesting thing. And I have clients of mine who will say, you know, what they think is best for their child, or what is best for their husband or their partner or whatever... and I'm like, oh this is going to be really uncomfortable for you.
Maren Oslac:You know, because I've been there, yeah, from a leadership perspective, when I was running my studio, I did that a lot with my team members, with people that I hired. And, you know I would get very invested in what they wanted. And I found that oftentimes I was more invested than they were. And again, you know, like, I can look at it from the perspective of they said they wanted that, and they didn't do all the things. But again, I go back to...that's my version of all the things. That saying, of like, walk a mile in somebody else's shoes, yeah? And, well, you can't truly do that, because we don't know everything that somebody else has been through.
Stephanie Allen:It's not my life, it's not my business, and it's not, it's their business.
Maren Oslac:Yeah, they have their own conversation with life, with spirit, with the one who sent them, whatever that means to each of those people. I mean that's not for me to determine for them. And, you know I did that a lot, and I ended up, I loaned people money, and ended up having to forgive loans, because they just never were in in a position to pay them back. And when I say I was invested literally with money, heart and soul the whole bit, like a personal cheerleader.... Whoo!!!Yeah! You want that? Let's go for it! Now you can even hear it like... let's go for it, not how can I support you going for it? Right? Big difference.
Stephanie Allen:You know there's a great definition of codependency. That word just completely always baffles me. What does that really mean? Am I codependent? I probably am, if I'm asking that question.(laughter) I look at the definition from the 12 step programs. Often a codependent is someone who actually is invested in someone else's well being and is doing for them what they actually can do themselves. That is a CODEPENDENT. And so you might be asking them, well, you know, somebody doesn't have any money...why can't I lend them some? Like what you were saying Maren. Well, they don't have money to, you know, to invest in the dream. Well, is that codependency? Well, it is if they're not showing up. If they're not participating in showing up, it becomes control. The whole codependency is actually control. It's like, you know, when we give to someone, we're actually giving with conditions that they're going to change, or they're going to go for that dream, or to instead of backing off totally and saying... it's like that, saying, I love that saying that you can teach a man, you can give a man a fish and he can eat for a day, or you can teach him how to fish and they'll eat for a lifetime, right? And that's the difference. And I look at that for our soulful leadership. How do we back away from that codependency? How do we back away from that caring more about somebody else's well being than they care about themselves? You know? How do we back away from that and give them the space to to actually find their own way?
Maren Oslac:I have a story from when I was in college with my dad, and he did that to me. So I went to college, started out pre-med, which dad was like, great! My father paid for all of my college, which, what a blessing, right? Most people end up in debt coming out of college, and I knew that I was not going to be in debt coming out of college because dad was paying for it. And then I decided that I was not doing pre-med, and I became an art major, and my father called me and said, You are not and I won't pay for your schooling then. And I said, that's fine. I'll get a, you know, and so I applied for financial aid. Little did I know that they actually had to contact my parents in order for me to get financial aid. So I got this livid phone call from my father, you are not going on financial aid. And I was like, well, I'm either going on financial aid or you're going to pay for it, and I'm going to be an artist. So one of the two is going to be, you know, it's like, there is that control, right? So both of us, neither of us, was going to back down. And bless my father, he raised a very willful child being me, because he was very willful, right? And so there's that codependency piece of he wanted to control what I did. And he had the power, right? Because he had the money. Wonder where I got that? Now, I'm going to help people with money, and then think I'm going to...yeah
Stephanie Allen:Well, that's a good insight anyway. And I think that's all of us. We learn it and then we perpetuate it, don't we?
Maren Oslac:Yeah, we do.
Stephanie Allen:Yeah. I had an interesting situation. Thank you for sharing for that, because had an interesting situation. Actually, just yesterday, leading a yoga class. So here we all are in shavasana, and we've just been working through, you know, the inner dialog with the critical parent and the child that is within all of us, you know. And what we're talking about is that internal narrative, you know, how we talk about ourselves is basically how our parents have talked to us. So like your story with your dad and going for your dreams and how that all unraveled, we then adopt it internally, inside ourselves. So even long after we've left home or left our parents have left this earthly plane, we're still, you know, grappling with the with that dialog inside of us. So here we are in shavasana, just working with the inner child and the in the critical parent, and it's quiet, it's still. And I, you know the yoga classes at the YMCA. So the windows border right on the parking lot, and for some reason, there was a little tiny crack in the window. So the window was open, and there was a mother bringing her young child to childcare. And on the way you could hear this outwardly, this mother literally screaming at the child, you're going to hold my hand. It's a parking lot if you're not going to hold my hand, and we're going to go back home. Is that what you want? And the child's screaming, no, I don't want to go. And it was back and forth. And I'm like, here we are in Shavasana. (shared laughter) We're supposed to be in this peaceful, relaxed, you know, kind of place. And I think half the class started, we all started laughing, because it's like, okay, you know, we have just been working with that on how to let go of that negative internal dialog, that internal battle within. And here it is being displayed in the outer world. It's such a mirror. And you know, when we when we're outside of it, when we're witnessing it, we can have a million different ways of approaching that situation, but when you're in it, you can't see it or hear it or feel it. And I think that's the key, and that's what, what I've started to learn for myself is like, what if you when you're in that place of attachment with somebody else, the way they you want them to be, or you are trying to do something for them, and you're feeling just so torqured if you can step outside of it for a moment and witness it? I tend to put myself and and the other being on stage, and I pretend that I'm watching the whole thing, and then I redirect it.
Maren Oslac:So I love that as an exercise. And I think one of the things that you said, which I just need to repeat real quickly, is that that inner dialog is not ours. We inherited it right? It's our parent's voice or our teacher's voice, or whatever voice that we have taken on for ourselves...
Stephanie Allen:...society's voice, everything we've ever learned, our voice that we've torqued it.
Maren Oslac:It's the conditioning. It's not us, and so it allows us to be a little bit more graceful with ourselves when we realize that we are being twerked, or maybe we did something we didn't want to do, or we're trying to control somebody, it's like or be controlled. So yeah, I think in soulful leadership that's essential. Those are the skills for us as leaders. And when I say leaders, I'm talking about like somebody that can stand for themselves and for others. So it's also the internal leadership. How can you gracefully, beautifully, talk to that part of yourself and say it's okay, you know, whether you're the one who's trying to do the controlling or the one who's trying that someone's trying to control you, and you're in that codependence thing, right? Where you want something more for somebody than they want for themselves, or there's somebody who wants something more for you than you want for yourself, right? It could be either side of that.
Stephanie Allen:I think there's a way of being kind about it, instead of like, you know, I think of like, you know, you're doing this to me, or good, bad, right, wrong. And I, you know, I offer this all to you all out there listening to if you want to make the practice of putting yourself in the audience and watching it as a movie and not judging it, not making it right or wrong, or good or bad, and just saying, I wonder if there was another way to kind of go through that scene again. Or I wonder, like you said, you know, if you walk a mile in someone else's shoes, I wonder what might be going through their mind, or that person's like on the other side, like, well, that child and that mother, like, you know, to be able to separate yourself from it so that there's space for love, and then to be practicing non reaction. Because, my God, that not that reaction creates a lot of inflammation and a lot of hostility, both, like I said, you either implode or you explode.
Maren Oslac:And we've all experienced both of those.
Stephanie Allen:I think it is a great, a great, great challenge this week.
Maren Oslac:I do too, and that is your challenge. For everyone out there listening is, you know, maybe put yourself in the audience, give yourself a little bit of space, make yourself the witness instead of the judge, jury and executioner, which we tend to, we tend to default to, right?
Stephanie Allen:So see it as great epic movie...
Maren Oslac:YOUR LIFE... on the headline on the on the marquee, right?
Stephanie Allen:That's right, that's right. Like we all laughed in shavasana at our yoga class when we're like, wow, that that that's like, God love them, right? Like, really, bless their hearts.
Maren Oslac:and not only that...it was such a mirror, right? God bless them for showing up to show us like what we're doing to ourselves on a regular basis all the time, all the time. So take a time out from that. All, all y'all. I can say that because I lived in the South for five minutes. All y'all....(laughter) anyway, we will call it there, and let you guys play with that this week. And please visit us on our Facebook page or our LinkedIn page, to The Soulful Leaders, or contact us through our website, thwww.thesoulfulleaderpodcast.com or visit us at www.tslp.life. We would love to hear from you. We'll see you all next week on The Soulful Leader Podcast.
Stephanie Allen:And that wraps up another episode of The Soulful Leader Podcast with your hosts, Stephanie Allen
Maren Oslac:and Maren Oslac. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to dive deeper, head over to our website, at www.thesoulfulleaderpodcast.com
Stephanie Allen:until next time...