Carol:
Hey, hey. Hey, Rebels. Welcome back to the podcast. We are rocking and rolling in our fifth season, and I have had such an enjoyable time talking with the amazing guests that we've been able to chat with over the last year of doing the Midlife Career Rebel podcast. And today is no different. Today we have Lori Saitz on. She is the founder and CEO of Zen Rabbit and host of the podcast, Fine is a Four Letter Word, which I love. She is an award-winning writer, speaker, and broadcaster. Lori is on a mission to teach the world to calm and grounded no matter what's going on. She is a nationally recognized gratitude and meditation expert.
And when she's not working, you can find Lori in her sanctuary, aka the weight room in the gym, something I probably should be in. She also loves cupcakes and Thai food and classic rock music, so we definitely have that in common. And what we're going to be talking about today is the topic of tolerating, it's something that Lori knows about. She's talked about it, I've heard her talk about it, which is why I really wanted her to come on and talk about that topic with us, particularly in terms of how we tend to tolerate and maybe settle for things as we're about to close out the year and step into a new year. This is the perfect time to start maybe taking stock and what's been holding you back from stepping into the things that you really want. So with that, I am so excited to have Lori on the show. Welcome, welcome, welcome, Lori.
Lori Saitz:
Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. I was looking forward to this all day.
Carol:
I'm so excited. I was too, because I think it's such an amazing topic. We all know that good is the enemy of great. And I found that over the years, so many women, at least the work that I do with career women, is that they settle for good enough, particularly when they've reached the top of the career ladder or they've gotten a really good cushy job and everything's going okay and it all seems good enough, and they stop there even though they feel called or have a desire to maybe step into or do something different. And I know on my own experience, I know women tend to, we have a high tolerance for suffering, and so to be able to... right?
Lori Saitz:
Yeah.
Carol:
And so they kind of sit in the state and they settle when they could do or have so much more. So I would love to open it up. And just in your experience on this particular topic, why do women tend to tolerate, and why are we the ones that seem to be more plagued with this than others?
Lori Saitz:
I'm not sure. I mean, I know more because I've had more conversations with women as my friends. Although I don't know. I think it's across the board that people in general tend to tolerate things because it's that whole thing of it's fine, it's fine. There's nothing majorly wrong. There's not a rock in their shoe that they need to take it off and remove it. Or maybe there is it, but it's just a tiny pebble. It's not, it's okay. It's not really bothering me all that much. I can live and because it would be too much of an effort to stop and take the shoe off, or sometimes we tend to overlook the things that will... they don't seem like they're slowing us down that much, and we don't want to slow down at all. But if you did slow down and take the rock out of your shoe, you could walk faster without it. But you don't realize that until maybe you actually do stop, but you're just like, "No, it's okay. I'm good. I'm fine."
Carol:
Yeah.
Lori Saitz:
And so it's just easier to keep going.
Carol:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think you said something really powerful. You said it's too much of an effort, but it's so interesting because it's an effort to make a change. But if we use your example of the rock in the shoe, it would be so much better to... you can go faster, you can do more, you're out of pain. So what is it about not taking the effort? Why does it feel like it would be an effort when we are kind of stuck in this toleration or settling kind of thing?
Lori Saitz:
Because we're already in motion, and sometimes I think it's hard to accept that sometimes you have to stop or slow down in order to go faster. I remember many years ago, a friend sharing with me that her dad had said, sometimes when you're opening the refrigerator, for example, you have to step back to move forward.
Carol:
Oh, that's a good example. You can't stand in front of the refrigerator and open it at the same time. You do have to stand back to be able to do that. That's a really good analogy.
Lori Saitz:
Right? He's a very smart man, I guess. But it's hard to picture, okay, wait, I have to slow down or stop or step back in order to go forward. I'm already in forward motion. I'm just going to keep going.
Carol:
Yeah. And is there-
Lori Saitz:
And it's... I was going to say it's comfortable.
Carol:
Yeah.
Lori Saitz:
Even though it's not necessarily the best, the most beneficial, but it's familiar, I guess it's a better word. It's familiar.
Carol:
Yeah. Yeah. I often find that the thing that... what people are... the fear around slowing down is the realization of something that maybe you don't want to face or don't want to deal with. Right? Is that your experience? Would you say that? Because you would think slowing down, I think of it like a speed bump, you know, have to kind of slow down and then you go over the speed bump. You can't always go through. But what is it about not wanting to slow down to take a breath for a moment that is so unbearable, right?
Lori Saitz:
Because we live in a society that tells us that the way to success is the 24/7 hustle. Just keep grinding, and that's your path to success. So many of us, myself included, have been conditioned, raised to believe these beliefs are deeply rooted and they are lies, but we believe them with our entire being because it's been so ingrained in us and it's very difficult to... it's possible. It's difficult to rewire the brain. And I mean, that's essentially what I'm doing with people is helping rewire their brain to these new beliefs, to be open to the idea of this 24/7 hustle, work all the time, do all the things, that is not the path to success.
Carol:
That's the path to burnout, which is what we do experience a lot in our society. Right?
Lori Saitz:
Yeah.
Carol:
It's going back to your earlier analogy. It's like we keep the pebble in the shoe and we're in pain and we're bleeding and we're limping and wondering why our leg's not working right. But hey, I'm still moving forward. I'm still doing the thing. And even though it's painful for us, and you mentioned this too, it is, it's moving us out of our comfort zone to slow down and maybe change the situation, even though it is painful, it feels uncomfortable, it takes us out of our comfort zone. What is that about?
Lori Saitz:
Well, it goes against these beliefs that we've been trained and accepted as truth. Everyone around us says, "No pain, no gain."
Carol:
Yeah.
Lori Saitz:
These sayings are throughout our raising, our upbringing and our life now.
Carol:
Yeah.
Lori Saitz:
And so we buy into it because everyone around us is buying into it. And a lot of people, you don't stop and question. You just keep going. And I know personally, I was doing all the things in my business, doing all the things, so doing, okay, one we're, we're not human doings, but I was doing all the things and they weren't getting me where I wanted to go. So what I did was more of them and harder, "Let's go do more of the things. And for a longer period of time, they're not working. But maybe if I do more, they'll work."
Carol:
Wow.
Lori Saitz:
Craziness.
Carol:
I know it sounds crazy, but it is exactly what we do. So is that experience, is that what got you into doing the work that you do now where now you're nationally known for doing this kind of gratitude and mindfulness work?
Lori Saitz:
You'd think I would've learned from my first business that that didn't work, but no, I didn't. And I got into doing this business. So my first business I was making and marketing a product called the Gratitude Cookie that was based on a family recipe and created it as a product for businesses to say thank you to their clients and people who sent them referrals, ran that business for 11 years, couldn't scale it quite the way I wanted to, and I ended up shutting it down. But I had been talking a lot about gratitude and using gratitude in business and how it differentiates a business and all the things about gratitude.
Carol:
Is that where Zen Rabbit came from?
Lori Saitz:
Yes. It was Zen Rabbit Baking Company.
Carol:
Yeah.
Lori Saitz:
Originally, yeah. And then right before... right when pandemic started, I was asked to... So I went away from talking about gratitude, did some other stuff in marketing and networking, and somebody asked me to come do a presentation on gratitude right at the beginning of like March, 2020, April, 2020, around there. And that brought me back into this whole world of, again, talking about gratitude. And then I brought in the pieces about meditation and tolerating things and how do we teach ourselves to stay calm and grounded.
Carol:
Wow. And so you've been doing this, so transitioning from the hustle of trying to do your business and doing some other things, you moved into this state of doing this type of work, and what type of things did you have to learn about yourself or change in order for you to live what you were kind of preaching, if you will, or teaching to other people?
Lori Saitz:
Yeah. So the really interesting thing is, I had been teaching this for a couple years now, and around May or June of this year, 2022, I fell back into the trap of doing all the things and not seeing the success and just going, going, going. I live by myself, so why not just work all the time? Because what else do I have to do? And by July, I was like, "I can't do this anymore. I'm not having fun. I believe life is meant to be fun and to have experiences, and that's what we're here for." And I wasn't doing any of that. "This is crazy. What am I doing?" And I took off the whole month of August, I cleared my calendar, took off the month, and went on a sabbatical road trip with my 19 year old cat. I had to step out in faith that I have to shut everything down because I just can not do it anymore. And what I found happened, interestingly enough, I knew this intellectually, but then I actually proved it to myself that not doing all of the things actually brought me more success than when I was in front of the computer all the time doing all the things.
Carol:
Yeah, when you were more intentional about it. What I really love about that, and I think this is such a good example, that just because we know something, to your point, intellectually in our mind, it doesn't mean that the rest of us have caught up with it, right? And so even when I think about people who are listening and their careers and they're thinking, "Oh, maybe I want to switch, or maybe I want to do something different," there's always this idea that as soon as I switch or make the decision to switch, it's all going to work out beautifully fine, right? It's all going to come together. But to your earlier point, you have to unlearn some things.
We've been so conditioned in our society to be a certain way, to operate a certain way, that it takes a moment to identify and realize that's what you're doing, and then to pull it back and unlearn it so that you can move into the next thing or move into the thing that you really want to do or how you really want to be in the world. So I think that's a great example of, I think how it really is when you really want to do something different, and that even for yourself, as much as you believed it and knew it in your mind, you still had to take a moment to just say, "Wait a minute, this is not necessarily the right thing I want to do, or the way that I want to do it," which I think is great.
Lori Saitz:
Yeah. Again, our society wants to tell us how we should be.
Carol:
Yeah.
Lori Saitz:
And the real key here is stepping back and allowing yourself the space to get quiet enough to hear your own inner voice. That is the only thing that knows what's right for you. And so when I'm working with my clients, I'm teaching them how to use meditation as a tool, but there are so many others, meditation, journaling, gardening. I mean, there's a million different ways. And I define what meditation is, and that I like to break down all the myths and misconceptions around that. But ultimately, you're getting in touch with your own inner voice because we've got social media, traditional media, family, society, friends, everybody wants to tell you what to think and what to do. What's the best thing for you? They don't know, that voice inside, you knows. And it could be called intuition, whatever it is, we tend to discount it. "Oh no, that can't be right. It's telling me to leave my job after 20 years. No, that's such crazy talk."
Carol:
Yeah.
Lori Saitz:
But it gets louder and louder until you finally listen.
Carol:
Oh, I love that so much. And you're right, we're not only told what to do, but then we also are so, like you said, inundated with information with social media that we start looking at other people thinking, "Oh, that's the way to do it." So then we start convincing ourselves that either what we're doing or our own internal voice is completely wrong because look at Instagram, Susie at Cutie Pie #5, and she's not doing it that way so clearly-
Lori Saitz:
Right-
Carol:
Right? I can't do it that way. So we put that judgment and pressure on ourself as well as getting... listening to well-meaning friends or other people around us telling us, "Oh, no, no, no, that's crazy. Or You shouldn't do that." That is so true. And particularly at Midlife, we have been inundated with these messages for a lot longer than most. So do you find that it's harder for the clients that you work with to help them to truly tone out, get rid of all the other voices and tune those out so they can tune into themselves?
Lori Saitz:
Yes, and no, because it is deeply ingrained at this point. At the other end of the spectrum, we are at this point where a lot of us are reevaluating what's going on in our lives. So it's a transitional point naturally, because parents are passing away. Kids, if you have them, are growing up and not needing you in the same way they did when they were little. Maybe we've been with a partner for 20 or 25 years and you're like, "I don't know if this is still working." All of these transition places where we, I think are a little bit more open to reevaluating and reconsidering, "Is this how I want to continue living?"
Carol:
Yeah.
Lori Saitz:
Even if it's been fine.
Carol:
Yeah.
Lori Saitz:
All the way up to this point. It doesn't have to be horrible.
Carol:
Yeah.
Lori Saitz:
But it's fine. Is this how I want to continue the next 20 or 30 or 40 years?
Carol:
Yeah, that's a good point. I found that I either have people who had a significant event that made them rethink some things, or to your point, it's just kind of been a slow drip that it's been enough over time that it's like, "Hey, I think I want to do something different." What are some of the signs that you maybe... that people maybe at that place where they're like, "Okay, I've been tolerating this, I've been having that rock in my shoe long enough and I'm ready to make a change." What's the, I don't know, the steps or the catalyst or the signs to look for to maybe say, "Maybe I need to lean in more to listening to myself or getting the support I need to start listening to my own voice and not every other voice around me."
Lori Saitz:
I think it's a general undercurrent of suck. As someone said to me, "You just, you can't put"-
Carol:
That's a tweetable. That's a tweetable, that's a tweetable. I love it.
Lori Saitz:
General undercurrent of suck?
Carol:
Yes.
Lori Saitz:
It's not necessarily a monumental event, but it's something that builds up and maybe you're, you're just feeling dissatisfied. You're getting annoyed by things that didn't used to annoy you, or you're just... you look around one day and you go, "This is what it is. This cannot be what it is."
Carol:
Yeah.
Lori Saitz:
"How did it end?" I mean, maybe it's a certain birthday or some kind of landmark thing that happens in your life and you just go, "How did I get here?"
Carol:
Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting, on the news, I see this just all over the place, around the heightened level of mental health issues that we're facing today and how COVID has... what I think I heard someone say, "It's not that it invented everything or brought it about, it just exacerbated what was already there." And I think there is this push and pull between when we were on lockdown, it kind of forced us into examining and looking for the first time at things around us. And then as we try to go back to normal, there's this struggle with what is normal and what do I... do I want to go back to what was before, because now I'm starting to actually see things differently.
I mean, I know this is probably out of the scope here, but I'm just... if people don't listen to that, if they just stay the charge and run the race, what's the potential impact of that? I mean, I think one is what we're seeing now is this heightened level of mental health and challenges and inability to function really by just tolerating and settling and saying, "Oh, well, let me just keep going and not pay attention to it." Have you seen, or what are your thoughts about the impact of not listening to that, I love it, general undercut of suck-
Lori Saitz:
Undercurrent.
Carol:
Undercurrent. I'm sorry.
Lori Saitz:
Yes. Undercurrent-
Carol:
Of suck.
Lori Saitz:
Yeah. Yeah. Ultimately, it's going to result in regret at the end of your life.
Carol:
Wow.
Lori Saitz:
Are you going to regret the things that you didn't do, the things that you tolerated? A friend of mine just as week brought me, she sent me a video of a woman who wrote a book about the five regrets of the dying or something like that. And one of them was that I wish I had been happier. I wish I had allowed myself to be happier.
Carol:
Wow.
Lori Saitz:
I wish I had lived my life not for everyone else. Not that you're selfish and ignoring everybody else, but more done what I wanted to do versus trying to please everyone else.
Carol:
Yeah. Totally agree with that. One of my doctors is in human development, and Eric Erickson's, when he talks about the lifespan, there's a whole book in the lifespan he talks about at Midlife, where as through the ages, you're looking forward, when you get into midlife is when you start looking back. And that regret is the most damaging and detrimental thing that you can experience at this time because you're starting to reflect about, "What am I leaving? What legacy am I leaving?" And that's when we start thinking about all the things we could have done, should have done that could really impact us and send us to a funk about the sum total of our life. And there's another psychologist, I think his name is Gilovich, Tim Gilovich, who talks about regret. And that most people, when he did the study, that people don't regret what they've done because they could either get over it or justify it, but the biggest regret people have, or they're over the things they didn't do when they just tolerated or settled and kept that rock in their shoe.
Lori Saitz:
Yeah. I'm just looking up... So Dan Pink, the author, Dan Pink.
Carol:
Yes.
Lori Saitz:
His newest book is called The Power of Regret, How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. And I went to a book signing where he was talking about this book, and he was talking about how the purpose... a lot of people say they want to live life without regrets, and he doesn't think that is possible or desirable because it's those regrets that then allow you to make adjustments moving forward, that when you look at what you regret, it helps you change your course and go, "Well, I wish I had done that then, so I'm going to do this other thing now to kind of correct it."
Carol:
Yeah. I think if you have the chutzbuh, like you say, to slow down, to listen to your voice, to take that pebble out of your shoe, I think. Absolutely. So I think I would say, not to argue with Dan Pink, I would say, and I haven't read the book, so let me just say this, but I would say there's a step between realizing, having a regret and actually doing something about it.
And I think that goes to your point earlier, which is that you have to slow down, unplug, unlearn, and start listening and tuning into your own voice so that you can then go into that next step and do the things that maybe you regretted. So I think what we're talking about is that in between of-
Lori Saitz:
Yeah-
Carol:
If you're at that point of tolerating, settling and realizing, is this really what I want to do, that these are some of the things that you really need to implement and start doing so that you can get to the other side of that.
Lori Saitz:
Yeah. And then there's, you bring in my belief that everything that has happened, happened... it couldn't have happened any other way.
Carol:
Totally.
Lori Saitz:
There's this guy named Peter Crone, and I follow him on Instagram, he's known as the Mind Architect, and he has this quote that I absolutely love. The first time I heard it, I had to go, "Wait, wait, wait, what did he say?" "And it's what happened, happened. And it couldn't have happened any other way because it didn't."
Carol:
Oh, I love it. That sounds like something from Harry Potter too, actually. But I think that's so great. I think that's so great. Okay, so-
Lori Saitz:
You have your regrets, at the same time, don't beat yourself up. It turned... It happened the way it was supposed to happen, and now what are you going to do with this?
Carol:
Yeah, completely. That reminds me of a quote that I love by F Scott Fitzgerald that talked about, "Listen, there's... it's never too late and you're never too old to change courses and to do something different." And I'm paraphrasing a lot, but he is like, "If you're not happy, if you're not experiencing things you want to experience, then I hope that you have the courage to change it."
Lori Saitz:
Yes.
Carol:
Right?
Lori Saitz:
Yes.
Carol:
And so that is so true. I love it. I love it. I love that you have multiple definitions of meditation, because I think people can get really tripped up on, "I can't sit still, and so therefore I can't meditate."
Lori Saitz:
A hundred percent.
Carol:
What are some other tools or tips or resources that you think would be useful for people who are at that place listening to this thinking, "Yes, I need to move forward and try to start slowing down and listening to myself?"
Lori Saitz:
Yeah. Well, I would advise that first of all, like you said, meditation is a lot of different things. It's not just sitting for an hour cross legged on the floor in silence.
Carol:
Yes-
Lori Saitz:
There are a lot of different things-
Carol:
And some of us midlife people can't get on the floor and cross our legs.
Lori Saitz:
You don't need to. There's the good news. I mean, meditation could be just unplugging from your electronics, is a great first step. So having an evening routine, people talk a lot about morning routines and I believe in that as well, and an evening routine, and again, I'm a work in progress here too, I'm not... but turning off your electronics, turning off your computer, not looking at your phone for at least an hour before you go to bed, it's because it's affecting your brain. Definitely no watching the news before you go to sleep because all of that negativity is coming into your brain and then you're falling asleep and it's going into your subconscious. So the way to reprogram your mind and rewire your brain is through that subconscious, it's called alpha brainwave level, which is kind of right between being fully awake and being all the way asleep. And any messages you're putting in there at that level are going straight into your subconscious, which is what controls 95% of what you do every day.
Carol:
Completely. Yeah.
Lori Saitz:
And so turning off your electronics and doing the same at some point during the day, if you want to go out for a walk in nature, do not take your phone with you. I mean, or if you absolutely have to keep it in your pocket, don't have headphones in, just pay attention to what's going on in nature around you.
Carol:
Yeah. Yeah. Those are great tips and suggestions that I think for anyone who is feeling that angst, that undercurrent of shit, of suck, or shit-
Lori Saitz:
That works too.
Carol:
Right? Whichever, whatever works for you, if you're feeling that in the moment. So this is such great advice to just start there because I think because of our society, we're programmed to move immediately into action. So I feel this way, therefore I should quit my job. I should look for something different. I should just do some action steps that'll get me out of where I'm feeling. And what you're suggesting I think is so incredibly important and powerful because if you don't know, if you don't listen to your own voice or even know what you want, why are you taking all these action steps that ultimately may take you out of the frying pan and into the fire, to take you to a deeper current of suck and shit. Right?
Lori Saitz:
Yeah. Yeah.
Carol:
So what you're saying I think is so important. So if you find yourself on this precipice, please take this advice, find a way to really hear yourself so that you can make the best decisions for yourself and not find yourself just in a worse situation. So I think this is so, so incredible. It's so important. It's like the first step to anything else that you want to do. If you find yourself in that place. Love it.
Lori Saitz:
Yeah. In fact, even taking a step back from that, that's a great thing. Do that and even quicker when you're just sitting at your desk or wherever, take 60 seconds and just focus on your breathing, breathing all the way down to your abdomen because we do not breathe properly. I mean, we breathe enough to stay alive, but we are not really oxygenating our blood and our brains. And so if when you're feeling stressed or overwhelmed, just stop and take several deep breaths all the way down to your abdomen, breathe them in, breathe out, and just give yourself 60 seconds, 120 seconds, whatever it is, and you will feel immediate difference in-
Carol:
That's powerful-
Lori Saitz:
In your level, in your stress level, and you will feel more calm, you'll feel more grounded, and then you can make decisions from a place of responding instead of reacting.
Carol:
Good point. Good point. I love that. So I'm going to ask, Lori, I ask everyone this, what does being a career rebel mean to you?
Lori Saitz:
I love this question. So it's funny because a few weeks ago I was writing a chapter for a book and we were instructed to write a letter to our reader, like a love letter before we wrote the chapter. And what came out of that was I came up with this idea that I was writing to a closet rebel. My ideal reader is a closet rebel. It's somebody who, like I was, I was enough of a rebel to go do things, but not enough to get arrested. You know?
Carol:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Lori Saitz:
So I feel like, yeah, a career rebel is somebody who has done the things that they were supposed to do and now has reached a point where they're like, "Wait a minute," now they're checking in with themselves like we talked about and going, "No, I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm going to do what makes me happy." And they get a little rebellious and it's rebellion against the constrictions of what you are supposed to do.
Carol:
Yeah, I love that. I absolutely love that. So Lori, where can people find you? Love the name of the podcast, Fine is a Four Letter Word, which is awesome-
Lori Saitz:
Thank you-
Carol:
But where can people find you or what resources or how can they just access some of the great things that you have to offer?
Lori Saitz:
Yeah, the best place to do that is at zenrabbit.com, which is my website, zenrabbit.com. And there you have all the links to my socials, to the podcast, as well as a bunch of resources that I... I do some... I have some meditations available, some articles, all kinds of resources there. So that's the best place to go.
Carol:
That is so awesome. Well, Lori, thank you so much for spending this time together. This was a great conversation and I think I really necessary one, particularly this time of the year when things get super hurried and frantic and crazy.
Lori Saitz:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for inviting me.
Carol:
Yeah. Yeah. You are welcome. Well, listen, that's it for today, rebels, thank you so much for joining us. And listen, if you want some support in meditating and getting in touch with your inner voice so that you can make the best decisions for yourself, check out what Lori has to offer and use some of those resources to really help yourself. And if you want some support in stepping into the career life you love, making that transition because you're in a current undercurrent of some shit, then I want you to reach out to me, schedule a free 30 minute discovery session and we can talk about all the ways to stop tolerating and settling and stepping into a career life you love. Listen, thanks for joining me, and until next time, have an amazingly rebellious week. See you soon.
