Kylie Lewis

Interview by Madeleine Dore

Kylie Lewis: Coach, creative business consultant & author

Full transcript

“Particularly when you’re talking about routines and ruts, I think we’re kind of battling with both of those things every day more than ever right now.  Everyone’s having trouble thinking straight right now, and we’re all trying to hold onto routines when we actually need to realise that we need new ones, and to be really gentle with ourselves in the process of trying to establish that.”
– Kylie Lewis

Madeleine: What is enough?  What is enough to offer?  What is enough to make it sustainable?  What is enough to get started?  What is enough to feel like it’s ready?  And what I’ve learned is that there’s never really a clear answer to this idea of enough.  Just as done is better than perfect, maybe sufficient is better than enough.

As Brene Brown describes it, sufficiency isn’t two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance.  It isn’t a measure of barely enough or more than enough.  Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all.  It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, and knowing that there is enough and that we’re enough.

For this weeks’ guest, this gnawing ‘we are enough irrespective of what we do’ permeates everything she does. Kylie Lewis is a coach, consultant, and certified Dare to Lead and certified Daring Way facilitator, which is based on the research of Brene Brown.

Her interview series turned book, The Leap Stories, explored how there’s no single path to success. No one way to conjure the courage, take a first step, or the next step, towards fulfilling work.  

So, Kylie has so much to share about the ups and downs of our careers and our days.  In this conversation, we talk about never getting our routines in perfectly and to how it’s normal to have horizontal days, taking it one moment at a time, developing self-compassion, stepping into this collective vulnerability that we’re experiencing, but also how to set boundaries during this time and sort of quieten things like comparison and, ultimately, aiming for enough.

We started this conversation right on 11:11 and, to honour how our energy and mood can change moment by moment, here’s Kylie Lewis on how she is, in this minute.

Kylie Lewis: In this minute, I’m feeling very jumbled, actually, I must say. It doesn’t feel like I’ve got a firm grasp on anything right now and it’s just a moment-by-moment, blow-by-blow, what’s happening right now, just pay attention for the next half an hour, let’s get through that, what does that look like today?

MD: Yes, I think we’re all feeling that in such a hyperaware state. It’s forced presence in many ways, isn’t it?

KL: Oh, yeah, I mean, you can’t kind of look away because it’s important for us to be paying attention to what’s going on and the changes that are happening, and then translating that into a what does that mean for me right now in this moment and for my loved ones and for my business and for my community?  What does that look like right now?

And it’s the real tension between being engaged, being aware, keeping a lookout on the horizon, and being able to be centred and calm in the midst of it all.

MD: And there’s, I would assume, no clear answer to that, but how are you personally navigating that?

KL: I think the answer is imperfectly. We really are all just doing the best that we can in a pretty profoundly… it’s disturbing in some ways and a disturbing opportunity that this has been presented to us. It’s disruptive. And so there’s no one right way, as you said, to deal with this, and I think I’m still just figuring it out. I’m sort of going okay, today this is what’s on the agenda, how am I feeling, what do my kids need, what does my husband need, what do I need in the midst of all that. What does my business need, what’s the priority for today, and maybe for the next two days?

And that’s kind of about it. And really just monitoring my energy levels in the middle of all of that. I’m finding that, if I’ve got set plans and I know that I’m going to be interacting with somebody and I’ve got an appointment, I tend to have better energy. And then there are days where, like yesterday, I actually just had a day on the couch. I was just tired, and I was cold, and I just surrendered to it. I just thought today is just going to be one of those days sitting on the couch under a blanket with my heat bag and a cup of tea and a piece of dark chocolate and just go with it. And I did.

And then, by the end of the day, I actually… it’s funny how these things work out, but by the end of the day, I then had this creative surge.  It was like taking notice of how I was feeling and saying that that’s okay and this is, you know, there’s going to be times like this, gives yourself permission to then get the recovery and the rest and the perspective you need to be able to come back and find a little bit of juice somewhere in the day.

MD: Exactly, and I think sometimes we can place so much emphasis on following a routine, but then days like that happen and then we don’t need the extra added layer of guilt for not following a routine that might have been too stringent in the first place.

I’m trying to find more a rhythm and I think I had a very similar day yesterday where I called it a horizontal day, and allowing myself to have a horizontal day yesterday just allowed for that to just be part of the rhythm where now I can have more of a vertical day.  I’ve gone for a run this morning, I’m talking to you, I’m upright, but I’m energised because I allowed myself to rest yesterday.

So I’m wondering, just overall, what’s been your relationship with routine, before you’ve had to make completely new routines?

KL: Yeah, I think anyone who’s in their own business, it’s both the blessing and the curse of being self-employed.  When you first get into your own business, it’s like, ah, I can actually not have the routine that’s been forced upon me or expected upon me from all these societal expectations.  I get to set my own routine, but you realise, actually, you need some routine and that having routine actually sets you free.  

So, my routines changed over the time I’ve been in my own business.  When my kids were smaller and I had more responsibilities with them, I would have certain routines during the week where certain days would be for this kind of work, and certain days would be for this kind of work, and then Friday’s would always be my catch up day and do all the things for me day, and then Saturday afternoon was always my ritual nap day.  And I still hold that one.

As my business has changed, and I think last year I pretty much relaunched my business with some new programmes and took me away from a steady routine because I was travelling quite a lot, and so that really throws you out.  I think what I try to think about is where I’ve got periods of intense work, like where I’m facilitating a two-day workshop and I might be travelling interstate to have to do that, I always try and put in recovery days after that so, as soon as I get back home, it’s like okay, now this is the lighten the load time, this is the time where you do have a horizontal day to get you back onto your feet vertically the day after.

So, my daily routine, which I try to have when I’m actually at home for a decent stretch, is to get up in the morning, to not think about too many things, and just get straight to my hot Pilates/yoga studio by 6am and do a class, and then go across the road and have a pot of chai at this café that I really love, sit down, have a look through the news, give myself permission to have a look at social media and hopefully I’m putting out a post, not just consuming everything as well, I’m being productive and posting something as well.  And then that’s sort of the real setup for my day, and it depends on whether I’m travelling interstate or whether I’ve got a workshop locally or whether I’m needing to do proposals, that kind of thing.

So it really depends.  I think getting back to your point about horizontal days, the self-compassion that we need to give ourselves and to really cultivate is the thing that’s critically important for us as human beings, as leaders, as business owners, as partners, as parents, just as human beings. That self-compassion to recognise that we need to be able to be kind to ourselves, particularly when things are hard.  We need to recognise that all these difficulties that we’re also facing, and the things that we’re feeling, are common to being a human being.  It’s not just us who are feeling these things.  And to recognise that there’s no right or wrong way, it’s just what is right now, and just paying attention to that.

So when things feel a bit topsy turvy or I don’t feel like I’m being as productive as what I should, that’s what I try to come back to and just say,  it’s actually okay, you can get back on track, you’ve had these times before, you can work through this, do what you need to do now, tomorrow’s another day.

MD: Yes, it’s definitely so important to remember to be a friend to ourselves.  I was wondering, because you’re a certified Brene Brown Dare to Lead facilitator, and I think a lot of people would be familiar with her work around vulnerability.  Given that you’ve just spoken so wonderfully about self-compassion, what is the link there between vulnerability and self-compassion?

KL: Brene defines vulnerability as risk, uncertainty, and emotional exposure, and what we’re all experiencing right now is collective vulnerability.  We are all feeling uncertain about what’s happening.  Even in the next hour, in some instances, we’re feeling at risk.  The risks are real.  They might be more real for some than others, and it’s emotionally exposing.  We’re in these unprecedented times and, for some of us, that might really trigger our anxiety.  It might throw us into really dark places.  We might be experiencing emotions that we haven’t tapped into or identified or felt for a long time.

And often what we try to do to avoid that feeling of vulnerability, we push it away, we try to deny it, we try and armour ourselves up by becoming more impenetrable or we deny what’s going on or we get angry.  There are lots of ways that we can armour up to push away these really uncomfortable feelings of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.  And our response to armour up and push that away keeps us from then being able to connect with others and actually what really is going with ourselves.

So, vulnerability is often seen, culturally, as a sign of weakness.  We think a vulnerability is something that is to be avoided.  There are two paradoxes with vulnerability.  The first one is that, when I meet you for the very first time, it’s the first thing I look for in you, but it’s the last thing that I want you to see in me because I’m looking for a way in.  Vulnerability can look like strength in you but feels like weakness in me.  

What came out of Brene’s research was that vulnerability was actually our most accurate measure of courage, so for those of us who are able to tolerate those feelings of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure, that’s what bravery is. At the end of the day, there is no courage without vulnerability.  We have to be able to recognise that brave is uncomfortable.  And often the kind of misconception is that when we get confident with something, then I can do something brave, but bravery exists in the uncomfortable.  It doesn’t exist in the confidence.  And, in fact, the only way to really build your confidence is to actually be able to do things that feel uncomfortable and have the self-compassion to say it may work, it may not work, but where I want to be is actually in the trying and the learning and the growing, and just giving it a crack, because if I sit on the sidelines the whole time, I’m never going to know.

And one of the pieces of Brene’s work is that she talks about this metaphor of being in the arena, of actually getting into the arena, and that’s any moment in our life where there’s vulnerability, where there’s risk, uncertainty, and emotional exposure, and some days we will be brave enough to show up and have that conversation to express the truth, to ask that question, to pitch that idea, to put your work out into the world.  Sometimes when you do that, it will go well and it might even go better than you expect, and then other days it’s not, and you’re going to end up face down on the arena.  

What the skills of Daring Leadership looks like is being able to get back up and go again, rather than staying down on the floor, and the only way that you can get back up is to develop the self-compassion to say you tried, you gave it a shot, you learned something in the process, now get back up and lets go at it again.  And you don’t have to do that alone either.  You can have people… She talks about having people in your empathy seats in the arena and in your support section in the arena, so you don’t have to do that alone.  

But, in my experience, strong leaders do have a strong sense of talking to themselves like someone they love.  The same kind of kindness that they would extend to their loved ones or their children of their best friends, and when they’re in struggle, they’re able to offer that to themselves first, and it’s such a critical skill to develop.  It’s the thing that’s actually going to get us through.

MD: I love how you’ve put that in such a clear way in terms of you can really see the tool and how it creates almost this feedback loop of you need to try and then you need to have the experience to then become better at tolerating that courage or the bravery required, and then you need to have that self-compassion.  It’s this wonderful tool.  

I was wondering, for you, what initially led you down this path of exploring things like bravery and self-compassion?  You were one of the first people in Australia to be a certified Brene Brown facilitator, so how did this path start for you?

KL: Initially, at the very beginning of my career, I studied psychology and sociology as an undergrad at uni, and I did sociology as my honours years.  But when I graduated, quite a long time ago now, Victoria, where I live, was in… or Australia was in the middle of a recession and the idea of actually going and working in any kind of field related to that was just… social services were being cut left, right, and centre, and around the same time was when the internet, so I existed pre-internet, was around when the internet started becoming a thing, and I got really fascinated. 

One of my strengths, and also one of my downfalls, but one of my strengths mostly is my love of learning, and being able to have access to information at my fingertips and connect with people all around the world just became really… it was just where I wanted to be, it was what I wanted to do.  I love looking at things that don’t make sense or that haven’t been figured out and working out how this could work and what are the potentials for this kind of technology.

I worked in startups and online startups for 20 years.  I was a digital strategist and was an educator, and then I think it was eight years ago, I just had a really massive year.  It was actually 2012, so it was two cycles of leap years ago, and everything just kind of collided.  I was working on this massive online retail project for a large Australian retailer, but we had no additional resources, so the workload was just huge, and so it was kind of this double whammy.  Lots of big technology projects and working in the retail space, and then some really big significant personal things were happening in the background in my family, and it was just a collision.  

And it was about the same time, I think that year, that I actually watched Brene’s Ted Talk, her first Ted Talk, The Power of Vulnerability, and when I watched I went, that’s it.  That’s everything that I know to be true from my experience in the world and in the workplace.  It makes sense in terms of the training and the education that I’d had with psychology and sociology, but it gave me a language and a structure and a framework that I hadn’t had before, and everything clicked into place and I just knew.  It was almost like a coming back to myself, it was almost like… I sort of say I became tantalised by the internet and all the potential and the growth and the learning and the change and all of that kind of stuff, and so I basically left in 2013, pivoted my career, became a coach.  So what I was doing inhouse for corporates, I was doing as a consultant for a smaller business.

Then there was the opportunity to become a certified facilitator, and there was no rut in doing that.  Everything was just like… my whole body just lit up because I just felt like I was really aligned with really meaningful, purposeful work, and went for it.

MD: It’s remarkable in so many ways, ‘cause I think those moments are so few and far between where our body lights up and we return back to ourselves and see something we so know to be true.  But I do want to ask you, as you said there was no rut in pursuing that learning and pursuing that opportunity, but I’m also interested because, as you pivoted, you’re quite dedicated to uncovering how other people pivot and how people take the leap.  

And I guess from your own experiences, but also the amazing people that you’ve interviewed both for your book and the series, The Leap Stories, I was wondering, is it always seamless in that way?  Is it always just, I know this to be true, I’m going to go for it?  Or how do people go through that leap when it is more rut-like?

KL: Oh, it’s a complete shit show, to be honest. I knew that that’s actually what I wanted to do, but it wasn’t something I could just turn over and do next month.  It took planning, it took saving money to go and do courses and to get accredited in certain trainings.  The training that I did with Brene in 2016 was actually meant to happen halfway through 2015, and so there was delays and trying to figure out what to do in the interim of that meant just keeping my feet on the ground and keep showing up to what I was doing at that time, which was servicing small businesses, sharing what I knew, helping them grow their own businesses.

And so that resulted in the interview series, which was an anchor for me at that time because it helped me.  I was still working stuff out in terms of how to run a business.  I could go into other businesses and talk about digital marketing strategies and content strategies and social media and all of those kinds of things, but I was still new to running a business for myself, and so The Leap Stories came out of wanting answers to questions that I had for myself, and coming across people who had already made the leap, who were already ahead of me, and asking them how they did it and what they knew about it.

So it was up and down.  It wasn’t a linear line, as none of these things are.  It was two steps forward, five steps back, but just keep going.  I guess I had that lighthouse on the horizon that was guiding me to where I wanted to go.  It didn’t mean that I sailed straight to it, it meant that I was pulling up in all sorts of harbours and getting stuck on shores and all that sort of stuff in the process.  I probably said yes a lot to stuff at the beginning, and I just got better at getting more discerning as I got more used to finding my groove.

But I didn’t really know what I wanted to really do, and so I just… it was very experimental.  It was like okay, we’ll just see.  Just give it a go, give it a try.  You’ve been asked to do this, just try it on and see if it fits.  If not, that’s okay.  So some days there were ruts and some days there were routines, and sometimes there was really big leaps.

MD: Yeah, I love that, to know looking back that it wasn’t just this perfect plan that you’ve executed because it can look like that from the outside when we inspect people’s trajectories.  But there’s so much wobbling.

KL: Oh, god, yeah.

MD: But I’m wondering, do you think that you’ve arrived now at that lighthouse, or what are you still experimenting with?

KL: I think life is just a series of lighthouses.  After I did the training in 2016, the irony of that was I was certified to run Daring Greatly and Rising Strong public programmes, but I was terrified to actually do it.  And I actually only ended up running one public Rising Strong programme and I had a massive headache at the end of that two days, and I was just like, oh my god, this is so hard, this is such a stretch.  This is way out of where I thought I was going to be.  I’m not sure if I’m actually really up for this.

And I was still using all of the learnings and the content and the tools, but I was doing them in different ways, like I was still using it in my one-on-one coaching and some of the elements in some of my other bespoke programmes that I’d put together, and so I sort of sat on it for quite a long time and then, when her book Dare to Lead came out in 2018, it was like, oh my god, thank god, because she did leadership research and she positioned this work in the context of teams and leaders.

I was like, this is actually what I was looking for and it’s got additional evidence and additional research and some different tools.  And so last year, when I then trained up in that, that’s when I really took off and just really found my groove, because I was talking to people in a way that really leveraged my experience and I really knew was going to be impactful for them in the first place, in their teams and in their workplaces and their organisations.  But knowing 100% that it was going to also impact them on how they would show up with their families and their loved ones as well.

Often we have these greater expectations for how we show up at work than how we show up with our loved ones, and there’s this more legitimate idea that it makes sense if it’s training or if it’s going to help me be better at work, then I’m more likely to invest time or money or effort into doing that.  The thing that I love about Dare to Lead is yes, it does all of that, but it fundamentally gets you to look at who you are as a person, which all great, daring leaders do.  It’s a transformation that starts from inside.

MD: Definitely.  The lesson I’m really enjoying about that is that it’s sometimes fine, and maybe encouraged, to sit on things for a little while until something emerges that resonates.  As you sort of touched on there, you might be more inclined to pursue or to meet expectations when they’re related to the workplace, or our professional lives, but less inclined with our personal lives.  I’m wondering how that’s coming about now?  Now that, for many people, it’s their first time having to really meld those two together, so what are you discovering, or what are you observing?

KL: I think we have to acknowledge that this is not normal.  We’re not in normal times.  This is hugely disruptive, and we have been knocked sideways, and new normals need to be established.  Again, going back to Brene’s work, she also just launched her podcast this week, and her first episode in the context of what we’re all experiencing right now was about just appreciating that we’re all doing FFTs every day.  An FFT is doing something for the fucking first time, and so that idea that, look, this is a global pandemic, none of us have lived through this, this is a FFT for all of us, so let’s just take a collective big deep breath and give ourselves the grace in that, and how that then translates into each of us, depending on the context in which we’re operating in is going to be different.  

I think it’s that paradox of being able to say what are the things that can anchor me right now that I have control over?  But also don’t put so many expectations and pressure on myself that I have to do it perfectly, or that there are some things that are better to do than others.  At the moment, we really need to just be able to say to ourselves, this is an FFT for everybody that I know, for my business, for my family, for my clients, for my community, for me, and what’s just the next right thing?  What’s the next right thing for right now?  I don’t have to have it all figured out ‘cause no one actually has it all figured out right now.

There’s so many things that we’re all struggling with for the first time, both good and bad in all of it, and we just need to give ourselves grace to recognise this is not normal, and that’s okay, and I don’t know actually how I might feel, but I know that as long as I keep connected and I keep talking with people and realising that I’m not alone and I don’t have to do this alone, we’re going to get through it.  We’ll get through the other side, and maybe we’ll even establish better routines on the other side with more grateful hearts.

That’s not to diminish how fricking hard it is for so many of our community, and at the same time I’m also saying these incredible community responses rising up out of that, so it’s the paradox of just going this is all really hard and messy and I can also anchor in some things that keep me grounded in what I can control, and maybe that is a bit of owning your routine and recognising that it has to be new.  We have to adapt.

MD: Yes, exactly.  I’m just reminded of that Leonard Cohen ‘there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.’  There’s definitely those elements of joy coming through, but I’m wondering what is grounding you?  Especially perhaps as a family.  Is there anything helping you navigate the new normal?

KL: It’s really interesting.  So one of the things that has been a gift of Brene’s work is understanding what boundaries look like and what boundaries are, and boundaries are really just a description and an awareness of what’s okay and what’s not okay, and wherever you’re experiencing any kind of resentment, it’s normally an indication that there’s a boundary issue that maybe you didn’t even know that you had, or maybe hadn’t articulated.  

And so we have a very small house, we live in the inner-city, so we have a really small house that we all share, and so I sat down with the kids and said, okay, I think we need to write a daily checklist to make sure that we’re all getting up out of bed, that we’re all having showers, that we’re all brushing our teeth, that we’re trying to move in some way really proactively for about half an hour.  We need to make sure that we keep the space clean, uncluttered, so we put stuff away.  So all of the things that I would probably just normally do to pick up the slack, it’s like no, I’m not going to be the one that carries all of this while we’re here, and this is probably a good opportunity to sit down and have a bit of a family meeting.  And setting expectations that are realistic, and not beating ourselves up if we don’t meet them all the time, but just getting clear and articulate what are our boundaries for each other.  Here’s mine, what are yours?  What does that look like for you as well?

And so the things that are probably grounding me right now is putting those things on the list.  If I can do, I don’t know, maybe four of those things out of the list every day, then that’s good enough.  And I think it’s recognising that we need to be able to communicate what our needs are and have grace and patience and realise that it’s not always going to go well, tempers are going to fray, and conversations are going to be had, but we’re actually all in it together and take a breath.

So, for us, we drew up a daily checklist as a guiding light and then a weekly checklist, and that’s where we’re at right now.

MD: Oh, I love that approach.  The guide is there but you’re reminded not to beat yourself up if not everything gets done on the checklist.  It’s like that quote from Brene Brown herself, where it’s, “No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.”  And I’ve been thinking a lot about ‘enough’ during this time because, for some people, there’s more time available.  There’s no longer the commute, there’s no longer the conversations at the water cooler or the meetings.  There is more time, and I think we’re so trained to fill time that we do more to optimise, and I’m just wondering where you think that pressure might come from, or how you’re navigating that?  Not just now, but always, that pressure to be doing.

I think you’ve really got to a nerve of what a lot of people are experiencing right now because I think in the lead up to this, it was this idea of, oh, so if you do now have all this spare time, you can learn a new language and you can develop that new scientific theorem that’s going to change the world, like there was all these memes going around around how people in lockdown and quarantine throughout the ages have come up with these life-changing creative outputs, and it was sort of… going into it was like oh, right, okay, so, I’m going to have all this time, so what should I do with it?

And any time you hear that ‘should’ that appears in your head, that’s a flag.  It’s actually taken me a long time.  I talked about it in 2012 when I was having that really tough year and I watched Brene’s Ted Talk.  The other thing I did was read this other book called The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, and in that book they talked about four energies.  They talked about your mental energy, your emotional energy, your spiritual energy, and your physical energy, and they’d studied high-performance athletes and athletic teams and, what they realised, is that people have on seasons and people have off-seasons.

So, if you think about, I don’t know, a Melbourne example, AFL teams, the AFL season doesn’t run all year long.  They have an off-season over summer where they rest and recover and recoup and rethink and re-strategise and reflect.  They do all of that sort of stuff and then they come back and they’re ready for the season to go.  And then, even when they’re training, a weekly training schedule, it won’t be the same every day.  They’ll have intense training days and they’ll have recovery days.  And they even studied people like professional tennis players, who even took the time between playing points as a rest, recovery, and reset point, and that revolutionised my thinking.

I was somebody who grew up thinking rest was for the weak and there is so much opportunity, especially growing up in digital culture in my career was like you need to be hustling and you’ve got all this time, there’s no barriers to entry to anything now, so you really just need to be in there and people… that horrible meme that says you work for five years doing things that people wouldn’t do so you can have… I don’t know, what is it?  20 years of the life you want, or some kind of crappy meme like that.  And so that kind of relentless culture is something that I really had to back off with, and I could feel myself, and with these memes going around saying oh, this is a break, think of all the things that you could be doing to fill it up.  I was like whoa.  And it was probably about a week into this that I’ve gone, okay, you really need to unplug from all of that and just come back to you, and what feels right for you, and start taking care of your [inaudible 00:36:58] and coming back to serving your community right now.

What does that look like for you in a way that feels sustainable for you?  And for whatever you’re thinking might feel sustainable, you probably need to even half that because the energy that’s just going into having to make new decisions every day around, do I have enough food?  Should I be going to the shops?  What are the restrictions saying now?

I was talking with my best friend this morning and we were saying this kind of hyper-vigilance that we’re all now in is very anxiety-provoking and it’s exhausting, and all the normal things that we would think about, that we wouldn’t even think about.  We wouldn’t even… it’s just an autopilot because we just know.  We’ll just go to the shops and get that, and I’ll just go and grab my coffee from favourite people.  All of that is now off the table and, cognitively, the load that we now have to deal with to be making all these new decisions is really significant.

And so really honouring that and recognising that just doing the best we can doesn’t mean filling up every moment of our day.  It means being able to allow ourselves to just have some white space in there to figure out.  I’ve been having massive troubles of actually being able to even think straight.  I feel like I’m just jumping from one thing to another, I’m in my inbox, I’m checking all those emails, I’m on social media trying to provide stuff, and I just thought, this is getting me nowhere.  If there really is a moment here to create something new, I’ve got this blank calendar.  

The way that I’m going, I’m just going to burn through all of my cognitive energy in just dealing with all these little kind of stuff that’s appearing, so I’ve kind of got enough in place.  My exercise people are live-streaming and we’ve got coffee at home and there’s plenty of food, plenty of toilet paper, I don’t need to be worrying about that, so take a breath and come back to yourself and just not let all the ‘should’s’ and ‘just because I can, I should do that’ or ‘wouldn’t’ be good if I did that’, not let that necessarily take hold because that is going to exhaust us and I think this isn’t just about a couple of weeks, I think we need to be thinking about this for a bit of a longer-term and what’s going to sustain us through that.

MD: Exactly, and so I think we can’t just push and shove and thrash about at the beginning ‘cause we’re going to become so overloaded, as you mentioned, with how taxing these new decisions we have to make in our day can be.  It is a lot to take on psychically.  I’m very much in the same boat.  I’ve just found the last few days, it’s just the few deadlines I have left are very hard to concentrate on.  I feel this immense pressure, especially given just the theme of this podcast, it’s routines and ruts, but I just have to resist trying to optimise this moment to make the most of it and just sort of be.

But I do want to ask you because I’m always quite impressed by how you show up, so even now you’re sharing some really great resources for people and you’re always very informative, and particularly it was noted earlier in the year with the bushfire crisis and how you were sharing, not only information, but you also rallied a lot of people together to put together an auction to raise funds for the bushfire relief.  I’m wondering, when you’re feeling internally chaotic, how do you still show up?

KL: I think one of the things that really helped with that was recognising that it was a moment in time, and that I had a really unique opportunity because I was on school holidays with the kids when that all happened and I birthed that idea while we were away down the coast and my family were all sleeping in in the mornings and staying up late, which was lovely, that’s exactly what holidays should be.  But I’m not someone who actually likes to sleep in, and so I’d find myself just at a loss in the mornings, and I just thought I’ve got this idea, I’ve got this opportunity.  I go back to work in terms of commitments I’ve already got in two weeks, what does it look like to just focus on something for this two weeks right now in a way that’s really manageable and sustainable for what’s going on with my family?

And it also actually gives me energy because I think, for me, just sitting and watching the disasters that were unfolding, and I don’t know anybody in Australia that didn’t know someone or wasn’t directly affected by those fires in some way, and I think it was actually a coping mechanism, to be honest.  It was recognising that I had a short period of time, I had a window of two weeks to pull it off.  I had the means to do it without it being too disruptive, and it would actually give me energy to feel like I was contributing and to be part of something where people like me also recognise that it was important, and it actually gave them the opportunity to contribute in a way that made sense for them as well.

But I had really hard deadlines on that and, if I’d had more time to prepare and lay it up and give people more notice and maybe even do more marketing and all of that kind of stuff, maybe I could’ve raised more money.  But I just got to, it’s just enough.  It just has to be.  This is the amount of time and energy that I can give to it right now, wherever this lands, that’s going to have to just be enough and I’m going to have to be okay with that and it’s better than doing nothing.

MD: There’s so many lessons there.  I know that was applied to a crisis, but even just this idea of you need the deadline to get something done, you need the squeeze, but also this idea of done is so often better than perfect.

KL: 100%, and there were so many opportunities and we talk about this, actually, in the Dare to Lead workshop, when that comparison and scarcity come to play, that’s when we start playing small.  That’s when we keep ourselves silent and not putting our work out in the world.  And one of the things I had to learn probably about two years into my business was to really, and this is a hard lesson and I even feel shame in saying this, but I really had to disengage and unfollow people who I felt really triggered by.  They were doing things that were very close to what I was doing or they were operating in the same kind of ways that I was operating in, and every time I saw what they were doing, I would just feel sick.  I would have a really visceral, strong, physical reaction to it, and it just didn’t make me feel good.

And it wasn’t because I resented them or I held anything against them or anything like that, it was just I didn’t want to put myself through that, and the more I came to understand is if I can stay in my lane in terms of recognising that what I bring is unique, just as what everybody else brings is unique, there’s no other Madeleine, there’s no other Kylie, and recognise that that’s enough, then that gives me the permission to put myself out in the world and recognise that I don’t have to be everything for everyone.  I don’t have to be the lifechanging coach for anybody who comes my way.

What I have to bring is unique, and it’ll suit some people rather than others, and that’s completely fine.  But that takes work to get there because otherwise you do just constantly find yourself hustling.  You have these relentless standards and you keep yourself back from putting out your things in the world that people really need to hear.

MD: Aw, I could actually feel it in my stomach when you’re describing that feeling.  It’s almost a very protective act, to just do the unfollow, so you can just focus on the work that’s in front of you for you.  Then when it’s time to do the work, are you someone who’s quite good at then just taking action?  Do you procrastinate?  Do you feel distracted?  Do you dilly dally?  Does it change?  How are you, I guess back to this idea of routines and working, how do you find focus and flow?

KL: Oh my god, all of the above in terms of what happens in that process and that creative process.   What I’ve come to learn about myself is that, when I am procrastinating, it’s normally because I’m overthinking something and the only way for me to get through it is to just get a small win in the right direction.  That might mean talking about the idea with someone, like actually saying it out loud.  It might mean putting in a deadline that makes me accountable.  If you get stuck, phone a friend, get somebody that will help you, that compassionate friend that will be in the arena with you, and that’s why your Side Project Sessions are so great for that because they absolutely make people feel less alone and help put some of that accountability, and recognise that yeah, it’s going to feel really awkward and vulnerable and that’s what bravery looks like.

MD: Yes, aw, that’s so well said and every time I start something, even now, it takes months and months and months.  There’s that metaphorical file that they’re all sitting in, the ideas and the experiments, and until there’s this tension point, and I think it comes back beautifully to this idea of self-compassion about really making it about the learning and about just helping maybe one person resonates and maybe that one person is you.  

But I think it’s always a lovely sign when you’re sitting on something that’s actually… it means that the project is meaningful in some ways.  It’s something to explore.  So I kind of have a lot of respect for procrastination.  So, speaking of honouring those moving parts of the creative process, what would be your advice to someone on how to have compassion as we navigate the ebb and flow of our days right now?

KL: Well, I think the context in which we’re speaking in is really telling.  I think we’re doing our best to try and hold onto a routine, we know that it’s important for us to have a routine.  I think we’re in the middle of redefining what routine looks like for us right now and recognising that experiencing ruts is completely part of that process.  We are in the great unknown for a little while, and so routines are going to… I have a sense that as soon as we get our finger on a routine and what it might look like, we’re going to need to adapt it or move or shift or be agile with it anyway.

MD: I think that’s all we do anyway.  I haven’t really ever met someone who has had it all in place the whole time.

KL: I think you’re right.  I mean, I probably get it right about 60 to 70% of the time, maybe, in terms of am I exercising enough, am I eating well, am I getting enough sleep, am I tending to the connectedness of family?  All of that kind of stuff.  And that’s part of the self-compassion thing. I’m not shooting for perfection here, I’m shooting for good enough and for being in the moment of it and not being an anxious mess in the middle of it all.

MD: I hope that you were able to be as inspired and comforted by Kylie Lewis as I was and really note how crucial it is to find your own measure of what is enough of sufficiency and allow that to change.  What I really took away from Kylie is how powerful it can be to stay in our own lane and to focus on our own work and how to really recognise that what we offer is unique, it is enough, without needing to compare or change.

As Kylie Lewis reminds us, and it’s so important to keep remembering, is that we’re not alone in our stumbles or in our comparisons or in our procrastination.  It can be really nice to have a companion, and so I hope I can be that for you, too.