Overcoming Perfectionism by Embracing Mindfulness with Meg Burton Tudman

H: So Meg, you know how excited I am to be chatting with you and how much juicy goodness we are going to squeeze out of this interview but would it be okay before we start talking about authenticity, perfectionism, mindfulness, confidence and all the things. Can you tell me how the heck does someone like you with an MBA to become who you are now like, what's the path?

G: Yeah. Oh, I love this question so much. So I followed what in the community I grew up with was a very traditional path. You go through high school. You go to college right after. You go to grad school after that. You take the job that you're offered, and that's your path for the rest of your life. And I followed that and was a perfectionist and a people pleaser for all of that time and didn't think then that I had the choice or even the ability to do things differently. And so I had this one piece of me, right, that was this is the path. There's no deviating from this and then this other piece of me that, and I say this with all the compassion in the world, was a hot mess. I was so unhappy. I was so unfulfilled. I was so miserable and yet, on paper, looked like I was doing all the things, checking all the boxes, advancing professionally, you know, working for these great companies. And yet, internally, felt like this isn't sustainable, I can't live the rest of my life like this. I can't imagine, you know, showing up day after day in this kind of energy with this kind of mindset and doing this kind of work.

And my background is in sales and marketing and it's interesting because for the longest time, I thought, well, I'm good at this, so this must be what I'm meant to do. And it took a really long time to get to a place where internally, I could say, maybe I'm good at something else, or maybe I can get good at something else, or maybe just because, you know, I've been successful, and I've checked the boxes in this one particular track, I could do that in another track. I could take another path and in a way, the decision was actually made for me because I ended up getting fired from a job that initially was my dream job towards the end, not so much, but initially was my dream job. And when that happened, I was completely blindsided, and I thought, who am I without this job? That was my entire identity, and I thought, like, what is next? How do I one, how do I frame this, like, for everybody else, never mind myself.

But how do I, like, how do I keep that mask in place, you know, that mask of perfectionism, that mask of success? And how do I handle, you know, this intense feeling of failure of shame, of embarrassment and so all that was happening, and at the same time, I felt like a weight had been lifted, and I felt this freedom. It was fleeting for sure like, this isn't easy, anybody who's been fired, you know, knows. It’s not an easy process to heal and to work through but I felt these moments of freedom where I felt like, Oh, I can define myself in a different way. I don't have to box myself into a space that doesn't fit, that doesn't align and that doesn't feel good. And so I used that as a catalyst to totally switch gears and become a mindset coach. I got into yoga and Reiki energy healing, and, you know, totally changed the trajectory, both personally and professionally, of where I was headed.

H: That's a makeover, I'll tell you. And you know what, I find myself wondering because I think when there's a lot of dissatisfaction that builds up. And yet on the outside, you're checking all the boxes, you're doing everything right. You're like the ultimate good girl. You're conforming to the norm. You're excelling at conforming to the norm. Did you have anyone in your life when that sort of rupture happened that supported you moving in a drastically different direction. Because that takes so much courage to give yourself permission to do that. I'm wondering if anyone else in your life supported that or if they were all like, what are you doing.

G: I had both. The people who didn't know the real me said, what are you doing and I didn't tell anyone at the time that I had been fired except, you know, a few close people to me. And they said, well, you don't have another job lined up, what, like, what are you gonna do? And at the same time and my husband was my biggest supporter, I'm so grateful for that and he said, why don't you take a minute and pause and figure out what would really bring you joy, what would you really enjoy? Where do your passions lie, you know, what is another path you can take. Had I not had that that person giving me permission to give myself permission right? I mean, we have to give it internally.

Had I not had that, like, bug in my ear in the best way, I think I would have just gone to, you know, another company in the same industry, and I would have kept on that path, but I had somebody who I trusted, who I knew had my best interest at heart, who was a huge supporter, who said, hang on, maybe there's another way for you. And I think, you know, when these things happen for us, that's so important to seek out those people who can reflect back to you, who can look at you through, you know, a nonjudgmental, a noncritical lens and say, I see something different for you. You know, can you see something different for you and start to work through that process? So I, for sure, was blessed, and I'm so grateful for that.

H: Were there early signs, Meg, as you were succeeding in an authentic way and it's not like let me back up a little bit. It's not like you were a total fraud, right? You were succeeding at something you had become good at and I also have a sales background, so I know exactly how it feels to be good at something that doesn't feel like your highest and best. But you're still proud of being good at it and not everybody is good at it. So there is a certain level of satisfaction, like, what were the early signs, probably that grew along the way that this isn't it?

G: Oh, that's such a great question, a lot of it was body and mind related. I have struggled with depression and anxiety since I was a kid, but it got progressively worse and worse and worse as I continued this really inauthentic path. And I also have struggled with really intense floating and could tell when the stress levels were so high, when there was so much misalignment, you know, mind, body, and soul, when there was so much. Just like underlying unfulfillment and unhappiness that all of a sudden, you know, it looks like I was pregnant and I actually I have a dear friend who used to put her hands on my belly and say, make a kick. And so, you know, it wasn't just me being, self critical. I feel bloated like, it really it was a thing. And so there were definitely things from a body and mind standpoint that, you know, in a way, might have been easy to dismiss and might have been easy to say, oh, everybody experiences that, or, oh, that's just like a blip or it'll go away.

But I've always been really tuned in, I haven't always listened and honored what I've been tuned into. But I have always been tuned in, and I think that's such a skill, you know, for all of us to cultivate is to start to pause and listen and, like, tune in where in my body do I feel this, and how does it feel, you know? What are the physical sensations? What are the emotions and feelings? What are the thought tracks that are coming up for us and are they ours? You know, so much of what's in our mind, especially, is somebody else's agenda or is something like we learned as a kid that maybe was true for us when we were, you know, 5 or 10. But now as, you know, driven women as adults, it just doesn't It doesn't align anymore. It doesn't make sense, and yet it's still in our mind. It's still impacting us.

H: I think some of the most transformational things I've read are that, you know, we have like however many thousands of thoughts a day, and most of them are basically on repeat. It's just like a real to real, you just keep having the same thoughts over and over. So that was like the first thing and I'm like, actually that's true and scary. But also that the origin of those thoughts is, for most people, decades old, and not even yours. If you think about like little kids are told in all kinds of ways by the adults in their life and older siblings, they're told who they are, what their value is, what their preferable qualities are, what they're good for so to speak, or good for nothing, as some people have been told from an early age. And those things like those things sink deep and start to form the core of your identity.

And most of the time people don't question them, like ever so we go through life thinking we know who we are, thinking we know how we are, what our worth is, what we're good at, and without questioning it, never knowing why we feel so miserable, sick and unfulfilled. You talk about anxiety and depression. You know I have a mental health background and the astronomical numbers of adult women who are on anti anxiety and anti depressant medications. If that isn't a signal that something is seriously wrong with our culture, I don't know what is. That can't be normal and yet, instead of looking inward and saying, why is my body rebelling! And why am I so miserable when I am supposed to be winning? I've got an MBA! I've got a great job! People think I'm excelling! I might even have an enviable life! Why is my own body, mind and brain telling me otherwise, we don't ask those questions right. I don't think we have the opportunity to wake up and make the kind of change you did.

G: I think you're totally right. And I think that treating ourselves with that compassion and with that curiosity is so critical. You know, really for anything, for us to thrive in general, it's critical. I think it's especially necessary when, you know, we're getting a message from our body and our mind. It's constantly talking to us, and we can choose to ignore it, and then maybe it'll scream, and and we won't have the choice to ignore it. Or, you know, we can and choose to tune in and and explore and it's not from a a critical or a judgmental place. You know, it's not as if we have, like, made a bad choice or done something wrong. It doesn't have anything to do with our worth, it's more these are the messages that I've been told. This is the path that I've chosen thus far. Does it fit anymore? Does it fulfill me and feel good anymore? And I think, you know, if we've experience to especially depression and anxiety. But if we've experienced these, you know, like, undesirable states to put it mildly, we think that that's normal because that's become our baseline. Oh, this is how I always feel, this is, you know, this is life for me.

H: Or even that it's desirable like a badge of honor because you say that you work with, you know, basically recovering perfectionists and burned out superwomen. And I know a lot of them, and I have been that person. And I remember very distinctly, not exactly like humble bragging, but just in a very offhanded way, talking about how little sleep I was getting and how stressed out I was and how I never used my PTO. And I hadn't had a vacation in 15 years and it was kind of like complaining, but it was also virtue signaling that like, I thought being an overachiever and a workaholic and a perfectionist was actually something to be proud of.

G: Yeah. I felt the exact same way, that speaks right to my heart. And it's interesting so if you start to experiment, well, what happens if I do take some of my PTO? Or what happens if I do honor the rest that my body needs? How does that then allow me to function, to show up, to thrive? And I think for a lot of us, we need that evidence because we've got a lifetime of doing it the other way. And in a way, it works for us. That self narrative of, you know, this is a badge of honor that I'm gonna wear proudly, works for us. It fits into our story. It fits into our identity. And so we need these opportunities, and we can create them for ourselves to say, well, if I if I do it a different way, what's the impact and and does it help me? And if it doesn't, you know, then you try something else. But chances are it's gonna be a good thing. It's gonna help you thrive. It's gonna help you feel that balance and that alignment.

H: I love thinking of it as an experiment because I think when we are a hardcore, card carrying, like A student, perfectionist, people pleaser, overachiever, like external validator seeking person, like all of that, which I think is to say, a good girl. If we were culturally conditioned to be a good girl. We were clean. We were modest. We strove to be excellent. We were helpful. We put other people's needs, wishes, wants, preferences and priorities ahead of our own. We did all the things. And you know, it's not like all that didn't come with some benefits. I think one of the reasons why it can be so hard to allow yourself to evolve, to give yourself permission to ask the questions about, like, what's going on in my body?

Why am I depressed? Why do I feel so crappy when I have the life that I've been told I should want, I thought I wanted, a part of me wanted, I'm actually proud of, but like, am I just ungrateful? Am I just like greedy? Am I insatiable, am I entitled like you can really go down a very dark road because we are told, we are taught, we are conditioned that that we should believe if I do all the things, if I check all the boxes, that I will be happy! So if I'm not happy, that's gotta be a me problem, not a cultural problem. So, I mean, it's no wonder to me that a lot of women are depressed because they think they're failing at being a good girl.

G: Right, I feel that so deeply that, you know, from a young age, be good, be a good girl, be careful. You know, these messages resonate so deeply, and unless we're conscious about, you know, flipping that script and creating a new story and a new way to define ourselves, that conditioning will stay, and it's reinforced, you know, culturally right? There's this this good girl, you know, aesthetic that is easy to continue to receive those messages if we're not tuned in and noticing, well, hang on, does this really serve me well? Does this really feel aligned, is this even helpful for me?

H: Do you think there are some women who actually do love that inauthentic life? Or do you think it's that it's just a matter of time before they wake up to being miserable. Do you think it's possible that if you were a different person, if I was a different person, that we could have gone through our entire life and career feeling actually fulfilled and satisfy by being in this kind of a performance of a person instead of a real person, is that even possible?

G: I'm so curious about that, I think that's so interesting. I think that it's really difficult to feel aligned and to feel grounded and balanced If we are inauthentic. To me, those 2 things have a really hard time existing together, with that being said, our brains are so powerful, and we can trick ourselves, and we can tell ourselves a story that everything's fine, you know, this is normal. This is how I want it, or this is how it has to be, and that can be our reality for a really long time. I think, and it's not a blanket. I don't think we can say this for all women, but I think often what happens is there's some sort of, like, event. It might be a crisis. It might not. You know, for me, it was, you know, a mental health break. It was being fired where I thought, okay like, the gig's up. I can't, you know, I can't fake it anymore.

Oh, and what's interesting too, like, I guess I could've in that moment chosen to say, nope, I'm continuing on this path. I'm digging in my heels. I'm not gonna change. I'm gonna keep that same mindset. I'm gonna keep that same energy, and I'm gonna, like, push my way and hustle my way through. And that may work for some people for a period of time, and then there may be another event or another opportunity, you know, depending on how you look at it that allows us or empowers us to check back in. For me, I think at that point, it was like, enough is enough. And I was young, relatively speaking, when it happened, and I thought, I can't. I've got a whole lifetime ahead of me, I don't wanna show up like this. I don't wanna live like this. It just doesn't it doesn't make sense for me. But I think it's easy for us to trick ourselves and to stay in that energy and that mindset.

H: That makes so much sense, Meg. And I also think it's who we surround ourselves with. Because we tend to surround ourselves with people who think, feel, and do pretty much like us, you know, for all the reasons that that makes sense. So if all of your friends are depressed and bloated and climbing the corporate ladder, like, that's your frame of reference. So if everyone's just kind of low key complaining, but no one else is making any changes, it can really take a lot of courage, a lot of self awareness, but also something you and I have talked about privately, and agree to call radical responsibility. Because in truth, you know, complaining is like an Olympic sport, llike I know people who have earned an unofficial PhD in complaining, they are masterful at it. But ultimately, whether you call it a reason, a rationalization, excuse, blaming, whatever, I think the opportunity to say I am living the life I'm choosing, no matter how you got here, no matter what your cultural, social, religious conditioning, family conditioning is, like here you are.

You're either paying attention to what's going in on the inside with you, going on the inside with you, or you're not, and no shame, just this is what's happening. This is actually the life I'm choosing. I am a 100% responsible for it. Do I wanna continue reinforcing the same choices? Do I wanna continue checking the same boxes? Or do I wanna take responsibility for making a change? Like, I think that's really empowering and powerful. But not everybody views it that way, you're like, are you saying I'm responsible for my own suffering? Could you speak to that a little bit because I know you have some thoughts on this.

G: Yeah. I do have some thoughts, and it's interesting. I think that are you saying I'm responsible for my own suffering is such a common response when we invite ourselves or someone else to take responsibility for themselves and it's both right? You know, the people around us in our circumstances for sure are gonna impact how we feel, you know, what our reality is like, what our experience is like. And at the same time, we're never powerless and so when we choose to take responsibility and when we choose to look at, okay, how am I relating to this? How am I responding to this? Where does my ability to make a shift, whether it be big or small, where does that lie? You know, is there a different story I can tell myself about this? Is there a different way I can interpret these circumstances? Is there a boundary I can honor so that, you know, this particular person or circumstance or energy impacts me in a different way and so in answer to your question, like, yes, it’s both.

For sure, the external things matter, and we also have this amazing internal ability to say, like, stop. I'm gonna make a different choice here and when we shift that choice internally, you know, when we when we shift how we're looking at things, when we shift how we're relating to them, when we shift, you know, our own, like, inner narrative about things, that's gonna shift our entire reality. That alone, If nothing else changes, that internal work and that internal choice changes everything, and it's wild. I mean, it's I think so often we think like, oh, this is happening for me. I can't do anything about it and yet, if we shift internally, our experience is gonna be completely different.

H: Did you find that it changed your relationships with other women when you began to give yourself permission to evolve and make different choices about how you were gonna live your life and how you were gonna have your work in the world.

G: Yeah. Absolutely. It changed and in many ways, it changed for the better. I think for so long, I was showing up with all these masks, so it wasn't really me. You knew what I wanted you to know, and it was a fraction of who I really was. And so then showing up, you know, to those relationships and those connections with this so compassionate authenticity right? This radical acceptance for myself, this radical responsibility for myself showing up in that way made so many of those friendships and connections so much deeper. And at the same time, there also were people who were very uncomfortable with it. And those connections, those friendships, those relationships eventually fizzled and dropped away. And I think that's gonna happen, and that can be really hard, especially if they are, like, long term relationships.

I had a conversation recently with someone who said, you know, if I met this group of people now, I don't think we would be friends and it's interesting. You know, when we look at, like, the longevity of friendships, sometimes that's really sacred and really special because hopefully you both transformed and grown together. And sometimes the opposite is true where, you know, you might you might both have grown and transformed, and yet you get together and you revert back to those roles that you had when you first met. And that can be really slippery, and that can be a tough place for both parties to be in right? There's no blame, there's you know, nobody did anything wrong. It just is you're in a different place right now, and the way you connected before isn't there authentically. So you've gotta show up almost as a different version of yourself to keep that relationship in balance.

H: I think this is one of the topics that I am most fascinated with right now is outgrowing things, including relationships, paying attention to that, recognizing the signs of that, entertaining conversations about whether that's happening, and if there's a way that the relationship can evolve in a healthy way, and how you introduce that without making the other person feel threatened or triggering defensiveness, And if not, is it possible to part without the need for blame, without the need for shame, without the need for anger or hurt, but just to say, we shared this stretch of the road together, and now our paths are diverging without needing it to be a negatively perceived event or a fail.

My view about relationships of all kinds has absolutely transformed since I started learning meditation and mindfulness and these kind of practices. Because I realize, you know, in truth, most relationships proceed out of habit, laziness, and obligation, not genuine alignment. And when you reach a point where you're living your life more authentically and more intentionally, those reasons aren't gonna cut it anymore. So being able and willing to maybe confront those realities and see, hey, can this relationship continue in a healthy way by maybe developing a little bit more or is it time to release without that being a negative thing?

G: Right, I love that and I think that that last part is so key right? It's not a negative, it's not a failure that the relationship has, you know, it it's brought us what we needed. It supported us, you know, hopefully, in the way that we needed for that time and now both parties can go on and, you know, continue to grow and hopefully thrive as well and it's not a bad thing for these things to end. And, you know, it's interesting from, like, an energetic standpoint. If you start to honor those truly authentic connections, right, where it's intentional. It's conscious. It is purposeful. You know, it's not habit. It's not laziness and if we release and let go of the relationships that no longer serve either party well, we make space for the relationships that can. You know, if we if we are constantly trying to make something work that really no longer works, we don't have the capacity to welcome in something that, you know, might help us continue to grow and transform and be the best version of ourselves that we can be.

is point, we're at the end of: 2023

G: Yeah, I think you bring up a really good point. I think it is still new for a significant amount of people. A lot of times and this would be the case for more 1 on 1 work. If I've connected with somebody for 1 on 1 work, chances are they've heard of it, or my message isn't gonna resonate with them to begin with. But, you know, if a company brings me in or I'm doing, you know, a facilitation for a group, they may have no idea what I'm all about and they come, and then, you know, if they're willing, they're able to open their mind to it and it goes back to what we chatted about earlier with it being an experiment.

You know, especially if these concepts are new to you, there I think it's such a gift to give ourselves the space and the time and the opportunity to test it out and to see, you know, okay what happens if I meditate every day? You know, how how does that impact me? And what do I like about it, and what do I not like about it, and, you know, where's the opportunity for me to make this ritual and this practice my own so that I am called, you know, to hopefully practice that and honor that on a regular basis. We have to start where we are, and if the concept is entirely new, then there's gotta be a little bit of give and take right? There's gotta be some flexibility to test it out and see what happens for me when I honor this, when I do this?

H: Yeah, that way you're not selling meditation. You're not trying to convert people to a lifestyle or a way of thinking. So I would imagine anyone, everyone listening to this podcast, anyone who identifies as a driven woman and has attempted to practice meditation, or do yoga, or practice mindfulness and says I can't do it. I'm too high strung. I'm too high energy. I'm too busy. I don't have the time. It doesn't work. My mind is always going a million miles a minute. I've had plenty of people tell me that I happen to have ADHD. A lot of my clients have ADHD, they will be the first ones to say there's no way someone with ADHD can meditate. Now I know this isn't true but if you were to be talking to a total non believer when it comes to all the benefits of what you now understand is completely transformational, what would be like the first step or the first experiment? Just out of curiosity, or even sometimes I'll ask someone to prove me wrong. Say, you know what, just for shits and giggles, why don't you try this, and then you tell me what the effect is, how would you set that up?

G: Oh, I love this so much. I think that one of the things that's so important is that you can make your meditation practice your own. That what works for me, what works for you is gonna be different than what works for someone else and we're culturally conditioned to think we can only do it one way and so I think some of the right way Right?

H: The right way. The perfect way.

G: Gotta be the good girl even with a meditation practice. I think often, you know, we have this this concept that, oh, I've gotta sit cross legged for 2 hours a day, you know, in total silence. I can't have any thought come into my head, or I'm doing it, quote, unquote, wrong right? Or I'm not gonna get the benefit from it and that is not true at all. And if we give ourselves space to experiment and to say, okay, I love a guided meditation. Or I love a breath work meditation, or I love sitting in silence, or I love staring at a flickering candle. You know, it can look like whatever works for us. It's there's not one way to do it and so, you know, honoring what it is that actually works for you. Because if it's not working, let's stop doing it like, we've done that for a lifetime. Let's stop that, I think that the breath is probably the most powerful place to start and noticing, you know, what happens when I take a deep cleansing breath. What does it do to my mind? What does it do to the feelings that I'm experiencing? What does it do to my body from a physical standpoint and start there. And if you're brand new to meditation, please don't try to sit down for, like, 15, 20 minutes, that is asking so much or at all.

H: Start with walking meditation like, just just sitting still, you're gonna your mind is gonna race even more than what it already does.

G: Yes, and one of the interesting concepts, and I for sure thought this when I started meditating, was that our mind had to be completely clear. Our minds are made to think, that's their job, if you're thinking, your mind's online and it's doing exactly what it's meant to do. So instead of trying to stop all of those thoughts, which I think is nearly impossible for most of us.

H: Unless you are unconscious or dead, I'm pretty sure. In case, game over you don’t need to worry about meditation anymore.

G: Yeah, I think that if we, you know, start to separate ourselves from the thoughts, to notice when a thought comes in and then to let it go and it's hard. I mean, that's a practice for sure, you know, to notice the thought, to not engage, to not give it attention, to not give it energy. Oh, there's that thought and there it goes. You know, it can be like clouds moving across the sky, traffic moving on a road, you know, thought after thought. And what will happen for us, you know, the more we meditate, the more we practice that skill is that there will be space between the thoughts right? That that space between stimulus and response and I've got two, I had 2 experiences with meditation. One, when I first started and was brand new to it, and I did it and, you know, was committed to it, and I felt awful. And I thought this, like, this is bullshit, this doesn't work. And the reality was I actually felt awful all the time, but I only noticed it when I got still and took a deep breath and closed my eyes and paused for a minute. So it wasn't that the meditation wasn't working, it was that that was actually my norm, and I had never noticed it before until I paused.

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Because up until that point, and I know you're gonna relate to this Meg, up until that point, I think I was basically treating my body like a transportation system for my brain. It just moved my brain from place to place. I wasn't paying attention to it. I wasn't thinking about it. If it hurt, if it was tense, if it was sick, it was just like, oh, how inconvenient is this? I just wasn't an embodied person, I was just moving the brain around and if anything wasn't working well with the body, that was just annoying AF, but I didn't see it as something that I needed to focus on. Now that's completely different like, I'm so much aware more aware of all my aches and pains now that I meditate and I'm more mindful, so there's that. But I wouldn't change it for anything, I think there's so much more vibrancy and honesty and integrity in the way I live my life, now that I'm actually, like, paying attention to my mind and my body and not lying to myself and others as much as I used to.

G: Yes, oh, I feel that so deeply. I had an experience where and I remember it clear as day, and it was decades ago now. I was standing in my kitchen and about to freak out about something. I couldn't tell you what it was, but I was about, I feel it coming, I'm about to blow. And I had been meditating consistently for a period of time, not years, but a period of time and had this moment where I was able to pause and say to myself, hang on. I can make a choice here about how I respond to this. And I was self aware at that point enough to say, like, Holy cow like, meditation is working for me. Like, this is amazing, I have this ability to be present, to tune in and to make a conscious choice. I don't have to just react without any kind of purpose or intention behind it. And, I mean, that was mind blowing for me, and that was all the evidence I needed that it worked, and it was something to keep doing regularly.

H: Well, that's a transformational moment, Meg, as well because in that moment, you were aware that emotions, anxiety, like that feeling of impending doom or I'm about to blow is not like this inevitable thing that's going to takeover, that's going to be like a tsunami and just sweep you away, that you actually had some agency. And you could, like, maybe pull yourself back from going over the edge, that is life changing.

G: Yeah. It was for sure, it absolutely was and so empowering too right? So often, I think we feel like life and things are happening to us rather than for us, and that we've got, like, no control over anything. And that, you know, that skill, and it's a skill that we can cultivate right? Now I don't know that many of us are, like, wired this way naturally, but it's a skill we can cultivate, you know, to be able to say, hang on. Let me pause and let me choose how I'm gonna move forward from here? What's the next step that I'm gonna take?

H: I think we are at a point in our culture where some alarming, disturbing, certainly very concerning things are happening. A lot of people are talking about trauma and I think, let's just face it, the last few years have been traumatizing for the majority of people on the planet in one way or another. And the hits just keep on coming but what deeply concerns me is while I have all the compassion in the world for the trauma in the world and for how much people are dealing with that is traumatizing. I'm also really concerned that we are, many of us, adopting a passive, helpless, victim mindset where everything has to be labeled with a trigger warning. Because if we are to get triggered, we are gonna lose our shit, we're gonna lose our minds, we're going to come all the way off the hinge and then anything goes as if we have no power, no agency, no ability to soothe ourselves, to manage ourselves, no opportunity to develop resilience, I don't believe that.

G: I'm with you on that one and I think it's again one of those cases where it's both right? Like, yes, there is trauma happening, there are absolutely terrible terrible things happening. No one's denying that and where does our power lie to heal ourselves, like, and to truly care for ourselves? And yes, you know, we haven't talked about self care but I look at self care as a series of choices that we make throughout every day. And this isn't let me light a candle, let me take a bubble bath. Those may be helpful in a way, but it's so much deeper than that. Like, how do I need to heal so that this trauma, this experience doesn't continue to impact me and we have that ability.

And, you know, depending on the trauma, some of that work takes a really, really long time and takes the support of a lot of professionals and, field It is not easy. I don't know that it's ever easy, you know, to heal from any kind of trauma. And so, you're starting to look at what can I do for myself and to start small that it you know, it doesn't mean that you're gonna pull the rug out from underneath you and all of a sudden your trauma is healed, it just doesn't work that way. But knowing that there are there are things that we can do, there are beliefs that we can start to wire in, bin there are thoughts that we can give energy to that will support that type of healing.

H: Yes, and even if the healing journey is years, any thoughts that we can claim as our own that help us feel more safe, more secure, more empowered, we can claim. We don't have to earn them, they can belong to us. One of my favorite thoughts is that I am growing stronger every day.

G: I love that.

H: Some days there'll be a big leap, other days it'll be an imperceptible difference, but it serves me to claim that thought, it serves me to practice that thought. It's not like one and done, I have to practice thinking it, because I have decades of thoughts that are well established in there that would tell me otherwise. So, I would like to close by asking you, Meg, what your definition of living mindfully is?

G: Oh, this is such a great question. My definition of living mindfully is cultivating a presence for that current moment that we're in and empowering ourselves to show up in that current moment, exactly as we are. To strip away the mask, to strip away the people pleasing, the perfectionism, to show up with authenticity and to be truly in each moment.

H: That's beautiful, I love that. I keep my, definition of living mindfully super super simple like I just try to show up to the best of my ability from one moment to the next, open, curious and refusing judgment.

G: I love that, that’s so powerful.

H: Like here's where I am, what's going on. I'm getting upset in this conversation, wonder what's going on you know, and not hating myself for it or judging the other person for it, but just, you know, that's interesting, I wonder why I'm feeling like this. That also feels like a very childlike space for me.

G: Which is good right because we lose that. We lose that as we grow.

H: Which is more joyful, much juicy. I'd like to think I'm reverse aging like, in terms of becoming more childlike.

G: Yes. Finding that wonder, finding that bliss, finding that, like, there's it's the radical aspect again right? This, like radical joy, this radical presence, this radical acceptance, and empowerment of what truly serves us well in each moment and there's a ripple effect to that.

H: Yes, to the people around us. We also have to do it for ourselves because our culture at large is not going to send us that invitation, not going to give us that permission. So I think living mindfully is sort of an act of claiming your own existence. Because look around you, there's plenty of overachieving, burned out, inauthentic perfectionist who are making themselves miserable. But that ripple effect is like, there's something different about Meg.

G: And it's a practice, I think that that word is so important. You know, it's not as if we, like, flip a switch and we're fully evolved and all the trauma is healed and we show up authentically. No big deal. Easy breezy every day. This is an ongoing my work is done. We're never finished and that's a good thing right? Like, that's a good thing for us to keep peeling that onion, to keep evolving, to keep transforming. We shouldn't be the same woman that we were, you know, yesterday or last year or when we were a kid. You know, we should continue to shift and change and grow, that matters.

H: Absolutely, plus it would be boring. So how do people find you online, and where do you like them to connect?

G: Sure. My website is my name, megburtontudman.com, you can absolutely start there. I'm also active on LinkedIn. Also my name, Meg Burton Tudman, and I'm on Instagram as Mindset Mastery with Meg.

H: I will make sure we link to all of that in the show notes, and I definitely wanna recommend that whenever Meg does a reel on Instagram, be there, feel really good.

G: I appreciate that, Diann. Thank you so much, I loved our chat today.

H: Me too.