Reclaiming Joy: Breaking Free from Achievement Culture with Ronni

Nicole and Ronni explore the transformative power of reclaiming joy as our default state rather than something to chase externally. They discuss how self-awareness and conscious choice create ripple effects that positively impact every area of life.

• Joy is our default state that gets blocked by various life circumstances
• Self-leadership means recognizing thought patterns that no longer serve us
• Making one significant change creates positive ripples across all life areas
• The true self has eight core traits: calm, courageous, clarity, compassionate, curious, connected, creative
• Gratitude functions as fuel that creates momentum and possibility
• Pausing to replace fear-based thoughts with empowering ones breaks the cycle of stress
• Boundaries are essential for creating work-life harmony

Check out Ronni's community "Networking Naturally" and her free "Boundaries and Balance" masterclass to learn how to set healthy boundaries without guilt. Links available in the show notes!

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Ronnie: Finding Lost Joy
• 2:59 Understanding True Joy vs. Happiness
• 8:37 The Power of Gratitude as Fuel
• 17:57 Boundaries for Work-Life Harmony
• 21:16 Pausing to Replace Fear Thoughts

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello there and welcome back to the next episode of Overcome Yourself, the podcast. As you know, my name is Nicole and I'm so excited to be here today with Ronnie. Ronnie, please go ahead and take it away and tell us a little bit about you. I know you work with Joy, I know you've got a lot going on, so tell us a little bit about who you are and who you help.

Speaker 2: 0:23

Yeah, definitely. I love helping mid-career women, especially just to really reclaim joy that might be lost along the way. You know, we are so easily rewarded for achieving and, you know, looking for success in external ways, and often my clients are at a point where, yes, they've done this climbing of the ladder and they really just want to enjoy life and have energy and have joy in their relationships and even joy and purpose in their work. So a lot of the coaching focuses on how to lead, and when I say lead I mean influence. You know how do you lead others? Even if you don't have a position that sounds like an executive title, you still are influencing other people. So how do you lead in a way that is holistically well? And also, how do you lead yourself so that you, you know, have all the benefits that that are out there in life, right? So that's sort of it in a nutshell.

Speaker 1: 1:26

Yeah, even if you're all alone, you're leading yourself, so you're leading somebody. Yes exactly. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Speaker 2: 1:35

Yeah, self-leadership is a key component. When you think about it, we end up being day-to-day in a default mode. You know, we go through very habitual routines and also our relationships fall into patterns. Our thoughts definitely fall into patterns, right, and that's the way our minds are wired. It helps us to survive, it helps us to conserve energy, all these things.

Speaker 2: 2:00

But when you stop and say what of my thoughts and my convictions really once served me, but don't serve me now, you know, maybe it's something that was handed to us societally or in our family, messaging or even in the career path we're on, and at some point it stops working, you know, for our best benefit. And that's where I love to give people the chance to become really self-aware and with that self to give people the chance to become really self-aware. And with that self-awareness comes the chance to make a conscious choice, to view it differently and choose new ways of experiencing life that are more joyful, that are more fulfilling, that actually express who you are in a way that maybe you haven't been able to up to that point in life.

Speaker 1: 2:45

That's beautiful. That's amazing. I love that you talk about joy a lot. Can you talk to us about joy, like, what is joy? How do we find joy? Yeah, tell us.

Speaker 2: 2:59

Yeah, we hear very often, you know, people say I'm searching for happiness, wanting to find joy, and my core belief is that joy is our default state, it's there already. So it's not about finding joy or chasing it down. It's really about uncovering and moving out of the way the things that have blocked the experience of joy. So with every person it's a different way of arriving at this understanding, I would say, because every one of us has these components right. We have the spiritual component, the physical component that we're dealing with, whether we're feeling well physically or struggling physically. It can be emotional aspects, it can be relational challenges that are taking the forefront Career and financial and fulfillment. Those sort of things could be kind of the thing that take the most focus and energy at any given moment in time.

Speaker 2: 4:06

So, looking at each person holistically as to what's going to get them moving in the right way, right direction, and I love this truth that when you change one significant thing, one significant area of change, it ripples into all these other parts of our life.

Speaker 2: 4:26

Yeah, so maybe you make that pivot from a career that was soul sucking to one that's wow. Maybe I don't make the same amount of money, but I love what I do every day, or I love who I speak with every day now, or it aligns with my values now, where my old job really just wasn't engaging for me at some point. So making that one shift ripples into all these other areas, then they can show up differently, maybe as a parent or um, you know, as someone in their community where they can now serve in a way that makes an impact beyond even their immediate, immediate circle. So that's the beauty of um transformation working with a coach where you can get beyond what you believe is possible Because we do. We get very limited very easily in thinking what's possible because we're in the day to day. You know we're in putting out fires day to day and that's not truly living, more like surviving, yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:20

That's um. So much of what you said resonated with me. I was thinking about how, in my book, I wrote about how joy I like to define it more like Dr Brene Brown defines hope, where it's not necessarily an emotion, it is a cognitive process, it is the basis from which everything else comes from, all the other thoughts, all the other emotions. And so I one of the chapters, one of my chapters why I stopped trying to be happy and it's not that I'm not happy is that I stopped trying to find happiness and I started living in joy. And so what do you think about that? Can you talk to me a little bit about the difference between happiness and joy?

Speaker 2: 6:07

Yeah, and I think your decision to say, instead of seeking for something that's ahead or not quite there yet, that's, you know, that's the, the fallacy right? Instead you said being joyful, so it's more, it's more the, the mindset of, instead of, what am I doing? Yeah, I have goals. Yeah, I have, you know, tasks and responsibilities. I'm not denying that, but that's not the preeminent focus. Who am I being while I'm showing up at that work meeting? Who am I being as I'm sitting with my child, um, on the way to their you know, ball game? Like? Am I present? Am I really listening? Am I existing as someone who, who shows love and shows evolution and growth, like all these things that are about being versus? You know the, the outward action as the priority, you know.

Speaker 2: 7:03

You know the achievement or whatever, yeah, yeah so so, when you are aware of that, you create space for joy to shine through. It's almost like, you know, take a clay vessel. You know when it's broken, what's beautiful is that the light can shine through. If that vessel is broken, you know, maybe in some sort of symbolic way, you know it's in there, the joy is in there. So you know, I think arriving at that point can take time or it can take a circumstance, and you know when people are willing to see it and and and also like ready, ready to see it and learn it, you know it also, like ready, ready to see it and learn it. You know it. It that's when it's going to be most powerful.

Speaker 2: 7:48

And I think what you said was it takes effort to search for joy, search for happiness. It takes, it's exhausting, you know, and it's maybe discouraging. But if you stop and allow it to just be like, be, like you said, joyful, um, be at peace, right, like you said, joyful, be at peace, right Then you're in a much more powerful state, much more powerful way of being compared to force and effort, because that runs out. And why is burnout such a common theme that we hear people talking about? Because we think, falsely, that if we just add one more thing to our plate, if we get just a little more efficient, then we're going to get there. It's the formula for burnout, you know.

Speaker 1: 8:31

Yeah, it goes back to what you were saying about that ripple effect. That's what I call dealing with a big domino, right? Because once you hit that big domino, all the other little dominoes have to fall into place. And for me, joy was one of those big dominoes, because it affects everything else that you do, right, your perspective. It affects how you work, how you deal with your family, how you talk to yourself, how you maintain your health, how you take care of you. Like everything that you do is affected by that.

Speaker 1: 9:01

Um, and the other thing you mentioned was that crack, and that's another thing that's in my book. I love how, like, we're on a very similar but. But I was talking about overflow and how what's in you is what comes out of you, right, and it's only what you have an excess of that you can give from. So, like, if you're watching trashy tv and you're watching all these reality shows and everything's about gossip and like, oh, who's better? Like who's prettier, who's this, who's that, well, that's what's going to come out of you. That's how you're going to deal with your kids, that's how you're going to deal with your house. That's going to deal with all of these things. I'm not saying, like we you know some of us, you know some people like to watch trashy TV just a little bit, and that's OK, right. But for the most part, what I mean is, if that's what all we're filled with, then that's all that's going to come out of us.

Speaker 1: 9:51

And so I had to make a very intentional shift to start reading about, well, joy, to start reading about having good habits, about the psychology of happiness. And how do I find it? How do I not find it? Business, all the things I learned about business. And now, when I talk, right, when I was younger, I used to get in trouble for talking too much, but I would talk about the wrong things. The wrong things were overflowing out of me. And then, when I was able to change my perspective, operate from joy, focus on all these other things. Well, guess what? That's what's in me and that's all I want to talk about now. So, like, if you want to gossip, that's cool, but I'm going to revert the conversation back to what we're doing next week.

Speaker 2: 10:33

Yes, yes, definitely, and it sounds like you're tapping into the idea of in each of us there's this like core essence, there's this part of us that is true, unchanging. There is a model I love to like. It's a model of therapy. It's called internal family systems. I don't know if you're familiar. Dick Schwartz developed it a few decades back and it is powerful because one of the key pieces of his model is that within each of us there's this, you know, essence, this true self, like capital S self, that is unchanged by experience, trauma. You know where you're born, any of those things you know and, like you said, even just the messaging around you, right, like all, the all of the media and the shows and our options, right, we have so many options. So this true self is kind of the core of who we are. And when we get to be sort of led by this true self, versus the personality, this outward part that we present, the ego or the roles that we play, none of them are bad in and of themselves, right, but the part that's true and most effective for living a life with joy, with fulfillment, with prosperity, whatever is important to somebody right Is understanding, being led by your true self, and just as an idea, as a concept to think of, is when you're about to enter something difficult, maybe like a really challenging conversation or giving a speech, where you're, you know, maybe, you know, intimidated by the thing that your, that your job is requiring of you. At that time, something, um, if you pause and really reflect on showing up as your true self, these characteristics are going to shine through.

Speaker 2: 12:32

And the eight traits that are sort of core to it and it's not a complete list, but the eight traits that that seem to be universal in this model um of of the true self and how we show up is that we are calm when we're our true self calm, courageous.

Speaker 2: 12:50

We have clarity, we are compassionate, and not just compassionate towards others but compassionate towards ourselves. First, we're curious and we are connected, so connected on a greater, greater scale, aware of the connectedness, and then creative. I think I listed eight, I'm not sure, but if I missed one, it's still a good list. And creative doesn't mean, hey, I make paintings every day, that could be that but creative means I'm able to be innovative in my thinking and have solutions and show up positively in all my realms of life and bring something into existence that enhances the environment, the people around me, the world, you know. So that might be the way of seeing creativity put that out there, because I think it's a really powerful way of viewing ourselves and how we can show up, you know, in these situations that you're talking about.

Speaker 1: 13:49

Oh, that is amazing. That's so. That's very cool. So hopefully those will be in the show notes. I'll make sure that we can extract those that you said, because they're dead on. I love how they all start with C.

Speaker 2: 14:02

Right.

Speaker 1: 14:03

Yes, okay, so I definitely have to go back and listen to it, to write them down, but I love those. Now I want you to talk to me about another big part of my book, like the foundation of everything that I do. I want your thoughts on gratitude.

Speaker 2: 14:22

Ooh yeah, gratitude is, I know social science, research backs this right. My background was psychology before doing my you know years and career with leading teams and you know sales and you know directing things like that sales and, and you know directing things like that and I always have used gratitude as a way of shifting, like shifting out of a place that feels, um, you know, perhaps weak in some way or like just disempowered for that moment. Right, I won't say it's weak, but maybe, if I'm in, you know, feeling sorry for myself mode or um, feeling frustrated about X, y, z, shifting my focus to gratitude creates energy, creates possibility, excitement, momentum can happen. So I've always been able to um practice and practice and almost use it as a muscle that the more I flexed it, the more easily it appears right. Even as I first wake up first thing in the morning, my first statement in my mind is something about what I'm grateful for. It's a thank. You know, for me it's a spiritual practice and I give thanks as soon as I wake up. You know I'm not saying I do it 100 out of 100 days, but most days, more days than not. That is that's where my mind has been wired to to do that as I wake up. That's been a discipline I've had over, you know, decades and you know it was.

Speaker 2: 16:09

It was it came from being in difficult times. You know, like losing my dad at age 30. So that grief period, parenting three children wasn't easy and so I definitely have a lot of compassion for especially moms who are juggling career and parent, because I did that, did that for a long time. You know, being in a long-term marriage that wasn't a healthy marriage for many, many years of it. You know like in a long-term marriage, that wasn't a healthy marriage for many, many years of it. You know, like how to navigate that and stay well and stay productive and lead your family still. So I would say, you know, gratitude was fuel, fuel for me to be able to do the things that were not optional and I and I you know I I do see it that way and it's yeah. So I think it's integrated into how I view things, almost as a default, because I see it as fuel and as as a way to create momentum out of a place that I don't want to stay, you know.

Speaker 1: 16:58

Yes, I love that, I love all of it. I alluded to gratitude being like a muscle in my book. Um, I alluded to so much of what you said, so dead on, and we have to use it. Like you said, it's like a muscle, yep, and if we haven't used that guy in a while, guess what it might have atrophied. But the only way to get it working again is to start using it, and so it is such an yeah, it's so, so important, and I absolutely agree. Let me know, I want to shift a little bit now because we've touched on some really important topics, like some really important, like, like important, like these are like the things you know, the foundations, right? So can you talk to me a little bit about how the audience can stay in touch with you? And you might have mentioned that there was a gift, so we'd love to hear a little bit about that.

Speaker 2: 17:56

Definitely, definitely. I have a community that I, you know, invite people to check out and see if they want to be a part of it. It's called networking naturally, and I formed it basically to solve a problem. The problem is in this you know, this time of building my own coaching practice, you know, leaving corporate life, I have found that I meet so many people who say they really just don't love networking, like it's a, it's a hassle for them. You know where it makes them, you know it's just not fun. So, um, I want to give people skills on how to be more effective at it, because it helps your entire career. You know every piece of it. And so I formed this community called community, called networking naturally. So that link, um, is available to your audience. So I invite you come in. It's very uplifting, supportive and there's skill building. Like I want people to walk away with actionable um tools just by being there. So I do that. I have asynchronous learning there where they can do it when they're you know, before they had to work, or do it at their lunch break, do it before they go to bed. There's learning there, but there's also community live. You know dialogue and live calls that are scheduled ahead. So, um, so group group coaching happens there, so that's a great way to stay in touch.

Speaker 2: 19:17

Um, and, as far as a gift, I have this really new class that I'm so, so jazzed about. It's called boundaries and balance, because everybody wants more balance, right, especially work-life balance, especially that. But one obstacle to work through is creating boundaries so that you can have that sense of balance. And you know, here's the secret you never really have true balance. What I call it really is more about like having harmony, work-life harmony so can I be myself at work and myself at home and feel like what I'm doing in both areas is enough, right, have that peace of mind. That's really kind of in my mind, what we can envision as the ideal.

Speaker 2: 20:02

But creating boundaries is key, and so once people learn some skill around how to do that in a healthy way, in a consistent way, without feeling guilty about setting these boundaries, then you know, then you can become basically unshakable, unstoppable, right? That's one piece of the puzzle. So I have a free class coming very soon. It's called Boundaries and Balance, so it's a little master class, 20 minutes long, full of info and action that you can take right away. So I'll offer that to your listeners, yeah.

Speaker 1: 20:35

Yay, thank you so much, and so the links for all of that are going to be available down in the show notes. I love that so much. No, if I go into that story we're going to take forever, so I'm not going to do that. Part two Part two yes, all right. So, ronnie, this has been just absolutely amazing. Can you leave us with a final tip? Like what is that big advice? Like what gives your clients the biggest aha moment?

Speaker 2: 21:05

that little gem yeah, I would say right now, what I hear is helpful to many people that I'm working with is they don't feel like they have enough time to do what they need to do and with that assumption in your mind like there's not enough time to do what they need to do, and with that assumption in your mind, like there's not enough time I'll never catch up. We tend to work faster, harder and longer when, in fact, the true answer is to pause, slow down and pause and become very aware of where am I experiencing this sense of fear and what is the fear message? So the fear might be like oh you know, I'm going to look like a failure or I'm going to let people down and I don't want that right. Everyone has their own little message that happens in this fear moment and we have the ability to capture that thought, hear it and acknowledge that. That's only one way to look at it. You can replace that thought. So I work with people on how do you replace that thought with a new one that moves you forward with peace, with confidence, with solution mindset.

Speaker 2: 22:23

So there's that moment to say where in my body do I feel that stress? Might be tight, chest it might be hot face it might be. My posture is hunched and I'm crouched over my desk. So notice where your body's telling you that you're having this stress, reaction and pause. Give yourself a breath. There are specific breath work type of techniques, but for this purpose, pause and breathe, let oxygen get to your brain and then give yourself that new message.

Speaker 2: 22:56

The new message could sound like I have enough time to do everything that matters, or I am enough regardless of what's happening outside of me. Whatever that message, make it, write it down somewhere. If you're that sort of a thinker and build that muscle. When you notice that tension, that fear, that stress, because now you're going to build this new pathway, this new pathway in your mind, that's a positive, forward-focused, self-loving message. And then you start to see the results from there and you will get more done because you're not in reaction and survival mode Now. You're in more of a clear-minded, adaptable mode with this new mindset. So I give you that tool and I know it works. You know it works 100% out of of the time. You know it's very powerful.

Speaker 1: 23:52

So and to tie it back to what you said earlier you mentioned, when you wake up, you your first thought which I'm sure it's very intentional, right, because it didn't just start off this way, but it's about gratitude. And I read once I think it's the book the Soul of Money. Talks about how lack creeps up on us in different places, and one of them is what's the first thing that comes into your mind in the morning. If you're like, oh, I didn't get enough sleep, you're starting off in lack. Like it's not just about money, right. Like it's exactly what you're starting off in lack. Like it's not just about money, right. Like it's exactly what you're saying. Like, oh, I didn't, I didn't get enough sleep, I don't have enough money, I don't have enough hours in the day, I don't have enough food. Like it's, if that's all we focus on, it'll never be enough.

Speaker 1: 24:37

Um, so, deciding when that is enough and then practicing what you preach which is what exactly what you're saying is. You wake up in the morning, you open your eyes. I'm grateful for what, I don't know, whatever, whatever pops into your head, but training yourself to be able to do that, I love that so, so much. That is, that's actionable and it's so powerful. It seems so easy. You're like, no, that's too simple. Because I did that. I was like no, that's too easy, it's just too simple, Like it's just saying what you're grateful for. But it really is. It did change my life when I took it seriously. So thank you for sharing.

Speaker 2: 25:14

That's awesome, thank you.

Speaker 1: 25:16

Of course and this has been an amazing episode of Overcome Yourself the podcast, and we will catch you guys next time. Thanks so much for joining us.

Speaker 2: 25:25

Thank you for having me. Thanks so much. Thank you, bye, bye.