Hey, welcome to Lessons from a Quitter where we believe that it is never too late to start over. No matter how much time or energy you've spent getting to where you are. If ultimately you are unfulfilled, then it is time to get out. Join me each week for both inspiration and actionable tips so that we can get you on the road to your dreams. Hello my friends. Welcome to another episode. I am so excited to have you here. I am actually, um, not here right now. I recorded this episode before I went on vacation. So I'm currently on vacation when this comes out. I am at a bucket list kind of location. We are celebrating something special with my family. I'm super excited and it's my first vacation where I'm really cutting off from my business for the entire 10 days. And that's what I wanted to talk to you about.

We'll talk about my vacation. But the point of the episode is I want to talk to you about the fact that vacation time is non-negotiable. It's not a nice to have. It is not. Uh, we'll save up for some dream vacation. And I'm not talking about money, I'm just talking about the time off. I'm not talking about like going on a very expensive vacation or anything like that. You don't have to do that. It's taking the time off of work to have vacation. You can stay at home and we'll talk about that. We'll talk about the rules that I'm gonna give you. But it's the idea of taking time off of work for personal time that's not related to illness, that's not related to other things and how important it is. And we're gonna talk about some of the objections that you're gonna have.

But I want you to start thinking about vacation time differently. I want you to start changing your own thoughts about what vacation time is and what it isn't and how we have been programmed to think about it and how wrong that is. Okay? So here's the thing. We have all been tricked into believing that we should never take time off, okay? If you are in America, which most of my F followers are, I know a lot of you aren't, but most of them are. I'm gonna talk about just America in general. But capitalism in particular has really done a number on a lot of us where we have been conditioned from very early on to equate our productivity with our worth. So the more productive you are, the better you are. And this has very insidious, um, effects all over our lives. I see it every day when I coach people.

We cannot even rest on weekends. We can't take a nap. God forbid you can't slow down because we always have to be doing something. And this is by design cuz if you have a workforce who pushes themselves to never take time off, you don't have to do anything, right? If you have a workforce that believes it is ethically wrong or morally wrong for them to rest, guess what? You're gonna have a lot of people of people that work really hard to prove to you how wordy they are, how productive they are, how wonderful they are. If that's what you've tied it to, it's actually genius. Cuz then it's like I don't have to, you know, crack the whip on you to work harder. You're gonna do it yourself. You're gonna think that in order to be a good person you just have to work harder.

And this is by design. This is in like every messaging that we've ever gotten in America. Not only is there capitalism, but there's also, you know, the basis of this country was on the puritan kind of principles. And the Puritan work ethic is, you know, widely known that much of the religion is based on the fact that like your godliness, right, your proximity to God is based on how hard you work. And so when you combine these two things, when you combine religion that has told us that, you know, what is it? Idle hands are the devil's playground. That if you're stand sitting around, you're doing terrible, th you're a terrible person, you're gonna get into a lot of trouble and that you know, your godliness is tied directly to how much you work. And then you're in a system that has rewarded the hardest worker, the person that can work the most, right?
Like all of the messages we've gotten for so many years of like the grind never stops and work hard, play hard and you know, whatever you can sleep when you're dead and all this other BS. And luckily that that narrative is kind of changing but it doesn't matter because we've been conditioned with it for decades. And so, so many of us have just equated that like I can never slow down and I can't tell you how many people I have to coach on this where it's like even when they take the break, even like I said, when it's the weekend, when it's nighttime, when it's the vacation, they can't stop. They can't slow themselves down, they can't enjoy it because they feel guilty cuz they think they should be doing more because they don't get to rest because even their vacation has to be productive, right?

If you have ever tried to maximize and squeeze out every last drop of your vacation and make sure you see everything and you do everything, this is a byproduct of your conditioning, right? If you're not allowed to go on vacation and just lay for four days and not do anything, if you feel guilty when you do that, there's a problem. Okay? And so we just have to start becoming aware of it. It's really fascinating and very obvious if you go to other countries, if you come from other countries, if you compare it to other countries because a lot of other countries don't view it this way and it's very easy to see and I think for a lot of other people viewing America, it's insane to watch how Americans work. And so when you look at other people you start realizing like maybe the way we think is not corrupt.

Maybe there's another way. I remember when I was studying abroad in Spain in college and I was just marveling at the fact that I was in a smaller city, but truly the entire city shut down every day for about two hours after lunch where everybody took a nap. What a beautiful, beautiful concept, right? I remember being blown away. I mean obviously I had heard about it, I knew about CS does and it also happens in Iran a lot. Like a lot of people take afternoon naps after lunch. And it's fascinating to me because I almost think that that's just biologically like something humans should do. I think your body just gets tired midday and we've come up with all these other remedies, quote unquote remedies that hurt like coffee and red bull and whatever else you have to take. But we have sort of tried to stamp out that humanness where it's like there's just a natural lull in your energy after you eat lunch and it makes sense to maybe take a nap so then you can go the rest of the day.

It happens in so many other cultures and it was fascinating for me to watch because I realized these people do this with zero guilt because that's not their conditioning. Their thoughts about it aren't that I'm doing something bad, there's something wrong with me, I'm lazy. It's that everybody should rest. Even if you don't wanna sleep you can lay down, you can have some quiet time, you can rest and then I can get up and go again. Lo and behold, their company still ran, their stores still made money apparently, right? We've been kind of given this lie that if we ever slow down, if we ever take time off, if we ever ever stop, the whole system's gonna go under the, the company's gonna fail. Like we can't do it. And it's just important to see that it's a lie that it's just been made up to get us to work.

The same thing with vacation time. When you look at Europe or you look at other countries, a lot of people, a lot of countries have like non-negotiable four weeks. My husband was interesting, like I've talked a lot about he's an entrepreneur, he has a a business and one of some of his employees are in Europe and it's fascinating to see them put their time in, right? It's like every summer I'm gonna take these three weeks off and they're never thinking like, oh my god, but what if he gets mad? What if he fires me? What if he hates me? It's just like this is the time I'm entitled to in my country, this is part of our contract is to get four weeks off and they take it as a block a lot of them, right? So you might take two weeks for Christmas and you take two weeks in the summer and we're gonna talk about why that's important.

But it's fascinating to just notice that it's not the actual taking of the time off that's wrong or bad or makes you feel guilty, it's your thoughts about it. So when you c grow up or you live in other countries that don't have those thoughts, all of a sudden it starts becoming very normal and you're like huh. It's almost as if everything in nature needs to slow down at times. It's almost as if it's natural to need to stop, to need to take a break, to need to take a nap, right? And yet in America it's like sacrilege. It's like how dare you not be able to go, go, go from the minute you hit the floor with your feet at 6:00 AM till 11:00 PM and you never slow down and you work on everything all the time, right? And we wonder why we're so burned out, how we can have balance and it's like you could have balance by slowing that F down.

It's really important for us to, to understand that we're not robots no matter how much they want to stamp out our humanness, no matter how much they want us to be robots, no matter how much we try to mimic the factory model and wanting to kind of do the same rote thing every day, all day, have the same energy. That's just not how the human body works. That's not how anything in nature ever works. And so why do we believe that we have to somehow be different or distinct from nature? A question that I ask myself when I was going through this is like, what if the point of my life is not to get the most done? What if that's just not the point? What if the point isn't to jam pack as much as I possibly can? What if it's to slow down and enjoy what I'm doing now?

Yeah, maybe I'll, I won't get to everything. Maybe that book won't get written. Maybe I won't, I don't know, grow the business or whatever the thing is. But can I enjoy what I'm doing now a little bit more? Can I slow down enough to actually like be present for it? Can I have fun doing it? Is that more important to me or is it just checking off that I just did everything. I did everything. I built 3000 hours and I became partner and I made this much money and I wrote a book and I did all this stuff and I'm completely burned out and I'm completely exhausted and my life has passed me by and I never took time to slow down and look around and experience things. I recently heard a quote like an Instagram graphic and it was just, nature never rushes and yet everything gets done.

And I think about that like really about what we think needs to get done versus what actually needs to get done. How much we pack our lives with projects. And you know shoulds and, and I talk a lot about this in the club, if you're in the club, we did a class on how to do less and I truly believe that like that's the key to staving off burnout, to learning balance. It's not about balancing more, it's not about cramming more, it's not about getting more done, it's about doing less. It's about having less to do. It's about giving yourself space to think and be and lay and rest and enjoy. And so I want you to ask yourself what do you want for your life? We have been conditioned in a system that has required us to constantly work for the future to constantly save, saved constantly.

Like for some time of like when I get there, when I have enough money, when I can retire and yet our whole life passes a spy, our whole life passes a spy and we get to an age where maybe we don't have the health that we wanted or our kids are grown and they're gone or we're too old to experience the things we want. Our bodies can't handle the things we wanna do and it is just worth questioning. Is that the model I wanna live in? Just because they've created that doesn't mean that's how I have to live in it. Are there workarounds? That's not to say that we don't have to make money, it's just to say like can I think differently about the money I make? Can I think differently about what is possible? I recently watched a friend who is in a very high powered legal position take a sabbatical.

That's not something that common in the legal field, but why not? Why not See if your company offers that? And so many companies do but we're too afraid to do it because what if people are gonna think, am I gonna fall off? Are they gonna fire me? Where are my clients gonna go? It's too much of a headache. So then we, all of these opportunities that we might even have and we give up because we're too scared to figure it out, we're too scared to deal with the discomfort that might come with actually doing it. I've recently read a book Die With Zero that I really recommend. It fundamentally changed the way that I think about money and part of the premise of the book is that it, it just thinks about money differently and how you should spend your money. But what was fascinating is like in all the studies that it was quoting and talking about is that we tend to spend less as we get older, as we get into retirement age and we also do less like we don't have the ability to go to the places we wanna see travel the way we want, experience the things we want obviously cuz our body changes.

And one of the things that the author advocates for is to like really think about the memories and things that you wanna make right now and the fact that you will spend more maybe in your forties, thirties or forties and fifties than you will in your sixties, seventies and eighties. And that's okay. And I think we've been kind of taught to be so petrified of that, that we keep hoarding, that we keep holding onto and not for no reason, right? We live in a country or we live in a society, different countries where you never know when you need that money, right? And he, again, you can read the book, he actually talks about how to address that. But it was just fascinating to think about. We put off so much for one day and oftentimes that day never comes or when it comes we can't have the experiences we would've had before.

We can't have the rest that we would have. Like you cannot stockpile, you can't decide like I'm gonna save up all my rest and then I'm gonna have it all when I'm 65, right? Maybe wanna start thinking about how we live our life differently. Society's not gonna change it. It's in their best interest, it's in capitalism's best interest for us to work as much as it wants us to work, we have to decide. I'm gonna give you an example, something I did before, I even never did this work or I ever consciously thought about this type of stuff when I was still working as a lawyer, I was a federal public defender and it's fascinating thinking about how much I was like didn't care. I was convicted in doing this because normally I'm such a people pleaser. But two years in a row I wanted to go on vacations with my husband that required me to take two weeks off.

One was to Iran and it's just so far and the time changes so much that you really can't go for like a week. So I had to take two weeks. And then another one was that we wanted to do a Europe trip and I didn't wanna go all the way to Europe for a week and we knew we were gonna have kids, kids soon and we knew it was kind of the last time that we were gonna do this. And I remember both times going and telling my boss that I was gonna take two weeks off and it was unheard of in our office. Nobody took two weeks off, okay? People took maybe a week at the most and that was really at times when it was kind of downtime like on the holidays. But most people didn't. Cause you have cases and you have all this work.

And I remember just being like, well figure it out cuz I have to take these two wigs off, figure out how you're gonna like cover my work because I'm going and I won't, can't reach me in Iran. I'm not gonna be on like email, I'm not gonna be doing anything but this is what I'm gonna do. And what's funny is they made it work, they weren't happy about it and I was at first like maybe I shouldn't have, but I very quickly was like, no, this is my vacation time. I saved, I have this time off. I want to do these things, I want these experiences that I'm not gonna have again cuz I'm never gonna be this age, I'm never gonna not have kids. I don't know when I'm gonna get to go to Europe for two weeks. So this is what I'm gonna do.

I look back, I'm very proud of myself. It was one of two of the best vacations I've had. I had an immense amount of like fun and rest and I felt really recharged when I came back. But I realized like no one was gonna hand it to me like they did try to make me feel guilty. Like not in so many words, but I think in the looks and the talks like wow, a whole two weeks. Well what are we gonna do with your cases? And I was like, I don't know, there's other lawyers here, , I'm sure they can handle it, right? It was on me to manage my own thoughts about like, yeah, they're not gonna like it, that's okay. I'm still gonna do this because I deserve to take this time off because that was part of the contract is that I get this time off and I wanna take it all at once and I don't care if it inconveniences people because this is also my life, right?

And so I want you to really think about like it's not gonna get handed to you, but how do you wanna think about vacation time? How do you wanna think about the experiences that you wanna have? And this is the reason I say it's like vacation time is non-negotiable. I don't mean going on a big vacation, I don't mean spending money and going somewhere that requires a big expenditure. I mean taking at least an entire week off. You can stay at home and we're gonna talk about the rules for that. If you do that, you could just stay at home if you want. You can go camping, you could do whatever it is that you wanna do, but you need a chunk of time away from work that is not when you're sick. And here's the thing, I also don't think it should be for family things like for family holidays like Christmas and stuff.

I mean if you have to fine and some people love those weeks and if it's restful for you, I'm not gonna take it away from you. But I tend to think that when we take those quote unquote vacations, they're not really vacations, they're, it's a lot of stress, it's a lot of like other emotions dealing with other people not doing the things you want, not sleeping, you know, maybe in the room that you, whatever it is, you have people in your house, it's, it tends to not be restful. So if you can also take a week off at another point, then I would highly recommend that. And I would question if you think you can't, why you think you can't? Like if it's really, I don't have the p t o or I just don't want to put that in and have to deal with like my boss's anger or whatnot.

So whatever you do, let's say you do decide to stay at home for a week, you don't get to like do projects, okay? The point of this is not like can I take another week to just be productive at home and do all the things I had on my to-do list? That's not the point of a vacation, right? And this is why so many of us when we go on vacation, we feel rested because it's like you get taken out of that environment so you can't really do anything. Um, but if you're gonna stay at home, I want you to just imagine that you're somewhere else, right? I want you to imagine, I know that's harder, but you can do it where it's not about cleaning out the closets or making sure all the returns get to the store or getting caught up on whatever it is that you need to get caught up on.

I know you think you're gonna feel better because it's like at least now I have this time to do this. But all that does is perpetuate this idea that you always have to be productive and that you can never rest and that you can never just have fun. And that even when you like, as soon as you have a pocket of time and we all do this with a lot of our weekends too, I would highly recommend you at least pick one day that you don't do that. Where it's like, yeah, I could do a lot of projects, I could clean out the closet or I could leave the closet as is and I can lay on the couch and I can read a book and I can actually rest. So many of us are so burned out because we just never allow our bodies time for rest.

So if you're gonna stay at home, that's fine. Pick one fun thing to do. One thing that you wouldn't normally do. Meet up with a friend for lunch, go for a hike or a walk somewhere that's beautiful. Like take a fun class that you wouldn't normally take or just lay and read and don't do anything. So many people that I have to coach on like on their vacations is to allow yourself to just do nothing on vacation. Just let it be sleep, let it be rest, let it be zoning out whatever the thing that you feel guilty about your quote unquote guilty pleasure, which is a terrible term cause pleasure doesn't need to have guilt ever. Whatever that thing is, let yourself do it without guilt. Tell yourself like I have this one week a year where I get to do whatever I want. I get to sleep as late as I want.

I got to scroll Instagram if I want to. Maybe that becomes a thing. Maybe you leave your kids in school and you take it a week when they're not home so you don't have to run around after people and come up with fun things for everybody to do. That's okay. It doesn't always have to be like an exciting thing that everyone does together. It can be. But think about what it is you need and then decide that that's non-negotiable once a year. Like it's crazy to me that I have to convince people that you get to have one whole week a year out of 52 weeks that you get to rest. That's nuts. Like the fact that we have bought into that and that we've bought into this lie that we should, we shouldn't need that. We should just go, go, go all the time is really like one of the biggest injustices that have been done to us.

I mean there's so many, so maybe not the biggest, but the way we start taking our power back is to start changing that narrative. Is to start really questioning why do I believe that I can't stop? Why do I believe I can't slow down? Why do I believe I don't get to rest? And the more you start changing that, the more it becomes easier to maybe nap on a weekend or you know, getting too, I don't get too crazy if it's too much for you, but that's how we start changing how we think about ourselves being quote unquote lazy or how much rest we deserve or how much fun we deserve. And you don't have to go big in the beginning, like you can start small, but the reason I say a week is because it takes a couple of days for you to decompress from all the shoulds and all the productivity it just does whenever you go on vacation due the first couple of days we're all still stressed and like you know, agitated and if you take like a Monday off, I'm not saying it's not, that's also nice, but it doesn't allow you the level of rest and the level of like recovery that you might need to go back and like feel that push.

And I know a lot of us wanna like quote unquote again, save our vacation time because you never know when you need it or we're gonna save for some big vacation. I just have seen so many people do that and then never take it or wait 10 years to go on one vacation and that's just unacceptable because your body needs more rest than that. And so yes, maybe you don't have a stockpile of P T O or like a lot of people wanna save it so that they can get paid out when they leave. And I'm not like shunning get making money off of it, but I just think like you have to think about what the trade off is. It's not simply that I'm getting this money. It's like can my body withstand year after year after year of zero breaks of zero rest?

Do I want that life? Like do I want my life to pass me by and I haven't had any time to like indulge in the things that I love doing or rest or be present or go experience something new. And so I want you to start thinking about your vacation time as non-negotiable. And I want you to start planning for it. I want you to pick a week this year that you're gonna take off the whole week. And I want you to throw out the to-do list on that vacation even. I want you to let yourself maybe have a vacation where you don't get anything done, you don't sight see anything, you just go late. You just allow yourself to take up that space and not need to be productive. And I said in the beginning of the episode that I was gonna talk about my own vacation and I really wanted to talk about why I even wanted to bring up this topic and the mindset work I have to do for myself to take a vacation.

I think it's really easy to look at other people and think it's easier for them to do it, especially with entrepreneurship. I know a lot of us get into entrepreneurship because of the appeal that you can set your own schedule and you can take the time off that you want. And that is sort of the lure. And I think looking at entrepreneurs it sounds like, well it's, you run the gig, nobody can tell you you can take as much time off and in theory that's what should happen. But that's not what happens in practice because most of us, when we get into this game, when we've brought over the same mindset from capitalism and hustle culture, we just build our own cage. And I see this all the time and I fell prey to it myself where when the buck stops with you, when there is nobody else to take over, if you know things fall through the crack or something goes wrong when it's your responsibility, it becomes even harder to take the time off.

It becomes even easier to say, well we'll do it next year or I'll just check my emails or you know, I'll just do this one call while I'm on the uh, you know vacation because it's your business. And so many of us, like when you so many people, I think employees have the catastrophic thought of like, I'm gonna get fired if I take this time off if I don't do it right, whatever. And for so many entrepreneurs it's like the business is gonna fail, right? We go to the worst case, like if I go and everybody ends up hating me or the business or some huge thing happens and I don't take care of it or all the clients dry up or whatever and we don't consciously think it, but there seems like a very real urgency of I can't take time off. And I was noticing this, I talked about in the goal setting episode that my goal this year was to focus fully on health and that includes mental health, right?
And I've laid out a lot of what I wanted to do both physically and mentally for myself. And one of the areas that I started realizing that I had really slipped in is having boundaries with my own business because I love what I do and it actually becomes easier. I can now see why people are workaholics. I used to never be able to understand because I didn't love working as a lawyer so I couldn't understand why people wanted to work all the time. I now get it, like if I don't check this, I will work nights, I will work weekends, I won't take time off because there's always something to do. There's always ways to grow, there's always things to learn. There's always the thought I'm behind, there's always more that I could be doing and I love doing it. So it's like I'll just add more on.

And one of the things I was noticing is that some of my boundaries were getting blurred. I'm pretty good at setting boundaries about nights and weekends. Sometimes I do work on weekends by choice because in the middle of the week I take time off. But I was noticing that I wanted to just let me just do a little bit here and let me do a little bit there and oh I just have to send this one email. And that was also the sort of sneaky thoughts I had when I was planning vacations. So since I've started the podcast, I've never gone on a vacation where I don't check my emails, respond to things and or take a coaching call. And my thought, because it seems so minuscule, like it seems so small, was like, well it's only one hour, right? Like I only have to coach one hour a week.

It's not like I'm coaching 20 clients, it's like 20 hours I'm coaching one group coaching call call. So like that seems super awesome and it is the fact that I can coach from anywhere and the fact that a lot of people do like this nomadic lifestyle where they are going and they're traveling and working, that's fantastic. And the fact that I have that ability is great, but that's not what I was doing. I was going on vacation. But the saying like, well I don't wanna worry about what was gonna happen with my clients or what they're gonna think or all the negative emotion that it might bring up in me, so I'm just gonna keep taking these calls or I'm just gonna keep responding to emails or check in with the community. And I think that I had this sneaky thought of like, it's not that much time, it's like 30 minutes, right?

I can check in 30 minutes a day. That seems like a no-brainer, right? And I think for a lot of us who may be working in corporate America, it is like, okay, 30 minutes is not that serious. But the effect of it is that I can never really disconnect, right? When I get a message from someone that maybe is unhappy about something or someone cancels or you know, I get a bill I have to pay or whatnot, like that affects your mood because you start thinking about it, you can't unsee it. And what I was realizing is that I have yet to kind of fully disconnect Now when I was doing the group program, it was easier to have like a week or two to disconnect because I could just plan the six month program to end at a certain time and then not have the next one start for about a week.

So I could give myself a week break in between. But I knew going into the membership that wasn't gonna be the case and I really had to like have, you know, a conscious dialogue with myself about how I was gonna deal with this because the membership is ongoing and people are always going to be joining and I could very easily fall into this thought process that they need me, they're new to this, they're gonna wanna see my face. If they don't then I don't know what's gonna happen. And I've watched so many entrepreneurs burn out from this. I've seen so many people in the online space who have multiple seven figure businesses shut it all down because they felt so tied to their business that they couldn't get a break recently. There is another coach, Vanessa Lau, she doesn't coach like a mindset. She coaches Instagram strategy and like building business.

And I wonder how much mindset helps she had because she recently announced her sabbatical and she has like followers on YouTube and has a multiple seven figure business. And she talked about how she shut all of her programs down in order to be able to take a long sabbatical because she was so burned out. And I was thinking about this as I was building my own membership and realizing like I think a lot of times when we think about putting things off or vacations off, we think like I could keep pushing through, I can keep working, it's not a big deal. And we don't realize that the trade off is not like can I go without a week vacation right now? It's what is the long term effect of me never being able to stop or never being able to disconnect? What am I giving up?

And for so many of us, it's really not the choice between do I take a vacation and do I not take a vacation? It's like do I take a vacation and be able to, to continue running this business or do I not? And I get to a place where I will burn it to the ground because I feel as though I have another pair of shackles, right? And I know when I started, I really started thinking about this like I know it's gonna be hard for me because I'm gonna have these thoughts of like what are people gonna think and are my members gonna be mad? And you know, all of those thoughts that come up. And I choose very intentional thoughts about it because I've in other memberships and I saw the benefit of having bringing in really incredible guest experts that are experts in things I'm not that can help them even better when I'm not around.

And other guest coaches, I can coach them better than I can. And one of my principles, one of the values that I have for the membership, one of the reasons I even do it is because I want people to not rely on me. I want them to learn how to self-coach so that they can coach themself. I want them to eventually, the goal is to not need me because I don't want them to be dependent on me to be able to get their mind set straight. I want them to learn the skills to be able to coach themselves when things arise as they will for the rest of our lives. And so I was realizing like when I have this thought that everybody needs me, I'm creating that co-dependency where like people have to only have me. And not only does that lead to my burnout, but it l it doesn't serve them.

And as I've thought through this a lot and I've thought about things like I know still that some people are gonna be upset and that's okay with me, right? Some people are gonna think that I shouldn't leave or that they should get coaching by me every week and other people are gonna see it as an example of what's possible. I have a lot of entrepreneurs in the program and that I'm hoping that a lot of people look at it as like it's also okay to walk away from your business for a little bit. It's also okay to do it scared. Like I do worry about things going wrong and this is the first time I'm going to like not take my laptop, not check my emails. I'm obviously gonna put a lot of stuff in place for people to be able to handle it. But I have to be okay with the fact that like some things might slip through the crack.

And I remember thinking like if my entire business fails because I have to leave for a week, then that's not a business I want. If that's gonna be the case, then let's figure that out now because I do not wanna have to be tied to something that I cannot disconnect from for you know, a week, 10 days or whatever. And I remember also thinking like the question isn't like are some people gonna be upset with me or is there gonna be, you know, some people gonna have their own thoughts, which they will. It was what am I willing to give to this business, right? I kept asking myself like how much of myself, how much of my life am I willing to be tied to it all the time? And this is what I think so many of us, there is a time for hustling, there is a time for building.

And I know for me for the first couple of years, I'm okay with the fact that like I did it in a way that I wasn't comfortable completely walking away. I didn't have really an assistant that I could kind of trust and handle. I didn't really know how to do bring on guest coaches. I was learning a lot of it and I felt very protective of it and I'm okay with that. But I realize like now as I'm trying to grow and as I am still trying to scale, I want to do it in a way that's sustainable. And I think this is the other thing that's really important to understand is for so many of us, we put it off to like when I get there then I will, right? When I have eight, seven figure business, when I have a whole team that can support it when I have all of these systems and we all know that that doesn't happen.

We all know that like as your systems get bigger, as your business gets bigger, it becomes harder. It's the same thing with any role, right? It's like we like to think like once I become partner or once I have this, get the promotion. But when you get more responsibility, you have more responsibility. It doesn't make it easier then to take time off. And so you wanna train your brain to be able to understand that like no, even if I haven't gotten everything done, even if all the systems aren't in place, even if it doesn't look the way it should or whatever, it's not as big as it needs to be. I need to prioritize taking a break. I need to prioritize the life that I want. I need to create a business that supports the life that I want right now as I build it.

Not when I get there. And I was realizing that for myself as I was building this, cuz I was thinking it's very easy for me to get caught in. Well it's just the first year I gotta be here the whole time for the first year while I build it. And I just had to question, is that true? Why do I think that, right? Why do I wanna believe that? What am I scared of happening and can I be okay with like if the worst case scenario, a catastrophe happens, I can handle it, I can deal with it, and can I let other people have their thoughts and feelings about it? Turns out their own thoughts create their experience of the program and that's okay. And I don't need to take everybody along with me. I don't need everybody to stay. I need people to understand what I'm doing and are okay with it.

And if they're not, that's, I can fully respect that. And I feel like when I got to a place where I realized like that is what I'm trying to build and that is what I'm trying to model, and I can only do it if I do it myself. Like it became a lot easier to be like, oh, it's a non-negotiable. This has to happen this year. And I've talked a lot about this on other episodes. I talk about the fact that like we teach people how to treat us. And this is true with boundaries, this is true with like how you advocate for yourself with work. This is true with vacation time. This is true with what people at your work are gonna expect, right? The more you start implementing, like I take a week off every year, I take two weeks off every year.

These are the times that I'm not here. We teach them what to expect from us as an entrepreneur. I was thinking the same thing. I think so many of us get caught in this capitalistic notion that like you have to respond instantaneously. Like as soon as there's an email, you have to respond as soon as there's a call, especially if it's your own business, God forbid you take a beat. And I really realize like do I wanna train people to expect that from me? Do I wanna train people to expect that I never leave, that they always see my face every single week that they can reach me whenever they want that obviously I wanna be there for them, but I also wanna create boundaries. So like if I'm gonna build this business in the way that serves me and my life, what does that look like?

And all I'm asking you to do is do that same inquiry. Yours can look different. You don't have to take a week off in the beginning if that's too hard for you, um, don't do it. But I want you to just start questioning like, what am I willing to give this job or this business? How much of my life am I willing to? And if it's not all of it, then how do I start training them to treat me in a certain way to expect certain things from me? And how do I start advocating for myself, for rest, for joy, for experiences? All of it can coexist. I promise you and I plan on showing you how I plan on growing this business while also taking time off. It's really important for me as I build a business in this capitalistic society that I rail against to not build it the way that everybody else is building it, to not do the same things that all of corporate America tells me I have to do, right?

Is to show that like you can make profit, you can have money, you can treat your employees well, you can give them the time off they need. You can also take time off. All of it is possible. And it's only possible if you believe it's possible, if you have the thoughts that support that, otherwise you'll never try. So I hope that you'll start believing that not only are vacations possible, but they're non-negotiable. You deserve time off. And whether other people understand or not is not your problem. Go out there, my friend and rest. All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode and I will be back after I get back from my wonderful vacation, hopefully very rested. I'll be back next week with another episode.

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