
Embracing Change and Cultivating Inclusive Leadership – ep.159
January 9, 2025
Kendrick Lamar: Storytelling Hip-Hop and the Fight for DEI – ep.161
February 13, 2025
Embracing Change and Cultivating Inclusive Leadership – ep.159
January 9, 2025
Kendrick Lamar: Storytelling Hip-Hop and the Fight for DEI – ep.161
February 13, 2025This week I am joined by Self-care Surgeon Benita Williams. Benita is the founder of a boutique coaching and consulting company that aims to relieve women executives from burnout while restoring their purpose to pursue their business endeavors. This episode will explore promoting self-healing using a holistic restoration method to achieve mental clarity and prioritize one’s well being.
Benita Williams, The Self-Care Surgeon, is an International Bestselling Author and CEO of Benita Williams Enterprises LLC, a boutique coaching and consulting company where she helps women leaders who feel drained revive so that they can thrive in purpose. Through her signature programs and retreats, she empowers women executives and entrepreneurs to master strategic rest, leading to enhanced clarity, innovation, and sustainable growth. Coach Benita transforms how high-achieving leaders approach success by integrating holistic restoration with business excellence. Her proven methodology has helped countless leaders break free from burnout to lead with renewed purpose and vision, while scaling their businesses without sacrificing wellbeing.
Social Media Accounts to Tag:: https://www.facebook.com/authorbenitakbrown
https://www.linkedin.com/in/benita-williams-688393175/
Melyssa Barrett: Welcome to the Jali Podcast. I’m your host, Melyssa Barrett. This podcast is for those who are interested in the conversation around equity, diversity, and inclusion. Each week, I’ll be interviewing a guest who has something special to share or is actively part of building solutions in the space. Let’s get started. Welcome to another inspiring episode of the Jali Podcast, where we celebrate diverse perspectives and amplify voices making an impact in their communities and beyond. Today, I’m thrilled to introduce you to Benita Williams, affectionately known as the Self-care surgeon. Bonita is an international bestselling author and the CEO of Benita Williams Enterprises, LLCA boutique coaching and consulting firm dedicated to helping high achieving women leaders transform their lives with a focus on mastering strategic rest and integrating holistic restoration duration. Benita has empowered countless women executives and entrepreneurs to break free from burnout, lead with purpose, and achieve sustainable high growth without sacrificing their wellbeing.
Through her signature programs and luxury retreats, Benita is redefining success for women leaders, showing them how to thrive in both their personal and professional lives. She’s a trailblazer in the self-care and wellness space, and her insights will leave you inspired to approach leadership and success in a whole new way. So grab a cup of tea or coffee, settle in, and get ready for an enlightening conversation with the incredible Bonita Williams. I am excited to have Benita Williams with me this week, and I am just so thankful that we were able to meet and to connect, and I just feel like we have become fast friends. Like we’ve known each other for years, but we haven’t. So I am just thankful that you are joining me this morning for this wonderful conversation on the Jolly Podcast. So thank you for being
Benita Williams: Here. I am so delighted to be here, Melyssa, thank you so much. And yes, I share the same sentiments. I feel like we’ve become really, really fast friends really quickly, so I, I’m excited about that. I’m excited to see where it takes us. I’m very excited. I’m excited for this conversation today as well. So thank you again for allowing me to join you on your podcast.
Melyssa Barrett: Oh, yes, it is my pleasure. I always think of whenever I’m talking to somebody, it’s like you are speaking to me, and hopefully other people can benefit, because I know you’re known as the self-care surgeon and you have your own compelling personal story of overcoming burnout, and I just feel like I’m always a few minutes away from burnout. And so I’m wondering if you can share your experience and maybe how it’s shaped not only your commitment to self-care, but just wellness as a whole, especially for leaders, women, all of us, people of color, all the hat,
Benita Williams: All the hats. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, again, thank you so much for allowing me this place and space to talk about a topic that’s really near and dear to my heart. And I’ll be honest with you, it’s a conversation and it’s a topic that I really wasn’t versed in. I wasn’t well versed in. During my years of work in the nonprofit sector, I was pretty much in the nonprofit sector for over 20 some years. And if you know anything about doing human service kind of work, the work is never done. You always end up taking it home with you. You always end up going over and above and beyond. And so you imagine after 20 some years of just constantly serving others in the community and things like that, you do tend to burn out. And that was the thing that I was very new at, didn’t really know what it was, and hadn’t really heard about it. And for the term, we hear that word, we hear that term, but it’s so cliche and it’s so commercialized, and so what is it? Even
Melyssa Barrett: Like, go sit down somewhere.
Benita Williams: Exactly right. Go take a nap, right? Something that at the end of your day or something like that, or go get some retail therapy or something like that. But it’s so much more than that. And just to kind of give you some insight about how I came about it, I, again, had been working in the nonprofit sector as an executive director and being in that place and space for so long, of course, I’ve seen the ins and outs in the day-to-day of people’s needs. And so we as caregivers, as people that have servant, its heart and servant leadership, we’re always constantly thinking about how we can help someone else. And we’re always constantly thinking about how we can be there to support someone else, but we never really pour back into ourselves. And that’s where I found myself. It was back in 2014 actually, and I had gone through a series of different things, life changing events really, which brought about a lot of stressors in my life, but I didn’t really recognize it, Melissa, as stressors.
I just rolled with the clinches. I just got up every day and I did what I known to do for the past 15 or so years. It was it nothing. So this particular day, I woke up the same way, had my same normal routine, and it’s about a hour’s drive or commute to work. I think we talked about that earlier, how distance is. And even in that not knowing how the distance and driving and stuff like that, you’re still carrying your work with you. So you’re on the road thinking about work, you’re at work, thinking about work, and then you leave work thinking about work. You get home and you’re thinking about work. So that was kind of like my lifestyle and my routine at the time. But on this particular day, I was in the office and I was actually getting ready to go on a business retreat, hence the word retreat, but
Melyssa Barrett: It
Benita Williams: Was a business, right? Ready, getting prepared for that. And so one of my coworkers came in and she just kind of looked at me and paused, and she looked at me and she said, are you feeling okay today? Are you okay? And I was like, yeah, I’m fine. Great. Just talking normal, just like I am now talking regular. And she was like, well, you don’t look so well. I think you should grab a mirror or something. And so I did. I looked the mirror, and to my surprise and my shock, really, I discovered that my face was actually disfigured on one side, completely unrecognizable. And I did not feel any symptoms of anything. I did not feel strange or abnormal in any sense. I felt like I was able to talk and communicate just like I’m doing now, but obviously there was something really wrong, and my face was basically telling the story that was hidden from me and really hidden from everybody. And that is that I was literally at my breaking point of burnout and exhaustion and overwhelming and just did not recognize the warning signs. And so that particular day turned into a year of just alternating my life as I had known it,
Being able to work and being able to take care of my loved ones. I was a caregiver. I am a caregiver to my wonderful, wonderful husband who has a significant disability, but my best friend. And so I’ve been doing that. And also I have been caring for my mom who had a terminal illness at that time. During that timeframe, all of these things that I was carrying, plus the weight of the work that I was doing and involved in, I was wearing all the hats and had these patterns of superwoman, so to speak, and being the hero, the shero,
Melyssa Barrett: You have the S on your chest.
Benita Williams: I had it. I was wearing it mighty proud. I had it on my chest. And so doing all the things, however, was not being kind to myself, did not know what self-care really was, and really masking a lot of feelings and emotional things that were going on in my life at the time, and really just using coping mechanisms to avoid really what was going on. And so that particular day turned into, like I said, a year long of going in and out of doctors, getting testing, you name it, I was out of work. I wasn’t able to work during that time, relying on other people, which was something I was very unfamiliar with. I was always the strong one, always the one that was dependable. And so my whole life, as I’d known it at that time, just really turned upside down for me. And I realized then that this was my wake up call, and it was like I heard a small voice say, if you don’t take care of yourself, if you don’t start paying attention to yourself and pouring into yourself, you won’t be here around for the ones that you love.
You won’t be here, you won’t be around here for them. But what do you do when you’re met at this crossroads, when you’ve been thinking that you’ve been doing it right the whole time, only to discover that what you’re doing is no longer serving you, and now you at a pivotal moment in your life where you’ve got to make some life choices, some different life choices. That’s where I found myself back in 2014.
Melyssa Barrett: Wow. I mean, that’s a lot.
Benita Williams: Yeah, it was a lot. And it came rushing in just like that. No warning signs that I was aware of. The warning signs were there. Let me back up and say, I just wasn’t aware of them. I was not paying attention to, I wasn’t sensitive to my body’s signals and warning signs and things like that. And so those warning signs eventually will become louder and louder and louder until you get the wake up call.
Melyssa Barrett: Yeah, yeah. We have a saying in some of the work that I do, we say, God will tap you and tap you, and then he will slap you. He’ll slap us. Right, exactly. Oh yeah. For me, sometimes we don’t recognize the, and I think that’s an ongoing challenge, right? Because we are kind of required, we’re obligated. We require of ourselves that we have to keep going. We have to get this done. We have such a passion for, especially in the nonprofit world, you always have such a passion for giving more of yourself than you possibly can give.
Benita Williams: Absolutely. And it’s a learned behavior. It’s your environment. I think back now, and I realize that what was I equipped with? What skill sets and the soft skills that I was equipped with to really handle self-compassion? And in some communities, I would say, and probably a lot in our community, we see mama and grandma and all of them being very strong. We never see them break. We never see them cry. We never see them take a day off. We never see them really relax and put themselves as a priority, as a first priority. So it’s learned behaviors, the habits that we pick up in our environments. And I think that’s why I’m very passionate now about the work that I’m doing to try to change the narrative of that so that we can embrace a different way, a more excellent way of taking care of ourselves as we take care and
Melyssa Barrett: Prioritizing ourselves.
Benita Williams: Absolutely. Prioritize ourselves. Absolutely. Yes.
Melyssa Barrett: And I know there’s a difference between taking a nap and getting
Benita Williams: Rest. Yes.
Melyssa Barrett: And I think you call it strategic rest.
Benita Williams: I do.
Melyssa Barrett: Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. So talk to me about that in terms of you have programs that are specifically designed around strategic rest.
Benita Williams: I do. And so I’ll go back into my story to tell you kind of how the backdrop of how I came about. So there I was again in 2014, not really knowing how to navigate this dark path of change. It was very unfamiliar, very uncomfortable for me. It was a place in the space that I had not navigated before. And I was looking, searching for a way to navigate this new lifestyle, which was very, very scary. And so when I started researching, I didn’t really find a lot out there. There wasn’t anyone who really identified with where I was and what I was going through in the medical field. They want to label you, they want to give you all kinds of medications and everything, and they want to just kind of stick a label on you and say, oh, this is what you’re dealing with.
But it was not my case. That was not, I knew that wasn’t me, and it wasn’t my case. And I had to figure out how to bounce back from burnout, really. And so it became a self-discovery, a self-healing journey for me. Many, many nights I was praying to God about why me, first of all, and how did I miss the warning signs, but now how do I navigate this start path to change? And just in a long period of rest, I was out of work, like I said, which was something very new for me. I was unable to operate a vehicle which was very new for me. I had to depend on other people. And so your village is very important to encourage you and to help you to stay strong and fight through. So I admonish everyone that may be going through something similar to lean into your village and make sure you have people around you that can help you and support you.
So I was very happy for that. So the thing for me was how do I bounce back from burnout? Because this is not my end of my story. I’m going to be around. I want to be around, and I need to figure out a more excellent way, because what I’ve been doing is no longer serving me. So I got really, really just focused on self-healing and what that means for me in this period of time. Rest was very, very loud. It was times that I would try to get up and do something, and my body was like, Nope, you’re going to rest. And times that I wanted to, I thought I was strong enough to be able to handle certain things. My body was like, Nope, you’re going to rest. And so I learned very early on that rest was a key factor for me and getting myself back and me feeling myself again.
And so from that, I just started developing new habits, what I call regimens, not routines, because routines typically mean that they’re not meant to be broken. But when you have a regimen, you can adapt a regimen to accommodate whatever stressors are going on in your life at the time. And so that’s one of the key things for me was like, stop being so robotic, stop being so automated and really be more present and be more mindful. And so when I did that, and there were three things that happened for me, I started to refuel my body, focus on refueling my body physically. And then I started renewing my mindset, realizing that the way I’ve been thinking about self-care needed to change. And so I got really, really intentional about that. And then thirdly, I started to refocus on what my purpose is, why I’m here.
When you have experiences like the one I had, it really does start to put things in perspective. And so priorities and setting boundaries and soul searching, so to speak, and why am I here? What is my purpose? And things like that really became very apparent for me during that time. So refuel, renew, and refocus. And my definition of self-care is anything that promotes wellbeing, that’s what self-care is. It’s not a cookie cutter approach. It’s something that really is for you and the moments in time that you may be facing, which can change at any moment. And stressors are not all bad. You could have some good stressors. It could be a new addition to the family, which is a stressor, but in a good way, things like that. But I learned to be more mindful and be more present in the moment, and to really hone in on what self-care is and what it isn’t. Self-care is definitely setting boundaries. No is a complete sentence. So I’ve learned the power of no. Then also, again, just anything that promotes total wellbeing and what I call total wellbeing is being in alignment in all areas of your life. And that is physical, mental, social, spiritual, and emotional. And so if you are out of alignment or out of balance in any one of those areas, then you’re not really achieving total what I call total wellness or total wellbeing. And so that just became my focus on my self-healing journey. Physical, mental,
Melyssa Barrett: Social, spiritual
Benita Williams: And emotional. And emotional. And emotional. Yes. Absolutely. Because what you find is most programs out there, they may touch on one or two of those things. So you may have your fitness routine down, or you may have your diet down, or you may have your nutrition down, but what about your mental health? Or you may do some mindfulness exercises and things like that, but what about your spirit? Have you checked in with your inner self lately? Right? Those types of things. So to find a totality, a whole holistic approach, if you will, to self-care, and really dialing in on all of those areas, what I call
Melyssa Barrett: Wow, that’s a lot. That’s good though. I mean, I’m taking notes myself like, okay, I got 1, 2, 3, maybe. Right, right. Exactly. So I, in terms of, and I know you can get to the whole strategic rest thing, but in terms of just being able to break the burnout cycle, I mean, there’s lots of leaders, CEOs that struggle with balancing their own ambitions with their wellbeing. And I mean, what are some first steps that you recommend? Because I mean, honestly, I’m like, okay, physical, mental, social, spiritual, and emotional. That’s like a lot.
Benita Williams: Yeah, it is.
Melyssa Barrett: And I’m like, I don’t know. How do you even start
Benita Williams: With again? Right, exactly.
Melyssa Barrett: Somebody’s kind of feeling drained, or maybe they’re stuck in what they think might be burnout, but where do you start?
Benita Williams: Great question. And you’re right. That was the part of the whole navigation for me. It was like, okay, I’m in this place and space, and so how do I begin to get out? And one of the things that I had to realize early on is that when you have hit a wall, you’re not trying to go back to the way things used to be. That was very hard for me. That was a very tough wake up call and a very aha moment for me because I kept trying to go back to what I was used to doing. I kept trying to put the S on my chest again and go do all the things or whatever the case. And it was just, that was not the path. It was not working out for me. And so the first thing is to accept basically what has happened and accept the fact that you may never go back to the way things used to be. But that’s a great thing actually. That’s a lifesaving thing, because if you go back, if you do the same thing over and over expecting different results, there’s a definition for that. Right,
Exactly. So we know we’ve got to change some habits, some ways of thinking, some ways of processing. And we just got to do some things differently and start to accept the fact that I’m becoming a better version of myself, a healthier version of myself, a more in tune version of myself. And so that’s what I had to start doing, just changing the way that I thought about self-care really. And awareness is a big part of that. I started getting in tune with my body. I was still out of tune with my body. There were warning signs like I had mentioned before, and I just ignored them. I did not pay attention to ’em. Didn’t think they were that serious. Some of them probably avoided altogether. But there are warning signs when you start to get the foggy brain syndrome, so to speak, when you can’t think of things that would just normally come sharp for you, you can’t be as sharp as you used to be.
And just on it sometimes the low energy was a big giveaway. Okay, you wake up tired, you go to bed tired, you wake up again, you’re tired, that type of thing, emotionally checking out emotion, checking out. My mom, I was her caregiver. She had a terminal illness. And actually in 2012, in 2012, she passed away and I emotionally checked out. I did not grieve her passing. I did not grieve her transition. I completely checked out. I emotionally detached and just had to keep it moving. And that was a big warning sign. So things like that you really want to pay attention to when you’re no longer emotionally there for the family and your friends or your children, things like that. Things that should emotionally charge. You don’t, or you’re very dismissive or the way that you used to handle things, you’re not as, you’re kind of lashing out more and things like that. Your personality, your persona changes. You’re not who you really are all the time and that kind of thing. So those are warning signs. Why
Melyssa Barrett: Did I just yell at her?
Benita Williams: Right, exactly. Exactly. Why did I just snap for no reason or that type of thing, or why am I aggressive driving or anything like that. It just could set you off. Why are you being reactive rather than proactive to everything? Why do you sense everything is an urgency rather rather than something that can be processed in time? Those type of things are all internal measures that we need to pay attention to. Physical, mental measures, emotional measures that we need to take note of when your emotional intelligence is just not that intelligent. So those type of things, the subtleties of everything. And so that’s when I discovered that, okay, Benita, you really need to dial in and you really need to understand that things are not going to be the way that they used to be, but that’s a good thing, and you can now chart a new path for yourself.
So awareness was everything for me, Melissa. I became very much in tune with my body. When my body started to give me signs that it was time to slow down or time to rest, there’d be days when I would just take a long nap or just rest or just charge myself with nothing. Can you imagine that? Can you charge yourself with nothing to do? Can you really take a full day, 24 hours? It’s not as easy as it sounds. Most people are like, oh yeah, I would love to do it. I would love to take a 24 hour. Try it. See how easy you really could leave the phone down,
Put the phone down, and not touch technology, and not turn on the tv. And not just that, just see, just challenge yourself with those type of things, and how easy is it for you to do those things. But when I begin to rest, and this is where I’ll talk about strategic rest and intentional rest. Rest is not something that’s an afterthought. It’s not something that we do at the end of our day when we’ve completed everything, all of our tasks, contrary to proper belief. It’s not something you do when you die. I hear a lot of people say, I rest when I die. Right? Go figure. But no, it’s none of those things. Rest is essential for peak performance. Rest is essential for peak performance. You need rest. You need food to eat. You need air to breathe. It is essential for peak performance to survive really and to thrive. So I started looking at rest as a strategy for success. It is a way, a tool that we can use to exponentially grow by leaps and bounds to exponentially scale, to exponentially tie in the holistic approach to wellness and wellbeing. Because in every single area you need rest. You need to be able to know when to turn off the on switch. And most people, that’s their issue is like they have an on switch and there’s no off switch. They don’t know how to turn it off.
But understanding how to be still and how to do that, and it takes practice. It’s not something that you innately do. It’s something that you have to practice at really to dial in. But when you do and you start to realize that, you know what, I can take strategic pauses throughout the day. I can have active risk moments and things like that. Resting is not just about taking naps. There’s so many ways that you can rest your brain and your body and things like that, but it takes practice.
Melyssa Barrett: Yes.
Benita Williams: I love that.
Melyssa Barrett: I love that. I think just that whole reset and being able to intentionally,
Benita Williams: Intentionally is the
Melyssa Barrett: Key. And this is, I think a lot of, because there’s so many leaders that will take a meeting over their own strategic rest.
Benita Williams: Yes, they will.
Melyssa Barrett: And it’s like, well, it’s like, I really don’t have it blocked off, so I’ll just take a call. But you are just as important as whatever that call is that you’re going to get on. More important, yes, more important. Thank you. Thank you. See, I’m still learning. Yeah, no, you’re good. But we tend to always kind of default to work first.
Benita Williams: Exactly.
Melyssa Barrett: And then the rest is like, I’ll take the leftovers and then we end up with no leftovers.
Benita Williams: Absolutely. And the thing about it is, you’re running off fumes. You’re empty and running off fumes, and you don’t even know it. That’s the scary part about it. You don’t even know it. You don’t even realize it that there’s nothing really left in the tank, but you’re running on fumes. And so we know if you drive a car like that, a vehicle like that, and you don’t put gas in it, or you don’t change the oil, you don’t take the maintenance, you don’t take care of it or whatever the case, it may run, but it’s real.
Melyssa Barrett: Yeah. It’s
Benita Williams: Dy peel it off a real bad smell. And it’s not optimal. It’s not optimal.
Melyssa Barrett: Right.
Benita Williams: It’s
Melyssa Barrett: Really, and you talked about holistic wellness, and I know some of the work that you do, I think kind of integrates holistic restoration with business excellence.
Benita Williams: Yes.
Melyssa Barrett: What is that approach and what does it look like and how does it benefit the clients that you work with?
Benita Williams: Absolutely. It’s my life work now. It’s my life work. To go back into the story a little bit. So after I did bounce back, after I came back to work and everything, I realized that that refuel renewal and refocus was real. And so when I started to refocus my purpose, I realized that I wanted to touch more women leaders, CEOs, people like me who may have experienced something similar or on the verge of experiencing something. And I wanted to be the guide that I did not find for myself when I was searching and I was trying to find someone to connect with someone that looked like me or had went through something similar as me and could help guide me and navigate that dark path of change. Well, I wanted to be that for someone else. And so I started a program called Destination. It’s like Destination, but with the intention of really just my approach to self-care, how to bounce back from burnout, how to still be that leader and that top performer, but without all of the consequences, without the consequences of burnout and anxiety and chronic stress and fatigue and all those things like that.
I truly believe that we can be successful without consequence in trying to chart my own path. And course to do that, I developed a coaching program, transformative coaching program that again exists to just help those who feel drained to revive so they could thrive in purpose. In purpose. And so sometimes the pivots come in life to change, to navigate your course and to change your course. Maybe you do some self-discovery and you realize, well, maybe I’m not as happy in this role anymore, or maybe there’s more to life than what I’m currently experiencing, or maybe there’s another reason for why I’m here and I want to seek that out now. Things like that. So I looked at what I went through as a turning point for purpose for me. And so now I get a chance to help other women leaders, not just women, because men suffer burnout as well. So I host transformative retreats. I do corporate wellness trainings and initiatives, anything that can help shine the light on how we bounce back from burnout or how we prevent burnout altogether. Of course, during the pandemic, we saw this in action, we saw a lot of people burnout. We saw the great resignation where people just tapped out and did not return back to work. Even that was a clue, right? Yes.
So we saw a lot of things happen, but why is there so much absentee volunteer absenteeism? Why is the burnout cost at $500 billion that company’s experience in burnout related costs and things like that. So these are questions that we really as a society need to tackle. And I’m grateful for platforms and places and spaces like you and your podcast here to be able to share with your listener audience because I believe it’s just conversations that we need to continue to forge until we change the narrative on self-care. I really believe that companies have a responsibility to protect their greatest asset, which is a human asset. And so in order to do that, you really need to have these conversations and realize what’s going on with your employees, your workers, your executive leaders, what’s going on, what’s really going on with them, not just during the day when they’re there, but even after hours or before work or whatever the case may be.
And how can we create a place in a space that is safe for them to be vulnerable enough to talk about their needs, and it not just be charged to mental health. Again, not everything is a mental health issue. I’m grateful for the healthcare system and a mental healthcare system, but it’s okay to take just a personal day for rest and recharging or refueling or to have a rest policy in place, things like that for the employees. It’s okay to do that, and actually it’ll benefit you much more than what you’ve may currently be experiencing.
Melyssa Barrett: Yeah, I love that. And you do see a little more of that, I think with very large companies, but you have a lot of people working from home now,
And it’s hard to separate sometimes work from personal because your work is in your personal space. So I mean, I know for me, and folks have probably heard me talk about this in other episodes, but for me, after my husband passed in 2017, I went through exactly what you’re talking about. It’s like, am I still happy here? I love the people I worked with, the work I was doing, but I got to this point where I was working all the time. It was like 18 hours a day in this little box office working from home. And I was like, I need to get off. But I had to get a coach in order to help me get off because I couldn’t figure out how to stop the wheel from turning,
Benita Williams: And
Melyssa Barrett: I needed to make a right, but I was going a hundred miles an hour. You know what I mean? Exactly, exactly. So I love you. I mean, all of the things you’re talking about resonate so much because I think people tend to just keep going, and yet it’s like they needed to turn right like 10 miles back. Right? Exactly.
Benita Williams: It’s what I call rest stops. I play on the word of rest stops. You think about a rest stop, rest stops are actually intentional and they’re essential to your journey, right? Because when you’re on your journey, sometimes you don’t know how much further down the road you have to go, and you don’t know if you have the fuel to last. You don’t know if you have what it takes in order to last. So when you see a rest stop, it’s important to pull over on the side if for nothing else to stop, to take in a breath, fresh air, to stretch, to go to the restroom if you need to, just to kind of recalibrate and refresh and those type of things. So when you think about that, taking a long distance road trip, that’s how we have to look at our lives. We’re all on a path. We’re all on this journey together. But there are moments in time that are specifically designed for you to do just that, to stop, to pull over for a minute, to be intentional about taking a break and a pause and assess the situation, see if you need more fuel, if you need more energy, if you need more direction, if there’s a detour of some sort or whatever the case may be. So it’s important to pay attention to the road signs of life, what life gives you, and to help you navigate so
Melyssa Barrett: Well. And I know I think you’ve actually talked specifically about some things like menopause and leadership and things of that nature, and not to leave out the men, because I think in a lot of cases we need support both. I mean, you may not be going through menopause, but it’s helpful when you know how it’s impacting us. Absolutely. Whether we work together or whether we live together. So I mean, are there specifically unique challenges for women leaders as they kind of deal with transition? I think anytime for me, anytime I think about a transition of any kind, whether it be work-related, personal, whatever, transition always is challenging and the most risk is created when you’re trying to do something else and move to a different place. How do you guide people through some of those things when you think about leadership?
Benita Williams: Great question. Yeah. I’m reminded of a quote that says that successful leaders anticipate change. And so you always want to be on the cutting edge, if you will, of understanding that change is inevitable. It’s going to happen. That’s just it. It’s going to happen. And so if we can prepare ourselves for that, if we can stay on the forefront of, we keep that at forefront of our mind, that change is inevitable. And if I want to be successful in that, I need to anticipate when those changes are. And the best way that you can do that is to be, again, aware, to be in touch, to be in tune, and to realize that not everything stays the same. People change, things change, jobs change, whatever career, family life changes. There are different dynamics which brings in different stressors at any point in time, which is why I really teach a lot about how to regiment yourself for the stressors that are going on in your life at the time, and give yourself permission and flexibility to change and adapt change as your needs change, as the stressors change.
And so it’s very important not to be so stringent anymore. Like I said, it’s not a cookie cutter approach. It’s very personalized and individualized, which I commend you for working with a coach, because that’s what we do. We help you to basically personalize and customize something that is tailormade for you and your lifestyle and what it is that you’re doing in the moments that you have. And so that’s where the work comes in at, because it is a journey. It is not an overnight success. I’m sure, as you know, anything that you’re doing to navigate change is going to take some time. I probably don’t know the statistics to the T about this, but you think about anything that was innovative, any type of innovation that we’ve seen in the last 10 years, well, it probably took longer than that for that idea to come to surface, to come to life and to be realized. But that’s what I mean. It’s anything that’s new and innovative or life changing. We’ve got to be on the cusp of it. And we need to be already in the way of and understanding that these changes may occur, and then what that’s going to mean not only for ourselves, but the communities that we’re in, the people that we serve, and those that we love that are in our community and our network. And then what does that mean for your work-life balance as well?
Melyssa Barrett: And I love that you said that. I think at the beginning you talked about leading into your village. And for me, I think there’s so much opportunity in whether it be, quite frankly, business or professional or personal network or
Benita Williams: Personal,
Melyssa Barrett: The ability to anticipate change really is a lot about who your village actually is because they actually help in a lot of ways. Like my mother, I mean, she’s been through stuff I haven’t been through yet. She’s 84. Wow. And so it’s like there are so many opportunities for us to connect with others, but I think a lot of times there’s so much focus on, I mean, there’s so much information coming to us now all the time, it’s, it’s hard to turn it off, but it’s so meaningful when you turn it off.
Benita Williams: Absolutely.
Melyssa Barrett: Absolutely.
Benita Williams: It’s amazing. And I believe that, again, we have work to do, but being able to do your part, we don’t have to do it all, but just be able to do your part, be able help yourself, help others to help you by you knowing what it is that you need and being able to go to your employer, being able, if you’re at and you need to reorganize your space or something like that, do something that’s, do something that helps you. And it also teaches other people how to treat you, but you have the responsibility of helping people to help you. And so in order to do that, you need to be in tune with yourself. You need to know what your needs are. You need to be in touch with that, both on a professional level and a personal level. If there are no meetings after 5:00 PM, then guess what? There are no meetings after 5:00 PM and to own self be true. That is one of the most powerful quotes that I always use to own self be true. So be integrity with yourself. Be integrity with what you say and your words and what you want, what you desire. Don’t break integrity with yourself in that way. That’s
Melyssa Barrett: Powerful.
Benita Williams: Yeah. You teach other people how to treat you.
Melyssa Barrett: Yes. I love that. I love that. So then in terms of, and I love that you’re talking about, because I think a lot of times, especially the higher in leadership, you go, a lot of times you invest less in your professional and personal development than you did when you were maybe an analyst or some of the an entry level. And so it’s interesting to me because I think the investment in yourself, we tend to underestimate the power of that investment. And it’s not always about money, but it can be just to create the time, right? Absolutely.
Benita Williams: Do you
Melyssa Barrett: Do
Benita Williams: What is going to help you to be beneficial to you? I hear people a lot of times, they’ll go on vacation, they’ll take a vacation, but then they need a vacation from the vacation. It’s like, what? Well, what did you do? Or what didn’t you do on vacation? You didn’t rest, you didn’t. Exactly. Yeah. And we wear it like a badge of honor. Sometimes people actually use, and this is interesting. This is a topic that came up in another conversation I had where a leader went off on vacation, took maybe a two week vacation or whatever, and was like, I got so much work done during my vacation. It’s like, what? That is not what a vacation is for. So you didn’t really, and then not to mistake vacation as true rest. I think that’s the other part of it as well, because rest is something again that you need food to eat and air to breathe. It is a non-negotiable.
Like it’s statistically, your body can only last so long without food, right before it starts to go into self-preservation mode. Well, it’s the same with rest. If you deny yourself rest for a period of time, I think 11 days or so, your body will start to go into self-preservation mode, which means you’re no longer in control, which means that you’re going to start to see signs of breakdown and deterioration and lethargic mental fog and all these other things because your body’s literally screaming at you at that point that, listen, something’s wrong. We need to sleep, we need to rest. We really need to pay attention here. So pay attention to your body is one of the first things that you can do to help yourself and reward yourself. And then being intentional about your mental energy. The brain is actually the organ that takes up the most energy.
You utilize the most energy in just your brain, the way your brain thinks and processes and things like that. So if you think about that, what happens when our brains work much like a computer. So when our computers are fragmented, overloaded, and processes and things like that, what happens? It tends to shut down, break down. And so we got to look at that and understand it. Our brains work much like a computer, and so we need to what? Shut down, reboot, reenergize, those kind of things. And so it’s all about a lifestyle balance, the holistic approach to wellness and wellbeing and making sure that we’re paying attention in all areas of our life.
Melyssa Barrett: That’s awesome. Yeah. So now I know you do a lot of work in your area, and regionally, I think you also are, you want to make sure internationally, as we think about self-care on an international scale, how do you envision your role in the movement globally? Because things that we do in America are very different in other countries and in the blue zones, I think there’s clearly different things that are happening to make people live longer and experience a much different life, I’ll say, than some of the things we’re used to here in terms of just working. And it’s like you work and you die. Exactly. That’s it.
Benita Williams: Then you die now.
Melyssa Barrett: Yeah. How do you envision when you think internationally about self-care and what the future of self-care looks like?
Benita Williams: Looks, I’m really excited because to my surprise, when I was doing a lot of the research, I discovered that there are other countries that are far more advanced in self-care techniques and basically taking care of the worker, so to speak, taking care of the employee. For example, in certain countries, they have more time off than America
And other countries. They really put in protocols for people to take breaks throughout the day. You start to see a lot of companies globally with far more advanced technologies and things that they incorporate into the workplace so that people can take breaks and rest and things like that. They may be discovering, you may be seeing some sleeping pods or different things like that that are just, again, cutting edge technology of the way we think or rethink work our work environment. Because you think about it, where do you spend most of your time? If it’s not at home, it’s at work. So where we spend the most of our time is where we need to be strategic in how we refuel, how we reenergize, how our energy inputs are more than our energy outputs. And so I believe globally that we see things that we could improve upon here in America. So hopefully we’ll take the lead and take the charge in that. And that’s I think, the role that I will help to play in just kind of bridging the gap, because there’s definitely a gap right now in the health and wellness space, but it’s a good problem to have.
Yeah.
Melyssa Barrett: Well, you keep the movement going. That’s what we need. And I’m literally just like, okay, I’m refuel, reframe, refocus. I got to keep that in my
Benita Williams: Head,
Melyssa Barrett: And I hope everybody else will as well, because there are so many things that people want to do in life. And I just think we don’t spend enough time on that refueling. So thanks for giving me the visuals of all of those things. It’s like you’re going to run out of gas. That car is going to be sitting in the middle of the road. And I love the fact that you talk about routine versus regimen, because I find myself trapped in because I don’t think I love routine, but a regimen I think I can actually get into because it’s like I don’t have to commit to it for the rest of my life.
Benita Williams: There you
Melyssa Barrett: Go. But it’s like, I want to walk more and I want to do this, and I want to do that. So I love the mindset as you think about words matter. And so to me, I’m like, okay, I love the fact that you have kind of permitted me not to have to create the routine, but to deliver a regimen. So thank you for that.
Benita Williams: Absolutely.
Melyssa Barrett: This conversation has been just so awesome. So hopefully we will have you back and you can talk maybe a little bit more about some of your retreats and some of the customized self-care components. But I love the fact that you are so open and transparent about your own journey through burnout and really how you got back, because I think that’s the part. It’s like you get to burnout and it’s like, oh my gosh, what happens now? And you kind of sit in this depression state or something, I don’t know. And so I love the fact that it’s like, Hey, let me show you how to get out and you’ll be fine. So for all of you, there
Benita Williams: Is a way. There is a more excellent way. And I would also say it’s a journey. There’s not a place where you just arrive, right? It’s a journey every day. It’s something that I have to get up and be intentional about every single day. But if you do that, if you honor your body, if you set those boundaries and perimeters and you really give yourself permission, that’s it. To be intentional about your strategic pauses, your strategic rest, and reset, then your body will thank you. Your lifestyle will thank you. Your mental space, your spirit will thank you, and you’ll see things in a clearer way. You’ll find that off switch. I promise you. It’s there. You’ll find the off switch. Look, I found an off switch, right?
Melyssa Barrett: So now I just got to figure out when it’s going to come back on. There you go.
I love it. I love it. Well, thank you so much for joining me. I mean, I know we could go on and on, and sometimes bite sizes are better for people to digest, so I like to try to leave them with something. And then as we start a new year, this is a perfect time for us to go through the process of refueling, reframing, and refocusing our purpose so that we can create some destination. There we go. I got whole new language already. That’s it. Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Benita. It’s been a pleasure. I look forward to continuing our wonderful friendship, and when I’m out east next time, we are going to definitely connect.
Benita Williams: Let’s do it.
Melyssa Barrett: Already
Benita Williams: Done. Yeah.
Melyssa Barrett: All right. Perfect. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for joining me on the Jali Podcast. Please subscribe so you won’t miss an episode. See you next week.