The Cure for Stress & Pressure.

Gigi: Welcome. We are back! Hello, Makena. 

Makena: Hello. We’re back. We are so excited!

Gigi: Yeah, This is fun. We just get to talk and share, so it’s super fun.

So today, we’re going to talk about: “Every Pressure Needs A System.” 

I love this topic because it just begins to simplify things in life. We’ve used it so much.

I used it with my clients for many, many years.

I came up with this because, in working with high-performing women often, I saw that they were doing so many different things and overwhelmed. 

When we started to see where there was the most pressure for them, attend to the highest pressures, and get a system in place, it freed them up to be more and more in their sweet spot.

Makena: What is your sweet spot? What does mean?

Gigi: That is their unique gifts, what they do well. 

Often we go into business, and we think, “I want to do this business. It’s exciting.”

And then all of a sudden, a year you’re into the business, and you go, “Oh my gosh, I’m doing all the details, and I’m not doing anything of what I’m really good at.” 

Makena: “Where’s that freedom that I was hoping for?”

Gigi: Yeah, exactly! “I’m taking out the trash.” 

Makena: “I’m crunching all the numbers. Doing all the admin.”

Gigi: We’ve used it so much with our clients and also with our business – with you. 

Because when we started, you were handling everything, so much of the details. 

How did we shift that? What did you do? 

Makena: I do want to say if you’re listening to this and you haven’t yet listened to our episode If I Don’t Hold It All Together, I Feel Like Everything Will Fall Apart, I think that’s a really good precursor to this episode. 

Because that is also the emotional part behind all of this, and even once you address the emotional part, there’s still the reality of pressures in your life and breakdowns.

I think for me, beyond getting through the trying, taking it all on myself, once I said, “Okay, we do need systems here. I am willing to let some of this go and get support.”

You really had me start by looking at where and what are all the things that I really didn’t enjoy doing in the business. 

What drained my energy the most? 

Similar to what we had you all do if you’ve been listening since the beginning of this podcast, with charting your aliveness or starting to pay attention to what feeds your energy and what drains your energy.

It’s really looking at what the energy drains or the pressures. Those are the things where you’re not in your sweet spot. Or where it’s pushing and pulling you in such a way that it’s taking energy.

That’s where you had me begin. 

Gigi: Those of you listening, you can do it the way she’s talking about, or you can just write down all the places where you feel pressured right now.

Not just in your business but also in your personal life and your relationship. 

Dump it all down on paper because then you can see where the biggest pressure is. I usually say that’s the one you attend to first.

You create a system to alleviate that pressure. 

Makena: I’m trying to remember, what the biggest one was for me.

I do remember when we hired our first VA. At that time, we were leading many programs and had a lot going on. 

We still are, right? But now we have a lot of support and systems in place. 

I remember that the graphic design, PowerPoints, and other things needed for the program we were doing at that time required a lot of details and reminders for our students and clients. There was a lot of graphic design. 

When we went out to get support, you said, “We need to get someone who’s good at those things and interested in those things.” 

And that’s really where we started. 

Gigi: Yeah. Because you were extremely pressured by all of that and stressed about it and everything. 

So I said, “Let’s get help. You can let all that go.” And you did. 

That was the first big, big, big step. 

Makena: It’s incredible. Now we’ve got our amazing team in place and those pieces are just so easeful. 

They’re so well trained again, years down the road, that it’s like, I have a thought, you have a thought, or we want to create something, and we just hand it off to them, and it’s created.

But that took time. 

Gigi: I’m so grateful for that. 

I was just thinking about that this morning. It’s funny because Iya, my assistant, and I sent her all of these things and then she just comes back and I’m just like, “Oh my gosh, do you know how much time this saves me.” 

She does it with such a great attitude and so well. It’s amazing.

The systems you start implementing to support you are going to change the way you see the world — it’s night and day.

Makena: Absolutely. I think pressures can also be in your personal life. They can also be communication breakdowns. There are so many different examples of pressure.

When you make your list, you want to write it all down. 

We’re going to give you different kinds of examples of pressures that we’ve addressed for ourselves and also with clients and an example of a system that can be put in place.

Where do we want to begin here? Do you want to give maybe a couple of examples, Gigi? 

Gigi: Yeah, I had a client who was very successful. She had built her business, but she was doing so many things that were not in her wheelhouse. And again, when you’re doing that, it drains your energy, and you’re just not that effective.

That’s what happens – your effectiveness decreases hugely. 

We saw that she needed to build a team. That team was in her office. Before that, she didn’t have an office manager—we got one. That made a huge difference. 

She did have people working with her in a virtual sense, so the office manager was able to help her with the in-house team and then also her extended group. 

She also didn’t have personal support. She had children, and she needed to really get a nanny and take on support.

That was huge for her as she developed over the years and got her team to where she was humming.

She handled every aspect of her life really well, and then she was able to accelerate her income.

Makena: We have women we work with at different stages. A lot of the women are high-performers and there’s the possibility to get that support in there. 

But I see some people go, “Oh, well I can’t afford it.”

You would be amazed. The first thing I ever delegated was someone to come in and clean my home. I saw I was spending five hours a week cleaning, doing laundry, and doing these different things. 

You really helped me see that if I put that time into either resting and rejuvenating or really working and being more effective in my work, I could create far more than the $100 or $150. 

That was how much it was to have somebody come clean my house then. 

So that’s the other thing: my results went up when I removed this thing that was an energy drain for me from my list.

Gigi: You also did it when you changed your coaching, right? When you were coaching all the time. 

Makena: Yeah. That’s a different kind of pressure.  

We talk to women all the time who say, “They feel like they’re just running around all the time.” They’ve got to take their kids here, and then they’ve got to run to this appointment… 

They’re in this reaction mode. 

Maybe they’re booking calls and they have calls all throughout their days. They have these little breaks between calls.

I also had that experience in the earlier days of coaching. 

You told me, “Take your calls and put them on two days a week, and only book coaching calls and maybe enrollment calls two days a week. Now, if you have to go outside of that, if you run out of time, then pick one other day, that’s like an overflow day.” 

I did that, and it was so powerful. I still do this to this day.

I had open days where I could focus on other things, work on a project, and really go deep. 

And I wasn’t being pulled in all these different directions.

That’s a really great example, too, of a system to address the pressure of feeling pulled in so many different directions. 

I did want to say it quickly because you were talking about that example of the client and we’ve been talking about your sweet spot…

One of the things that was powerful for me early on was when you introduced me to the idea of the visionary, the connector, and the arranger – the different talents as we call them in business.

I got to see that I’m a connector. That’s my sweet spot. 

I love the people side of things – that’s what really feeds my energy. 

Though I was really good at a lot of the structure parts of things, I had a skill that’s more in the arranger wheelhouse. It actually drained my energy. 

That was a huge pivotal piece for me.

Because it was so powerful for me, we actually developed it into our World Changer Quiz. 

We haven’t really talked about that on the podcast, but I did want to mention it because I think it’s really great for people to go in and take that quiz if they haven’t. 

We’ll put it in the show notes. You can go to www.worldchangerquiz.com.

It really tells you what your number one talent is in your career business. It also goes into your motivators, which we won’t talk about right now, but those are just really pivotal pieces of information that helped me shift the way that I was working – and see what my sweet spot even was. 

Gigi: It also gave you the confidence to shift – before you felt like you couldn’t. 

But when you realize that you are the connector in our business, this is a very useful skill because our business is about people. 

That is really how you also bring in clients – through your ability to get out and network and connect with people.

If you haven’t done the quiz, you’ll get so much out of it. There’s also an extended report that shares how you can not only go into your skills… but if you have a team or work with other people, and you find out what their talent is, it’s very powerful to understand how to work together with your team. 

Because I’m a visionary, I have a very different skill set. Shifting more and more to visionary allows me to step back and see what the next direction of our business or new ideas are. 

When I get the opportunity to do that, it usually really assists us in accelerating our business, earning more money, or developing new ideas or products.

Makena: Something that you did tell me early on is that sometimes in the very beginning of growing your business, you do have to take on the other parts. 

In the beginning, if there is little support or financial ability, you may need to learn the other roles, and that’s okay.

You really helped me with the piece of starting to get support in whatever ways I could as quickly as possible. I think that’s the main thing. 

It would have taken years, and I’d probably still be doing so many things that drained my energy. I just would have gotten stuck there.

You helped me see at every stage you make me go and look at what I’m doing strategically.

What are the drains on my energy?

What system can be put in place there? 

Gigi: Now we have those conversations often.  

Makena: To this day! I’m like, “I’m the one that has to do it.” 

You’re like, “No, you’re not!”

Gigi: “Send it over, and show them how. They love to do it. Then you can free yourself up to do what you do well.”

We talked about that in the previous podcast: If in the beginning you cannot get out there, hire people, and build a big team, see the place where there is the most pressure and open up to get support there. 

Even if it’s a family or a friend, there’s some way that you can do that.

One of my daughters saw that she didn’t really want to bring in a babysitter so she could clean her house. She wanted to bring in someone who wasn’t just a maid once a month or every two weeks. 

She wanted to bring in someone who would work six hours a week – two hours, and three times a week to clean up and make things nice in her home so she could spend time with her baby.

She wanted to spend time with her baby.

Makena: This is an example where a lot of people would say, “oh you’re stressed because you have your kids and you’re managing the household and you’re doing all these different things, you should get childcare support.” 

But she really saw, “Well, that’s not the part that’s draining my energy. I love this part of being with my kids. What’s draining my energy is organizing my home.”

So that’s where she really hired someone. 

That’s a great example from your personal life. You also give this example all the time, which I think is just so apt because many people experience this.

Let’s say that your mom or a parent or someone else in your family is always complaining that you don’t talk enough.

What’s a system someone could put in place? That’s like interpersonal pressure.

Gigi: Those things pull on people. You often see those huge things that are pressuring people is so simple.

I stepped back, and I was like, this is so simple. All you do is say, “Okay, let’s talk every other Sunday, and set up a Zoom call. We set up this particular time, and we have it set so that she knows you’ll talk with her at that time.” 

And it’s huge. It just takes the pressure off. There’s no more of that complaining. 

I do this with my grandkids, especially with my granddaughter Mia, because she’s old enough to talk and loves having conversations. So I set it up. 

Because she lives in a different city, on my schedule every month, we have a Sunday call. We both look so much forward to it, and we have fun.

It just took the pressure off me of going, “Oh my gosh, I need to talk with her. I need to spend more time.” 

They have such busy lives it’s hard to know when to call and that was huge. 

Now I have this rhythm, and she loves it. She always wants to do it.

Makena: I love that. In some areas, we feel stressed and pressured because we feel like we’re not showing up in the way we want to be or we’re not as connected to people as we want.

You have five kids and five grandkids – that’s a lot of people to keep up with. Plus, your clients and everyone else in your life. 

If that’s what’s pressuring you or if someone is listening to this and you feel like you’re not spending enough time with your child or whatever it might be.

Look and see. What would feel really good there? Or just structure it with regularity.

You tell people this all the time. I think this has become increasingly popular, but it’s about date nights.

Gigi: People have been having date nights for many years now, but you will see that people sometimes put them off.

I just talked to someone a couple of days ago, and she said, “I just keep on putting off. I don’t know why.” 

We talked it through. She said, “But when we do it, it just makes a huge difference in our relationship.” 

It’s so important because otherwise, especially if you’re a couple and have small children – and I see this – people start to lose touch with each other.

You think, “Oh, someday we’ll do date nights again. someday when the kids are a little older.”

But the minute we make the date a priority, I have couples who make it on Sunday mornings. Their kids are old enough. They say on Sunday mornings, “You guys go downstairs and get your own breakfast; we’ll be out at 11 o’clock.”

That’s their date time in their bedroom. 

It’s really important because when you connect and have a date night, it builds your energy as a couple, which makes everything else in your life easier. 

So it takes the pressure of worrying about it, being disconnected, or not having your connection and then really gives you energy by connecting and spending that time together.

Makena: Yeah, that’s a great example. 

I think the main thing here is to make a list of the areas in your life where you feel pressured or where there are breakdowns. 

And then what do they do with that list? 

Gigi: Look and see where the most pressure is that you would like to address right now. What would you do if you were to set up a system in that area? 

Give yourself some options, and then start trying them and really working on one. Once you have that, move on to the next one. 

What you’ll find as you do this – I did this with my clients – is that when you look back on your life a year from now, you won’t recognize it.

Because you have really developed systems within your ecosystem in all areas, your personal life and your professional life, you are at ease in those areas. 

Of course, life has pressures, things come up, and challenges happen, but you now have a great foundation in your world.

So it doesn’t throw you off completely. 

Makena: I’m thinking about a particular client who started working with us maybe two or three years ago.

I remember her as an established business owner who had been in business for about eight or ten years. When she came in, she was stressed, totally overwhelmed, anxious, and not making as much money as she wanted to. 

She was making decent money, but she had a goal to grow. 

I remember, and this is so often when women come to us, they say, “I can’t even see how I would grow. I’m so exhausted. I’m so busy. I don’t have the time, the energy to even go to that next level, whatever that is.”

We started working on this, among many other things, and looking at all the breakdowns, the pressures, and everything…

You do this hugely. I learned this from you. 

Over time, within a few months, she had completely stopped having anxiety and panic attacks and started having all these systems in place.

There was so much more time on her hands and energy. 

She started to have visions and ideas again. She started to be able to put energy into growing her business. She’s more than doubled her business since then, working a fraction of the time and traveling with her family.

Doing all these things she’s always wanted to do. 

It’s one of the most fun things for me and you – when we work with clients just to see that compounding effect over time. 

Gigi: Her family system was at a really challenging point there, too.

Now, look at the harmony and happiness of her family. 

It’s amazing to see. Yeah. 

Makena: Incredible. It’s not that she doesn’t have any pressures. 

There’s always going to be pressures and challenges, but step by step there can be really less and less of that.

Then you can kind of address things as they arise.

Gigi: As you listen to this, just take one item and work on it

And once you get that working well, then go to your next item.

As you play around with this, share with us. If you have questions or don’t quite see how to do it or set up the system, then email us and let us know.

Makena: You can always apply for an on-air coaching session. 

If you go to www.wayofthemuse.com/onair – if you haven’t heard them, we do some coaching sessions that we air, and that’s a really powerful way to also be coached through some of these things.

The other thing I wanted to say one more time is that if you want to take that quiz, it is free. It’s called the World Changer Quiz, and you can go to www.worldchangerquiz.com.

I think you’ll really, really enjoy it. 

Thank you, everyone. See you in the next episode. 

Gigi: Bye.