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We need a new definition of success—one that harmonizes meaning and money.
Imagine diving into your workday with renewed energy, leaving behind the exhaustion or dread of a monotonous grind.
Traditional beliefs about success and the root cause of burnout are the same:
Prove yourself.
Work harder.
Take care of the business, and it will take care of you.
We’re recycling the mindset and practices that keep us stuck. Our souls need a jumpstart into The Age of Humanity.
Tune in for a new way of working that honors our nervous system and the bottom line, using knowledge of the brain, the Bible, and business. We’ll discuss timeless truths that amplify growth, ignite change, and reshape the world of work. No corporate speak or business BS. Let’s get to the heart of a rewarding career and profitable growth.
We speak human about business.
What’s in it for You?
Value, Relevance, and Impact (VRI): No, it's not a new tech gadget—it's your ticket to making your work genuinely matter to you and your company.
Human-Centric Insights: We prioritize people over profits without sacrificing the bottom line. Think less "cog in the machine" and more "humans helping humans."
I'm your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hesson, your thrive guide leading you into the new Age of Humanity. I’ve navigated the highs and lows of business and life, from achieving over $40 million in sales, teaching thousands of people around the world about leadership, trust, execution, and productivity to facing burnout, divorce, raising a couple of great humans (one with ADHD), and navigating the uncertainty of starting a business.
I’m committed to igniting change in the world by jumpstarting business into profitable growth with the timeless truths of our humanity.
Sound crazy? It’s only crazy until it works.
Hit subscribe to never miss an episode, and leave a review to help other listeners discover our show.
Want insight and advice on your real career and business challenges? Connect with me on social media or email me at rebecca@wethrive.live. Your story could spark our next conversation.
[00:00:00] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Welcome back to the Business is Human podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hession, and we're here to bring you episodes that blend a meaningful work with profitable success. Here to steward what I call the Age of Humanity. I believe if we transform the way we work. We can transform the way that we live.
[00:00:28] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: As always, my friendly request, if you like what you hear, hit subscribe so you don't miss any episode and leave a review to tell the other humans that they might like it too. Always looking to help you and connect with others. All right, let's get into it, shall we?
[00:00:43] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: I'll just start off this episode by saying, I hope this is one that you will forward to every leader that you know, post on LinkedIn, share, share, share. Create a company newsletter out of of this. Get this one to everybody because. This is a message that I put out every single year because it happens every single year and we need to stop it or at least get better at it.
[00:01:16] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Warning, I am in the midst of writing a book that I'm super excited about. We'll talk about another day, but my brain is. So just overtaxed in a beautiful way. No complaints. I love every single second of writing this book. It has been the joy of my life over the past several weeks, but I'm having a hard time.
[00:01:46] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: I can already tell finding the words, and so just know that disclaimer, but this message is too important. Not to get out to you today.
[00:01:59] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: We need to stop playing year end hot potato. And some of you may not even know what the hot potato game is. I don't, I probably should have looked up where it originates 'cause you know, I love to do that.
[00:02:13] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: But busy writing a book didn't do it we just gotta get it off our plate and onto someone. And this is pretty typical at the end of the year because we do that thing where we think, I'm gonna hurry up and get caught up so I can rest. And then by getting caught up, what that means is you gather up everything because you don't work in isolation.
[00:02:37] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: We work as teams in a company, and then you dump it over to somebody else
[00:02:42] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: you know, the year end just hits different, I, I, it just does, there's this clash of personal and professional that strains our humanity. Like no other time of the year, everybody's just trying to tie a bow on something literally and figuratively. Right? Oh my gosh, that makes me laugh. so instead of.
[00:03:08] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Doing that, that, you know, Hey, can you, real quick question, before the holiday, I'm just passing this over to you real quick. You, you probably use very polite language when you're doing it, and you may even feel bad because you're doing it, but let's figure out a way to do it a little bit differently so that you don't need to feel bad.
[00:03:33] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: So. Let's just all just hand over heart, deep breath. Most things don't need to be done before Christmas, before the holiday. Some do, some absolutely do, but not everything does. In our nervous systems as humanity as a collective, especially moms are already overstimulated. It started back before Thanksgiving and it continues until December 26th, which I have officially called Mom's Day of Rest.
[00:04:15] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: December 26th. I actually even submitted that to the getting on the list of like official holidays. I haven't heard anything back, but it's true. So the overstimulated nervous system as a collective is real. It's here, it's happening. And so I want this episode to be your, I don't know your permission slip, your leadership reminder.
[00:04:44] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: I don't care what you call it, but the call to action is to evaluate what you can stop passing on to someone else before the end of the year. Stop playing the hot potato game and instead lead with a keen awareness of all of our humanity.
[00:05:03] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: So and let's do a little science. 'cause you know, that's what we do around here when our nervous system feels pressure.
[00:05:10] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: It's a perceived threat. the aspect of having a deadline called holiday break or just holiday is a perceived threat to our nervous system. Yearend evaluations, all the things that need to be wrapped up by the end of the year, plus the holidays. It just is, so, it kicks us into activation mode. And when we're in activation mode, we're in urgency, hurry.
[00:05:41] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: And so our nervous system is seeking relief. It's scanning the environment, it's scanning our lives and saying, where can I get relief? And so oftentimes what happens is the relief seeking in us to try to calm our own nervous system. Leads us to put things over on somebody else to get it off our plate.
[00:06:09] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: So then we go from relief seeking to relief, dumping onto somebody else, offloading our stress onto somebody else. And again, I don't think it's malicious. I think most of you're really, really, really good people, but that's what happens. And so. The nervous system term is displaced activation. Your brain is trying to regulate by pushing the load somewhere else, we do this automatically when we're overstimulated.
[00:06:35] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: So just the sheer fact of us talking about it, me talking about it, you listening and getting understanding about is helpful so that you can make different choices. So. Either making different choices in not choosing to pass things over before the holiday.
[00:06:55] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: And also, giving grace to one another. Lots, heaps of grace.
[00:06:58] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Boatloads of grace. More grace than eggnog. More grace than glitter. Oh, that's a good one. More grace than glitter. Make that a hashtag, William. Turn that into some kind of social media post for me. Tag me. and the Bible talks about this too. In everything about it is about the Bible is about unity. It's about good relationships and considering others first, that each of you look not only to your own interests, but to the interests of others.
[00:07:28] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Philippians two, four, for those plan along at home. and God's rhythm isn't meant to be frantic. His leadership style is not panic. Last minute panic. So we need to revisit these rhythms because they're literally how our nervous system is designed. And so what's happening now is before you withdraw to the quiet place called the holidays, which rarely is very quiet for most people, um, we just like panic mode to get everything done.
[00:08:00] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: So let's not do that. Let's not. Do that. so let's inventory real quick. December, it may not be on your plate, but the collective of business right now is looking at final year end deliverables reviews. Kids schedules, travel, emotional load of all of the things that are happening in your head, in your heart about family, uh, the triggers that that creates, financial pressures with the holiday, changes in weather.
[00:08:33] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: You're not sure about travel, you're not sure about, blah. We are in both emotional stir up uncertainty, stir up financial, stir up, and business expectations. Stir up. That's a whole lot of stirring up and that comes to work every single day. So the worst thing that you can do is create to dump everything out of your head onto a list and then dump it out to your team.
[00:09:06] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Sending lots of emails, requests, tasks, quick questions. Ooh, please don't do that. And gentlemen, please don't do that. If we all look back to our childhood memories, all of us, the majority, I'm gonna guess, 99% of us would look to a female in our life that was really behind Christmas magic. So let's remember that please.
[00:09:39] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Just, humanity works better when we just acknowledge the truth. Okay? Okay. let's not shame moms because they're stressed out and tired. let's just not more grace than glitter. More grace than glitter. I know I have to say this every year because last year, I know we're not supposed to live in the past.
[00:09:59] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: The Lord calls us to look into the future, but, uh, here, here's, I know that last year when I posted a little post, not even a full episode, a post on LinkedIn about this, I had a couple guys that were just not nice saying things like, you know, basically summarized the ladies can't hack it. Okay. I can't even go there.
[00:10:20] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Can't, can't. I'm gonna be love and light of the world today, but I'm just saying let's, let's more grace.
[00:10:26] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: So do some inventory of what's really urgent. And what's important. You know, I spent almost 20 years of my life with the Franklin Covey Organization, some beautiful, beautiful career moments, and Dr.
[00:10:43] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Covey taught us about the difference between urgency and importance in the time matrix quadrant. And so let's look at what's really urgent and what's really important, and be very. Discerning, let's do the space between stimulus and response, which is biblically wisdom and discernment.
[00:11:01] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Let's just pause and ask, does this need to be done, communicated about, acted on, thought about in any way for 2025, or is January perfectly fine? Because in a large percentage of the cases, I think January's. Perfectly fine. So make a January list. Instead of sending everything you can think of, create a page of January priorities, and then as things pop in your head, decide which can go on that list.
[00:11:39] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: You can also set your email, whether it's Outlook or Gmail or whatever you use. To write the email now, but not deliver until after everybody's back from the holiday, January 6th, whatever day that is for y'all. So your, your future, self team will completely thank you for that. You can even send emails to yourself.
[00:12:07] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: About things that you're thinking about. Just it comes to mind. Ooh, I don't wanna forget that. Great. Put it in an email and have it set not to deliver until January 6th. I'm telling you, I've done these things. They're helpful. I'm not just making it up. This, these are helpful. declare your end of year hours.
[00:12:25] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Now. Let people know. Now everybody here's, here's the last day. Then turn off non-essential notifications. Use your autoresponders. Use all your tools.
[00:12:37] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Don't wait until the last Friday before, and then send urgent things because you hadn't thought about it. I love you enough to tell you the truth, like sit down now and make these lists and decide so that you're not accidentally dumping on people. Now, get with your team. And even if you're not the leader of the team, you can introduce this conversation into the next team meeting, asks your team, what can we collectively decide to pause until January?
[00:13:12] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: So then everybody's like, oh, thank goodness. I'm so glad that just collectively decide what you can pause. Just think about how beautiful that could be. And some of the things that you can pause or even things maybe that you've done on a regular basis throughout the year, but probably need a December pause, maybe some newsletter communication, maybe some meetings, whatever.
[00:13:39] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: You can pause between now and January. Pause it. and lead with softness, lead with grace. Remember that people are overactivated, lead with clarity, but lead with grace and softness. So again, everybody's caring a lot and this is the time to show humanity for each other and especially for moms. you could even, if you really wanna be rockstar hero.
[00:14:13] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Go to the moms on your team and say, Hey, what middle of the week, day next week do you wanna take off an hour early so that you can go get some of your errands run and not have to do 'em on the weekend of the holiday? Which is just insanity at all of the retail establishments. Do that instead of a plant or a box of candy, give them an hour of of time instead of a gift, because that gift will go so far.
[00:14:47] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Trust me, I know this. This is how you lead in the age of humanity. And if you immediately thought to yourself, well, is that really fair?
[00:14:56] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Is life fair? I mean, is it. So let's just collectively decide if we're going to acknowledge that life isn't always fair to use it in our favor in terms of humanity. And I gotta, I gotta believe if you've got a great team, the guys would be supporting you in this. And if you don't, maybe that's a good litmus test.
[00:15:16] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: I should probably move on before I get cranky about it. I just, I, I have so much PTSD. From having young kids as a working mom, trying to make magic, trying to hit sales goals, trying to have some ounce of love and goodness in it for me in the mix. It's rough, y'all. It's rough.
[00:15:40] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: So here's some reflection questions.
[00:15:43] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Where am I unintentionally playing? Hot potato. Let's just check in. Two, what task am I trying to finish to relieve my own discomfort instead of supporting the team, which is basically a deeper dive from impression, number one. Number three, whose December could I make lighter, not heavier right now? Number four, what is actually urgent and what is just my nervous system asking for relief?
[00:16:13] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Five. How does Jesus' leadership style call me to behave differently during the year end? So some actions that you can take, 'cause I know y'all love some actions, some checklists choose three things to move to January if, if you don't have the time to actually look at the whole list and that just feels overwhelming, like another task, just pick three things.
[00:16:38] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: right now, this week, move 'em to January. Number two, schedule any non-urgent emails for January 6th or whatever date makes sense for you, and turn off at least one communication channel, whether it's Slack or email or teams or something for 48 hours, and just get some things done and declare. The rhythm that you want for your rest days.
[00:17:05] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Name the days, the times that you're unavailable. Honor them. This is the time. Honor them. All right?
[00:17:16] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Making someone's life a little lighter. This holiday season could be the greatest gift that you could give. So. It might just be a delay of a project deadline or a kind word of affirmation before they take a few days off.
[00:17:32] Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Just a little humanity goes a long, long way. All right y'all. That's it for today's the season Make it a great day.
Thanks for being here. You can follow us on Instagram, Business Is Human, or TikTok, Rebecca Fleetwood Hession. It's a great way to share some of the clips with your colleagues and friends. Alright, make it a great day. Love you, mean it!