Makena: Hi, everyone.

Gigi: Hello, everyone. I feel like I haven’t been on here in ages.

Makena: Yeah, it’s been a while now that we’re doing every other week instead of every week.

Gigi: It stretches out.

Makena: Yeah. Today we have a topic for you that is very relevant for me in general and also right now with being a new mom. So, yeah, it came up and we thought we would, instead of Gigi just teaching me what to do privately, we would put it on the air. So that’ll be fun. And the topic is control. 

So first of all, what do we mean by control? I think, Gigi, this is something we see a lot, not just with me, but with women that we work with. And I think successful, high-powered women often, what makes them successful can also kind of, on the other side, become too controlling or too structured. Yeah, I think controlling is probably the word because they’re not necessarily always structured people, right?

Gigi: Yeah, yeah. Like you said, it’s something you use to get ahead and is needed. Even though some people aren’t that structured, they have to be maybe in their business, in their work. So it becomes this—you spend all day acting like that, and then when you leave and go home, it’s really hard to turn off. 

Especially if you’ve seen yourself be effective and it gets results, but often we don’t see those results in our home life. It’s a very, very different thing. People aren’t going to respond the same way they do in a business situation. But that’s not just what this is about. We’re talking about control all over the place, right?

Makena: Yeah. For me, even though I’m focused on motherhood right now, I am finding it coming up very strongly. We were talking about that before we got on today, that I think something about the lack of sleep and just being a little less regulated because there’s so much more going on—something about that state makes me want to control even more, to hold it all together. I’m just finding that there’s limits to that. 

I can’t control everything, nor do I really want to, but it’s a habit or a pattern. Probably learned from earlier stages when I was super career and business-focused and didn’t have a family. But it’s carried over here. I think we see it in all kinds of women.

Gigi: Yeah, and the issue with it is it doesn’t allow you to ever really relax because you’re always kind of what we call business micromanaging instead of letting things flow. We could go a lot of different directions, because in business I see this too. Even if women are doing it, it’s made them effective; in the long run, it doesn’t work. In the long, long run.

Makena: Yeah.

Gigi: People don’t like to be controlled.

Makena: Yeah. And if you’re listening to this, you might not identify with the word “control,” but you might identify with perfectionism or trying to hold it all together. Like you said, Gigi, before we got on, not wanting to drop any balls, right? 

Can you talk a little bit about how this starts there—which seems innocent enough—but then it extends out to almost controlling other people?

Gigi: Again, you want things to be perfect, or you want to have everything working. If we do certain things and it’s effective and gets results, then we’re going to think, “Okay, I’ll use this everywhere.” So it becomes a habit, which feels like it’s holding everything together or making sure the balls aren’t dropping. But the truth is, it starts to create resistance in you, but also in your partnerships—or in business, the same thing with people. They start resisting, and maybe they resist quietly, but in that, there’s also a pushback that starts to happen. Then, what happens is funny, you get even more perfectionistic, right? 

This is funny to bring up right now because I’ve been watching my grandkids for the last week, which has been a blessing and fun and challenging. I noticed that when I would get tired and my nervous system was dysregulated, then I would want to stop this, stop that—I would start being overly controlling, trying to put order in because I wasn’t regulated. It wasn’t just that they weren’t regulated; I wasn’t regulated. So I had to step back and go, “Okay, how do I set myself up, something where I feel regulated each day as well?”

Makena: Yeah. You were telling me about your coffee ritual. Can you share?

Gigi: Yeah, everybody knows my little coffee. I was here—they have this gorgeous view of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco and the water and everything. There’s nothing like sitting in front of that window. That’s why I moved the furniture. I moved the sofa to be in front of the window because I love sitting in the morning, having my cappuccino, and just staring out a window or whatever. I put it there, and then every morning for the last three mornings, I would get up and that’s what I would do. I would sit there and just look out the window—the view is beautiful. 

Then the kids would do it with me. We watched the sunset one day, so it became this spot for me that I carved out, and then they had to come into my energy instead of me going out to them all the time, which really worked.

Makena: It’s so interesting because so many of these things are lessons that I really learned in business and you really taught me over the years. I feel like I learned them, and I integrated them, and I shifted the way that I approached my life and my work. Now, being a mom, I’m having to relearn them over again. It’s so interesting. What comes up in me when you share these things is like, “Oh, well, there’s not enough time to get everything done,” or, “If I don’t hold it all together, it’s all going to fall.” Those old thought processes that I know aren’t true because I’ve experienced the alternative, right? 

I’ve had those thoughts before when I was just focused on career and partnership, and then I really shifted things. You guided me, you mentored me, and I started to approach things differently. It’s just interesting to self-reflect and go, “Okay, all those same thoughts are coming up now, and I feel even more justified in them because I have a child.” 

But I know on some level it’s not true. It’s an energy you get into, a mode that you get into. Like you’re saying, one thing is slowing down internally almost. It’s taking those little moments and carving them out. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, sitting with my cup of coffee,” right? 

But I’m constantly multitasking—I’m drinking my cup of coffee while doing something, while nursing Sienna, while… Instead, to just take those moments like you’re saying, even if it’s just five minutes, to slow down or actually sit down and eat my food, instead of standing by the kitchen counter and eating.

Gigi: So much of my work has been around ritual and rhythm. Ritual and rhythm, right? Those little rituals go out the window, and then again, you’re at a new phase in life, and you think, “Oh, those aren’t so important,” but they’re so, so important. You said that when you’re feeding Sienna, you’re doing all kinds of things, but the truth is, if you sat there and just fed Sienna for 15 or 20 minutes and didn’t do anything else, didn’t look at your phone, you would calm down completely. 

She would calm down, she would feel your energy, and that presence and attentiveness would really increase your energy and your ability to do what you need to do during the day.

Makena: Which I’ve experienced before. Again, I’ve learned this through experience, so I can tell you guys listening who don’t believe this, that it is true. It’s hard when you’re in the middle of it; you’re like, “Yeah, that doesn’t make any sense.” Or it might make sense, but you’re just like, “I don’t know, there’s so much to do.” 

But you were telling a story, Gigi, about the laundry, which is great—also an applicable one to where I am right now. Do you want to share about that?

Gigi: Yeah, it’s so funny. Here, same thing. These kids are nine and five, so a lot of stuff, a lot of school, a lot of things going on. There’s laundry every day, right? So much laundry. I kept on thinking I should do laundry, and then I thought, “Wait a minute, I’m not going to do laundry. I’ll wait until Saturday.” Then I’ll do laundry, get it started. I did that—it was so simple, there was no pressure. That was a simple little system, where I see a lot of times moms are trying to keep up with laundry all week. 

The truth is, it was super easy to do the laundry on Saturday. I could throw it in, and we could go out, we went to the park, did all kinds of things, come back. It worked within my schedule because we didn’t have the tight school schedule. Just something like that, that’s going more with the flow of the energy of what’s happening instead of, in my mind, what I think should be happening.

Makena: Yeah, I tried to do something similar, and then I’ve kind of forgotten about it. I need to do laundry a lot more than once a week at this point—just with a small baby, you go through a lot of stuff. But I had started at one point to do kind of like every other day. So every other day, instead of just trying to keep it up constantly, I would put a load in, and hang it up, or whatever that was. 

Or sometimes I could stretch it to three days, right. Even just that little bit, like you’re saying, instead of running around constantly doing, doing, doing, treating a simple… Like you said, rituals are more like the coffee, and rhythm is what’s that rhythm of the way you’re approaching your days, right?

Gigi: Yeah, and to get yourself calmed down—for me, this is what I know because this is what I do in my work—if I sit with myself and I get connected to myself and I have a little bit of time for that, then when I work with people, I’m present, I’m there, and I go into it with my energy, instead of taking on their energy. I was here with the kids and I thought, “Why don’t I do that with the kids,” because that’s the way I raised my kids too. When I did that, then they came into my energy. 

Then it wasn’t this trying to run around and make sure everything was handled for them. Now, of course, we did a lot of that still, but little tweaks like that made a big, big difference. I think the other piece is the acceptance of learning that you’re navigating a next stage. Again, your life has an added complexity to it now because you have another person in your life. Right. So one of the biggest things that I think, especially because we work with a lot of women, is to learn to tap into the flow of the way things want and let go of wanting to hold everything together all the time. We talked about, when you wake up at night—you want to share that?

Makena: Yeah. I often wake up super early with the baby. Sometimes I wake up at six-something, which is our normal time, but sometimes I’m up nursing Sienna at 4:30 and then I can’t go back to sleep, and I start running around the house doing everything that needs to be done. How much time can I maximize to get things done before she wakes up for the day, or what have you. So tell me what you would tell me about that.

Gigi: Yeah, we talked about spending that quality time first sitting with Sienna. The other thing is to really go with the flow because a lot of times when people wake up like that, they’re frustrated, or there’s resistance, or they try to go back to sleep. I learned a long time ago that when I wake up like that, not to resist—maybe get up, read a nice book. You could even do that while you’re feeding Sienna at some points. So you start to go with what’s happening, instead of being frustrated and trying to fit things in, like you said, wanting to get up and get all these things done first.

Makena: Yeah, I really have learned the one from you over the years of not resisting. The frustration doesn’t happen for me—it probably does for some people listening, like you wake up in the middle of the night and you’re just stressed that you can’t go back to sleep. Now I pretty much shut that one down. I’m like, all right, I just go with it. I think where I get to continue to refine is, like you said, not just jumping into a million different things, like taking a few minutes to relax and not to scroll on my phone or something. Really drink my coffee, read a book, or listen to some music in the bath, or whatever it is if she’s not awake yet. Yeah, definitely.

Gigi: And then really to prioritize what’s important, because you can’t handle all the things you were handling before.

Makena: Yeah. I had a moment when I was visiting you just last week or the week before, where the way that I’ve operated up to now, I can’t really operate anymore because there’s just too many channels at once. We were, I think, packing to go home, so I’m navigating feeding Sienna, pumping, trying to get everything packed for our trip, getting us to the airport, just all the different pieces. In the past, I could do that sequentially in my brain: “Here’s all the things that need to happen, this is going to happen, and then that, then that.” I had this moment where, between the loss of sleep and the complexity of how much is going on, I cannot hold all of this in my brain. 

I just had to let it go and be like, “Okay, I just get to do one thing and then do the next thing and then do the next thing,” and not worry about micromanaging every moment. I’ve done that in the past because I’m worried I’m not going to get things done in time or something’s going to fall through the cracks. But it was just like, okay, there’s literally no way. It was actually the moment that sparked the idea for this episode, where I was just like, oh, it was an interesting aha—like, I can’t hold it all together. It’s just not possible at this stage.

Gigi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you start to let go and go with the flow, things work differently. It’s almost that thing we talk about all the time with allowing, and just allowing things to happen. Things are going to fall through the cracks, and you have to be okay with that. If there are things that are important, need to be prioritized, then that’s what you have to really make your list about; how do those get handled, and how do you and your partner support each other in that? It’s also great to know, what do you love to manage and maybe what does he love to manage, and how can you work together in a teamwork, doing what you want to do? That way it doesn’t become about you managing him as well.

Makena: That’s something we were talking about with you when we were there. I think you encouraged me to do this—I wrote down everything I manage and everything he manages. Because we’ve done this to some degree before in the household with who takes on what areas, but I just took another look at it. Are there things that I am managing that I can’t or don’t want to? Do we need to have another conversation about this to shift priorities? It was interesting. 

What I realized was that for me right now, it wasn’t actually about managing less currently; there weren’t other things that I was like, “Oh, I really need him to take this on.” I realized that I hadn’t been taking any time to myself, just to myself. I was either watching Sienna on my own, or in family time or time with Sunny, and we were watching her together. That was interesting to see, so we decided one night a week that he would put her to bed and do everything, and I would fully take that evening off, and then we’ll do the same for him as well.

Gigi: Right.

Makena: So he has a full evening. It was just interesting to write it all out and go, there isn’t actually anything I feel super called to hand off at this moment. The other thing we did was decide that weekly we would touch base and talk about what’s working, what’s not working in that regard, and is there anything that needs to shift? Especially for the moms listening, things are changing a lot when you have young babies. That’s a good practice we’re putting into place. In general, that tip of each person, if you’re in a partnership, having certain things you own has been huge for us over the years. 

Sunny handles the cars, almost anything with the cars. I book our travel. We have certain areas that we both get to own.

Gigi: Yeah, which is great because there’s so much frustration that happens. Like, “I just wish he would book our travel,” or “I wish…” People don’t sit down and just talk about these things. When you talk about them, it just clears out so much, because so much of the breakdowns are emotional breakdowns, as you can see.

Makena: Yeah, absolutely. That was huge, too. You did a VIP day with us when we were visiting you. Gigi gave us all, for Christmas—all of her kids—VIP coaching days with her last year. Sunny and I finally used ours, and that was huge, because so much… That’s the other thing I realized this week when I came home, I felt so much more spaciousness, but nothing had changed in terms of what I was doing. 

I realized so much of it was the emotional buildup, things we weren’t on the same page about, just things that had been building up. When we cleared that out, you supported us to do that in our coaching day, things felt very different. I felt so much lighter, I didn’t feel so stressed. So much of it, like you’re saying, is the emotional side as well.

Gigi: Yeah, like you said, we got through what would have taken hundreds of hours between the two of you.

Makena: Yeah. What we did in four hours—it was insane because we had had so many conversations and had been trying to navigate some of this stuff for months about being new parents and all the different pieces. We were able to clear so much out. Of course, we’re still implementing, and it will take us a while to implement everything that you shared or helped us with, but, yeah, it was hugely powerful. Thank you again for that.

Gigi: You’re welcome.

Makena: The emotional side is one part sometimes of the control or perfectionism, the trying to hold it all together. The other one, like you said before, is just if you’re tired or dysregulated. Often, we overreact by trying to put order to our space or everything we need to do.

Gigi: Yeah.

Makena: It can come out as control or perfectionism.

Gigi: The other one I had mentioned to you, which is sometimes I see perfectionism or control happens because people aren’t good at things, so they overcompensate for them. I remember a client talking—she’s doing spreadsheets and all these different things, and I think it’s not really her wheelhouse. 

She becomes overly controlling about that because for her, it’s difficult. I do that sometimes; I see that if it’s an area that I don’t understand and I’m trying to hold it all together. That’s another one, where if you can—in your business, let’s say—find people who are good at those things that you are not good at and turn them over to them, just like you’re doing in your home. Look at those areas of where someone excels and really give them those opportunities to excel in that area and take that off your plate.

Makena: It’s interesting. As you were talking, I was just thinking about how it’s a good reminder for me. Although I am very organized and structured—and that’s a skill set I’ve developed—I often think and had forgotten that a lot of that developed out of not really being that way. When I was young, naturally I was maybe even the opposite, a little messy and just all over the place with some things, and I developed this, almost overcompensated. 

I went the other way and thought I need to learn to hold all these things together and structure. It’s an interesting reminder for me. Some of this isn’t truly, naturally how I am. I’ll give the example of my sister, Brianna, who is an amazing organizer. 

For her, we talk about aliveness: for her, it’s so natural and fun and it brings her life. I’m always like, wow, because for me, it’s not actually like that. 

In our World Changer Quiz—if you don’t know, we have a free quiz called the World Changer Quiz at worldchangerquiz.com—we talk about visionaries, which you are, and connectors, which I am, and arrangers, which I’d say Brianna probably is. An arranger is more the systems and structures person. You and I both have learned a lot of arranger skills, but you’re more the visionary, and I’m more the people person and the connector. 

Often, I relate to myself as an arranger, and I’m just remembering—that’s not the distinction, what brings you alive. That’s not what brings me alive. It’s great for me to reconnect to that. I can do some arranging, I don’t mind that, but it’s not my highest aliveness. If I try to do too much of it, I put myself into this energy that’s just not the best for me. 

Sunny had a beautiful vision, just to maybe start to close on this. I asked him the other day about his vision for something, and he painted this whole picture of coming home, and I’m walking down the stairs holding our daughter, and I’m super relaxed, in my energy, flowing. He painted this whole picture, and I thought, oh my god, that’s what he really wants.

I don’t remember how it all came up—we were maybe talking about all the things around the house because he’s always like, “Just let it be a little messy,” and I’m like, “Well, I don’t think you’d actually want that,” right? Then I realized, it’s not about whether the place is messy or not or everything’s done or not; what he wants more than anything is for me to be relaxed, for me to be in my energy. I’m always orienting to “everything needs to look good,” or be “done,” I don’t know how to describe it.

Gigi: I know you. You always are trying to get to the end of your list.

Makena: Yeah, I’m always trying to get to the end.

Gigi: The list never ends.

Makena: I get to the end of it all the time for, like, an hour or so…

Gigi: Then there’s another list. You should just relax around that one.

Makena: Oh my gosh, yes. But that vision he shared is so true in partnerships. A lot of times—again, this is not always true that it’s the woman and the man; sometimes the roles are reversed—but a lot of times we see that the woman gets into this kind of energy of perfectionism or trying to hold it all together or whatever that might be. Ultimately, our partners want us to be happy, relaxed, in flow. They want quality time; our kids too, for people who have kids that are a little older.

Gigi: It’s a tough one because women have gone into business, and business brings a certain kind of energy. But you can balance that out too. You’re right on—your partner wants you to be happy and fulfilled and enjoying yourself. You can still be doing business, but from a place of relaxation, which is the orientation. It’s a shift in the orientation, and it is a design thing.

Makena: Tell me what you mean by that.

Gigi: Well, it’s just like when you guys were young, the design we put into place is what made things work; otherwise, they wouldn’t have worked. Two little kids, like I’ve been watching my grandchildren, two parents working, and no additional support—once in a while they have a nanny. Just that, to me, there’s a design breakdown to be able to manage all that and manage it so it really works for everybody.

Makena: Yeah. 

So for people who are working, what’s the distinction there for them to design it so that they can…

Gigi: Yeah, and that women want to let go and enjoy and feel relaxed and feel more feminine. Of course they do. Some women would say no, or “I feel very feminine,” but in their energy, they’re not feminine. There’s too much structure to it.

Makena: Yeah, I would say it’s like the secret longing of so many women—to feel, even if you don’t call it feminine, to feel more relaxed, more in flow, like they can let go. It feels like, and again I’m speaking from the inside of it even though I’ve learned this lesson before, it feels like it’s not possible when you’re in it. It feels like there’s no way or if you do that, everything’s going to fall apart or something’s going to… I don’t know what it is, right? But the truth is, again, that shift in orientation—if you start from that place, everything else flows easier.

Gigi: Start from what place?

Makena: From that place of being centered in yourself, more relaxed.

Gigi: And then what do you want? Your partner wants that, but what do you want? If we’re super clear about that, there’s absolutely a way to co-create that with your partner in that feeling. You’ve seen me do that with you several times, where you think, “You can’t do this, it’s too much pressure,” and then I say, “Yes, you can, it’s in your mind.”

Makena: Remind me what you mean by that.

Gigi: Even when you were feeling so much pressure and I told you to take three weeks off, you were like, “No, no,” anxiety. I said, “Three weeks, absolutely, you can take three weeks off. You’re going to have to organize a few things and do a few things, maybe you have to take a couple of calls, but mostly you’ll take that time off.” There is a way, but again, we’re too controlling in ourselves to see that life wants us to flow. There is a flow to life, and that’s when you start to design. Do you design that flow around what you want, what your relationship wants, what your partnership wants, instead of compartmentalizing? 

Because this is the thing that we get into from being in business—it has to be structured: I go home, I do this. There is an energy flow that can happen through your life that will get you what you want. It doesn’t mean you won’t be pressured sometimes, doesn’t mean things won’t be working, but you’ll be in the right orientation to where you will still gain energy from it.

Makena: Yeah. The image that comes to me—I can’t remember where I heard this originally, but it’s a great reminder—is like a leaf in the river: Are you swimming against the current or going with the current? What you’re sharing is so beautiful; there is a flow that wants to happen through you, with you, around you, but if you’re constantly trying to manage it all and hold it all together, there’s no room for that. 

When I think about you, this is one of your great gifts, maybe natural, or maybe cultivated, or both… But it’s one of the things I’m always trying to learn from you, and I’ve learned so much, but there’s always more. So many people, in our modern ways of living and culture and technology—it’s really a lost art.

Gigi: It is a lost art.

Makena: Yes.

Gigi: That’s why I still want to do my Arts of a Woman training.

Makena: Yeah, about that.

Gigi: Yeah.

Makena: Absolutely. Oh my gosh, we could talk forever on this topic. I feel like I just got a coaching session, so thank you. Great topic and hopefully you all enjoyed it, took something away from it. Anything else you want to share, Gigi?

Gigi: No, that feels complete.

Makena: Please rate the podcast on whatever platform you listen; that’s super helpful for us. Share this episode with someone you think could get value from it, and have a beautiful start to your holiday season.

Gigi: For those of you who do Thanksgiving, happy holidays and happy Thanksgiving!

Makena: Thank you. See you next time. Thank you. Bye!