69. Part 2: On Intentionally Living & Working with Pace with Kathy Oneto & Wade Brill

Overview

In this episode, I’m joined by my friend, Wade Brill, who was on the podcast with me early on in Episode 5. Wade is a Mindfulness Coach, Podcaster and Speaker.

Wade and I got together to discuss Pace, a topic we’re passionate about as it shows up in the work that we both do. If you’ve been listening to the podcast, you know that I’ve talked about pace on a few other episodes in the past year: Episode 52: On Setting Your Own Pace and Episode 39 on Rethinking & Shaping Your Time.

We thought it would be interesting to explore this topic further and share our own experiences working with and experiencing pace.

This is the second episode where we talk about ambitions, goals, and pace. How does pace show up when we consider ambitions and where that intersects with life and work? We hope through these two episodes that we raise your awareness of the power of thinking about and being intentional with pace both in your daily experiences and how you manage your personal and professional ambitions.

It’s been a pleasure, Wade! What thought-provoking conversations, and I was even a part of them! These discussions have further deepened my own consideration of pace in my life and my decision-making.

More About Our Guest

Wade Brill is a Mindfulness Coach, Podcaster and Speaker who helps busy professionals experiencing stress and overwhelm be more present, productive and energized. At the age of 21, Wade survived Hodgkin’s Lymphoma while simultaneously losing her mother to Leukemia. This major life interruption inspired Wade to realize how precious life is and that practicing radical self-care is smart, not selfish. Wade devotes her life’s work to helping others connect to their own inspiration.

Wade is a Professional Certified Coach, Energy Leadership Index™ Practitioner, and Meditation Facilitator through UCLA’s Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior. She hosts the popular Centered in the City podcast and is the creator of the Centered In the City on demand platform, offering modern meditations and self-care resources for busy professionals. Wade is a recognized speaker at conferences, companies, and retreats. Wade helps busy professionals create calm and clarity amid chaos and realize the importance of their one mind, one body, and one life.

Topics Covered

  • In this episode, we delve into how to think about pace as it relates to striving and goals.

  • We first hear from Wade on how her personal health experience and losing her mom at a young age impacted her view on this.

  • We discuss the power of using intentions to help find a way to work with pace around our goals vs. being driven by external rating scales that may push us to strive at an unrealistic or unhealthy pace.

  • It’s hard to avoid comparison when looking externally, but this is a watch out. It can be dangerous. As Wade says, “Compare and despair.”

  • Wade asks Kathy: Where does ambition come from? Kathy shares based on research that she believes to be human is to be ambitious and offers a view of how our ambitions are shaped. Wade adds how our capitalistic society also feeds our ambitions and impacts our pace, too.

  • What tends to get celebrated in our society, unfortunately, is operating at a fast pace (e.g., hustle culture, moving up quickly), rather than having a wider lens and views of how ambition can take shape and that we all are on our own journeys and timeframes.

  • How do we manage our ambitions and pace in the context of our personal life and having a partner and potentially having a family? Can we use pace and flex our goals over time? Is that a model that can work? Wade and Kathy both share what’s present for them around this and their own personal experiences.

  • Kathy brings in a practice that Brené Brown has shared around what she and her husband have done to support each other while managing busy careers.

  • We dive into challenges that can arise in finding pace around goals. For example, Kathy shares how some ambitious people she has worked with express guilt around wanting to slow down their pace. They are still ambitious, but just want to take it down a notch. Yet, their own internal dialogue and fear of being judged leaves them feeling really uncomfortable and not quite sure how to navigate. Downshifting can be hard.

  • We discuss the tension between professional and personal life ambitions and societal norms and pressures, along with how workplace norms influence these. Kathy believes pacing needs to be brought into the concept of managing careers in the workplace. Shockingly, society still hasn’t developed new norms that better support people in navigating these tensions between professional and personal ambitions, especially around raising families.

  • Kathy brings up one way to think about resolving these conflicts is to think about arcs and to ask, “What is it time for now? What is this arc about? What do I need to consider around my partner and family?”

  • Wade reminds us, too, that it’s never too late to shape your life in the way you want, and it doesn’t have to look like what society expects. Amen!

  • Wade helps us close with bringing us back to the idea of enjoying the journey and its pace.

  • Kathy’s close - think about: what do you want for yourself and your life, what do you want this journey to be about, and how will you pace things? And give yourself permission to set your own pace.

  • Wade adds - untangle from the should’s of life.

Resources Mentioned

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69. Part 2: On Intentionally Living & Working with Pace with Kathy Oneto & Wade Brill

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2022-2Kathy OnetoRight Success, Right Aspiration, Right Effort