Tracy: if I'm saying yes to this, what am I saying no to? And decide if that's okay.
What can you sacrifice to make space for that joy? Because often the joy isn't there, not just because it isn't recognized or identified, but because there's not space for it.
Chrissie: Self determination, autonomy, agency, having choice is freedom. That's such a powerful insight. Inspiring creative act.
You're listening to Solving for Joy. I'm your host, Dr. Chrissie Ott.
Hello, and welcome to Solving for Joy. I am so delighted to be joined by Dr. Tracy Asamoah today, my friend and colleague, and welcome, Tracy. So glad to have you here. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. Tracy Asamoah is a child and adolescent psychiatrist by training who has transitioned to full time coaching, uh, consulting and medical adjacent activities with a particular passion for coaching people in positions of, or on tracks of leadership uh, In the vein of transformative leadership. So I'm sure that we'll touch on that during our conversation today. We're so glad to have you here. So I know Tracy, that you've spent a lot of your life helping others navigate change, both through your clinical role in psychiatry and through coaching and other endeavors. Let's start by hearing just a little bit about what sparked your journey into this work and. How does it, how does it intersect with the concept of solving for joy through transitions?
Tracy: Yeah, I have to probably think pretty far back into my childhood to think about where a spark for doing this kind of work came from. And not having a name or label for it back then, I just knew I wanted to do it. deeply understand people and help people and be a resource for people. When I was a kid, I wanted, I just, I loved babies. I loved kids. I wanted to be a pediatrician. I knew that from a really young age. I was a, I was a kid who needed to work with kids and decided pretty early on that it seemed to make sense that being a pediatrician or something like that would be a great goal for me. And so, went through medical school and in medical school discovered mental health and specifically child psychiatry. And so, That just clicked for me. And I don't know if I can tell you why that clicked. I mean, part of the reason is going through medical school, I realized that I wasn't as interested in some of the more technical, um, procedural aspects of medicine. I really wanted to understand people's stories and be able to understand how I could help them.
I loved thinking about how people thought, how people behaved and all that. All of that stuff really made sense to me. And so I went into child psychiatry practice for over two decades and a couple of things influenced my journey into coaching. I knew. Some way, maybe, I don't know, five, 10 years into practice that I would want to bring other things into my work that I was not someone who really enjoyed just doing one thing that I like having lots of different things and ways that my brain can work and create.
And so I played around with writing a lot early on. I. I did all sorts of things. My husband and I worked on a couple of different startups that we thought about. So I just kind of explored whatever sparked my interest. I, on every personality assessment and strengths assessment, it's always kind of thinker and ideator and innovator. Like, I'm constantly just thinking and creating in my brain and have always known that that needs to be an active part of what I do full time. Um, Even when I was practicing clinically, I understood that right after residency and fellowship, the first year that I was out practicing, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder.
And because of that, I decided not knowing what, you know, 10, 20, 30 years would look like that I wanted to have as much control as possible over how I lived my life personally and professionally. And so, I just started toying around with what other things might be available to me if I decided to not practice clinically or I couldn't practice clinically. And I wanted to decide it. I didn't want that to be decided for me. And around the same time, I discovered coaching, had very little idea of really what that meant. And this was, you know, over 10 years ago now. And so coaching and medicine really wasn't a thing. And so I had never been exposed to it. I kind of knew, like I'd heard of Tony Robbins and then I had picked up some books and. And I had that vision of coaching and I wasn't quite sure what to do with it. But what I did understand was it was another way to help people and to understand people. And I love the idea of helping people who are working towards an aspiration or a goal that I could support them with.
Chrissie: Oh, thank you for that many encapsulated biography. Um, I hear love kids, love stories and writing, love behavioral and thought work, and that you had a sense of something else on the horizon that you always did. Um, partly because you're such an ideator and creator. And then when this chronic diagnosis came on, you know, what it sparked for me is the importance of right relationship, right? Autoimmune disorders are a question of recognizing self versus other. And in a fractal way, almost, you decided I'm going to recognize self, other on a macro level and be in right relationship in part because I'm also responding to this diagnosis. I love the harmonics of that.
Tracy: Yeah, I had this sense pretty quickly that I wanted as much as possible to be self determinant and that I wanted it to be a, from a place of me. I'm kind of at my optimal self and not from a place of working with limitations that, you know, sometimes these diagnoses bring. They bring limitations to what you're able to do and how you're able to be present. And I really wanted to make as many decisions as I could about the direction I would take from a place where I was kind of fully able to do all of the things that I wanted to do and to use that to be able to make decisions. I didn't want to feel like I was making decisions under duress. And I'm a creator. I love creating. I love the active planning and thinking. And so I think another part of it is I just got an opportunity to think really intentionally about my future and visualize it and plan it and think of all the options that I could have and just, you know, You know, think about the other things that I might be able to explore, and that was really appealing. It was really appealing to say, Oh, getting my medical degree wasn't the end point. It was a jumping point, and it was also just another tool in my toolbox of all of the ways that I could fully be, you know, You know, who I was supposed to be on this earth.
Chrissie: Yes. That's beautiful. Self determination, autonomy, agency, having choice is freedom.
Tracy: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Chrissie: It is freedom. That's such a powerful insight. Inspiring creative act. And I really love how you describe coaching as another way to help people. It's really just kind of what it boils down to. Um, here is a fun fact that I just discovered today, Tracy, I was searching for an email from you and I, uh, searched my inbox for Tracy Asamoah. And from August, 2021. This email popped up and I was like, Oh, what were we on together? Uh, physician coaching Alliance, Aaron Weisman, Dr. Aaron Weisman, uh, had done an intro to basically what is coaching for physicians, three, two, one. And that was when I was at the very foot of the on ramp to the coaching and medicine world. And you presented during that, um, time. I had absolutely forgotten, but that was, Oh
Tracy: my gosh, what a small world. Isn't
Chrissie: that? Isn't it? Yeah. Just makes me smile.
Tracy: Yeah. Yeah. I actually just attended a retreat with other members of Physician Coaching Alliance this past weekend.
Chrissie: That was amazing.
Tracy: in Minnesota and it was beautiful and I'm in Austin, Texas and it's, you know, it's cool today, which means it's going to not get to 90 degrees, but we're going to get past 90 degrees the next few days. And there it was in, you know, in the seventies and in the evening you wore a jacket. It was, it was perfect. I needed, I needed some place to say, no, fall is actually coming. When you go home, you won't know that, but no, it's coming. So you're okay. It is
Chrissie: coming. There will, there will be a change of seasons. Don't doubt it.
Tracy: There will be a change of seasons. Yeah.
Chrissie: Yes. Uh, in your coaching work, you talk about navigating not just the change of a transition itself, but also the emotional content that comes with transition. I wonder if there's, uh, A representative story in your mind about, uh, where you or someone you were working with embraced change in a way that helped them solve for joy, helped them experience that combination of meaning alignment and delight that we understand as joy.
Tracy: Yeah. You know, I'll, I'll say in a very thematic way, what it often looks like for the folks I coach is. Having this process of understanding what's really important, um, actually figuring out what does bring me joy and then understanding, okay, but what can you sacrifice to make space for that joy? Because often the joy isn't there, not just because it isn't recognized or identified, but because there's not space for it. If you're, you know, and with, with a lot of the physicians that I coach, if you're, you know, Um, and you know, from eight in the morning until five and then you're wrapping up charts until six and then you go home and you have a family that you're spending time with or helping or serving until nine and then you're finishing charts until 10.
Like joy just got squeezed right out of the window. And so it's first saying, no, there are actually things that don't work. Do make me feel joyful. And what do I need to let go of to make space for those? And so it there's lots of different ways that we explore that. But for me, the change that probably set me on the path for really looking at that was the opportunity.
And, and we rarely use these two words in the same sentence, but it was the opportunity that the pandemic brought because that's when I transitioned from having, you know, an office in a brick and mortar building where I saw patients in person to learning how to do all sorts of different things online.
And really being able to design now a coaching, then it was psychiatry, then psychiatry and coaching and now coaching and kind of all the other coaching related things that I do, but really designing how that looks in a way that. both incorporates those things that bring me joy actually into my day to day life in small ways, but then leave space for it and prioritize it after.
So kind of setting boundaries like, you know, I have a strict cutoff time in the evening for lots of reasons, but like, this is the time when my brain isn't what my brain needs to be. And I need to be present for my family. And I need to have these other things that are going to allow me to be better tomorrow present in my life. And so using boundaries for that, And also realizing that I can, there's, you know, because I like to create and I like to write and creating can look like a whole lot of different things that I can actually bring that into what I do in a lot of my different work activities day to day in little small ways. That means that joy just kind of gets infiltrated. You know, throughout the day. So it doesn't always have to be like this big joy. Oh, I went for this beautiful hike on Saturday morning. I got up at six and I saw the sunrise. And then I had a big, like, it doesn't always have to be these big gestures. It can, for me, it's honestly just getting in Canva and having to design something.
Like I love, I love, I don't always love giving presentations because I get a little bit of stage fright, but I love designing them because I love creating them and so just kind of finding those ways to bring it into just every little. piece of your day.
Chrissie: I love it. Infiltrations of joy.
Tracy: Yeah.
Chrissie: What is bringing you joy these days other than gorgeous Canva tools?
Tracy: You know, I think if I would not have gone into medicine or coaching, I would have been some sort of Architect, architectural designer or interior designer, because I love design. I love spaces. I love planning them. I love putting them together. I love looking at other people's spaces and how that represents them. I love architecture. And so we bought a house and renovated it last year. The renovation was actually finished almost a year ago to date, and I got to plan the whole renovation, which was amazing, but we also bought a house that's on about four acres, and I've decided to be my own landscape person, and it's a pretty heavily wooded property for about two thirds of it, and so I'm just, you know, sometimes it's getting my saw, sometimes it's getting Go, you know, going to see what else Home Depot has that I can rent.
Sometimes it's planting a flower bed, figuring out what does native Texas landscape look like and how can I incorporate that fully into it. So right now it's kind of designing and creating our outdoor space and just being in that space and absorbing nature and letting that restore me. But. Also, the creative process behind, you know, learning about all of these native plant species that I never knew about that exist in my backyard and figuring out how to cultivate them and how to make them grow together. Planning what I want the space to do that's going to fulfill me and, you know, nurture my family and all of the people that come to my home.
Chrissie: I can really sense that you are, um, you're working toward being in relationship to that space and to those plants in a mutually supportive way. Yeah. That's lovely.
Tracy: Yeah, because it is a living thing, you know, that you can have with a space like that where it's not just me imposing my Ideas and will onto it, but it's also listening to it and understanding it and letting it self declare however, it wants to and respecting that and listening to that and supporting that and getting so much Renewal from the time spent in that space And, you know, spend in that space, but also protecting it and caring for it so that it can flourish and grow. So yeah, I love the idea of the relationship that I can have with it and that we can have with the nature around us.
Chrissie: Yes. In some ways, it's back to being in right relationship with nature. Our inner and outer landscapes, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. There is something that we've read, uh, about finding wholeness versus striving for balance. And it reminded me, um, I was at the Alanis Morissette concert about a month ago here in Portland, Oregon. It was awesome. Joan Jett opened by the way. Fantastic show. Um, yeah. And. Alanis Morissette had all of these, um, she had a lot of slide multimedia stuff going in the backgrounds, a lot of visual, um, input as well as her amazing voice and band.
Anyway, one of the slides just grabbed my attention and it said, wholeness over wellness, and my, I had this very visceral, yes, reaction to that, like, that is, wholeness over wholeness. That is where it's at. That's the opposite of the toxic positivity where so many wellness programs, corporate wellness programs in general are, um, Working to use the tools of positive psychology, but in some ways it gets to this feeling of almost co opting the tools of positive psychology, and then the employed people may feel That there's something not quite clean about this advice to take care of myself. There's something not quite free of confusing motives in this messaging. Uh, I'm curious about your wholeness. and what you might like to share with our listeners today about your perspective on those thoughts.
Tracy: Yeah, and the idea of being in a setting where an employer is bringing in a wellness intervention, but you have that feeling like this doesn't quite feel like Meeting what I need. There's something missing.
And the way I've always described it to people is, well, that's the problem with balance, right? Because you can have on one hand, all of the things that are stressful and overwhelming and the All of the demands that come from work and your professional settings. And so, you know, the balance starts to look like this stuff is just way, wing it down and without taking anything off, you can tell people, we'll put it in balance, we're going to add some workshops and the opportunity to have a gym membership.
So the balances. technically there, but you haven't taken anything off. You've just kind of added stuff on to the wellness side to make it look like it's imbalanced, but now it's just heavier. It's the balance is just, you know, it's more weight, maybe adding in the expectation, like, well, now I'm supposed to eat, right?
So I've got to plan that and I've got to go to the grocery store and now I'm supposed to go to the gym five times a week. And so I've got to figure that out. And so that. So, um, you know, I think it's important to understand that. feel like it's just adding. What's supposedly wellness and positive. On does something that's already heavy without anything, having to been removed from the side that was making it heavy.
And so it doesn't really take into account that there is a finite amount of you available. And that you can't just keep adding on whether it's supposed to be in. you know, in favor of your wellness or if it's serving some other expectation or responsibility, there's just a finite amount that you as an entire individual can hold.
And so I talk to people, I used to talk to people about picture that you're a pie and you know, a pie is just round. You can slice it is thin, or you can make huge slices, but you only have that pie. So, You, you can fit the slices in however, but if you try to squeeze one in that doesn't fit, another one is just going to pop out, so it's not going to work.
I talk more now about integrating, because I think it, there's more to understand about how people fit the different parts of themselves together in a way that allows them to be whole and what does that look like. That may change from season. to another. And so there may be a time. I mean, when we're in residency and fellowship, yeah, we're going to be working a whole lot more than we're going to be able to focus on our wellness.
And it's for a finite amount of time. It's to a very specific goal. And so we have to figure out what amount of wellness can we integrate that allows us. To survive that as we get older and have more autonomy and agency and maybe even more support to do our lives differently, then we can integrate that differently.
We can pull back on some of those professional expectations and maybe bring other parts of ourselves in that bring us a different experience with what wholeness feels in that moment. But what you can't do is just keep adding. into perpetuity things onto both sides of the scale and expect that to feel good.
Chrissie: Yes, Tracy, the essential wisdom of subtraction, right? We only have so much pie. And I love the thought of having a piece pop out because you're trying to cram too many pieces into the pie plate. It's a little bit. A little bit of ridiculousness, uh, one of my coach friends who, you know, Liz Heichelbeck, uh, once said to me, it's not a problem of not enough time.
It's a problem of not enough me. And I was like, ah, this resonates. Yes, of course. Of course. And having this, this perspective of integration, uh, I think this is really where The thought leaders in wellbeing work are headed, especially in the work life realm, right? We don't want just a time balance of this many hours of work and this many hours at home.
We actually are looking for a more holistic integration so that we bring more of our outside of work self into our professional roles. And there's less compartmentalization, less stringent division, more flow of like, yes, my organized and executive brain can be active at home. And also my playful, silly side can come with me to work and I will still be effective, productive, connected, and in leadership.
Tracy: Yeah. And probably more so, right? Because you're using your whole, you're bringing your whole self into what you do. And if we're able to develop our whole selves and bring that in meaningful, intentional ways, while sharing a vision and a goal with those that we are collectively working with or that we're leading.
Then you're better at your job. You're a better employee. You're a better leader because you're using parts of yourself that are only going to facilitate you being more effective and, and more joyful. And then if you're more joyful, you're more effective.
Chrissie: And it's a happy, uh, a virtuous cycle instead of a vicious cycle.
Absolutely. You're thinking about pie charts, um, reminds me of a very familiar pie chart to you and me. It's, the Stanford WellMD. Uh, image of well being, professional well being in medicine, and in this pie chart, um, you know, there's about a third of the pie chart that is individual factors of well being, about a third are efficiencies or inefficiencies, they may be of our practice environment, and a third are cultural Like in your work culture, what's your culture of wellness like, and I was having a conversation with someone last week about, you know, why focus on coaching individuals and teams when we know that they are, you know, the 20 percent of the 80, 20 problem.
Right. And my proposal was, it's because that's. The lever, right? That's the part of the instrument that we can actually get engaged that will with the right fulcrum, move the 80 percent little by little, um, it's a little bit counterintuitive. I wonder if you've had experiences that, you know, at working at the 80 percent or working at the 20 percent and what those have yielded for you as a leader.
An influencer.
Tracy: Yeah. Yeah. I'll give you an example of someone that I coached and we didn't use all the, the terminology, but the concept for her that she was grappling with was she was struggling with the work demands that she had placed on her and didn't feel like they weren't over the longterm sustainable.
She also had a lot of frustration about the systemic pressures on other people and the clinic flow and the expectations on the staff. So this whole kind of problem of this misalignment. With how a hospital runs as an organization and how a hospital serves the populations of patients that it serves with humans centered in serving that care.
Right. And those two things are often following different agendas. And when we were exploring, so what Does she do in this, you know, first it's like, well, where do you have power in this? And it's that 20 percent that you actually, for most people initially have power and at least have the most power. And one of the decisions for her was, do you have the capacity to also battle this other piece of the pie?
Like maybe that's not where you want to have your fight. Cause that's going to take a lot of work. Cause you're not, if you're going to dive right into the systemic piece and try to fight. That beast, that is going to take a lot more effort and energy, and in all reality may not get You know, very much out of it.
If that's the fight you want, which a lot, you know, there are people who are absolutely ready to do battle with the system. Great. Cause we need that. But she was struggling because she didn't see them as two separate battles. It's just like, this all feels bad and I need them to change this and they need to not have this expectation.
And I'm like, well, which battle are you going to fight for? What makes sense for you right now? Or what? the systemic expectations are. And I think one of the things that come up with some of these wellness interventions that organizations bring is that the, you know, in all honesty, if you look at individual Just kind of clinically practicing employees and administrative, kind of the administrative business arm.
There are two different agendas that often don't align. And so, bringing in a wellness intervention, if you're on the business side, what outcomes are you measuring? Um, sickness days, staff turnover, you know, all the things that cost the business based on the behavior of the staff for their ability to Kind of practice clinically.
So then you're going to be looking for the outcomes of Are people quitting and are we hiring people and how much expenditure is there to hire a new person And how many sick days are people leaving and you're just kind of focusing on those numbers But if you're the person who 30 or 11 finishing charts and Getting double or triple book for patients and then you're running through your lunch You You just want them to tell you that you can have an hour protected for lunch and half a day protected each week for admin time, which may mean that you see fewer patients, which is going to, to them, look like fewer encounters.
So already the agenda and the outcomes are competing. And I think that's what becomes really difficult when an organization brings in a wellness intervention, but there isn't. A co designed understanding of what the outcomes and expectations from that intervention are. And so, that's kind of how I look at the pieces of the individual living in that experience of experiencing burnout or overwhelmed or just, you know, feeling like your clinical practice is dead.
Being weighed on by the expectations to teach or do research if you're an academic institution. And so you're just trying to figure out how can I live this day to day may look very different to someone who has a board and who has other stakeholders that are looking at a financial, you know, they're looking at the budget and they're trying to figure out, does this budget look like what we want it to look like?
Chrissie: Absolutely. And no, one of those perspectives is a wrong perspective. They're just different perspectives.
Tracy: They all have to be there, right? I mean, we've got to have money for the hospital to function and we have to have people who really can understand the financial picture of a hospital as a business to function and deal with all the different arms of that.
So that is extremely important. And so is how someone can be. in a place where they're well enough to do the job that they were hired to do, but do it in a way that they are also seen as a human in that experience who wants to feel well as they're doing it. And it's not to say that one necessarily overrides the other, but there needs to be an understanding that both exist and there has to be a reconciliation of that.
Chrissie: Yeah. I like that choice of words, reconciliation. I feel the tension that there's a constant tension, but there needs to be give in fact from both sides for that tension to be sustained in a way that moves the scene forward. The scene being here in this country, um, or other countries for that matter. I think we have very similar themes, although with different guardrails around us in different countries.
Such interesting work. Um, when I did the chief wellness officer training at Stanford, we talked about this a ton. Um, and, you know, going at supporting well being work amongst leaders and teams and individuals in an organization, healthcare organization in particular, but we could apply this to really anything.
Any large organization is, um, typically a very complex endeavor because there are such competing values and interests simultaneously. And, you know, while a profit motive is not simply, inherently that, it is not the greatest if the other side is, um, healthcare for all, you know, or humane healthcare for all, including those providing the care.
It's a vision, um, many of us hold as an aspiration and we'll keep doing our part to move toward it one by one.
Tracy: Yeah. And, and I think that's such a good point. I think the idea that as clinicians, what we experience is there's the, the centering on the human as the focal point of all of this seems to be lost.
Yeah. And. The further it goes towards the financial piece of it, the more it becomes this sense that it feels more corporately structured and less, we actually are people taking care of people focused. Then I think the more challenging it becomes to be those people taking care of people that really feel good about how they're able to do it.
And also how those that we're supposed to be serving are actually able to access and receive it.
Chrissie: And then our brains do this cognitive shortcutting to right of just deciding somebody in this blank leadership title, you know, is no longer. Worthy of my trust or attention. It's never that simple. It's always cognitive shortcutting and we should be alert to our cognitive errors, right?
Yeah.
Tracy: And, you know, Chrissy, because I'm sure you say this word over and over again with The folks that you coaches, we can also just be curious about those roles that we don't know. I was talking to a new client today who is, um, a physician leader and, and trying to decide where in leadership she wants to go and what the struggles have been.
And we talked about all the things that are different from being a clinician and a leader. And some of it is like, you know, being able to read a financial report and understanding some of the legalities that HR You know, has when you're thinking about leading people and hiring and all of those things, and I said, it's it's kind of like if you are a leader, the higher up in administration, you get the more languages you have to learn, and you learn them in a way that you have to enter each of those realms and speak their language.
And so now you're becoming like multilingual because you speak clinician and maybe teacher and then maybe researcher, but now you have to speak finance, and now you have to speak human resources, and now you have to speak networking and organizational strategy. And so it's learning it like. All of these are different cultures and different languages in of themselves that have some important goals, but there has to be some kind of understanding like we all eventually have to communicate in a shared language that we can actually use to get something done.
But I think. In this point in time, as leaders and physicians, we just have to learn how to speak these other languages and get curious about what is happening in these other places, and what do I need to know about that? How does that impact what I'm doing? And is there something there that I might be able to shape or influence or impact?
Chrissie: And speaking different languages augments our ability to perspective take. Exactly. Every new language brings us to a different perspective. Yeah. Go to, uh, I don't remember where I heard this last week, but it's a Alaskan native language that has like 17 different words for snow. Oh, oh my gosh. I think it was Martha Beck's podcast.
I mean, we just have basically, you know, snow, sleet. Yeah. We've got a few words, but there's like 17 different types of snow. Snow work. Yeah. That is so cool. So you take different perspective given what language you're learning, I like that analogy a lot. Let's, um, let's talk about leaders and wellbeing work, uh, since that's one of the things that brought us together most recently is that Tracy is going to be offering, uh, an updated curriculum in the leadership and vision development program inside joy point solutions and transformative leadership is one of your passions.
And we know from A plethora of studies that when our leaders are engaging in pro social and well being connected behaviors and activities in their leadership roles, that it directly influences the measurable well being of the people they lead. So what excites you about that and how do you like to support folks in those positions?
Tracy: You know, what excites me about it is the potential that comes from allowing a leader to really understand who they are as a leader, what their leadership identity is, how that aligns with their values, what their strengths are, what their purpose is, and to fully live into that as they lead and what that can do with the people that they lead.
Because when they're able to do that. And that's all, you know, that's all that internal work, right? And so then when you think of what does a typical leadership development curriculum teach, it teaches you, well, it teaches you how to communicate and understand people, but it also teaches you how to understand, you know, the business perspective and strategy and, and to kind of engaging with stakeholders.
And so it's really based on all of these external markers of leadership effectiveness that might feel a bit distant from how you want to experience yourself as a leader. And I get really excited about people who are able to actually look inward to how they experience themselves as leaders and what facilitates them being the best that they can be and then what that looks like when they are Reading others or handling difficult conversations or communicating a message or sharing and articulating a vision that the organization has and that they have for whatever team or department they're leading, it completely shifts how they're able to present themselves and to, and you know, the other step, you can meet with someone in financial, figure out how to read a financial statement or a financial report.
And you can have some conversations with HR and you'll figure out kind of the legalities around all of the. Different things that come into play with hiring and, and rights, employees, rights, and all of that. But to truly be able to understand to your core, what your leadership identity is and what it is about you that supports that and allows you then to lead teams in a way that they feel confident and supported and valued and understood.
Yeah,
Chrissie: it's inspirational when you experience that.
Tracy: It is. And it's, you know, and it's inspirational because I coach people who've been leading for a long time. Some are already chiefs or they're, you know, they're vice presidents or they're deans, like they've been leading a long time and they've been extremely effective.
And in those places they're struggling just being able to turn the focus inward and to really say like, well, I never actually got to really. Think about like, what is my, like, what is my leading mojo? Like, where does my power as a leader come from? Where do I find resonance with when I'm really leading effectively, both externally and internally?
Like, what does that mean? And. And just seeing kind of that awakening and that permission to tap inward, to develop those things, not in a selfish way, but because that's really when you become transformational with other people,
Chrissie: I feel that so deeply, I'm thinking about one of my leadership and vision development students right now, who's a client, and that's They recently set out like their own curriculum basically for this next chapter having identified an area that they were not enjoying their leadership role and then dug down deeper into Okay, I'm not enjoying it because I don't feel great at it, etc And this is how I would like to improve and these are the things I would like to actually delegate skillfully And it's been brilliant to see the excitement build.
Tracy: Yeah, and And You can give yourself permission to just get curious around those pieces of resistance and say, what else is there that I can know? And is there something to do? And maybe there's not, but if there is, how can I do that? So like your client, I'm going to just let these people handle this, and I'm going to focus on this.
And that is actually a better way to lead in this particular area. It's, it's just, that's so beautiful to be able to do that. And to have that discovery, and I, I just kind of seeing you talk about it, just like I can imagine the, the relief and joy they felt at allowing themselves to have that discovery and saying like, I don't have to do this in a way that feels this bad.
I may not love it, but it doesn't have to feel this bad.
Chrissie: Absolutely. It's so fun. Yeah. Learning is fun. Um, as we get close to closing up here, I would love to share with our listeners a final thought or two, uh, about how, how they might approach feeling stuck right now, or unsure about finding joy. Um, If they're facing transition or, um, or just sort of a period of stagnation sensing that there, there might be something on the other side, like you did.
Tracy: Yeah. I mean, something that I had to do is figure out what brought me joy and actually just realize that like, Oh, there are actually things that I enjoy doing that I want to have as part of my life. And. One way to start exploring those is just like, what are little small micro practices that you can bring into your day that introduces those things, that infiltration that allows those things to infiltrate your day.
It can be the tiniest, you know, the tiniest thing. For me with design, sometimes it's five minutes looking at this website called house that just shows a bunch of beautiful interior design pictures. I can do that for like five minutes. I'm like, all right, that's micro dosing. I, that, that's what I needed to get through the rest of this afternoon.
Little refresh. A little refresh, right? And another thing, and this is a coaching question that I think is so powerful, is when you are adding things onto your plate, always ask yourself, if I'm saying yes to this, what am I saying no to? And decide if that's okay. And I, even with some of my clients who are struggling with a boss or a supervisor, bringing more and more projects to them, even some that maybe aren't quite in their role, putting it to that person, you know, I'd be, I'm happy to help you with this, but then that means I'm not going to be able to do this anymore, or I'm going to have to offload this, or what do you suggest I don't do so that I can make space for this.
So this idea of balance by just adding more of the stuff on one side of this scale with the hope that you can add something on the wellness part is gone. It's like, well, if I put this piece of the pie in. What pie are we going to let pop out? Cause there's something's going to pop out. And so being very proactive about defining what that is.
Chrissie: Yeah. So skillful. Makes me want to think that, um, also our pie plate should just have one empty spot all the time.
Tracy: It really should. Yeah.
Chrissie: Somebody should have tried that pie already.
Tracy: And somebody should just be sitting in pure blissful joy over what that piece of pie meant. And we should always remind ourselves that that is in our scope and our realm of possibility.
Oh yeah, I love that.
Chrissie: I love it to, uh, Tracy, thank you so much for having this conversation with me today. I know that we have so much fun work to do together ahead, and I'm just so delighted that you are a part of joy point solutions and my dear friend and colleague, thank you for all the wisdom you shared with us today. As a reminder, if you want to find Tracy and her professional work, you can find her at joypointsolutions. com and she's one of our coaches and her coaching and consulting is also available through Tracy's own website, Tracy Asamoah coaching. com. All of this is in the show notes as well. Thank you so much, everybody. We'll see you next week.
Thank you so much for being with us today.
Join me next week when I'm going to take you through a story about my own journey, solving for joy in the midst and aftermath of a natural disaster, tropical storm Imelda. And ways to maximize our chance of achieving post traumatic growth instead of post traumatic stress. Hope to see you then.
I want to take a moment to acknowledge my incredible team. Our music today is by Denys Kyshchuk,, cover photography by the talented Shelby Brakken. This podcast is produced by the amazing Kelsey Vaughn. Post production and more are handled by Alyssa Wilkes and my executive assistant, Rachel Osborne. A special shout out to my steadfast friend and director of operations, Denise Crain, and to the one and only loyal champion number one fan, Suzanne Sanchez. Thanks again for tuning in. May we continue caring for ourselves and others, and may we continue solving for joy.
