34. The To-Be List: Your Secret to Sustainable Leadership
During times of transition, especially summer, it's easy to slip into logistics-only living - checking off tasks, managing schedules, and operating on autopilot. As a leadership coach, I see how this task-focused mindset leads women to burn out and disconnect from what matters most. The solution isn't adding more to your to-do list. It's creating an intentional to-be list that keeps you connected to how you want to show up in each moment
The research is clear: we spend nearly 47% of our waking hours thinking about something other than what we're doing. This constant future-focus and task-orientation pulls us out of the present moment where true leadership, connection, and joy exist. When we're caught in the logistics trap, we miss opportunities to fully engage with our work, our families, and ourselves
By creating a conscious to-be list alongside your to-do list, you shift from reactive task-master to intentional leader. This practice activates your prefrontal cortex, moving you out of survival mode and into purposeful presence. Through specific strategies and prompts, I'll show you how to craft your own to-be list that transforms how you experience your busy life.
Interested in working with me? Book a free 1:1 consultation here!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
How to break free from the logistics trap that leads to burnout.
The neuroscience behind why presence is essential for leadership.
Why transitions are key moments for practicing intentional presence.
Practical prompts to create your personalized to-be list.
How to integrate being-focused practices into your planning.
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A wandering mind is an unhappy mind - study by Killingsworth and Gilbert
Full Episode Transcript:
Let's be real. Your summer to-do list is already packed with work deadlines, camp drop-offs, team meetings, vacations that feel like relocations. But what if I told you the most powerful list you could make right now isn't a to-do list at all? It's your to-be list. A conscious, deliberate practice of presence, energy, and identity. And it's the strategy that separates leaders who thrive from those who burn out. Because during times of transition, especially summer, it's easy to slip into logistics-only living.
But presence, that's your leadership power. At work and at home. It's not just about getting through the day; it's about showing up for it fully. When you choose how you want to be, you shift from reactivity to intentional leadership. That's what this episode is all about. Let's dive in.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Hey podcast listeners, welcome to episode 34. We are about to dive into summer, and with summer, there's a big transition that happens, both with people at work and at school, people taking lots of vacations, people taking time off, people figuring out their camp schedule for their kids. There's just a lot that happens.
And oftentimes, what I notice from myself and the women that I coach is we discount the impact that transitions might have on us and our brains. And we oftentimes, during these transitions—end of school, new projects, summer travel—our brains default to survival-task mode. And we become like task machines. We stop feeling like leaders, and we start feeling like administrators of chaos.
And oftentimes people have this busyness is not a badge of honor; it's a barrier to presence, and people don't really see that. People don't realize that in the midst of it because you're in this doing mode. Do this, do that. And I get it. I have two little ones; they're both under five. I have my own very busy, successful business, and my husband has a very demanding job. And so that's our ecosystem that we live in. And oftentimes, I feel overwhelmed by all of the logistics, and I feel like I am just this doer enforcing things, getting things done, checking things off, that I forget that I am not just a human doing, I am a human being.
And it's important that we connect to that being part of us because this being part of us allows us to step out of burnout mode and allows us to connect with ourselves and listen to our emotions in deeper ways so that we can take care of ourselves through all of the busyness, through all of the logistics.
And the most important part, and this is what I want for all of you listeners, as well as all of the women that I coach, I want you to enjoy your life. I want you to know you've worked really hard for your life, for all of the things that you've created, for the vacations you're going on, for the summer camp your kids get to experience. But I want for you to also enjoy and live fully and to feel sustained and nurtured and to make sure that you, number one, are being taken care of.
And this is the most important thing about the to-be list. It's about you connecting with yourself. But the reality is, the more you connect with yourself, the more present you are, the more people get to connect with you, enjoy you, be with you.
So, today we are going to dive into the importance of being and balancing it with doing. I really talk about this masculine-feminine energy of the doing part is really masculine. The feminine part is holding that bigger vision, is holding that capacity to have that quality. And the masculine is really about quantity, and we need both, right? But we want to be led by our to-be, because that's really what we have in this present moment.
All right, so let me share with you a study that has been done by Harvard researchers, Killingsworth and Gilbert. I don't know if you believe this or know this, but I certainly, looking at these numbers, get it. We spend nearly 47% of our waking hours thinking about something other than what we're doing. Presence is rare, and it's powerful. So we spend so much of our time thinking about doing other things, planning other things, forecasting other things. And when we're absent from the present moment, we miss the very experiences that create joy, innovation, and connection for ourselves.
So that is why this logistical trap of living really takes away from our being, our ability to be present, our ability to connect. And if you track studies, especially since COVID, a lot of people are suffering from isolation, loneliness, feeling they don't have really great mental health. And a lot of it comes from all of these logistics that we do. Plus, we have a phone that has us having all these productivity tools and logistics, and we can just be absorbed in our phone and not actually connect with people, not actually have this human-to-human connection with ourselves, firstly, and with other people.
The trap of logistical living is a real thing, and there are lots of detrimental impacts from it. You are not connected to yourself, you don't know your feelings, you feel that you are just doing lots of things and you're not present to the people around you, you're not connecting with yourself deeply. And it's important we shine a light on this because the women that end up burning out from corporate, from having kids, from having really, really big lives, are the ones that are focusing so much on the to-do list to check off things, to make sure things are in place.
And I'm not saying that doesn't need to happen, but so rarely now are women giving themselves permission to be, to really think about themselves, how they want to be in their lives, and how to have that win-win for everyone, a win for my kids, a win for my organization, a win for me. How do we do that?
And my answer to you is the to-be list. This changes the game. It's a game of consciousness. It's a game of us connecting with ourselves. Even me doing this podcast right now, it is actually Memorial Day weekend in the US. My kids are home, and I had to deal with some technical issues before getting on this podcast. But guess what? I decided to be present, and I want to enjoy this experience of recording this podcast for all of you right now and imparting to you the magic and the power of choosing and having that leadership to be able to connect with yourself and choose consciously how you want to feel in the moment, how you want to be in the moment, and to protect that for yourself.
That is true leadership. So whether it is the midst of summer transitions or whether you're in a big board meeting where people are shuffling around and it's chaotic, and you have something really important to say, this is the same skill. This is the same skill of connecting with yourself, understanding yourself, and choosing how you want to be in moments with whatever happens, whatever circumstances happens, you choose, I want to show up this way. I want to show up excited, I want to show up eager, I want to show up in service. These are all for you.
So, let's dive into what this really looks like for you to implement in your life and how it can truly change the game of your life. Your to-do list manages output, whereas your to-be list manages the identity that you are shifting towards, the person that you want to be, the person in your mind that is enjoying this big and expansive life. When you start with who you want to be, your doing becomes more intentional. So, for example, I want to be playful with my kids. I want to be grounded in team meetings. I want to be joyful at dinner.
So the neuroscience around this is that naming your desired emotional state activates that prefrontal cortex. That's the part of our brain that has all of that executive functioning, that higher-level thinking, that resourceful thinking. And it shifts you out of that reactive mode, that mode where you're in survival. And this is so important because if you want to engage in your life in an active way and feel excited, feel in control, this is why you ask yourself those questions: What do I want my emotional state to be?
Oftentimes, so many of the women that I coach, they come with all of their technical expertise, their logistics, their how-to-do something, right? And they're so focused on those details, but they're not focused on how they want to come across. They're not focused on how personally connected they are to what they're saying and doing in the moment. And that is true leadership.
I want to cite Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett. She talks about how emotions are not hard-wired. They are constructed from past experiences and current context. We do all have for ourselves how we think about emotions, but this current context is about who we're becoming, who we want to be. So naming how we want to feel helps us to regulate and shape our experience in the real-time.
So you can catch yourself. Sometimes I do this. I mean, I caught myself just before recording this podcast or in the middle of it when I'm yelling at my kids to be quiet. I also catch myself being, "Hey, I want them to have fun. Go have fun somewhere else. I need some quiet space. I'm protecting this time, and I am enjoying telling you and explaining to you the importance of being and owning that relationship and seeing myself explain it in whatever way, having my space around me, and really thinking about how this message is going to hit for women and how this is going to help them start thinking about their day-to-day, their week-to-week in a way that is more for them."
So, some of the things that I have my clients do when they are practicing this to-be list is really visualize: How do you want to be? What do you want to be thinking about? How do you want to engage with the people in front of you? And it's not so hard to do, but we as a society don't have a lot of practice doing it. We are so masculinely focused on to-doing things. Do this, do that, check this off, accomplish that. That this being part, this part where we're connecting with our emotions, that deeper level, this is something we need to hone in and practice.
So, let's talk more about practical ways of using this to-be list. And I want to share with you some examples and stories of myself and my clients of how this important practice has shifted the way that they show up in their life, has shifted how they feel about themselves, how nourished they are, and has shifted the important things that they show up for, both at work and at home, and how that impacts the greater system.
So, let's talk about transitions. What is a transition? It's drop-offs, it's meetings. It literally is entering a new room. You know how sometimes you go to another room, you literally walk through the door and think, what was I supposed to get here? So I want you to know that transitions are powerful moments for leadership presence because oftentimes when we're moving from state-to-state and we're not present to ourselves or taking care of ourselves, we revert back to our survival or our nervous system or our auto-pilot thinking.
So how you enter a space, a call, or even your own kitchen sets an emotional tone. Who do I want to be as I walk into this moment? You want to ask yourself this question, right? Who do I want to be? This question reorients your nervous system and your leadership.
I just want to share an example recently of one of my clients who came back from a big trip, and she realized that I was coming home from this big trip and I had a big problem to solve. She was helping her boss and the company figure out a banking issue that they had. And so she really thought ahead of time how she wanted to be. How did she want to protect her space? And she could have just gone straight into work, dealt with all of the emails and tried to set aside some time to work on this complex, important, significant problem.
But instead, she created space for herself. She said, "Actually," and she was sharing this with me in our coaching session, she said, "I decided that if I'm going to solve this complex problem, the best thing for me to do is to work from home." So she chose to work from home, not look at her emails, and just focus on answering this question and believing in herself and knowing, so even before she started working on the problem, she knew that she was capable, that she was creative, and that she could figure it out.
She just really needed to create the environment. And this is so important because it's not so much that we don't have the knowledge. What happens is we feel overwhelmed by the circumstances around us because we're not taking leadership of our environment. We're not being disciplined with ourselves, and we're not holding up our boundaries. And so what happens is not so much that we don't know how to do things, it's because we allow external circumstances to take up that precious emotional and mental state that we need to be in to get things done at a high level of excellence and intentionality.
So, she protected her space. The kids went to school, she was home by herself, she had time to just focus. She didn't look at her other emails, and she dived into this problem. And it came a lot quicker than she thought, but she came up with very creative ideas on how to solve this problem. And she shared it with her boss, and she shared it with the auditors, and they had some questions, and she was way on top of it, and they congratulated her for her expertise and her creative thinking. And that was because she created that space for herself. And she also decided ahead of time, this is how she's going to do it, and this is what she's going to accomplish.
So I wanted to show you how powerful it was for her to think about the to-being part of it. She wanted to feel confident. She knew she was creative. She wanted to enjoy this process. She didn't want to be rushed. She didn't want to be interrupted by people coming into her office asking her questions. She didn't want her mind to be distracted by emails or kids knocking on her door. So this is why this to-be list is so important.
And I'm going to give you another example because I know a lot of you are probably planning vacations and trips and feeling overwhelmed. I really do feel sometimes when you travel with little kids, it feels like a relocation and not just a nice visit. But oftentimes, it is because those logistics are coming front-and-center.
Then you're thinking about other people, then you're thinking about where we're going to stay, and you're thinking about who we're going to meet, and you're mindful of all of these different things. And when we get overwhelmed and we're not clear on our vision, and we're not clear on what we want out of the situation, and we don't redirect ourselves to that, then we get overwhelmed and we are not in our highest-level thinking and we don't execute well. And so then life just happens to us and it feels chaotic.
And I'm not saying that just doing this to-be list is going to cause you to not have chaotic things happen or for you to have an emotion that you weren't expecting. What I am saying is that even if you are experiencing something that you didn't expect to experience, your vision of what you wanted can help you align yourself back on course. It can help you get back to what you wanted at the end of the day and what is important to you.
And the more you think about that ahead of time and not in the midst of those chaotic moments because when you're in the midst of those chaotic moments, your brain is just going to revert back to what is the easiest and what is that survival mind thinking versus what is our vision? Oh, our vision is to enjoy our time. So even if we're stuck at the airport, how can we enjoy our time? You get to decide that for yourself. You get to have leadership over that.
And I'm actually planning this trip to Chicago, and I am feeling very confused about one of the days because part of me wants to see friends, part of me wants to see clients, part of me wants to do all of these things. But when I start allowing myself to vision it, I think, actually, if I try to stuff too many things in this day, during this time, I am going to feel overwhelmed. I don't want to feel overwhelmed. I want to consciously choose who are the top four or five people that I want to see that day, and I want to have time to be with them. I want to have time to connect with them. I don't want to feel I'm rushing from meeting to meeting.
I used to live in New York, and when I used to go visit Chicago when I was in my 20s, I used to stuff my schedule with all these people, trying to see all these people. And I started getting really transactional with connecting with people. It wasn't this deep connection. Whereas now, I decide ahead of time, I really want to deeply connect with some friends and some family, and I'm not going to make my schedule crazy. I'm actually going to allow for a lot of space, and I'm going to connect with myself and make in-the-moment decisions. Sometimes I might say, "Actually, the kids need to go to sleep early and I'm super tired. Let's rework the schedule so that it works for me."
But that's because I'm connected with my own emotional state, and I'm connected with the vision that I want to hold. And it helps me to create those boundaries, and it helps me to express them in a way that is for me, but also for the person that I'm connecting with. I don't want to show up tired trying to tick a box and connect with someone when I'm worried about my kid or I'm not fully present. So this to-be list really allows you to vision into what's most important to you and have that as your forefront and have that as your guide and leader.
If we are to be the leaders of our lives, if we are to show up engaged, activated, nourished, it is really this process of learning how to connect with ourselves and have that deeper level of awareness where we're deciding ahead of time how do we want to be versus just doing, doing, doing and just putting our own emotions and our own needs and wants at the mercy of the to-do, the logistics. It's like saying, "I need to get this thing done even though I don't feel great. I don't want to do it." And then you question, "Well, why am I here anyway? Why did I do this?" Because you've lost so much of that connection to yourself.
And so this to-be list is truly your connection to yourself, your emotional connection to yourself, what truly matters to you, the purpose that you want to have, the life you want to live because it is in these moment-by-moment that you get to create this. It's not a, "Let's be this person later." It's, "No, let's be, let's practice how to be this person now." If you're not practicing it now, you're very, very, very unlikely to practice it later.
So, how to create your summer to-be list. And of course, I'm talking about summer, but this can be expansive. You can use this all-year-long, and I really teach my clients to look at this list even from a Sunday strategy perspective. This is something that I teach my clients. Sunday strategy is looking at their full week and looking at it from the perspective of not just what you need to get done, but how do you want to feel doing it? Do you have enough down-time? Do you have enough space? Have you planned the logistics that you can already so that you don't have to deal with having all these decisions during your day?
I'm just going to share a little bit about my Sunday strategy, and then we'll talk about how to create this to-be list for your summer. But my Sunday strategy, I do meal-prep, I talk to my husband about what's on his schedule, I tell him what's super important for me. I plan our nanny schedule. I plan the things that I can plan and that are logistical, of course, but I get those all out of the way because those are just sort of table-stakes that need to get planned and dialed-in.
And that just creates more space for us to be. So my week gets executed so that when I'm done with work, I really just enjoy my time with my family. And we're not talking about, "What are we going to eat? What are we going to do?" No, I've already decided that on Sunday.
And I create space in there to have lunch with my friends. I create space in there to make sure I have connection time with my husband. This is really about intentional living and really about taking care of yourself ahead of time. This is the parenting job that you maybe wanted, but maybe your parents didn't have these tools or skill-sets. But the more you're able to create this for yourself and have that presence and that connection, the more you're able to impart your skills that you're learning onto other people in your life as well. And the more you get to enjoy your life because you've planned to do it and you've intended to do it. You're not just walking into it blindly, feeling things are happening to you.
So, that is some of the Sunday strategy. But let's take it into some prompts that can help you decide how you want to be.
When I'm with my family, I want to be... (fill in the blank for yourself). How do you want to be? Connected, fun? What is it that you want to be in that moment? And don't allow logistics to define that.
The next one. When I'm in my team meeting, I want to be... What is that? What is that for you? As you envision being with your team and connecting with them, how do you want that time to be?
During solo time, I want to be... This again is about you taking care of yourself. And for me, one of the things that I'm really working on is down-regulating because I am high-regulated when I'm working and engaged and activated, but I'm also learning how to create this ramp-down time for me, this night-time ritual so that I can down-regulate my emotions and really get myself ready to embrace rest.
And then in unexpected stress, I want to be... What do you want to be? This one is important especially with child care schedules. You know things are all-over-the-place. So sometimes even this, in unexpected stress, I want to be grounded and calm. I want to take a deep breath. You can even have some action words that will help your beingness in that moment.
When celebrating, I want to be... Just notice for yourself what comes up and ask yourself these questions. Let yourself sit with this thought and give yourself permission to focus on your being.
So this isn't about being perfect. It's about creating a compass to come back to, moment-by-moment. So I want to encourage you to write it, post it somewhere, revisit it often. You can even have this with your family members. "Hey, I'm coming to visit, and I'm getting really clear on what I want to get out of it for myself, but I also want to hear, what do you want to get out of it?" They may say, "I really want to connect with you. I really want to be able to go on a walk with you." And this is where that vision piece comes into enrich your life with more quality versus quantity, versus that to-do piece.
All right. So that is today's episode, really about focusing on your beingness and your vision. The version of you who leads powerfully isn't created by adding more tasks, right? She is revealed when you choose to be, again-and-again, moment-to-moment.
So your call-to-action is really writing down your to-be list. Try to do it alongside your to-do list. You can have your to-do list, but you might want to say, "This is how I want to be when I'm doing these to-do." As you bridge that gap for yourself, you might still be somebody who very much aligns to their to-do list, but we're going to grow your capacity to have more being, have more time and focus on you connecting with yourself while you're doing.
And share your list with a friend or colleague or your husband. Share this out loud. This is important. And of course, DM me. I'd love to hear your favorite being word for the summer. What do you want to be? How do you want to be? Connected, fun? What matters to you?
And if you want to take this work deeper for yourself and this really resonates with you personally and professionally, I just want to invite you to an empowering coaching consultation with me. It's 45 minutes with me where we dive into just this. This move from the logistical living trap to truly living a satisfied and fulfilled life that is deeply connected and rooted to your emotions, what really matters to you, and what you want to become, who you want to become, and how that becoming shows up in your life.
Okay, so you've got your assignment for the summer and for the rest of your life to be. Go out and enjoy it. Get nourished by your life. Feel satisfied in your life. Give yourself permission to be. All right, I'll see you next week.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
But presence, that's your leadership power. At work and at home. It's not just about getting through the day; it's about showing up for it fully. When you choose how you want to be, you shift from reactivity to intentional leadership. That's what this episode is all about. Let's dive in.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Hey podcast listeners, welcome to episode 34. We are about to dive into summer, and with summer, there's a big transition that happens, both with people at work and at school, people taking lots of vacations, people taking time off, people figuring out their camp schedule for their kids. There's just a lot that happens.
And oftentimes, what I notice from myself and the women that I coach is we discount the impact that transitions might have on us and our brains. And we oftentimes, during these transitions—end of school, new projects, summer travel—our brains default to survival-task mode. And we become like task machines. We stop feeling like leaders, and we start feeling like administrators of chaos.
And oftentimes people have this busyness is not a badge of honor; it's a barrier to presence, and people don't really see that. People don't realize that in the midst of it because you're in this doing mode. Do this, do that. And I get it. I have two little ones; they're both under five. I have my own very busy, successful business, and my husband has a very demanding job. And so that's our ecosystem that we live in. And oftentimes, I feel overwhelmed by all of the logistics, and I feel like I am just this doer enforcing things, getting things done, checking things off, that I forget that I am not just a human doing, I am a human being.
And it's important that we connect to that being part of us because this being part of us allows us to step out of burnout mode and allows us to connect with ourselves and listen to our emotions in deeper ways so that we can take care of ourselves through all of the busyness, through all of the logistics.
And the most important part, and this is what I want for all of you listeners, as well as all of the women that I coach, I want you to enjoy your life. I want you to know you've worked really hard for your life, for all of the things that you've created, for the vacations you're going on, for the summer camp your kids get to experience. But I want for you to also enjoy and live fully and to feel sustained and nurtured and to make sure that you, number one, are being taken care of.
And this is the most important thing about the to-be list. It's about you connecting with yourself. But the reality is, the more you connect with yourself, the more present you are, the more people get to connect with you, enjoy you, be with you.
So, today we are going to dive into the importance of being and balancing it with doing. I really talk about this masculine-feminine energy of the doing part is really masculine. The feminine part is holding that bigger vision, is holding that capacity to have that quality. And the masculine is really about quantity, and we need both, right? But we want to be led by our to-be, because that's really what we have in this present moment.
All right, so let me share with you a study that has been done by Harvard researchers, Killingsworth and Gilbert. I don't know if you believe this or know this, but I certainly, looking at these numbers, get it. We spend nearly 47% of our waking hours thinking about something other than what we're doing. Presence is rare, and it's powerful. So we spend so much of our time thinking about doing other things, planning other things, forecasting other things. And when we're absent from the present moment, we miss the very experiences that create joy, innovation, and connection for ourselves.
So that is why this logistical trap of living really takes away from our being, our ability to be present, our ability to connect. And if you track studies, especially since COVID, a lot of people are suffering from isolation, loneliness, feeling they don't have really great mental health. And a lot of it comes from all of these logistics that we do. Plus, we have a phone that has us having all these productivity tools and logistics, and we can just be absorbed in our phone and not actually connect with people, not actually have this human-to-human connection with ourselves, firstly, and with other people.
The trap of logistical living is a real thing, and there are lots of detrimental impacts from it. You are not connected to yourself, you don't know your feelings, you feel that you are just doing lots of things and you're not present to the people around you, you're not connecting with yourself deeply. And it's important we shine a light on this because the women that end up burning out from corporate, from having kids, from having really, really big lives, are the ones that are focusing so much on the to-do list to check off things, to make sure things are in place.
And I'm not saying that doesn't need to happen, but so rarely now are women giving themselves permission to be, to really think about themselves, how they want to be in their lives, and how to have that win-win for everyone, a win for my kids, a win for my organization, a win for me. How do we do that?
And my answer to you is the to-be list. This changes the game. It's a game of consciousness. It's a game of us connecting with ourselves. Even me doing this podcast right now, it is actually Memorial Day weekend in the US. My kids are home, and I had to deal with some technical issues before getting on this podcast. But guess what? I decided to be present, and I want to enjoy this experience of recording this podcast for all of you right now and imparting to you the magic and the power of choosing and having that leadership to be able to connect with yourself and choose consciously how you want to feel in the moment, how you want to be in the moment, and to protect that for yourself.
That is true leadership. So whether it is the midst of summer transitions or whether you're in a big board meeting where people are shuffling around and it's chaotic, and you have something really important to say, this is the same skill. This is the same skill of connecting with yourself, understanding yourself, and choosing how you want to be in moments with whatever happens, whatever circumstances happens, you choose, I want to show up this way. I want to show up excited, I want to show up eager, I want to show up in service. These are all for you.
So, let's dive into what this really looks like for you to implement in your life and how it can truly change the game of your life. Your to-do list manages output, whereas your to-be list manages the identity that you are shifting towards, the person that you want to be, the person in your mind that is enjoying this big and expansive life. When you start with who you want to be, your doing becomes more intentional. So, for example, I want to be playful with my kids. I want to be grounded in team meetings. I want to be joyful at dinner.
So the neuroscience around this is that naming your desired emotional state activates that prefrontal cortex. That's the part of our brain that has all of that executive functioning, that higher-level thinking, that resourceful thinking. And it shifts you out of that reactive mode, that mode where you're in survival. And this is so important because if you want to engage in your life in an active way and feel excited, feel in control, this is why you ask yourself those questions: What do I want my emotional state to be?
Oftentimes, so many of the women that I coach, they come with all of their technical expertise, their logistics, their how-to-do something, right? And they're so focused on those details, but they're not focused on how they want to come across. They're not focused on how personally connected they are to what they're saying and doing in the moment. And that is true leadership.
I want to cite Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett. She talks about how emotions are not hard-wired. They are constructed from past experiences and current context. We do all have for ourselves how we think about emotions, but this current context is about who we're becoming, who we want to be. So naming how we want to feel helps us to regulate and shape our experience in the real-time.
So you can catch yourself. Sometimes I do this. I mean, I caught myself just before recording this podcast or in the middle of it when I'm yelling at my kids to be quiet. I also catch myself being, "Hey, I want them to have fun. Go have fun somewhere else. I need some quiet space. I'm protecting this time, and I am enjoying telling you and explaining to you the importance of being and owning that relationship and seeing myself explain it in whatever way, having my space around me, and really thinking about how this message is going to hit for women and how this is going to help them start thinking about their day-to-day, their week-to-week in a way that is more for them."
So, some of the things that I have my clients do when they are practicing this to-be list is really visualize: How do you want to be? What do you want to be thinking about? How do you want to engage with the people in front of you? And it's not so hard to do, but we as a society don't have a lot of practice doing it. We are so masculinely focused on to-doing things. Do this, do that, check this off, accomplish that. That this being part, this part where we're connecting with our emotions, that deeper level, this is something we need to hone in and practice.
So, let's talk more about practical ways of using this to-be list. And I want to share with you some examples and stories of myself and my clients of how this important practice has shifted the way that they show up in their life, has shifted how they feel about themselves, how nourished they are, and has shifted the important things that they show up for, both at work and at home, and how that impacts the greater system.
So, let's talk about transitions. What is a transition? It's drop-offs, it's meetings. It literally is entering a new room. You know how sometimes you go to another room, you literally walk through the door and think, what was I supposed to get here? So I want you to know that transitions are powerful moments for leadership presence because oftentimes when we're moving from state-to-state and we're not present to ourselves or taking care of ourselves, we revert back to our survival or our nervous system or our auto-pilot thinking.
So how you enter a space, a call, or even your own kitchen sets an emotional tone. Who do I want to be as I walk into this moment? You want to ask yourself this question, right? Who do I want to be? This question reorients your nervous system and your leadership.
I just want to share an example recently of one of my clients who came back from a big trip, and she realized that I was coming home from this big trip and I had a big problem to solve. She was helping her boss and the company figure out a banking issue that they had. And so she really thought ahead of time how she wanted to be. How did she want to protect her space? And she could have just gone straight into work, dealt with all of the emails and tried to set aside some time to work on this complex, important, significant problem.
But instead, she created space for herself. She said, "Actually," and she was sharing this with me in our coaching session, she said, "I decided that if I'm going to solve this complex problem, the best thing for me to do is to work from home." So she chose to work from home, not look at her emails, and just focus on answering this question and believing in herself and knowing, so even before she started working on the problem, she knew that she was capable, that she was creative, and that she could figure it out.
She just really needed to create the environment. And this is so important because it's not so much that we don't have the knowledge. What happens is we feel overwhelmed by the circumstances around us because we're not taking leadership of our environment. We're not being disciplined with ourselves, and we're not holding up our boundaries. And so what happens is not so much that we don't know how to do things, it's because we allow external circumstances to take up that precious emotional and mental state that we need to be in to get things done at a high level of excellence and intentionality.
So, she protected her space. The kids went to school, she was home by herself, she had time to just focus. She didn't look at her other emails, and she dived into this problem. And it came a lot quicker than she thought, but she came up with very creative ideas on how to solve this problem. And she shared it with her boss, and she shared it with the auditors, and they had some questions, and she was way on top of it, and they congratulated her for her expertise and her creative thinking. And that was because she created that space for herself. And she also decided ahead of time, this is how she's going to do it, and this is what she's going to accomplish.
So I wanted to show you how powerful it was for her to think about the to-being part of it. She wanted to feel confident. She knew she was creative. She wanted to enjoy this process. She didn't want to be rushed. She didn't want to be interrupted by people coming into her office asking her questions. She didn't want her mind to be distracted by emails or kids knocking on her door. So this is why this to-be list is so important.
And I'm going to give you another example because I know a lot of you are probably planning vacations and trips and feeling overwhelmed. I really do feel sometimes when you travel with little kids, it feels like a relocation and not just a nice visit. But oftentimes, it is because those logistics are coming front-and-center.
Then you're thinking about other people, then you're thinking about where we're going to stay, and you're thinking about who we're going to meet, and you're mindful of all of these different things. And when we get overwhelmed and we're not clear on our vision, and we're not clear on what we want out of the situation, and we don't redirect ourselves to that, then we get overwhelmed and we are not in our highest-level thinking and we don't execute well. And so then life just happens to us and it feels chaotic.
And I'm not saying that just doing this to-be list is going to cause you to not have chaotic things happen or for you to have an emotion that you weren't expecting. What I am saying is that even if you are experiencing something that you didn't expect to experience, your vision of what you wanted can help you align yourself back on course. It can help you get back to what you wanted at the end of the day and what is important to you.
And the more you think about that ahead of time and not in the midst of those chaotic moments because when you're in the midst of those chaotic moments, your brain is just going to revert back to what is the easiest and what is that survival mind thinking versus what is our vision? Oh, our vision is to enjoy our time. So even if we're stuck at the airport, how can we enjoy our time? You get to decide that for yourself. You get to have leadership over that.
And I'm actually planning this trip to Chicago, and I am feeling very confused about one of the days because part of me wants to see friends, part of me wants to see clients, part of me wants to do all of these things. But when I start allowing myself to vision it, I think, actually, if I try to stuff too many things in this day, during this time, I am going to feel overwhelmed. I don't want to feel overwhelmed. I want to consciously choose who are the top four or five people that I want to see that day, and I want to have time to be with them. I want to have time to connect with them. I don't want to feel I'm rushing from meeting to meeting.
I used to live in New York, and when I used to go visit Chicago when I was in my 20s, I used to stuff my schedule with all these people, trying to see all these people. And I started getting really transactional with connecting with people. It wasn't this deep connection. Whereas now, I decide ahead of time, I really want to deeply connect with some friends and some family, and I'm not going to make my schedule crazy. I'm actually going to allow for a lot of space, and I'm going to connect with myself and make in-the-moment decisions. Sometimes I might say, "Actually, the kids need to go to sleep early and I'm super tired. Let's rework the schedule so that it works for me."
But that's because I'm connected with my own emotional state, and I'm connected with the vision that I want to hold. And it helps me to create those boundaries, and it helps me to express them in a way that is for me, but also for the person that I'm connecting with. I don't want to show up tired trying to tick a box and connect with someone when I'm worried about my kid or I'm not fully present. So this to-be list really allows you to vision into what's most important to you and have that as your forefront and have that as your guide and leader.
If we are to be the leaders of our lives, if we are to show up engaged, activated, nourished, it is really this process of learning how to connect with ourselves and have that deeper level of awareness where we're deciding ahead of time how do we want to be versus just doing, doing, doing and just putting our own emotions and our own needs and wants at the mercy of the to-do, the logistics. It's like saying, "I need to get this thing done even though I don't feel great. I don't want to do it." And then you question, "Well, why am I here anyway? Why did I do this?" Because you've lost so much of that connection to yourself.
And so this to-be list is truly your connection to yourself, your emotional connection to yourself, what truly matters to you, the purpose that you want to have, the life you want to live because it is in these moment-by-moment that you get to create this. It's not a, "Let's be this person later." It's, "No, let's be, let's practice how to be this person now." If you're not practicing it now, you're very, very, very unlikely to practice it later.
So, how to create your summer to-be list. And of course, I'm talking about summer, but this can be expansive. You can use this all-year-long, and I really teach my clients to look at this list even from a Sunday strategy perspective. This is something that I teach my clients. Sunday strategy is looking at their full week and looking at it from the perspective of not just what you need to get done, but how do you want to feel doing it? Do you have enough down-time? Do you have enough space? Have you planned the logistics that you can already so that you don't have to deal with having all these decisions during your day?
I'm just going to share a little bit about my Sunday strategy, and then we'll talk about how to create this to-be list for your summer. But my Sunday strategy, I do meal-prep, I talk to my husband about what's on his schedule, I tell him what's super important for me. I plan our nanny schedule. I plan the things that I can plan and that are logistical, of course, but I get those all out of the way because those are just sort of table-stakes that need to get planned and dialed-in.
And that just creates more space for us to be. So my week gets executed so that when I'm done with work, I really just enjoy my time with my family. And we're not talking about, "What are we going to eat? What are we going to do?" No, I've already decided that on Sunday.
And I create space in there to have lunch with my friends. I create space in there to make sure I have connection time with my husband. This is really about intentional living and really about taking care of yourself ahead of time. This is the parenting job that you maybe wanted, but maybe your parents didn't have these tools or skill-sets. But the more you're able to create this for yourself and have that presence and that connection, the more you're able to impart your skills that you're learning onto other people in your life as well. And the more you get to enjoy your life because you've planned to do it and you've intended to do it. You're not just walking into it blindly, feeling things are happening to you.
So, that is some of the Sunday strategy. But let's take it into some prompts that can help you decide how you want to be.
When I'm with my family, I want to be... (fill in the blank for yourself). How do you want to be? Connected, fun? What is it that you want to be in that moment? And don't allow logistics to define that.
The next one. When I'm in my team meeting, I want to be... What is that? What is that for you? As you envision being with your team and connecting with them, how do you want that time to be?
During solo time, I want to be... This again is about you taking care of yourself. And for me, one of the things that I'm really working on is down-regulating because I am high-regulated when I'm working and engaged and activated, but I'm also learning how to create this ramp-down time for me, this night-time ritual so that I can down-regulate my emotions and really get myself ready to embrace rest.
And then in unexpected stress, I want to be... What do you want to be? This one is important especially with child care schedules. You know things are all-over-the-place. So sometimes even this, in unexpected stress, I want to be grounded and calm. I want to take a deep breath. You can even have some action words that will help your beingness in that moment.
When celebrating, I want to be... Just notice for yourself what comes up and ask yourself these questions. Let yourself sit with this thought and give yourself permission to focus on your being.
So this isn't about being perfect. It's about creating a compass to come back to, moment-by-moment. So I want to encourage you to write it, post it somewhere, revisit it often. You can even have this with your family members. "Hey, I'm coming to visit, and I'm getting really clear on what I want to get out of it for myself, but I also want to hear, what do you want to get out of it?" They may say, "I really want to connect with you. I really want to be able to go on a walk with you." And this is where that vision piece comes into enrich your life with more quality versus quantity, versus that to-do piece.
All right. So that is today's episode, really about focusing on your beingness and your vision. The version of you who leads powerfully isn't created by adding more tasks, right? She is revealed when you choose to be, again-and-again, moment-to-moment.
So your call-to-action is really writing down your to-be list. Try to do it alongside your to-do list. You can have your to-do list, but you might want to say, "This is how I want to be when I'm doing these to-do." As you bridge that gap for yourself, you might still be somebody who very much aligns to their to-do list, but we're going to grow your capacity to have more being, have more time and focus on you connecting with yourself while you're doing.
And share your list with a friend or colleague or your husband. Share this out loud. This is important. And of course, DM me. I'd love to hear your favorite being word for the summer. What do you want to be? How do you want to be? Connected, fun? What matters to you?
And if you want to take this work deeper for yourself and this really resonates with you personally and professionally, I just want to invite you to an empowering coaching consultation with me. It's 45 minutes with me where we dive into just this. This move from the logistical living trap to truly living a satisfied and fulfilled life that is deeply connected and rooted to your emotions, what really matters to you, and what you want to become, who you want to become, and how that becoming shows up in your life.
Okay, so you've got your assignment for the summer and for the rest of your life to be. Go out and enjoy it. Get nourished by your life. Feel satisfied in your life. Give yourself permission to be. All right, I'll see you next week.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
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