Watch or listen to this episode below.

Brief summary:

On this episode, I get to speak with the COO of Truss. Jen leech, a software engineer with experience at nearly every level of the stack. During this interview, Jen gives us a behind the scenes look at how burnout showed up for her a few years ago, and what she's discovered that allows her to be strategic about managing it since then.

Key insights from this episode:

• (at 09:10) Jen notices the first signs of burnout

• (at 13:11)  Jen and Leila discuss the challenges of identifying burnout symptoms in yourself, especially if you’re driven by data

• (at 15:06)  Jen’s strategy in looking for solutions to the burnout she identified

• (at 18:09)  Jen explains the surprising result she experienced when facilitating her body to focus on parasympathetic functions

• (at 21:35)  Jen explains how she managed to get at least one  of these activities in her schedule daily

• (at 23:37)   The contrast between types of activities that help when you are burned out vs managing a normal stress load

• (at 24:32)  How long it took Jen to feel ‘recovered’ from burnout

• (at 25:56)  Jen turns the idea of “drive” on its head as she relates it to what she experienced as a founder and successful leader in business

• (at 32:12)  Signs that you might be experiencing burnout

• (at 38:48)  A perspective change that can come with your morning coffee

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Transcript:

FUEL Podcast hosted by Leila Ansart
EPISODE 7: Recovering from Burnout — with Jen Leech, President, COO and Co Founder at Truss

INTRO: Welcome back to FUEL podcast. Today, I get to speak with the COO of Truss.  Jen leech, a software engineer with experience at nearly every level of the stack. In 2012, she co-founded Truss to deliver software that could have a real impact on people's lives. Truss works with complex systems, such as those found in the centers for Medicare and Medicaid, the department of labor and the department of energy with a focus on humans at the center of these systems. 

During this interview, Jen gives us a behind the scenes look at how burnout showed up for her a few years ago, and what she's discovered that allows her to be strategic about managing it since then.

SHOUT OUT: Before we begin, I'd like to do a shoutout to Apple listener,  50M. This listener was kind enough to leave the following review:

“My new favorite podcast. I really appreciated listening to the interview with Scott Shute, author of the book Full Body Yes. Going to have to listen to that one again. My favorite part: Life happens through you.”

Thank you again, listener 50M. I'm really appreciative of you taking a moment to share your thoughts with others so that it can help spread the word and make the FUEL podcast community a larger one. If you would like to share your review of this podcast once you finish listening, please do so anywhere you can write a review and you may be featured in a future podcast episode. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Welcome Jen!  Why don’t you tell me a little bit  about who you are, and who Truss is. How did you co-found the company, where did the idea come from? And then, I think that'll help people have the context for the story that you're sharing.

Jen Leech, Guest
Sure. So, my two co-founders and I were employees at our previous company together so we knew each other from that experience. And the three of us all ended up leaving at a similar time and we expressed interest in starting a new company, and we had similar thoughts about what we wanted. We all had a sense of a type of company that we wanted to build, not necessarily a particular product, but like a way of behaving within the company. When we got together and started, initially working on our own product idea, it was just something interesting to work on. We worked together very well and eventually after a couple of years, we pivoted to a consultancy from the product company. That's what we've been doing for the past seven years.

Leila Ansart, Host
Okay, tell us what Truss does.

Jen Leech, Guest
We are a software development consultancy. Most of our work is with the federal government. We tend to come in when somebody has already tried to build something and they failed. As an example, one of our projects is to work on the unemployment insurance systems for the United States. Complex systems and a lot of stakeholders. We come in and do a lot of research and exploration to understand people and what their needs are and try to build things that serve the people involved. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Wonderful. And Truss is how old now? 

Jen Leech, Guest
10 years, I think.

Leila Ansart, Host
Okay. You had shared with me in a previous conversation, some of your journey around building this company and what it required of you, would you be willing to share that now? 

Jen Leech, Guest
Sure. Well, there are many stages to that. I think that you're thinking of, about four years ago. So, around, oh, I'll hop back to around seven years ago. My two co-founders, all three of us have kids. One of them has a daughter who's in high school already, so she's ahead of my daughter. My daughter is seven now. My other co-founder has kids who are two months older than mine. 

About seven years ago, we both were in the middle of being about to have kids. We're just at that moment, starting to get into the business of federal contracting, which is really exciting. He had been invited to go to Washington DC to try to fix healthcare.gov, which at the time was in the midst of a giant, existential threat. From there, that was a seed after which a lot of subsequent work followed on. 

As our business was taking off, we also both had kids. I just had one daughter, he had twin boys, and we’re obviously all busy. We tried to support each other. We each took some leave, and then came back to work and it seemed to all be working all right. 

It was about two years into it, I think, after that I began to really notice that things were not working well. It was one of those things where I had been working with a client. I had the luxury of being able to work from home until my daughter was eight months. And then I began to go back onsite with clients. When I began doing that and going to my client's office, full-time being there 40 hours a week. I tried to follow the pattern that I had previously had, just having meetings in the morning, meetings in the afternoon. Occasionally a lunch meeting maybe, if it happens to become necessary. At the same time I took on a project with a client that was very important. It was valuable to the client, a lot of really exciting outcomes, a lot of really fun work to do -- a really wonderful team. I was excited to do that work. 

But what began happening is that to do all of that, I was getting  up in the morning and immediately as soon as I got out of bed, I’d taken  care of my daughter, getting her ready to go to daycare, then commuting into work, working the entire day. Most days I ended up not taking a real lunch break, coming home and then the evening routine, and not having any breaks at all. I didn't really notice that was a problem until I think it was my husband [that] began commenting like, “you're kinda being short most of the time”. When he brought that to my attention, I started paying attention and noticing that he was right. I was not being my best self. 

Leila Ansart, Host
I think we all have those moments. It's humbling to hear from someone that we love and that we live with say, hey, you're not your real self, most of the time you're this other person showing up [who]  is stressed or short or however you want to call it. 

Jen Leech, Guest
..Incapable of having a real conversation. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Yeah.  It could have been really off-putting to you. Instead you listened and said, well, let me think about that. And then saw some truth to it. So what happened next?

Jen Leech, Guest
I really feel for him because I was coming home and I'm an introvert by nature. I would come home and my first [reaction] would be like, don't talk to me, leave me alone. I just wanted to be by myself as much as possible. That was not fun. But I began to pay attention and notice that yes, he was right. I was not really able to have a conversation because I didn't have the bandwidth for it. I didn't have the mental space for it. I didn't have the emotional patience to think about anybody else's-- what they were experiencing. I was only able to be in my moment and not experience theirs. So I noticed that was going on. 

Once I noticed that, I started paying more attention to what else is going on. For instance when I was sleeping, I was having night sweats. But it was as if, when you have a really bad fever and you're really sick with the flu and you wake up in the middle of the night and you're sweating because you got a fever. You're like, gosh, I better change my pajamas, or better towel off. That was happening except I wasn't sick. I had no fever. And it was really bizarre. It was like, what is going on? It was just weird. I occasionally try to go to a yoga class on Friday nights. When I did that, I began noticing-- this is some kind of vulnerability here,  but I think this is good for people to know so they can understand and self-diagnose, and that kind of thing. 

But as soon as I would get into a restorative yoga class, when I would get into a reclining restorative pose, I would start crying. It was really interesting because it wasn't like I was thinking about something that was sad or that anything was bothering me in particular. It was like a biological reaction. Tears started coming from my eyes, and it was a surprise. It was like, wow, what is going on? And then I started to see a therapist, and she helped me to then also pay attention to other things in my body, like what was going on and in particular my heart rate. I began to notice that my heart rate was never calming down. Even if I sat to meditate for 10 minutes, my heart rate would be at like 120 for the entire time. 

I began to pay attention and gather this collection of things that were happening and many of them were just physiological. Eventually I began to research it and began to realize that they were symptoms of burnout. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Yeah. So when you realized that you were burned out, was there sort of  an internal, no, not me. I mean, we've all heard about burnout and you hear people talk about those experiences. Did you find that you were challenged to identify with that? 

Jen Leech, Guest
The biggest challenge for me was that there's so much that people write about burnout on the internet and it's hard to tell what's real. I'm very science-based. 

Leila Ansart, Host
You were saying that it's hard to know what's real when you're reading on the internet about burnout.

Jen Leech, Guest
Exactly. I tried to pay attention to what data exists and look at real scientific research, what studies have been done, how was the quality of  this data, before acting on information that I see. I didn't find a lot of really high quality data on this topic. I thought, I found a lot of people writing their opinions. I think the closest I found was, I think it was a book with what I would consider to be kind of pseudoscience. However it had catalogs of different symptoms in it describing different stages of burnout. I looked at the catalog of symptoms and I said, that really matches what I'm experiencing. Maybe this is a hypothesis, but it's viable.

Leila Ansart, Host
What was your next step discovering the research wasn't quite as robust as you would have liked, but realizing your daily experience was impacting you quite a bit. What did you decide to do next? 

Jen Leech, Guest
From there, well, it seems like a likely explanation. How about if I just try a bunch of things and see what, if anything, changes? So I started putting together a grab bag of different things to try essentially. Many of them were kind of funny. As an example, for a while, and this is actually on the advice of a therapist, I was trying to do anything at all that would lower my heart rate. Just like, what if I take a long, hot bath, and afterwards does my heart rate go down? What if I go on a hike in the woods? What if I go running? Just trying a bunch of stuff and I began to keep a list of what helped. There were a few things, actually being in nature, going on hikes and being in the woods did help. Being in a green environment helped. 

It was interesting because it was one of the few things that had a really marked effect. 

Leila Ansart, Host
By green environment, you're talking about being outside in the fresh air. 

Jen Leech, Guest
That's right. Outside amongst plants and natural environment. It could be Golden gate park in San Francisco. It could be Tilden in the east bay. I of course live in the bay area for my references. Pretty much anywhere I was surrounded by trees and greenery. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Okay. So how did that land with you? 

Jen Leech, Guest
Well, when I began to build this list of things that became really useful because then I could use that list. I managed, basically. I started trying to get into natural spaces on a regular basis. I also, by the way, another thing that really helped was acupressure massage specifically. So, like a good Chinese acupressure massage, remarkably helpful. I began doing those on at least a monthly basis. Actually for a while it was weekly and that helped, that really helped. 

Another thing that I noticed was, and this is an interesting one. I'm not a hundred percent sure how much of a science there is behind this, but it was a correlation, I noticed. This notion of a sympathetic versus parasympathetic nervous system. When you do certain kinds of yoga, it's supposed to get you into that parasympathetic state which is the opposite of the stress state, it's that relaxed state. So doing yoga was another thing that I would do. I began to study the parasympathetic state in general, and I began to discover that, the theory is that there are a bunch of bodily activities that only occur in that state. And when you're in a stress state all the time, they just don't happen. I began to think about  what are the things that I can do to trigger those parasympathetic activities? And one of the things that only happens in a parasympathetic state is crying, which is interesting. It comes back to that experience I had with yoga, where as soon as I would get into that state in yoga, I would have tears streaming down my face. So, one of the other things that I did is I began to try to get myself to cry.

Leila Ansart, Host
Did it work? 

Jen Leech, Guest
Yes, it did. 

Leila Ansart, Host

Wow. 

Jen Leech, Guest

Yeah, it was kind of really amazing. I started explicitly looking for the saddest movies I could find so I could watch them so I can make myself cry. 

Leila Ansart, Host
After crying, I mean, I have a mixed view on crying. I cry often. I'm a crier, as I say. One of my very good friends has always said crying is so therapeutic to her. Maybe not during, but definitely at the end, feeling like she just was able to release. Is that the experience that you had? 

Jen Leech, Guest
Yeah, well, I've always not been a crier. It was actually very difficult for me. It's even physiologically difficult to just get into that state. But then when I was doing it therapeutically, it was noticeable. I would notice that my body would feel different as I was getting into a place where I could be emotional and cry. And then afterwards I would be more relaxed, more calm. It helped, it was part of my set of things that I did on a regular basis. 

Leila Ansart, Host
What do I do for stress relief? I make sure I could cry. It sounds funny, but it sounds like it was truly quite a discovery for you and quite impactful.

Jen Leech, Guest
Absolutely. Yeah. Once I had this list of things that I knew would help, I explicitly started doing at least one a day. Over time that began to really chip away and help quite a bit. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Help me picture that in my planner. I'm both a paper and digital planner in terms of my calendar. Obviously going out on a hike or getting a massage, those are more, okay I can fit the hiking on the weekend and maybe the massage in one evening. What did the other one-a-day activities look like in your day to day? 

Jen Leech, Guest
Well, so one of the things that did eventually help once I made some progress on this, meditation did eventually help. But it took a little while. It took kind of recovering before it began to be really effective. That became one of the things that was on my list. The benefit of that, of course, being that you could do it in the middle of a workday, you can take a break and meditate.

Watching a sappy TV series, that became one. Let's see. Actually, going for a walk in a green environment was one that I tried to do a lot. Actually, I moved and a big portion of why I wanted to move was so that I could walk outside my house and be somewhere green. 

Leila Ansart, Host
That's amazing. Yeah. How much of a walk does it take for you to feel the difference? 10 minutes? 

Jen Leech, Guest
Yeah. Easily. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Even 10 minutes, you found, made a sizable difference,and you're measuring this with your blood pressure. No, sorry, your heart rate. 

Jen Leech, Guest
Yes, exactly. I was looking at how quickly my heart rate would change as soon as I would enter a forest trail and it would be within 10 minutes. 

Leila Ansart, Host
I've heard some conjecture around changing your physiological state with something as simple as drinking a large glass of water, or if you're sitting and you're in an environment of stress, just getting up and going up and down the stairs in your home two or three times. Just doing something that's a really big shift physiologically. Did you find any of those types of things were helpful to you or were you looking for something bigger?

Jen Leech, Guest
Those things  that I had already been doing, yeah, they weren't enough. If I'm working and nowhere near burnout, like I'm totally healthy, I should do those things. If I'm fine and have no problems like I don't need to reduce stress, I should still do those things. I should still get up every two hours and get a drink of water and go up and down the stairs. I consider that to be just like such a baseline. Once you get to the point where you need to really mitigate burnout, it doesn't really help. Not where you need it to. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Kind of like taking an aspirin for something much larger. 

Jen Leech, Guest
That’s right. Yeah. 

Leila Ansart, Host
How long do you think Jen, that it took you to go from, oh my God, I have self identified all of these symptoms. It looks like I'm truly burned out, to shifting and starting to employ some of these activities. And then at what point, how long do you think it took to when you really started to feel better on a daily basis? 

Jen Leech, Guest
It was longer than I initially expected, reading about it, the stuff I was looking at said that it would take as long to get out of the burnout as it took to get in. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Interesting. 

Jen Leech, Guest
I would say that was my experience. It took me probably two to three years to get into it. Probably about that amount of time to feel like I was actually recovered. 

Leila Ansart, Host
And is that how you are now? 

Jen Leech, Guest
Yeah. Ever since then, I've developed habits which are preventative. It was about four and a half years ago or so that this has happened. In the past year, I feel like I've recovered, but I have very explicit strategies in place to make sure that I stay that way. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Yeah. I'd love to hear more about that in a moment. Before we move on, as you know the theme of this podcast is around your fuel, your internal drive. I mean there's a drive to survive, obviously, that is at play here. What would you say, if you could look back at that journey, was the thing that kept you pushing through. 

Jen Leech, Guest
Drive wasn’t even my problem, well, in a way drive is what caused the problem for me. I was just working really hard to get everything done. Have it all be correct to my standards. In a way I had to relax that and be less perfectionist. That was a change. The change was that I had to give myself permission to do self-care. That wasn't something that I had ever prioritized before, or allowed myself to take time for. I've remained pretty driven in terms of wanting my business success and making sure that my child was okay. And the real struggle was letting myself take time off. 

Leila Ansart, Host
So releasing the perfectionist drive was your drive. I love the irony there. It sounds like that was a pretty big shift for you given the way you lived your life up in to that point. 

Jen Leech, Guest
Yeah. It's huge. 

Leila Ansart, Host
You mentioned that you've developed some strategies now for preventative care. Are those the same strategies that you mentioned earlier, that you used for recovery or have they shifted? 

Jen Leech, Guest
Some of them are still the same. I still love to do yoga. I still love to go for walks and anywhere green, go running and try to take opportunities to do things that let me feel like, an emotional release of some kind. Yeah, it's still a lot of those things. But I've also now built time into my daily schedule to make sure that a certain set of things happen every day, as a kind of preventative maintenance, I would say. So, as an example, I have a meditation break every afternoon. If I ended up missing it for some reason, I really notice it, as do other people. 

Leila Ansart, Host
I love your honesty. 

Jen Leech, Guest
Yeah. It's important.

Leila Ansart, Host
It's funny. When I first started reading about meditation and the impact that it has on your mental state and your clarity and your creativity, your flow, my original thought when I first heard about it was one of, yeah, it would be nice to be in a position where I could just wrap that into my day, and seemed like only certain people get to do that. If I had an assistant at the time, I do now, if I had an assistant that could carve the time out and organize this, and then I could take that time and I always put it on its own pedestal of when I get to a certain point, I may be able to employ that. And I actually feel differently about that now, but I love how you worded it, that it's a preventative care. And I'm huge into physical, preventative care, eating healthy exercise, those kinds of things. 

I mean, I love my salty and sweet too. I'm not crazy about it, but I put a lot of focus there. But to think about it as mental preventative care is a really nice way to reframe it. Perhaps those listening might get something from that too, that this may be the permission that you need to give yourself to move away from the potential burnout that you may be facing. Obviously, as you mentioned before, if you're already there, you may need to take some larger steps to recover before doing something like that, well, feel that it makes an impact. 

I thought that was interesting too, and I'm connecting these dots, so correct me if I'm wrong here. What I heard you say was when you tried meditation first, when you were still in burnout, it didn't seem to make much of a difference, but once you had recovered, then it did. 

Jen Leech, Guest
Uh-huh

Leila Ansart, Host
It's almost as if we've been through an experience where we're saying, oh, I'm going to try meditation. I'll do one of these Headspace, guided journey that they offer, once a day for the week or whatever. I've heard people say, I've tried meditation and it doesn't seem to do anything for me. I'm connecting here potentially that if you perhaps tried meditation and you do feel stressed and it's not helping you may be past what meditation on its own can address. That may actually be a sign to say, I may need to do something larger that makes a bigger impact. 

Jen Leech, Guest
Interesting. I suppose it could be. There's also, I think, a journey of learning how to get into the right mindset for meditation. That's its own thing entirely. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Yes we could do a whole hour conversation on that. I certainly don't want to make it sound too simple because it's certainly not, but yeah, just something to think about. As you move forward now, Jen you've said that you've got these spaces in your calendar that you've booked in for preventative care. You're definitely much more self-aware on how you show up and looking for signs of needing self care time. What would you say are the biggest markers that people should watch for if they're perhaps thinking maybe I am burned out. 

Jen Leech, Guest
Yeah. This is an interesting one because, one thing interesting about burnout is that it's not binary. There's a spectrum of different things that might happen to you physiologically and mentally that could be signifiers. And some of them take a month to show up, some take years to show up. It could be a really broad spectrum of things. But on a day-to-day basis when I'm monitoring myself, to say, do I need to do some recovery? 

So the things I look for are-- reactivity is one. If someone says something that I didn't expect or didn't like, how likely am I to take a moment and think about it and pause and reflect, versus just react in a moment. 

Here's another way of doing it:  at the end of the day just say, God, I wish I hadn't said that thing like that was too harsh or too emotional or too something. That's a signifier that you're reacting before you're processing. That can be a signifier that you need to take a few moments to level set and get yourself into a calmer, more even keeled state. That's an easy one. There's a long list though. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Well, you gave us a good one. Why don't you give us one more? 

Jen Leech, Guest
Sure. Another signifier that I use is actually just looking at my calendar.  I have noticed that if I go longer than two hours without a break, that my behavior, my performance starts to decline. If I look at my calendar and I see blocks of time, longer than two hours, I immediately say, oh, no, this is going to create a problem for me. I need to either change that or compensate for it later, and I schedule it. 

Leila Ansart, Host
So you block that time out. That's wonderful. Those are really good and very practical science. I know when we spoke the other day and you said this earlier too, you said something about being easily frustrated and having a lack of emotional bandwidth to listen to others. I think those are the two that hit me the most when you shared because I think sometimes the words that come to me are “I don't have anything else”. Like there's nothing left to give. I hear that in my head, that's a really good sign for me to say, okay, Leila, you need to step back and do some recovery. I liked how you put that. 

Jen Leech, Guest
Hopefully, if you see little signs here and there, doing something to balance and compensate for that immediately can help maintain a good homeostasis and hopefully never get to the point where you have like a racing heart 24/7. Or you find that your diet or your appetite has changed. There are things like that occurred, but those are pretty extreme cases. Certainly if you're experiencing any kind of physiological changes, then that's pretty extreme and something you'd have to take a look at. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Well, I love getting out in nature. I'm with you on that one. I was lucky enough to be in Colorado this last weekend, hiking. Some of my favorite spots. I love Colorado in the fall. And one of the things I noticed too in terms of feeling like nature gave me what I needed in that experience. Two of the times I hiked this last weekend, I wasn't listening to anything. I was just really focusing on my breath and it was a challenging hike. Focusing on my breath wasn't hard because I was breathing hard and just thinking and looking around and seeing the beauty and all of that. But the third time I hiked, I actually had my earbuds and I was listening to something. While it was a great workout, at the end I didn't find that sense of being filled up again that I typically get from being out on a hike. 

I think that's interesting too, to kind of pay attention. I think that could be different for everyone, but if music or a podcast or something of that nature is your go-to perhaps experiment with doing it without and seeing if you get a different result in terms of how much recovery, or filling up your cup is the way I like to put it, how much that offers you. 

Jen Leech, Guest
Yeah. I totally agree. It's really interesting you said that. I absolutely noticed a difference if I'm listening to something versus hearing nature, and there's some things that I can listen to that are also restorative. Sometimes I get an enhanced effect. Sometimes I get a decreased effect depending on what I hear. In my head, it's filling up my cup actually, which is interesting. For a while, one of the triggers I would have is like, okay, do you have something every day to fill up my cup? Have I filled out my cup today?

Leila Ansart, Host
One of the reasons that phrase resonates with me and makes me laugh--  I'm a high achiever, as you have self-diagnosed, I struggle with the perfectionist mentality. The feeling like everything needs to be done to the absolute, highest standard possible that I'm even aware of. When I think of filling up my cup, I think of it like the coffee drinker. You fill up your cup. You're always justified in having that coffee. I mean, coffee is what keeps you going. It's your comfort, it's the warmth. It’s all of that. It's the energy. It makes me kind of giggle inside because when I say I'm filling up my cup, I'm also  like, okay well, you took care of that. What about your personal, your self care cup? Take care of that and give yourself permission to be as dedicated to that as you are to your coffee or energy drink or whatever that thing is that you don't even question that you have a right to have. So it's interesting, little play on words. 

Jen Leech, Guest
Yeah. I keep a list of things that make me feel better. You're paying attention comment, that's so important because it changes from person to person for every individual. There are things for them that help them recover better that are individual to them. You have to pay attention to how you feel after you've done this thing and keep a list. It's that simple, just keep a list. One of the things on my list is I go get a coffee. Not what I made at home but I'll go out and get a coffee and that's something I do for self-care and it's wonderful. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Yeah, because you're getting out of your work environment to change up the scenery for a few minutes. It's beautiful. 

Jen Leech, Guest
There's a really great little coffee roaster, independent coffee roaster nearby that makes a really wonderful mocha that doesn't have too much sugar in it. And it brings me joy. 

Leila Ansart, Host
That's wonderful. It sounds good. I'll have to go there next time I'm in California. 

Jen, as we wrap up today, thank you so much for being just so open and vulnerable with your story. I'm absolutely certain that those listening at least 50%, if not more, have dealt with the signs of burnout and have had the desire to prioritize self care, but maybe not necessarily had such a practical view of how to measure it and how to watch for it. Thank you for sharing that.

If people would like to learn more about you, follow you on social media, if you are active, how can they do that? 

Jen Leech, Guest
Sure. I am on Twitter. I'm @JenniferMLeech. I'm also on LinkedIn - Jen Leech.

Leila Ansart, Host
Beautiful. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jen. I think this is a great tool to add to our toolbox. And I really appreciate too, as we close up, that you turn to the idea of fuel on its head. So far you're the first that said, well, my internal fuel has been so strong that now I need to change how I view that and give myself permission, you said, for self-care. Turn it down a bit.

Jen Leech, Guest
To redefine it. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Thank you. That's perfect. I think that'll really resonate with a lot of people who are high achievers like you. So thank you again for your time. 

Jen Leech, Guest
Absolutely.Thanks so much. This is real fun conversation. Appreciate it. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Absolutely.