Permission to Kick Ass

Setting fire to the myth of work-life balance with Hillarie Kay

• Angie Colee • Episode 165

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I LOVE today's convo with burnout recovery coach and Enneagram expert, Hillarie Kay.  Not only does she have deep personal experience with burnout (her very first story is about winding up in the hospital with a presumed heart attack, only to think, "I don't have time to rest, give me drugs!")... she has a deep understanding of what drives us to burnout in the first place. If you've ever found yourself wondering if there's more to life than "rise and grind," this one's for you. 

Can't-Miss Moments from This Episode:

  • The surprising reason most affirmations DON'T work (and what you can do instead to help reprogram your brain)... 

  • To follow or not to follow: Hillarie and I reveal how we decide whether to take a "guru's" advice or follow our own guts (this one is so simple, yet most people won't do it)... 

  • Bad news: all the growth strategies work. Good news: all the growth strategies work. Now what are you going to do about it?

  • "You attract how you act" - Hillarie's BRILLIANT and catchy mantra will help you spot what you're doing to bring people to your world... for better or worse.

  • The shocking reason a lot of businesses fail (and it has nothing to do with capital, or clients, or any of the typical "success" metrics)...

Hillarie's bio:

I'm Hillarie Kay a burnout recovery coach, speaker, trainer, and author. Prior to becoming a third-generation business owner, I forged my path in corporate America, specializing in public relations and marketing.

In 2016, I established a full-service marketing agency. In 2020, I underwent a pivotal career transition, delving into the realm of business coaching using the power of the Enneagram personality framework to guide entrepreneurs and teams toward greater success.

Since then, I've coached and collaborated with a diverse range of entrepreneurs and teams, spanning from innovative startups to industry giants within the Fortune 100 space. My passion lies in supporting high achievers, corporate executives, and teams in their quest to prevent burnout, enhance communication, and optimize performance through the transformative lens of the Enneagram.

My husband, two sons, three stepsons, and I split our time between Southeast Missouri and the Raleigh/Durham area of North Carolina. I'm obsessed with the 60s and 70s and you can often find me in antique and thrift stores searching for that perfect vintage outfit or furniture piece!

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Angie Colee:

Welcome to Permission to Kick Ass, the show that gives you a virtual seat at the bar for the real conversations that happen between entrepreneurs. I'm interviewing all kinds of business owners, from those just a few years into freelancing to CEOs helming nine figure companies. If you've ever worried that everyone else just seems to get it and you're missing something or messing things up, this show is for you. I'm your host, angie Coley, and let's get to it and welcome back to Permission to Kick Ass. With me today is my new friend, hilary K. Hey, that rhymes Say hi, hi it does rhyme.

Hillarie Kay:

Hey, it's Hilary K. Maybe I should use that as a new tagline or something.

Angie Colee:

Yeah, I like that. It's sticky right. That was my early days of copywriting. I was obsessed with okay, if you're new to copywriting, here are my tools, take them down. Good, hippo, thesauruscom rhyming dictionary. And now there's another one that I can't remember, but there you go Like oh, idiom dictionary. So that was how I created all of my fun plays on words and rhyming, all of the different things. Anyway, tangent aside, please tell us a little bit about what you do?

Hillarie Kay:

Yeah, no, I love it. So I am a burnout recovery coach. I just say in any game informed burnout recovery coach, and I work with high achievers so on their burner burnout recovery journey predominantly entrepreneurs, c-suite execs who have hustled their way to the top but didn't do so in a sustainable way, and so they have found themselves on the floor of their bathroom or in the shower bawling their eyes out, going how the hell did I get here? And I can't do this anymore. And so then they come to me and we work through it.

Angie Colee:

Yes, I'm so glad that you talked about hustle and sustainable in the same sentence, because I feel like that is the part that is missing from the conversation and it's the part I told people I'm pro hustle, I'm anti grind. Yes, we are not doing grinding culture here, because I don't like the implications of grinding yourself away to nothing while your business grows. It doesn't make any damn sense. I will die on that hill.

Hillarie Kay:

Yeah, I literally just had a post come out today about grinding and how grinding promotes friction. It does not promote flow.

Angie Colee:

So why?

Hillarie Kay:

are we happy and why do we find joy and like we're grinding away at our career and like that sounds like an awful thing, like when something's grinding, that's like ugh like it's making you awful noise.

Angie Colee:

That's usually a warning sign?

Hillarie Kay:

Yeah, absolutely. So now I'm all about finding flow and equilibrium. I don't even like the word balance, it's just finding that equilibrium.

Angie Colee:

I hate the word balance too, because, well, I think of the word balance differently than I think, as most. Most people think of balance. I think it's like achieving stasis of some kind, like predictability. I see balance as finding a way to make the pendulum swing less wildly from. Oh my God, this sucks. Oh my God, this is the greatest thing ever. I'd like to balance those out a little bit more, make them a little bit less drastically swinging. I don't have any illusion that I can climb to the top of the pedestal and stay there forever. That is dumb. I'm going to need to pee eventually, like go do that.

Hillarie Kay:

Yeah, no, absolutely Like whenever I hear. I mean, part of the reason why I think people do get burnt out is because they have this fantasy that work life balance can exist and so they trick themselves into thinking that it's possible and, honestly, culture promotes it, right? They it's like this myth that it can happen and it's a bunch of bullshit. Like, work life balance is not a yes, yeah, work life balance just says in this sometimes your work life is going to take priority, sometimes your personal life is going to take priority and you just have to be okay with that and you have to know how to flow with that and how you personally manage that, and that's going to be different than anyone else.

Angie Colee:

So, yeah, yeah, I love that, the distinction too. Like we're talking about flow, we're talking about grinding and friction, and grinding you know to circle back to that is a sign of something wrong in just about every other context. If you're grinding your teeth at night, need to go see somebody about that. If your gears are grinding in your car, need to go take it into the shop, right? No, grinding all flow. And when you think of flow in terms of hustle like I think about greasing you know your snowboard to go even faster down the hill and other things like I'm don't come from me snowboarding experts. I am from South Texas. That was just the analogy that came to mind on the fly. Just, you know, don't come from me or educate me, whatever.

Angie Colee:

My entire experience with snowboarding was a bunny hill in Northern Quebec about 15 years ago actually about 20 years ago and all I ever did was ride the ski lift to the top and all the way back down. So like, yeah, I don't know.

Hillarie Kay:

I'm anti snow, so I don't. I don't deal with any winter sports. Same.

Angie Colee:

Same. Oh my gosh. Well, how did you wind up in this field?

Hillarie Kay:

Yeah. So I got burnt out at a really young age. So I by the time I was 23,. I held a director position. I was the director of marketing for a startup. I had two kids.

Hillarie Kay:

I was in my second affair and I was in the hospital because I thought I was having a heart attack and the doctor was like no, no, you just need some rest. And I was like ha, you're hilarious. Like I'm currently the breadwinner in my family. I have a three year old, a newborn, who has special needs, a horrible marriage. I am like hanging on by a thread, Like you need to give me medication so I can keep going, Like that's what I, that's what I wanted. It was just like rest was not an option. And I kept going for a couple of months in that type of like, with that type of mentality, Like I just don't have time to rest. And then I was sitting in my office and it was just balling, Just was like I literally can't do this anymore.

Hillarie Kay:

And I took like a plethora of personality tests because I was like, for crying out loud, someone is going to have to tell me what is wrong with me, because there's something clearly wrong with me. And I reviewed all of my results from like so many different types of personality tests, Like you name them. I had took them and I was like the last one I was looking at and it was the Enneagram and I had taken it before and comes to find out like I got mistyped when I took it and but I decided to take it again on a whim. I was like what do I have to lose? And when the results popped up on my screen, I remember being like, oh, my gosh, like it wasn't just telling me the what, like everything else would say you're driven, you're ambitious, you're outgoing, you're detail oriented. But I'm like, yeah, you're not telling me anything. I don't know why am I like that? Right, and the Enneagram showed me why, behind the what, it was not like my purpose, why, but it was like why I was doing the behaviors. And what I've come to learn is that my fear of failure and my fear of not being valued and not being respected was the reason for my drive, ambition, detail, being detail oriented is because I was so scared of failing that I didn't have stop, I didn't have a pause, I didn't have a relax button and so that kind of like turned my life in this like huge 180.

Hillarie Kay:

About six months later I decided to start my own business because I was gonna have better control over my life with having two small kids. I ended up getting divorced and I needed to have that control in my life. But a year and a half later ended up right back smack dab in the same spot and I was like, no, okay, I have to go back, because I know I can see the pattern. I can see. And that's when I really just dove, just head. First I have my own marketing agency and it like dawned on me oh my gosh, you're making all of these marketing strategies for your personality. So you're not only doing this for you, you're not only creating all this drive, ambition, hard work for your business. You're now doing this on behalf of 20 other clients. So of course, you're burnt out. So it was like another, like good, good, good, let's like take this back.

Hillarie Kay:

And I started really looking into sustainability for my personality. And then I was like I wonder if I could do this for other people too, and kind of just like gradually made that shift and I realized like I loved like the coaching consulting more than anything anyways in my agency, like the implementation. I hate that crap. Like I still hate it, Like I hate doing it for my own business. Just because you're good at something doesn't mean you should be doing it.

Hillarie Kay:

And so I kind of in 2020, I pivoted. I closed my marketing agency, opened up coaching, and it was just at that time it was just business coaching, because I was like I'm still my burnout journey, Like that wasn't even all my radar, but business was like my blood. I'm a third generation business owner. Like that. It's just always come very naturally to me. So I started using the Enneagram, the tool that helped me to help other business owners in creating sustainable business strategies, and that's kind of morphed over the past four years. And for the last two years I've been consistently working with people who are burned out.

Angie Colee:

So I know that was a lot, but that's kind of a dirty story. Well, and that was a fascinating story. I was writing notes furiously the entire time and people are gonna see that from the video. I was just sitting here like, oh my gosh, tell me more. Couple of things that I wanted to highlight that I wrote down like these are things that immediately jumped out at me Rest is not an option.

Angie Colee:

I feel like that's gonna be somewhere in the title of this episode or something like that when rest is not an option, because I hear that echoed with so many people that I've worked with, especially folks that are like mid six figures, in that awkward growth stage where they've run out of extra hours to do things but don't quite have the time to invest in people just yet. Like those are the folks in danger of burnout. Ben, they're done that. Rest is not an option. That's accurate, but probably not because of the reason that you think, for everybody listening, it's not an option because it's a necessity, it's a thing that you have to have.

Angie Colee:

You are literally not a machine and even if you were a machine, machines need maintenance, oil inspections, all kinds of things to keep running. They need adjustments to the code If we're talking about cloud based like, you are not a machine. Even the machines don't run 24 sevens, so, like, get this bullshit out of your head that you could somehow figure out a way to work harder, more efficient. And what really struck out to me was that like, or stuck out to me was you asking the doctor for medication, like, no, I don't need to rest, give me medication so I can do even more. How many times have I caught myself in that own trap, like in that trap of my own? I'm just you know what. I'm not even gonna go down that path Because we all have those stories, right Like.

Hillarie Kay:

I didn't even catch myself. Now. I do this for a living and I'm like whoa, hillary, why are you missing all of these signs, like your stress signals in your body have been beeping at you. You've identified what you look like when you're stressed, what you look like when you're overwhelmed, what you look like when you're burned out. When are you gonna get it through your head to you know, and it's a, I've been in recovery for eight years and I'm still. It's still a thing, and I have to remind myself rest is productive. You can't be the business owner you want or the C-suite level exec that you want if you don't rest.

Angie Colee:

Yeah, and I love that that you brought up. Like all the warning signs are beeping Like guys. If you've ever driven a car, when it starts beeping or the warning light starts flashing, that is imminent danger of failure. What you really should have done was the first time that light come on you call the mechanic, you take it into the shop, you figure out why it's going, cause sometimes it's something tiny that could be an easy fix faulty sensor. We just replace that. Oh, it happens to be under a recall. Lucky you it's taken care of right. It could be less than what you're thinking. Just go check it out at the first sign. Otherwise, once you ask somebody who threw a rod in the engine after not changing the oil for way too long, didn't understand that that was. That was 18 year old Angie, by the way, like she didn't know much about cars but, yeah, don't ignore the warning signs, cause then you'll blow an engine.

Hillarie Kay:

Right, and our body tells us, right, like. I think one of the main reasons why we're in a burnout epidemic because that's what's happening is because we do not understand the signs our body is giving us. And everyone's signs are different. Right, what someone's burnout looks like could be what someone else's growth cycle looks like. Right, we are all created different and so, again, it's the why behind the what, and so you have to. It begins with learning, right, okay, what is the why behind my what? It's that awareness cycle, and then, once you are aware of kind of your signs, then you can start to observe them in action, to where you're like, not getting those alarms. Right, you're catching it of. Ooh, I just heard something my cardinant tell me it's not beeping at me yet, but I just heard something. So I'm going to proactively and it's all about like.

Hillarie Kay:

I don't believe in like, like curative solutions. You have to have preventative solutions. There are curative tactics but not preventative. There's a difference there. You can't transform, you can't recover, you can't enter into a growth cycle If you don't first know about them and then, second, be able to observe them. And that's the work.

Angie Colee:

I love that you brought that up, because I feel like so I'm still in marketing and do consulting and business growth coaching too, and one of the things that I wind up talking about to people is I've got bad news, but it's also good news. All of the tactics work. So if you're coming to me and you're asking, like, which is the best tactic for launching this offer or pursuing these particular people in this industry, and the answer is I don't know, what do you think is the best? What have you tried? What works for you? Well, so-and-so says this, and this other guru says that. You know, I don't give a damn what they think.

Angie Colee:

What do you think? What have you tried? What appeals to you Like, what resonates with you out of what are the gurus saying? Does your brain say, or your gut say I like guru A's approach and philosophy on this, but it doesn't make sense to me to do it that way, so I'd rather take that and then kind of do it this way. That's where I want you to get as a business owner, where you go. Okay, my gut is telling me this and there's something there worth paying attention to.

Hillarie Kay:

Yeah, absolutely, you nailed it. This is one of my pet peeves is people will go and follow the latest self-help book or the latest marketing group. Like I can't tell you how many of my clients are people in the marketing industry.

Angie Colee:

Oh, I know, oh, I know. Yeah, I don't even have to know that to know that.

Hillarie Kay:

Yeah, and it's because they'll follow the latest trend and that trend worked for that person because that's how that person's operating system worked. Right, if you, if that person's operating system so I talk about this with my clients is some people have a what's called like a more one to one energy, to where they are an attractor, like a magnet, and so video is gonna work for them. If you have, if you are someone who leads more with what I call like the self-pres energy, you're not gonna do well on video. So, no matter how good your content is, it's not gonna work because that's not your internal operating system and so like but people don't know, people have no idea because they don't slow down enough to understand who they are. They just try to be whoever, whoever everybody else wants them to be, or what culture tells them to be, and that shit just doesn't work. It doesn't work.

Angie Colee:

It doesn't work because in this, like I will bang this drum until the day that I die. It doesn't work because you are your own person, right, and you're giving away your power anytime. You are giving into the fallacy of if I just follow this person's steps, I will be successful. I mean, I understand the logic of it, I understand the fear behind it and you mentioned a great thing about fear earlier that I definitely want to circle back to but that is a fear base, that is a giving up your power. It's like they know better than I do, so I'm just gonna follow their steps, and the other side of that coin that we don't talk about is and I get to blame them if things go wrong. It wasn't my fault, it was their system.

Hillarie Kay:

Yeah, totally, it's like bypassing. It's just yeah, you get to bypass your behavior and I don't, but like you can't do that, that's again. That's like the spring in the word. Sustainable, that is not sustainable.

Angie Colee:

I mean, you can do it, but you're never going to get to where you want to go if you refuse to take personal responsibility for how things are going in your life and your business. At the end of the day, no matter what pressure you're under from family, friends, colleagues, clients, whatever you are the one that makes the decisions on what you do and do not do, even when it feels like you don't have a choice. You know it's a quote, quote rush you still have made a choice, even if you choose not to decide. So yeah, just stop pretending like you don't have any power in this situation. You get to say no, you get to walk away, you get to quit things. I'm not saying it's gonna be easier. There won't be a big mess or a big fallout, but those are all options that are available to you.

Hillarie Kay:

Absolutely 100%. There's no yeah. And that's what part of this journey of like, when I realized that in my own life, like what was driving me, that I, and like owning my impact, owning the impact that I'm having on myself, owning the impact that I'm having on others, like it was brutal, like brutal. But once you're able to own that impact and see and observe it, you're like ugh, it gives you back. It's like so empowering, like it sucks at the beginning, but then you're like hell, yeah, like no, I get to own my shit Like no else does I get to, and I get to, you know, decide where I wanna go. So yeah, I love that.

Angie Colee:

Yeah did you ever see that I think it's on Netflix that show called Work and Moms.

Angie Colee:

Yes, yes okay, so you know what I'm talking about that moment when Kate is like so upset because it doesn't look like her marketing agency there's a trend there or her PR agency that looks like it's gonna fail and she's scared and her husband looks at her and says no one's coming to save you. And on the surface that sounds like, oh, kick me when I'm down, why don't you? That's really horrible, but she took that as empowering, like right, nobody's coming to save me, it's up to me. Ooh, I get to do some stuff and figure this out. Like I wish more people could take that default attitude. Nobody's coming to save you, you get to save yourself. Let's be Drew Barrymore at the end of Ever After. Yes, I would like the key, please. I don't need the prince to save me, I saved myself.

Hillarie Kay:

Yeah, absolutely 100%.

Angie Colee:

I wanna circle back to a couple of things. Well, first of all, there was one thing that you said about being in burnout and figuring that other people were too, and I feel like that's the recurring theme of the conversations that I'm having today, which is noticing that if it's true for me, it might be true for other people too, and there's something here. I think a lot of people in the early stages of business talk themselves out of something, either for fear of competition, or they think it's just a me problem. I'm the one that is doing this all wrong. Nobody else is struggling with any of this, and I'm going to tell you with all of the love that I have, if you have this story in your head bullshit.

Angie Colee:

You are not alone. There are eight billion people on this planet. I guarantee you hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people have experienced the same thing that you were experiencing. Might be in different contexts, with different people, but we know those feelings very, very well. You are not alone, and if you know how to solve that problem we talked about accidental expertise on another show. Today too, you might be the person that goes. I went through this horrible thing like burnout and then gets to turn that experience into something that helps other people. An accidental expert, so don't discount what's happening to you, as you are the only person in the world that is dealing with that.

Hillarie Kay:

No, or that you're dealing with it because there's something wrong with you. Yes, that's the connotation you're putting on it. We could decide our behaviors. I tell my clients all the time your behaviors are neutral. You are the one that puts the connotation, or you let society put the connotation on it for you, like being assertive, that's not good or bad, that is neutral, it's just a fricking behavior. Yes, so the connotation we put on these behaviors is it's what really gets us into trouble. And yeah, it's just is. There's nothing wrong with you, it just is. So let's figure out why that that's becoming a problem for you. Right, like it's not bad that it is, it's just like okay, let's figure out why and what fear is dictating that behavior. Because that's fears and motivations. Those are the things that dictate our behaviors. It's going to be one or the other. I choose to let my motivations dictate my behaviors and no longer my fears.

Angie Colee:

Yes, I love that you said that because, like, okay, so if this is the meaning that I've assigned to this thing, this is fearful, this is shameful, this is bad. I've chosen to assign that. Can't I choose to assign something else? It's probably going to involve a little bit of undoing in my own head, but I get to change the meaning around this thing. I love that super empowering. It ties perfectly back to the other thing that I mentioned about fear that I wanted to circle back to, because you mentioned fear as a driver, knowing that that was driving the decisions to achieve that led to the burnout. It's funny, because I wanted to unpack that a little bit.

Angie Colee:

What you focus on, you find I've talked to so many people about that that like well, but I'm worried about the money. The money is not coming in. I'm stressed about the money. Okay, well, you're going to continue to find stressful situations where money is lacking, because that's all you see. Stressful, hard situations. That's all you believe your reality to be. So your brain, the supercomputer that it is, is going cool. We don't need that multimillion dollar opportunity. We don't need this easy person to work with. We're looking for people that are a pain in the ass that won't pay us on time, because business is hard, money is scarce and I believe these things to be true, so I'm going to keep. This is what your brain is saying. I'm going to keep doing this because this is what we know and this is what is true 100 percent.

Hillarie Kay:

It's why I used to think that affirmations were just a bunch of shit. I was like that is those. They don't work.

Angie Colee:

I was right there with you.

Hillarie Kay:

Right. But the reason why they don't work is because we're using them like okay, like if you're saying an affirmation like I am confident, like maybe you don't have an issue, an actual issue with confidence, so why are you saying that affirmation? Like how I build affirmations are like what am I scared of?

Hillarie Kay:

What are the things right now that I am struggling with, and then I craft affirmations around those things. So it's, it's using the things that I'm actually having issues with, I can say I'm enough, I'm confident, I'm whatever, all day long. But if that's not what I struggle with, then that's not going to work. But I'm going to. I'm going to tell you when I say I'm going to be featured on Hoda and Jenna, I'm going to be a patient and loving mom, or I am a patient and loving mom, Like even switching it to the past tense, so your brain's like, oh, we're already there, we're going there. It makes a huge difference Because, yeah, are you, you attract what you, how you act right.

Angie Colee:

Like so yeah that's going in the bullet somewhere too. You attract how you act. That is so on point, because there's another repetition from an earlier episode. I grew up in South Texas and anything mindset, breath, work, yoga the culture I was raised in is that is hippie, dippy bullshit, like that is airy fairy, nobody. That doesn't make any sense. It's woo.

Angie Colee:

I've always struggled with affirmations and I think you really highlighted the key why because they always felt false. They felt like a lie to me. Like I'm standing in the mirror looking and going. I am confident, I am well. I don't feel confident, I don't feel loved. There's already a disconnect happening because I think I'm lying to myself, like belief plays a huge factor into this. So I love the fact that you broke it down into what am I afraid of? I'm creating an affirmation for that Because I feel like that was a real turning point for me, and not all that long ago too, where I had this old story.

Angie Colee:

I did this pattern that was repeating for me, based out of fear of work hard and the money will come. I changed that to the more fun I have, the more money I make, and not too long after that, I had one of the easiest sales of my life, where I was just on a phone call a lot like this going I have a new thing. It doesn't even have a name. This is the thing I do. I've been doing it for about six months, quietly behind the scenes with people. This is what they're saying, this is how it works. Then the person started asking me questions and I went yeah, yeah, yeah, and I'm trying to get more people in the door, so right now I have a special deal. And they were like I'm in, I'm sold, what do I need? Do I need to finish the sales?

Hillarie Kay:

I don't.

Angie Colee:

Okay, cool, I'll just sit you the paper we're later I guess.

Hillarie Kay:

Yeah, yeah, it's incredible. It's amazing what our brain can do. It is so powerful and it can be our biggest asset or it can be our biggest obstacle. And it's a daily and it goes back to the like. We have to know how our personal, how our brain works, how our system works, and then we have to observe it in action. Also, you said something a little bit ago that I can't remember what context, but you were like follow what your gut is saying, do that. I would even take that a step further. Is some people they shouldn't follow what their gut's saying? Maybe they are actually head centered?

Hillarie Kay:

In my world there's head, heart and body, and we all lead with one or the other. I was told my whole life that I was too emotional, that I've made emotional decisions, and so it made me not trust my heart. It made me not trust what my heart was telling me, and so I led and I made all my decisions from up here, logically. But that is not how I am wired. I am not wired to primarily use my head. Do we need to use our head in decisions? Absolutely, but not everyone needs to lead with their head.

Hillarie Kay:

Some people need to lead with their gut, right. What is in my body? What is that next step? Some people need to lead with their heart. What is my heart telling me? What can I learn from what I've felt during past experiences like this to help me? And then there are some people who do lead from their head and need to be like I need to know logically, what the next step is.

Hillarie Kay:

And so understanding that about yourself too, is that some people do lead from the gut, but some people lead from the heart and some people lead from the head, and none of it again is good or bad. It's just how you are operated. So don't let anyone tell you how to operate, how to make a decision for your business, how to do a sales call, how to craft an offer. Like other people's opinions are none of your business, not just you know. Like that's like I can't remember who I heard that from, but it was in relation like trying for people pleasing, right, but it goes back to decisions for your business too. It's like it doesn't matter what everyone the gurus, right to really circle back that we were talking about at the beginning. What they say is what works for you.

Angie Colee:

Yes, and sometimes you're going to do the opposite of what the guru or your coach or your partner, your business partner, your spouse, thinks that you should do, because they don't have the same context and the same knowledge that you have. That has happened a couple of times in my business and it was a big undoing that I hope to prevent for other people that I work with. Was I spent so much time trusting other people's instincts over my own and other people's logical approaches? And exactly you nailed it earlier when you said that's a thing that worked for them in the situation, the context that worked for them. It's not going to work for everybody and I never really understood when I was going through that why it just felt wrong. I'm clearly a gut person and there's a funny connection to all this I'll mention in a minute. But I had to learn to trust myself when those little messages came up from internal Angie saying okay, yes, like 80% of that sounds right, but I disagree with this one thing. I need to go explore that.

Angie Colee:

The funny thing to me was and we're recording this in early March of 2024, couple of weeks ago, I posted this kind of vague thing on Facebook about like I have a theory I'm working on.

Angie Colee:

If we were in a room with a big old box of Legos and we were tasked with building a super cool, badass thing, how would you approach doing this? Would you find the instruction booklet, lay out all of your pieces methodically and like follow it step by step, page by page? Would you look at the finished product and be like I'm going to reverse engineer this a piece at a time? Would you just sort stuff into color piles or piece piles and just start building with your heart? And that's like. When you were describing like head, gut, heart, I was like oh my God, I think my Lego theory just fell into place, like that's exactly who those people are, 100%. There was a fourth category that I think might overlap with the head too. There was a bunch of people that were like I need to understand why we're building this, who we're building this, for, the circumstances under which this will be used.

Hillarie Kay:

Yep, that's totally head. That's the logic. Yeah, the process oriented, it's okay, and I could probably tell you there are any agronom type, those people who said that. But yeah, no, it's a thing, it's an absolute thing. Yeah.

Angie Colee:

Yeah, and now it's not a surprise to know that I fell in with, I think, the gut people are the reverse engineer. I see how that works. I could probably figure that out. Cool, we're just we're going to go. And the I would say like the creative inspired people are definitely the put it in pie, as that will build something beautiful. It may not even be the thing.

Hillarie Kay:

Yeah, I'm a heart centered. I laid with a heart center and I'm always like, okay, let's color coordinate it, like let's see where we're feeling after it's. Or I want to organize it, but I need to do so in a way to like spark my juices, let me see where the energy is going in this situation.

Angie Colee:

Yeah, it's like for everybody that is not following along.

Angie Colee:

Let's just reiterate the thing how you do business is not how everybody else does business, and I think that's why I've had a couple of clients tell me sometimes I really hate you because you won't give me a straight answer and I'm like it's not my job to give you a straight answer.

Angie Colee:

It's my job to help you find your own answers. If I give you a straight answer, we're actually going to wind up not working together because again, you're giving away your power to make decisions to me. You want me to tell you what to do and then, if it doesn't work out for you because I'm not in your head and I don't have all of the, you may tell me everything and I still don't have the context of being in between your ears to be able to fully understand your situation. As empathetic as I am, so like you've still got to make the decision that feels right for you at the end of the day, regardless of what I think. And if you're coming to me for straight answers, I'm going to be like well, what do you think? What's coming up for you when you think about this? And, to their credit, the people that I've been coaching. I've been coaching for over a year at this point and they keep coming back for more, despite being a frustrating coach.

Hillarie Kay:

So no, I hear you. I get that all the time. Can you just tell me what to do? No, you know what to do. You know what to do. I can be the person that bounces ideas off and strategies and say you might explore things in this area, or you might explore things in this area, but at the end of the day, you're the one living with this decision and this has to work for you. It has to work for you.

Angie Colee:

Yeah, I think the closest I get to telling people what to do is okay. So I encountered a similar situation and when I was in it, this is how I handled it. I'm not saying that that's what you should do, but it might be a good jumping off point to explore what feels right to do in this situation and if what I did feels right for you, cool, feel free to borrow that. But like this is more about finding your solution than it is, like Angie said, just do what Angie said.

Hillarie Kay:

Yeah, yep, that's why businesses fail.

Angie Colee:

Mm-hmm, we don't trust our intuitions. And there was another thing that you mentioned like way back toward the beginning about repeating patterns, and that's another thing I have a theory about. I call it the upward spiral. I don't know if I made that up or if I stole it from somewhere else, but it seems like in my theory is that we all have the same set of like two to four problems, two to four core beliefs that are super flawed, that as we climb up levels, we keep encountering those same problems and keep dismantling them at a different level, which is why it always feels like we're just. Why am I back here? Why am I dealing with the same lesson again? Because it's new level, new devil.

Hillarie Kay:

Yep, absolutely no. There's for every personality type or whatever you can call it. Whatever you want, there are about three to four common obstacles. Mm interesting and they tie back to the fear and motivation. It's why you keep running up to those is because they are indirect. It's your ego and your fear meeting up and that's what that friction, that grind, if you will is what causes the obstacle.

Angie Colee:

Mm-hmm, and so it's about understanding.

Hillarie Kay:

oh, this is showing up again. That means I did just level up, which means my instinctual energy is kicking in Like uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh. And now? But I know my instinctual energy and I know how to operate it. So, yes, this is showing up, but guess what baby? We know that we have the tools now to not let it spiral us into burnout. We can let it spiral us up into growth.

Angie Colee:

Yes, yes, yes, yes. I call that looking for evidence, like, okay, so there's all this evidence that you could fail. Look at all these other things that happen. And also, what's the evidence that you might knock it out of the frickin' park? We gotta practice swinging this pendulum the other way. The options aren't all. You know I stay where I am or death.

Hillarie Kay:

Yes, yes, I call it facts versus feelings, is that?

Angie Colee:

a feeling, or is that an?

Hillarie Kay:

actual fact.

Angie Colee:

Like you tell me.

Hillarie Kay:

can you prove? Can you, can you actually show me this Mm-hmm, like I dare you?

Angie Colee:

My brain just went and the court of Hillary and Angie is now in session. All rise for the honorable Hillary Kay, who will now judge you accordingly. Whether you are feelings or facts, please proceed. Oh my God.

Hillarie Kay:

I love it. I love it.

Angie Colee:

That'd be a good segment to have right Like a weekly, weekly content, like, oh my, gosh, I can imagine that as like a good TikTok video or like a YouTube short or something like that. It's the end of my recording day, guys, I'm a true creative if you have listened to this show, and this is about the time where my brain starts going ooh, that would be fun. The court is in session. Feelings are facts.

Hillarie Kay:

I love that. I love it. I might just use it. Hell yeah, I'll send you when I do.

Angie Colee:

Hell yeah, go for it. I wanna participate. I'll be like the bailiff. I'm gonna throw people up Bullshit. Thank my fault. Pay me a fine of five Reese's Peanut Butter cups and a tryptasonic. I like that one. It's also end of day, hungry. Apparently you don't have to follow me down this path, but I'm curious Do you think you know which Enneagram I am? I do, okay, okay, and if I'm digging into your process, feel free to do it. No, don't.

Hillarie Kay:

Yeah, okay, first of all, enneagram, self-reported. No one can tell you you're Enneagram type. There are signs and signals. If you take an assessment, they're only about 55% accurate. I always live type people and I ask a series of questions and I say, hey, I think you are this because of XYZ. How does that hit? So that's the process, right. So I can't tell you, but I can suggest Okay, my sense is that you are one of two types. Okay, I'm leaning toward an Enneagram eight.

Hillarie Kay:

Enneagram eights have a core fear of being perceived as weak or incapable. Their motivation is control, independence, things like that. So you have some signals of like a type seven, which a type seven, so a type eight, I will say, is called the challenger. So they are very, they are very gut oriented. They like to challenge theories, challenge ideas. But also the type seven, it's all. They're known as the enthusiast and they are more logic based, like they're more head center based. But they are. They have this really cool way of tapping into the body and their intuition. But they have a core fear of being trapped or in any sort of psychological or emotional pain. So they are very creative and can, because they feel like if I'm not creative. If I don't have all these things going, I'm going to be trapped in a situation. So, at the end of the day, like they value freedom, and so those are the two types that stick out to me as potentials for you Interesting, but yeah.

Angie Colee:

I can't remember the last time I took it, I think probably a year or two ago, but I remember. I think I got three and eight. We're like neck and neck.

Hillarie Kay:

So I'm a three. I got mistyped as an eight, so threes are heart centered. Threes, core fear is failure, not being respected or valued. Big people, please, our energy will very rarely challenge a situation Very highly like adaptable they're called the chenelian to where, like an eight, is going to be more like. I'm not going to mesh to what you want, like this is, I believe this. Yeah, I may not be as assertive, but I'm not going to mesh what you with what you want, just for the sake of what you want?

Angie Colee:

Oh, interesting, yeah, it does. Like I was talking with somebody last week at a mastermind who said something I'm paraphrasing Like I really admire your confidence and like your super no nonsense and I was like would it surprise you to know that I was a doormat? So you could very well be a three, wait what? And I was like, yeah, I mean, I got. I got married at 22. A US Marine followed him across the country, was a housewife for a while, like didn't know what, and I very much grew up in that Southern energy of like your place is in the home, you take care of other people, things like that. So I told people okay, so this behavior that you're seeing now where I go no bullshit, that's learned behavior. That is my response to allowing myself to be walked all over and be pushed around and told who I can and can't be. So I very much am passionate about well, you can become whoever you want to once you get tired enough to think who you are.

Hillarie Kay:

Absolutely and you use and that's why I like this system is because you're not a type. You move in the system, so you're connected within the system and so it's all about right that behaviors and how they're showing up and like the low side of the eight, the low side characteristics, they can be very withdrawn and just go, but it's not that they're like, okay, I'll do whatever you want, like all, all form, but they're like, okay, I'm just kind of withdraw and get kind of dismissive and withdrawn and just go.

Angie Colee:

Oh, I can, I can see that happening.

Hillarie Kay:

That's in a burnt out state. That's like in a very light. I'm tired, but if that's an eight, though, right Three, so if you're a three you would maybe have the same thing. But it's like numbing behavior, Like it's like okay, Like a like playing an hour of Angry Birds.

Hillarie Kay:

Yes, yes, yes, and so I don't see. This is why I love this system because you have to dig, dig in and ask the hard questions by typing sessions. People often say it's like was I just in therapy? Or like, was this a coaching session? It's like often a mix, but you do get really deep. And so I would ask you probably more questions about your, your marriage. You know all of that type of stuff to dig into the to the motivation and fear behind why you did that.

Angie Colee:

All of this stuff is fascinating and, you know, for anybody that might have their guard up because it sounds woo or it sounds like BS.

Angie Colee:

I would encourage you to keep an open mind on things like this, because anything that can teach you a little bit more about yourself and help you down a growth path is a great tool in my mind and I used to have that.

Angie Colee:

You know Carol Dweck would say fixed mindset. Where it's like I, I can't really change things that happen to me or other people's fault, like very defensive, very closed off energy, and once I consciously decided to no, I'm going to work on this, I'm going to keep my, my mind open and I used to tell people that our perception is not reality. Right, that sounds a little bit woo, but I need to have this actually made into a visual so I can show people, like if you're staring, if you're standing in a hallway and you're staring down at the end of the room and there appears to be nobody in it, right, you're confidently saying there is nobody in this room until I take you above and show you that there are two hallways off to the side where people are quietly standing, like this room is not empty, there are people there. You can't see them. Your perception is not reality. Be open to changing it. Just saying yeah.

Hillarie Kay:

Yeah, no, you're. You are absolutely right, and sometimes our perception of ourself is not reality either.

Angie Colee:

Yes, absolutely. You are not one thing. You are not a static being. You contain multitudes, as we like to say. That's my go to whenever somebody's like, but you said this earlier I contain multitudes.

Hillarie Kay:

Yeah, no, and we are. We're a like. We are small percentages of every like in this system and the nine type system is like we have. We have all nine types within us, just at different percentages. We have one core type, but the other ones show up for us at different percentages, depending on what's triggering us, yes, and what is coming our way. So, yeah, you are not this static being, you're not in a box who are growing and moving and flowing with the ebbs of life.

Angie Colee:

This is fascinating. I might have to go retake my assessment after this and see if it's see if it changes, because I've taken every I've taken, like disc Colby, yeah, what else have I taken?

Hillarie Kay:

Stringsfinder.

Angie Colee:

Stringsfinder. I've taken stringsfinder. I am strategic and an activator, which was not surprising at all to me. Oh, human design took that one too.

Hillarie Kay:

That's way more woo, since that's based on astrological Well, that one is intense.

Angie Colee:

It's intense, but it's funny because there were pieces of it that were strangely accurate, like my basic. My basic nature is to wait for an invitation and I was like that's bullshit, absolutely not. I am a doer, I am a maker, I am a creator. And then when I sat and thought with it, like what's the truth of this here? What is my experience been like? Every time I tried to force a situation, go bang down doors, make opportunities appear, they were miserable and I hated every minute of that experience. And every time I went out and showed up as my authentic self and drew people to me and they invited me to collaborate on something. It was an amazing experience. That was a lot of fun, that made a lot of money and I was like, oh, this is great. So yeah, now my inner Texan skeptic who goes that's, that's epidemi bullshit, goes, that might teach me something, that's all right.

Angie Colee:

Let's go give it a shot. Let's see what happens. Yeah, yeah for sure. Sure. Well, I feel like we have covered the entire spectrum here. If somebody wants to go deep into the weeds with you on this, tell us where we can learn more about you.

Hillarie Kay:

Yeah, so I am Hillary K Everywhere H-I-L-L-A-R-I-E-K-A-Y Everywhere. My website's Hillary Kcom. I'm Hillary K on Instagram, hillary K on TikTok, hillary K on LinkedIn, hillary K everywhere. And I have my new book is coming out in April 2024, called the Burnout Recovery System. So it is going to be just like it's a simple quick guide. It's not like a novel of any sort. It's not a memoir. It's literally like going to be like 115 pages gives you more like a workbook to go through some of the stuff that we've been talking about today. And so, yeah, so I'm really excited about that. There's a free chapter that you can download on my website if you're interested in that. So yeah, that's where you can find me.

Angie Colee:

Awesome. I'm going to make sure that they have clickable links in the show notes for easy access. I hope everybody takes you up on this, because we could all stand to learn a little bit more about why we even why we're even humaning the way that we human. Thank you so much for being an amazing guest. I've had a whole lot of fun and let's do this again.

Hillarie Kay:

Yeah, absolutely, thank you for having me. It was great.

Angie Colee:

That's all for now. If you want to keep that kick-ass energy high, please take a minute to share this episode with someone that might need a high octane dose of you can do it. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Permission to Kick-Ass podcast on Apple podcast, spotify and wherever you stream your podcasts. I'm your host, angie Coley, and I'm here rooting for you. Thanks for listening and let's go kick some ass.