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Have you ever had a moment where you stop and think, wow, I've created this incredible
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life, but do I actually want to keep doing what it takes to maintain it?
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And now it's not an obvious question.
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It tends to appear in passing and just quickly it's easy to move on from it, right?
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Because your attention is usually on what's in front of you, what needs to move, what needs
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to be decided, what needs to be held, and you're really good at it.
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Which means the focus stays on keeping things working at the level that you expect of yourself.
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But this episode sits inside that question, not to evaluate the life itself, but to look
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a little more closely at what's involved in sustaining it and what becomes visible when
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you pause long enough to notice.
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Let's get started, shall we?
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Welcome to Project Joyful, the podcast for Health Centre Leaders.
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Project Joyful is the space for conversations at the intersection of leadership, health
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and lived experience.
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Here we explore what it means to lead in ways that honour your body, protect long-term
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capacity and support a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.
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This episode is part of the Biology of Leadership Series in this series, which will leadership
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through your body, not as a performance to optimize or a mindset to fix, but as a biological
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experience, straight down the side.
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Leadership doesn't just live in decision strategies or roles, it lives in your nervous system,
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and how responsibility is held, and how reliability and care that will quietly organise your body
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long before your body sees you.
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These conversations are for leaders who are capable, trusted and effective, and who are
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curious about how leadership is experienced internally, not just how it performs extremely.
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There's nothing you need to do as you list them, no insight you need to apply.
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This is simply an invitation to understand what's been shaping your experience of leadership
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and need the service, and what's become possible when biology becomes a part of the conversation.
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Let's begin, shall we?
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Have you ever had a moment where you stop and think, I've created this incredible life?
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Do I actually want to keep doing what it takes to maintain it?
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It's not even the big moment, right?
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It can be something small like driving home at the end of the day, or looking at your calendar
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for the week ahead, or noticing how much of use required to keep everything moving at
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the level that you're used to, because you're really good at this.
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You know how to operate here?
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You know how to deliver, how to respond, how to hold multiple things at once and have
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them all land, but every now and then there's just that brief pause where you see it from
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a slightly different angle, not the life itself, but the ongoing energy it asks of you
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to keep it running the way that you do.
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And it can show up in really specific ways, like the way your body tightens slightly before
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you walk into a high stakes conversation, even when you're fully prepared.
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You know what you're going to say, you've thought through, you've already considered
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how it might land, and still there's that subtle bracing as you reach for the door handle
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or you're waiting for that meeting to start.
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Or you're getting to the end of the day, everything's been handled, everything's moved forward,
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the way it needed to, because you've already thought a few steps ahead, right?
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You run through how things could play out, made decisions early, caught things before
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they became issues, and then you get home, you sit down, and instead of switching off,
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your mind's still going, replaying parts of the day, running ahead to tomorrow, like something
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hasn't quite settled yet.
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Or maybe you're being the one that everyone relies on, the one people come to, the one
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who keeps things steady, because you've usually already got a sense of how things are
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You've thought about what might happen, what you do if it does, and then in a quieter
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moment, you're noticing that you don't really take things to anyone else in the same way,
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not because you can't, but because something in you's used to being the one who's got
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it all handled, or it doesn't quite occur to you to actually bring it to someone else,
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well maybe it feels easier to just take care of yourself, or maybe you're not sure
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or it'd be done in the same way that you'd want it done.
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It's subtle, but when you start to notice it, you can feel how much of you is consistently
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engaged in keeping everything moving at that level.
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And the thing is, if you look at those moments, the tightening before you walk into the room,
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your mind's still running at the end of the day, already knowing how things are likely
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to play out before they happen.
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Some of that's actually being driven by what's in front of you.
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It's not the conversation that's causing that response.
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It's not the workload, it's not even the level you're operating at.
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It's that somewhere along the way your systems learn to stay slightly ahead of everything,
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to anticipate, to prepare to have a sense of what's coming so that nothing catches you
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And you've gotten really good at that.
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It's part of why you're trusted, part of why things run the way they do around you.
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It's part of your personal brand.
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But what that means is that you're really just responding to what's actually happening
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You're holding what might happen, what could happen, what needs to be ready if it does,
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and you're holding it consistently.
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And that has an energy cost.
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Because some days your systems got more capacity for that.
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You're sharper, you're faster, everything feels like it flows.
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And on other days, well, nothing's really changed on the outside, but it feels harder to
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The same level, the same expectations, the same conversations, they just require more
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Not because you're having a bad day, but because of how much of your energy is going into
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staying ahead of everything, rather than just meeting what's actually there.
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And that's why it can start to feel like, do I want to keep doing what it takes to maintain
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And it's not the life itself, it's the way it's being held.
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Because when you see that it's the way you're holding it that's creating the demand,
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there's an assumption sitting underneath it that most people don't question.
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That if you don't hold it this way, something drops.
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That your edge comes from being across everything, from thinking ahead, from staying that
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But if you look closely, your edge isn't actually coming from that.
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It's coming from your ability to see clearly, to make decisions, to respond to lots in front
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of you and move things forward.
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The holding, well, it's just wrapped around that.
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And when you're constantly holding what might happen, your attention is split.
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You are in the moment and part of you is managing everything around it.
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Which means you're using more energy to stay at the same level of clarity.
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Whereas when your system isn't doing that constant background work, that same clarity,
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that same decision making, that same standard, it's still there.
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But it's coming through without the extra load around it.
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So it's not that you lose your edge.
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Your edge was never coming from the holding in the first place.
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And this is also where this becomes something that you can't really think your way through.
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Because you can see it, you can recognize the pattern.
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You can even start to notice it in real time.
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But what actually shifts it, well, it's not more awareness.
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It's what's happening when your system starts to experience operating differently.
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And that is a very different conversation to the one most leadership spaces are having.
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It's not about any more or refining your strategy or finding a better way to manage it.
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It's about what changes when that constant holding is no longer what's driving how you operate.
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And that's the space that we step into inside biology of leadership.
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It's three one hour sessions looking at how your biology is shaping the way you lead
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and what becomes available when that's no longer running in the background in the same way.
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You can explore it here at traceytutty.co.nz, board slash leadership biology.
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You see, it's not meant to feel this hard to sustain the life that you've built.
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I'm sending you lots of love.
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Thanks for listening to today's podcast.
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Tell conversations spoke to you today.
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