Burnout Recovery & Creating a Culture of Rest with Nicole Havelka

In this episode of The Empowered & Embodied Show, Kim Romain and Louise Neil sit down with burnout recovery coach, yoga and meditation teacher, and ordained pastor Nicole Havelka to explore why slowing down feels so radical in a culture obsessed with doing.

Together, we dive into:

• How burnout shows up differently for each of us, and why it’s not just an individual problem but a collective one
• The pressure to constantly prove our worth through productivity and “being the best”
• Why the word can’t disempowers us, and how to reclaim choice in our lives and work
• The surprising overlaps between burnout, perimenopause, and values misalignment
• Practical ways to create compassionate workplaces, embrace rest, and focus on impact instead of output

If you’ve ever felt buried under the weight of doing it all, this conversation will remind you that rest is not only possible, it’s essential, powerful, and deeply radical.

Key Moments

0:00 – Welcomes and introductions

03:57 – Doing vs. planning: the trap of over-strategy

08:25 – Replacing “proving” energy with body awareness

11:12 – Duality of busyness and rest

13:56 – Redefining “being the best”

22:05 – Pebbles, rocks, and ripple effects

23:28 – Burnout is a collective issue, not individual

26:51 – The exhaustion of being a change agent

32:25 – Awareness as the first step to choice

34:30 – Reclaiming choice instead of saying “can’t”

37:48 – Bodies, yoga, and honoring differences

39:45 – Rethinking work culture and flexibility

41:46 – Final reflections and takeaways

Connect with Nicole Havelka

Nicole started her business, Defy the Trend, in 2018 to support change agents and values-aligned organizations while they embrace a more rested life and create compassionate workplaces through mindful time management, transformative coaching and restorative yoga and meditation. When she’s not working, she is nurturing herself by doing experimental cooking, watching/reading apocalyptic literature and television, traveling to new places and spending time outdoors. Learn more about her at defythetrend.com or subscribe to her Substack, Just Rest. 

https://defythetrend.substack.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-havelka-35762022/

https://www.facebook.com/NicoleHavelkaConsulting

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFkq_yGnNi_JFnTIIzJytNA

https://www.pinterest.com/defythetrend

Join a circle of changemakers committed to leading with purpose, presence and ease inside Kim's Rising Visionaries mentorship program.

Reclaim your career and confidence during midlife through Louise's Rise & Redefine program.

If you’re loving this show, come check out the Feminist Podcasters Collective, where creators like us are uplifting diverse voices and driving meaningful change. If you’re looking for new shows to fill your feed, head to https://feministpodcasterscollective.com to explore everything we have to offer.

Transcript

Empowered & Embodied Show: Episode 173

Title: Burnout Recovery & Creating a Culture of Rest

Release Date: August 18, 2025

Hosts: Kim Romain & Louise Neil

Guest: Nicole Havelka

(01:36) Kim Romain: Well, hello, hello, hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Empowered and Embodied show. I am one of your co-hosts, Kim Romain, joined by my beautiful co-host.

(01:46) Louise Neil: Beautiful, I like that. Thank you. I'm feeling beautiful today. I'm Louise, the other one, the other co-host. And today we are joined by the amazing and the lovely...

(01:57) Nicole Havelka: Nicole Havelka.

(01:59) Kim Romain: Nicole, we're so glad to have you here. Yeah.

(02:02) Nicole Havelka: I'm delighted to be here. What fun. I was actually listening to your most recent episode at this time of recording just before we started. I was already thrilled to be here, but that made me even more excited to join you today.

(02:17) Kim Romain: Yay. Well, I know we had such a great, I mean, we know each other through, yet again, friends. This is another friend from the Feminist Podcasters Collective. Yeah, whoop whoop. And I know that you and I have had some really wonderful offline conversations as well recently. I, again, we will get to all the good yumminess of, kind of the conversation, but let me let people know a little bit about you, before we go any deeper in, because I'm ready. I'm ready to roll. All right. Let's go. So Nicole is a burnout recovery coach, yoga and meditation teacher, and an ordained pastor. Clearly multi-passionate, woman after my own heart, Nicole started her business Defy the Trend in 2018 to support change agents and values aligned organizations while they embrace a more rested life and create compassionate workplaces through mindful time management, transformative coaching, and restorative yoga and meditation.

(02:44) Louise Neil: Go!

(03:12) Kim Romain: While she's not working, she is nurturing herself by doing experimental cooking, yes ma'am, watching and reading apocalyptic literature, because you know, that keeps the mood up, and traveling to new places and spending time outdoors. Again, Nicole, we are so glad that you are here. We were talking just before we hit record about you and I are both working on some grants for our clients right now. And I was reading it and all this yummy goodness, right? Yoga, meditation, rest, and grants. And I'm in the thick of it too. So the antithesis of restful.

(03:57) Nicole Havelka: Totally. And as you were describing all those things that I aspire to do with clients, it's interesting that what popped into my head is that, and yet people really want to hire me still to just make the thing go. Because I have a gift for just sort of hitting the ground running and, like you, I have at this point in my life tons and tons of experience, and because I am multi-passionate, I've learned how to do a lot of things. I'm one of those jacks of at least many trades, if not all. I can do lots of different things and they want to hire me to just do the thing, or in the case of the grant we're working on, "Can you just make us a five-year strategic plan?" And I'm gonna probably talk you out of that, but we'll apply for the grant first, right? Can we do something a little, maybe, less time? Because I'm not sure that that kind of strategic planning certainly doesn't work for our time that we're in, I don't think. Things are too changey right now for that. And I'm not sure it was ever... those were ever great. I think people like them for putting, but then they end up in a file drawer. I don't know if that's been your experience too, working with nonprofits and organizations that they feel like the work is done when the paper is printed. And then you're like, "That's not the work." The work isn't doing the thing. Planning is great, but the work is actually doing it. So I'm sort of an advocate for spending less time on the plan and more time on the doing at this point. But I digress. I don't know where that's heading us today, but that's what popped into my head.

(05:17) Kim Romain: It's so not the worst!

(05:17) Louise Neil: You...

(05:30) Kim Romain: No, but that place of... it's... it's fascinating because we so often talk about the need to slow down, the need to come back to the body, come back to yourself, come back to listening to self. And I know we're going to go there. I know we're going to talk about burnout, and I know we're going to get into all the things. I, you are the burnout coach. But this place of doing does get, of implementing, in particular, that aspect of doing gets so sidelined in so many different ways with organizations, but with individuals as well.

(06:03) Nicole Havelka: Yeah, for sure. For sure. One of the things that I wrestle with in my own meditation practice and at least a couple times a week, I meditate with a particular group. I'll give a shout out to the Liberated Life Network. Maybe you've heard of Reverend Angel Kyoto Williams before. She's a Zen Buddhist priest and has started this meditation community that I've been meditating with for a few years. And one of the things we do is reflect on the practice that we just did. And one of the pieces that you reflect on is what she calls turbulence. What was the stuff taking you out of the practice? And what she encourages is not just the stuff. Usually it's your to-do list or some nonsense like that that's pulling you out or you're reviewing, I don't know, some challenge you've been having or some conversation you had with somebody or you're nervous about something that's going to happen that day. And at least for me, but I also see this come up with other people because we put our comments in the chat about what's coming up for us and or talk about it on Zoom. So it's a group that meets on Zoom. And the thing for me that I've just said most of the time, what the thing is that's taking me out is this need to prove my value and prove my worth by doing enough and doing it well. I mean, it took me a little while to figure that out because I had to be, of course, I was encouraged by this practice to reflect on that. I had certainly... I've been practicing yoga and meditation for over 20 years. So this isn't new to me. I don't get really upset about the to-do list or whatever that's roaming in my head, cause that's just what our brains do. But it was... it's been really interesting to reflect on why that is. And I think it really matters over time that we are thinking about that and that we're bringing that into some kind of awareness and working with that all the time. Because I think at least a little bit, I'm less likely to want to prove my value and worth by what I do. Or I do know now that I'm far more sensitive to people pressuring me to simply do and produce for the sake of doing and producing. I now know that if you're trying to do that with me, we're not values aligned and this needs to end probably, unless you're willing to make a shift. I have learned that a little bit painfully in recent memory as a matter of fact. But that's been a really important learning for me that's stemmed not entirely, but somewhat out of my, come out of my practice.

(07:57) Louise Neil: Mm.

(08:25) Louise Neil: What's... I'm curious, what... the question that came up for me is, has something replaced that energy, that proving energy? Is there something different there now?

(08:36) Nicole Havelka: That's a great question. I haven't thought of that. So that's why I'm here to like get to learn as well as to hopefully share with you. I... Is that I think... I think that I'm a better listener to my own body. And I've been practicing that in my yoga practice for decades now, but I think the... I'm much more apt to listen to my body when it tells me to stop. And I'm getting better, though I'm certainly not perfect at scheduling myself in such a way that I just don't even hit that wall. You know, so I don't know if that's energy that's replaced, but it's a different way of being for sure. You know, and I know that you all are entrepreneurs too. And one of the things that I was a little surprised by when I started getting connected with other entrepreneurs, especially solopreneurs, that we talk a lot about how much can you really do in a day? How many hours do you actually work? Particularly like we were just talking, if you do client work, you really need to wrap your head around how many hours a day are really productive, because otherwise you way over schedule yourself with client work, which also impacts how you charge for your work. There's lots of things that that impacts. So I think I'm better at saying, you know what, I'm not... for me, I know that my energy is way better in the morning. If it... once I dip, I generally can't get another wind in the evening, it just doesn't happen. Unless I go to a coffee shop or something, I can occasionally push through and get some, if I have a grant due or something and I have to like today something's due, I have to get something done. I try not to do that because I even, and I'm not a caffeine person. I'm not caffeinating, but I'm still being stimulated by that. Anyway, I'm rambling a little bit about that. But I think the energy... I think the energy is like awareness if that's an energy, like that there's a connection, a better connection to my body. When I was, especially when I was young, I was the opposite of that. I was one of those... I'm one of those people with a ton of energy and I would just power through and power through and power through and then hit a wall and I was like a toddler. You know, I was done and I was crabby and I was mean to people. Or I would just stop, you know, I would just sort of drop on the floor and be like, okay, I'm done. I need to go. And I... I don't do that. I'm much more apt to stop before I've even gotten to that place now. So happy to say that that energy has been replaced or the awareness of my body has been replaced for sure.

(11:12) Kim Romain: It's so interesting because you're talking about, again, all this doing, right? All of this movement and doing and high energy and when you're done, you're done. And yet when I introduced you, when I read your bio, right? Yoga, meditation, a pastor, which also I think of being, right, pastoral in particular as being this more centered place from a more frenetic or high energy. So that duality that exists there is fascinating to me.

(11:42) Nicole Havelka: Mm-hmm. That is a really fascinating... I think the challenge in those kinds of roles is that you have to be present in the busyness of it, which this sounds, this is a duality for sure. Like that you have to be practiced and you have to do enough of your own stuff. And this has been a more than 20 year exploration for me and will never end frankly. How am I caring for myself? How am I engaging in practices, spiritual practices for me that renew, replenish, ground, center me so that I can be present in that, even if it's chaotic, even if it's busy. However, I'm to the point where I don't want to be in or create, certainly don't want to create communities where the busyness is the thing we do together either. I'm done with that. I'm just done. Not playing that game anymore. Let's make communities that do 25% of what we used to do. That's what I would really love to convince clients and friends and other people to do. Can we just do less? Like, why are we doing it? And the why is what I already shared with you. The why we do it is because our culture teaches us that particularly in the US, what our culture is... culture teaches us is that what we do, our value is derived from what we do and what we produce. And that, and for those of us who are, have any marginalized identities that gets worse, the more you have, the worse that gets. So we're constantly proving, if we do more, if we do it, at least in my mind, I have to be the best at everything I try to do, or I don't bother doing it or in order to get the... now it's like in order to get the client or in order to get the job or to be recognized or to have people like you or whatever the thing is that you're trying to get out of it, that's all kind of bunched up together, I think.

(13:56) Louise Neil: I think what became transformational for me was when I decided that I wanted to be my best. Right? I don't need to be the best. Who the fuck decides what the best is anyways? That is some kind of made up bullshit that we all strive to be and we never, ever achieve ever. But it's baked in. It's baked in from the moment we step into a school where we are, right, taught to be the best by somebody's standards. And for me, it was like, I'm just exhausted by trying to reach for something that is completely unattainable because I don't know about you, but nobody's grade in my work. Nobody.

(14:39) Nicole Havelka: Right.

(14:42) Kim Romain: I did have people grading my work. Sometimes people probably still want to grade my work, but honestly, what I realized is that is coming from a place of them needing to prove that they know more than me. It's not about me needing to prove. It's really coming from that place that they need to prove something about me.

(15:02) Kim Romain: That's not my issue, that's theirs.

(15:04) Nicole Havelka: Right.

(15:04) Louise Neil: Yeah. Yeah. Well, when I started to look at it from who am I at my best? I set those standards. I know what it's like. I know what it feels like to be in my body. I know what it feels like to be grounded. I know what it feels like to be... like some of my best moments are standing outside with my feet in the grass and just taking a deep breath and feeling so connected to the world. And yeah, I am at my best in that moment. But I get to define what that looks like. I get to define what that feels like. And then I get to take it with me. And then I use it, right? I use it in my work. It's like, how am I being my best in this moment as a podcast host, as a coach, as a... metaphors? I define that. Me.

(15:53) Nicole Havelka: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and the competition, being with yourself in a way. And I don't even like thinking of the competition that way, competing with yourself necessarily. But I get to define how I wanna grow and change. And I love that image. I'm gonna take that image with me today, Louise, the image of you, your best moment being barefoot, grounded in the grass and taking a big breath. I... that's one of the things I try to inch my coaching clients toward is to celebrate rest. We don't, because we don't do that culturally, right? To celebrate that I, you know what? I could have powered through, but I was exhausted and I took a nap instead. I could have... you know, I could have done any number of things today and I didn't and that we get better at... we get better at learning how to stop and in fact celebrate it. One of the things I often say, I remember this was several years ago. I remember seeing a Facebook post. This was my cousin's daughter and her husband posting about her and saying, "Look, she's finishing her master's degree in nursing and we have these two very small children and she does all these things." And he was genuinely like, I love my wife and look at all these wonderful things that she does, which is great. That's not wrong. But how many posts do you see on social media other than maybe in our... our little... our little alternate universe that we've created a collective saying, hey, I didn't do anything today. And that's just... and not only that's just fine, it's great that I walked outside, took my shoes off and walked in the grass and took some deep breaths today. I, you know, I did it yesterday. I had a long sort of afternoon of meetings kind of bouncing here and there. And then I'm like, "I do need to keep working on this grant," and "I'm going to lay down first."

(17:52) Kim Romain: I totally did the same.

(17:53) Nicole Havelka: Yay!

(17:55) Kim Romain: I had been head down. I worked on the grant. I had some client meetings. I took a break. I got back to the grant. I had a long discussion with the ED. We were going through it with a fine tooth comb. Let's make sure. I mean, this is a million dollar grant. This is a big deal. This is not a thousand dollars. Let's put it in perspective. But I was done. I got to a point with her and I said, "I'm done. I'm tapped out. We got to be done in this moment." And she was like, "I respect that." She went off, she's three hours earlier than I, so she hadn't had quite the same length of day at that point. She went off and did her thing. I went and laid down and my daughter came in, checked on me and she was wonderful enough to offer to make dinner. And so I said, you know what? I'll go back to it. I'll revisit it. We'll see maybe later tonight, maybe first thing in morning. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I let my energy guide what I needed in that moment. I know that I have a deadline. I will reach that dead... I will meet it. But I will only meet it based on my needs. So in that moment, I had to lay down. My body wasn't able to take anymore. I was way over saturated.

(19:08) Nicole Havelka: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I don't know about you, but I've never been like, if I try to power through that and especially doing work like writing or something, whatever I produce at that point is garbage. You know, it's not very good.

(19:09) Kim Romain: Right? And it's not like normal writing. I mean, for anybody who hasn't ever written a grant before, these things, and this is a government-based, not a federal, but a state-based grant. And this is the amount of hoops you have to go through, the number of inane... slightly different questions, but still asking you the same thing over and over and over again and tying it to line items with dollars and numbers. It is enough to make anybody's head explode. And you do have to step back and go, okay, for me, it's refocusing on what is the true impact that we're making. And I feel like that's also what we're talking about for ourselves. When we're standing on our feet on the ground, what is the true impact I'm making here in my life? If we were to base our quote unquote productivity on that, I feel like we would be very different humans.

(20:29) Louise Neil: We've been living in a very different society, let's be honest.

(20:33) Kim Romain: Right? It'd be beautiful. It really would be.

(20:37) Nicole Havelka: Let's go make that and live there. I don't know. Can we all make our little communal living thing that isn't a cult? I don't know how to do it. You know, everybody rightfully has a little bit of skepticism about intentional community, right? Because there's a slippery slope there. But I would love to live in that place where we're not pressured. But I think that's what we do with with this podcast, with our businesses, with the people we work with, one millimeter at a time, right? That we're inching toward that world every time we encourage someone to take a break, every time we let ourselves take that break that we need, every time that we convince a client trying to do good in the world that maybe doing less is more. One of the things I try to ask myself and clients these days is, you use the word impact and so this brought it back for me, the, like what is the smallest thing you can do for the biggest impact? And we tend, and I am so guilty as charged about this, often make... we're gonna do the most complicated, fancy, extraordinary thing to have the impact. When often the best choice to make is what's the... you can make, really small things that have important impact in the world. And that's your work to do.

(22:05) Louise Neil: Yeah. Yeah, this... this... this image, I just need to share this image came to mind as you were talking, Nicole, about, you know, a pond, right, or a lake. And when we throw a pebble or drop in the pond and the ripple effects that it can have, we are so concerned as a society to say, I need the biggest drop to make the biggest ripples, make the biggest splash. And now here we are focusing on, where's the biggest rock? Where's the guy? I find the biggest rock. Well, I can't lift the biggest rock. Now it's so much energy just to lift up the big rock and to, right, even bring it to the edge of the pond. And then how far can you throw a big rock? Not very far, right? And your ripples actually don't reach the other side of the shore in any kind of and make any kind of impact because you're all focused on the size of the freaking rock. Right.

(23:06) Kim Romain: Well, and with that, it's, it's you're holding that rock as though that's entirely your responsibility. And I think, you know, Nicole, I know you've talked about this in the past is that burnout, right? Burnout is not an individual issue. And burnout happens when we're trying to hold that rock all by ourselves, when we're really not meant to.

(23:28) Nicole Havelka: Yeah, totally. And I think there's just, there's so many nuanced reasons for burnout, I think, that go beyond the standard definition, which I teach and train people all the time, because I think people don't even know what it is often. You know, it is that sort of sense of exhaustion, but what they define it as is emotional exhaustion. So you just don't have any more feelings left, right? And then it's a different side of the same coin. You don't have empathy for others or you don't have feeling. If you don't have a sense of having emotions for yourself or just for the general world around you, you certainly aren't going to have the energy to have empathy for other people. And then you... you feel like what you do doesn't matter anymore. You have this sense of that what you do or what you do doesn't matter or have any, doesn't have any impact anymore. And so that of course leads to people just not doing anything.

(24:31) Kim Romain: Now I have a vision of either being squashed underneath the rock or just giving up and just leaning on it and being like, I'm not... I'm not... but the rock needs to be moved, but I'm, fuck it, I can't do it.

(24:47) Nicole Havelka: And yeah, and you generally can't do it yourself, right? You need to do, especially if we're talking about a big rock, you're going to need to gather the community to help you move the rock if that's really what you need to do. And maybe the use of the rock is to sit on it. Maybe you don't need to throw it in the lake or wherever you're trying to throw it, if we're following that metaphor. I don't know that you need to, maybe you don't even need to move the rock. Maybe you need to do a different thing. I think that could be a different, that could be a choice that we could make, but we get so fixated on moving that rock and doing that thing. And you know, I've often been high... for me, burnout came really not from people think, that means I'm not in the right job or doing the right work. And that can be true. But for me, most of the burnout didn't come from that. It came from the... of rocks, the resistance you get when you try to make change. And because I'm naturally a change agent, I think I'm constitutionally unable to just maintain the status quo, at least, especially at this point in my life. I have zero interest in what you've been doing this whole time. And I... I really do have trouble have... I have to work at empathy for folks who are appropriately, understandably grieving whatever it is they're losing from the past that isn't anymore. I have to work at that because in my brain, I'm like, well, isn't the new thing always better? That's just sort of how I'm wired. And so I've had to work at cultivating empathy for that. And that's not a bad, that I think is not a bad thing. But I don't think that was the burnout per se. What burned me out is that people, then if you're the change agent in a situation, people are gonna throw rocks at you in a way. You're gonna be the lightning rod for, even if it's not your fault, it generally isn't. You're bringing the change and really you're just bringing in what's happening anyway. I'm usually just better at saying, you know what, that thing you used to do just ain't working anymore. I'm really sorry about that. We can grieve that appropriately, but you need to do something. If you want to have the impact you want to have in the world, you're going to have to adapt what you do. And people, if you're the outsider who comes in to help, whether you're a consultant or a new employee or whatever you are in a situation or maybe a new family member, even this can happen in families too, you... you come in and you bring your new thing, people are going to resist you and be annoyed by you. And that's really taxing to your nervous system. And so for me anyway, because of the space I tend to occupy in groups, being that change maker is exhausting. And I think there's a lot of people occupying that space right now because my gosh, the world feels really overwhelming. And like you're pushing, you're trying to pick up that rock by yourself and move it. And that's why we really need each other right now, right? Yeah.

(26:35) Kim Romain: Right, you're magnifying it.

(27:36) Kim Romain: Well, and I love that you're bringing this up because there are so many different reasons why burnout shows up, right? Your experience with burnout was definitely from that place of, my being here is creating resistance and that's exhausting me because I keep trying to push or tear apart the rock or do something different with the rock that's here, right? My exhaustion was they kept piling more rocks on top of me with the expectation that I suddenly could move them all. And, right, so it was a diff... it was a different reason. And Louise, I know you experienced some semblance of it as well, or I believe you did.

(28:15) Louise Neil: Well, yeah, and you know, I think it's interesting because it is a resistance, I think, that happens. It's just the cause is different. For me, burnout came from a values misalignment, right? And it was like, here I am, trying to show up as myself and being constantly reminded that I don't fit in over and over and over again. And that completely exhausting, but my values were misaligned and started to create this very, very crunchy place that felt like it was, right? It was a slog. And that was when I was in my corporate job in as an entrepreneur. And as I'm going through, Nicole, you're talking about what it feels like to be burning out and all of those things. That's what it can feel like to be in perimenopause too. All of those things happen. The disconnection, I went through the same feelings I was having in corporate as an alignment, misalignment in my values, it started to happen when I was doing the work that I would love to be doing. And I'm like, what is happening to me when I'm feeling this burnout again? And yet I'm doing... my values are aligned. What is happening, right? And that was my body telling me we're going through some chaos here and it's showing up as disconnection, as exhaustion, as like a brain fog and all of those things. So yeah, it's really interesting because having gone through burnout at work and going through perimenopause, it started to feel the same, but a different way forward, a different solution. Yeah.

(30:00) Nicole Havelka: Yeah, you're gonna make me think more about how that's impacting me. I think too these days. That's definitely true in my case too, being of that certain age as well. I just keep thinking, you're just, you're overwhelmed. You have too much work or whatever. And although that's changed recently where I'm not as overwhelmed, I don't have as much work and I'm still foggy. So there still must be some truth to that. Right? You can't see them, but there's about, you know, there's six post-it notes here going, do this after this recording because otherwise I'm not going to remember.

(30:28) Kim Romain: Yeah. Yeah, it's true. And the thing is, is it doesn't... I mean, it very well could be perimenopause. And I know, right, for the three of us being around that right age, absolutely, check, check, check. We get that. And there are other physiological things that happen to us, right? In addition to that, on top of that, in many of our cases, that also replicate that feeling of burnout. And so, going back to what we were talking about towards the beginning is this place of awareness, of stepping in to allow space for us to be aware of what is showing up for us in this moment, whether it's burnout, whether it's perimenopause, whether it's a combination of both, and then something else. From August of last year through March of this year, I... yes, was experiencing perimenopause 100%. Yes, had been experiencing a little bit of burnout with aspects of my business. But I also went through, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and we live in different countries. So my needing to get back with her, my needing to go back and forth, well, the world started to really take up flame and go on fire with everything that was happening around the election, the, into the start of this administration in the States. And then the changing of the guard up here in Canada, it was like all of it. That all, and then I'm going to, yes, throw in all the cosmic shit that's going on. All of that impacts us, right? It was a, it's up in a hot fucking mess. So giving ourselves that awareness, maybe I don't pinpoint the exact thing, right? We gave some examples of, of what we learned to be the reasons why we were in burnout. And we didn't need to know what the reason was. We just needed to know it was happening. We needed the awareness. It's like when we have that awareness, then we can make a different choice. Then we can choose to lean on the rock and go, y'all figure out what's happening here, but I'm gonna take a breather.

(32:47) Nicole Havelka: Right. Well, and I think people also need to know that there's an alternative to powering through. I don't think we see enough examples of that in the world. People taking a break and saying, no, my body is telling me to do a different thing or that there is an alternative. Because I just had this come up with a... and it happens all the time. Just in casual conversation, had it come up with a client during our virtual co-working time. So it was a casual interaction. And sometimes you just can't, meaning you can't take the time off, is kind of broadly what we were talking about. And she was talking about a specific circumstance. And I get this especially from moms. I mean, and it's the toxic expectations put on mothers. It's not their fault. Let me be clear about that, especially because I'm not a parent and I don't want to be one of those annoying people who don't have children, but I'm preaching at you how to be a parent. So I don't want to be that person. On the other hand, there's all these toxic expectations on women in general and mothers in particular that you need to do all these things to be. You need to go to your kids field day that's happening right now, because the end of school year is happening around here in the US. And you need to have this job and you have to do it really well. And that means you need to power through. And so I hear these folks paying, "Well, I can't." And I would love people to say, "I can't not take this option." Or "I know I need to do this thing, but you know what? I'm not going to do this thing I committed to maybe." This feels like more of an option for people when they're really exhausted. Can we just give people permission to say no and that someone in the community is gonna pick up the slack and it'll be okay.

(34:30) Kim Romain: There's some ownership there, right? Because that word can't, right? You were giving those examples of can't. And look, I was talking to my best friend this past weekend, and she was telling me this whole list of things that she needs to do for, again, when we're recording this, it's the end of the school year in the States, all of the teacher gifts she needs to make. And I was like, "Friend, your children are more than capable of doing those things," right? What part of it do you not have to do? Sure, your littlest one could use some assistance. Absolutely. But, but none of this is, "can't, I can't not do this. I have to do this," right? None of it is, how about you say, "I choose to do it." If you are actually going to do it, how about you reclaim that and say, "I choose to do it." That was me yesterday with, cause I did power through for a while. And I said, "I'm choosing to do this and I'm choosing to do it so that I could spread it out." Cause I knew that I'd need some downtime today as well and right inside and out. And if I, if I didn't power through for a little while, then it was, I was going to have it bundle up on me today. Right. So we... but let's give ourselves a little bit of empowerment here and say, "I'm choosing to" versus, fuck it, can't, I... I have no control over my own life. I just have to do all these things.

(36:05) Nicole Havelka: Right, the word can't is very disempowering. Right, it's a disempowered word. I had a, when I was actually doing some training and teaching more accessible yoga, one of my teacher actually encouraged us to stop using the word can't, period. And it is really hard, by the way. Some of that is the, the word is very expedient and you communicate things quickly with it. But in... in... teaching a yoga class, for example, don't say, if you can't do this pose this way, even with good intention of giving an alternative, right? Instead, you say, "Here's the variety of ways in which you could do this and you can choose." And that's a much more empowered thing than saying, "Well, I know you can't do that." Right? And the reality is that our bodies can do really different things on really different days. And so let's just not be judgy about that. Let's just make different choices. And you're right. It's a choice. You do have... I think we just feel so disempowered by this overworked, overwrought culture that we're in, that we don't feel like we have choices. And so you're giving, you're inspiring me. Maybe, maybe I need to do a series on what the choices are. I need to write about that sometime. What are the choices you have? It's not that you can't, it's that maybe you don't know what the alternatives are. Kind of in the way that sometimes, or many times in the US, yoga, physical yoga especially gets taught where it must be this way, the pose needs to be done in this way. Which I totally bought into for a very long time because that's how I was taught, right? That, your feet have to line up in a particular way in a particular pose and so much of that I've learned is utter nonsense because people's bodies are so different. And we tend to ascribe that to things like weight, you know, those kind which we don't need to go down that rabbit hole necessarily, but our toxic diet culture culture. But we ascribe it to things like that, "I, there's something wrong with me because I can't do this pose in this way." And I'll use this example because it's true for me. I have a very long torso and short arms relatively. So there are simply things where my arms won't reach. That is not some grand personal judgment against me. That's just that's how my body's made. And everybody has that kind of thing in their body, you know, that our bodies are quirky that way. And it's kind of cool. And usually one person, your leg, one leg is almost always longer than the other. That's almost always true. It's probably true for arms too, although I've been less attuned to that. That's why even when I teach yoga, I'm like, here are the three or four options. If none of these work, make up your own. I don't, and I don't care. That's part of why I like teaching online still, even though it's not a fad anymore, because we're past COVID lockdown. But because people can turn their camera off and not feel the pressure of doing things in a particular way. And probably one of my greatest joys as both a coach and a yoga teacher is when people have said, "Yeah, when you were teaching me this thing, or you were asking me to do this thing, I did this thing instead." I really think that's some amazing, that's major progress, I think, if someone said, and I'm always like, "Yay, I'm so glad you didn't do what I told you to do," you know, right? Or you made up another option besides the options that I give you and you chose something different. And that's the kind of empowered space I want people to be in. And that brings me such great joy. And so that's sort of, maybe that's sort of an alternative to the, "can't," right? "I can't make another choice" is like, "Wait." Pause a second. "What are the many choices that you could have?" Let's think about that.

(39:45) Louise Neil: Yeah, if we could take that into the world of work, right? And so we're talking, you were talking about yoga and doing poses. What if we could have a work culture that said, "Here's the outcome," right? "What are the choices? How could you do this? How could this happen?" And get there without this idea of I have to be the best. I have to do it this way. I have to sit at my desk and punch the clock and, right? What if we could look at it differently for at least moments in time, right?

(40:21) Kim Romain: But that would involve creativity and innovation. Oh my goodness. I think we could probably continue this conversation all day. Yeah, yeah.

(40:30) Nicole Havelka: Yeah. I mean, I would be happy to come back anytime and continue this conversation. This is lovely. I love that, Louise, why don't we apply that idea to work that there are 15 ways to do a thing? I mean, I've even had that experience recently at a... I had a one-year contract and a sort of almost a regular job for a while, which didn't go well, by the way, but I won't get into it. And the, one of the biggest things that I ran up against is if you're going to be in this role, you have to be this way. You have to do it this way. And you know what? I've seen people in this role, because I used to work for... I'll just say I used to work for the denomination in my church. I... so I visited and coached hundreds of pastors and you know what? There's a different way to do it for everybody. And I've been doing that, seeing that for 20 years and you're not going to convince me otherwise. I think you can do the way you do it. How about if I do it the way I do it? That's a healthier place for me, but why can't we do that in every workplace, right? Even just to present the training in that way, "Hey, this is the way we've typically done it, but you might modify this in a new way. And if you do, please tell us, cause we'd love to know about that." What a different vibe that would be in a workplace, right?

(41:43) Louise Neil: Yeah.

(41:45) Nicole Havelka: You've inspired me, Louise.

(41:46) Louise Neil: That's what we're here for, inspiration. I'm inspired too, Nicole. Thank you for our conversation. You know, when we were talking today just about that word, "can't," and how disempowering it is, what a reminder. I'm wondering myself how many times that little voice in my head says that to myself, nevermind how it comes out in conversation. And I love that we have this conversation today in that little nugget is gonna stick with me to say "whoa, where am I saying that?" And "how can I say it differently to myself?" and start paying attention to that. So that was a gift. This whole conversation was a gift. So thank you.

(42:37) Nicole Havelka: You're welcome. This is a joy.

(42:38) Kim Romain: So when we think back over this conversation, I know Nicole, you were talking a little bit, we got into that space of talking about the rock. Louise brought up this metaphor and we went there for a while. And that is something that I am really excited to continue to explore for myself because I do go to this place of where am I making impact? What is my impact in this moment? That I do. But I don't necessarily think about is this rock mine in that way. Let me rephrase that. I don't think about is this rock mine alone? Because very often, sure, it's my rock. I can say it's my rock, it's not my rock. I'm okay with that. But it's this place of is this mine alone or is this something that could be shared? Particularly in an entrepreneurial world where I work primarily solo, right? There are partnership opportunities that I step into, but it doesn't mean that every rock that I come across needs to just be for me. Where can I share the rock? So I'm excited to think about that and explore that a little bit further so that I don't get hung up in those places that continue to exhaust me. Goodness gracious. Nicole, where can people find you in the world? Yeah, learn all about you. I know I'm connected to you in some cool places.

(43:58) Nicole Havelka: Yeah, well, I'll tell you where I'm hanging out these days on the socials and digitally that don't annoy me. And there's a lot of places that do. But the place that you probably find me the most places are Substack. You can find me on defythetrend.substack.com. My newsletter is called Just Rest. And little teaser, I'm not sure when this podcast will come out, but I'm planning to launch a podcast of the same name in fall. So which will be sort of a companion to the Substack. So stay tuned for that. I am super excited about that. You can find me on LinkedIn just by my name, Nicole Havelka. My name is not that common, so I'm pretty easy to find there. And then I've recently gone on Blue Sky. So if you want to find me on... and I'm just @just-rest at Blue Sky social. So those are the places I'm currently not annoyed by that you can find me.

(44:51) Kim Romain: I love that. Yeah, that's a big, that's a big important thing to be, "where am I in the world? Here's where I'm not annoyed," and just being.

(44:58) Nicole Havelka: And legitimately, these are places I'm kind of enjoying right now, which I haven't felt that way about social media in a while. So that's exciting that I'm no longer burned out on social media entirely. So I'm excited about...

(45:10) Kim Romain: I know Louise and I have been playing over on Substack too.

(45:13) Louise Neil: It is fun. Yeah, I did just signed up for your newsletter, Nicole. I want to thank... thank you for a great conversation. Thanks, Kim, too, for just this conversation is one that's going to definitely sit with me for a while. So I really appreciate both of you. And I appreciate you listener for tuning in today. Thank you so much for being along on this ride and looking at rocks with us today. Take care everyone, bye for now.