Hello everyone. This is Tonya Dawn Recla. Your Super Power Expert. I am so excited to have with us today Kim Sutton. We met her at New Media Summit. We were all featured as Icons of Influence over there. Big shout out to Steve Olsher for creating a really fun event. She’s the host of the Positive Productivity podcast. I’m especially excited to have her on the show today ’cause we are talking today about managing stress through self development.
The reason why that is such a pertinent topic is I think especially for entrepreneurs, change agents, healers, practitioners, all of you folks out there, this is where a lot of that anxiety that … Kim and I were talking a little bit before the show, this comparison thing, the imposter syndrome. We’ve got all kinds of fancy names for what happens in the entrepreneur space. I’m really excited to have her on board. She talks about she has the Entrepreneur’s Guide to Overcoming Idea Overwhelm. I know some of you can relate to that. She calls it chronic idea disorder.
Anyways, she’s such a blast. She has such a huge heart and is really there to assist folks in that entrepreneur space who as with all of us have perhaps walked in some of the same paths as she has. She’s come out and emerged on the other side of that to reach back and assist others. This will be an exciting conversation. Thank you so much for joining us today. Please join me in welcoming Kim to the show. Welcome Kim.
Thank you so much. I am so thrilled to be here.
Very cool. We are excited to have you. Let’s jump in and ask what are your super powers?
My superpower is empowering entrepreneurs to manage stress.
My super power is empowering entrepreneurs to relieve themselves of stress through personal development and professional development as well.
I love that. I love it. I don’t know that we would always see that connection. We think of stress and anxiety and depression and everything else as these emotional things. I think a lot of us see self development, personal development in a different vein. In my experience they are intricately connected. Do you see that as well?
Oh, absolutely. It’s like going to the doctor. A lot of doctors look at the symptoms, but not at the cause. We really have to dig in to find out what’s going on.
I think that’s a great point. Let’s say that somebody comes to you are they are like, “I’ve got this big vision. I know what I’m here to do” and all this other stuff, but that anxiety is kicking in. What are some of the key components do you think that lead to, I know we touched on a few of ’em, but what are some of the, maybe top three issues that you see entrepreneurs going through that lead to that kind of state of existence?
Number one, is lack of sleep. I know this from personal experience. So many entrepreneurs will push, push, push, push, push and they will get to the point where they are consistently only sleeping two to three hours a night. That’s not good. Sleep deprivation leads to so much anxiety and so many other health problems. Number two is saying yes to everybody else except for yourself. You are telling yourself “No” as far as self care and everything that your body needs to better cope with stress. Number three is multitasking and distractions. I’m going to put it all together.
Our phones and I thought I had my phone on silent just now, but it started ringing. We have our phones constantly beside us with all the social media messaging. We are getting notifications all the time. Then we are constantly looking at what other people are doing. It’s constantly distracting us from what we need to be focusing on. The comparison syndrome just gets really overwhelming.
I see that with social media. I have this love hate relationship with social media. I can usually tell where I’m sitting in my own development or my own frequency shifts by how I am relating to social media in that moment. Every time I shift into a new space and I’m a little unsure and it’s this expansiveness, I notice that my desire to engage on social media decreases. Then when I feel more confident in that new frequency that I’m sitting in then I want to be out there and talking to everybody and I feel more confident and I portray that in social media.
What I find is that especially as entrepreneurs the challenge is trying to make sure that we are constantly engaging, constantly engaging. That’s extremely stressful. That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself as you are growing through your own self development.
It absolutely is.
How do you manage that?
Well, it got a lot easier for me when I became real and authentic on social media. A lot of the pressure came from trying to be somebody that I was not. When I started admitting and being fully transparent about everything that goes on in my business and in my life, ’cause I’m also a mom of five. The two are very much related, especially on days like today. I have a sick kid at home and another kid, I shouldn’t be admitting this, but another kid watching the sick kid. I probably shouldn’t have said that, but I’m being transparent.
That’s right. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.
You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do. I could hide that and just pretend that everything is perfect around here, but everything is not perfect. By being more transparent and more authentic I’m able to build my community and people chime in and they are like, “Yeah. I’ve dealt with that too.” Although I’m not sure how many people would admit that they kept another kid home just to keep one.
I would imagine that happens far more frequently than we realize.
There you go. We are not seeing it because people aren’t being as authentic as they could be. I think really will get rid of a lot of the stress when we stop caring so much about what other people think.
That’s a great point. I know that that’s a big reason why Super Power Experts came to be was what I noticed was a lot of the really successful entrepreneurs, all of them had some sort of a practice. Whether it was spiritual, religious, woo woo, magic, it just didn’t matter. There was something that they did that was attributing and helping to grow their own personal well being, but we just weren’t talking about it.
I contend that the whole super power dialogue is really underneath all of this. For me it was like, “I think we need to just start being honest about this.” I’d go to these business conferences and there was no discussion at all of personal growth or of the road or the journey or anything else and everybody wanted to put on these pretty faces and say “Oh yeah you can look at the mechanics and the tactical aspects of the business only” and I’m like “That hasn’t been my experience.” The successful people in business attend to their own personal growth, self development, that type of thing.
I think it relates to what you are talking about which is we are doing people a disservice if we are not honest about that. If we get on here like “Everything is great. Everything is always perfect” then that sets this standard and people think if they don’t feel like their life is also perfect that somehow they are failing. I just don’t think that that’s an authentic conversation.
That’s exactly how I got to where I am now was by looking at other people who I only saw posting the picture perfect and thinking “What am I doing wrong? Why aren’t I experiencing that?” But two big ah has came out of that. Number one, I’m only seeing one side of the picture. Number two, they are at a different place. They could have a huge team. They could have a huge credit card debt and I don’t know it because I’m not seeing that side. At that time it was me, myself, and I with paying for everything out of cash.
We have to give ourselves grace or space or whatever word that you use to realize that you are always doing the best that you can. Even when you are not, you are doing the best that you can.
We see other people’s highlight reels and we see our own blooper reels.
Even when you are not. I love it. I used to talk about how we see everybody else’s highlight reels, but we see our own blooper reels. It’s important I think to keep that in mind. We are going to take a quick break.
We are talking with Kim Sutton today about managing stress through self development. Kim where can people go to find out more about you?
I would love if people would visit my website at thekimsutton.com. Make sure to put the before Kim Sutton. All my social media links and my podcasts are right there.
Awesome. Very cool. We’ll take a quick break. Stick with us. We are going to talk a little bit more about how you can implement some of these processes and just mindsets into your every day existence to reduce your own stress. Stay with us and we’ll be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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