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The Life of And podcast is for high-achieving women and working parents who are ready to stop living a life of “have to” and start designing a life they actually want. It’s a space where we talk honestly about the things we’re often afraid to admit — even to ourselves. The exhaustion. The ambition. The loneliness. The joy. The tension of wanting more without losing yourself in the process.
If you’re in the thick of it — feeling stretched, tired, hopeful, driven — this is your invitation to take a breath, get real, and find your way back to your own Life of And.
[00:00:00] Brian Kavicky: Instead of saying, "I feel so guilty that I'm not participating," say, "You guys do an amazing job. I'm so glad you guys volunteer." Just recognize what are your patterns? Why are you responding that way? And what is my true motive for what I am getting out of this? Because a habit becomes a racket when it's a bad action that you get a benefit for.
[00:00:22] Tiffany Sauder: I'm Tiffany Sauder, entrepreneur, wife, mom to four girls, and a woman figuring it out just like you. Come on, let's go build your Life of And. Have you ever found yourself saying one of these things? I feel guilty working out while my kids are home. I feel guilty asking for help around the house. I feel guilty not responding to that email. I feel guilty logging off when there's still more work to do. I want to challenge something. I don't actually think most women feel guilty. I think we're using that word to avoid telling ourselves the truth because usually what we mean is one of these three things. I don't want to. I'm afraid of what people will think or I haven't decided yet what matters most. And instead of deciding, we decide to do it all. So today what I want to unpack is what's actually underneath guilt and how it's costing us more than we realize.
[00:01:16] Tiffany Sauder: I'm excited to be joined in the studio today with Brian Kavicki where we dig into this topic of guilt and what is the real cost of doing it all? Brian, I want to have this conversation about guilt with you because you gave me a massive unlock a few months back when we were talking about burnout. And I hear that word all the time with women and you said what you say. What did you teach me about burnout?
[00:01:40] Brian Kavicky: That burnout is not because of I'm doing a lot of work. Burnout is because I'm not seeing progress against the bigger goal that is worth pursuit of.
[00:01:50] Tiffany Sauder: Yes. So when women tell me I'm burned out, they often are looking for a retreat. They're looking from some glut of rest that is only going to resume back to their chaotic life when they get back to the actual life. And so Life of And is all about having agency over your choices and your life. And so when I learned this, burnout has nothing to do with being busy. Burnout has everything to do with not making progress. I was like, okay, I want to do that exact same thing with this word guilt is how do we get agency over it and how do we break it apart so we can better understand it together and then sort of synthesize it back together of like, okay, how do I ask myself better questions when I start to feel myself using, I'm going to say this junk word of guilt.
[00:02:35] Tiffany Sauder: So I think I'm going to start by giving you some vignettes about guilt and we can dissect from there different places and ways that I hear guilt, and then you can maybe share some that you hear in the female leader clients that you work with. Okay. Just heard this one from, I was doing a presentation and a young woman, she has twins that are two, literally with tears in her eyes said to me, "I feel guilty when I am working out and my kids are awake." And so I don't really ever work out or when I am working out, I'm feeling like not present and torn the entire time.
[00:03:13] Brian Kavicky: So the questions I would ask on that are, "Well, why do you feel guilty? And is it because your kids look at you weird? Why are you working out? Is it because somebody told you you weren't supposed to do that? It's because you have a belief that says, well, I'm supposed to be a mom and I'm not supposed to be in good shape and feel good about myself." Where does that guilt come from is what that is? What are you comparing that to?
[00:03:41] Tiffany Sauder: So we're going to just let these questions be rhetorical I
[00:03:43] Brian Kavicky: Think
[00:03:44] Tiffany Sauder: As we go through these. One in my life, my daughter is in the musical at school and it is quite the production and I am doing the least amount possible to be able to get on the early ticket list because getting tickets is hard. And so I was picking her up from play practice and I found myself getting ready to say to this mom, Julia, who's in charge of all of the set, like, "Hey, Julia, thanks so much for all you're doing. I feel guilty I'm not doing more on the tip of my tongue."
[00:04:20] Brian Kavicky: And why do you think you said that?
[00:04:22] Tiffany Sauder: Well, I think that it makes me ... I had a rehearsed answer, but I think the real one is actually this. At school, there's this group of moms who are really involved and they know all the kids and all the teachers and all the stuff that before it comes out in the email to pedestrian moms like me. And I don't actually want to make the time to be part of that group of moms, but I do think there are seasons where I feel a little bit left out of the flow and I'm just like, "Ah, dropping off goldfish and I don't really remember everybody's names and exactly what's going on. And I feel a little on the outside looking in. " And so I think saying I feel guilty is like saying, "I'd kind of like to be part of the inner circle, but I know I'm not.
[00:05:14] Brian Kavicky: " Exactly, but yet you're not.
[00:05:17] Tiffany Sauder: Yes.
[00:05:18] Brian Kavicky: And how do you think Julia heard that? What do you think she ... If somebody came to you and said, "Oh my gosh, I feel so guilty. We haven't gone out together for a while." What would run through your head if somebody said that to you?
[00:05:29] Tiffany Sauder: I would be like, "Well, we just haven't. We haven't prioritized it.
[00:05:32] Brian Kavicky: " Yeah. What's a big deal? Yeah. So it's sort of this unnecessary thing that you did to send a signal. And you also said an interesting thing. You said, "I am doing the minimum possible to get on the early ticket list, which is nothing if I could get away with it. So I can signal to somebody that I feel guilty about something that maybe I really don't." Because I don't believe that you really do because you said I don't really know their names and learning and remembering people's names starts with, "I care." So you sort of don't care.
[00:06:05] Tiffany Sauder: No, I don't care. I care about those women and I appreciate all that they're doing for the school. And I do know that that's like a sandbox I don't have time to spend a lot of time in.
[00:06:18] Brian Kavicky: Okay. I'm
[00:06:18] Tiffany Sauder: Choosing not to.
[00:06:19] Brian Kavicky: But here's a question on this. Why instead didn't you say, "Wow, Julia, I am so amazed at what you do. I'm so proud of all of you that volunteer. You do amazing things from the school." Why choose instead to say, "I feel guilty that I'm not helping out more."
[00:06:36] Tiffany Sauder: Totally. It makes about myself. It's so gross. I did a much better job. My oldest daughter is a swimmer and there is a mom that does all of the early morning breakfast. Ladies, girls got to be there at 6:40 in the morning. It's nuts. And at the end of the season, I just sent her a virtual Starbucks gift card and was just like, "Thank you for all that you do for our kids. You're amazing." And I did not make it about myself and that felt much better.
[00:07:00] Brian Kavicky: Yeah. Yep. Okay.
[00:07:03] Tiffany Sauder: What about things like, "I feel guilty that I make more money than my friends or make more money than my spouse."
[00:07:11] Brian Kavicky: So it would be, what is causing you to feel guilty? Is it that your friends are complaining about how much money you make? Is that you're seeing and realizing that they don't make as much money and that makes you feel bad for them, but instead you're choosing to make yourself feel bad for yourself? Is it that you think it's wrong to make more money and you don't deserve that? I mean, what is causing that? Because in a rational sense, if somebody says, "Well, I make more money than other people, " I mean, you would go, "Well, good for you. " But in your case, it would be that person would be going, "I feel bad about it. " Well, I feel bad. You'd feel good for anybody else.
[00:07:51] Tiffany Sauder: And that's not necessarily an example from my life, just the listeners. I've heard that from people before. What about, "I feel guilty that when we leave the house, my kids just look like a train
[00:08:02] Brian Kavicky: Wreck." Yeah. Do the kids care? Do they look in the mirror and make sure that ... I mean, if my kids walked out ... I mean, they're older, but if my kids walked out, they'd be devastated or sometimes they'd be in a hoodie. You care to a degree, but why are you taking that on for them when they potentially have the ability to do things or even ask you and say ... I mean, my daughter, when she was five years old, would not leave the house without a bow in her head and she would not get in the car unless she had a bow. So even when they're young, they care. If they don't care, why do you?
[00:08:39] Tiffany Sauder: Any examples from women you work with where guilt comes up?
[00:08:42] Brian Kavicky: I hear it as I got a promotion and I used to be a peer to a bunch of women and we were really good friends, but now I'm in a position and I think they envy my position and I feel guilty that I got it and they didn't. I was given an opportunity to speak or do something or a special project and I was the one asked and I feel guilty that I was the one asked to do that thing. Another one would be, "I feel guilty because I should be at home more. I should be at helping around around the house more. I should be doing more things. Yes, I have a maid. Yes, I have all these things, but I feel guilty that I'm not there all the time." Stuff like that.
[00:09:28] Tiffany Sauder: That's another one I hear. I feel guilty getting help around the house. I feel guilty totally. So when women say, "I feel guilty," what do you think it is that they actually mean? We've walked through different vignettes where it can happen personally, it can happen professionally, it can happen about our families, about us individually. What do we actually mean?
[00:09:50] Brian Kavicky: I think there's two versions. There's a version of silent guilt, which is this is how I feel and this is what my internal thoughts are telling me. And there's public guilt, which is the example of you at the school where you're outwardly proclaiming your guilt to somebody else. And those are two totally different things. They're both rooted in some level of justifying either I'm justifying not having the progress that I could make. I'm justifying why I'm not doing something. It's a defensive posture, but that internal guilt is typically causing them to say, "I can't do what I want or I shouldn't do what I want because I have this other thing holding me back and then allowing it to hold them back."
[00:10:38] Tiffany Sauder: So is guilt always a junk word or can it be used in a way where it's not a decoy for another more true emotion or story perhaps?
[00:10:53] Brian Kavicky: Well, real guilty is you violate something. You are guilty of murder if you violate the law. You are guilty of speeding if you violate speeding rules That's literal black and white guilty. But if you notice, if somebody gets pulled over in a car for speeding, they don't go, "Oh my gosh, I feel so guilty for speeding." They are yelling at the officer, they're crying to get out of the ticket. They are doing everything possible to proclaim I'm innocent of this, where this junk word is more, I'm using it as a mechanism in order to protect and defend myself where they're not really defending themselves in the same way out of it. They're going, "It wasn't my fault. I didn't do it, but something's wrong with your gun. What's wrong with you? " It's so interesting actually. Used in the wrong context.
[00:11:45] Tiffany Sauder: So what questions can we ask ourselves? What investigation can we do? Because every time I told you a story, you had two to five questions to ask of it, what's actually going on here? So in the same way that now when I say, "Oh my word, I feel burnout," or I feel that talk track starting, I'm like, I either have to go harvest progress where I'm like, "No, I am actually making progress and sort of find it instead of looking for the places where I'm just feel overwhelmed and underwater." Or I know that's a cue of I've got to make forward progress on something I care a lot about because that exhaustion starts to go away when you feel the connection between effort and outcome. So help us build our toolkit, our vocabulary around this when the guilt talk track starts internally or externally, what do we do
[00:12:35] Brian Kavicky: Instead
[00:12:35] Tiffany Sauder: Of riding the rollercoaster?
[00:12:37] Brian Kavicky: So it's not necessarily the word guilt, but it's understanding that guilt as this word is being used as a justification and that means it's a habit. So a habit for it to be a habit has a trigger and a response. So you said that when you said I catch myself, you're recognizing a trigger and you're saying instead of responding to that trigger in that way, I'm going to choose to respond differently. So if I'm the mom who's decided to exercise and I'm on the treadmill exercising and all of a sudden one of the kids starts going, "Mommy, mommy, mommy," I can either say, "Oh, I can't exercise. I see this is why I don't do it to justify that because that was the trigger." Or I can say, "I'll get to you when I'm done." But I have to make the choice of how I'm responding to that trigger and that choice is based on what is this habit I have empowering me to do?
[00:13:37] Brian Kavicky: Is it empowering me not to make progress or is it empowering me to do something progress? It's just different. It's the same as the school thing. Instead of saying, "I feel so guilty that I'm not participating," say, "You guys do an amazing job. I'm so glad you guys volunteer." It's the same thing. I'm in the same school line. I see the same Julia and I'm going to say something different. Just recognize what are your patterns? Why are you responding that way? And what is my true motive for what I am getting out of this? Because a habit becomes a racket when it's a bad action that you get a benefit for.
[00:14:15] Tiffany Sauder: Because the benefit could be them socially being like, "Oh my word, I totally wish you ... You're so talented. I wish you could be part of this, " or something like that. It's like giving me this social feedback.
[00:14:24] Brian Kavicky: Yeah. Or it could be, "I don't really feel like exercising, so I'm going to make it that I feel guilty that I don't to justify why I'm not exercising." Because it's an easy way out to say, "Yeah, I just feel guilty exercising when my kids are away." I would bet you a lot of money that that person does not exercise when the kids are asleep because they say things like, "I have finally time to relax." It doesn't change. It's just the framing of the moment of, "This is how I'm going to use this to justify the situation and the decisions I've made."
[00:14:56] Tiffany Sauder: Is it a step too far to say that when we're using the word guilt, we're lying to ourselves in some way?
[00:15:02] Brian Kavicky: I think you're not only lying to yourself. A lot of times you're using it to lie and deceive other people because you're justifying your actions. You're playing defense, which is a total ... He's like, "Oh, it's terrible that I would say that that was all about me. " It's all self-protection and lying is one form of self-protection and saying I'm guilty is just another version of self-protection.
[00:15:26] Tiffany Sauder: Well, and we're recruiting them into the racket
[00:15:28] Brian Kavicky: Because
[00:15:31] Tiffany Sauder: I sort of interrupted her in saying, "Well, I think you just need..." My observation is you haven't chosen. You haven't chosen which one is more important and that's okay, but you at least have agency over it if you say, "I just haven't chosen. I'm seeing this friction play out. My plan was to work out at this time. This friction's starting to show up and I have to decide which one I care more about. " And then just own the choice.
[00:15:56] Brian Kavicky: But own the choice of, I can work out when my kids are awake. It's not a either or, which is I can work out, but I have to do it when they're asleep. It's like, "Well, if you made the choice, I need to work out. Oh, by the way, your kids are awake right now. Do it anyway." Because what lesson are your kids getting from you if they're watching you cave to what they want and not getting what you want out of life? It's not helping or empowering them in any way. Even at two years old, they're still observing you.
[00:16:58] Tiffany Sauder: Which I think is actually a good on-ramp to some of what we talked about before this, which is the hidden price of doing it all. Because when guilt is the thing that is making the choice about what gets our energy, what gets our yes, what gets our prioritization, what gets on our calendar, when it's guilt. Because if I had said, "Oh, I actually feel guilty for not participating more in the musical, so I am going to participate more in the musical." Let's say guilt made that choice for me because I feel guilty, and then it added a gajillion more hours of me being at the school. It would have violated one of my stated priorities, which is to be more available for my girls right now, just physically, still at home, not planned, because in this season that's super important. So if my guilt made the choice to be part of the musical, it would have violated one of my stated priorities, which is to just be home and to be still.
[00:17:49] Tiffany Sauder: It wasn't actually that I had plans, except that my plan was to be home more evenings between the hours of 4:30 and 8:30. So when guilt is making our decisions for us, we get to this place where we are doing everything because guilt is making the choices and not our priorities. So what is the price of doing it all and what does that look like for ourselves and everybody around us?
[00:18:16] Brian Kavicky: I think the price is that there's no more you. It becomes you live in a world where everything is about them. It doesn't even matter who them are. The rule-
[00:18:27] Tiffany Sauder: That again.
[00:18:29] Brian Kavicky: I think if you're using guilt as a mechanism, you will lose you because you are choosing to make it all about them. Yes. And so if that is what you've chosen and you say ... So it's totally different. So imagine that I woke up this morning and I said, "I'm going to make my life solely about them." You would never feel guilty. You'd be all the time going, "What can I do for you? " You'd never utter the words guilty because that was aligned with your purpose. The problem is that when we haven't defined that that is my purpose and we're missing, this is what my goal, this is what my priorities are, this is my sandbox, that is going to step in because everybody is working to make you part of their plan, whether it's stated or intended or hinted at. And if you don't have those locked in things to make decisions, you're going to start caving to them and without that priority to go, "I'm not doing it here or my nose," you have to have a defensive mechanism to justify what you're doing.
[00:19:33] Tiffany Sauder: But that guilt word starts to become a defensive, reactive toolbox inside of a chaotic world.
[00:19:43] Brian Kavicky: But it's interesting, you never use the word guilt in how you feel about your own situation. The person that's promoted, if I said, "How do you feel about being promoted?" The first thing that they would say is, "I'm really proud of myself." And then they'd say, "But I feel guilty because if there's a but, they haven't fully accepted like, why don't you just feel proud of yourself? Didn't everybody else have the same opportunity as you did?" I mean, it's totally irrational to worry about how other people feel about that because they could have applied for the job, they could have done all the things, they could have achieved it. Would they feel guilty if you didn't get the job or would they be pretty proud that they got it? So it's this weird shift of, I'm worried so much about what other people think or how I'm perceived or I'm in this world of self-protection when technically there is no self at there ever.
[00:20:41] Tiffany Sauder: Do you think it's more prevalent in women because we're so communal or not really?
[00:20:48] Brian Kavicky: Well, I think- It's okay if it's no,
[00:20:49] Tiffany Sauder: I'm just
[00:20:49] Brian Kavicky: Curious. I think the communalness causes it to be talked about a lot, but I will tell you, men have this exact same problem.
[00:20:56] Tiffany Sauder: But it plays out a little bit differently just because-
[00:20:59] Brian Kavicky: They just don't-
[00:21:00] Tiffany Sauder: Social norms are different.
[00:21:00] Brian Kavicky: Well, they're not talking to women about it. They're talking about men about it. No guy is coming home and saying, "Oh my gosh, I feel so guilty that I'm traveling so much." It's just not going to happen, but they can- Sometimes though. They can be behind closed doors going, "Yeah, I feel pretty bad. I'm getting a lot of pressure and I feel not so great about this. " In those quiet moments, they'll admit to the same thing.
[00:21:28] Tiffany Sauder: Yeah. So do you think this cloak of guilt and this pretend hero's journey of doing it all puts women in a place where we can get in our own way more than anything else?
[00:21:42] Brian Kavicky: Yes, because this feeling of I get to do it all or I am doing along it all is still justification for my current state. I'm so busy, I'm involved in so many things because I bet the women that are on that musical set, if we said, "What do you feel like your purpose is? What do you feel like you're doing?" They would just look at you all confused. They're like, "Well, Julia needed me, " which means they've made it about them. It's just that I'm doing it all, I'm busy. Is this justification for bad decisions that you're making and choosing not to have priorities, not to have real goals and passion towards things, and you're justifying it by saying I'm needed.
[00:22:27] Tiffany Sauder: So the other way that that can look is, "No, it just doesn't fit. I'm so excited about what's going on. It just doesn't fit for me right now." Or, "Oh, I've decided not to tackle what my kids wear. We're busy with things we love doing and I don't know. They just pick something out of the drawer and we just roll out, but we're having a great time." It's just a totally different posture of these situations of this sort of guilt that's like you can position it where it's like, "Yeah, it's what we chose. We're just going to go with it. "
[00:22:54] Brian Kavicky: Yeah. If you go to the grocery store and you see this kid that's wearing a superhero outfit and you kind of look at it and the mom's like, "I know I gave up." I was like, "Good for you. That kid is so happy running around like Superman." And they're like, "Yeah, I gave up. It's exactly whatever."
[00:23:12] Tiffany Sauder: So step one is to catch this ... Well, maybe I'll ask you the question. When guilt starts to raise its head or raise its voice in our minds, what steps do we undertake? What do we do if we want to come out from under this idea of guilt? Not idea, but this vocabulary of guilt.
[00:23:34] Brian Kavicky: Yeah. The first step is what was the trigger? What triggered me to feel this way? What triggered me to respond that way? What does that response align with what I've said my priorities are, my goals are, and what's important to me? What do I value and how should I have responded differently if I actually was bought into my purpose, my values, and what I've prioritized and then determine what benefit you got if you took it too far, what did I get? So your communal aspect of somebody's talking in a group of women, they're like, "Oh my gosh, I just feel so guilty right now." And somebody goes, "Oh, don't feel guilty. You're amazing, blah, blah, blah." Well, you got a benefit from somebody complimenting you. Is that really the most healthy thing to do or not and say, "What benefit am I getting by using this guilt mechanism to justify something?
[00:24:32] Brian Kavicky: And is that really going to be healthy for me? "
[00:24:36] Tiffany Sauder: Ladies, I think we have a really big choice to make in whether or not we perpetuate this racket of guilt because socially we have an opportunity to give things velocity or to shut them down. And so when somebody says to you, "I feel guilty," or you find the words at the tip of your tongue, how do we have better vocabulary to ask questions like what Brian has said, which is like, "What's the payoff? What is this really about? What's underneath this? And how do I make sure that it's my priorities and not my guilt that are making the decisions in my life and what goes on my calendar and what gets my money and what gets my attention?" So we're going to jump into actually recording the next episode, which is about what happens when you have caught yourself in this idea of guilt. We've gotten clear about what it is that it's about, but we bail on the decision midway because as Brian said, "Hey, it might be that you haven't yet decided that you're going to exercise, and that's actually what you're using as a cover for the fact that you're saying you feel guilty about it.
[00:25:38] Tiffany Sauder: " But there are times we've made the decision. We have decided it, but then life starts to life around us and so quickly the decision gets undone. So in the next episode that's coming in May, we're going to talk about what happens when we get to this place of friction around choices that are decided through the lens of our priorities instead of choices that are decided through the lens of guilt. As always, thanks for listening on this episode. Brian, thanks for joining me in the studio. Such a chic little setup, Keith on audio, and I hope that this helps you step into your life of And. It's so important that we live in a place where we feel like we have an abundant view of our resources, an abundant view of the role our talents can play in the world, and I hope that this episode has helped you on your journey.
[00:26:25] Tiffany Sauder: Thanks for joining us. Thanks for listening to The Life of Ant. This is your weekly reminder to keep making bold choices, saying clear yeses, and holding space for what matters most. As always, if you like this episode, I'd love for you to drop a review and share it with your friend. It's the fastest way that we can grow the show. Thanks for joining us. I'll see you next time.