When did life become so feverishly chaotic? We seem to be running a never-ending marathon with no real payoff. And let’s be honest, we’re exhausted!

I have an inspiring and thought-provoking talk with Dr Samantha Hiotakis, a clinical psychologist and lifestyle strategist. Dr Samantha works with ambitious high achievers who are so busy prioritising family responsibilities and job to-do lists that they just don’t have time to prioritise themselves. Sound familiar?

We debunk the guilt we feel when we put ourselves first and the power of mindset to become who we were be born to be – guilt-free!

Show notes

  • Dr Samantha’s personal journey to becoming a mindset coach and lifestyle strategist.
  • We feel guilty for prioritising our own needs first.
  • The power of setting intention, mindset and personal growth goals.
  • Actively dedicating calendar time to work on yourself.
  • If we serve ourselves FIRST, we are able to serve others better.
  • The ability to break our routines with achievable steps.
  • Be prepared to do things that you don’t like!
  • The initial steps will take the most energy.
  • Excuses are often masked as quiet objections and explanations.
  • The 5-second rule to physically commit to doing a task.
  • You have the right to own your life by reclaiming your own time.
  • There is no such thing as work-life balance.
  • We try to do it all! The necessity to delegate your tasks to others to free up your time.
  • Throw out the to-do lists and create a to-be list of what you want to become.
  • The ability to reset and be present in the moment.
  • You can do hard things.

More about Dr Samantha Hiotakis

Check out Dr Samantha’s website and her guide download on how to reclaim your time and energy. You’ll thank me later!

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If you enjoyed this podcast, you will love everyday self-care with Dr Kelly Donahuesetting your intention with Dr Abby Medcalf, and how to stop talking and start slaying!

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Transcript

Lisa: 00:09 Hello, everybody, and welcome to today’s episode of Working Women’s Wealth. I’m with Dr. Samantha Hiotakis, who is a mindset coach and lifestyle strategist with a PhD in psychology and 15 years of experience as a clinical psychologist. She works with ambitious high achievers who are so busy prioritizing their families, careers and day to day responsibilities that their own personal goals always come last. I’m sure that resonates with so many of the audience. Samantha, thank you so much for joining us.
Samantha: 00:58 I’m thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Lisa: 01:01 How did you first get on to this roadmap of the power of mindset?
Samantha: 01:08 Wow. It was really a situation that kind of life happens to all of us. In 2008, I went in for a very simple routine medical procedure. I was supposed to be in and out in a few hours, and it really turned out that I was unfortunately bedridden, unable to work or function for over nine months. I had my doctorate from psychology at the time. You would think I would know about mindset, but it was more cerebral. When I was bedridden and unable to walk and unable to function, my world obviously came crashing down and I really had to dig deep to figure out how to start to heal. The doctors were trying to do what they could and there were not a lot of answers.
I really found the works of Wayne Dyer and Louise Hay and understanding that I had control over one thing and that was my thoughts. My body was doing its own thing, but I could control my thinking. I really, really took time in those months to really start to understand the power of my mindset, my thinking, setting intention for the day. To be quite honest, towards the end, nobody had an explanation for how I was walking, seeing, working again. I went back to the 70-hour work week within two years, just with a different spin obviously from the life experience and that just really showed me the power of our mindset on our lives.
Lisa: 02:38 That’s interesting that you went back to the 70-hour work week. So many people think when you have that almost near death of life altering experience that you become very Zen and you don’t necessarily always return back to the 70-hour work week. How did you integrate this whole thing of your mindset and a new way of being with the 70-hour work week?
Samantha: 03:06 I’m so glad you asked because as a clarifier, really what I did is I’m somebody who is always in a state of doing. I only feel good about things when I’m accomplishing something. For example, yesterday, I accomplished making healthy organic ice pops for my son. I’m always doing something. That 70-hour work week was the culmination of me still working in my job, but then what I started to do is I started to really study and work for myself. What that meant was really digging in deep to understand the mind, the body, but I really carved out time in my calendar to do that because that was how I was able to see through and follow through on continuing my journey to learn. If I didn’t do that, it would be very easy to say I’m going to continue to learn and then weeks would go by and months would go by and I still wasn’t on any traction.
Lisa: 03:58 So many of us feel bad to prioritize ourselves. Somewhere we got this idea that everyone else needs to come first. Our children come first. Our husbands come first. Our work comes first, and that our own learning, our own growth, our own personal development, our own relaxation comes last to everything else. Why have we got to that stage?
Samantha: 04:26 It’s really symptomatic of society. I’m not placing blame on men or society. I just think it’s something that we are used to doing. When you think of how you’ve achieved as a young girl, it was always to either make your parents proud, your teachers proud and getting grades, but those are all external to ourselves. When you’re graduating college or university, it’s getting the job again something outside of yourself. When you’re getting married and having children, again, it’s outside of yourself. All through life we’re moving from what’s within. A lot of times, we’re made to feel that it’s not anything to be prioritized. What I find is that the women that I’m working with, they’re typically in their late 30s or 40s. They’re really slowly dying on the inside because they don’t know how to advocate or ask permission to prioritize themselves.
I love to give the oxygen mask example. There is an emergency on the plane and the oxygen masks drop down. We know this. We’ve all been on planes and we know what they tell us. They tell us to first put the oxygen mask on yourself and not on your children because the gut instinct is to save everybody else and to prioritize everybody else, whether that’s your clients, your children, your husband. The reason that we’re supposed to put the oxygen mask on ourselves first is because if we put it on our children first, we are going to pass out and we’re not going to be able to hold it there for the child. That message is so simple, but it’s lost on us. That’s what we have to get back to because if we serve ourselves first, we will be so much more available to everybody else while at the same time accomplishing our wildest dreams beyond what we have accomplished so far.
Lisa: 06:16 Why do most of us keep setting goals that we don’t achieve? We might want to start our own business. We might want to eat more healthily or begin an exercise regime, but we set it for ourselves every single year and we never quite get there. Why aren’t we able to maintain the work it needs, whatever it needs in order to keep this thing going? Why do we sign up for a gym contract and go for the first three weeks and stop?
Samantha: 06:45 It’s brilliant because if you think about the women that this is resonating with and the women that are listening to this, my guess is that they are really high achievers, and they’ve accomplished incredible feats and incredible things in their lives. By doing that, what they’re doing now is they’re trying to climb Mount Everest in one step. What I mean by that is an example that I could give, now I’m not a fitness coach but this resonates with most women, is if you want to start going to the gym, a lot of women will say starting on Monday, I’m going to go to the gym every day. They’re pumped and they have the outfit and everything and they have the workout and they know where they’re going to go, whether it’s one year to the gym or they’re going to be doing an online program, and then that Monday doesn’t happen.
Well, what’s happened now is at this point, we failed and our brains don’t like to fail. An example that I can give is bicycle in the grass. The first time you ride a bicycle in the grass, it’s bumpy and you’re really trying to keep the steering going. You ride that bicycle in the grass over and over again through the same path and all of a sudden, you have this dirt path because you’ve been going the same way every time. Now the bicycle almost glides. What happens is when we try to change what we know as our routine, the bicycle is going to try to leave the dirt path and go into the grass again. Well, your brain doesn’t like that. The bicycle is going to revert and go back into the dirt path.
When we get back to the gym example, when you have essentially “failed” because you didn’t make it to the gym that Monday, it’s very easy to go back to the routine that you know and go back into the dirt path than go back and try to go on the grass again. I always advise women, stop trying to climb Everest in one step and start with baby steps. Maybe say something like, I’m going to go to the gym once a week and start there because you can continually try to do that.
The other thing, Lisa, that I always try to tell clients too is be prepared to do things that you don’t like because back to the bicycle example, your brain is not going to really be able to receive and do what you want it to do just because you said you want to do it. See, willpower really has nothing to do with this. The fact of the matter is that you need to really stay with yourself and be willing to continue to try, but know that your brain is going to be fighting you. I always advise people, be prepared that you’re going to be doing things that you don’t want to do. That’s expected. When you know that and you know that your brain is going to say, I really don’t want to get up this morning. I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll do it next week. I’ll do it next month. Then, you’re the one that has to consciously stop.
Lisa: 09:42 I love that example that Stephen Covey gives about the shuttle leaving the earth’s atmosphere, that it burns most of its energy to try in the beginning just to leave the earth’s atmosphere. Once it’s done that, then it becomes on autopilot, like your dirt track. As it’s leaving the earth and trying to get out of there, those initial stages consume most of the energy. I guess that’s exactly what you’re saying.
Samantha: 10:05 Yeah, it’s exactly what I’m saying. What’s frustrating for the women that I’ve worked with is that because they have accomplished so much in their life, they don’t know how to process it when they’re unable to stick to something that they’ve started. The default is to go to an explanation, and an explanation will be like I just don’t have time. I’ll do this when the lacrosse season is over, or I’ll do this when I’m done with this client project. Really those are excuses, but it’s a way for us to put our bike back on with dirt path because that’s our routine.
Mel Robbins talks about this a lot too and she talks about the five-second rule. The five-second rule is really within five seconds, you have to make the decision and the decision can’t be just in your brain. You actually have to take actual physical movement to commit to that. What that means is back to the gym example, is literally when that alarm goes off, if you want to work out in the morning, you have to get up within five seconds or your brain is going to start going into default to get you to go back to what it knows which is not going to the gym. I think being armed with that information and knowing that there’s almost little sabotage points coming up will help empower you to know what’s coming so that you can prepare for it and get beyond it. Because once you do get beyond it, you are starting to create a new habit but it’s those initial stages that are so, so tricky and extremely frustrating for high achievers.
Lisa: 11:33 What are the biggest objections that you get in your practice from the people who come see you?
Samantha: 11:39 The biggest objections? It’s really a quiet objection because the women that I’m working with really have what we call first world problems. They will demean themselves by saying I just have a first world problem. What I mean by is the objection is I have the job of my dreams. I have the family. I have the husband. I have support. They can have help with nannies or babysitters. Who am I to complain? Who am I to seek out help? When they feel ridiculous with why they can’t also figure it out for themselves. It’s not really an objection that is said on the outset, but as I’m working with them really looking back, there was a lot of resistance to talking about it because there’s fear of being judged of how can she be complaining? She has everything. From all outward appearances, from the external looking in, she does have the “perfect life,” but she’s essentially dying inside.
I think that’s the problem, is that it’s a right that we have let go of to exist and thrive in our own lives. Right now, a lot of women are operating on autopilot, and they’re not existing in their own lives, let alone on their own calendar for anything that they want. I mean this with a whole heart when I say five minutes alone in the shower with no interruptions where you can just wash your hair and get what you need done. That’s not what I’m talking about. A lot of women will say, well, I can get a manicure and I can do all this. I’m talking about real time where you’re dedicating part of your calendar and part of your days to you and your next big adventure or your next big accomplishment, your next big dream.
Lisa: 13:29 What do most of the women come see you to help unlock?
Samantha: 13:33 The overwhelm and the lack of time. A lot of times, one of the things that I do right on the outset is help women reclaim their time and energy because that’s where their pain is, is they’ll say, “I have no time and I’m wiped out. I’m exhausted.” If you really think about it, they’re not exhausted from a sense of lack of sleep per se. They’re exhausted from the sense that they’re not nurturing and feeding themselves. They’re not taking care of themselves from a spiritual place, emotional place. They’re just existing on that autopilot. That is what I help them with and teasing out the overwhelm. A lot of it is fear. When we really come down to it, it’s really the understanding that they have more control than they realize, and it’s about prioritizing.
I think one of the biggest pet peeves that I have that I’ve seen is the word balance, work-life balance. There’s no such thing. That’s a dog chasing its tail. You’re never going to have work-life balance. What you do have though is the choice. You choose, some days your work is going to take priority, some days your life is going to take priority, and then you also have family that you need to put in there as well, but there’s always going to be this scale that’s tipping in different ways, and that’s the way life is supposed to be. It’s not supposed to be balanced.
I think women striving to keep everything afloat, that’s where the problem is. Helping women understand. I had a conversation the other day with a woman who I helped her understand, why are you not delegating out a lot of the work you’re doing in your home? She had the means to do it, but she was doing everything on her own. If she delegated to someone else, then she would have more time to spend with her son. We took it a step further and we looked at her annual earnings. She’s a salaried employee, but if you divided it and looked at your hourly rate, what would it cost to pay you by the hour to do this task, which is a very simple task, and what would it cost to hire somebody to do this task? It was eye opening. I see that with a lot of clients where they don’t realize a lot of what’s taking from them because they’re trying to do it all.
Lisa: 15:54 It frustrates me they’re trying to do everything. I find it especially when you talk about looking after the kids where everybody has to do and be at everything. I was chatting this morning to a friend and I was saying the challenge is that kids actually like Lyft cab because they get to socialize with their friends, they get to speak to another mom, all of those kinds of stuff. Yet, we feel we have got to do every Lyft cab, every doctor’s appointment has to be done by us, everything. We’ve lost that sense of village that steps in but also that provides different input in our kids’ lives.
Samantha: 16:30 Yeah, so beautifully said. It’s so true, and it’s not even just for family. It’s running the household. I always believe that anything that you can either hire out or put on autopilot, do it. From a very simple perspective, here I am trying to do this with my clients, but I only recently did the subscribe and save through Amazon because what was happening is I was going to Target and that was taking the commute to Target plus the time in Target and the commute back and all of that. I just said, let me just simplify this and subscribe and save and order it through Amazon. I don’t know why I felt guilty doing that. I’m still the one ordering it, but I did it for the first time last week. Honestly, it freed up a good three hours out of my week. I found three hours for me to do something else with.
Lisa: 17:17 Absolutely. When you speak about a to-be list, what is that?
Samantha: 17:24 The to-be list, I just love it in the concept of we know what a to-do list is. A to-do list is very energy draining, although it feels really good to scratch out that number. I’m still an old fashioned to-do list person, and I have my to-do list, and I have one for my family and one for my job and one for myself. The to-do list is an energy sapper in the sense that it’s not really doing anything to improve who I am, and that’s what a to-be list is. When I think of my personal goals, what do I want to be. What do I want to become? I really like to reverse engineer that statement and then create a path to that to-be list, whether that could be an author or to be somebody that’s opening her own company or to be healthier or to be more in shape, and then reverse engineering the how-tos as opposed to a to-do list because the to-do list just really, it sounds exhausting when you even say to-do list.
Lisa: 18:28 Absolutely. I always think that the most magnified version of that is forced corporate retirement because you’re tootling along your life. Everyone I speak to from the age of 55 onwards, and I say, what are you going to do in your retirement? They say, I’m going to sit on the couch and just chill. That’s great. I say to them, no, no, no, you need a very strong vision of what are you going to be? What is it going to be like afterwards? What does your day look like and your week and your month and all of this? They go, no, no, no. It’s absolutely fine. All I want to do is chill and maybe play golf and it’s going to be absolutely fine. You walk through that retirement with them and you know there’s a crash coming and there is this massive crash because they haven’t seen through the goal. They’ve just stopped at that word retirement and sit on the couch.
There is an existential crisis. Why do I exist? Why do I live? All I do is just sit. There’s this massive crash that comes because they haven’t envisioned what they want to be. What do they want their life to be like? What do they want to do? It is so pronounced I think more so than anything else. For most of us, we look back and we go, I used to have those dreams. I wonder what happened to them. When it comes to retirement, it’s just so pronounced. A person who is busy, involved, engaged, everyone wants their opinion to just sitting, and nobody wants your opinion. Nobody cares about you. It’s this massive fall of humanity.
Samantha: 20:01 Oh, it really is. It’s something that really irks me on another level because the women that I work with from an age range perspective are mid 30s to early 50s. I can’t tell you how many of them really feel like they’ve almost peaked. Who are they to want another coming, so to speak, where they’re going to have a new career or a new path? I listen to Gary B. a lot, and he is really passionate about the fact that because of our life expectancies, retirement is painfully long if you retire younger, in your 50s. You have this whole life, like you said, especially if you’re really somebody that people are going to for their insight. I always tell the women that our job is to create a sequel, and that sequel is going to be better than the Hollywood sequel because let’s be honest, in Hollywood, sequels are always worse than the original.
Now with all of the wisdom that we have that we’ve learned, 99% of the women that I work with have been through something. Whether that’s a health issue, an emotional issue or something. We’ve all had our journeys, and we’ve all had our learning experiences. Now imagine what we can create and what we can do from a personal development, personal growth perspective to chase that dream that was so far off. Now you have all of that, plus you maybe have some monetary help where you can support that dream and you have the power to do that. Then, why is it that in this state, women are becoming more and more invisible and just on autopilot? Why are they not doing the reverse? Why are they not flipping the script and saying this is where I’m really going to soar?
This is where I’m really going to soar, because when you think about it, a lot of men really tend to soar at this age range where companies are really exploding. Women are just trying to survive and get by. I just think it’s an untapped feeling that women feel but they don’t know how to express.
Lisa: 21:56 Absolutely. When I look at that problem statement, people laugh at me because I went back to university to get an honors degree when I was 40 years old. The little 19-year-olds around me were looking at me a bit strangely. People used to say to me, why would you do that? Isn’t that quite humiliating? I looked at them and I was like, it didn’t possibly dawn on me that one wouldn’t want to because at 40, you’ve only had 20 years of your work career, and you’ve at least got a minimum of 20 left if not more. In financial planning, we are told that you have to plan until a person is 95. You cannot plan for an age less than that. If we’re going to live until 95, it’s not only that I have from 40 to 60 or from 40 to 80 to use this new skillset.
Is it difficult? Oh my, goodness. It’s humbling because you go from being an expert in one field to a rookie in another. It’s daunting. The reality is each year that passes, you get more and more of an expert in this field. That learning curve is exponential, and that’s fun, and that’s energizing. You actually in your second chapter or second half choose the things that you enjoy and want to spend the rest of your life with.
I remember my assistant asked me if I was offered all the money in the world and my perfect job, would I go back? I looked at her and I was like, no, I’m semi-retired. She looked at me with this look that was like, no, you work so hard. I do. I work so hard, but I adore what I do, which means that I’m energized, and I speak to exciting people, and I only work with the clients I feel like and choose to work with. What’s better than that?
Samantha: 23:38 Absolutely.
Lisa: 23:39 I think so many people just cut themselves short because who would come to me, who would want to speak to me? Who would, who would, who would? I’m like, well, who wouldn’t? If I have the same problem that you have learned how to solve, why wouldn’t I go to you? You’ve got to work hard so that people know that you exist, but why wouldn’t I come to you? Because we seek out people who are just ahead of us in the journey, not necessarily world celebrities at everything.
Samantha: 24:07 Exactly. You’re looking for people that … What you’re saying is women in that age range that I referenced earlier, they oftentimes have different interests and different experiences that they’re more passionate about than they would have in their 20s when they first started out in their career. It’s not surprising that they maybe want to make a shift or a change, but it’s that feeling of what right do I have? I have everything. It goes back to that I’ve checked all the boxes. You’ve checked all the boxes. I have everything that I ever set out to have, but it’s that nagging feeling that something is missing and then feeling exhausted all the time and having no time. It’s this culmination that we really need to take a hard look at ourselves and say, well, number one, do you even show up on your calendar?
The trick that I do is I use the Google calendar and I color code turquoise, and I make sure to block out every day a turquoise block of time, minimum 30 minutes but up to whatever I can, and that’s time for Samantha. That’s one for me, and that’s really time that I get to spend doing something that’s going to serve me, whether it’s for personal growth or downtime, whatever I need without guilt. An alarm bell goes off if I don’t see that colored turquoise on my calendar every day. That’s part of it too. Listen, I’m going to be 44, and I really believe that my next chapter, my sequel is going to be better than the first. I’m excited for it.
Lisa: 25:34 What would that be? In La La Land if the world went perfectly, where would your next chapter end up?
Samantha: 25:40 Definitely with a New York Times Bestseller. Since I was a kid, I’ve always had books in me. It’s just a way to get a message out to the masses, and I feel like there’s a lot to know and a lot to say. Social media is a platform, but I feel like a book that somebody can curl up with and highlight and go back to with the messaging that I have would really help me reach so many more people, women in particular about the power that they have in their minds to just be empowered in ways that they didn’t even realize.
Lisa: 26:15 I love that because I define passion as something that you love doing, but I define purpose as using your passion to serve others. I love that whole concept that in the second half of your life, you get to serve others with the gifts that you have. I always find when you work in purpose, you have a whole extra layer of energy.
Samantha: 26:43 Yeah, 100%. Since I transitioned into this field, I had the doctorate in psychology and I used to work as a psychologist, and now I work as a coach, and I no longer work in the mental health space. That served the purpose for the time that I was doing it and I loved it and I worked with families and children, but now that transition has shifted and it’s just a lifeline. There’s an energy source there, and it nourishes my soul every day. That’s my passion and being able to serve. That’s really what it comes down to. I think people are like, well, you’re working, you’re earning money. I really always say that’s a side effect. It’s just a side effect. I would be doing this anyway because they always say, what would you talk about in your free time? This is what I would talk about in my free time, and I do.
Lisa: 27:35 Do you live what you talk about?
Samantha: 27:38 100%, but do I mess up? Oh, sure, but I have the advantage of checking in and knowing when I’m starting to veer and go back to that dirt path. That dirt path that I talked about with the bicycle is always there, and that’s the neural pathway. That’s something that all of our brains, my brain knows. There are ways to slip up and there are ways that that bike is going to sneakily get back to old patterns. I have the ability through over 15 years of being attuned to what that looks like to really notice on the outset when it’s starting to happen.
That’s something that I help my clients. Once they get through and they’re on the other side and working with me, then they’re able to pick up when they’re starting to revert back to old patterns and stop it in its tracks. We’re all human. My life in no way, shape or form is perfect, but it is close to perfection as I would have it because I’m so conscious and intent on how I want to live. I only have one life, and I want it to be the most exuberant, powerful life that there is, not only for myself but recently giving birth to my son that I was told I would never have. It has been this surge of empowerment just being a mother. It’s just a huge shift that I personally took.
Figuring out how to work being a mother into all of this is a dance, and I’m still figuring it out. I don’t have it all figured out, but I’m figuring it out, and we’re figuring it out together. It turns out that he’s my greatest teacher because he is exactly what I’m trying to teach the women that I work with to get back to. When he’s doing something, he’s in the moment and he’s doing it selfishly for the joy of it because that’s what served him at that moment. Somehow as adults, we’ve gotten away from what serves us and what makes us feel really good.
Lisa: 29:36 I think it’s one of the fascinating things wWhen I think of the journey that I went through to have my girls and the huge loss of health I had around that whole period. It’s always such an interesting thing because I do think it makes you much more mindful of being in tune to consciously choosing what you do in a day, consciously choosing your health, consciously choosing your kids, consciously choosing your work. It doesn’t mean that, oh my goodness, I by no means get it right to every single day, but you are much more mindful of what happens when you lose your health, when you can’t have kids, when you do all of that stuff. That it does almost put a lens of real choice in how you spend each day.
Samantha: 30:20 Absolutely. I always tell women give yourself permission to do nothing. That’s a really hard thing because sometimes, we’re just in a state where we’re not feeling good. We’re blah. I’m not talking about clinical depression, but I’m saying you have these moments where you’re just not feeling motivated. You just need to just have some quiet time and then give yourself that permission. I feel like a lot of women feel that it’s a failure state if they just want to zone out and maybe do nothing or do something mindless. That reset, that ability to reset and recharge, it’s really important to listen when your body and your mind are telling you that it needs that because that’s how we function best is by really tuning in. Instead of assigning some external value that by taking some downtime and relaxing that you’re not going to get to that next step. That’s ridiculous.
I have an example from yesterday actually. My son, he still takes naps, and he had his nap at 1:00, and I had a lot of things that I needed to get done. I wanted to prep some food for the week. I wanted to do laundry, but I was really tired. I had a bad night’s sleep for whatever reason. I was going back and forth and having a war with myself as to whether or not I deserve to take that nap. I finally caved in and I just said, you know what? You need to take the nap. I did take the nap with him. Everything got done that I needed to get done. It was really interesting within the breath of knowledge that I have that that war still went on in my head, that I felt guilty for taking that time to rest. I was just saying you know better than this.
It’s that war that I was saying really early on when we started the podcast that your mind is going to revert back to patterns and routines that it’s comfortable with even if those patterns and routines don’t serve you and are not necessarily good for you. Sometimes I always like to say we have to be arguing with ourselves and making decisions that maybe don’t feel right at the time, but we know in the long term are to serve us. Yesterday, that was that nap. I took it. Everything I needed to get done was good and it was good to go, but it was just really interesting.
Lisa: 32:35 I love what Brené Brown says when she says you live with your worst critic. It’s so true. We are our worst critic. We criticize ourselves for what we should do. We criticize ourselves for what we don’t do. We criticize ourselves the whole time, but the word “should” for me is just a word I wish that we could ban from our vocabulary because who said you shouldn’t have that nap? Yourself, the other part of yourself, well you should be doing this and you should be doing that. Oh, shut up.
Samantha: 33:07 Yeah, exactly. It’s so true. In one of the blogs that I wrote, it was really about that, and it was talking about how we get up in the morning, and we are getting breakfast ready, and we’re getting everybody ready for school and ourselves for work. When we’re at work, we’re doing our jobs, and we’re fielding calls from whether it’s the school or the nanny or whatever, and we’re doing that all day. We come home and then we go back into that mom mode and we’re doing everything. We’re present with our children. We’re doing dinners. We’re doing bedtime, bath time routines, and then the children are in bed, and then you’re looking at your husband who seems to be calm. He’s doing his own thing. He’s relaxed, but what your husband doesn’t see is that you’re going through that checklist in your head about everything that needs to get done to prepare for tomorrow.
By the time your head hits the pillow, you pick up your Kindle. I have my Kindle on my iPhone, and I look at a book that I’ve been trying to read for a long time. You find that you get the book, we’re sitting there in bed and then you hear the alarm because you didn’t make it to the second page of the book because you’ve just been doing so much all day because you weren’t serving yourself first. It’s because you’re just constantly on the next step. I just gave your audience, try pausing for a minute. Just try to be present and start small. Start for five minutes where you just try to be present in your surroundings and you just say, where am I right now, as opposed to what do I have to do next? It’s exhausting. It’s like running the never ending marathon. It’s just [crosstalk 00:34:39].
Lisa: 34:39 Absolutely. I think it is so important that we do focus on those short stops and short breaks. I have to focus on my breathing. I’m just not a person who can sit and clear my brain and do nothing. I have to use the trigger of actually watching myself breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. I set a little timer because I find it enormously difficult to just stop and be mindful of my brain just naturally goes to two different places.
Samantha: 35:09 Yeah. A really beautiful way to do that sometimes is music. Sometimes just putting on your favorite song can transport you out of your current mindset. Sometimes distraction is what we need to just shift a little bit or movement. I don’t mean exercise. I mean just take a walk outside or do something that’s just a little bit different that’s going to shift your focus for the moment, and then it helps to center you and it helps to bring you back.
Lisa: 35:38 Samantha, it’s been such a wonderful time spending with you and I think I could ask you a million questions, but for those who want to get ahold of you and to learn more about the work that you do, how do people do that?
Samantha: 35:50 My website is drhiotakis.com. I’m sure you’re going to have it in the show notes. I have a really good freebie for your audience. I’ll give you that link. It’s just a really detailed download that I created. It’s a PDF of how to reclaim your time and energy by finding some hidden time in your day because that seems to be a really big pain point for a lot of women. Right now, I only work one on one, so I want to give my undivided attention to every woman that I work with. I work virtually so I work with women around the world. I just find it to be extremely rewarding. The women that I work with, they are also enlightening me to so many things, and it’s just this really beautiful symbiotic relationship that we have.
Lisa: 36:38 Well, thank you for that download. I do know that the biggest pain point for almost everyone I speak to is time and energy. I think the ability to reclaim that is such a precious gift. Thank you so much for that and thank you for your time on the show.
Samantha: 36:53 Thank you so much for having me. It was wonderful.
Lisa: 36:56 That was Dr. Samantha Hiotakis. I truly resonate with what she was saying in terms of the fact that we always are prioritizing everybody else, but somewhere deep inside us, we absolutely know that there’s something we want to achieve, something we want to do, something more we want to be, or even where we want to serve others. We might not know exactly what it is, but we know that it’s this almost growing hole inside us as we spend all our time prioritizing everybody else and everything else. We ask a little, what about me? As she said, it does feel so first world problem-ish. I truly know that each one of us were put on this earth to contribute positively to the world around us, to be the best human beings that we can be.
I want you to think deeply about what is it that you need to start learning, start growing, start building in order to start getting to a stage where you can live your best life possible. Take care and have a great week. I’m Lisa Linfield, and this is Working Women’s Wealth.