Are you stressed from endlessly chasing to-do lists?
This week, we dive into why the relentless hustle can leave executive directors of nonprofits running on fumes and what you can do about it. 👀
Kishshana Palmer makes a much-anticipated return to the show, and this conversation is nothing short of a revelation. We explore the intersection of personal wellness and leadership in the nonprofit sector—why neglecting self-care harms not just you, but also the causes you’re so passionate about.
Kishshana, a renowned speaker, trainer, and the Beyoncé of our nonprofit world, brings her unique insights to the table, and trust me, you won’t want to miss this!
As an author, speaker, and influencer (yes, I dared to say it), she’s known for her straight talk and infectious energy.
🌟If there’s a beacon of hope and wisdom on how to balance passion with personal wellness, it’s Kishshana. She believes in actionable strategies and is here to challenge the outdated notion that suffering is a badge of honor in our sector.
Curious about strategies to strike a balance between your relentless drive and personal well-being?
This episode is packed with practical tips and much-needed motivation for nonprofit leaders who are always giving but seldom taking time for themselves.
Grab your coffee, put your feet up, and join us for a chat that might just change your perspective on work-life balance.
Important Links:
https://www.kishshanapalmer.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kishshanapalmer
Preorder her book: https://www.amazon.com/Busy-Four-Letter-Word-Achieving/dp/1394243197
Episode Transcript
RHEA 00:00
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Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown, I’m your host, Rhea Wong.
Hey, podcast listeners, Rhea Wong with you once again with Non Profit Lowdown. Today, my guest is my friend, Kishshana Palmer. You know her, you love her. She’s been on the pod before. she is a leader. She is an author. She is a speaker. She is, dare I say an influencer? Cause I think you’re the Beyonce of our nonprofit world. She’s a trainer. On all the things, Kishshana, welcome to the show.
KISHSHANA 01:03
Thank you for having me. Oh my gosh, Rhea. I was thinking about this this morning.
I remember when you were at your your last full time organization that you were so gracious to have me come and support you and your team. And I remember when I was on the phone with you and you were like, I’m about to go. And you’re like, I’m gonna go figure this out. I need to go explore. I need to go figure some stuff out.
This is not it for me. And I remember thinking like, darn. Not that it was brave, but I was excited. First of all, it was brave. Because you could be in a prison that’s very fancy. A lot of people call them the golden handcuffs, right? Golden handcuffs, if you will. But like the idea that you would step out at a time where there wasn’t really air quotes, like a reason to step out.
Executive director jobs are plentiful. People always wanted really good fundraisers. And you were like, no, I’m gonna try something else real quick and figure this out. And I just remember that I was thinking that this morning darn what what an example to set for your experience that when no one was looking, right?
Like you were just like, I’m a bet on myself.
RHEA 02:06
That’s so kind of you to say I, right back at you. I think you were really one of the people I looked to being like, yeah, I could do this. Cause Sean is out here doing, and I can do it. And so I think you’ve been such a role model to so many folks out there, particularly for women of color, who I think are very good at talking themselves out of things.
I’m very good at. They think that they can’t do it or it’s not for them. And, to see folks like you out here being like, oh, you can do it. It was really, it’s so powerful.
KISHSHANA 02:31
I love it. I appreciate that.
RHEA 02:33
All right, friend, let’s jump into it because I know we’re all excited to talk about this. Oh my goodness.
We were just talking about being in our mid forties, even though to look at us, you’d be like, what are you saying? You’re clearly in your twenties, but we were both in our mid forties, we got birthdays coming up. We do. And the vibe I’m getting around the sector is everyone is just tired, friend, just tired.
And, one of the things I think about is this next generation like, as these boomers are retiring and our generation, Gen X is taking, stepping into the lead. I also see so many people stepping out of leadership because it’s so hard. So I guess As an entry point.
And what are you seeing?
KISHSHANA 03:18
So to me, like one of the things that I have, leaning into this over the last couple of years, but one of the things that I’m seeing most consistently is that folks are not just tired, they’re tired to the point of. Like paralysis, they’re tired to the point of dare I say apathy.
There’s so much coming at us, so much information, so much input that’s just happening like in the world and then in our communities that in our neighborhoods in our families. Then we got to deal with this mess at work. Folk are over it. And because this feels like an unprecedented time, this is not like when we were making the turn to the industRheal revolution or making the turn into the civil rights movement or making a turn into the women’s feminist movement.
There were some turns that we were making where folks got like a renewed wind. We are winded. And there are two things that I think many of the leaders that I see, and I was actually looking at some trends that I was talking about this a little bit earlier this year, but even going into this summer that I’m seeing, folks want two things, Rhea.
They want comfort. And they want to escape. Now, if you think about that, so period paragraph, I grew up, last key kid, two of my favorite foods to eat. And still to this day, we’re a chef where the ravioli y’all don’t judge me and ramen noodles, specifically Ichiban. There’s a particular brand that he got in New York that I love, and I don’t eat any other brand.
So I love ramen to this day. I saw an ad for not one, not two, but three specialty brands of ramen that are launching subscriptions.
To be able to dig in. Do you think that I, let that ad pass me by, or did I jump on it? I jumped on it because what would I just tell you? Ramen is a comfort food for me, right?
So specialty companies, desserts and ice creams and salty snacks. If you look carefully, you’ll see that there’s an uptick in those sort of like niche products.
You’ll also see there’s a huge uptick, despite the fact that these airlines are charging an arm and a leg and two baby toes. In folks being on the road, they’re catching flights, even if they have feelings because they want out.
So we are yearning to be comforted, right? And so leaning towards things that bring us comfort and we are yearning for escape. And so how do organizational leaders create an environment where their team members feel both comfortable, right? There’s a comfort, whether it’s in job security, whether it’s an understanding of love in their role, whether it is in the mission is growing, whatever and escape.
That work is a place that they actually don’t want to escape from, but it’s a place to go to. So that’s what I’m seeing.
RHEA 06:05
Yeah. It’s so interesting as you’re talking about this. Are you familiar with Esther Perel’s work?
KISHSHANA 06:11
And if I ever meet her, I’m just telling you, I’m gonna give her the biggest hug in the world.
RHEA 06:15
Kishshana, I met her and I have a picture with her. I was such a fangirl. I’ll send it to you. I’m a fangirl, a fangirl. I know. I was like, Oh my God. Anyway. Yeah. It reminds me of, for those of you who don’t know Esther Perel, check her out. But similarly in
marriages, we need comfort and we also need mystery, right?
It’s this tension of these two things. Before we get into the work piece, I, you said something before we started rolling that I thought was really interesting around us being the sandwich generation, right? I don’t have kids, but I have lots of friends who have kids. So they’re in the process of taking care of raising kids and also trying to take care of aging parents and you have needs on both sides of your family and you get squeezed out, and you’re taking care of your organization and you’re maybe taking care of, maybe you’re the breadwinner, whatever it may be. And it leaves such little room for us as. Again, I’m going to be heteronormative here but like women, I think tend to take on the bulk of the emotional labor at home, the second shift.
So I don’t know, man, it’s dire out here.
KISHSHANA 07:21
It’s dire. And I think that the expectation that we are in the social sector, that means that we need to continue to be sacrificial lambs is BS. We are employed and I don’t care if you are a faith leader because I talk about those my friends who are in the faith sector in terms of whether faith leaders should be completely of service, whether they should make money or not, like that kind of whole dialogue.
It’s still a business. Lights got to be on, things got to get paid, the mortgage got to get burned, people have to buy. We are in the social sector because we chose, some of us just fell into it, to be a part of a system that is supposed to repair, to tighten, to fill in the fissures and the cracks of our social safety net.
That’s hard damn work. Okay. That’s like the people who put the steel poles in the ocean, who build the bridges, who build We never hear about those folks. We never talk about the danger. We just marvel at the product and the finished work. And so people just want. the diseases to be cured and they want the babies to not starve and they want the dogs to be rescued and they want the trees to be conserved and they want the babies to get education.
We just keep going on and on. But what happens to the people who are responsible for ensuring that we create the environment for that to be so. and I think that if you’re not Thinking about your home in that perspective, then it’s very hard to translate that to me to work.
RHEA 08:56
So let’s dig into this because I think there are a couple of different angles here I want to talk about, Kishshana, and I’m really interested, and I know you are, around the idea of, personal wellness, right?
Because if we are not well ourselves, how can we be well for our community, for our families, for our work, et cetera? And I think, and again, I’ll speak for myself, data point of one, it felt in the sector that it really valorized like sacrifice. If I talk about this a lot, like suffering is noble.
If I’m working a hundred hours a week and I don’t pee, like I am ED ing so hard. And it took me a while to realize that there were no gold medals given for suffering. Cause if there were, I would definitely have been up on the hook. Maybe a little bit up on the front, dancing on top of the front suffering!
I get the gold medal for suffering! Yep. And I just think so many of the folks that we have in our sector subscribe to this notion and yet there’s no model for what could be otherwise.
KISHSHANA 09:55
Absolutely none. And they’re like this like teehee, folks are like, Oh, that works. For you. Right. You don’t like.
RHEA 10:04
Do as I say, not as I do. No. You should definitely not check email after 7pm. I’m going to, but you definitely,
KISHSHANA 10:09
You’re like, I’m going to, but you on the other hand should not. And so that to me is something that I’ve been seeing, like this idea. That we can lean into taking care of better care of ourselves and not feeling like we are beating ourselves up because we’re not doing what social media tells us we should be doing.
When people think about personal wealth personal wellness, oftentimes the first thing we think about is exercise and diet. But I actually have a different perspective. Not that doesn’t count, but I believe in what I call my five star wellness. And that is different for every person, but it has the same five things.
So in order to think about what makes your personal five star wellness plan, you’ve got to think about what makes up your physical wellness. And the questions you got to ask yourself are, how am I moving? How am I taking care of this vessel? How am I making sure that I have the energy to do the things that I want to be able to do?
So that might mean movement and that might mean diet, and it might mean some other things too, right? It might mean vitamins, whatever. And then. We think about our mental wellness and well being. How am I taking care of my mind? What am I putting into it? What am I listening to, absorbing? What am I saying to myself?
Am I getting support to navigate where I am in this season? What does that look like? And then for those,
go ahead,
RHEA 11:32
I was just going to say to that that really resonates with me particularly now because y’all know we’re out here being faced with all kinds of election craziness right now. And doom scrolling is not the jam y’all.
And it’s really hard to stop yourself, but please put down the phone. Stop doing trolling. I got to a point where I was like checking the New York times obsessively like every five minutes. I’m like, And it just really wasn’t working for my mental health.
KISHSHANA 11:59
No. So what I did for that Rhea is I put all of my feeds to summary.
So I get a morning summary. I get an after midday summary and an evening summary. That’s it.
RHEA 12:10
Yeah
KISHSHANA 12:11
I took everything off my desktop. I took everything. I am controlling the way in which I receive information and what shows up in my feed. So if you took my phone from me and We’re just being nosy. You would see fashion.
Of course, you would see home repair and DIY projects. You would see puppies. You would see tons of stuff about college scholarships and study tips because the Queen Andrew is in college. Now you would see stuff about travel and about hair care yeah. That’s it. And oh, inspirational stuff. Cause I love that stuff.
But there’s no, actually no news in my newsfeed at all.
RHEA 12:47
I love that. And I also think what we know about the brain is that especially for folks, those of us who’ve experienced trauma in our lives, we get into catastrophizing, right? And so it’s so easy to take this one piece of information and then just go down this rabbit hole of like, and here’s why the world is going to end.
And look, the other thing is the media companies prey on bad news because bad news sells, right? So they keep you clicking. And so I think, which your point being a guardian of what you’re consuming and inputting is so important.
KISHSHANA 13:19
So absolutely. So if you’re thinking about your physical wellness and you’re thinking about your.
Mental than you, for those of us who have a belief system of some sort and most of us have one, then there’s your spiritual wellness, right? So how are you taking care of the chakras? Head to toe, how are you taking care of your heart? How are you taking care of that? The centering, what is your goalpost outside of yourself?
And so really being able to take care of that. And then the one we don’t talk about in our sector, financial wellness and well being. being.
RHEA 13:52
Oh, girl, let’s talk about that. I love talking about money. Let’s talk about all the money.
KISHSHANA 13:56
I know you do. I know you do. I know you do. I did not come into this work naively with any sort of like poverty mentality.
I didn’t think I was doing anybody a favor. Okay. I did not get a job in the sector I went to school for. And then the job I did get, I didn’t want to do because I went into investment banking. And so when I wanted to go into marketing, nobody would hire me. I was too young with too many degrees and not enough experience.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so when I ended up in non profit work, it didn’t occur to me to not take to ask for less or to accept less. Like I, and so what I didn’t learn, cause I didn’t have the conversation. I’m first generation, first to go to college, first to have a professional career in my family.
In the way that I do, I didn’t know how to manage my money. My dad is a saver. He grew up pretty poor, saves everything. My mom grew up with money. She didn’t save nothing. Okay. The money was just going to come tomorrow. And. You watch, but you’re not having those conversations. And so I didn’t understand that in order to be well financially, I needed to understand what would need to be true for me to feel safe.
Everybody has a floor when it comes to their money. That’s if my bank account go below that panic city, but everybody also has a ceiling. You have more money in your bank account than the ceiling you have in your mind. You’re going to spend down. And so what I want to encourage more of us to think about when it comes to our financial wellness is how do I create the space for me to have the life that is comfortable for me and my family as I run this race?
RHEA 15:29
Yeah
KISHSHANA 15:30
And not to compare it to others, that it’s possible to do financial planning, that it’s possible if you have crap money habits, and I had crap money habits to turn that cruise ship around. And honey, you might backslide a time or two, but that you gotta be, have your head on when it comes to that.
And then last but not least, Rhea.
RHEA 15:48
Oh, wait, sorry. Can we just stop at money for a second? Because I have so many thoughts on this. Let’s go. So I did this course called The Trauma of Money, which was really fantastic. And what I learned was that a lot of these bad money habits, I think, we think that Financial education, financial literacy will help people.
But what I learned is that a lot of the times when we have quote unquote bad habits, whatever it might be, it’s really because it’s a trauma response because we get that dopamine hit. So I’m sure like, people who think got no money, but they go on a shopping spree and you’re like, Oh girl, what are you doing?
They need that dopamine hit in order to feel regulated, but after that dopamine hit fades, then they’re back into that shame spiral, right? And they can’t really dig themselves out because they’re not dealing with the deeper issue of the trauma and the dysregulation that they’re experiencing because of what they feel around money.
And so we use money as this To your point, escapism, right? If I just, if I buy this new thing, I’m going to be happy, right? And maybe you will be happy for that minute, but it’s not the long term happiness. So yes, double clicking on all of the things that you’re saying about wellness and taking care of your family.
KISHSHANA 16:57
And for those folks who know my work and say, cause I don’t, my gosh, I admire you. You’re just like you are, when I meet you in person, you’re the same way. I would encourage folks to kick the stool of the pedestal they have put me on because what you just described. Is me not was me and the thing that I knew I had to do differently was to ensure that my child did not inherit the money stories that I inherited.
I could not prevent the behavior because she is watching what I see. And so now she’s a freshman in college. She’s an only child. She grew up with a single mom. She said to me last week that she never experienced us not having any food. My parents would never allow that. We’ve never experienced being on house.
Thank God. Never experienced lights cut off, but I did have my car repoed when she was five.
She remembers that the car was gone one day. She said to me, mom, it just occurred to me as I was talking to some of my friends that I now know the times we didn’t have any money when you started your business.
And I said how’d you know that? And she said because those are the weeks that you made spaghetti and used to get upset. If I wouldn’t eat the leftovers on Thursday, Sunday, and Rhea, she is not wrong, but it doesn’t stop her. From ordering Uber eats at school on my credit card. And I had to say, ma’am, hello, this is not an ATM, but Rhea, the life that she has lived is whenever she asked me for something, cause she doesn’t ask for much mommy provides mommy makes it happen.
It shows up to your dopamine hit. Not only was I getting a dopamine hit from the shopping, cause it made me feel better in that moment. I got a dopamine hit from making magic happen for my kid. And I kept chasing it and chasing it and chasing it. And then if I didn’t have the money, you know what I did?
I ate.
RHEA 19:01
Oh, that’s another like buffering activity, right? We get to a thing to avoid feeling the thing. We do other things. We, for me, my drug of choice of working, I like truly people that were like, I’m like, no, I actually was like, I used work as a way to avoid hard emotions, hard conversations, dealing with my life.
And the hard thing about it is I got a pat on the back for being a workaholic. So I was like, I’ll just do more of this. Bye. So it’s not like being an alcoholic where people look down at you with judgment. It’s if you’re a workaholic, it’s like, Oh, good for you. Good job. Yep. Yeah. And I’ve been doing a lot of work around the ways in which our bodies become addicted to certain emotions.
I was addicted to, feeling busy feeling my adrenal glands are shot because I was. So stressed, but because I was chasing this affirmation of Oh I’m important and I’m busy.
KISHSHANA 19:54
That’s right. That’s right. The biggest thing I did that the biggest aha moment I had, and the biggest release of the anvil that was on my neck.
So I’m a Clifton strengths coach. I took my Clifton strengths and that for those of you who don’t know that strength used to be called strength finders, your top five strengths. I took it when I was 26. Right After I had my daughter that was the first time I’d ever heard of it. So I took it then.
I’m one of those practitioners who does not believe you need to take it again, unless you have a major life event, like major. And so I think moving across the country, my child going to college, becoming an empty nester, losing almost 80 pounds, falling in love, like them’s is enough to take it again.
Okay. So I took it again and I was amazed at how my strengths completely shifted. So about 15 years apart. Yep. And it really doesn’t happen all the time. Normally they’ll move up and down within your like top 10. Oh, hell no. Woo is now in my top 10 and it was number 32 when I love that.
You become more woo. Oh my gosh, right? So here’s what I discovered when you are used to performing in a particular way when you used to being in a particular way. Part of being able to shift and to grow through that is to admit what you, what excites you about it. And I realized, Oh sugar, I like to shine.
I like the damn it. I like to shine. So for leaders who are thinking about why they won’t give their team members more responsibility, but they’re like, Oh my God, nobody can do it better than me. Or for the micromanagers who, you know, you’re a micromanager, your team is talking about you right now. I want you to take a just a little pause and go, do I like to shine?
RHEA 21:33
Kishshana, why are you telling me about myself right now? You don’t know me.
KISHSHANA 21:42
And so imagine being out in front rear, you’re a thought leader. People look to you for advice and information in the how, and we share that similar pathway. Imagine having all your pimples and your boils. Just waiting to bubble up to the surface, the fear and the horror that you live with that people will think you are not worthy because you are used to getting a pat on the back, like you said, for performing.
You got to shed all of that.
RHEA 22:10
And just to add on to that, I also think that there’s something so toxic about this, cis white male patriarchy. Mm hmm. System that you and I both stepped into, right? And it was like, the way to be a leader is to know everything. The way to be a leader is to be bulletproof.
The way to be a leader is you have to like, cover all the bases, never make a mistake, never let them see you sweat. That’s right. And. Guess what? It doesn’t work for humans. Humans are fallible. Humans make mistakes. Humans don’t know what to do or say sometimes. And I think when we create a system where we can’t be human, then we become dehumanized.
That’s right.
KISHSHANA 22:50
hat’s right. I felt like a robot. A shell of myself. And I wasn’t being phony, right? Yeah. All of the ways in which I was crying out for help showed up in my physical wellness and it showed up in my financial wellness. So that’s why I said, so that’s only four to five. So yeah.
RHEA 23:11
What’s the fifth one?
Sorry. We let’s get back on track.
KISHSHANA 23:13
No. It’s community wellness.
RHEA 23:15
Oh yeah. I love that.
KISHSHANA 23:17
Are your people, cause you can have watchers and you can have supporters. You want the folks who are going to get in there and they’re going to get that support and you got to ask for support because otherwise it’s help and help is the one you just decide what people need as opposed to support as you respond to what people say they need.
But do you have the people who are just on the sidelines just to watching? Wow. You have supporters. Oh, shoot. Let me see what I can do to jump in there with her. Let me see if I can call her name and room. She’s not in. Let me see if I can put her up there. Let me see if I can support her family because I see that when she wins, other people win.
You got to have that community wellness. So I want folks to take an opportunity to assess who is in your professional community. And how are they helping you to both stay grounded and how are they helping you to grow? Who’s in your social community? How are they helping you to explore the creative, the other sides of yourself that you don’t necessarily get to tap into at work?
How are they pushing you and pulling you to be able to find some joy in things? And then I want you to look at your personal community. Who’s pulling you under? and the way that you can the easy way to know that is when you spend time with somebody, get off the phone with somebody, see somebody’s name, come up on a caller id, the email pop up.
If you immediately feel exhausted. mm-Hmm, , , or you take a deep sigh or you roll your eyes, honey, that is an indication that maybe that’s not the community in this season that you need to be in. And so if we do those five things,
It. Don’t be perfect. But if we keep those five things front and center for ourselves, then I believe that gives us the bounce, the launchpad to be able to be healthy, empathetic, dialed in, present leaders.
RHEA 25:05
Kishshana, as you’re talking, it made me think of a podcast episode I just listened to with Martha Beck and the fact that so many of us are walking around thinking that our bodies are just a fancy container for our brains, right? I think our Western society really puts the value on like the things that you think, right?
And the things you’re producing as opposed to the. thing that you are. And I think so many of us can feel, I’ll speak for myself, disconnected from my body, right? I, for a long time, and I’m still working on it, had a hard time accessing emotion because I was like, no I’m not an emotional being. I am a thinking being, right?
And often our bodies tell us what we are. Information faster than our minds can like we know for your point, we know when we have that feeling of dread when that name pops up, we know if we’re involved in activities that give us joy or don’t. And so how do you recommend that we really start to tap into this intelligence and intuition that are our bodies.
KISHSHANA 26:06
So to me is the first thing I feel like that was the hardest thing for me to do is to decide. To admit to myself in my quiet time, Kish, what the are you doing? You are running yourself ragged, twisting yourself into a pretzel to be busy. You don’t feel successful. You are leaving a graveyard of unfinished things.
You are beginning to over promise and under deliver or kill yourself trying to deliver on what you promised. You are eating at your social capital because you are disappearing. And people do not, they’re not used to that. They’re used to you being everywhere. And so they’re like, why is she not reliable?
She didn’t return my phone call. So the first thing we’ve got to do to me is decide that today is the day you are going to put yourself first. And the thing about many of us putting ourselves first is that we see that as a reactionary knee jerk, selfish action to take. Most of us, I’m gonna put myself first.
You notice your shoulders go up and your voice drops and you get into this posture of to help with it. If your posture was, I want to help more people. I want to be more discerning about who I help and support myself first. I got to make sure I’m shored up in order to be able to do so. then what of my five pieces of wellness.
Needs the most work. Where do I need to get into triage? What’s on life support?
What are the resources and supports I need to be able to get that just to level? And then you got to get yourself to that level. And you might have to cuss some people out who keep pulling at you. No, you might have to give them one of those.
But the first thing to me, decide the second thing, assess the third thing, triage the fourth thing, rest. When I say rest, pause, right? Cause now you done three things in a row. Timeout and then assess again.
RHEA 28:16
Yeah
KISHSHANA 28:17
You’ve been operating this one way for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 plus years of your life.
There is an unrealistic expectation that we’re going to magically wake up and just quit all of the foolishness. And now,
RHEA 28:29
Friend, I’m going to chime in here with the ways in which psychedelics can be helpful. So I went on an ayahuasca.
KISHSHANA 28:39
Okay. So who about this? Oh my God, last fall, this whole thing about IO ayahuasca and psychedelics and ways in which we can culturally, cause this is a cultural practice of centuries. Get back to ourself, but go ahead, jump in, talk to me.
RHEA 28:55
So I I was in Costa Rica in August. I went on a four day Iowa. I mean, It was a week, but there were four days of ceremony in Ayahuasca, and I led by shamans and it literally just rewired my brain.
Like I just. Let go of so much stuff. I let go of judgment. I let go of the need to be right. I let go of like ancestral pain. I let go of resentments. I like threw it all up in a bucket. So there’s a physical manifestation of like, you literally are purging this out of your body. And I feel different.
So it’s been about six months and I just feel this like shift in me where I don’t put up with the bullshit. I don’t want to do it anymore. And I think it’s and it’s unfolding still, but I feel so much more centered. I feel like a clean channel of energy and intuition and. Yeah, and I just, I feel like I have gotten clarity about stuff I don’t want to do anymore.
The performances I don’t want to do, the conversations I don’t want to have, the people I don’t want to work with. It’s so clear to me.
KISHSHANA 30:01
Yeah. I think now that you are in the light. A friend of mine who has mentioned this, I think it’s time for me to just be like, okay, oh, verify, lemme go.
But I dunno. If I wanna deal with my deep rooted stuff, I might come back. Woo, honey.
RHEA 30:15
Look to your point. You have to decide, right? You have to decide. You have to decide, am I ready? Am I ready to come face to face? And I will tell you that first night I was scared. I was like, I don’t know if I’m ready.
And they tell you to speak to the Ayahuasca. And I was like, okay, show me. Show me who I am. And I was expecting like, you’re a terrible person, all the things, right? Because I think we have this judgment in ourselves. And the ayah just spoke to me and it was like, oh no you are love and you are a messenger of love.
And you’re like no, that’s it. And I was like, oh, it’s so simple. And we put up all of these things to block being messengers of love in our lives. But if we are love and we’re messengers of love, then
KISHSHANA 30:57
then it’s easy. Okay. And I remember one of the things that was so hard for me to lean into is the fact that, I bring a lot of joy and I kept thinking to myself, how do I bring so much joy to others when I feel so much pain?
And I think you can do two things. You can both be harboring something and that energy is being reworked. And when it leaves your body is leaving as a way maker for somebody else.
So what if I took that journey and cleansed out some of the stuff that’s causing me pain? Holy crap, Rhea. What kind of joy?
RHEA 31:37
Yeah. You would be like a, you would just explode into the universe.
KISHSHANA 31:40
I just need to get near her, a supernova of joy.
I just didn’t imagine lots of glitter everywhere and feathers and leopard.
RHEA 31:55
Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Cowboy hats. Apparently now
KISHSHANA 32:01
And there’s not a cowboy hat that’s going to fit me right now. Extra, extra large. My head is really generous.
RHEA 32:06
All the brains inside friend. All right.
I’m going to send you information, but yeah, I think I think the field of psychedelics is really interesting with respect to our mental health, because I think we’re in a crisis globally, certainly nationally.
And. For us to really heal. We literally, like I, I called my ayahuasca thing a hard reboot. I was like, I just have a hard reboot in my life. We got to reset, we got to carve this new neural pathways. We need to grow new brain synapses. We got to just acknowledge that this whole situation that we’ve created both in our own lives and in the world, it’s just not working for us, not working for us.
KISHSHANA 32:42
It’s just not working for us and we’ve got to do differently. And there’s no judgment. Other than look at the situation that we have found ourselves in. Some of us we would say we didn’t necessarily choose it. You looked up one day and said, what the heck, what is going on here? Yeah. Our lives happened
[00:33:02] Rhea Wong: to us.
Life happened to us. And what I love the period paragraph, what I love about young professionals is that they are not allowing life to happen to them.
We, for the most part, particularly, I’m a Gen Xer, so we just did what we were told, did what was expected. Air Force professional, and if you are a professional of color, Lord, that is loaded.
But these young people are saying to hell with all of that, which is making leaders in organizations Ridiculously annoyed, upset, and I used to think it was like, Oh these young people, they don’t, they don’t understand the rules and they’re entitled and obnoxious and blah, blah, blah. And some of that might be true for certain people, but what’s really under that, I think we are jealous.
Yes. Yeah. Of the freedom that these younger professionals, newer professionals coming in, younger people coming in. Are experiencing, but I want us to reframe that and go, Oh my gosh, many of us are parents, caregivers, aunties, godparents, et cetera. We created the runway for them to be able to choose. So we should celebrate that and then figure out how we get to shift so that we have a more innovative environment for them to thrive in.
RHEA 34:21
Yeah. Yeah. Chuck Klosterman had this great quote. I’m going to butcher it, but it’s a book about the nineties and he’s basically said like every generation complains that the generation after them is softer and lazier than they were, but. That’s right. We should be creating a world in which they don’t have to be as hard as we were.
And that technology means that they shouldn’t have to work as hard as we did. And yet we fault them for that and yet we created the circumstances for that to be true.
KISHSHANA 34:49
That’s exactly true. And I just want us to stop taking in information. To just have, we’re like information hoarders. Yeah.
But it’s preventing us from doing something. So someone’s listening to this podcast right now and they’ve heard us talk about five star wellness. They’ve heard us talk about how to take. How to move into a different space. They’ve heard us talk about how to let go and different tactics that we’ve tried to do.
So they’ve heard us talk about being able to put ourselves first and why that’s four to five huge shifts and someone is in their car right now, or they are walking right now and they are stuck because they don’t know which one is the one. And I want us just to pick one. Just start. Just start.
Yeah. Yeah. Just start. Discover yourself. Be okay with discovering yourself. Because if you bring that level of curiosity to yourself, then you’re going to bring that level of curiosity to your team, to your organization’s mission, to the how of the, how the work gets done, to who should be doing the work because it ain’t you.
And everything else in between. And I think that is the gift that we can give ourselves to move out of this place of being stuck, of the deep seated apathy, of the desire to be able to get under the covers, the heated blanket, the weighted blanket, or just to escape to the tropics! Yeah. Yeah.
RHEA 36:25
I, listen, I still wanna skate to the chapter.
I still have hello, my ham, hello on in Bali. In my mind, but yes, in my mind. . All right. Before we sign off, I know you have a book coming out. Do you wanna say, oh my gosh, something about it and then we’ll make sure to put it Absolutely. Put info in the show notes. I know it doesn’t come out for another couple months, but I want people to get it.
Can you pre-order it?
KISHSHANA 36:46
Yeah. Like people get this book. You need Yeah. We able to preorder by the time, yeah. Yeah. They’ll be able to preorder it by the time that folks will listen to this. You’ve heard me talk a lot about being busy. You’ve heard me talk a lot about performance. And so my first book published by Wiley is busy is a four letter word.
How to achieve more by doing less. Love it. Okay. And this is not going to be platitudes Rhea. Okay. Of the thing. This is like tried and true methods, tactics, and sometimes last ditch efforts. How to put the stuff down and still be successful. And it’s going to come out in time for the holidays. So folks will have an opportunity to be able to give it to every darn body.
And I said, give it to everyone that you know, they probably everyone.
Yeah. But busy is a four letter word. Okay. We don’t put it into the F bombs of the world. Love it.
RHEA 37:30
Love it. Love it. Love it. Okay. Kish. Always so fun to hang out. We’ll make sure to put it in the show notes, folks, listening pre order because that always helps, but you need it.
I need it. The world needs it. Thank you so much. Always so fun to hang out and I’ll send you information.
KISHSHANA 37:53
I think you, I appreciate it. All right, y’all.
RHEA 37:56
Talk to you soon.
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