Learn from Patrice how to have courage to slow down and to instead choose a life with more purpose.
Do you find yourself worn out by your schedule? You may feel that you do SO much but find little satisfaction from your never-ending to-do list.
Maybe your full life feels . . . empty.
We live in a world that rewards “busy.” It feels good to be productive. But, how can you know if it’s time to take a step back? How can you fill your time instead?
Patrice Washington—a recovering over-achiever—learned how to do this from a deliberate choice she made this year: she decided to slow down.
Patrice learned SO many lessons in the process, all of which she’ll share in this interview!
Patrice shares her story of how she learned the hard way how you cannot validate your self-worth by being busy. Valuing yourself has to come from the inside. She teaches how even productivity requires you making trade-offs. (Maybe right now you’re sacrificing your mental energy or physical health for the sake of being busy?)
And how when you slow down your life doesn’t get empty—it becomes more full.
As Patrice puts it, “My calendar is still full, but it’s full of the right stuff.”
Do you want less of the “busy” and more of the “right stuff” in your life? Tune in to learn how you can change your busy calendar into a life filled with more purpose!
About a few other things…
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SHOW NOTES
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Songs Credit: Pleasant Pictures Music Club
TRANSCRIPT
Monica: Patrice Washington, welcome back to About Progress!.
Patrice: Thank you for having me back. It’s good to be back. It’s good to see you.
Monica: Well, I can’t wait to do a little sneak peek on this cause people are going to freak out. My community loved the last episode we recorded together. And I’m, I’m so excited to have you back on. I know you are extremely busy, but what we’re going to talk about today is going to touch on that. Busy-ness, you know we live in such a hustle culture and I’m a go-go kind of person and, and you are too. Yeah, I’m happiest when I’m busy, you are happiest when you’re busy, but at the same time, there are seasons and times in our lives where we’re feeling the push to slow down or to do less.
And I’m going to share a quote from an episode you did that. I don’t often have to do. But when I heard you do an episode talking about ways you were slowing down, I paused it and ran and found a notebook and wrote this down. You said “There’s a season to make things happen and there’s a season to let things happen.”
So that’s what we’re talking about. How to know when to do less and when to do more and how to know the difference between the two let’s start just by hearing a little bit about your own experience with this, this past year. This tangle. What has that been like for you?
Patrice: It’s so funny, you even said that I enjoy being busy. That that was definitely story of my life. Right. I was addicted to achievement very early on because that is how I found value and how I thought I would earn love from my family. I didn’t grow up necessarily feeling lovable. But I always knew I was the smart one. So as long as I was doing things in achieving, that is usually where the praise came from for me. It’s not because I was the pretty one. And so that became a cycle in my life, right? Like just this always, never ending chase for significance for success, for money, for insert whatever sounds good. Like that began the cycle of that.
And I just turned 40 years old this year and the last year and a half or so I think particularly in the pandemic, I really started to ask myself more questions about why that was. Like, yes, I’ve been through a lot of therapy. And my therapist over the years, and I have really gotten to the root of how I was chasing achievement because that’s how I earn love. Knew that! But I didn’t realize how I would keep putting myself in these cycles of busy, in the cycles of hurry.Even when I didn’t have to anymore, I was still kind of always being drawn back into this idea of scarcity.
Like if I didn’t fill every single moment in the day, what quote, unquote productivity, who was I, what good was I right? Like what are you doing? And I consider myself to be very spirit led and a purpose chaser. You know, that’s what we say in my community, Redefining Wealth, we’re purpose chasers. And so sometimes even when you’re doing things in purpose, with purpose, for a purpose, you can still do too much.
Overwork and overwhelm yourself unnecessarily. We were sharing before we started recording that I took a year off for my MBA program and a part of taking that year off was because of this revelation, like why does every corner of my life have to be full? I say that I value purpose. So why am I allowing my calendar to always be so chaotic?
Like I choose the things that I do. I get to say yes or no. I am the CEO of my business. I don’t have a boss looming over me telling me what I have to do, where I have to go, how long I have to stay yet. I’m creating this environment as if I do. Subconsciously, I realized I was so happy that I was being so acknowledged for my gifts, because I grew up thinking that I didn’t have a gift. So now here I am, you know, in some people’s minds, the Patrice Washington, and I get invited to do so many things. And the little girl in me was going, they see my gift.
They see my gift well, let me go here. well let me go there. And it’s been about a year and a half now. Where I’ve been like, well, they see that, okay. They see my gift, but I treasure my gift, which is my vessel, which is my body, my spirit, my temple, more than anything. And so now my no’s have to be so much more deliberate and intense.
And they need to come sooner, quicker, faster. And so now I do stuff, but I don’t really feel as quote unquote busy as I have in the past. I don’t, I feel like I’ve learned to be so much more selective and I’ve learned that the first person who needs to cherish and honor and validate my gift is me.
And everybody else is like secondary if, if even secondary. And so now I’m really getting back in a space of literally only doing things that feel completely in alignment and on purpose for me things that are worked around my schedule and what feels good for me, not me always bending to do things for other people.
And this is so much, I know Monica is like so much, it’s like bubbling up. I realized in the last year that new levels require a new no, right. I was choosing between good and great. And now I have to choose between great and great. And that’s hard. All of the things are so good. All of them would look good. Right? All of, all of it is the things that I prayed for, for so long. And yet now I’m learning to exercise a new level of no because I’ve gotten into this rhythm and this space of “everything that is permissible is not beneifical.”
Everything is permissible is not beneficial. Just because I can doesn’t mean I should or I have to. And it’s it’s, it’s stretching me right now. If I’m honest, it is stretching me, but I’m learning so much about myself in the process and I’m learning. More about this next level of being a wife of almost 15 years and a mother to a high school student. My daughter just started high school this year and it’s like a whole new adventure. And I’m saying no to even the great things allows me to be greater for them in this phase.
Monica: Okay. That is exactly what I wanted to, to bring up. When you talked about the, before, just being full of busy-ness of kind of this counterfeit productivity and counterfeit, because you’re like trying to prove your worth through the level of productivity instead of it being purpose driven and soul-driven, like you talked about It doesn’t sound like your life is any less full sounds like it’s more full. There’s a shift here, right? Like you’re not full of busy-ness, but because you’re not full of busy, busy, busy, you open yourself up to being full of other things that really matter.
Patrice: Yeah, and it feels good. It feels so much better, right? I’m sure you’ve been in seasons where your plate was full and it was a challenge. Like it was, it was like you were pulling in for seeing him and just like you’re drained at the end of it. My calendar is still full, but it’s full of the right stuff. It’s not full of the have-to’s. There’s nothing that I do in this season, except for this last course in my MBA program, I do have to finish, but as I was telling you, I don’t even care about finishing with an A. I have really given this program my all, now I got a lot from it. But also the addicted to achievement dies hard. Right?
Even for this last course, this is the thing that is like a have-to, for me right now. And I’ve decided that I’m only going to give it so much, like, because I don’t want to get back in the cycle of, of giving all my heart, my time, my soul to the have-to’s, I really want to reserve that energy and that space for the get-to’s.
Monica: I’m thinking about the women who are listening and just how they can recognize when that shift needs to happen for them. Do you, and I know since you are so purpose driven and also spirit driven, do you have any advice for these women on how to know. If it’s a time for less busy and doing less so that you can have a fuller, richer life where it counts. How do they know?
Patrice: I think your spirit is already telling you, I think when you’re at that place where you are waking up still tired, going into appointments or showing up for things, and you are like, “I wish they would cancle.”.
We’ve all had that light, right. When you’re like, maybe they won’t show up, like, and I can go have some me time. Right. Where your calendar is probably very hurried and you’re going from one thing to the next, and you’re not even sure how present you are in each space or with each person.
I feel in my own life that that’s when my spirit, like when I’m feeling that, and I’m so weary at the end of the day, no matter how many supplements I take or how much I’m working out or any of those things, my soul is exhausted. Yeah, no it, but so many of us dismiss it and because we’ve gotten advice, like be everywhere and be all things to all people and you know, this is your season and you got to hustle and grind and do all the things we are so committed to leaning into those outside voices.
But our insight is like dying and it’s like, this isn’t right. And it can be so confusing, especially if you’re doing work you love. You. So I have a client. Her, her name is Dr. Patrice Buckner Jackson, and she talks about burnout and she talks about compassion, fatigue. And how many of us are heart workers?
So you are listening to this podcast, you listen to Monica, then I know that you’re a Lightworker out there and you really have purposeful work. And you know, that the work that you do in the world is good and, and phenomenal. And that you’re a blessing. We are so susceptile to that compassion, fatigue, because we tend to feel like, well, if I don’t do it, who will, and the truth is there are many people on assignment out here.
Like you’re not the only person who got that assignment. And we are burning out, right. Burning the candle on both ends, trying to be all things to all people, but really would, if we were better for a smaller section of people that we’re called to serve.
I was waking up feeling tired. And I knew I was like doing all the things and some of that could have been a mix of just the mental exhaustion we all suffered last year. But it was also a great time to, to look at that time, but also assess the months leading up to it and, and really go, “have you been doing too much? Like maybe this is the season that you should maybe take a step back.” And I did.
That’s why I didn’t do my MBA program last year at all. I never enrolled in a course at all in 2020, because I was looking at what are the things that I have on my plate that I have made up a story that they must be done now.
A lot of us create these arbitrary deadlines and then we push ourselves up against these demands and these expectations, like we’re robots and we’re human. And we’re cyclical, right? Life is cyclical is seasonal and there are seasons where yes, perhaps we need to go all in.
And then there are seasons where it’s like, just rest and how I know that. Is, you know, the faith pillar for me. Sometimes it comes to me and my prayer time. It may come to me through journaling, through meditation, through writing. Sometimes I’m just divinely led to podcasts like this. Someone is divinely listening right now and they’re like, oh my gosh, this is the thing that’s been on my heart. If you were looking for a sign to take a step back, this is it. Yeah. And so for me, I just kept getting these signs, these downloads like, “take a step back.”
And I’ll give you an example. Monica, in October, 2020″, we were gearing up for the release of my latest book, re redefine wealth for you. And I was getting ready to put a deposit on a soundstage. Cause I had this huge vision for what I wanted to do with the book launch. And I was like, it’s going to be like Oprah’s masterclass, right? Like you’re going to be able to see purpose chasers on the screen, on the zoom screens from all over the world. And I’m going to invite my good girlfriends to speak.
And like I had all this stuff planned and that still small voice was like, “No. Not for you.”
And I’m like, no, no, no. I’ve worked really hard on this book. I think this is like the best thing that I’ve written. And I share so much in my story and there’s some great exercises and I’m like, no, this is the book my other books have done well, but no, this is the book.
But last year my word was “obedience.” And, and I kept saying, what will my life look like if every time I heard what I refer to as the holy spirit. Tell me to move or do something like what if I just did that? And didn’t question and didn’t fight and didn’t straddle the fence. And I called the folks back, like, no, we’re not going to do it.
My team was very bewildered. They’re like, ah, Hey, we got a book coming out. Like, should we be doing more? Should we be doing something? And I just kept feeling this sense of like, no, rest. It’s not for you, it’s not for you. And I watched some of my good girlfriends launched their books and some of them used the same thing that I was thinking about crushed it.
And I was crushed in a way, happy for them, but also like, but I could have did that. Like I have means and the, the connections and the relationships, like I could have done that. My book came out on my 40th birthday, March 15th, a couple of weeks before. The whole shebang would have been like the weekend before.
So I think like March 13th or something, let’s call it that well, about a week or two, before I get the call, my mom has had a stroke. Oh, wow, In California. And I’m in Georgia and everything comes to a head. And I ended up spending weeks in California, just getting her, you know, making sure she’s good and going to doctor’s appointments.
And, you know, I’m, I’m the one I’m that child. So the one to take care of everything. And I thought to myself, what if I would have sold a thousand tickets to this thing? Wow. Did I have to postpone so much or refund? And it could have gotten really chaotic. And I was like, Hmm, it makes sense now. Yeah.
In October, there would’ve been no way for me to predict that six months later, my mom was going to need me in that season, but I listened to that still small voice that was like, this is not for you. And the crazy part about this year is that I’ve done a lot of virtual speaking events and some I didn’t speak at all.
And I’ve had more people reach out and say, Hey, we’d like to buy 700 copies of your book. Hey, we’d like to buy 500 copies of your book. We’ve sold several thousand copies of the book that I, and I don’t think it could have happened at way, even with the event that I was planning.
And so what an example and a reminder. I pray. I never forget this. Cause you know, we have spiritual amnesia just so we love to forget things that we’ve already come through. I just pray that. I never forget this example because this was a year that I did not do all the things that I did not push super hard for the book or not really for many things.
And yet. By Q3. We had seven figures in my business and that’s usually a Q4 thing, you know, by the time we get there, I don’t work on Wednesdays. I’m taking the solo quarterly trip. I’ve said no to more, I’m more intentional about the things I say yes to. I didn’t do some big book launch and I still we’re having one of our best years.
Monica: And that’s what we’ve talked about, right? It’s not that your life will be less, it will be full, but it’ll be full of the things that matter. And, and the purpose that is missing in that counterfeit productivity.
And while I’m listening to you, Patrice, it’s bringing to mind one of the biggest struggles we have in saying no is just. The fear of making trade-offs because making trade-offs are hard, you made a huge trade off in that one example, and you made a huge trade off and taking a year off from school.
And, and those are scary, especially when they are good things. And I love your advice about taking a step back and thinking about how am I already making trade-offs by being so busy. And with good things. Like what trade offs am I still making right now?
Patrice: The trade-off usually is our mental health is rocky. You know, our physical health is typically in a shambles. When you’re living a hurried lifestyle, you’re usually not taking good care of yourself physically.
And you know that we say you know that in order to execute the vision, you have to protect the only vessel you get. You get one body. The mental, the mental toll that it takes to not have a moment throughout the day that you can focus on, oh, clearing your head, clearing your thoughts, processing, how you actually feel, right.
The relationships. How many of us the trade off is our relationships? We are telling our family and friends, oh, I do this work because I do it for you. You know, especially as parents as mothers. Oh, I do this because I love you, but your, your kid never sees. And what they see of you is so scattered, you know, what they see of you is, is such a frazzled version that they’re kind of going, do I want to do anything purposeful?
There are so much that does get traded off. And for many of us, our faith too, you know, we say faith at redefining wealth is about believing in something greater. It doesn’t matter to me what you say you believe in, but having a belief in something allows you to be grounded because life is coming, right. It’s not a matter of if, it’s when and so many of us trade time, right. We trade off the time that we would spend in our spiritual practice on a daily basis because oh, I’m busy. So no, I haven’t had time to pray.
But the trade off… let’s be real. Most of the stuff we’re doing is not even important. Monica it’s urgent things that other people put in front of us and it was important. We get so consumed with the urgent that we lose sight of what’s actually important.
Monica: It’s kind of when people say, “when everything’s important, nothing’s important.” It’s the same thing with these trade-offs, it’s so hard to differentiate between good and great and even great and great, like you brought up ,and how urgent at all feels. And I just, I can learn from you and also your book too, which I’ve loved is it just takes practice and it takes getting messy and kind of making mistakes with it. And the other thing I’ve cued in and learned from you is a, takes a whole lot of courage because when you’re making those trade-offs and you are choosing between good things, fear gets in the way, a lot of fear.
And you taught us something back when we did our episode on resistance that. I have used almost everyday sense both for myself and for the woman I work with, and on the show. And it’s what you do with your fears. And I think that’s really, you talk about it in your book too. So I would just love to hear it from you again, what you do when you are full of fear.
Patrice: I did it this morning. I also use this literally every other day, probably for something. And what you’re referring to is the exercise that I call, “What If versus What Is,” and a lot of times when we have these trade-offs and we, and it’s like, okay, if I say no to this, what does that mean?
Or what could that create? We usually have a lot of noise in our minds and we don’t name the noise. We don’t acknowledge it. We just let it run rampant. It’s it’s just in there doing a doozy right on our self esteem, on our clarity, on everything. And so I started doing what if versus what is some years ago.
And so it started with me literally in my journal, folding a sheet of paper and saying like, okay, what are the, what ifs? The what ifs are just the. What is real, what am I really afraid of here? And allowing myself to be radically honest about what’s really going on. Not trying to be politically correct. Not, not writing this as if somebody reads this, what will they think of me? Right. Like, just like. What would be my God’s honest truth about what I’m actually afraid of.
And I list everything out. It’s like a brain dump, anything I can think of. And then on the right side of the paper, I labeled it, “what is,” and I try to look at everything I said as a fear and then counter it with either the like, it’s all truth, but it was like, for me, what does the Bible say about it? Or what do I just know to be true? Right. Cause sometimes we are so far gone. It’s like, we have no options in the middle. We’re like, either I keep this job or I go homeless. It’s like, girl, there’s a lot of options.
Monica: It’s like extreme binary fears, right?
Patrice: Yeah. It’s like, Hey, there’s about 999 options of like things that could happen. But when I write it down, I can see it for what it is. Is that really a big concern? Or are you making this up or are you telling yourself a story? And if you are, then why not tell a new story? Because you’re choosing the story anyway, like you are the author and creator of this story, choose a new one, choose a different ending.
And so I do that all the time and it has served me so greatly, and my clients as well. And I’m glad to hear you and your clients are using it too. It has been the game changer because oftentimes. When I see, “what is” it completely trump “the what if,” and it’s not that the, what if just melts away, but when I’m feeling it, I can go back to, yeah.
That is a possibility. But, OK. Right. Like, and if it is, if it does happen, here’s what I could do. Here’s who I could call. Here’s how I could turn that around. Here’s a plan B some of us are like, oh, there’s no plan Bs. And some things I’m fine with a plan B, I’m fine with a plan C. Right? Like in some things I’m okay with moving forward, because I know that nothing is permanent and everything is cyclical and seasonal and temporary.
A lot of times we treat these decisions as if they are like fatal. And completely catastrophic. And it’s like at most it will be inconvenient, simmer down, right? Like all the like little gremlins in your mind, like at most this would be an inconvenience. Yes. Maybe I won’t like it. And I’m talking, I do this from the most trivial to the most important things in my life. It’s just, it has just been a complete game changer.
Monica: One of the things I love the most about it too, is that it doesn’t mean you have to go all Pollyanna and tell lies to yourself. Like, so an example could be like, I’m going to disappoint my spouse.
Like I’m going to disappoint them because I’m not willing to do this chore, this thing anymore. I go to this thing with them and the truth to that is, yeah, I could disappoint them, but I also can, you know, XYZ. It gives you choice because you’re actually seeing the truth.
Patrice: Sometimes to take care of yourself, you have to disappoint other people like a part of walking in purpose in your truth is going to be that you piss some people off.
That just is what it is. Some folks are not going to like that you are choosing you, including people who are the closest to you, because they’ve been used to you choosing them all along. But, in the process, you’ve betrayed yourself. And so now that you’re walking in a space of, you know, saying, look, the idea of betraying myself is intolerant.
Like, I cannot take that anymore. That does not feel good. That does not feel right to me. And yes, my spouse, my parents, my children, my whoever, they may be disappointed, but this is something that I have to do for myself. And if they love me, you know, I will either enroll them in the vision and they will understand, or they will come to understand, but I’m not going to be so afraid that I continue to chip away at my own spirit.
And that’s what a lot of us is women have learned to do. I’ve learned to chip away and honey, this is, again, everything that I share, it’s my own story. I know in so many ways that in order to protect, I thought protect other people’s feelings or, you know, whatever preserve relationships that I would only go so far.
And as long as I did that, even as, as visible as my career has been. I knew I wasn’t really living out loud. I knew that I was still dimming down. I knew that as much as I have done, I still was like, Hmm, you got more in you. There’s like more shine to you, but because you want to protect other people’s feelings, you hide bits and pieces of the story.
You only tell so much. Right. And when I started to break free of that, did I have to have some uncomfortable conversations? Yes I did. In the long run, has it been beneficial to myself, to those relationships, healing, to clients and you know, people out there in social media or in these spaces that have heard it?
Yes. And in the bigger scheme of things, I’m so glad that I finally allowed myself to be free and I’m still getting free every day. It’s a journey.
Monica: Oh, that gave me chills. Apparently I needed this interview even more than I knew going into it. I love that so much more of your story is in the book. And, and while I love that you were choosing for yourself how you’re going to promote it, I am going to promote it for you here and just say, people need to read it. It’s Redefine Wealth for Yourself, and also go and listen to your podcast, Redefining Wealth. It’s one of my favorites and you’re one of my favorites. And, you know, before we go, Patrice, I I’d just like to know in the season of your life, you know, you just turned 40, you’re you’re about to graduate with your MBA.
Your business is doing well. You’ve been through a lot with your family and they’re thriving. Like what’s on the other side of this. What in your season of life right now, what is your life full of?
Patrice: And this season of my life, I just keep saying I’m scaling joy. I just want to take all of the things that bring me joy, not happiness, cause that’s based on stuff. Right. But the things that literally give me energy and make my belly leap in a good way. How do I keep adding more of that into my moment to moment life. And how do I keep removing things that don’t, and that is the path that I’m on right now, like a year from now. I have no idea where I’ll be, but I say that to say I am really leaning in to only doing the things that bring me the most joy and then allowing those things to scale. And so I don’t know what tomorrow holds.
I don’t know what this decade holds, but I know who holds me. And I’m really just in a space of. Being radically honest with myself first and then making a choice to be radically honest with people around me. And that’s included my daughter, my husband, my parents, my siblings, my team members.
Like I’m not holding any punches anymore. Like I’m not holding back. Because I got one life to live and I spent the brighter part of my first half here wanting to please people or doing things to earn love or to earn validation or respect in so many instances. And, you know, I’ve worked through so much in therapy on and off over the last 16, 17 years. And now I’m just like, I just want to live it.
Right. Like I just kinda live everything that I’ve practiced, everything that I’ve learned fully. And I believe that as I continue to step into that and choose that, sky’s the limit. I don’t know what it’s going to bring. I know it’s gonna be good.
Monica: Well, I’m right behind you on all of those things, but also even just that age marker.
So it gives me a lot to look forward to. Patrice, is there anywhere else you’d like to send people besides your book and your podcast that we mentioned?
Patrice: Yeah, I would say definitely. If you want to hear more about what the six pillars of wealth are, I kind of alluded to a few of them. Definitely go to my site. patricewashington.com/starthere. Here’s a free audio training that breaks it all down, and it even gives you an opportunity to take a quick assessment so that you can, you know, really go, oh, okay. Well, which pillar do I need to start with? So I can get on this path of. Saying no. Clearing the calendar, doing what matters, all that good stuff.
So come on it.
Monica: That is brilliant by the way. Wow. That’s, that’s so helpful too, because like, I love your pillars. But yeah, that’s one of those other things. How do I start? Where do I go? I love it. Well, Patrice it’s been truly a blessing for me to talk to you today. So thank you very much for being here.
Patrice: Thanks for having me back.
