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Transcript
- 01:39 About Susan Leahy
- 03:12 Leadership
- 04:39 Preventing Burnout
- 09:59 Sleep
- 14:08 Fear
- 18:54 American Collegiate Women’s Association
- 21:01 Power Tip
- 23:18 Most Pressing Health Issue In the World Today
- 25:02 More About Susan Leahy
Wendy Myers: Welcome to the Live to 110 Podcast. My name is Wendy Myers and you can find me on myersdetox.com. You’re watching the new video podcast, the new Live to 110 video podcast that you can find on YouTube at WendyLiveto110.
Today, we are interviewing Susan Leahy. She’s a very close personal friend of mine. She’s so amazing, has such an amazing energy and is so inspirational that you’re going to love her too. I just had to have her on the show.
Susan is an inspirational speaker and communication specialist whose mission has turned to ‘focus on helping to empower women personally and professionally’. Susan’s passion of motivating women led her to found ACWA, the American Collegiate Women’s Association.
This association supports the development of collegiate women across the nation by providing powerful leadership conferences and a networking and community for collegiate women to learn, experience and increase their personal confidence.
Susan has a master’s degree in applied behavioral science with an emphasis in coaching and consulting from Bastyr University – and she also gives really good relationship advice.
Susan, thanks for coming on the show!
Susan Leahy: Oh Wendy, thank you so much for having me. I love the work that you’re doing with Live to 110. It’s amazing to watch it. You’re amazing!
Wendy Myers: Thank you so much. Yeah, I’m amazed at what you’re doing. I was really excited that you started this association to help women in leadership. I’m excited to be a part of it as well.
Wendy Myers: So why don’t you tell the listeners about yourself and why you decided to found this organization?
Susan Leahy: Well, I’ve been working within colleges and universities for the past 15 years. Right when I graduated from college 20-somewhat years ago, I would come in and I would do workshops for the student leaders there. It’s been something that I’ve been doing for years.
There’s something magical about the collegiate years no matter if you’re a re-entry student, you’re going in later on in life or if you’re a traditional student, the reality is that collegiate environment, there’s an openness in your learning, there’s an openness in what you’re trying to become. I’m excited to be offering these conferences. They really are focusing on women and helping them increase their own leadership potential both personally and professionally.
Wendy Myers: Because leadership is a skill. Definitely, some people are kind of born with it, but I think also, these skills are taught. They need to be taught to our young women. Women in college are gung-ho. They’re ready to take on the world. I think it’s just really great that you’re doing this.
Susan Leahy: And it’s funny. I think that we look at people and we think that they have “it”. We make that assumption of one another, it’s so easy, especially as women to look around the room and see who has it. But the reality is we’re all working on it. I think it’s important to really put that out there that leadership, however it manifests in your life (because it manifests differently) is a learned skill that you continue to hone throughout the duration of your existence on this planet.
Wendy Myers: Yes, yes, yes. I agree.
Wendy Myers: We talked before the show and I loved when you said that, that leadership is a full body experience. Can you explain that a little bit more and what you mean by that?
Susan Leahy: Well, it’s interesting. My master’s is in behavioral science and so whenever I do my keynotes, I always ask people to just kind of get involved and to participate. And what’s so interesting is people will allow to get involve is they’ll kind of say something, they’ll maybe elevate their voices, they’ll ask questions, but the last thing that people usually get involved is their bodies.
Making that mind-body connection when you’re a leader is so crucial because you could be thinking a lot of things, you could be saying a lot of things, but if your body isn’t in action, then you’re not going to be motivating people to be in action with you.
Leadership is about creating momentum, creating a movement and you’ve got to have all elements of yourself – your mind, your body, your spirit – all of it in alignment, all of it moving.
Wendy Myers: It’s all about body language. Your communication comes through your body language for the most part.
Susan Leahy: Well, the study, the very famous study, your words, your tone, your body language. Body language is 55% of what you’re communicating. So gosh! A lot of women are afraid to just get their bodies involved. Come on, Wendy. Let’s get our body involved. Come on, Wendy! Woo-hoo!
Wendy Myers: You got to talk with your hands. You got to do that.
Susan Leahy: Let’s get moving with it. Woo-hoo!
Wendy Myers: Well, I think that one issue with our women leaders today is that they’re working too hard. That’s why I wanted to do this podcast with you, to give women some power tips on how to be healthy women leaders because I think so many women, they want to be the best mother, the doting wife and the respected leader in their field, but they end up getting burned out. So how do you teach women to basically prevent burnout?
Susan Leahy: Right! You know what? We’re going to do it right now because I think example is the best way to learn. It might seem simplistic, but you and I, we’re going to demonstrate it for your listeners, your viewers. I’m going to ask you to just take an intentional deep breath in. Ready? Here we go.
One of the most important ways that we can support ourselves from not burning out is to really become conscious about how we are interacting in different situations. I think that sometimes women get so busy they forget to breathe. They forget to take time for themselves.
The first thing that’s pushed off a woman’s calendar is ‘me time’, is ‘her time’. We’re so busy serving everybody else, we forget the importance of really serving ourselves and doing even this little exercise of just being conscious enough throughout your day to take intention deep breaths that are totally for you so you can refocus, reintegrate and get back into your body. It’s important!
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I find that myself doing that. You’re like, “I have to do this. I have to do that” and you’re all stressed out and you’re breathing is really shallow and your brain can’t function without that oxygen. So I have to constantly remind myself to keep breathing and take in deep breaths.
Susan Leahy: Right.
Wendy Myers: And so I think it’s just a very simple exercise a woman can do to just relax a little bit to take the stress off.
Susan Leahy: And it really is. I feel like everything you need to know about leadership resides in the breath. It’s that sense of if you’re operating from that space of being constricted and being stressed and feeling like there’s all these pressure on you, you can’t be in that space of expansion and leadership is an opening. Leadership is the ability to create the space so that something new can be created. If you’re constricting, it can’t come out.
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Susan Leahy: Women especially are such a beautiful illustration of that. Our bodies are designed. We’re the greatest leaders. We lead life into the world and we can’t do that from a space of just pure tension. We have to expand and let it come through us.
Wendy Myers: And I think it’s really important that our women leaders learn how to take care of their adrenals and thyroid because that’s one of the problems. When women get burned out, when they’re working so hard, they’re not sleeping enough, they’re in that fight-or-flight mode, they’re constantly thinking about their to-do list and all the things that they have to do, their adrenals and then their thyroid gets burned out and then they don’t have the energy that they need to continue to be a leader, to continue to be the best wife and mother and professional person.
Susan Leahy: And that’s why one of the stances with respect to ACWA, why we’ve partnered with an organization such as yours is that our conferences, the information that we’re sharing, it’s about how to be an integrated leader. And for women especially, it’s so important that we take care of our minds, our bodies and our spirits, so that we can fully show up in the world.
What you’re talking about with the adrenals burning out, it’s a common problem that are happening with women in both the workplace and at home. And when that happens, we can show up in the way that the world needs us.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, and I think that’s one thing that my mission, as well – basically, the focus of my website, the myersdetox.com and my practice is teaching people how to take care of their adrenals and thyroid. That’s why everyone’s so drained and drinking coffee all the time and eating sugar. Their bodies are just crying out to get energy and you have to learn how to take care of those adrenals and thyroid because it leads to poor health down the road. It’s really the underlying cause of so many health issues.
Susan Leahy: And it’s interesting. It is interesting because when we’re talking about this term leadership, it’s like, “Where does it start?” It really starts with the leader that you’re being to yourself. How are you showing up and taking a stand for you and how that then can translate and ripple out beyond just yourself?
I think for women, we’ve got to take care of our bodies. If a woman is not integrated, if a woman doesn’t feel good in her body – and I’m not talking about what you look like. This is such a different conversation. This is about what you feel like. Are you really taking care of yourself? Do you feel strong? Do you feel healthy? And when you can operate from that platform, it makes it that much easier to then interact in the world and deal with people outside of yourself.
So leadership is really the process of starting the internal shifts so that you can match then the external shifts that you’re trying to create within your families and within your workplace.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, and I think one of the main components of taking care of your adrenals and thyroid is sleep.
Susan Leahy: Hello!
Wendy Myers: So why don’t we talk about sleep. It’s such an original concept, but I think it’s probably the biggest issue with any leader – finding enough time to sleep. So why is sleep so important?
Susan Leahy: What’s funny, Arianna Huffington from the Huffington Post, this is her whole, entire, new platform. She was at work. I mean, very hardworking woman. She’s created an unbelievable empire.
One day, she passed out on her desk and cut her forehead wide open because she was so sleep-deprived. She then started doing some research about the importance of really being able to integrate and just have the right number of hours of sleep in your day.
And again, this is just another sign of personal leadership. Are you taking care of yourself enough so that you can then take care of others the way they need to be taken care of?
Women, for years, have not been taking care of themselves and forsaking themselves thinking they’re doing a better job taking care of others, but you’re setting a poor example. You’re setting a poor example for yourself, for your children, for the people that you’re working with.
I love that Arianna Huffington’s new mission is about getting people, male and female, to sleep!
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I know, it’s something that she mentions on her new book. It’s funny because it’s such a basic thing that people just forget that is so important, that they need to sleep eight hours at night – even more sometimes.
I think that’s one thing that, for me, I really have to be careful about – not working the 12- to 16-hour days that I really want to be doing because I have to sleep. I want to get so much done and I want to accomplish so much and I want to help so many people, but if I give myself away too much, at some point, you have to pay the piper and you’re not going to have the energy to do that. So it’s about taking it one day at a time.
Susan Leahy: And you know what’s interesting is that we think that that is something that we pay down the road and it’s not true. You’re paying for it now. You’re paying for it in this moment because I think at a subconscious level, there’s a knowing from ourselves that if I don’t find myself worthy enough to take care of right now, then that just projects out beyond. I have to take control right now.
I’m really excited to share that I’m right in the middle of my 90-day Pilates Challenge. I’m alcohol-free and I’m dessert-free. I’m on day – well, not right in the middle, but day 40 was yesterday. It’s that sense of just doing things to take care of myself, leading my own health so that I can then show up differently for the people that I’m working with, with my family, with my kids, with my husband. You’ve got to lead your own health.
Wendy Myers: And you have to convince yourself, “I have time for myself. I have time.” You have to make the time. I find myself constantly, “Oh, I don’t have time. I don’t have time to work out. I don’t have time to go for that walk because I need to work.” It shortchanges you. It burns out the adrenals for sure.
Susan Leahy: And you can’t get those back. Hello. It’s a tough road to hoe. You better keep them safe instead of try to repair the damage once the damage is done.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, and I can speak from personal experience. I’ve been working on healing my adrenals for probably three years.
Susan Leahy: Three years!
Wendy Myers: I’m still not there.
Susan Leahy: Easy to say, harder to do.
Wendy Myers: I have been working hard on healing those.
Susan Leahy: I know you have.
Wendy Myers: I’m healing those. If I go to a doctor’s office, I don’t have adrenal issues, but for me, I’m looking for perfect adrenal health.
Susan Leahy: There you go. Optimum health. Optimum health.
Wendy Myers: Optimum adrenal health. So on my hair mineral analysis, I’m not quite there yet, but I’m getting there. I’m very, very close. I have to sleep more.
Susan Leahy: “I have to sleep more.”
Well, I think that with respects to leadership and leading, this idea that people have to just kind of, “Go, go, go, go, go,” and burn their candle at both ends, I think we’re really as a society waking up and recognizing that we’re not getting the most out of our people. As a leader, as a woman in leadership, it’s that sense of how do I really support people in having work-life balance and I can’t do that unless I have it myself.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, yeah.
Wendy Myers: So what about fear? It’s something that we’ve talked a lot about when we’ve talked about our over decades long relationship is about fear and making decisions based out of fear. How does fear affect your health and basically impede you from becoming a leader?
Susan Leahy: Well, it’s interesting. I think that we need to become very aware of how fear manifests because fear is a very natural part of our existence. It’s not going to ever go away. We’re not going to stop all of a sudden being afraid of things. It’s a part of the way we interact.
The number one fear in the nation before death and spiders is public speaking, yet any great leader needs to be able to manage that fear. It doesn’t mean that they don’t feel the fear. It just means that they’ve found a way of dealing with it and they do it anyway.
So one of the first things that I encourage people to do is to get really in touch with how does it manifest for you? Do you fight or flight? That’s the first question that I like to ask people. Are you a fighter or are you a flighter? How does it manifest?
You might be a combination of some. In my relationships, I always wonder why none of the conflicts would get resolved because I would fight, I would yell and then I would lead, so nothing got resolved. So you can be a fighter with flight tendencies. It’s that sense of realizing that you’re not really leading if you’re allowing yourself to stay in that reactionary pattern.
A very simple model that I like to share with my clients is that you get in touch with, “Are you a fighter? Are you a flighter?” and then you become conscious of the importance of really staying. So S.T.A.Y. has become an acronym that we use and S.T.A.Y. stands for, “Stop thinking it’s about you.”
A lot of times, when we get into the fear, the fear is really self-involved. “They’re going to think I’m stupid. They’re not going to like me. They’re going to judge me unfairly.” The fear is all self-obsessed, fear of getting hurt, fear of losing, fear of whatever. It’s about you.
Wendy Myers: Fear of not being funny.
Susan Leahy: Fear of not having that joke land.
Wendy Myers: That’s one of my fears.
Susan Leahy: Gerald, my husband says, “Susan, if you weren’t laughing, no one else would be.”
But S.T.A.Y. really has become a mental mantra that I’ve equipped people with to help them deal with their fears because great leaders, they don’t fight with their people, they don’t flight from their people, they stay with their people.
S.T.A.Y., stop thinking it’s about you. Create some energetic gap in your mind so that you can reconnect to what your vision, your purpose, your desire is and not be in and given to your fear, which his fight or flight. You can’t lead when you’re fighting and flighting.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I just spoke on Jimmy Morris’ Livin’ La Vida Low Carb Cruise. I was up on stage and I was speaking and people keep telling me, “Once you’re up on stage and you’ve done a bunch of times, the fear just goes away,” I don’t believe that. I wanted to flee. I wanted to feel from the stage, but I stayed.
Susan Leahy: Yeah. Good.
Wendy Myers: But my adrenals, they were going and they were going for hours afterward.
Susan Leahy: Phew! How does it manifest in your body. What do you think or feel when you want to fly? Do you change colors? Does your heart beat fast?
Wendy Myers: Yeah, the voice gets a little shaky.
Susan Leahy: Okay, the voice gets a little shaky.
Wendy Myers: My voice gets a little shaky, yeah, but I can relax a little bit.
Susan Leahy: I think it’s a bold face lie. I’m sorry. I’ve been speaking professionally for almost 20 years and I still get nervous when I get up in front of groups. Does it feel a little bit different? Absolutely. But I still have that flush of energy. I don’t think that you’re ever going to get rid of that. And to think that when you feel that, that that is in some way is saying that you’re not competent, confident, it’s a lie. It’s saying, “Oh, this is a human side of me. Now, I want to go and I want to move past that and I want to really connect with my audience. I want to make a difference in this world.”
Wendy Myers: Well, I do want to move past being human.
Susan Leahy: I’m sorry, Ms. Myers, it’s not going to happen.
Wendy Myers: That’s one of my goals, okay? At least I’m not like David Bowie and vomiting before I go onstage. I’m not taking it that far.
Susan Leahy: That far…
Wendy Myers: Just a little shaky voice. I don’t have much to complain about I guess.
Susan Leahy: And then you enjoy after it’s over, right?
Wendy Myers: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Susan Leahy: …which is great. It feels good. And what you have to offer is so important. You can’t be a leader if you’re not willing to offer that side of yourself even though you’re still feeling the fear.
And I think with collegiate women especially, it really is such an interesting time. It’s like how do you give women the permission to really be in their fullness in front of people. Don’t fight, don’t flight, but really give yourself permission to stay.
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Wendy Myers: And so why don’t you tell me about ACWA, the American Collegiate Women’s Association and basically how you conceived of creating a leadership association that’s really more holistic by incorporating all the elements of health and well-being?
Susan Leahy: I think that’s really what it is. I’ve been around the speaking world forever. I’ve worked in the college market for years. I’m lucky enough to have an amazing partnership with the American Student Government Association. They’re going to be doing their 100th conference this year. I’ve been with them since conference no. 2, so I have trained thousands and thousands of student leaders.
I have been doing these women in leadership classes and it became very apparent that this movement of the feminine leader – what is feminine leadership? There’s a desire for more information, more tangible experience.
What we’re really trying to offer through ACWA is experiential, transformational conferences that give women permission to play and really take on a greater leadership role both personally and professionally.
Wendy Myers: Well, so how is the ACWA different and unique from, say, your typical leadership training that’s out there?
Susan Leahy: Well, it’s interesting because I think that a lot of times when we go to conferences, we shuffle from workshop to workshop to workshop to workshop. The way that the ACWA conferences are structured, they really are longer workshop blocks so that you can actually go deeper, have more interaction. I say that we’re not talking at you, we’re creating with you. That’s a big difference.
All of our ACWA presenters are not just presenting. They’re facilitating, they’re connecting with and they’re creating with the ladies who are attending the conferences. And we have women who are in sororities, we have women that are in student government, we have just the general female population who’s interested in developing their own skills, so it really is a conference for any woman at any age that’s in the collegiate market that’s wanting to increase their own leadership potential.
Wendy Myers: So can you just give the audience and the female leaders out there a closing power tip?
Susan Leahy: A closing power tip, this is an interesting one. I mean, I guess maybe I’ve got this in my brain right now because we got started with the S.T.A.Y. model, I want to leave you with something tangible. When you get in front of an audience and you’re going to be speaking whether it’s a formal event or an informal event, there’s a few steps that I follow.
The first one is I really encourage you to look at the people that you’re about to speak to. Create a connection. I want you to then remember how important it is to feel good about what you’re doing. So look, smile, take a big intention deep breath in so that you can expand yourself. When we’re nervous, we’re closed in. We breathe. And then all the while in the background, I want you to recite that S.T.A.Y. model. S.T.A.Y., stop thinking it’s about you. Great leaders are not there because of themselves. They’re showing up on behalf of the people who need them to lead them.
So look, smile, breathe, then talk all while you’re saying the S.T.A.Y. model.
Wendy Myers: That’s what I have to remember to do, to smile.
Susan Leahy: I know.
Wendy Myers: I’m a very happy person, but I get up there and I just have a serious message and I’m nervous and I’m like, “Hello, my name is Wendy Myers…” and I just get into this robot mode.
Susan Leahy: Right. If you think about it, it’s all connected to us constricting. You don’t smile because you’re constricting your face muscles. You don’t breathe because you’re constricting your lungs. The reality is we can’t be leaders unless we’re in our own personal expansion.
You have to expand. You have to become more. You have to let yourself move outward if you’re going to really give outward.
So I appreciate you giving me the platform to talk a little bit about ACWA and I look forward to our partnership and really bringing you into some of the conferences and having you speak to some of the ladies.
Wendy Myers: Oh, I am thrilled. I would be so honored to do that. And this has been great for me actually. I’m glad that we had this talk just for my own personal improving of my own public speaking skills.
Wendy Myers: But I have a question that I like to ask all of my guest. We do this on every podcast.
Susan Leahy: Oh, my God! I can’t believe it. I buggered out. Did I bugger out? I thought I buggered out. Okay, go ahead.
Wendy Myers: Oh, no, no. Sorry, we were having technical issues earlier, but it’s fine now. So what do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today? Deep. It’s heavy.
Susan Leahy: The most pressing issue in the world today. I’ll tell you – oh, gosh! I think that childhood obesity is a big deal. When you see kids kind of sitting in front of the television and eating the foods that they’re eating and it’s manifesting in their bodies, we, as adults need to do something about it because our kids deserve to have a strong foundation to live the rest of their life on. They don’t deserve to dig themselves out of a hole that we put them in. And so I think that’s a huge issue that we need to deal with.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I was pondering that the other day. I was at a birthday party for one of my daughter’s cousin. There were tons of kids there…
Susan Leahy: Right. Cake, cake, cake!
Wendy Myers: …and half of them were obese. Half of them were overweight. It just makes me so sad. It is a huge, huge problem and it’s going to spurn even more of a bigger obesity epidemic that we have today. It’s so concerning.
Susan Leahy: And it directly connects to a person’s self-confidence. It’s not again about what you look like, it’s about how you feel. We know that when you’re carrying twenty extra pounds, it has a lot of impact on how you’re physically feeling, which is going to affect how you mentally feel, which is going to affect how you show up in the world.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, absolutely. So can you tell the listeners a little bit more about you.
Susan Leahy: Well, you can find me at a couple of places. You can certainly go to ACWAOnline.com to learn about ACWA as an association and also, to learn about our conferences that we’re so excited. Our conferences are held at exclusively women’s institutions, colleges and universities. We’re going to be at Simons University and we’re going to be at Spellman and Mount St. Mary’s. That’ll be coming up here in the next few months. You can go to ACWAOnline.com.
You can also learn a little bit more about my speaking services by going directly to susanleahy.com. You can learn all about the workshops, webinars and presentations that I give. So those would be the two places that I would direct people to go.
Wendy Myers: And you have a sparkly new website too.
Susan Leahy: Ah, yes. Websites are like babies. They’re always growing up. They’re always getting bigger and better and they’re getting bolder. So yeah, we’re constantly working on the websites.
Wendy Myers: Well, Suzie, thank you so much for – I call you ‘Suzie’. Thank you so much for coming on the show. That was so wonderful and I hope that you have inspired some of our young female leaders out there to join up to your association so they can get the skills that they need to go out and take over the planet.
Susan Leahy: That’s right. Well, Wendy, I look forward to growing to 110 with you.
Wendy Myers: Well, thank you so much, Suzie.
Susan Leahy: Okay, bye.
Wendy Myers: And everyone, if you want to learn more about detoxification and the modern paleo diet and how to heal your health conditions naturally, just go to myersdetox.com and check out the new website. You can also find me on Facebook and Twitter at iwillliveto110. Thank you so much for tuning in! You have just been listening to the Live to 110 Podcast.
