Hey pro organizers it's Melissa. And in case you are under the mistaken impression that this is a. Highly professional podcast. And I, um, Really like have professional, you know, stuff. Uh, or whatever, I just got done eating a spoonful of peanut butter, which by the way, if you think that's weird, we do that in our house all the time. Just random spoonfuls of peanut butter. And there was like, oh my gosh, I need to go, uh, the record, the intro to the podcast.
And I'm like, I just finished eating peanut butter. And, uh, I, now I can't talk. So, this is a story that nobody asked me for an in fact, several of you may have just clicked, stop other podcasts, but if you stuck with me, Thank you. I just wanted to let you know that. You know, it's really just me behind this, uh, behind this microphone. And, um, you know, it's not like a real, super professional outfit that you're hanging out with, but I appreciate those of you who stick it out with me.
Week after week after week after through 200. And. 13. I think this is episode 213. So I really appreciate it. All right. I gave you a podcast on Monday. Monday Tuesday. I don't know. Uh, and I'm giving you another one and then there's going to be another one after this, because I'm breaking this one up into two parts because we are talking about burnout. And I am talking to a doctor who specializes in burnout and stress and managing stress, particularly for women entrepreneurs.
Some of whom occasionally. Like to just eat peanut butter, um, apparently and, uh, then podcasts. So I am very thrilled to bring you part one of this conversation and part two. I promise I will drop tomorrow. So you will get three podcasts this week because I am behind. So I'm going to be getting caught up and you're going to get lots of goodness from now until the end of the year. So I would like to introduce you to Camilla Moore. And she is going to hit us with some great stuff.
I loved my conversation with her and I hope that you do too. Have an awesome day organizers. Okay. We're going to get into it. Cause we have, we could probably talk for like seven hours. Neither of us have the time for that because we have many other things to do, but we're busy women. We're busy. We're busy women helping busy women. But can you just give us kind of your background, all of those things for our listeners? So Dr. Camilla Moore, I am sir, I'm a chiropractor by trade.
I sold my practice a few years ago. Went to work for a big hospital organization, started the department there, and then had always been doing some mindfulness based meditation for my own just personal use, but then really started to get burned out of my job and wanted to Kind of spread my wings and see what else there was. That's when I got my board certification in lifestyle medicine. And one of the foundations of lifestyle medicine is stress management.
And so I really fell into the smart program, stress management and resiliency training program that I teach online. And and about a year ago, Little over a year ago, there was some reshuffling at the hospital system. And instead of going back into private practice, I decided to do this full time and have never looked back. I teach the program online. It's on demand because we are talking about busy people. So we need it accessible.
And then I work one on one with clients that in our, You know, our focus is really how to burn out proof of business, and we work with small business owners solopreneurs entrepreneurs, and professional women that are really kind of struggling with this work life balance, but they, or they want to be, you know, a little proactive, and like, how do we burn out proof our business, because I feel like everybody sees the writing on the wall, but we don't
have a roadmap, and so that's one of the things that we work on one on one. And it's been wonderful. Well, first of all, you have a very similar story to a lot of us, including me of like, Hey, I had, I had this fork in the road and I just said, I'm going all in on, on being a business owner. But being a business owner is not always easy. You know, it's, there are peaks and valleys and by the way, in any job, there are peaks and valleys, but I think it's especially important.
Have you seen, I mean, this feels obvious to me because I have seen it in myself and others, but like big changes since the pandemic, you In people's ability to just handle things and all of that, you know, it's been interesting because I You know, our experience personally of the pandemic was also you know, because I was in healthcare and we kept our office open. I was also pregnant during the pandemic and had a pandemic baby. Yes. In June of 2020.
And so I witnessed because I was also taking care of a lot of the health care workers that were so stressed out and so exhausted and so burnt out. And then but also kind of going through it myself. And one of the things I was actually thinking about this today it's funny you mentioned it.
Thinking about, like, how, in particular, like, with women, like, how the pandemic has shaped all of our work life balance and what that means, and there are a lot of women like me, like, part of the reason why I decided to commit was because I wanted flexibility, being a working parent, being, you know, the daughter of parents that are getting older, and, I wanted the flexibility of not having to go into an office every day and have that business dependent
just on me showing up that day, and also to have other employees that were reliant on me to show up that day. But you know, There was this study that came out earlier this year in the journal Work, where it looked at specifically women in middle age and why we were so burned out. And they narrowed it down to three factors. One, that women tend to be in a higher turnover.
Profession and anyway, like their, their, their jobs or their positions tend to have a little bit more chaotic nature in general to we're kind of like the sandwich generation where like we might be caring for our own kids, but also caring for our parents. where we have, you know, we're really the middle of two generations that need some caregiving and attention.
But the third was so interesting to see, like, in print was that We have economically evolved so that women are super powerful in the workplace, but societally, we still have very gender specific roles of carrying the household load of carrying the child care and the, you know, parents caregiving as well, like most of that falls on women.
So. You know, we see this, but in, since the pandemic, there has been a lot of the shift for women wanting to work from home because like, it's just so much easier, but at the same time, It doesn't really help that balance because, you know, we're in it. Like, we're home. There's dishes to be done. There is laundry to be done. There is grocery shopping to be done. And if we default to those traditional roles, then we're doing all of it.
Yes. And I think, you know, the pandemic is really, we're, I don't think we're out of it, but I'd still feel like the cards have still been tossed up in the air. And not the companies don't really know where everything's in. I mean, you're seeing like big companies like Amazon, they're mandating, everybody goes back to the office now and they've gradually phased that in, right? Like last year it was just like three or four days, like a hybrid, but.
You know, I think that women have such power in the in the workforce that I think Those that are employees and getting, being employed are going to do what, you know, you and I did eventually and just say, I'm so capable of doing something better on my own. And what's the downside? Well, that, that unseen labor, you know, I, I know that there's a phrase for it that I'm probably missing, but that, that emotional home labor kind of thing. I'm obsessed with this topic.
And I had someone on the podcast who's a fair point. Play deck expert. You know, she does all the, all the fair play stuff. And we talked about this a lot because there are just, every, almost every woman I know, even if you have a wonderful, like, very good partner, it just, so much of the, the life stuff ends up on the mom or the woman or the wife or you know, whatever. And it's, it's really, really hard to balance all those things.
Well, and in like, you know, in a, in a heterosexual couple with, you know, the man, like, the husband going to work, like, part of that infrastructure is he, like, his job, like my husband's job, and yes, I, like, I married the good guy, like, I married the nice guy, like, 10 out of 10, highly recommend, but His job still has expectations of him showing up and being there, you know, and we see this in the difference of just maternity leave and paternity leave, I guess.
Paternity leave right now is like, you know, crazy to think about in certain generations, but, you know, in millennial generations, like, we have family members that are in millennial generations, like, They both took time off, you know, like it is, it's shifting a little bit, but part of why it's difficult for these later generations to do that is because the expectation of both gender roles are still very much founded in traditional roles. For sure.
I actually, I'm glad you said that too, because I, I always, I tend to selfishly think of the woman's side, but there are, I know some very, really, really great men in, again, in a heterosexual couple who one of them, a guy that I know that's, I would consider pretty progressive about his views, who was like, oh, this guy I work with is taking paternity leave for three months, like, I can't believe he's leaving for that long. Like, he was, he was really complaining about it.
And I was like, Like, honestly, like, I'm glad that he's taking pictures, but there is still like, there are a lot of those gender roles that are still out there and but yeah, it's, it's, it's all interesting.
Well, and we take on, I think there, women, I can speak for myself, like I'm so much better at multitasking than, you know, than my husband, like God love him, you know, but but I think we have different skill sets and, you know, it's, it's, it's, It's easier for a lot of us to do all that juggling, and it's expected, and if it doesn't get done, it falls, we are the ones that shoulder that blame, too.
And I think the term, it's invisible, the invisible load, it's the mental load that, that women are carrying, and Yeah. I mean, and, and having, throwing a child in the mix just highlights everything. Just forget it. Forget it. When there's someone else that needs you all the time. One of the things that I explained to my husband one time is that like, it was his dad's birthday and I was like, Hey, did you get your dad a gift? He's just looks at me with this like blank face.
I think he's a good one and he just looks at me and I go, do you understand that if we show up at. Your parents house without a gift. I'm the one that's going to look bad. Not you. It's not my dad. It's your dad, but I will look bad and I will be judged. And your mom and your sister are going to talk about me behind my back. And he's like, what? And I'm like, just trust me. It's going to happen.
So, and you know, one of the things that we were talking about before the show was just about how, like, you know, as professional organizers taking on. Taking on that load of your client, in addition to everything else. Yes. And , one of the, one of the things that we talk about is, setting personal policies.
If you have a business and you have you have your financial policy, like we had a no show policy in our office, we have, I mean, you cannot go into any place without signing a terms of service. Right. And so if we can take that concept and apply it to our lives, then we give our lives a little bit more structure to be able to default to those boundaries. And so we talk about setting boundaries a lot, but that could be very challenging.
And one of the ways to move over that hump and to make it more comfortable is to evaluate your life. This is one of the things we do. I love this, this little game. Evaluate your life in terms of energy, not so much in terms of tasks or responsibilities, but weigh the energy that it takes to move forward. from you and, and all of those events that give you energy.
And so, for example, like if you exercise and that's something that you enjoy and that gives you energy, like that gives you energy, how much energy is that? But then if you have a draining client, you know, how much does that drain you? And so being able to be very detailed and very specific On what gives you energy and what doesn't give you energy really begins to put a quantitative measure to what you want for your policies and what you can do for your boundaries. I love this.
Okay, so is it like do you literally write things out? Like, do you give things a number? Here's what we do. So, you could take a piece of paper and we start broad, like there's a few different steps, but we start broad. And so to take a piece of paper and you're just going to write two columns. So down the middle and then down across two columns charges. And I can never, drains, I can never remember that word for whatever it is. So positive and negative, right? So charges and drains.
And then, and this is the key, is you have to be, you have to be very detailed. And you have to understand that this is an observation exercise. This is not a measure of how much you love someone. This is not a measure of your commitment to them. That is not a measure of anything other than sitting with this. And saying, how does this make me feel? So, you know, I have a four year old. I love him. I would kill for this kid. I would die for this kid.
He gives me a ton of joy and a ton of energy, but he's also four years old and like a drain, right? So does the fact that he goes on both sides make me less of a parent? No, because you have to acknowledge the parts where you're giving so much before you can understand what you have to do to fill yourself back up. And so if you can make that list and you start really, it's so. You may just say, see, like you, maybe your list of drains is like 20 and your list of charges are five.
That's fine, because if you get a huge hit from each one of those, then that's okay. But you have to be able to sit and feel, what does this do? You know, when I have to give, what does this feel like? And so that begins to give you something tangible to recognize that Maybe some of the policies can be setting some boundaries around the drains, you know, and they don't have to be, you know, I had two policies when I had my, my business, my first business, and this is my practice.
One, I refuse to be uncomfortable at work, and two, I refuse to be uncomfortable in my own home. Okay. And so, what that did, so those seem very broad. However, if there was a conflict in the office, if there was, and I'm a middle child, so I do not like conflict. I do. I'm an oldest child and I don't like it either. So, if there, avoid it. Yeah. But this.
Forced me, like if there was a conflict with a patient, if there was a conflict with an employee, like I would remember that I had told myself I am not going to feel uncomfortable at work. And so what that meant was I was not going to stew. I was not going to stew. And it put me into this mindset of solutions.
And I, it gave me that little jolt to say, deal with it and deal with it now and get it off of your plate because you do not want to walk into your own place of business and not want to be there. Okay, I love this. This is really good. As an avoider, I can say that this is really good. But put it into some context that feels comfortable to you, you know?
I mean, I do not love confrontation, but I, hated being uncomfortable in a place where I was creating that space more than I did not like that confrontation. And so having skills around dis you know, and that's where like honing my skills on How to communicate those crucial conversations, those critical conversations and how to navigate those so that you can take a, you know, highly charged situation and diffuse it and actually come together as a team. That was really helpful.
But if I hadn't had that underlying policy, then it would have been so easy to just avoid, avoid, avoid. And so I also had that same policy in my home, which means that. You know, not everybody is welcome in my home. And this is when, you know, I had a community based practice. So, like, you run into everybody and, like, it's not unusual, like, to just see people in your front yard. And so I set that space that, like, my home was for my family and my friends.
And that meant that no matter what happened outside of this space, I knew that I was always coming to a very safe, very comfortable place. And so that was really helpful. But I can give you a couple of other options that I actually love that you may not think about. And like, one of them was that like, No no work phone calls in the car.
I was gonna say, I actually wanted to talk to you about this because as you were talking, the first thing that I thought of is with what we do for a living, the amount of ways people have to contact you and like your work hours kind of never end because someone's always in your space. So that was like, actually, I'm glad you're talking about this. It's one of the first things I thought about.
Yes. And that is, I think, especially if you are a small business owner, there is this, we were talking about like the challenges and the stresses that come with that is this, you know, the desire for being available full time. And also kind of this driving need that you have to, because if you miss out on that business, then, you know, you won't be able to pay the bills and blah, blah, blah. But what I can tell you is that setting, setting that space.
is going to exponentially grow your business. And it will because what you're doing is you are concentrating that effort. You are concentrating your business. And so at the same time, you are also carving out that time for your own replenishment and your own recovery time. And so having those, and you have to just say, okay, what makes sense to me? What am I really missing that I was enjoying?
And so, for example, I love So in the car, I listen to podcasts or I talk to my family, but there are no work phone calls in the car. And so that sets that space again for, that's on my terms. I've also seen more and more emails come through from, you know, other colleagues and other people, other people that just say, I return emails on Monday, Tuesday. Thursday, Friday. And like, that's it. Like that's their email. And I love that. Like, I love that.
One of the things that I have found is that in business, happiness equals is when reality exceeds the expectations. So when you can set the expectations of communication with your clients, Then, if you stay within those expectations that you have set that work for you, then you're winning. If you decide to go outside of those, then you're exceeding their expectations already.
And so, you know, setting these personal policies protect yourself, but they also help to streamline your business by removing a lot of that questioning clutter. I think we have a lot of all of us, including myself, operate so much in business out of a fear you know, and it's, it's, we can call it fear or FOMO or there are probably a lot of names for it. But I just think about what you're saying is, Oh my gosh, if I don't work on my business 24 hours a day, my business is going to implode.
No, your business actually might be better. If you say at five o'clock, my computer gets shut down or I don't return client texts. at nine o'clock at night. And I actually had a client yesterday who sent me a text and she, she flat out said, I really appreciated this. It was like eight at night. And she goes, I do not expect a response. I'm just sending this while I'm thinking about it.
I, and I was like, bless, I will happily get back to her because she's so nice and because she's so respectful. Right. And but setting those. Those boundaries. And I know boundaries is like such a hot word and you know, probably overused and misused and all the things, but setting those actually helps you be better at your job. Even if you might have someone that is like, you know what? I didn't love that. You didn't get back to me at nine o'clock last night. You know what?
I might have just learned about you that you might not be my person. And this is, this is so much of, you know, kind of the bigger, like, energy picture, right? Because we hear boundaries and we, we, we think barrier. And that's where a lot of the kind of angst around it, around it comes in. But it's, it's, you know, If you think of it as just, this is how I run my business, this is how I run my personal life, then it becomes a non negotiable and a very objective perspective.
If, and this is, again, like, a, you know, words of wisdom, if you focus on the money in your business, it's always going to be about the money. Yeah. If you, and you're never going to have enough. I can tell you, you'll never have enough. But if you are able to let go of that piece of it and trust in your service and trust that you are going to provide an exceptional service in an exceptional way, To people, you will never have to worry about money. And that is one of the truths.
And like, what you're saying is like, what this does in a big picture is by saying, these are the parameters in which I'm going to work. You will create a business in which people will embrace that. And, you know, my dad's a physical therapist. He's, he's been practicing for. I mean, 50 something years now, and he always said people will come to you because of you and they won't come to you because of you. And that's exactly it.
You want to create, you're, you're not trying to be, you cannot be all things to all people. That is a true, true statement. So, by being who you are and being true to what you need and to being true to what you want to do, you will invite people in that want that, too. And you will detract people that will not. And they'll come in. They'll try to come in, but they will leave very quickly. And you don't want those people. Because when you You don't want them.
When I go back to, I love, it's, it's so simple, but it's so smart. Like when you talked about the charges and the drains, it's just like a phone. We all, all of us know what drains our phone down and all of us knows how long it, we all know how long it takes to recharge our phone. If you think about you as a human being as that phone battery and are, I think also really brutally honest with yourself about what actually charges and drains. Like setting those boundaries.
And by the way, if you don't like the word boundary, pick a different word, but set those parameters for yourself is just, again, a way to say, I'm actually doing something really good for myself and the people that I serve happily because I want to continue to serve them happily. Yes. And that, like, you're in this for the long haul. This is a marathon.
And when I work with people where they've actually, like, and I've been through all of this myself, you know, I understand what this feels like. But when they are really struggling, one of the things that we do is we say, Okay, now I want you to look back for those charges. Because a lot of times you've gotten to this point and you've lost so much of yourself along the way, that You know where you are now, it's unrecognizable.
You know, we wear all of these different hats and sometimes the one that says Camilla, you know, or Melissa has just gotten so tiny that it doesn't even seem to fit anymore. And so. And what we do is we have to get to the core of who you are and what makes you tick. And so we look back on, you know, the past 20, 30 years, whatever, and we say, okay, what did you used to do that made you really feel tick? Great. That you could do forever. You know, did you used to paint? Did you used to exercise?
Did you used to sit and read a book? You know, what was it that you really loved doing that you have had to lose along the way that really you loved about yourself? Because those are the things, right? Those are the things that when you've gotten to this point and you feel like you've lost, you've lost who you are because you're wearing all of these things.
We have to say, okay, what was it that really helped fill you up and then being able to incorporate those things back in made you feel you that helps to build that those charges back up. But along the way, you probably have lost a lot of them. I was gonna say, I was, I was actually gonna joke, except for I realized it probably isn't even really a joke, I'm like, what if people don't even know what those things are?
Because, I mean, that, that's, that's real too, I think that we've lost some of those things that, of like, what is it that legitimately lit me up, and I was so So excited about and what, what does that even look like anymore? And you might have to dig pretty deep to start thinking about some of those things. And that doesn't mean that you're gonna be doing that exact same thing. Sure. Right. 'cause it's, it's too easy to say, well, I, you know, I don't live in the mountains anymore.
I can't go hiking. Okay. Okay. That's fine. But what's the essence of it? Sure. What was the essence of that? You know, and, and for me it was gardening. Like we grew up, we had a certified organic farm growing up just for funsies, you know, and, but we. That was so much of my childhood. And at the time I was like, Oh God, weeding again. So much work. Yeah. So much work.
But as an adult, like to be able to have that time outside, like in nature, growing your own food, like it has such a deeper meaning to me now. And like, it's so much of what I just love. To do as you see the dead plant behind me. That's great.
I appreciate that because I, as someone who does not have a green thumb, but, but this is actually, I'm glad we're talking about this too, because when I think about, you know, what's the, you know, kind of, what's the connection between how we prevent burnout and other things in ourselves as business owners, but also how do we help our clients?
I can just think right now, just as you started to say that I'm like, I can catalog a bunch of clients that I just thought about off the top of my head that as we're going through their things, we'll say like, Oh wow, these knitting needles have seven inches of dust on them. Did you ever learn how to knit? Oh yes. I used to knit all the time, but I haven't done it in years. I have. And that's maybe a silly example, but it's, it's all sorts of things.
It's hobbies people used to have or things people used to like to do. And they, they just don't. They don't do that anymore. And then they're crushed by the stuff that they've all kept, you know, the whole thing. It, it, there are lots of those examples that we see all around us. That may just be, it may be because that was just, you know, a moment in time for them, but it also may be something meaningful. And until you sit down and explore it, then you don't really know.
But the whole point here is prevention, right? So like, we don't want to get to that point. We want to be able to have that balance throughout our whole careers and our whole business. That's what we're looking for. And these are the things that we look at, you know, along with all the healthy stuff, you know, like eating well and sleeping and, you know, those types of things, which are very important.
It's a challenge, but I think getting to the point where you trust what you're doing and you trust yourself that that's going to be enough. And then trusting that you are going to have whatever it is that you need, you're gonna get it, and you're working too hard, and it will happen but you have to protect yourself in order to have the future. All right. Thank you, Dr. Moore and I will be back tomorrow. With part two of my conversation have a great day.