My Story, Spark, & Strategies

Episode summary:

• [00:01:14] Getting to Know, Evelyn Pacitti
• [00:04:38] Hobbies
• [00:07:55] Evelyn’s Burnout Story & Growth
• [00:13:21] The Secret, Make it Quantifiable
• [00:20:11] Defining Wellness Metrics
• [00:26:28] Purple Heels and moving to Europe
• [00:29:21] Crocheting as a Coping Mechanism
• [00:31:47] Why did I start the podcast, Engineering Serenity?
• [00:38:49] What is a spark? (my definition)
• [00:41:36] My biggest take-away from doing the podcast
• [00:44:23] Building Boundaries

• [00:49:15] Final Five Questions
• [00:49:37] Definition of Serenity
• [00:51:33] Masterful Skill
• [00:52:39] Recharge Method
• [00:54:06] Geeking Out
• [00:55:52] Ideal Day
• [00:58:07] Erica’s Wrap Up

Listen to the full episode

Resources

• Come hang out with me during a FREE Energetic Tune-Up Session

• Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) favorites:
• Nick Milo of Linking your Thinking
• Tiago Forte of Building a Second Brain

transcript

transcript created by Castmagic AI, may include errors

Evelyn Pacitti [00:00:00]:
I always had the impression that to heal your wellness, to have a full energetic filled life, you have to work for yourself. You have to be rewriting the rules. You have to have this strong meditation practice, but ultimately, very little changed in my life on a day to day basis. It really was a mindset shift and an understanding of what are boundaries. How do you use them? What are my strengths? And how do I tune and design my life to honor all of those signals? Be aware of them and then honor also the dreams that I’m moving into. Are you ready to reclaim your life from exhaustion and expand the possibilities of what life can be? If so, I’m your guide, Emma Pacitti, work life geek and engineer turned resiliency coach on a mission to redefine how we work, live, and utilize our energy. Each episode, I dig deep with my guests as they share their stories, spark, and strategies for developing our own unique work life blend. This is Engineering Serenity.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:01:05]:
Episode 10, stories, spark, and strategies with me, Evelyn Pacitti, and special guest host, Erica Lutz.

Erica Lutes [00:01:14]:
Hello. I’m so excited to be here. I am Erica, a long time fan of your, amazing podcast. And I think that’s a fun way to start is, the way that you ask other people to introduce themselves, and we’ll see how you do in your own questions. Would love to hear your full name and your pronouns.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:01:32]:
I’m Evelyn Pacitti, and my pronouns are she/her.

Erica Lutes [00:01:35]:
And give us your age ish. It doesn’t have to be your actual age, just ish.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:01:40]:
I am 41. I had a birthday last week, and I’m very much looking forward to 42, the answer to the ultimate question.

Erica Lutes [00:01:48]:
Well, very happy birthday, and we’re so happy you are here today on your own show. Can you tell us a little bit about your career and your industry?

Evelyn Pacitti [00:01:57]:
I work in the wellness industry. I’m a well-being systems architect.

Erica Lutes [00:02:02]:
And how many hours a week do you say that you work?

Evelyn Pacitti [00:02:06]:
I probably work about 25 a week, and those are the ones that I track. The constantly thinking and buzzing and sketching in the note pads and notebooks don’t get counted.

Erica Lutes [00:02:18]:
We’re gonna come back to this question in a different form in a little bit, but, if you just had to say it outright, do you like your career?

Evelyn Pacitti [00:02:26]:
Yes.

Erica Lutes [00:02:27]:
And on the scale of 1 to 10, how would you describe your work life balance today?

Evelyn Pacitti [00:02:35]:
I would say it is an 8, but it feels very life heavy. I’m thinking about my work all the time, but I feel like if my work was more solidly grounded, that would be helpful.

Erica Lutes [00:02:49]:
What do you mean by solidly grounded?

Evelyn Pacitti [00:02:52]:
Because I’m still in this growth and experimental phase and that kind of stuff, sometimes it feels really floaty. What am I doing today? What am I working on next? Is this working? Is there traction here? Is this experiment viable? These sort of things. When I had the day job, did I know that I go in, you execute, you know what you expect, you know what’s coming in and out. And I mean, I do not regret for a moment leaving engineering 2 years ago. This is the best. I love it. I’m enjoying it. But a little more predictability would be helpful.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:03:27]:
I feel like right now. Mhmm.

Erica Lutes [00:03:30]:
Well, just a few more getting to know you questions and then we’ll delve right into these, issues. Where do you live, and what culture were you raised in?

Evelyn Pacitti [00:03:40]:
I’m born and raised American, North West Pennsylvania. Yeah. Tool and Die Industry, middle of nowhere, small town industrial America, ultimately. And 12 years ago, I moved to the Netherlands, and I am married to a fabulous Franco Italian man who blows my mind with culture and experiences all the time.

Erica Lutes [00:04:03]:
Oh, wow. That is like a hot lot of, cultures and languages and going from, what I will go ahead and humbly call the middle of nowhere America to, living in a country where neither you or your husband is from. It sounds like there’s a lot of excitement, that I can’t wait to hear a little bit more about. If you had to describe your household, how would you, define it?

Evelyn Pacitti [00:04:26]:
I’m married. I have one kid who’s 4. Well We live in a city.

Erica Lutes [00:04:30]:
And live in a city. Any hobbies apart from the motherhood and this wellness, coaching?

Evelyn Pacitti [00:04:38]:
So I am terrible at hobbies to tell you the perfectly honest truth. When I burnt out and I said, what am I supposed to do if I don’t work? They said, go work on your hobbies. I’m like, I’m sorry. I don’t have hobbies. I work and I survive. And still to this day, even with, yeah, trying to find that balance, I still find that a lot of the hobbies that I do still keep my mind very engaged. I like to play video games and I’m, like, reading and researching, but I’m always reading and researching, like, other topics that I’m always, like, very actively engaged. So I’m in the process of finding more hobbies that are more physical and analog based.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:05:13]:
During my burnout, I did quite a bit of crochet. That was my analog escape, but I haven’t done it in years. I really wanna do obstacle races again because the last one I did way back in 2,012, I laughed hysterically through the entire 7 kilometer mud race. And I was like, I feel like this should be back on my radar. So I’m trying to experiment more with what does a hobby mean for me. I love planting seeds, but anything after the seed planting process is usually a debacle. Maybe I’ll actually grow something this year. So this is a year of stepping more into mining experiments outside of doing more research, playing with personal knowledge management systems, thinking about automations or business design or studying marketing something outside of playing with business ideas.

Erica Lutes [00:05:59]:
That’s so interesting that, playing video games and reading isn’t considered a hobby in your own mind. So I feel like it’s also the way you define your own hobbies. That’s very interesting. Yeah. That it somehow it has to be some like bubblegum romance novel for it to consider for it to be a hobby for reading that, like reading analytical books can’t be enough. So it’s very interesting feedback, aren’t you?

Evelyn Pacitti [00:06:18]:
It just feels like it’s always the same level of mental engagement. And it’s okay. How do I shift that in a way where I’m, like, engaged in something else? How do I start to play with those energy modes a bit more, and how would that impact my normal day to day energy and my recovery cycles? So that’s what I’m playing with a bit.

Erica Lutes [00:06:36]:
Interesting. Okay. So now you connect hobbies to healing and rejuvenation. That’s an interesting component of.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:06:43]:
Oh, of course. For me, that’s one of the reasons that you’re doing them because they’re like a different energy mode of operation and they’re giving you different energy. Big thing that I think about is the mixing of different energy types. There’s all sorts of research about different types of recovery, and I think there’s 7 of them in the literature. I tend to simplify it to just 3 in my life. I think there’s mental energy, physical energy, and social energy. And, like, you’re draining from 1 bucket. If you need to take a break in the other two buckets, so call a friend or go for a walk if you’ve been writing all morning.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:07:12]:
If you’ve been in nothing but meetings, maybe you need to read a book or go for a walk. If you’ve been in the garden all day, it might be time to read a book or call. How are you mixing those to do that shot of energy switching?

Erica Lutes [00:07:24]:
Makes sense. Wow. That’s a really nice way to look at it. And I never really looked at puppies in that same way, which is how do you heal yourself? And that would make sense to tie into your backgrounds. Well, you had mentioned a little bit earlier about crocheting. And if you remember what you said about it, it was that it was something that you were doing during your burnout, which is a question that you often ask a lot of your guests is, if they’ve ever experienced a burnout and if so, if they’re willing to talk about it. So That’d be the next question I would ask you is, have you ever experienced a burnout? Would you be willing to talk about it?

Evelyn Pacitti [00:07:55]:
Yes. I have had 3a half burnouts in my last 20 years. So my ultimate’s just absolutely crushing on the couch, leaving work experience happened in 2017. I was very lucky to be going through this experience in the Netherlands. It was a normal day at the office, I felt like, but I was struggling. I was in an accelerated career path in my engineering career, and what I was doing is I was keeping the same function, but I was switching out the disciplines underneath. So I have a hardware background and I switched to the software teams and was a technical lead in the software teams. And the lack of technical depth in that area, I was finding more challenging than I gave it credit for.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:08:45]:
Software engineering is a very different field with a lot of nuances that I was still trying to get my grip in. So I was it was not a comfortable position. It was really a stretching period of time in my work career. Then on top of that, I had a lot of home things happening. And I think this is one of the things that a lot of people underestimate in the burnout experience. They talk a lot about the impact of work, but they don’t, really take into consideration what’s going on and all the things that are happening in the rest of your life and how is that impacting you. Personally, we were struggling with fertility, and I was diagnosed with early onset menopause and was basically told that having a child was not really in the cards. For us, I had a sudden death of my grandmother, and we were robbed, like, broken in, took a crowbar to the wall, walked out with the safe, and drove away with the car in the garage, kind of like massive home invasion while we were visiting, family for the weekend away.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:09:45]:
And these days all culminated in about a 3 month window in my life. And I went to my manager and I said, hi. Just want to let you know I’ve got a lot going on. I feel like I’m not really showing up to the office in the full capacity that I would like to be. I wanted to just reset our expectations of what we can do and, like, how we can rebalance this. He looked at me square across the table and said, if you are not burnt out, you are extremely close. You have 30 minutes to leave the building and you do not return until you’ve talked to the company doctor. Work is no longer your concern.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:10:24]:
And just like that all of the pressure and all of the expectations to show up were gone in an instant. I negotiated with him. I can’t leave right now. I have to transfer work. I have to do this and that. I have all these things going on. He’s like, I give you 4 hours to write a transfer email, and that is it. That is all you get.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:10:44]:
It is timebox, and you do it sometime in the next couple days, but you leave now. He saved me. He saw something in me. He saw my struggle and gave me space to heal in a way that I don’t think I would have given myself permission to do. I went home with the obligations gone, and I don’t remember the next 4 to 6 weeks. I completely dropped into this moment of pure fog and exhaustion waiting for therapists to show up and things like that. And I admit right now that I got very lucky that I happened to go through this when I didn’t have children at home, when I had a very supportive husband. Dropping into that and being able to have that space to heal when you don’t have to show up for anything or anyone, I think is a very different healing experience than if you also have to show up for families, children, things like that while you’re going through your healing experience.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:11:36]:
So I then went into this cycle of healing and looking at it. And once I discovered what a burnout was, once I discovered the impact so for me, the World Health Organization has a description of what burnout is and that’s that the typical list that you see about being apathetic to your work and losing your spark and it’s really the who definition is related to work and only related to work. For me, personally, I really considered that switch from being like overly stressed and over exhausted to being burnt out to when it starts to physically manifest in your life in a major way. When your body really starts shutting down because it can no longer handle the stresses, like, you’re going down one way or another. Watch me take you down because I can help you recover because you’re clearly not getting the memo. There’s actually a graffiti wall art on my street that says, if you listen to your body when it whispers, it doesn’t need to scream. And it was in that moment that I started to heal and I started to recover, and I went to therapy, and I did all that. But the thing that really that I don’t know.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:12:48]:
In this moment was that all the traditional advice that I was getting, I found really frustrating. It was like, go for a walk, work on your hobbies, heal and feel better. And I was like, okay. Am I more or less tired than yesterday? Is this working? This meditation that I’m doing, how do I know that this is getting any better? I just feel like crud every single day. And this is where I started to be like, okay. I need something that I, Efela Wallace Pacitti, a experimental systems thinker driven by numbers, need something to hang on to in this process to show that anything is working. So then I started to say, okay. How do I make this quantifiable? How do I start to measure this? So I said, okay.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:13:30]:
What if I ask myself one question every day? How much energy do I have remaining at the end of the day? On a scale now I do it on a scale of 1 to 5. But when I started, it was like, am I depleted? Then it’s a negative day. Do I just feel like I had enough to get through the day and then it’s a neutral day? Or do I have energy remaining? So then am I if I have energy remaining that means I’m starting to replenish my system. I’m starting to do that. So then I started to think, okay, how do I create more energy positive days? If I’m in an active mode of recovery, how do I get more energy positive days that I start to replenish my tanks? How do I start to recover and refill not only my daily tank, but my reserve tank? The tank that you pull from when you run out of energy for the day, but you still gotta show up for that board meeting, that presentation, that kids play, the dinner with the awkward in laws, whatever it would be that you need more energy for when you’re out, you could pull from the reserve tag. And I’m lucky. I don’t have a chronic illness. I don’t have something that fundamentally limits my ability to replenish my reserve tank.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:14:38]:
Maybe there’s some people who their reserve tank, what they can pull they don’t have a reserve tank to pull from. That’s just their limit. I’m lucky that I can replenish my tank. And that’s the magic of what I’ve seen is that when I started to replenish, when I started to heal, I go back, it took me a few years. But when I got back to the level where I was where I thought I had energy, I was like, oh, I have so much more to grow. This is like nothing. And then it started to refill and refill, and I was like, what is this? What is this energy? What is this clarity? It’s it almost felt like sometimes like a video game that once you got to a certain level in your reserve tank, like, new mode unlock, interest in hobbies. New mode unlock.

Erica Lutes [00:15:22]:
It’s been

Evelyn Pacitti [00:15:23]:
Wanna hang out with different types of things or explore new topics or go for a run. Because at the beginning, I had no interest in exercise. Everybody says exercise. It’s great for you. No energy in the tank for exercise. But once I started to replenish a bit, now all of a sudden mode unlocked. You want to run. I

Erica Lutes [00:15:42]:
wanna go back to, the comment you made about how you were so lucky and so lucky to be 1 in the Netherlands. And number 2, that this person was your boss. And it’s funny when you started Zillba story, my first thought was, oh gosh, this guy is gonna be totally horrible to her. And, you know, this is gonna be a victim story of, how this didn’t go in the way that she wanted it to go. So when it’s a, when it’s a positive story, that’s kind of surprising. And of course, since I also am American and I also have lived in Europe for a while now, it seems that this is just something to hone in on a lot of the guests on your show. Everyone makes a different backgrounds or cultures or living in another country than they actually grew up in Americans who were living in Spain or Americans in the Netherlands. And so it is a theme.

Erica Lutes [00:16:21]:
Have you ever gone back first and foremost to that former boss to thank him or the role he played in your life?

Evelyn Pacitti [00:16:29]:
I have. I actually thanked him recently. So I thanked him actively in the process because he was also part of my rehabilitation process. Because in the Netherlands, you get time period off, you see a company doctor, and then there’s a sort of a rehabilitation process where they reintegrate you back into your work. And and, like, you have to rewrite your response to that environment without the pressure of having to deliver. And I thought that this was crazy when I heard it, but it’s such an important part of the process that if you’re doing a reintegration that you’re giving yourself that space to rewrite the rules, to allow your body to be not okay for a while. And, and that, and you’re going to like fight to want to go back to old habits, to old ways of working to responses of having to show up to not respecting your boundaries and not respecting your energy levels and things like that. This is the thing that I found so incredibly amazing when I look back at my journey.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:17:31]:
So I burnt out in 2017. And by 2021 so I’ve been tracking my daily energy levels since 2017, basically every day. And I can watch the trends over time. I have good months. I have bad months. I have good weeks. I have bad weeks. I watch the trends.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:17:47]:
But across the board, the most energy that I have had between 2017 and now in the beginning of 2024, is the 6 month period that I worked in corporate when I had a 2 year old at home before I quit to work and run my own business. That was some of the most energetic replenishing 6 months of my entire life. I was thriving at work. I had the energy to come home. I had the energy to play with the idea of what would my business look like. Should I take the jump? Have those conversations? And I was just constantly regenerating energy. And I think from that place of just saying, okay. I’ve healed.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:18:28]:
I have energy. I have clarity. I jumped not out of a place of necessity that I didn’t see another solution. I jumped from a place of I fundamentally feel like I’ve stumbled on something that can help other people, especially more analytically minded systems thinking individuals who struggle with traditional wellness advice, making it meaningful in their life, making figuring out how to integrate it into a busy life. I felt like I had something fundamental to share. And the thing that I found so incredible was that who I was in 2021 when I was working in corporate, when I was in my engineering field again. If you would know me then, if you know me in 2015 before I started to crack at the seams, I think if you saw me on a day to day basis, I wouldn’t seem like the exact same person. But I was operating energetically completely different.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:19:21]:
And that’s the thing, I owe I always had the impression that to heal your wellness, to have a full energetic filled life, you have to work for yourself. You have to be rewriting the rules. You have to have this strong meditation or energy practice, but ultimately very little changed in my life on a day to day basis. It really was a mindset shift and an understanding of what are boundaries. How do you use them? What are my boundaries that are important to me? And what do I need? And how do I know what my signals are? What are my strengths? And how do I, like, tune and design my life to honor all of those signals. Be aware of them, honor them, and then honor also the dreams that I’m moving into.

Erica Lutes [00:20:11]:
One of the other aspects of this, which I think came up on your LinkedIn account is that people wanted to talk about metrics and metrics relating to burnout. So you had spoken about tracking how you have felt in the, since 20, 2018. So speaking of metrics tracking, what do you think that looks like? How does that play a role in this process?

Evelyn Pacitti [00:20:32]:
So I think there’s a couple of interesting things to go into. I can go into both my personal experience, but before I do that, I’ll say there’s industry about what are wellness metrics, especially in the corporate space. So if wellness is becoming a core deliverable for organizations that they have to report on their wellness metrics, then the question is, what is a wellness metric? How are we defining that? And there’s all this really interesting research being done right now about what are wellness metrics, how do you measure them, how do you take the the fluffiness or of do you feel okay, are you showing up clear, with clarity, with intention, and what are those in a formal sense. So I think that’s a really interesting conversation that’s developing, and I’m enjoying following and seeing where that’s leading. For me, personally, energy is my favorite sort of baseline to look at. Because energy if you’re talking about how much energy do I have, I think it it’s a nice way of blending all of the aspects of health together. Your mental health, your emotional health, your physical health. If you’re sick, you’re not gonna have that much energy because your physical health is down.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:21:45]:
If you’re going under a lot of stress, maybe your emotional or your mental health is down and that’ll also decrease your energy level. So I feel like it’s like a nice summary of one thing that you can check on that’s super easy because I’ve tried all sorts of things to track. I’ve tried tracking all sorts of different times of day, trying to map it out, different parameters. But I found that this is the one that, like, my jets ask this question every night. I put a number in my notebook, and that’s it. I, like, sometimes it’s a WhatsApp message to myself. Sometimes it’s in my notebook. Sometimes it’s in my tracking tool.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:22:18]:
But ultimately, I write down a number every day and that’s just enough to get a feel for monitoring because if you’re not aware of what’s going on, you can’t see the patterns, you can’t make changes. So I think that’s where the question is, what is a metric for burnout? It’s more like, how do I know I’m not okay? And I like to have a conversation about what are stress symptoms of, like, how do stress symptoms show up for you and how do they show up for you at different energy levels. So if you’re just a little bit tired, like you’re just having energy leak, what how does your body tell you that you’re tired? How does your system tell you that you’re tired? Maybe it’s the way that you behave. Maybe it’s a physical movement. Maybe it’s a sore muscle. Maybe it’s something that your mind says to you. And then as you get more and more exhausted, as you move through levels of depletion from just an energy leak to being tired, just pushing through to completely crashing, how does that look throughout the day? And if you’re aware of them, how can you then adjust accordingly? Oh, I know I should take a break, but I’m pushing through right now. For me, that’s a mid level energy signal that says, you know what? You’re actually more tired than you think you are.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:23:34]:
So therefore, you’re not respecting your own boundaries that you need to take a break right now. And you’re negotiating with yourself on how to do that. One of my all time favorite of easy, I’m tired and I don’t notice that I’m tired is, like, when I am not in the mood to recycle, when I’m just like, I’m just gonna throw this in the trash rather than rinsing it out or recycling it. It’s one of those moments I was oh, apparently I’m slightly more tired than I gave myself credit for. Maybe I need to recalibrate slightly.

Erica Lutes [00:24:03]:
And, when you’re talking about, this energy leak, because of course I’m always thinking about a car and maintenance and what’s the importance of going into spend all this money on what may or may not be an actual problem until it becomes a $3,000 repair. When you talk about energy leaks, what are those symptoms? What, I guess it’s different for everyone. What did it look like for you? And, and you’ve worked first, worked with many individuals, not to mention this podcast, or you’ve interviewed many people. Are there examples that you can share just in case there’s a listener who says, oh, wow. I didn’t even see that myself, just as your boss, maybe identified something in you that you couldn’t see for yourself. Maybe it’s a helpful tool just to mention.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:24:41]:
I think energy leaks are energy symptoms. It’s a fun brainstorming exercise. Give yourself a moment, like, maybe set a a 10 minute timer and just write down, like, all of your stress symptoms that show up. And then after you’ve done that exercise, then you can start to bucket them. Like, what are low level ones? What are mid level ones? What are high level ones? And I think high level ones are usually easier to identify. Like, maybe your numbing activities where you’re numbing instead of recovery show up in your high level activity in your high exhaustion activities and things like that. Rather than addressing your direct question about energy leaks, so I gave you some of my examples about, like, recycling or the voice in your head that says, no. You can’t take a break right now.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:25:22]:
Showing up disconnected for a conversation. Pushing myself into a space where I know I’m not, like, mentally there, that’s usually a good sign for me. Different sugar cravings, that’s usually one that I hear come up a lot. Like, if you start sugar craving sugar or coffee, what does that tell you? Maybe you need it, maybe you don’t. But it there’s no and I think that’s the important thing is that there’s no judgement on the stress symptoms. They are just a tool you can use to start to become aware of what’s going on. So you can start to say, okay, this is interesting. How can I explore this topic more? This is interesting.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:25:58]:
What do I wanna do with this information? And maybe you’re at a point in your life or maybe your stress symptoms are totally fine, and you’re okay with them. Maybe you’re at a point in your life where you don’t have the bandwidth to deal and adjust right now. But you can say, at least I’m aware that I’m making the decision that I’m pushing through this level of exhaustion. I need to show up for this right now. I don’t have an opportunity, but at least I’m aware that this is happening. I’m not doing it blindly. I’m not just zombifying walking through my life.

Erica Lutes [00:26:28]:
I love that word. But one of the aspects that we talked about is this, transition between, the United States and, the Netherlands, not to mention, of course, the cultural aspects of marrying a for Italian and all the amazing things that come with that. But one request was from the audience was to hear about this purple heel story, that brought you over to Europe. And I was very curious, to hear more.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:26:55]:
To give a little background, I was writing some fun facts about me. And one was I moved to Europe because I was wearing a pair of purple heels. And people are like, you can’t just leave me hanging on that one. So I had lived in New England. I went to school in Massachusetts. I got my first job in industry in the US in New England. I lived there for 10 years, and I was at the point where I was like, okay. Time to switch it up.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:27:21]:
Maybe I’m thinking Chicago, Texas, Portland, or something completely different. And there was a sign on the wall that said EU career fair, and I was like, interesting. I remember with the last day of the career fair, and it’s really interesting because you know how they say there’s these forks in your road that happen? This is a moment where I could clearly see the fork and the decision that I made. Because it was the last day of the career fair. I’m sitting in my grad office. I had already updated my resume for for this thing. I thought, shall I go? Shall I not go? Shall I go? Shall I not go? I was like, meh. I might as well go.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:27:57]:
So I walk into the career fair. I’m wandering around. There’s a lot of postdoc positions. I didn’t finish my PhD. I left after my master’s, so postdoc wasn’t gonna work. Things in finance, things in consulting. And then there was ASML there who makes equipment for the semiconductor industry. And I said, oh, you make microchips.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:28:16]:
And they said, no. We make equipment for the semiconductor industry. I said, close enough. Tell me more. And we’re chatting along and they look at me and they said, why should we talk to you instead of anyone else who’s here? I said, I don’t know because I’m wearing purple heels. They laughed really hard and I got an interview for the next day.

Erica Lutes [00:28:32]:
That’s amazing. Okay. That is fantastic. It also great, career stories since I spent a lot of time in my classes, every semester trying to explain to people how to stand out in an audience. I’m gonna use that story. That’s great. When we talked about, healing and you talked earlier about hobbies and that you wish you did a better job in hobbies, You jumped, to that crochet story about your burnout. You talked about logging the way you feel.

Erica Lutes [00:28:58]:
Are there other things that you did for yourself knowing that course is not applicable to every single person on the planet, but it sounds like you did explore some of their hobbies and like crochet sounds pretty out of the, that is not video games, nor is that reading for you. Are there other things that, that kind of made you feel like you were able to heal? Maybe it was just those 2 hours a day sitting back in the office, transitioning back or maybe there was other things.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:29:21]:
So I think there were a couple things. I’ll first comment on your crochet. Because you’ve mentioned it a few times and I feel like you’ll enjoy this tidbit about it. Crocheting is a mind puzzle for me, but it’s also a repetitive physical action. The thing that was magical for me about crochet is crochet allowed me to remain in a room full of people that I was finding really overwhelming during my recovery, but create a bubble or a barrier between me and the room around me. At the beginning, it started at, like, family meals or holidays where everybody was together. And instead of stepping out of the room completely and leaving, which I could, I would move to the side and I would get out my crochet. And it would allow me to be there but distant.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:30:06]:
And it ended up being this magical form of bubble space for me that I could always travel with it. I didn’t need Internet. I didn’t need anything. I just had my little bag with my yarn and my hook in it, and I could just build. And even if I was just making straight lines and I wasn’t doing anything complicated, it was always there for me. And I actually utilized this tool when I was reintegrating back into the office. There was a full day workshop that I needed to attend, and I was not at the point where I was going to the office full time. And I knew that level of concentration and presenceness was not in my capability set at the time.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:30:43]:
But I went, and I took my crochet hook with me. And at the beginning of the day, at this big workshop with lots of people at different levels, I said, hey. I wanna let you know. I’m I’m here. I’m asking questions, but I, at some point, will get out my crochet hook when I need space. And I will sit back here and I will crochet. And I’m still listening, but I’m in an active recovery state during this moment. I remember at one point, like, I was crocheting and the tech went down and everybody was laughing, and they’re like, well, late template has something to do.

Erica Lutes [00:31:22]:
Wow. This these are such powerful messages and also great ways to take the reins of your own recovery. I think that’s to scoff at the traditional things of being suggested to take a walk or explore your hobbies or see a therapist. And that wasn’t fulfilling to you that you have really found a way to map out your own recovery system. So I can totally understand why you’ve gone into this space coaching and trying to help others with a similar background, heal. Can you tell me a little bit about the work that you do now and, even extrapolating that into the podcast that you’ve done? What’s the meaning behind it? It sounds like these individual coaching sessions are individual and helping people on a 1 on 1 basis, but I think it’s beautiful that you’ve decided to zoom out to this podcast level because it’s almost more access for people to hear individual stories to, you know, you have this charming way of drawing people out into this very comfortable. And I will even say intimate and vulnerable space to ask them questions about these very delicate things. It’s hard to talk about risks taken, mistakes that you’ve made.

Erica Lutes [00:32:23]:
It’s not all positive about what you’ve learned from these mistakes, but honestly, the fact that you’ve made mistakes in the first place. So maybe you can explain what this dynamic looks like between individual support that you’re offering to people in a coaching form and also these products.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:32:37]:
The reason I started the podcast is because I am fundamentally intrigued by how people design their lives. What is their passion? What is their spark? How do they integrate that into their lives? And how are they finding work life balance? Because the thing that I found is that we had an expectation of what life should look like, what is the rhythm, and we’re trained into this rhythm. I’m like, what does the rhythm of a day look like? What does the rhythm of a year look like? It’s set culturally. It’s set by business. It’s even to the point where when I started working for myself, when I started to drop my kid off at daycare at 10 because we slept in, we had breakfast, I got told off because I was messing with the rhythm of the day because having a parent come in messes with the rhythm of things. So even starting to just flex the system a little, sometimes can get pushed back. But what I found is that there’s a lot more flexibility in the system than we give it credit for. And how do you start to look outside the expectations and play with the parameters? Play with the shadows.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:33:39]:
Dance on the line a bit in a way that like it feels your vibe. It brings your joy. I wanted to have a space where I could have a conversation with people about what is their dance? How are they designing it? How are they putting it together? If they’ve struggled with exhaustion, if they still struggle with exhaustion, how are they blending in that in their life? How are they approaching it? What their symptoms look like outside of the standard list of burnout symptoms? How is it showing up for people? We’ve had people on the show who had showed up as a heart attack. We’ve had people, like all sorts of gamuts. And then like, how are you recovering? Like I love one of my favorite examples is the woman with the hula hoop that she uses during her breaks. 1 woman, which the podcast never actually aired, but she hugs her alpacas in the afternoon. She goes barefoot into the grass and hugs the alpacas in the afternoon. She’ll be back.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:34:35]:
Her podcast episode got rebooted. But, like, having the space to tell these stories of not only what does it look like for you? Opening the conversation about that we are all exhausted. We all have periods of exhaustion. We all struggle with it. What insight does that bring you about your life, your career? What do you need at the time? Because when your body’s screaming, it’s because something’s out of whack. Something needs attention, and it’s your body’s way of being like, excuse me. Excuse me over here. Can we chat? So that’s why people needed that check-in.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:35:09]:
It’s different in all different areas. I mean, even in my own life, the different periods that I’ve had different burnouts, whether it’s full body seizures while I was wide awake, when I was working in industry, whether it was the swollen tongue I had while writing my thesis in undergrad or whether the full mental fog exhaustion, like I have, I’m almost lacking 5 years of distinct memories before my burnout in 2017 and I got married in that window. If I don’t have pictures, it is very hard for me to pull distinct memories from my own mind because I was in such the flurry of the exhaustion and just pushing through the stress and just making life happen the way that it was supposed to. And just, like so having these stories about how it shows up for other people, what are their symptoms? I hope that conversation triggers people to have a conversation with themselves that maybe I am exhausted. Maybe small story or this way that this is showing up reminds me of my own experience. The story about how they recovered, hearing about all the different ways that because some people sought therapists, some people had supportive management, some people were blending new businesses or new corporations. It’s all different experiences. Some people started new businesses.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:36:26]:
Some people shifted. Some people continue to do the things they did, which I think is also an important thing that you don’t have to change your life in order to heal. And those are the stories I wanted to have to give more a space for examples of what life can look like. How can we design it? Not and also how exhaustion can show up and what we can heal and learn from it.

Erica Lutes [00:36:50]:
And that is, one of the best features of your podcast is seeing how many different people, how many different stories, and just the similar threads that you can pull out of that. Each person sharing their own humbling experience. And that’s one of the things I like about this podcast is that people who seem very glossy, very glamorous, whether in the profile picture, the way that they started the podcast, the way that you started to hear about their career journey and the ambitions that they had often people who are starting their own businesses, entrepreneurs. And then there’s just this break, this moment, as you start to talk about this burnout and things that are just so hard and so challenging, that is something that I think we can all relate to. I know that’s, in your last comments, when you were talking about, by the way, the full body seizures while you were awake, you’re swollen, tongue in college, which I guess I will not delve into in this episode, but very curious to hear more about these topics that in my own life. I remember I recently a doctor telling me, I think that you can tell the difference between discomfort and pain. And as somebody who, teaches yoga as part of my profession, I find that very interesting to hear that is that you seemingly have this very strong character, this amazing background, this tremendous drive. And when you’re talking about hardware versus software components and, and what a humbling and stretching part of your career that this happened in, that you also have to turn and focus a little bit about what’s happening in your own personal life.

Erica Lutes [00:38:12]:
And I just think it’s remarkable that this boss of yours was able to see that and to give you space for that without humiliating you or punishing you for that. And what an amazing journey it’s been. I wanted to hone in on another aspect that you often talk to people about, which is their spark. This was something that, I thought would be a really interesting question to ask you. You mentioned it in different forms, but not outright as this spark. If you wanted to talk to people about what is a spark rather than what is your spark for the moment, different ways that you’ve identified this in other people. And of course, if you would like to talk about the spark inside yourself.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:38:49]:
So what is a spark? It’s a really it’s a fun question. For me, spark is that it’s that thing that seems to almost be tied to childhood wonder and experimentation. It’s the thing that makes your whole body light up and tingle where and I think in as adults and in today’s society, it’s almost a thing you feel guilty to indulge in. It’s the thing that, like, you get really excited about and you feel guilty when you get too excited about it in front of people. It’s the thing that this you’re you start buzzing and you get excited. And maybe you’ve learned how to, like, tone down your spark because you’ve integrated it into your work. But it’s the thing that makes you go, oh, that’s fun. Oh, how does that work? Oh, tell me more.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:39:39]:
And yeah. And it’s just fun to see what are the things that make people really intrigued that they wanna dig into and explore because we all have different stories. We all have different sparks. And learning other people’s sparks, learning to have that conversation, it brings us together and it also enables us to create these amazing collaborations. That’s why I love working with Teams. One of the my favorite things about when I was working with teams is listening to the different team members and seeing like, where is your spark? Like, where do you get excited and you don’t even notice? And how can I create more opportunities for my position as a team leader to enable you to work in those sparks, to create opportunities to step into them and play with them? And that’s also what I do a bit with my clients in energy management. Like, where do you spark up about energy? How do can you create more spaces for that? How do you play with the edges and see what’s going on and start to dance? So for me, that’s the spark. And I think a lot of times it’s a hard question to ask people outright, because I think unless you’ve taken the time to step back and once again, awareness and wonder and experimentation.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:40:48]:
Am I aware when my system lights up? Am I aware when I start chatting uncontrollably? And maybe the first symptoms are a bit of that, I feel guilty for doing this or this feels too easy or I should be doing something more productive or more important with my time. Maybe those are your first hits of where your spark is, but why are you digging into it? Why is it so exciting? And then you come from that and you’re like, oh, this is really what’s jiving with me. This is what I wanna do. This is what I wanna integrate into my life in a major way.

Erica Lutes [00:41:25]:
And it seems like it’s not just what is your spark, but where is your spark? That’s something that it sounds like you’re engaging with others. That’s a really great way to frame that. So very helpful. Are there things that you have learned or taken away things that you remember, from the podcast that you’ve done so far? For me, I think about some starter stories or somebody who moved to Barcelona and was like teaching online in China and still trying to create, grow her business in Barcelona itself. And it started falling, just burning all of the different edges of every single hour of the day. I think about another podcast that you had when a woman talked about how research has done that janitors in hospitals have some of the most high satisfaction rates of their job when they feel like they’re not only doing something to help the patient themselves, but helping the entire community of the hospital and that sense of belonging. You know, those are some of the takeaways that I have from some of the podcasts that you’ve had, but perhaps you also have this data bank in your head of things that still, you hold close to your heart.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:42:26]:
So I really love actually the final five questions about what people wanna master and what they’re geeking out on.

Erica Lutes [00:42:31]:
They’re coming. They’re coming. I really

Evelyn Pacitti [00:42:33]:
I really love those answers because some of the things that people wanna master have been mind blowing. I’ve been like, woah. I never would have thought into that as something that I wanted to master. But probably the most interesting red line that I’m finding a lot, and maybe it’s just the people that I’m asking or the people who are in my audience right now, is a lot of people seem to be focusing on the importance of finding those pieces, putting together finding those pieces of yourself and finding that flexibility. There seems to in the final questions of what do you want them to take away from today, a thing that tends to come up a lot is about giving yourself that permission to find yourself and to find your freedom and that there’s more flexibility. And that’s a fundamental lesson that I’ve learned through all this, and that’s what I hope to give my audience, to give my clients, to give just people in my community not only examples of people showing up and doing it, but leading by example in my own life and with the people around me, but also giving people a safe space and permission to start to play there, to start to experiment in a way that doesn’t feel like they’re throwing everything away or they’re putting everything at risk. How can you start to play in a safe and fun way?

Erica Lutes [00:43:56]:
Not putting everything away and not putting everything at risk. That’s certainly, and that ties into, one of your podcasts about play, right? About finding this space to play and as adults that were not seen as, taken seriously enough for, playing whatever that means in your own way. Is there a question that you can think of that we haven’t covered today? Something that you really wanted to share that’s brimming and burning on the top of your mind?

Evelyn Pacitti [00:44:23]:
I think the only thing that I would want to say is that when you start to figure out what you need, what boundaries is a very fluffy word, and I think it’s something that takes time to figure out what is a boundary. Anybody who I think has gone through any sort of burnout or exhaustion and learned how to rebuild understands what their boundaries are. But I think about it as I have this visualization. You have this square of grass and limits are the place where you fall off the edge, And that’s where you get pushed and that’s where your system breaks and you’re not okay. Boundaries are the fence you put inside of that so that you don’t get to your limits. So where do you put those fences and how close to that edge you put your fence depends on where you are in your life and what do you need. And you can start to think about all those different parameters. And then when you’re starting to think about designing your days and designing your work specifically And I think this was the real secret sauce of when I went back to work and when I figured it out, how to have an energetic career again, was that I said, what do I need in a day? What kind of balance do I need? And I told management, like, and I think I was at a privileged position of having 10 years within the organization, having a history of putting in the reps and showing up and doing the thing.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:45:42]:
But I also was able to come in and say, this is what I need to heal. Like, I can show up to meetings. I can run, I can organize, but I also need desk work. I need time that when I am running on low energy, that I have tasks that I can do where I can contribute in low energy. When I can contribute when I’m not completely there, and how do you design your work so that you have tasks that you can do when you’re in low energy mode, when you’re in recovery, and then what are your high energy tasks? And making sure that you have a good blend of those in your workday is really, really important. And that takes some chutzpah to do at the beginning. Okay? You’re gonna have to look at your agenda and be like, you know what? I am block 9 to 5 almost every day showing up for these meetings. Where’s my contribution? How do I wanna show up? Because if you’re showing up for a meeting, what are you doing in that meeting if you’re multitasking? What is your purpose of being there? So how can you say, okay, where’s my energy? Where do I show up? Where do I put blocks of deep quiet work if that’s what I need? If I’m an analyst or I’m a researcher or just that’s what you need, where do you put those blocks? How do you make them sacred? How do you how do you hold respect for those boundaries at the beginning? And they will fall apart all the time.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:47:00]:
Just like setting any sort of habit and any kind of thing. They’re small. Like, you don’t need a 3 hour block every Wednesday day and cancel half your agenda on day 1. You just say, okay. Where do I put a block in for me? Where do I know my rhythm of the day? I know that I’m not super productive between me personally, I am not productive between 1 in the afternoon and 3 in the afternoon, which totally stinks in terms of timing because my kids had school at BSL. And it’s just when I started moving again at 4, it’s pickup time. And I’m like, man. Oh, I love my kid.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:47:34]:
Don’t get me wrong. But it’s messing with my it’s messing with my funky flow. But so now I’m like, okay. If my downtime is there, what am I doing in that window? Do I am I doing some sort of social tasks? Is that where I’m doing admin? Is that where I’m making phone calls? Is that where I’m doing social media? I’m now experimenting with what wouldn’t happen if I worked out in that window? What if I did my run or if I went to the gym in this window? And I’m all like, oh, but then I gotta change and I gotta shower. What am I gonna eat? What if I have a meeting in the thing and then I gotta get pretty again and and I was like, wait a second. Just take a step back. Right now, I have lunch and watch Netflix usually for 2 hours. Right now, I’m watching Drink Masters.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:48:14]:
And just just try it for a week. See how this works. If it doesn’t work, you can mix it back up. But I have over a year, almost 2 years worth of data because I use a time tracker as my accountability buddy in my online business, that I turn it on when I’m working. I say what I’m doing and I turn it off. And I have this hole really consistently between 13. So what can I do with that? That I know I’m down. And if I was in corporate where I can’t step away for 2 hours, what can I do in that space? Okay? Is that a sit behind my desk? Is that the time when I go through my email? Is that the time maybe I need to do my bookkeeping or my timekeeping and that kind of stuff? How can I think about what are my rhythms? What is my mood? And how can I make slow and high energy tasks together? And there is so much more flexibility.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:49:04]:
You always think, well, nobody allowed me to do that. I have to show up like this. I have to show up like that. Just try it and see what happens.

Erica Lutes [00:49:15]:
Well, I think we’ve come to the final five questions part of the show, which is certainly one of the most interesting parts. I love when people laugh at your, questions, just as genuine laugh, because they don’t know what’s coming. It’s beautiful. Of course you do know what’s coming, but I’d still love to hear in your own words. What is your definition of serenity?

Evelyn Pacitti [00:49:37]:
Serenity for me is being in this sort of state of flow where you know that what you’re working on is happened and you’re moving through your day and that the things that are happening are working in a sense that don’t feel like there’s a lot of restriction to them. You’re moving between getting up, breakfast, and drop off at work, and the work that you’re doing is just flowing. And when that ends, you allow it to move to the next phase of the day without it like the stop start force, just like and having this sort of calm clarity where you’re not rushing, but you’re moving. It’s weird. I have this vision of jumping between stones at, like, high speed. And you’re just like, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then you can go, like, I’m stopping here and I’m moving here. And, like, you just sense and you feel like, what do I need now? What do I need here? Where and you just sense it’s also not only just about you, but also sensing the people around you.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:50:37]:
What do they need right now? Do you need to stop and take space for others? Do they need you? In a way that you could just you have the space, you have the permission, you have the flow to be like, you know what? I’m gonna spend an extra 20 minutes having coffee with the neighbor rather than just dropping off the mail today. Or I’m gonna we don’t have to do bath time right now. We’re having a moment. We’re having a puzzle. We’re enjoying it, and we will flow into the next moment when that comes to us. I mean, giving space for that and that feeling of just and things in their place, that is what serenity is for me.

Erica Lutes [00:51:16]:
Oh, that’s beautiful. And, of course, those in the audience probably cannot see you. However, you really do look like a person jumping from stone to stone in a super person power. So it’s, it doesn’t remind me full circle of your video games that you like to play in the very beginning when you talked about this, it looks very bad ass. 2nd of the 5 questions. If you could master one skill instantly, what would that skill be?

Evelyn Pacitti [00:51:41]:
Language. Speak a foreign language. My kid is 4 and speaks more languages than mommy does. My mother-in-law doesn’t speak English, and I still struggle to communicate. My husband translates, and she’s super supportive and has she gets what I do probably better than most people, and I can’t even communicate with her properly. So when we have moments, it’s really nice. But, like, being able to communicate. Being able to show up to a barbecue in the Netherlands and feel like or a Dutch birthday party and feel like I can mingle without getting lost.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:52:11]:
Oh, not being intimidated by a 6 year old at the playground who’s trying to tell me something about my kid, and I’m like, I got nothing. I got nothing. Or just a play date, 4 year old’s play dates. Terrified now. Hi. What do you want from me? Okay. I’ll work on it. It would be great if I had real micro skills.

Erica Lutes [00:52:28]:
That’s hilarious. I could completely relate to that. That is hilarious.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:52:32]:
Do you

Erica Lutes [00:52:33]:
need an orange juice or do you need the bathroom? What are you around the way, but besides, let’s just hear it in in one of my response.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:52:50]:
This is actually a tricky one for me because I’m really bad at it. They say you teach what you need. So for me it’s taking the breaks when I need to take the breaks and listening to myself. So and actually respecting what my system says I need. So if it says I need to go for a walk, actually going for the walk rather than be like, it’s cold and I need to put on my boots, and it’s just easier to sit in a cup of chair with a cup of tea. No. Go for a walk, woman. It automatically makes you feel much better.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:53:19]:
Call the friend, go for the walk. Listen, when I know that I’m tired, take the break, be okay with it, and general energy mixing. So I actually I work in blocks, and I have these blocks that I know that I’m gonna work in, and then I allow that flexibility of whatever I want between the two blocks, and I think that automatically also helps me recharge. Because by giving myself permission to do whatever I feel like I want to do, in and around work or the house or other things within those predefined blocks, then that also gives me time to recharge and to also satisfy my jumping around playing semi ADHD brain, so it gives space for all of it.

Erica Lutes [00:54:06]:
What are you geeking out at right now?

Evelyn Pacitti [00:54:11]:
Personal knowledge management systems. I am totally obsessed with PKMs and especially, designing my personal knowledge management system in Obsidian. So for those of you who don’t know what personal knowledge management system is, it’s basically the idea of a really good introduction on this is called Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte. Linking Your Thinking by Nick Milo is also a really good resource, but he’s very much Obsidian stuff. But it’s okay. You we have all this input coming in. We have all these ideas, and I generate ideas like crazy. How do you not lose them? How do you contain them? And not only how do you contain them, how do you take them one step forward and utilize them? How do you not get lost in noise of information that you then don’t integrate into your life and utilize? So how are you building easy, simple information systems that make information available, accessible, and usable without over designing the system.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:55:10]:
So this is something that I’m really intrigued on and playing with all the time. I like to refer to it as my serenity systems because they’re the things that help me keep an overview of what am I to do’s? What am I working on? What are my ideas coming in? What are the projects I’m working on at home and here? Because I’m in a single day, I’ll jump between, I’ll jump between marketing ideas, getting an idea about wellness, picking up an article here, looking into gardening advice, a new, place to go with the family to go walking with the trolls in Belgium, like a bit of anything and everything. And where do you put all of these things so they don’t get lost?

Erica Lutes [00:55:53]:
Assume that you have the optimal work life blend describes your typical work today.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:56:01]:
I like it that I knew this question was coming and I’m blanking. I feel like it’s not that far off from what I do. For me, it all comes down to these blocks that I have. I was thinking about it a lot over the holiday break that I don’t know about the rest of everyone else, but my energy patterns during the day is like like a sine wave of high energy and low energy. If I look at focused energy so this is mental energy that I’m talking about, not physical energy for but really mental energy because that’s my natural sweet spot to think about. And then I have these 4 peaks in my day. And if I look at what am I doing in those 4 peaks, and then what am I doing in the troughs, and how am I designing that? And right now I’m playing with the parameters of, like, I have a peak in the evening, but that’s when the family time is. So then what can I do in that time that’s also engaging with the family? So that’s where I’m playing with the idea that may maybe that’s more craft time or something or playing with more hobbies or exploring something with that with my son or my husband.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:57:01]:
And what am I doing in my morning? I’ve always written my best work first thing in the morning between, like, 5 AM and probably 11 AM. I wrote my undergrad thesis. I wrote my master’s thesis. Anytime that I really need to study, like, that’s the window I do it in. That’s also my favorite time to work out. But I feel like because that’s the time that I’m the most consistent with it. So I feel like I’m going round and round on not answering this question. I don’t know, to tell you the truth.

Evelyn Pacitti [00:57:29]:
I think in many ways, it goes back to my definition of serenity of having a workday that allows me to go with the flow. And I think that’s the answer for me, is that I know what the key modules of my day are. I know what my key flow moments are, and I allow myself to move through the day. Hitting the items that move my business forward, that help and support my family, but also allowing the flexibility for the fun, for the play, for the experimentation, for the unexpected, and having space for that. And I think that is my ideal day.

Erica Lutes [00:58:07]:
That is beautiful. Well, I think that we’ve covered so much in this, episode. It’s so interesting to hear about, first and foremost, your background. I really didn’t realize that you had come from such a small, town in Pennsylvania. I just you seem like this extremely cosmopolitan woman with, 12 years of experience in the Netherlands, not to mention, like I said, a million times, married somebody outside of that cultural realm and navigating this life of very heavy world of engineer, how you got there through your, purple heel story, which I will never forget. And just that graceful way, if I offer that to you, graceful way in which you now elegantly tell the story of going through what was a very stretching and hard period, both inside of your role to, at your company, as well as this multitude of things that happened to you and and how we spend too much time focusing on perhaps the the work aspect and not what also is happening on a personal level, which I think is one of the big takeaways of today. Also this idea of hobbies and translating hobbies into what you call these energy levels of mental energy, physical energy, social energy, that you’re able to mix around your day in a very, intentional way. But looking at what you think might consume a lot of energy and also tracking how you feel at the end of the night.

Erica Lutes [00:59:21]:
That is a big. Regulate for me is that you’ve spent almost every single day since 2017 tracking your energy levels. And whether that be on a metric scale of 5 as you’re doing today, or if it’s looking at the way in which you feel, do I have a neutral amount, in surplus, or am I in a deficit? That is certainly something that I think a lot of us learn from them in this conversation today. But it is really profound to hear about not one, not 2, but 3 to half of these burnouts over 20 years, because sometimes we think it is just one time, one time only you fix it, you move on, players look by your bootstraps. And that was your one time of being weak and vulnerable and, and it’s over. So showing us that’s not necessarily the case. And also that people make a difference that this boss that really does stick out to me in this story is that he was able to stand back, recognize and support you. And that’s not always gonna be the case.

Erica Lutes [01:00:08]:
So I think for those of us who are managers, those of us who are leading an office, that is an important gateway to be able to help and identify other people. And when we talk about sparks and not what is your spark, but where is your spark? I wanna bring that back certainly to my own, colleagues and my own office is how does this reinvigorate you, which again, all taps back into those hobbies, rejuvenating, people at different levels in your different spaces. So I would say those are some of the big highlights, for me. I would love to end with the one question, which is what is the thing that you would like audience to take away from our discussion today?

Evelyn Pacitti [01:00:43]:
Flexibility. Permission for flexibility and experimentation whether it’s in your own life, But also if you’re in a space or a role where you lead a team or you lead a family, how can you give space to them to experiment, to breathe, to find their energetics, to find their flow, to have low energy and high energy moments. Because in a way, it’s our role in a places of leadership whether it’s in families or in organizations and in our own lives to give permission for everyone to experiment, to play. And if you’re in a position where you have some energetic bandwidth, giving people who might not have the bandwidth to see those possibilities right now, giving them the permission that they can do that is a really powerful gift that you can give to yourself and to your communities.

Erica Lutes [01:01:44]:
Well, on that note, that’s exactly what I wanted to thank you for is being bold, being quirky, having that chutzpah that you mentioned and being able to show up for all of us, whether that be your own team, whether that be your family, your son, your husband, your mother-in-law, your extended family, your friends, but certainly as you’ve mentioned in 3 different roles that I will take away with today is your audience, your clients, and your community. So thank you so much for everything that you do with this world.

Evelyn Pacitti [01:02:13]:
If you are struggling to find space to reflect and improve your daily energy levels, then I’d like to invite you to one of our free weekly check-in sessions. You can find more information about it at measurable wellness.com back slash energy. I hope to see you soon. Intrigued or inspired by today’s episode, but forgot the details? Don’t worry. I’ve got you covered. Visit engineering serenity.com for a complete summary of today’s episode, including timestamps, links, and other resources for your adventure. Wishing you strength and serenity. Evelyn out.