Self-love is not merely a luxury but a necessity for our well-being. It involves acknowledging our worth, embracing our strengths, and forgiving our flaws. By practicing self-compassion and self-care, we create a solid foundation for personal growth and resilience. In a world filled with obstacles and challenges, how can we carve out time for self-love amidst our busy lives?
In this episode, I have an interesting conversation with Arliss Dudley-Cash, a highly esteemed business consultant and self-love coach. Join us today as we delve into Arliss’s remarkable personal journey and explore the profound significance of cultivating self-love, not only within the realm of business but also as individuals. With a background in neuroscience, Arliss founded Soullutions to guide clients toward personal growth, utilizing self-love and self-acceptance as catalysts for success.
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Empowering Yourself for a Life You Love with Arliss Dudley-Cash
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you selling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about a situation that you may find yourself in or may already be in and that’s a situation that you have already kind of made some progress or started taking some action toward your goals, you figured out what you want to do, but now you need to take account for a couple of things. First of all, how you maintain that balance, how you maintain that balance of taking care of yourself while you’re, say, potentially working a full-time job but also trying to promote a business or taking on two or three pursuits, trying a whole bunch of things, it can be stressful, it can be a lot, and also how you’re controlling your mindset because nothing’s going to really work that well if you don’t have a positive mindset and there’s plenty of people talking quite a bit about how the information you consume into your brain and the messages you tell yourself, what you believe about yourself eventually becomes the results of whatever pursuit you’re trying to take on. And this is where my guest today, Arliss Dudley-Cash, and her business, Soullutions, comes into play.
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Arliss, welcome to the program.
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me here today. It’s such an honor.
Well, thank you so much for joining. And, first of all, I want to ask you, Soullutions, just give us a little overview of what the whole thing is all about.
You know, I had a dream and this is the business name that came to me and, really, it’s the marrying of the business pursuits that we’re all looking at, and it could be in business but it could be in life, those solutions that we’re looking to achieve or those goals that we’re looking to achieve, and really bringing a soulful approach to that, tapping into our humanness and what we need for the caring and feeding of us as humans on this planet as we go through the process of accomplishing our goals.
So, do you think that the business world tends to ignore the human soul, the human needs and focus only on things such as output, things such as numbers and metrics?
Absolutely. I think that that is a huge part of our societal structure and a huge part of the way that business is structured. And other professions as well. This is not just in business, it just is in business as well.
Yeah.
And I think that it’s kind of a short-sighted approach to having success in business because the research shows that the more that we look more holistically at what we need as humans to be successful, the more successful we are.
Yeah, that makes sense, and you showing the research, is this all recent research or would someone 20 years ago have had any reason to be aware of this idea that if we take care of our human needs, our business is also going to be better?
So, 20 years ago, there was some research out there. Most of the research that is discussed now is very recent, like in the last five to ten years, but if you are looking for later research, I highly recommend Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn’s research. She did biochemical research and she won the Nobel Prize in biochemistry and she showed that our cells are listening to us, so what we say in our heads about ourselves or our businesses or about our world, and they actually have a response to what they hear. If they hear something negative, it can impact our telomeres and if it hears something positive, it can positively impact our telomeres. Now, that doesn’t have a specific relation to business but it does talk about our resiliency as humans to live long and healthy lives, which is what we need to be doing in order to function in our business.
So when you talk about living a long and healthy life but also a productive life, and so could you be saying some things to your cells, like, “I am a productive person,” “I am competent at doing X, Y, Z tasks. I am a person that people are gonna like when I try to put myself out there,” will that have an impact as well?
Absolutely.
So the more that we positively speak to ourselves about our efforts or our belief in ourselves or our business, the more likely that we are going to see that in our reality. Click To TweetAnd one of the reasons why is because we have a pathway in our brain, it’s called the frontal striatal pathway, and it has shown that the more positively we are to ourselves, we can actually strengthen that pathway. We can make it stronger, actually thicker and more active, and that’s one of the pathways that we use to link to the part of our brain that is important for decision making. So, if we make that pathway stronger by being kind to ourselves in the process of doing business, we are more likely to make better decisions in our business.
And does this include the talk we get from people around us because there’s the self-talk and then there’s also the environment, such as what content we’re consuming, whether we’re reading online or reading newspapers or what people we’re around, which one’s a bigger impact on our cells are receiving information, whether it’s positive or negative?
The environment that we’re in and what we’re consuming dictates what we normalize, and so when we are around people that speak negatively about themselves or others, if we consume media that is negative or traumatic in some way to us, if we are in situations that are not supportive, we normalize that and then that influences our internal environment, because what we’ve normalized in our consumption, we then make part of our internal environment. So it is my belief that we come into this world kind to ourselves and then we normalize this negative interaction that we see, it could be from the adults in our lives or from media or things like that, and that impacts whether we’re kind or not to ourselves inside our own minds.
Now, here’s a random observation that I sometimes make and I admit to having absolutely no statistical basis behind it so forgive me if I’m just way out of left field but, sometimes, I feel like when I interact with people, like little kids, age four, five, six, even seven and eight, they tend to be kind to themselves and kind to each other until the childish “I didn’t get what I want” crying thing comes about, but, usually, the default reaction is that, but then teenagers tend to be quite critical of themselves, critical of each other, there’s always this anxiety about who’s popular, who’s not. What kind of leads to some of that? That feels to me like somewhat where the origin of this like “I’m not being kind of myself” may come from in a lot of people’s lives.
Yeah, and this is just going to be from my observation too, I don’t necessarily have a study to cite, although one kind of comes to mind, but I do see that younger children are kinder to themselves and kinder to others so they’re much more likely to be supportive and they’re very resilient. So, if something negative happens in their world, they bounce back from it, just like if you see a kid running down a hallway and they fall down, a lot of times, they’ll pop right back up and keep running. Whereas if I was running down a hallway and fell down, I would not pop up that fast. So, they’re definitely more resilient and it doesn’t occur to them to make it a problem for themselves because they’re in pursuit of whatever they’re in pursuit of. I think then, as we age and get into our teenage years, we’re exposed to more of the societal norms, which leads to pressure to meet those societal norms, whether they’re realistic or not. And I think that in that age, we don’t have the ability to really evaluate if something is realistic or not, we just see it as what it is and then we hold ourselves up against that. And, typically, societal norms are actually not very achievable by most people, if any people, and so that creates that negative environment.
What we do know is that the more that we normalize something and the more that we believe something is true of us, it alters our perception of reality to be that. Click To TweetSo, the biggest impactful study that I’ve read, it was a study done with patients who were suffering from anorexia, extreme anorexia, and, obviously, they were very small individuals at that point because of their disease process but they had told themselves that they were huge and big and fat and all these things for so long that they would literally walk up to doors and turn sideways for fear that they wouldn’t fit through the door. Even though they obviously physically could fit through the door, they had altered their perception of reality so much and that had become their reality is that they were too big to fit through the door. If people in those circumstances can do it in that extreme form, obviously, we’re doing that sort of thing all the time in small ways and so we just have to be really conscious of it.
Yeah. It reminds me of what people say to themselves even around like, “I’m a likeable person,” or, “Oh, I’m a terrible person,” and those types of things and then that can somehow, I know that there’s certain neurodynamics as well as social dynamics around impact eventually creates your result because you act accordingly and then when you act accordingly, the result becomes accordingly. The way people respond to you is based on the energy you’re giving out.
Absolutely, absolutely, and the more that we are kind to ourselves and outwardly kind to ourselves, the more we influence those around us to be kinder to themselves too.
Oh, nice. What do you suggest people do with those people in their lives that are not kind to themselves and they tend to be the same people who are not being kind to others as well?
Well, I think it starts as an inside job first, right? So we have to start practicing being kind to ourselves and this is a little bit harder than most people think it is. I do nuts and bolts of business with some of my clients and, on occasion, I teach a class on self-love because, to me, the two are integrated so much. In my classes on self-love, I ask my clients to look at themselves in the mirror, and to say, “I love you.” Most people are not capable of even looking at themselves in the eyes in the mirror, let alone saying a nice thing to themselves. I say if you want to impact the world around you, start with self. Get really comfortable being kind to yourself. Notice when you’re having a negative thought about yourself or notice when you’re saying something negative to other people about yourself and switch it to at least neutral first, because going to kind might be a challenge, right? And it’s okay. We can at least start to notice and switch it to neutral. If you’re to the place where you’re pretty kind to yourself and you’re still around people that aren’t kind to themselves or other people, then it’s time to start working on boundaries around what you’re willing to accept and will support you in your life.
And so it sounds like what you’re saying is that when it comes to any of our pursuits, whether it be business or just jobs, regular career, we need to be kind to ourselves first before we expect the outward, like the order of operations is definitely work on yourself, work on your own self-talk, work on your environment and how that impacts your own self-talk, and then go out there and do your business and work on how you’re acting, how you’re promoting your business and all that stuff.
Yeah, and I think they work hand in hand. Our businesses can be really great tools to help us be kind to ourselves. So when you accomplish a goal in your business and you choose to celebrate it, you are doing two things. One, you are strengthening that frontal striatal pathway. You’re strengthening your self-esteem and your belief in yourself, but, two, you’re also increasing your motivation in your business because you are giving your brain that reward for doing the work. So, we can work on being kinder to ourselves and our business simultaneously and they’re mutually beneficial.
They can be parallel processes as opposed to you need to do all this self-work and then work on how you’re presenting yourself outwardly.
Absolutely. And I think it actually works best as a parallel process because it allows people to really feel in to being authentic in their business and what that looks like as they’re going through the process.
And do you think that people who are kinder to themselves are naturally kinder to others? Does it naturally flow about in that direction or are they two separate processes as well?
It absolutely flows in that direction. So Dr. Kristin Neff has done a lot of research on self-compassion and compassion and she shows in her research that people that work on their self-compassion naturally become more compassionate to others and more empathetic towards others. Self-kindness is one of the three aspects to growing self-compassion and so, as we become kinder to ourselves, we are naturally becoming kinder to others.
And if someone’s trying to be kinder to themselves and there’s some environmental factors, what do you think would be the three worst environmental factors that people encounter today? Because there are a lot of people who are, as you talk about the norms and the pressure, not kind to themselves.
I would say negative social media, so social media that is causing people to compare themselves or change themselves in a way that’s not a healthy direction for them or is just negative, in general, social media that’s cutting people down or using negative motivation or is using dark humor or things like that. So, I think that that’s number one. Number two, I would say, is like TV shows and movies that do the same thing. So, I know what it feels like if I end up in a movie that is really negative and how I feel about my life or myself or just the world in general after I’m leaving that movie versus attending a movie that’s really uplifting and positive and supportive. And we have to know what that is for ourselves. It may not be the same for each person, right? So I might say, “Hey, I’m not going to watch the movie Inception,” because of some negativities that happened within me, because of my experience in this life, not because of the actual movie, right? I am going to choose to watch Eat, Pray, Love, like that’s a positive supportive movie for me. Now, somebody might watch the movie Eat, Pray, Love and feel like it’s negative for them and that’s great. We have to know individually what works for us. And then I think that the third one is like the closest people to us. And this brings in the boundaries part. So boundaries are not about impacting the way that other people act, it’s really about being clear about what’s okay as far as behavior around us as individuals. And so, if we have people in our lives that are actively cutting us down, being negative towards us, judging us, those types of things, it might be time to either evaluate, “Do I want to go through the process of trying to set boundaries with this person and see if they’re able to uphold my boundaries or is it time to uninvite them to the party of my life?”
Yeah, or switch what the relationship looks like.
Yes, or switch what the relationship looks like and create some change in that way.
Yeah. I have an interesting story a little bit with some of those, especially some TV shows and movies that before I started on some of this self-talk, self-love journey, I did self-love seminar myself I think a year and a half ago, maybe even closer to two years ago and then I’ve kind of been somewhat on that journey for several years even before that, before starting this podcast which probably would not have happened if it weren’t for that, and what I’ve noticed is that some of the same shows or movies that, say, ten, fifteen years ago, I would have loved and eaten up, I suddenly realized, wait a second, this movie is like just making light about something about society that’s just really destructive and I just don’t like it anymore.
Absolutely. And I think that that’s one thing that we kind of have to realize too is our brain trains us to believe that the way that we feel or the things that we believe or the experience of our life is going to be the same from this moment on, whatever this moment is, so our brain is not trained to think about the fact that we are going to change as people, that we may change in our belief systems, we may change in the way that we see the world, we may change in how we operate in the world. The truth is is that we are not the same people that we were a week ago, a month ago, two years ago, ten years ago. We have changed in some way, and that might be really positive change that we feel good about or it might be not so positive change and maybe we want to change back. Who knows, right?
And so the simplified version of the statement that people often make is the phrase “Thought creates form,” the idea that what’s going to happen in your life is going to be an artifact of what you’re thinking about and if you think you’re going to fail, likely, you’re going to fail because you’re going to find ways to validate that, and if you think you’re succeeding, you’re likely more likely to succeed. Do you generally subscribe to that or…?
Absolutely. Our brain is looking for evidence to support the beliefs that we have.
So, if we want a different outcome in our lives or businesses, we have to choose to believe that a different outcome is possible. Click To TweetAnd that can be a big stretch for people. I do believe that as we believe, we are experiencing in our lives, and science proves this. I mean, the study that I talked about with the anorexia patients walking up the doors and turning sideways to fit through the doors because they feel like they’re so massive, they couldn’t possibly fit, that is a direct response to believing something and then having that be their reality. I think that we all have to be really mindful of what we are choosing to believe and whether or not we are conscious of it, it is a choice.
Just to think about the idea that someone who’s probably skinnier than 95 percent of all people out there but really believes that and, therefore, she’s living that life that’s not really reflective of what people are seeing or not even reflecting of what other potential options even are.
Absolutely, but I experienced this in business owners all the time. So I have business owners that come to me and they’re like, “My business is wildly successful, it’s so organized, everything’s working really well,” and then I find out that they haven’t hit their sales goals in six months and they haven’t been able to pay themselves in over a year and things like that. And then I have people that come to me and they’re like, “Ugh, this is a terrible business, I wanna walk away, I want it to be done,” and then I show them, I’m like, “Actually, it’s really successful. You’re doing a great job. You’re killing it.” Let’s just change a few things and have you work on being supportive of yourself and you’ll feel differently about your business. So we just have to realize that we could be altering our version of reality on both sides of the spectrum and really getting real with ourselves about what’s going on and being kind with ourselves through that process, whether we discover that things are going really well or they’re not, being kind and compassionate to ourselves gives us the resiliency to move forward.
So you talked about two scenarios, one where your self-belief is way lower than where things are, things are going way better than that, and it sounds like the response to that is kind of the self-talk and self-love, but what about the people who believe they’re doing really well and then you find out that things are not going as well as they thought? And I think this can apply to business, relationships, your own fitness, your health, your mental health, anything else as well.
It’s still self-love and self-compassion. Typically, people are on that side of the spectrum because they so want to look successful. They so want to be successful based on societal norms or based on other people’s view of them and it’s still going to be a process of loving their self through the realization that something needs to shift or change or that things are not as they thought it was. I’d been on both sides of the spectrum in my business before, I think most people have, where I just want to believe things are going so well because I’ve put in so much effort that it has to be instead of looking at the reality that, hey, this might be going well but these other aspects of my business is challenged and I need to do the work to make this better or bring somebody in for help or do something differently. Loving myself through that process is actually far harder than when we find out that things are going better than we thought they were.
Yeah, that sounds like a much bigger challenge and I can imagine when talking about all those different dimensions of life, whether it be your business, your relationships, your whatever financial situation, your mental, your physical health, we’re all going to experience at some point in our lives in one of those dimensions a situation where we realize, “Hey, this problem is a much bigger problem than I thought, while I’m in a much worse state, I have much more work to do than I thought I needed to do in order to feel better, be in a better spot,” and so that’s going to be one of the more challenging times in life, probably.
Absolutely. And, unfortunately, most people set goals that are completely unrealistic, which leads them to feeling like they ultimately fail when they have actually made a lot of progress.
I’m guessing that something that you experience a lot with your clients is, first of all, whether or not someone is in a situation I think a lot of people end up finding themselves in where they set unrealistic goals but they think that those goals are like what they need to do in order to even feel some sort of self-worth, valuable type of person.
Absolutely. And the truth is is that we’re worthy whether we do anything or not because we’re humans. Human beings are worthy of love and respect and kindness whether they are successful in business or life or not. We don’t have to prove our worthiness as humans, we are worthy.
And how much of it is also people asserting their own definition of success? Because we have this prevailing societal narrative that success means X, Y, Z, get your advanced degree, get the good job, move up a couple steps, get the raise, get the house with a 2.6 kids and 1.7 dogs and everything else.
Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s really important for us to all think about what would success look like for us individually? What is our ultimate goal? And this can be a really huge guiding light for each one of us. I’ve thought a lot about this in my own life. My ultimate goal is to be contributing to a world where gentleness, kindness, and authenticity become the norm. So, I use that as my guiding light and when I have opportunities or different things that come up as options, I hold that up to my overall goal and, if it aligns with that overall goal, then it becomes a possible yes. If it doesn’t align to that goal, then it’s an easy no.
I do want to touch on, first of all, your story yourself, like what inspired you to start Soullutions? And I hope I’m not over emphasizing the two Ls there as I’m saying it, but, yeah, what’s your background, what inspired you to do this and what motivation brought you to want to have this particular impact?
I was the baby of the family and I had a lot of expectation on me. Now, I know that they were doing it from a place of love. They wanted the best for me. I don’t think it was malicious at all and I knew from like the age of six that I was going to be a doctor, a lawyer, dentist someday, and, so, going to college and getting an upper level degree was required of me. I went through undergraduate and forensic science, I then got a job as a deputy coroner and realized that my pigtails and pink scrubs were probably not a great fit for death investigation, let alone my bright, shiny personality. I thought that I would always be in sciences so I entered a PhD program in neuroscience at the University of Iowa, and three and a half years into it, my health rapidly declined and I was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition and I was told that I probably only had a year to live and that I should leave the program and I should go to live with my parents and that’s what I did. So, I went and I lived with my parents in Hawaii and I decided not to give up and I had some really great doctors, I had a couple of major surgeries, and I realized, while I was going through this process, that genetic condition that I was diagnosed with is not a terminal condition but I had literally almost overworked myself to death trying to meet this societal expectation and I was working 90 hours a week and playing on softball teams and I had gotten married and all of these things that I thought was expected of me and I had run my health into the ground. And I realized in that moment that not only did I have to work to fix the health side of things, I had to start being kinder and gentler to myself or I wasn’t going to survive. Because even if I did fix the health part, I would just be running myself into the ground again as soon as I could if I didn’t fix that part too. And so if I wanted to have a life, I had to figure out a different way to do it. And practicing self-love and self-compassion and kindness and gentleness was really my only option to continue to have a full life and it’s something that I still work on every single day. I kind of tricked into business. I had an accidental business in jewelry design and when I got hired into a corporate company and I was a director of operations for a couple of years and then, after that, I created Soullutions because I saw business owners around me falling for hustle culture, falling for that message that they had to do more and do more and do more and do more, and seeing them taken out of the game. Most of the time when I see business owners taken out of the game, it’s either because of their physical health or their mental health, it’s not because their business is unsuccessful. Very rarely have I seen that. And so I wanted to support business owners be able to be successful in their business, have the lifestyle that they’re looking to have while also taking care of themselves along the way.
Yeah. I believe the Japanese actually have a term, I don’t remember what it is, you might, you’re a little closer in Hawaii, that literally means someone worked themselves to death.
Yeah. I don’t know the term either but, yeah, absolutely, and that’s what I almost did and I don’t want that to happen to anybody else.
People like to look at problems and they like to point the finger elsewhere and I think what some Americans do is they’ll say, “Oh, Japan has that problem. That’s an over there problem.” Is that a problem that like is more common in some of our, especially some of our maybe big city hustle cultures than we realize?
Oh, absolutely. And it’s not just business owners, it’s people in corporate jobs too. And a big part of that is just ignoring our bodies altogether, so not eating throughout the day, not drinking enough water, not using the restroom. I mean, I’m talking about basics. I ask my clients what are the basics for the care and feeding of Arliss, right? What are the basics for the care and feeding? What needs to be happening in order for you to actually take care of yourself so that you don’t end up having a health crash because your immune system is shot or you end up with diabetes because you’re eating huge meals at night but not the rest of the day or whatever it is, like how do you take care of yourself to keep yourself in the game of life? And then, once you figure that out, make it nonnegotiable with yourself.
So, one of the things that I commonly do, despite all my pursuits, is I’ll go for bike rides in the middle of the day. I love that for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s physical exercise. You get some sun. People talk a lot about social media and Internet addiction. Well, when your hands are on those handlebars, you can’t pick up your phone, you can’t put random bits of information into your brain for no reason and most of it is like you have no control over it and it does tend to be like negative, divisive, more often than positive. And so you’re saying that if someone discovers something along those lines in their lives, like this thing really makes me a better person, whether it be cooking a nice meal, which helps you be healthier, I’m talking a little bit more advanced than just like you have to eat, someone will say, “Well, I’m actually gonna cook a meal, I’m gonna cut up vegetables, I’m gonna boil some pasta, I’m gonna do something awesome like that,” that you make a couple things like that nonnegotiable that helps whether it be your physical or your mental health.
In the morning, I meditate and I do Pilates and, in the afternoon, most afternoons, I go swimming. When I’m in a pool, I can’t look at my phone. I wear a smartwatch because I like to track my physical exercise to make sure that I’m hitting my goal in order to keep my body strong because I have such a sedentary life, being a coach and consultant, I’m on the computer a lot, but I don’t actually have any of my notifications go into my watch ever because it doesn’t support me letting go of that, letting go of work and letting go of those different things that are coming in. When I’m swimming or when I’m spending time with my partner or when I’m at dinner with friends, I can still wear my watch and I’m not distracted. I know that we often get smartwatches so that we can have those notifications on the go. One of the things that I talked to my clients about is if you really need notifications during certain times, set it to take notifications during certain times and then have it turned off so that when you’re not on work time, you actually have a break.
Yeah, and you’re not doing a whole different type of work. With some people, I’ve even compared people maintaining their Instagram profiles to like just another type of work that now you’re doing.
Absolutely. And I think that one of the things that a lot of people, myself included, on occasion, kind of trick ourselves into is saying, “Well, if I’m looking on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook or whatever it is, I’m either taking downtime or I’m doing research,” and, unfortunately, those are both myths. It’s not research. If you really wanted to do research on how to promote your business, you could do research in a lot of other ways that would help you far more than looking at other people’s Instagrams or TikToks. It’s not downtime for your brain. It is work time for your brain, whether you feel like it is or not. If you really want to take some downtime, we need to unplug.
So, I’m originally from New York so I have some struggles with unplugging and I’m sure a lot of people have that situation as well. What does giving your brain downtime really look like? And what do we, some of us that have that so ingrained in our heads, need to do to feel comfortable with the idea of just giving our mind some downtime?
Well, I think that we should start small, and this is true for everything. If you’re looking to do something new in your life, whether it’s be kinder to yourself or unplug, start small.
Start with something that doesn’t feel terrifying. Start with something that you can be consistent with. Click To TweetConsistency is more impactful at being successful on achieving a goal than doing something huge and then not wanting to have anything to do with it for like a month. So I tell my clients, “Hey, set a two-minute alarm and go look at a window.”
Yeah.
Start small, start with something that’s achievable, that feels comfortable for you, and then it can be bigger later.
Yeah, because you can’t go from like zero to 100 right away with respect to anything, just suddenly flip a switch and, suddenly, I’m going to be a different person because habits are hard to break and there’s this like kind of mental training almost that we have upon ourselves.
Yeah. So if you’re somebody that’s plugged in all the time and you want to start practicing being unplugged, set a two-minute alarm, sit and breathe and count your breaths or look out the window. Spend some time outside walking or biking or swimming. Use some kind of meditation that you want to do. Now, I think that turning on a little ambient noise can help our brain get a little bit more comfortable with fully unplugging without being fully unplugged and still allow us to have some of that downtime.
And, similarly, like some of those meditation apps like Headspace, where, obviously, you have a guide through the app that’s going through the experience as opposed to like the pure meditation where you’re just sitting there can also be a good transition.
Absolutely. Research shows that it just takes two minutes of doing mindfulness meditation or mindfulness practice, which is just being aware in the present moment without judgment, to have the full physiological effect. So, listening to something like Headspace or Calm or Insight Timer or looking out the window or using classical music in the background while you close your eyes for a period of time, all of that are really great first options.
And so one last thing I really want to cover here is where our society is headed, where the trends are, because I know you’re hoping to have an impact to help people be more gracious to themselves, prevent people from working themselves to death, and I’m sure someone out there will let me know what that Japanese term is, do you see anything, any corner being turned with regards to what people refer to as hustle culture?
I do. One thing that I love about the time that we’re living in is that research is kind of catching up to these concepts and being able to actually see how it impacts us physiologically when we practice self-kindness or compassion or take a break in the day or things like that. Research is also showing us the direct impact on the bottom line when we do these things. And because research is coming out in this area and more and more focus is going on this area, it’s pretty hard to ignore so I do see this shift happening. I would love to see it happening faster, and things take time. And so I do see us going in this direction and I think that it’s really an exciting time and I can’t wait to see where we are in like 20, 30 years.
Now, I know that there are some people that are worried that we’re going to take it a little bit too far, and I’m not going to comment on where that worry it comes from, maybe some people really liked what I call the old school work culture where people would get there religiously at eight every morning and be worried if they leave before five and stay late to make sure they don’t get fired, and, obviously, I really hope that’s over because that was so counterproductive, but is there a danger of going too far to the other extreme, away from hustle culture where people are just not doing anything that’s meaningful, I don’t want to use the word lazy but you know what I mean, they’re being like non-motivated?
It’s going to get worse for a while, going through a period of time where people are so burned out that now that they are having the option to do less, they just want to do nothing. I think that that is a response to how negative the environment has been for them or how hard they have worked themselves for so long and I think it should be expected. So just like when somebody runs a marathon, they then have some period of time where they have to recoup and they don’t run or they run very little in order to then work back up to running a marathon. Now, we are trying to move a culture that was telling everybody that running a marathon was absolutely required. In fact, it was an ultramarathon, and now we’re trying to get people to be like, actually, it’s better if everyone consistently runs a 10K because then you don’t have to recover. You could run a 10K every day, like if you train well enough and not really feel much effect and be fine. So, I think that we’re gonna go through a period of time where people aren’t going to want to do anything and we’re already experiencing that. We see it in the news headlines and we see — I see it in my clients. People don’t want to do anything. I think that that’s a normal response to this transition that we’re seeing. What I am seeing, though, is that when I’m working with people and they’re starting to care for themselves more and they’re starting to be kinder to themselves and practice self-compassion, they are going to a place where they feel inspired and passionate again in their lives to be doing things that are worthwhile. And that’s exciting. And I think that, eventually, our society will get there.
So, what you’re saying is that when people observe someone that’s really not doing anything, whatever version of it it is, it’s really probably just a response because, I mean, some people have been in that culture for 20, 30, even 40 years, and so internalized ideas that it’s kind of weird even to think about the world that I first entered the workforce in back in 2007, 2008, that that was considered normal and now realizing 15 years from now that that was actually a really toxic set of expectations that were normalized at the time and that was like the tail end of like 30 years of that.
Yeah. And we have examples of where companies have released a lot of this toxic culture and created a new type of culture for their business. Google, for instance. I’m not saying that they’re the hallmark for this but they were definitely on the forefront of making this change. And it’s not like Google has collapsed. It’s not as though their employees just aren’t doing anything. It’s not like they’re not productive and not successful and not profitable. In fact, the more that they’ve released this toxicity and the bigger the changes that they’ve made, the more successful they have become. So, I do think that there is going to be that burnout period for a lot of people where they’re just like, “Ugh, I don’t wanna have anything to do with anything,” for a while and I think it’s normal but I think that the more that people are able to take care of themselves and are in a positive culture, the more inspired they will be to give back, because, as humans, that’s just typically who we are.
Maybe the people who are responding to the changes don’t necessarily think that they were necessary but the experience of some of these people and you know it firsthand, when you overcame that, when your body finally told you it’s time to stop working yourself to death pretty much, did you have a period where you had to just take it easy for a few months or even a year?
I was pretty challenged for about three years.
Yeah.
And I had a lot of medical stuff going on too but I was pretty challenged for about three years. I think that one of the things that we kind of have to work on individually too is just because we were treated some way or just because we had specific expectations of us as we were growing up or as we were entering the workforce or things like that does not mean that we have to perpetuate that toxicity. We could choose something different. We can choose to treat other people better than we were treated.
Well, it’s kind of weird because you do see that sometimes with the whole like, “I had to endure 10 years of fetching coffee for people just because they’re higher up and so you think you can come in and just get there right away?” Well, yeah, maybe we are moving to a better world and that’s a hopeful sign. That’s something that I’m really hopeful about too because we got to take care of ourselves too. I think we’ve, for a long time, seen the decline in the American community that’s been really detrimental to mental health as well. It’s like we don’t necessarily make time for just — some of the most important human experiences I believe are just friends sharing experiences together or community sharing experiences together, even if you’re all just going to, say, ride on a boat for a few hours or something like that.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Well, Arliss, thank you so much for joining us today on Action’s Antidotes, sharing the real depths of your story as well as the real depths of some other stories that you’re referencing here because these are all real, meaningful human experiences where people really are suffering from some of these perceptions that we have about ourselves, whether it be like you have to be this skinny or you have to work this many hours, you have to achieve this particular milestone in order to really be a worthwhile human being, and I love everything you’re doing for all your clients as well as trying to have a general societal impact and all these moves that we are needing to make toward self-love is the kind of broad term we can say to describe all of it.
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. Such an honor and I’m really grateful for what you’re doing in the world.
Well, thank you so much. I’m really appreciative. And I’m also really appreciative of everyone out there listening today. And just so you know, this is my 99th episode and so the next episode that comes out, number 100, is going to be a little bit of a switcheroo because, for episode 100, I’m going to have one of my previous podcast guests interview me about my pursuits, how I started this as well as my more recent endeavors so I encourage you to tune back in or check back in some of these other older episodes because we have so many amazing people like this in the world and the more amazing people like this that we see that are doing what we need to do to create a more rich human experience where we believe in ourselves, the more we can really look forward and believe in the future and part of that is stepping away from that doom and gloom social media stuff that we were talking about, and the news too, but, yeah.
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About Arliss Dudley-Cash
#1 International Best-Selling Author, Business Consultant, and TV Show Host Arliss Dudley-Cash MA, MBA is an inspirational speaker and soulful business movement leader. With a background in business, neuroscience, and forensics her career expands over several industries including operations management, research scientist, and death investigation. Arliss unites this eclectic background with her personal journey to overcome the odds and survive a terminal diagnosis.
Her awarding winning presentations include topics on extreme self-love and mindful business practices. Arliss is a big believer in the magic of our individual stories and the power of storytelling to affect positive change in this world. Through her company, Soullutions LLC, she is passionate about helping her clients to become powerful, joyful, authentic business owners experiencing freedom, having a lot more fun in their business, and experiencing the success of their dreams. Arliss’s dream is for each of us to become the loves of our lives!