Healing From Burnout (Part II)

Marlee welcomes Laura Hartley, activist, coach, and founder of Public LovEd, for a deeper conversation on healing from burnout. Marlee and Laura dive into the systems, cultures, and mindsets that we internalize which then keep us in a cycle of burnout and keep us playing small. Laura shares how to get free and decondition from these toxic internalized beliefs. Marlee and Laura also discuss how to shift from scarcity to abundance!

Transcript

Welcome to the Shifting with Marley podcast.

I'm Marley.

Thank you for joining me wherever you are.

All that I ask of you,

The listener,

Is to have an open mind and an open heart.

And in return,

I offer you myself.

Today we're going to revisit the topic healing from burnout.

I talked about this a few months ago in episode number 25.

And in that episode,

I shared my personal experience with being severely burnt out.

And I introduced some ideas to help you and me begin to heal from burnout.

Not surprisingly,

That episode was well received and quickly became one of my most downloaded episodes and sparked conversations with many of you.

And that told me that this topic really resonated with a lot of you,

But that episode really only skimmed the surface.

So today we're going to dive deeper.

We're going to talk more about healing from burnout and also deconditioning from the systems,

Cultures,

And mindsets that keep us locked in a loop of burnout.

We're going to talk about breaking the cycle and creating a new world in the process.

Here to help us uncover these layers and guide us deeper into this topic is Laura Hartley.

Laura is an activist,

Coach,

And founder of Public Love Ed,

An online school for change makers and entrepreneurs to radically re-imagine the world,

Co-creating the conditions for social healing and collective thinking.

Through Public Love Ed,

She runs programs on healing burnout and cultural wayfinding.

Laura is also the host of the Public Love Project,

A podcast interviewing activists and thought leaders on remaking the world.

Welcome Laura.

Thank you,

Molly.

I'm so excited to be here.

Welcome from across the world,

Right?

You're coming to us today from Australia.

I am,

Yes.

I am here on Gadigal land in Sydney,

Australia today and reaching out to you in North America.

That's so fun.

I'm so grateful to connect with you.

Thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you.

Can you please let people know where they can find you and connect with you?

Yeah,

Absolutely.

So people can find me via my website,

LauraHartley.

Com.

I'm also very active on Instagram and Facebook at Laura.

H.

Hartley and occasionally on LinkedIn if that's your space as well.

So to start Laura,

Can you please share a bit of your story and how you got into this work and came to start Public Love Ed?

Absolutely.

So I have always been fascinated by change,

Both inner and outer.

And I think this stems from two parts of my life.

So when I was growing up as a child,

I was surrounded by personal development and spirituality.

My mother was a life coach.

She ran one of the first life coach training schools in this country.

And my earliest memories are listening to everyone from Dennis Waitley to Tony Robbins to Neil Donald Walsh and Wayne Dyer.

We had books in the house by like Florence Schovel Shinn and The Game of Life,

These very kind of early personal development books of like the last century.

And so a lot of this really informed my way of thinking and my way of being in the world.

It taught me that we have the capacity to change,

That we have agency,

That we have some level of choice over our circumstances,

Or at least how we perceive them.

And this became really important to me.

As I entered my adolescence,

I had crippling depression and mental health issues.

I spent in and out of hospital a lot.

I didn't finish high school and very dark space that I was in.

But understanding that on some level that I had agency,

That I had this inner world within me led me to be able to do some of the inner work that I needed to do,

To spend a lot of time in therapy,

A lot of time on healing,

And a lot of time looking within.

And so I became fascinated with these questions of,

What does it mean to be human?

How do we make meaning?

Where do we find purpose?

What does it mean to follow our callings?

And what even are our callings?

So of course,

This inner world then became a very big focus of mine.

But I also became interested in social justice and activism.

I saw this disconnect occasionally between personal development work and spiritual teachings and the way the world actually is.

That there is incredible injustice with racism,

With the climate crisis,

With increasing wealth inequality all across the world.

And sometimes these personal development teachings missed some of the systemic realities that people were facing.

You know,

They focused a lot on these individual capitalistic notions of success.

So I found that one,

In ignoring systemic realities that people of color,

Women,

Queer folks are not afforded the same opportunities in our society,

That they were kind of bypassing parts of reality,

That no matter how great you meditate or how good your manifestation skills are or whatever it might be,

There are things in the world that are not afforded to everybody equally.

And sometimes the personal development teachings also missed,

They didn't challenge our sense of meaning or success or purpose.

They were kind of co-opted by capitalism to say,

If I have a bigger car,

If I have exactly what I want whenever I want it,

That this is the law of attraction.

But the climate crisis is real.

We can't afford endless emissions.

We can't afford for everybody to have everything all of the time.

That's not the way of the future.

And that's actually not what brings us happiness either.

It's not the same as community or creativity.

And so I found this struggle between the two worlds,

Between personal development,

Which ignored systemic realities,

That ignored injustice at times,

And between activism and this focus on outer change,

Which really missed the qualitative changes that needed to happen between us,

That changed the conditions of why we were showing up in the world,

Of how we were approaching change.

And this is kind of where my work came to play.

My love of change in every form got me thinking,

What is the bridge between inner and outer change?

What is the work that needs to happen within us to create the world that we want?

And that's how my school was born.

So I started Public Love Education last year as a place for us to kind of reimagine the world to explore what are the conditions that we need to create for social healing,

For collective thriving,

And to create a more just and regenerative world.

So I run programs for change makers around healing burnout culture,

Around cultural wayfinding.

So exploring what it is to navigate through patriarchy,

Through capitalism,

Through supremacy culture,

And to follow what is ours.

So I love this work and I'm excited in the way that it's come together and to talk to you about it today.

Wow.

Laura,

Thank you so much for sharing that.

Your drive to help people and the planet is truly inspiring.

And it's exactly the reason I started this podcast,

To be honest.

So just thank you for all that you do.

It's really important work.

So to get into burnout now and burnout culture,

One of your focuses at Public Love Ed,

What is your perspective on why we are so burnt out as a society?

So I use this example of a plant in one of my courses,

You know,

Thinking of like a tomato plant.

If you plant a tomato plant in your garden and it doesn't grow,

We don't blame the plant.

We don't criticize it.

We don't give it a pep talk.

We don't tell it to toughen up,

Just try harder.

Or why can't you be like all of the other plants nearby,

You know,

Just grow.

Instead we look to its environment.

We look to the soil it has.

We look to the amount of sunlight.

We look to the rain,

The quality of the nutrients.

We don't just blame the plant.

And that's the same with us.

With humans,

We need to look to the environment that we're existing in as much as,

You know,

Our own personal resilience or mindset that we often focus on to understand where are the causes of the dysfunction that we're experiencing.

And I think there's this myth that burnout and depression and anxiety and all of these conditions which are rapidly increasing across the world are just part of being human.

That this is just,

You know,

We're a slightly anxious species and this is just,

You know,

We're a bit dysfunctional and humans are the problem.

That I actually think that these conditions are reflective of living in and being human in a deeply dysfunctional culture.

That it's less about what is wrong with us personally and more what is wrong with our environment.

Because when we're living in a world that is constantly reminding us that we're not enough,

It's embedding artificial scarcity into its sales tactics every single day,

Everywhere we go,

Telling us you're not enough in order to buy more.

When we have this disconnect of community and this increasing rise of like hyper individualism,

When we feel like there's never enough time and we're constantly trying to keep up and I just need to get that little bit more done.

And like,

No wonder we're burnt out and stressed.

I think it's a pretty natural reaction to the environment that we're living in a lot of the time.

You're so right.

And I love how you connect the individual experience of being burnt out to the larger societal level because we are so affected by these systems.

And I want to shine light on that today.

So thank you.

Yeah.

You know,

The thing is about burnout,

If it was in just one industry,

When the term was first coined like 30,

40 years ago,

It was actually coined out of kind of activist movements.

And then you saw it a lot in medical and spheres that had very,

Very high pressure situations.

It made sense.

You could see it a bit more there,

But burnout is everywhere now.

It could be in the corporate field.

It can be in change-making spheres.

It can be,

You know,

Just life living through a pandemic.

You know,

We feel burnt out.

So we can't just bring it back to,

Oh,

I,

You know,

I haven't practiced enough gratitude or I haven't learned to be mindful enough or whatever it might be.

Actually the conditions of our culture and of our lives and not suiting our wellbeing.

You're so right.

And I think what we're talking about here is internalizing these toxic systems and cultures that we're a part of.

Right.

And I know the kind of catchphrase for that is internalized capitalism.

Right.

So can you please talk a little bit more about internalized capitalism to help us understand a little bit more about what it is and the most common ways that shows up and expresses itself in us?

Yeah.

So internalized capitalism is the equation of our worth with our productivity or with what we produce.

And many of us,

Like when we hear that statement would go,

No,

That's not me.

You know,

I think I have worth even if I'm not producing,

But it's not necessarily reflected in our actions.

So the ways that internalized capitalism shows up is going into work when we're sick.

That's a big one.

It's gotten a lot better over the last few years,

But even then how many of us have worked from home when we're not feeling particularly well?

Finding it hard to say no,

Or to turn down projects or opportunities that people ask you to do.

Being unable to switch off,

Feeling like you always need to be doing more,

Even when like you're at home,

Like it's late at night,

You're like scrolling on your phone,

But like,

I feel like you've got to just be like,

I'm watching TV and I've got to scrolling my phone and I've got to be cooking dinner and I've got to be on this zoom call,

Like always needing to be doing more.

There's this sense of time scarcity that there's not enough hours in the day that we're crazy busy that we've just got to squeeze a little bit more into this meeting,

Or we'll just power through.

It's like all of these experiences of just rushing through time.

There's also this expression of like extracting from ourselves.

We treat our energy,

We treat our motivation,

We treat our compassion as if these are endless resources within ourselves that should just be there whenever we want them.

You know,

The same way that we extract like fossil fuels and energy from the earth without very little regard for the surrounding environment,

Very little regard for their renewal.

We extract from ourselves.

We're like,

I should just always be able to do this when I want to.

And that's wonderful,

But our bodies are cyclical.

They need replenishment.

They need nourishment.

They can offer us so much,

But not without time to actually care for them.

And the last way I think internalized capitalism shows up is also this,

I'll be happy when syndrome.

You know,

That I'll be happy when I just reach the next milestone,

When I just get the next promotion,

When I just reach the weekend,

That it's always somewhere else and it's always in the future.

And we're always chasing this long,

Linear,

Mythical line where we never quite reach that place.

That in itself is capitalism.

You know,

Capitalism is an ideology as much as it is an economic system.

And these are all the ways that we have kind of internalized the ideology of capitalism to the point that we see it as this is just the way life is.

This is just normal.

And actually this is a culture that has developed over centuries that hasn't necessarily served us.

Oh,

Laura,

This is really eye opening.

I feel extremely called out.

I feel like I personally suffer from everything you just said.

I don't know about anyone listening,

But oh my God.

I mean,

Me too.

That's why I do this work.

So I'm right there with you.

Man.

So I want to go deeper for a minute on something you said,

And that is the scarcity mindset,

Which I know is a byproduct of internalized capitalism because I think it's really pervasive and runs deep in each of us.

And I want to bring that to the surface and bring our awareness to that.

Can you share with us more about scarcity mindset and how that affects us and common symptoms of this mindset?

Yeah.

So one,

I think it's important to say that scarcity is embedded within capitalism.

Capitalism can't function without scarcity.

You don't have endless infinite growth without scarcity being the driver of that growth.

If there was enough,

We were satiated.

If we were satisfied,

We stopped growing and it's not necessarily a bad thing.

We were actually good.

We're satisfied.

We're abundant,

But there's no growth and we define growth as success within capitalism.

So we need scarcity to be driving that.

And it's important to also know when we're talking about abundance and scarcity,

Not to gloss over systemic realities,

That there are people out there who experience not enough food,

Not enough housing,

Not enough clean water,

Not enough connection,

Not enough love,

Not enough security.

All of these things are very,

Very real.

But the issue is not so much genuine scarcity.

I use the term artificial scarcity,

Which I borrowed from Jason Hickel with a strong hat tip to his work,

Because a lot of the time it's actually just scarcity of access.

A third of the food produced in the world is wasted or destroyed or lost all of the time.

There are something like 16 million houses in the US sitting vacant.

The problem is not scarcity of resources,

It's scarcity of access.

So what we're then able to do is to look at,

Okay,

Well,

If it's scarcity of access,

What are all the ways that I can start to explore the ways that I have internalized scarcity and that I perpetuate it?

And this is where we start to get free of the system.

So when I'm talking about the internalization of scarcity,

A really good example is what I mentioned before,

This experience of time.

We live in a culture that says that you can lose time,

Waste time,

Squander time,

Squeeze time.

We have happy hours and we have hump days in the middle of the week.

We're this very long linear line that we see it as,

That we're just taking as much from as we can while it's still there before it runs out.

But not every culture has seen time that way.

Other cultures view time much more cyclical,

As something that repeats itself,

As something that moves in patterns and cycles.

There are other cultures,

In particular indigenous cultures in the Amazon and in South America,

That lack words for time like we experience it.

Their experience of time is a completely different thing.

Their experience of space is a completely different thing.

And this tells us that it's not inherent to being human.

It's just inherent to the way that we are participating and perceiving the world.

So when we are able to see that,

We're able to change the way that we approach it.

So when I notice that I'm feeling super busy and stressed out and there's just not enough hours,

Which is still more common than I would like at times,

I actually asked myself,

What would abundance of time feel like right now?

What would it act like?

What would be different in my thoughts,

My words,

My actions,

If I had an abundance of time?

And from that place,

I'm usually able to slow down a little bit.

I'm able to look at increasing my creativity,

You know,

At being a bit kinder to myself,

At stepping out of that constant hustle mode.

And the more I'm able to do that internally,

The more I'm able to then challenge the way I externally participate in scarcity culture.

As a business owner,

I'm very conscious that the way we're told to market is to tell people this time is running out.

You've got to buy now,

You know,

Or there's limited spots in this online webinar.

They embed this scarcity so that you buy,

So that you have this FOMO response within you.

And I really don't want to do that.

So again,

I look at,

Okay,

What would selling and marketing at the speed of trust look like?

What would an authentic and abundant relationship here look like?

I heard a wonderful question from somebody the other day,

Tom Morley on LinkedIn,

Who said,

What if we replace the word profit with flow?

And we trusted that as enough of us reach our individual flow states that our collective flow would take care of us.

And I found that a really beautiful question because it's the same kind of principle.

What if I operate from a space of enoughness?

And this is where the kind of magic lies,

I think,

Stepping into understanding where am I experiencing scarcity?

Where is it real?

And where is it scarcity of access?

Scarcity of access is figure out-able.

And I really like to drive that home because sometimes it's easy to become passive there and go,

Well,

That's okay,

But I don't have it.

You know,

But it is a solvable problem at the collective level and the individual level in many cases understand systemic realities exist,

But many of us can overcome that.

And then how am I perpetuating this for others?

Wow.

I am learning so much today,

Laura.

And I also want to bring up a few other examples of that internalized scarcity mindset that I think are really important to point out.

So fear of not being enough.

That's a big one.

Nope.

Good enough syndrome.

That is a big one for me too.

Like I've had that for so many years.

Fear of going broke,

Fear of not having enough money.

Big one.

Absolutely.

Huge one.

And not feeling supported or that you have enough people or enough resources to do the work that you need to do.

And these are,

You know,

To an extent,

These make sense,

You know,

In capitalist or capitalist societies,

If you're not working,

Um,

There,

You know,

We see people who are homeless,

Who don't have enough food.

You know,

There are very real possibilities that culture kind of tells you,

At least on an unconscious and not always vocal level that,

Hey,

You know,

If you're not working hard enough,

You know,

If you're not like just keeping ahead,

You're not keeping up with the Joneses,

You're going to end up like way back there.

You're going to end up like starving to death.

You're going to end up living on the streets.

You're going to have no support.

And the sad thing is,

Is that within our culture and within our societies,

That this is actually reality that some people experience.

And that shouldn't be the case because again,

The issue is not genuine scarcity,

It's scarcity of access.

So we need to be shifting those systems on the outside so that we can provide that safety.

You know,

Scarcity and safety are kind of two ends of the coin.

And so part of this work of overcoming the mindset to create the safety within our bodies is so that we're then able to then change our systems to be founded on safety.

Because if we can't experience it first ourselves,

It's very,

Very hard to create in the outside world.

Yes,

Yes,

Exactly.

Honestly,

The whole point of my podcast,

As well as your work,

That connection to internal change and external change.

Two other examples I would just want to bring up of both internalized capitalism and internalized scarcity,

Perfectionism and imposter syndrome.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

I think those two as well,

Like they,

There's such roots in patriarchy and in capitalism for both.

This idea of that we're supposed to be kind of pristine and clean and,

You know,

Perfect and not a hair out of place.

And you know,

For centuries,

Women were supposed to act in a certain way.

They weren't supposed to be too loud.

You know,

They weren't supposed to speak out of place.

They didn't have the same opportunities that we have today.

And even then we're still not on a completely even or level playing field as men in a lot of cases.

So understanding that these things and perfectionism is something that,

You know,

I still work through within myself.

You know,

I have my mantras for it.

I actually said one before the show of like good enough to go safe enough to try to like work through perfectionism,

But understanding that they have roots in culture,

That they have roots in the history of our societies.

Society is what allows us,

I think,

To start seeing them less as personal character flaws,

Less as something that's wrong with us and more as something that's wrong with our society that we need to be part of changing.

I love that.

So,

So important,

Such an important perspective.

It's a total shift in perspective.

And we're talking internalized capitalism and this internalized scarcity mindset.

It impacts our self-love,

Our self-worth,

Our relationship with money,

Our nervous systems,

And therefore our bodies,

Our relationships,

Decisions we make or don't make.

I mean the works basically,

Laura,

Almost every aspect of our lives.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

There's not an area that it doesn't touch.

And I think that's what makes it kind of hard to see the water that we're swimming in at times because it's everywhere.

Exactly.

That's exactly it and that's exactly why the work you're doing is so important because you're bringing awareness and you're also giving tools for change.

So thank you.

And this is all so profound and really scary and sad and it really lights a fire within me to want to build a better world and better systems and better cultures.

And of course,

On top of it all,

Back to burnout,

This internalized capitalism and scarcity mindset play a huge role in leading to burnout and keeping us in a cycle of burnout.

Absolutely.

So let's shift gears now and let's talk about healing and deconditioning and detoxing from these toxic cultures.

What are your best tips and tools for healing burnout?

So burnout is such a big thing to approach.

And when we're looking at burnout,

There are so many different areas that really we need to address.

There's this physical aspect of the body and our nervous system,

Which is a very real thing that we need to learn to work with.

There's this area of our mind and the stories we tell about why we do what we do.

A lot of us carry stories that we need to fix things or save things.

And all of these also carry a danger response that keeps us in this stressed and burnt out mode.

And then the cultural aspect as well.

What are the microcultures of our world like?

You know,

The microcultures of our community,

Of our family,

Not just the giant overarching Western culture,

But the ones that we are actively shaping and participating in.

Now when we've reached burnout,

All of this,

You know,

This isn't an overnight work.

I wish it was.

I could just like,

Just like take a pill or like,

You know,

Flip a switch and everything's kind of good again,

But it takes time.

And I think where that starts is really with the body.

Like if you've like hit burnout and you were like just starting to recover,

I think actually learning to connect with our body is one of the most important things we can do.

You know,

Culturally we live very neck up and a lot of the time when we're burnt out,

We've missed the signs.

We've missed the signals.

We've missed all the red flags,

You know,

The tight shoulders,

The locked jaw,

The butterflies in the stomach,

The headache that we were getting,

You know,

The dryness of our throat.

We missed all of these signs of our body saying that it needs something or that something wasn't aligned for it,

That we didn't really want to do something.

And so coming back to our body and actually reminding it that,

You know what,

I'm here,

I'm listening to you.

I'm going to honor you.

I'm going to do what it is that you would like me to do.

And so that means,

You know,

If I notice that like my shoulders are tense and hunched,

Why?

Why is that happening?

You know,

Is it happening because it's actually a reaction to my,

Me participating in this meeting or in this group or volunteering for this thing that I don't really want to be doing?

And if so,

How can I honor my body?

So coming back to the body,

Listening to it,

Creating safety,

Reconnecting with it is one of the biggest things.

And for a lot of us,

We're not aware that we feel in our body.

I wasn't for a long time.

You know,

I remember like being in my like mid twenties and like really discovering that like my emotions are like seated in my body.

It wasn't very conscious for me.

It took me a long time to actually get to know that and to realize,

Oh,

Okay.

Yeah.

So this feeling in my chest,

Oh,

That's anxiety.

Oh,

Okay.

What,

What's underneath that?

You know,

What's coming up.

So having that experience is what guides us.

Once we're able to do that for a bit to kind of really heal our relationship to self,

You know,

And again,

This is very Western thing to be disconnected from our body.

We think the mind is more important than everything else.

And there's a lot of science now that's telling us that's not entirely true,

That it's not all the brain.

You also need to look at,

Am I doing what's right for me?

Am I actually living the life that I want?

Because a lot of the time we're not.

And so that's partly why we're burnt out.

And then what agency do I have to change that?

Where can I look at why I'm doing what I'm doing?

And can I do it from a place of service or from a place of love and not just in our mind,

But genuinely transforming that within our approach.

And then from there we start to look at the culture,

But I think that actually comes last.

You know,

We need to kind of do this self work first and this self healing,

Then we can go out and start to change the spaces that we're participating in.

Yeah,

I think you're right and I think that's actionable piece that you can start today,

Returning to your body,

Doing that self work.

And I wanted to give a little personal update on where I'm at with healing from my burnt out state that I shared in the last episode on this topic.

I would still say I'm burnt out,

But I've been making changes and making progress.

And I would say I'm better off now than I was a few months ago,

Which is great.

My goal these past few months has been spaciousness.

I've been giving myself more time and space to do nothing,

To just be,

To sit with my body and my emotions,

To really process how I actually am in each moment,

Which is how I actually became more present these past few months,

Even despite my burnout.

And I've been taking more guilt free and shame free naps,

Which has been life changing.

And it's now one of my favorite things that I look forward to and I highly recommend.

And I still work full time during the week,

But I've been setting firm boundaries at my job,

Actually taking my vacation days,

Saying no more to reduce the workload on my plate.

I've stopped working late for the most part and reclaimed more time during the week.

And I've been trying to reduce the stress and overwhelm that I feel at work because doing every task in a stressed out state was not sustainable and not good for my wellbeing.

And all of these changes have made a difference.

That sense of spaciousness,

You know,

That is such a beautiful term.

How do we create spaciousness?

I'd love to ask you a question,

Which is,

You know,

Did you find it challenging at first to create that because sometimes we have ideas that,

You know,

We don't,

I don't have the time to be spacious.

How did you get over that initial challenge to actually go,

Yeah,

You know,

I'm going to intentionally do this?

Yeah,

That's a great question.

For me,

I started with taking half days,

At least one day a week.

And I thought that was spaciousness.

That was my initial step and it did help.

So I wasn't working all day,

Every day,

Five days in a row.

So I had that half day.

I tried to take it mostly on Fridays,

Whether it was the morning or the afternoon,

Depending on my work.

But the problem there is initially the first couple of months of me doing that,

I was working later every other day that week to make up for it.

So in reality,

I actually had less spaciousness because then I had no time the other four days of the work week.

I would,

Was literally just working,

Sleeping and barely surviving,

Even though I had that spaciousness that extra day.

So where I really found the spaciousness and again,

I'm talking the Monday through Friday work grind here is when I set that boundary to stop working late,

No matter what was on my to-do list,

No matter my deadlines,

I did my job.

I'm working 40 hours,

But I'm not giving my job that extra time,

That extra time late at night,

You know,

During the week.

So I'm still taking the half day on Fridays,

Let's say,

But then also stopping work,

You know,

At five o'clock,

Let's say all the other days.

And that was the sweet spot where I found the spaciousness during the work week.

And then the other part with spaciousness is that part of just being.

So it's not something to just check off your to-do list.

Even if it's only five minutes,

It's five minutes of truly having no agenda and no distractions and that time to actually,

You know,

Turn inwards.

And I'm not even talking about meditation here.

This is like separate from my meditation practice,

Which I think is an important distinction just to,

Even if I'm standing,

Sometimes I'm sitting,

Sometimes I'm standing,

Sometimes I'm going outside.

I I'm actually like,

Even if my eyes are open,

I'm turning inward and I'm saying,

How does my body feel in this moment?

Where's the tension?

How deep is my breath?

That's a big one.

Cause I feel like we're often walking around with breathing really shallowly.

So can I just take a deep breath in this moment?

And so that's how I was able to find the spaciousness.

I love that.

You know,

I think that that choice of boundaries that,

You know,

That reminder that actually we have agency,

We have a choice in how we participate in the world is so important because what you're kind of describing there reminds me of this term at the moment,

You know,

Quiet quitting,

You know,

Which I actually kind of love that term,

You know,

That it's like,

Well,

Actually I'm going in and I'm doing my job and I'm doing everything that I'm supposed to and I'm giving it my all for the time that I'm there,

But I'm not giving it my entire life.

I'm not giving it,

You know,

18 hours of my day.

And there's some respect to that,

That we have a boundary to say,

This is my work.

I love my work.

This is what I'm going to do.

And here is where I go home.

And here is where I start to explore what else is happening within me.

You know,

Walking the other day,

I,

I slowed down and I just watched the birds and I watched the trees and I watched the sky.

And it's this beautiful experience that,

You know,

This 10 minute walk becomes something that adds that sense of spaciousness.

That's like what you're saying into our everyday experiences.

Yes,

Exactly.

Walks being in nature,

That's,

I think really builds that spaciousness.

So Laura,

Taking this even further,

How can we decondition from internalized capitalism and the scarcity mindset while still living in a capitalist society?

So I think it comes down to a little bit of what we were just talking about,

Which is,

You know,

Agency,

That we have choice in the matter.

It is so easy to say,

Oh,

Well,

Yeah,

The culture is the problem,

But you know,

I,

I can't change that.

And that's,

You know,

That's just the way the culture is.

And so therefore,

Of course,

I'm this way.

Actually we have far more power and far more choice and decisions than we actually think we do.

Every day in every moment,

We choose how we show up in the world.

And this is what I learned growing up.

This is when I say that my love of personal development teachings is this is what they instilled in me is that we have choice.

So when we are,

We have to go to work,

We have to pay the bills.

We all have lives.

You know,

There are certain things that we have to do,

But we can choose,

Is this actually serving me?

Is this the only way that I have to do this?

Can I choose the energy with which I'm approaching today?

Can I choose to slow down for those five minutes?

Can I choose to set boundaries over my time?

Can I choose to examine why I'm doing what I'm doing and do I actually even enjoy it?

The average life on earth is something like 4,

000 weeks,

Which when you frame it as that is so incredibly short 4,

000 weeks.

So how do we want to spend them?

And that again,

Brings us back to this idea of a larger framework of time,

A larger space in which to view our lives,

In which to re-examine why we do things.

And then knowing that we have some level of power and choice gives us the possibility to choose again.

And I think that's how we start to change the culture.

That's how we get free while we're living within it.

And there are other tools.

I think entrepreneurship is a wonderful way to break free of capitalism and to choose to do things on your own terms,

But it's not for everybody and that's okay.

But it's also then,

Okay,

What are the ways I've internalized the system?

How can I choose again?

What is aligned with my authentic nature?

Where am I finding my new compass from?

And then making those decisions.

This is a really important message.

Thank you,

Laura.

And I've heard you talk about this term,

Getting free before.

And is this what we mean?

This deconditioning,

This is getting free.

Yeah,

I think so.

You know,

Getting free is about releasing all of the structures and the ideas that tell us we need to be someone other than who we actually are.

So when I'm talking about,

I'm getting free of toxic cultures,

Not community,

Not tradition.

These things have wonderful things that they offer us.

I think John O'Donoghue,

The poet,

Has a wonderful line that tradition is to community as memory is to the individual.

So like there are beautiful things about our culture as well.

But there's also a lot of toxic ideas.

And so getting free is about,

Okay,

Like where are these ideas that are keeping me stuck in perfectionism?

Where are these ideas that are keeping me stuck in I'm not ready yet?

Where are these ideas that are keeping me stuck in?

I don't have enough.

I'm not enough.

There is not enough.

And then getting free of them allows us to create something new,

Something new to emerge,

Something new to be born and to see what comes out of that space.

Yes.

And I believe our best life,

Our most joyous and free life requires this deconditioning,

Requires this getting free.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

And Laura,

Once we break free from this scarcity mindset,

The other side of that is abundance,

Right?

That's when abundance becomes available to us.

So what does it look like and feel like to live in a state of thriving and to see the world through abundance instead of scarcity?

This is such a good question.

I think there's a few different ways,

You know,

And everyone's experience of this will be different,

But to me,

Abundance tastes like freedom.

So those two things are very linked in my mind.

What feels free?

What feels liberating?

That is very often tied to abundance.

But I also think when we're looking at abundance is looking at the way and our relationship to power as well.

It's less about power over,

It's less about domination,

Which is all that supremacy culture is based on,

You know,

All the patriarchy,

All that white supremacy,

All that capitalism is based on,

Something being over one another.

And this is inherent to kind of our Western mindset and to,

You know,

What's developed over centuries and possibly even longer.

So we're shifting out of power over and into power with,

Into claiming our power and to knowing that power doesn't have to be used as a force.

It doesn't have to be about pushing something else,

You know,

That can have its own generator.

So that's another experience that I think abundance gives us because again,

Looking scarcity tends to drive domination.

So abundance,

I believe,

Creates shared power.

It creates community.

And I think abundance also feels like connection.

It feels like safety,

Like trust and honor and reverence and awe and possibility and all of these things that we can cultivate,

That we can seek them out and transform our relationship to them.

You know,

How many of us can experience wonder just by watching children play or by watching a sunset or by watching the birds fly and that taking time to slow down and spend that time in that experience of awe,

I think,

I think that's very closely tied to abundance.

Yes,

This is the world I want to live in.

Abundance is also an energy and a mindset that we can tap into.

And this is a shift from fear and lack to gratitude and abundance,

A shift from lower frequencies and vibrations to higher frequencies and vibrations.

It's changing your relationship to money and healing the wounds you have around money.

It's also bringing more gratitude into your day to day life,

All the way down to the food you eat in the water you drink.

As Eckhart Tolle says,

Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.

And it also requires raising your self-worth and feeling worthy to receive abundance because the universe only gives us what we think we're worthy to receive.

And abundance is also being generous with others without any expectations,

Being of service.

It's shifting from fear of not having enough to trust that there will always be more and trust that there is enough for everybody.

As Wayne Dyer says,

Abundance is not something we acquire.

It is something we tune into.

I do love Wayne Dyer.

That's a beautiful quote of his.

So Laura,

Let's talk about the connection between internal change and external change for a minute.

How can shifting out of burnout and scarcity and into abundance ourselves help the world?

So I think when we're talking about changing the world,

I think what we're really looking for is not just like small incremental steps to the system as it is.

We're looking to really transform the world from as it is to as it could be.

And so we're looking kind of at total transformation.

And when we're looking at transformation,

We're really looking to,

And this is where the getting free comes in.

This is where it's about actually,

Well,

How am I participating in a system?

Because it's not enough to just kind of make a change without then also looking at the ways that we might unconsciously create that change again.

And this is something that really matters to activists or anybody who is involved in community change or in changing systems or policies or any of the external work that we do.

We need to be careful not to recreate or to perpetuate systems that we're trying to dismantle.

This is why the inner work matters because what good is a new economic system if we are still infusing it with scarcity and hierarchy.

What good is feminism if it's not also challenging white supremacy too,

If we're not also looking at what it means to step beyond supremacy culture altogether.

So this work of doing the work ourselves matters because the more of us who do this,

The more of us who challenge our participation in systems changes the system.

The systems change when we change.

So there is a play to this of like,

Is it chicken or egg is in our outer first and I really think it's both together.

It's not enough to just do the inner work and to ignore the problems in the world.

And it's also not enough to focus on changing the external reality without looking at the psyche and the conditions that have led to its creation.

But this joining of them is really where it begins.

So understanding that where I'm following what is true for us,

Following what I am being called to do will lead me into the world and it will lead me into doing the work that I am supposed to do to be part of its healing and to be part of its transformation.

Yes,

Exactly.

And I also think we can both agree that we can't create the new world we are all seeking from a burnt out state or from a place of fear or lack.

Absolutely because when we're burnt out,

We haven't like we lose our creativity.

We lose our joy.

We become,

You know,

Really cynical.

We're exhausted.

We have nothing to offer.

Not really.

That is not where we do our best work.

So creating the space within ourselves to feel good,

To nourish ourselves,

It gives us a much more imaginative sphere to work from a much more creative sphere.

It opens up new possibilities.

And on top of that,

You know,

We tend to connect with people better.

You know,

We relate to people better and so much of change is relational work.

It's changing these hearts and these minds and our connections,

And we deserve to feel good while we do that.

And we work better feeling good while we do that.

Laura,

I'm just so grateful our paths crossed.

I really enjoyed this conversation today.

Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and perspective.

I have one final important question for you.

What is your vision for the future of humanity and the earth?

I love this question.

It's so big.

So I'll go with a big answer.

I would like to see a world that embraced the many different ways of being human and that embraced many different cultures.

And that was much less attached to this idea of supremacy and hierarchy.

That one way is better than another.

That my way is the superior way and the only way or the way of civilization or the way of the future or whatever it might be.

That accepting that there are many different ways and many different paths that we are all supposed to walk.

And I would love to see more of us with that in mind,

Following our own inner compass,

Trusting what is true for us,

Focusing on our connection to ourselves,

Our connection to the earth.

And in doing so,

I think we could start to reevaluate our relationship to the earth,

To the climate crisis,

To the extinction loss that we're facing.

I think we could reimagine our relationship to each other.

So breaking down the continual cycles of violence,

The continual cycles of harm that we perpetuate.

All of this takes time and it takes work.

But I think that is my vision.

One that sees the many different ways of being human.

We presented a lot of ideas and concepts today,

And I encourage you to do some reflection.

Ask yourself,

Who would you be if internalized capitalism and scarcity mindset released their hooks in you?

Imagine what would you do with your life if you weren't driven by scarcity,

Fear,

And lack.

Consider in what areas of your life do you already feel abundant?

And in what areas of your life can you tap into abundance more?

Imagine what would the world look like if more people shifted from burnt out to thriving?

I'll end today with a quote from Laura.

May we plant tiny seeds of revolution within us so that we embody the change we seek.

It's time to detox from toxic culture so you can listen to your inner knowing and navigate to a more just,

Regenerative,

And equitable world.