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I Have a Story For You is a podcast about power, perception, and the invisible rules shaping women’s decisions.
Hosted by Dr. Sonja Adzovic — doctor, speaker, and advisor — this show explores why intelligent, capable women often find themselves working harder without changing their position.
Not because they lack discipline.
Not because they lack ambition.
But because they are operating inside learned assumptions about work, leadership, success, and authority that were never consciously chosen.
Each episode begins with a story — historical, personal, or cultural — and follows it into the kinds of questions most women carry privately:
Why do I keep over-functioning?
Why does success still feel unstable?
Why do I hesitate to make the move I know I want?
Why does leaving feel like failure even when staying feels wrong?
This is not a podcast about hustle, productivity, branding yourself better, or surface-level empowerment.
It’s about learning to see clearly before you act. So your decisions are not shaped by fear, pressure, or inherited expectations.
If you are navigating leadership, ambition, relationships, or career decisions and sense that something isn’t adding up, this is a room for sharper thinking.
Expect depth.
Expect discomfort.
Expect clarity.
I have a story for you.
Let’s begin.
00:00:08 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
This podcast is for women who are already established.
00:00:12 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Women who know they're capable, but can feel the gap between who they truly are and how they've been operating.
00:00:21 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
This is a show about power, identity, and the exact shifts that elevate how you lead, decide, and sell without performing or chasing or molding.
00:00:35 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
I'm Dr.
00:00:35 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Sonja Adzovic
00:00:36 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
This is I Have a Story for You.
00:00:40 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Most high-performing women believe one thing almost religiously.
00:00:45 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
If I just work harder, I'll outgrow this.
00:00:48 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
I believed that too.
00:00:50 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
I've lived in different cities, and I've watched myself become almost a different woman in each one.
00:00:57 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
When I lived in Toronto, I was relentless.
00:01:01 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
I worked like a machine.
00:01:02 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
I felt unstoppable.
00:01:04 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Like if I wanted something, I could and would move mountains to get it.
00:01:10 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
But it was high performance inside a high pressure system.
00:01:15 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
It just wasn't sustainable.
00:01:17 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
My body eventually told me that.
00:01:20 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Now in Belgrade, something else happened.
00:01:22 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
I softened.
00:01:23 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
I slowed.
00:01:25 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
I had space to grow out of certain childhood patterns.
00:01:29 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
But I also became more lethargic, less sharp in my ambition.
00:01:35 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And then in Scotland, at a retreat surrounded by brilliant, expansive women, I felt something click again.
00:01:43 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Not manic productivity, but expansion, possibility.
00:01:50 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So you see, it's the same woman
00:01:53 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
but different environments, completely different output.
00:01:57 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
What I didn't understand for a long time was that environment doesn't negotiate with willpower.
00:02:07 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Your environment shapes your output.
00:02:10 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
It shapes your nervous system.
00:02:13 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
It shapes what feels normal.
00:02:16 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And once I saw that, I stopped asking,
00:02:20 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
how to be stronger and started asking, what system was I operating inside?
00:02:27 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
I've personally seen the effects that environment can have on women.
00:02:32 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
I've seen a really extraordinary, very capable woman placed in these low stimulating environments and then kind of just wither away, but also seen the opposite.
00:02:43 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
I've seen
00:02:45 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
somewhat mediocre woman placed in high stimulating environments and then become even more extraordinary and even more capable.
00:02:54 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
The thing is, is that we can't fight against our environment.
00:02:59 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
We think that we're so strong, that we're so tough, and we are.
00:03:03 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
But there are certain things that we can't outplay, outmaneuver, or outwork.
00:03:09 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So for a long time, we've known the effect between nature and our mental health and physical health.
00:03:16 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
But only recently have we discovered the connection between our environment and our successes and failures, directly contradicting the narrative of just work harder to succeed.
00:03:31 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
There's more to it.
00:03:33 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So going back to nature and our physical and mental health.
00:03:40 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So starting in the 1960s, the connection between nature and our human psyche was starting to be officially researched.
00:03:52 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
and a term called ecopsychology was formed.
00:03:55 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And this is a field of study related to the interconnectedness between nature, our human psyche, and our mind.
00:04:05 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So it's the interconnectedness between all of these.
00:04:08 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And essentially what this field looked into and what it posited is that
00:04:17 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
connection with the natural world is crucial for our emotional and psychological well-being.
00:04:25 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Now, does the research support this?
00:04:28 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Absolutely.
00:04:30 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So there are the research has shown that there are mental, emotional, behavioral and cognitive and physical health benefits
00:04:44 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
of spending time in nature.
00:04:47 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And the opposite is true.
00:04:48 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
There are detrimental effects to a lack thereof.
00:04:52 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So in one of the largest research studies of this nature, it was in Denmark studying over 1 million people that found that living in spaces that are low green spaces, which means that they don't have a lot of greenery around them,
00:05:13 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So living in low green spaces resulted in a 55% increased risk of developing depression, anxiety and schizophrenia.
00:05:26 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Now, the opposite is also true.
00:05:30 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Those who live in or spend time in green places or blue places.
00:05:37 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So this is bodies of water, rivers, seas, lakes, oceans.
00:05:43 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
experienced health benefits.
00:05:46 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So, for example, decreased stress, decreased depression, decreased anxiety, but also better mood, better attention, and better cognitive function.
00:05:58 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Okay.
00:06:00 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And also, there are effects in our immune system.
00:06:03 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Spending time in green places and blue places
00:06:07 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
has an effect on our immune system by decreasing our cortisol, decreasing our blood pressure, heart rate, increasing natural killer cells, which are a type of cells in our immune system, which are very important to battling certain pathogens that we encounter, all of which together to the story that green places and blue places, when we spend time with them, increase our immune system.
00:06:37 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So here we see the mental, physical, emotional, behavioral, and cognitive benefits of spending time in green places.
00:06:48 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And this isn't just one study from one place.
00:06:51 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
This is universal.
00:06:52 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
We've seen this research replicated in New Zealand, Japan, Denmark, all over the world.
00:06:59 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Now, here's the thing.
00:07:00 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
This is a fairly easy fix, right?
00:07:02 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
You just go spend more time in nature.
00:07:04 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
It's been shown that even 10 minutes a day spent in green places will be beneficial.
00:07:10 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So, you know, on your way home from work, you can stop by a forest and spend 10 minutes in there.
00:07:15 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
This is a really easy fix.
00:07:19 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
But what about the effect that your environment plays on your productivity, your success, and your failure?
00:07:26 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Here we are talking about the people that you are surrounded by on a day-to-day basis.
00:07:32 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
That's not quite so simple anymore.
00:07:35 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And research confirms that your peers in some contexts determine up to 95% of your success or failure, 95%.
00:07:49 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And this is shown in multiple research studies.
00:07:52 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Now, the thing is, why are we going to go through them?
00:07:55 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
To understand how this works.
00:07:58 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
When we understand the research, we understand how things work and we're then able to better apply it to our lives.
00:08:06 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So one of the most interesting and
00:08:11 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
research studies that has gained a lot of momentum recently is the spillover effect that we've seen by the Kellogg School of Management.
00:08:19 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And here we see proximity.
00:08:23 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So we've seen, or rather the research showed that if you're sitting within 25 feet, that is around 7.6 meters for my metric friends like me, to a high performer, so you're just sitting within
00:08:40 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
up to 8 meters, basically, to them, your performance, your productivity will increase by 15%.
00:08:49 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And this research showed that in a company setting, this will result
00:08:55 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
in 1 million increased annual profits for the company, just by that 15% increase, your productivity sitting within eight meters of a high performer.
00:09:08 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So again, you're just sitting, you're not necessarily interacting.
00:09:12 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
But here's the thing, the opposite is also true.
00:09:16 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
If you're sitting close, or if you're within the proximity,
00:09:24 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
of a low performer, this will affect your performance and will decrease your productivity and your performance by 30%.
00:09:32 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Now, what's super interesting to me is that while you need it to be within 25 feet to a high performer to have it affect you, there's no radius to a low performer.
00:09:47 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
They could be 50 feet away, as long as they're kind of like within eyesight, they're there,
00:09:53 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
that will affect you.
00:09:54 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Now, obviously, if they're in another building, you don't even see them, you don't even know them, that won't affect you.
00:09:59 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
But if they're on the floor, that will have an effect on you.
00:10:04 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And that directly contradicts something that we often think like, oh, if we just ignore them, I won't talk to that toxic person.
00:10:11 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
I just won't interact with them.
00:10:13 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
I'll set those boundaries.
00:10:15 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
That's great.
00:10:17 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
But that's not enough.
00:10:19 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
they will still have an effect on you.
00:10:21 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
They can decrease your performance by 30% just by being somewhere in your vicinity and there's no radius that will keep you safe.
00:10:31 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
There's no distance that will keep you safe.
00:10:34 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Now, what is really interesting is that we've seen this across many industries.
00:10:40 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So this isn't something that we studied only in psychology and the
00:10:45 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
results were positive there.
00:10:48 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
But this has been studied in all different industries.
00:10:50 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So for example, this one was in the Kellogg School of Management.
00:10:53 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So here we're talking about business and management.
00:10:56 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
But we've also seen it in cadets.
00:11:00 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So we've seen this in the army.
00:11:01 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
We've seen this in medicine.
00:11:03 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
We've seen this in all different industries.
00:11:05 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
This is a universal effect that is happening.
00:11:08 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So wherever you are, whatever industry you're in,
00:11:12 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
this will have an effect on you.
00:11:14 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Working hard is not the only thing that is affecting your ability to succeed, to move forward, to get that raise, to get to that level of influence, to that position of influence that you are working to get to.
00:11:30 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Another thing that we've seen, so in Air Force cadets, now Air Force cadets are broken down into, so you have a group of them, and they're broken down into little groups of 30,
00:11:41 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
called squadrons.
00:11:43 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And they noticed that there's a lot of variability with their level of fitness between the squadrons, but within a squadron, there's basically no variability.
00:11:58 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So even though all of them have the same training regimen, the same fitness, the same recovery time and everything between the squadrons, so between these groups,
00:12:10 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
There's a lot of variability.
00:12:11 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And they were thinking, OK, why?
00:12:13 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Why within these 30 people, if they're all super fit, they're all super fit.
00:12:19 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
But if they're all super, you know, in another one, not so fit, they're all not so fit.
00:12:26 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Why is there this variability between groups, but not within a group?
00:12:30 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Like, it doesn't make sense when you first think about it.
00:12:33 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
But then they found that actually makes a lot of sense.
00:12:38 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
that how fit the success of this group is determined by the motivation of the least fit person in the group.
00:12:50 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Now, I know as as as soon as I'm saying this, like, I know you're thinking of that person in school that was, you know, the the least academically inclined or that person at work who
00:13:06 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
never really wants to work and you're thinking about them.
00:13:09 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So absolutely.
00:13:10 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So it's the motivation of the least fit person in the group.
00:13:15 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So if the least fit person is motivated to improve, that enthusiasm spreads and the whole group improves.
00:13:26 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
But the opposite is true as well.
00:13:28 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
If the least fit person is apathetic, lethargic, it brings the whole group down.
00:13:35 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
just as one person in a group of 30 people has that much of an effect.
00:13:41 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Okay.
00:13:42 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And so we also see a similar phenomenon in medicine and air pilots.
00:13:51 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So in medicine for cardiac surgeons, cardiac surgeons perform this type of procedure called cabbage.
00:13:57 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
It's a bypass surgery and
00:14:01 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
They saw, okay, that certain surgeries were more successful than others, and they wanted to see if there's a pattern and what is the determining factor?
00:14:12 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Is it the number of years of experience of the surgeon, the number of years of experience of the whole team together?
00:14:20 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
You know, is it what time of day?
00:14:22 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
They looked at all these factors to see what determines
00:14:26 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
the likelihood that a surgery will be successful, this CABG surgery will be successful.
00:14:33 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And they thought originally that the most important factor of whether surgeries will be successful is, of course, the number of years of experience that the surgeon has.
00:14:45 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
The more experienced a surgeon is, the more successful the likelihood of the surgery will be.
00:14:51 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
But actually there was something that was three times more important than the years of experience of the main surgeon.
00:15:03 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
It was actually the familiarity of the team.
00:15:07 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So how often that whole team had worked together had a three times more impact on the success of the surgery than all of the years of the surgeon's experience.
00:15:21 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And the same thing with in air travel.
00:15:26 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
73% of air traffic accidents happen when the pilot and the first officer are working together for the first time.
00:15:35 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
There's that lack of familiarity that results in accidents.
00:15:42 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Now, when we're in an office setting, this
00:15:48 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
we do have a little bit of space for error.
00:15:51 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
But in industries and fields like medicine and air travel, the margin for error, the possibility for error is 0.
00:16:05 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Errors, mistakes result in lives lost.
00:16:10 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So the importance of this is extraordinary.
00:16:14 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Now, why are all these things happening?
00:16:16 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Why does
00:16:18 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
our environment have such an effect on us?
00:16:21 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Why is it that when we work with people we don't know, success goes down?
00:16:28 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Why is it that when we're just in the vicinity of a low performer, our performance goes down?
00:16:33 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
We don't even have to interact with them.
00:16:35 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Why are all these things happening?
00:16:39 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So neuroscience tells us there's kind of three main reasons.
00:16:43 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
There's many more and they're quite interconnected.
00:16:46 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
The three main reasons are, first, we have mirror neurons.
00:16:50 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So these are specialized neurons that allow us to quite literally mirror certain actions of other people.
00:16:59 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
They have an evolutionary social benefit throughout all these years, allowing us to learn faster and be socially in certain groups.
00:17:11 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Okay, so allows us to mirror.
00:17:13 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Second thing is social contagion.
00:17:16 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
This is where emotions and behaviors spread through, spread quickly through a group.
00:17:29 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So social contagion is where behaviors, emotions, and attitudes, remember the importance of an attitude, spread
00:17:40 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
fairly quickly through crowds or groups of people.
00:17:45 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And there's many mechanisms to this.
00:17:47 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And one of the mechanisms is the mirror neurons that we just talked about.
00:17:51 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So imitation, social conformity, and suggestibility all play a role in this behavior and attitudes and emotions spreading through a group of people.
00:18:05 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And the last one is familiarity.
00:18:07 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
We saw this with the surgeons and
00:18:10 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
the pilots, right?
00:18:13 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
When we are surrounded by people we are familiar with, we are kind of jibing, we are vibing, we have a rhythm of how we are working together.
00:18:24 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
If it is positive, it works really, really well and allows us to be even more productive.
00:18:30 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
right?
00:18:30 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
That familiarity is taken away if there is somebody, again, who's a low performer, who is lethargic, right?
00:18:36 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
That takes away the benefits of the familiarity.
00:18:40 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
But if we are all high performers and there's familiarity, that increases our success and our productivity.
00:18:47 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So what have we talked about here?
00:18:51 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
The narrative to work hard is one we've all learned growing up.
00:18:57 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And it's an attractive one because it tells us then that our fate, our success is in our own hands.
00:19:05 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
We have control over our fate and our success and how far we can go.
00:19:12 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And it's one that has gotten you to where you are now.
00:19:17 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
It does work, that work hard.
00:19:22 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
But it gets to a point when it's capped, when that work hard is actually hurting you.
00:19:28 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Because science tells us, and perhaps in your own experience, science tells us a different story, that there's actually more things affecting your success and your failure, up to 95% affecting.
00:19:43 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So the people we surround ourselves by has up to a 95% effect on our successes and our failures.
00:19:53 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So here we've seen that our environment has an effect on our mental, physical, emotional health.
00:20:02 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
and our cognitive abilities.
00:20:04 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And then also through the people that we surround ourselves by, it affects our ability to show up in a way that is necessary for us to achieve and move forward and do all the extraordinary things that we want to do.
00:20:20 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
So if the law of the environment tells us that who we are surrounded by has such a disproportionate effect on our success and our failure, why is it that we are still telling ourselves that we can outwork anything?
00:20:36 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
That if we just work hard enough, we will succeed at whatever we want to do when we clearly see that there is much more to it, that almost the system is rigged against us.
00:20:49 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
in the sense that we are a product of who we are surrounded by.
00:20:56 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
And this is something that I look at with women in my advisory sessions.
00:21:01 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
Why is it that so many women think that they can outwork these laws of nature when really by looking at the situation accurately, by being able to look at
00:21:13 Dr. Sonja Adzovic
how things stand accurately with their environment, with everything going on, they're able to make better decisions to move them to where they actually want to go.