Healthy High Performance with Nancy Nungari

How can you achieve high performance without burning out?

In today's episode, I'm happy to delve into the concept of healthy high performance. When we think of high performance, our minds often jump to athletes or the inevitable burnout that comes with pushing ourselves to the limit. But what if there's a way to excel without sacrificing our well-being? Join me, as I sit down with Nancy Nungari to explore this vital topic. 

Nancy is a consultant, trainer, and published author. She offers personal development solutions to companies and individuals who embrace holistic well-being for sustainable productivity and healthy, high performance. She shares her insights on maintaining high performance while nurturing all aspects of our lives. We discuss the importance of self-awareness, balance, and holistic well-being in achieving sustainable success.

In this episode:

• What is healthy high-performance
• Nancy’s background and journey
• The pitfalls of traditional high performance and burnout
• The role of self-awareness in maintaining balance
• Understanding and nurturing the three parts of our being: body, mind, and spirit
• The six pillars of life: physical, spiritual, financial, relationships, community, and self-care
• The concept of the Wheel of Life and how it can help assess balance
• Strategies for slowing down and calming the nervous system
• Identifying and addressing the root causes of unhealthy drive
• The importance of small, consistent steps toward change
• Balancing professional and personal life for long-term well-being

Resources:

⁠Rebuild Program

Couples Goal Setting Workbook

Connect with Nancy:
Get her Work/Life Balance Journal

Find her on Linkedin

Her website

Couples Goal Setting Workbook

Complimentary Relationship Assessment

Follow Katie Rössler on Instagram

Check out the podcast website

Transcript

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast. I'm really excited to be talking about healthy high performance today, because I think often when we hear high performance, we either think of an athlete or we think burnout. And today, Nancy Nungari and I are going to talk about how can we have healthy high performance, especially in today's world.

Stop, Katie. No problem. Take care of it. Oh, I forgot to I hope we can do a take two. I forgot to plug in the microphone. Because I know if we just use the I'm so sorry. If we just use the computer, the sound is very echoey. It's not good. I really apologize. It's okay. Good catch. I have an editor. We caught it just on time.

Wait, wait. Oh yeah, that's much better quality. Yeah, the other one is very, the audio. You have a great composition and the audio sucks. It's not really good. I've had that in my own podcast and was really like, ah, yeah, this, okay, wait one, one second. I got this. What microphone are you using? I have a blue, a blue Yeti.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I am. Okay. The, the, the ball, the blue snowball. Blue snowball. Okay. All right. Oh, we got it. I really apologize for that, but we caught it on time. Not a problem at all. Okay. So we'll restart again. Let's go. Good.[00:00:00] 

Welcome to the Balance Code Podcast, a place for high achievers to step outside the hamster wheel of day to day life and start learning tools for more balance. I'm your host, Katie Ressler, and I will be guiding you on this journey of discovering your balance code.

Welcome back to the podcast today. I'm really excited to be talking about healthy high performance because in today's world, we think high performers are either athletes are going on the burnout train.

We're going to be talking about what it means to be a healthy high performer and what that looks like today. I have Nancy Nagari and we're going to be talking about this hot topic. Nancy, share with us a little bit about yourself, where you are, what you do and who you serve. Right. Thanks for having me, Katie.

I'm looking forward to our conversation. So I'm originally from Kenya, East Africa, and I'm in Germany. We're in the same country as you. And I've been living here for 25 plus years with some [00:01:00] interruptions. So I am, I'm an author, a trainer, and I'm a speaker. And I serve my clients, the intersection between content marketing, personal development, high performance, and self care or holistic well being.

So that's what I do. Excellent. What got you into the world of learning more and helping people who are high performers? Right. I am a high performer. Guilty. Yeah. Yes. I am. Um, I am, uh, I'm ambitious. And, um, I've always been ambitious, I guess, from, childhood, I was a fast one. And sometimes, you know, parents, put a lot of, they have a lot of expectations on their first child.

And, um, not just parents expectations, but I was very smart in school and I'm a very, very curious person. So I like to learn and I like to implement and I'm multi passionate. So I have different interests in different things. You know, like when people say niche down, [00:02:00] it's hard for me to niche down because I have so many passions and I enjoy all of them, but I learned that, We can do a lot of things, just not all at the same time.

So that's how I got into healthy health performance out of my own experience. Actually, it's not theory. It's, um, my own personal painful experiences where I've had, you know, burnouts. And up till today, I really have to be very, cautious with myself and very gentle because it's easy to slide back again with being a high achiever, high performance to, you know, get back to doing more than we have capacity for.

So I'm very passionate about the topic of, healthy high performance and especially wellbeing. So that's how I got into that. And many times people who are, let's say type A personalities or high performers, you know, like go, go and they get things done and maybe even gets a bit of a high from that or a bit of a, they have, they enjoy doing that.

It's very easy to neglect. It's very easy to neglect the [00:03:00] holistic, the other parts of our lives, whether it's health, whether it's relationships. Sometimes we see people who are doing really well professionally, but then they get to the top of the ladder and then you hear they're getting a divorce. So like the ladder has been leaning up against the wrong wall.

So healthy high performance is not just physical. It's holistic, with all the pillars of life. Yes, from your own experience and the work you do with clients, why do you think we tend to get into the unhealthy side of high performance so often? That is a good question. Why? There's a lot of, you know, there are different reasons I would say, but I say, especially us working with clients, again, it's like, Type A personalities and, um, and then and then there's the element of we live in a performance oriented world, you know, where we're constantly being assessed.

It starts in school, and there's also this thing of toxic productivity where we then identify too much [00:04:00] with what we do as opposed to who we are. And we forget that we're human beings and not human doings. And I think that sometimes getting into this unhealthy performance is often very subconscious.

We're not really aware. We're just going, going, going. And then of course, you know, get accolades when you do well. And then you keep going and you think, yeah, you know. That's who I am. And then maybe 30s, 40s, at least with my case and with a lot of my clients, capacity is not there anymore. So unless we kind of stop and assess, like, why am I going, going, what is my motive?

Basically, when I work with clients, I like to ask them, okay, what's driving you? What's your motivation? Is it external? Are you trying to prove something? Are you trying to earn something? Or is it internal? And this question can be very difficult, you know, this self awareness, but I feel like self awareness, especially when I ask my, clients are without any judgment, you know, giving a safe space and [00:05:00] people can actually go a little bit deeper and say, yeah, why, why am I driven?

Why do I keep wanting to go, go, go? And sometimes not even stop to acknowledge the process or the progress. And in a safe space, people can start it. Shining the light because self awareness is like shining a light in a dark room. You know, if you keep stabbing your toe because the room is dark, when you shine the light, you're no longer going to stab your toe on that, the corner of the table.

So self awareness is so important because when we shine light on that, then we can begin to gently and with self compassion see, okay, what options do I have? So to answer your question, conditioning, We live in a, performance driven society and oftentimes also, childhood experiences. If I may just give an example, you sent an email the other day and you talked about what your nine year old taught you.

And I found that so interesting. And essentially, you know, just to shorten, you said, she didn't want to say something to be honest about something because she didn't want [00:06:00] her friend not to like her. So if that's with a nine year old, they're already noticing, okay, I have to. be somebody else or I have to not be authentic so that I keep my friend and I love that you told her, your own best friend appreciates your, your difference.

And, sometimes in childhood we're taught like if we're not good and we don't perform because we're being compared to everybody else, then there's something wrong with us. so we, grow up with that thing of, I have  I'm competing against everybody else. And sometimes we're competing against ourselves.

So that's a long winded answer to your question. That was excellent. You know, I, I think what you shared about the fact that there's the conditioning of maybe the family and our, own personality, but also. We're in a gold star society. You're right. We're constantly, Oh, good job. Yay. And our worth, our goodness is wrapped up in our performance.

So it becomes like the drive that's never ending, right? There's always the [00:07:00] carrot in front of us that we want to get. And then we end up in the experience that you've had, that I've had where you hit the burnout and it impacts your health. And you go, Was that worth it? Exactly. Right? It's like the unlearning we have to do of I don't have to be everything to everyone.

I don't have to do everything, but that's pretty deep rooted, right? Like you're saying that's that conditioning. Exactly. And the goalpost keeps moving, you know, it's just, it's always, it's like reaching out for that goal that is never, or doesn't seem to be attainable. So if we're not careful, we can just keep going, going, going and burning out and getting back on and going.

Some people just completely hit the, some just don't even survive the burnout, you know, that's the tragedy of it, especially like, um, CEOs or leaders of organizations. Sometimes it ends tragically, Yes. Yes. And you're right. We're more of the autobiographies that are [00:08:00] being written, you know, and, and we're getting into like, what's happening behind closed doors of these elite leaders in the world or, or people even who've grown their businesses or, People we even look up to and go, Oh my gosh, I would love to, support and help people in that way.

When they share about what really happened to their mental health, to their relationships, going through divorce or, some who have talked about even the relationship with their kids has been impacted. Yes. we start to have to ask ourselves the question, is it worth it? So as we look at healthy high performance, What does that even look like?

Nancy? I'm like, okay, healthy, high performance. I'm all in teach us. What does that look like? Healthy high performance. I see it this way. like you just mentioned, sometimes kids, the father is always working, the child never gets to know the father, or the, mother is a career driven woman, and somebody else is taking care, and I get it, you know, sometimes we have to do what [00:09:00] we have to do.

There's mortgages to pay and bills to pay. Yet, As you said, sometimes we have to ask ourselves the question, is it worth it? So I see healthy high performance as first of all, realizing that we are, three part beings. Like we are spirits, we're having an earthly experience. We have a soul, that's our mind, our will, our emotions, and we have our physical body.

So those three work together. And the way I see healthy high performance is looking at, am I nurturing all those three areas of my life, or is it just work, is it just, I come home and I work on emails and I do the reports, you know, and my child is like, Hey, look, daddy. And then I, yeah, wait, I need to finish this, or are we so consumed with what we do that we're not even fulfilled.

At the end of the day, we get to the end of the ladder and realize I've achieved this, promotion, but I feel so empty. I feel so, was that it? You know? So there's no sense of purpose. There's no sense of, this is [00:10:00] a spiritual part, you know, where we, we look at what we're doing. We're part of each other.

And if my work brings meaning to not only me, but to other people, then it's easier to balance out because I'm not just. trying to tick off something so that I can feel like, yeah, you know, I did it, but I'm serving humanity. I'm part of a bigger picture and then there comes a fulfillment. But if I'm only looking to get the promotion, why?

I often ask my clients, like when they come and they're like, I want to get this and they say, okay, what do you want? But then why do you want that? what is your motive again? So healthy high performance is really on all the pillars of life I said, we're spirits We have a body and we have a soul which is our mind our will emotions and we have our physical body and in those Three part, us being a three part being then there are different pillars like six pillars like physical spiritual Uh, finances, which would be work, relationships, community.

And the [00:11:00] last one is self care. So I normally help my clients. We have the six pillars in life. And then we look at how are those pillars doing, what's going on on those areas, from a bird's eye perspective, there's something in the coaching world, maybe, you know, it is called, um. The will of life.

I call it the will of balance. I've kind of adapted it to my own coaching. And then look on, on those parts, you know, how is, what's your life like? Is there a balance? when you look at those three, six pillars or is finances and work so high, like you have a 10, but then family is like a three and then spiritual, like a zero, like What, you know, some people have no connection with, some people call it a higher power, but they have no connection with the, with the sense of like, I'm part of a bigger thing, you know, like a higher power.

There's some, I'm part of something bigger, you know? So that's, how I see healthy high performance as in really, Not making an effort because making an effort, again, we can get into high performance about healthy high performance, you [00:12:00] know, but just stepping back and first of all, being very self compassionate with yourself because sometimes we can be very hard on ourselves and we, we literally driving ourselves like with a whip, and then just stepping back and saying, if this was your good friend or your child, just look at their lives.

What would you tell them? tell them, what do you see that maybe they don't see? What are the blind spots? And of course, working with a coach can help with that. But even a supportive friend, and sometimes even a partner, if we can be honest with each other, so that's how I see healthy high performance, like setting intentions of this three part being, realizing first of all, that we're a three part and then just kind of objectively stepping back and assessing.

How do my six pillars look? And one of the best ways you can do that is with journaling. of course, talking to a professional, talking to like therapies or somebody like you or a coach is good, but we may not be that far yet that we're like wanting to talk to somebody, just the beginning stages of self awareness is just journaling.

It's amazing when you think on [00:13:00] paper, you put your thoughts out and you step back and you're able to look at your life with a bit of a distance, then you can begin to see, okay. I think my performance is not healthy. So that's how I see healthy high performance. The, the question of why, why do I have the goals I have?

Why do I want to achieve what I want to achieve? And then reflecting it on what am I willing to lose to get that? And when you look at that wheel of life, I love using that every month. I kind of reflect on where am I, how are things balancing out? But when you look at that wheel of life, it shows you what you're giving up.

Exactly. Right? It gives you a great picture. So I love how you said, like, if you were your own friend, what would you be like, Hey, did you notice you let this go this month and you weren't really paying attention on your relationship or your health or self care? Yeah. Exactly. 

Hey there. I wanted to take a moment to interrupt this interview to share with you a resource I have for you. Do you find that you and your partner [00:14:00] struggle to set goals together? No, I'm not talking about cleaning out the garage or finally filing taxes, but to actually set goals about your relationship.

Well, I have the couple's goal setting workbook just for you and your partner to help you start getting more focused on building your relationship rather than getting the to do list items off of your household tasks. So check down in the show notes for the couple's goal setting workbook and make sure you take some time out in the coming weeks to use it and start to build a stronger relationship together through setting goals that you're both excited about. 

And also with the will of balance, also then asking, what are my values?

Because sometimes we might be willing to sacrifice some things. You're like, okay, right now, maybe I'm working on paying off my mortgage in the next five years, because after that, my kids will be maybe around five to 10 and I want to spend more time. And so right now I'm going to kind of sacrifice, they're still [00:15:00] small, they're still young and I can.

work a bit more, and so that by the time they're around five, where they all three, five, where they need a lot of engagement, a lot of time teenager, where they need guidance, then I'll step back from my work. My values will have shifted because I believe values, you know, core values, they can change depending on where we are in life, and, If you're a parent, your values might be, first of all, you're related to being a good mother and being there.

But when the children, for example, when it's an empty nest syndrome, those values can change because those kids don't really need you to be kind of like a helicopter mother anymore because they've gone out of the nest and they need to develop their, so values can change, priorities can change. And as you said, the will of balance really, I call it the will of balance, the will of life.

it really helps us to see. Wow, you know, like when you're driving a car and there are some lights like on your dashboard going on, you're not gonna change your journey [00:16:00] based on the lights, but they're telling you something needs to be addressed here. And if we don't address it, things can get bad.

So it's the same with the wheel of balance, the wheel of life, you know, when we see what's happening and we see the, parts that need attention, We can think of it like, okay, that's my car. Those are some signs that I, um, um, I need to look into that. So you're not at the panic at the end when you're, it's been flashing for the last one hour, but now your car is just suddenly like, it just comes on the highway and it just stops, you know, and, and life is a journey, you know, and, uh, the car stopping can be burnout.

It can be total exhaustion, adrenal fatigue, all kinds of things, divorce, you know, children acting up and you're like, what is going on here? You've been ignoring them all this time. So, yeah. Yeah. What if somebody came to you and said, I want to be a healthy high performer, but it is so hard to turn off this drive in me.

Cause I think for many of us high performers, it's a bit addictive, [00:17:00] right? This go, go, go. But drive, we don't want to lose the drive, but we want to, I always say it's like a wild horse within us, like, you kind of want to tame it, but you also want it to be wild because it's so beautiful as it is. How do you, how do you help people navigate that internal drive inside them?

Hmm. I would say first of all, again, self awareness. Like, first, just be yourself. Putting everything on the table, whether it's with a wheel of balance, talking to a professional, and seeing how is my life really going, just taking a pause. And taking a pause doesn't mean going on holiday and then coming back and having to recover from the holiday.

It can just be, I'm going to take a lunch break and not eat at my desk and just go for a walk. So like calming our nervous systems, which when we are like active and high performance, you know, we're like really like, stretching, you know, our nervous system is like, yeah, you know, it's fight or flee. We're in action, you know, but then starting to calm your nervous system, you're balancing [00:18:00] your parasympathetic system and, and kind of just slowing down inside, how it is sometimes when you're really working on something like you lie down in bed, you're slowing down, but your mind is just going.

So you haven't really slowed down, but it can start with small things going for a walk during a lunch break. Putting off our social media and basically calming, slowing down on the inside, like the car, when we see the lights blinking, it means I need to find a place I can slow down and stop and see what's going on.

And then from there, when you do that assessment, see, okay, what is one thing I can start to change because we didn't get there like in a day. And sometimes high performance, we think, Oh yeah, one more thing. I'm going to get this done and I'm going to tick this off in a week. And then that's not how life works.

So embracing the concept of slowing down. And asking oneself, why am I doing this? Why do I want to do this? This, this question is very scary. The motive, because [00:19:00] we can lie to other people, but we can't lie to ourselves. And if we lie to ourselves, like, come on, you know, what's going on? Like self awareness about being honest to yourself.

So asking yourself, why am I driven? Because I'm trying to prove something. Is this unprocessed trauma? Am I running away from myself? Like literally, like, I know you do stuff with grief. Sometimes people who are. supposed to be grieving and feeling those feelings and letting those feelings go through they just will not slow down because it's scary.

They think like, Oh, when I slow down too much is going to come up, but actually it's the other way around. We want to slow down and give our bodies time to process all that energy and all that, cortisol and all that stress hormone. So to shorten the answer, I said, somebody first of all, just slow down.

Okay. Just today, go for a walk full of social media for an hour. And instead look out of the window. Just pet your cat and look at her whiskers, you know, take your child to the playground and really just focus on them swimming. Like be [00:20:00] mindful of that moment and then take a moment after, as you're slowing down, just look at your life with a bird's eye view, no pressure, no self judgment, no self criticism and see what do I, how, what do I want my life to look like?

in a year because high performers, we're good at, you know, getting the vision, going for it and taking it off. So that can help also to take a bit of that in there where we future pace and then start slowing down and doing things with kaizen steps. You know, the Japanese philosophy of continual progress, but small steps.

Yeah. Essentially, if somebody were to ask me, what is the one thing that I would advise somebody who is a high performer and they're just, wanna stop and they don't know how. It's self-awareness and like, what is your motive? What is driving you? And then work from the root, because if we try to just clip the branches from the top and we don't get to the root of why we're driven in an unhealthy way, we'll just keep repeating the [00:21:00] cycle.

So what is your motive? What, what's driving you? And often it's not pretty, but that's where we need to start for sustainable change and sustainable, high performance. And that is essentially self care. Just taking a moment to take care. Because you're worth it. And here's the thing, if we keep going, going, going like that, as much as we add value to society and everybody and to our families, if we keep going in an unhealthy way, at the end, nobody benefits.

Nobody benefits when a good team player, when a good employee, when good talent, when they burn out, because they've just been doing the most. The company doesn't benefit, the person doesn't benefit, the family doesn't benefit, so it really serves everybody to get that balance, and switch things up a little bit slowly, one step at a time.

Definitely. I, tend to subscribe to the 2 percent method. Every day is just 2 percent towards whatever the like marathon goal [00:22:00] is. Right. And the more that I can just focus on what is that 2 percent today versus, do the whole thing right now. And as fast as possible, that helps me feel like I'm achieving and also finding that balance.

So I love how you said that, where it's like, We got to find, you know, really ask ourselves and find out those healthy and motivators, but also take it easy, go slow and break it up. So then it's like, okay, I'm still a high performer. I'm still doing amazing. I don't have to do it all now. At the same time, exactly.

All or nothing thing is not good. It's black and white. I think you mentioned that this black and white thing is either all or nothing. And I would do that a lot. You know, it's either go and then a, there's in between, you know, there's nuances and also being compassionate with ourselves because as high performers, we can be very hard on ourselves and it's often like I said, either conditioning or family of origin, not blaming anybody, you know, like I'm, an immigrant and [00:23:00] being in, Europe or navigating spaces where people don't look like me, that There's often that expectation, like I have to prove myself.

I have to work twice as hard to prove myself worthy of this thing or to get a chance even. And even addressing those things and thinking that may have served me at a time back, but it's now become like toxic. It's now maladaptive. We need to change that. And that's only something I can do. So finding value in oneself also.

And then realizing, okay, sometimes like this, how can I navigate that to my advantage? Like, how can I navigate that so that I serve other people? I live here in Germany, but not at the expense of my well being, because a long time I've learned that does not work. It's got to mean trouble more times than I Yeah, the two percent, not all or nothing, like this, it's okay to have in between.

Work smarter, not harder. Yeah. Easier said than done. [00:24:00] Right? Totally. Yeah. Especially for high performers. Wow. You know, we want to, and we enjoy that sometimes, only until, you know, we overdo it and then it's no longer fun. And that's a shame, you know, that's a pity. Absolutely. Nancy, this has been such a wonderful discussion and thank you for kind of painting the picture of where the unhealthy comes from and how we start to shift and dive into a healthier view of being a high performer.

And hopefully somebody, you know, if you're listening, definitely, um, uh, Nancy will share how you can connect with her in a minute. Finding out about this wheel of balance, finding out about, you know, ways that you can start journaling and asking yourself these questions so that you can more effectively shift from the, I have to, I have to, to have to, to, okay, what do I really want and how do I want it to look?

And then how do I plan it that way? Cause like you said, life happens. Yeah. And we feel like, Oh, I've got to [00:25:00] make up for the last time or that week where I went, I was sick. I got to do all these things now, but that will just make us sicker. That just will impact us more. So Nancy, if they want to connect with you, where can they find you?

And, and, and, talk with you more about this. Right. So the best place would be my website. That would be n a g a. So naga coaching dot com. And I actually have like a free gift, a free download for your listeners. And that's just a journaling. You know, it has the, areas of life, you know, like we said, the wheel of balance and assessment and just starting slow, like John, like, how am I, what's my happiness level right now?

what's my wellbeing level? Like, just like journaling and again, bringing awareness into the situation is the beginning step. And you might even put that aside for one or two months because you might not be ready, but at least you started, you self awareness, shining the light in a dark room. So nagacoaching.

com and that'll be [00:26:00] nagacoaching. com forward slash balance, because it's just for your listener. So they would have to add the balance to find that download. It's a free PDF. Perfect. And that's what I was just saying. We got to work on this. So, Nancy has it already for you. You don't have to go and research it.

I will make sure all those links are in the show notes and that I really encourage you, dear listener, to go get that workbook because when you have something already created for you, it just makes it much faster to make the progress. And then connect with Nancy, ask questions if you have like, Hey, Nancy, I am way off balance in these three areas.

What do I do? She would love to support you in that. So. Thank you so much, Nancy, for being here, for sharing. I'm so glad we connected, both being in Germany, different areas. Me too. Thank you for having me. Me too. It was a joy to connect with you and also to read your newsletter. It was very interesting. I was nodding and thinking, yeah, and how you, you know, Navigated that in the end and, and, and had the lesson in there.

That was brilliant. [00:27:00] Yeah. I'm glad to have connected. And on social media, in case somebody wants to connect social media, I'm on LinkedIn. Naga social. So I'll give you the link as well. Perfect. Yes. Go find her on LinkedIn and connect. And dear listener, here's to finding our balance. 

Thank you for listening to today's episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Take a moment to leave a rating and a review on your favorite podcast platform. That helps other listeners just like you to find this podcast too. Want to connect and learn how we can work together? Check out the links in the show notes below.

Discovering your balance code doesn't have to be a one person journey. You can have a team and I'd love to support you. So here's to finding our balance code.