Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:00:10]:
I'm not coming down I never knocked it on the ground I'm not coming down I wanna go higher, higher, higher than that.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:00:10]:
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 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. 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? Ladies and gentlemen, I'm coming to you today from a state of nervous system dysregulation task misalignment to my gifts and talents level of being.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:01:04]:
So it is, oh, gosh, nine days until the sixth annual Stand Tall In Your Story event. So at the time you are listening to this, I'm probably on a stage if you listen to this, the day it comes out on the 13th. And I'll be introducing the seven women that will be sharing their stories. And I want to talk to you today about what happens to us and therefore our lives when we are doing work that isn't aligned with our unique gifts, talents, and interests. Because this event is one of my favorite things, and I love that night so, so, so much. But the two weeks prior to the event is when all of the spreadsheets of guest lists and tasks and questions about budget and food and drinks and where do you want to put everything and, oh, it gets to be a lot. And so the number of decisions that I make on any given day, plus doing work that isn't aligned to my unique gifts and talents has a significant impact on how I feel. And that's just not me.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:02:36]:
This is how our nervous system works. And so while I was feeling that way today, I thought, you know what, Just hit record and talk about it can give you some real life examples of this. So let's, let's break it down from a science perspective. So when we do tasks that aren't aligned with our strengths, our unique gifts, talents and strengths, our nervous system responds to that and it recognizes that. And it has a drain on our energy. It increases our activation and therefore our stress and cortisol levels and really makes decision making difficult. So the part of your brain that is responsible for problem solving and decision making, the prefrontal cortex, right here in the front has to work harder when you're doing things that don't come naturally. Now, that doesn't mean we're doing things that other people would think are difficult.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:03:43]:
Because when I sit and look at 350 names on a spreadsheet that need to be divided up exactly to the ticket that they purchased and the table that they're supposed to sit at and order the exact right amount of food, some people, that literally lights up their. Their love centers, like, they salivate over that stuff. Now, look, I like that it gets done, but I don't want to be the one to do it. But guess what? It's my company. It's my event. This is what I'm doing. And so when we look at each other and want to make judgments about what is easy or hard for others, y'all, that's just not fair. It's impossible for us to know the level of difficulty a task is for somebody else, because we're not them.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:04:44]:
We don't have their unique gifts and talents. So I wanted to bring this up for a lot of reasons today. There's lots of lessons to be learned here. But this whole comparison, judgment, it's interesting because we all want our uniqueness. We want to be known for our uniqueness. And there's, you know, just a huge movement around authenticity. But the minute that somebody is different than you, there's this immediate like, well, what do you mean? Why don't they see it this way? Or why don't they do it this way? So we're quick to place judgment on somebody that isn't like us, but yet we don't want to be like anybody else. I just find that super fascinating.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:05:27]:
And so I want to share this with you because I want us to be gentler and kinder and loving and accommodating to everyone's differences, because the extra effort that it takes to do things that aren't aligned to your gifts and talents or something that you're learning brand new causes a lot of mental fatigue and decision fatigue. It's dramatically decreased our level of creativity when we're doing tasks that aren't aligned to our gifts and talents. And so I have to be really mindful when I'm doing this event, preparing for it, that I don't schedule on any given day. A lot of the tasks that don't light my heart on fire the same day that I am writing a talk that I'm going to give on stage that night, because those two things do not match. And I've learned this over time. Because it used to just be all hands on deck, just trying to figure it out and just doing whatever I could whenever I could fit it in, and that never worked. And so now I'm much more strategic about, okay, so what tasks are happening today and when can I be creative and when can I be in a space where I'm making a lot of decisions that are really important? And listen, I start planning this thing months in advance, but everything always ends up coming to the last couple of weeks for some of this detail work. That's not my jam.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:06:51]:
It's not what I love. A couple other things, sciency things. Your autonomic nervous system shifts into stress response, fight or flight mode when you're struggling through the work that doesn't fit your strengths. So I'm going to give you an example of this. When I'm working on the spreadsheets and trying to line everything up and make everything work, or I'm working on the timing of the event to make sure intermission happens at the exact right time and the event ends at the exact right time. If I have my phone on and I make myself available and somebody calls me and wants me to make a decision, I can't access the calm, healthy, whole part of me in that space. And so I've learned to say to, well, I'll turn off my phone. So, so I'm not interrupted.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:07:45]:
But even if, like my kids are here, I will say to them, hey, I'm going to be working on this thing and if you want to talk to me about something, let's wait till after. Is there anything you need right now? Because if they were to interrupt me while I'm doing that, I'm going to be snippy kind of whether I like it or not. It just like my, my brain is like, I'm feeling like I'm being attacked. And so one more interruption during that time is like right here. It's like if you trap a wild animal in the corner, even if you're going to try to help them, they're going to or lash out at you. That's kind of how I am when I'm doing work that I'm not great at. You're just more tense and anxious because the cortisol and the adrenaline that gets released do tasks that you're not good at makes you more anxious and mentally drained. So over time, if we are perpetually doing work that's not aligned to our gifts and talents, that's a fast track to burnout and exhaustion and will eventually cause you physical problems.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:08:53]:
So I hear too often that somebody is sticking it out in a job they hate for good pay and benefits. And you better hope you got some good benefits, because you're probably going to need them for all the healthcare that you're going to have to pay for. It's kind of a wash. So I wanted to share this tonight so that we could all spend some time in reflection and ask ourselves, is it worth it if you're not in a job that the majority of your time is spent doing things that you like to do that you're good at? There's a tax to that. So your paycheck and your benefits better outweigh that tax, and the chances are it doesn't. Conversely, when you're engaged in tasks that light you up, your brain releases dopamine. That's the neurotransmitter that gives us motivation and pleasure, things that we like to do. So I said to a client today, we were talking about this topic, and I said, you know what if somebody said to me, hey, I need you in two hours to go walk in that arena unprepared and give a talk for 7,000 people? I would be fired up versus, hey, could you sit down and make sure these 350 people's names get lined up on this spreadsheet and they get the right amount of food ordered? That's an example of how dramatically different those two things can touch a person's brain and motivation levels.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:10:19]:
And so we can't say, oh, it's really hard to give a talk on stage, or it's really hard to do this. Everybody's different, unique, down to our fingerprints. And so one lesson of today is make sure that you are lined up with things that you love to do that you're good at as much as possible. Yeah, we all have stuff we have to do, but as much as possible. And two, be curious about other people's things that motivate them and give them excitement, joy. Some people love to create pivot tables on Excel. I had a colleague once that I would be looking at some data, and he'd say, you want me to build you a pivot table for that? Be like, sure, if it lights your heart on fire. And then one day he was like, do you want me to teach you so you can do it for yourself? I was like, absolutely not.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:11:05]:
Don't you talk like that to me. But if you want to light your little heart on fire and build me a pivot table, let's go. This is what it means to live and work as those unique pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that are meant to fit together, each of us different, but supporting one another. What else about this that I think is important for us to share today? The lack of intrinsic motivation is something that I'm really concerned about for our society. And it's a huge topic that I'm writing about in this next book that we'll be unpacking over the next several months in a variety of ways. But the shortcut to prepare you for that and as it relates to this is most of our society. School business parenting is externally driven. You go to school because you're going to get grades and get ranked according to your grades.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:12:08]:
And so you start to define yourself based on those grades. In business, you are looking for what role, what industry, what title, what paycheck. There are various ways that we look for external validation and motivation of our identity, who we are. We wait for a performance evaluation to know if we're good. We wait till we get the promotion to see if we're good. And that is the number one driver of burnout, proving yourself to something outside of yourself. And so my hypothesis, after studying this for, I don't know, eight years out, burnout is an identity issue. It's not a productivity or work or any of those.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:13:05]:
It's how we get our sense of self. And so what we're saying here is when you're intrinsically motivated from the inside out versus the outside in, it releases far more dopamine, motivation, pleasure, to the degree that we want to get better and we want to work harder and we want to do more because we're so intrinsically motivated on. On certain things that we are designed for, the way God designed us uniquely. And when we're too often working from the outside in, it doesn't do that, doesn't light us up. And so we burn out. And Daniel Pink wrote about this in his book Drive. He said the three keys to driving motivation were autonomy. There you go.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:14:03]:
Intrinsically motivated, mastery. I want to get better, which is what happens when you're intrinsically motivated. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Like, you know that the work that you do, you know how it matters to another person, to whatever you're working on. And so I'm just digging into some of those concepts more in this book that I'm writing right now. So intrinsic motivation is a key part of this message today. Tasks that aren't in alignment with who we are require more energy because they force the brain to operate outside its natural pathways. So your nervous system is spending so much more energy.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:14:44]:
Energy, therefore it's spinning more glucose and oxygen. So we start to get mental fog, physically exhausted. And over time our resilience starts to wane. And so the last couple of days after doing these kinds of tasks, which are sitting, they're not physically exerting in the way that most people think about physical exertion. I didn't go out and run five miles. I just thought about things that I don't like to think about. And so for the last couple of days, I kid you not, at like 5:30pm I'm like laying on the couch thinking, oh my gosh, is it too early to go to bed? And so now I take a break. I even took a little nap, 5:30 nap the other day and then I could get up and went and walked and worked out a little bit, but went to bed early because y'all for me, spreadsheets are exhausting.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:15:42]:
You might think getting on a stage with in front of a 350 people is exhausting. Nope, not for me. Spreadsheets killing me, killing me this week. So sometimes you'll hear it called flow state, you know, where you're just in the groove. You're doing things that you love to do. If you say, hey, go write a new keynote speech, oh listen, you better clear the whole day because I'm going to get in some flow. I love to do it, Love, love, love to do it. And I can spend, I can 10 hours stretch, do it, no problem and still feel great and then lay in bed that night and be like, oh my gosh, more ideas.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:16:15]:
Just flowing and flowing, flowing, flowing, flowing. So bottom line, takeaways today. Leverage, leverage your strengths, please, pretty please. And if you are a manager or leader or business owner and you have people that work with, with and for you, it is in everybody's best interest that you take the time get to know those people and what, what are their unique gifts, talents and abilities? Because they may have hired in in a particular job because it was an opening and they needed a job and that's how they hired in. But that doesn't mean that they are in the role that they could be their very best at. Which also doesn't always have anything to do with their background, their experience, their education. You find out these things by asking really curious questions with people. Ask them things like what do you love to do that you're really good at? And don't limit it to just work and just sit and listen to what are the things that come up for them.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:17:23]:
Ask them My favorite question, what was 14 year old you doing for fun? Because that's before the world told them who they should be. So if you can tap into knowing who they are inherently the way God created them to be in their mother's womb, and tap into some of that and give them opportunities to learn based on their strengths. You want to talk about engagement, you want to talk about drive, you want to talk about loyalty and longevity, that's the snizzle. But too often we just put people in roles and it's convenient for us in the business to keep them where they are because anytime we move someone, it's disruptive. But I can tell you wholeheartedly that if you take the time, get to know these people and put them in jobs that are best aligned to their strengths, profitability will benefit. Another takeaway from today. If you are in a situation in your role where you have the ability to delegate tasks or reassign tasks in some way, do it. If there are things that are just draining you all the time, do it.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:18:33]:
I was working with a client several years ago who hated doing the budget planning. But she thought because she was the CEO that she was supposed to be doing this small organ, fairly small organization, and it wasn't actually plugging the numbers into the spreadsheet. It was a lot of the prep work for it. And it was exhausting to her. And I asked her one day, I said, why are you still doing this if it drained you? And she had the belief that if it drained her, it must drain everybody else. Remember, we think that everybody's like us. We see the world not as it is, but as we are. So she thought she was saving others from a job that she didn't want to delegate because she didn't want to just like put a monkey in their back about it.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:19:19]:
I said, I bet there are people in your organization that would love, like literally love to do this. And sure enough, she went and talked to somebody that she was like, oh my gosh, I can't remember the person saying, I bet they would love this. Once she learned these things about what happens when you line up in flow to your unique gifts and talents. And she went and had a conversation with this woman and she said, would you like to do this from now on? And she said, absolutely. I've been waiting for you to ask because I know you hate it. See how that works? Have conversations, find out what people love to do. Find out ways that you can delegate and reassign tasks to meet people's gifts and talents. Now if you aren't in a situation that you can delegate something, can you redesign it? Can you change the way that it gets done? That's in better alignment with the way you think, the way you work? Just give yourself the freedom to consider that and ask yourself if that's an option.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:20:18]:
See how it goes. I'd love to hear about it. And if you need to do work that isn't aligned well to your gifts and talents, make sure that you are incorporating lots of breaks, lots of nervous system regulation, lots of take a break, go for a walk. I've done that several times the last few days so that I'm not completely draining all of my energy. It really has made a huge difference because I could tell there was one stretch yesterday where I was starting to make mistakes and I moved something over to a different tab and it was like, where'd that go? And then I couldn't find it. And then I was getting more aggravated. I was like, oh, I think I need walk. Today I filmed a little story on my Instagram where I just stood at the counter and slowly peeled two carrots and cut them up and just stood at the counter, me and the dogs eating carrots.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:21:08]:
It was like 10 minutes of just pause, breathe, peel, chop, eat a carrot. And I got rejuvenated. And I was like, okay, now I can go back and finish the run of show timing. And that's that. Bottom line, when you work in alignment with your strengths, your nervous system operates far more efficiently and effectively so that your energy is better, you experience more joy. And then the ripple effect of you having a better experience is that when you go out into the world outside of your work, to your roommate or your spouse or your neighbor or Pilates group, wherever you're going after work, everybody benefits that you have done work that is optimized to your unique gifts and talents. Because what happens is we have a ripple effect of our nervous system energy. So when we're all going to work every day, waiting to be recognized and externally validated or doing work that we aren't really aligned with, then we take that energy, which is, ew, a little ick, home with us.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:22:28]:
And then we sit and try to do homework with children, cranky, and then there's a fight, and then that ripple effects into, like, on and on and on and on. So these aren't just productivity hacks. I actually hate that term because I don't want to hack anything. These aren't just about getting more done. These aren't just about work. How we work impacts how we live it impacts our relationships. It has a huge ripple effect in society. I mean, it might not even be somebody that lives in your house or that is a part of your inner circle.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:23:11]:
When you've been doing work that's not going well and you run down to the coffee shop and you're snippy and kind of ick to the barista that impacts their day. And then they tell their colleague that you were kind of a. And then that's a ripple effect in their conversation. Like you stack three or four of those together for a barista. My goodness. Right? So all of our collective energy every single day is impacting one another. And so if we would all just do our part to know ourselves and try to align our lives as best we can to do the work that we're supposed to be doing, because it's our unique gifts and talents, we can change the world. And I don't just say that with hyperbole, which I am a fan of and use fairly often.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:24:04]:
I say that because it is true. And I am going to spend the rest of my days helping people understand that and do that better. So that's all for today, y'all. I am so excited just for you to see the videos, if you're not going to be at the event next Thursday, March 13, of these women that are going to be sharing their stories in our sixth annual Stand Tall In Your Story event. It's always been in celebration of International Women's Day. We do it in March, but it's really about business, being human, and it's men and women and they bring their kids sometimes, and it's all about humanity. And the stories this year are really great. So as soon as those are produced by my partners at Cantaloupe.tv, shout out to them today.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:24:57]:
Then I'll make sure that they get to you. All right, y'all. Love you. Mean it. Make it a great day.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:00:10]:
I'm not coming down. I never locked it on the ground. I'm not coming.
Rebecca Fleetwood Hession [00:25:10]:
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. All right. Make it a great day. Love you. Mean it.