So I wanna share with you the power of and and why I'm so glad that you're in this room today because this can change your life.I'm gonna start off with a little bit of story of a story I introduced myself, Becca, Fortune five hundred sales executive. Been in the tech industry twenty years. Well, let's rewind about ten years ago. Mid my mid to upper thirties, and I'm working as a senior sales leader. I'm part of an executive board. I have four kids in middle school. Four. Four kids in middle school. And it's a blend blended family at that. So I was running on all cylinders. So if you're familiar with the running on all cylinders thing, you can put a little a little emoji or that you're with me in there, but I was going on all cylinders. And as I'm raising my my kids and working this, you know, big role, I remember having four bad days in a row.

Now, again, you could drop a little emoji of, like, a 100% if you've ever had four days, four bad days in a row. But I just remember coming home from my fourth bad day in a row and feeling so depleted that I didn't yeah. I see a 100%. Yep. And feeling so depleted that I didn't even know if I could muster the energy to get out of the car. And with everything I got, I put on that smile as we do as parents or, you know, for walking into work if you're not a parent. You know that feeling where you just gotta put the put the face on, put the smile on, and go. So I do that. I walk through the door. All the kids are there. And mind you, my kids are no longer in elementary school where they're like, mommy, I love you. Right? No.

I walk in and they're straight up, mom, sign this. Mom, I need that. And I lost my mind. I said, can I put my freaking purse down? And I exploded in anger. And to this day, it is a moment in time that I will never forget because time slowed down. I saw them shift. I saw them shift into shame. I saw them shift into sadness. I saw them shift into guilt for even approaching me. And it was in that moment that I was like, woah. I'm pushing so hard that I'm no longer present. I'm not present for my kids. I'm not present as a wife. I'm not present like, how present am I actually at work? Maybe a little bit at work, but how present am I for myself? I can't be doing the best job that I can if I'm running on empty like this. So yeah. Four is hard. Yeah. We've a 100% without children.

It's so hard. Like, all of this life being is so hard. And what I realized is that the only priority I had was work, and it didn't leave much room for me. And with the lack of energy that I have, it didn't leave much room for my family, for my kids. I'm pretty sure the team that I was running, I was probably showing up on empty to them. And I remember this sounds silly, but this is the the power of and, and and we're gonna go into it because it's not about my story, but it's about what you can do, what I learned through my story. And I remember after this moment doing something completely in the opposite direction of tech, I signed up to be a yoga instructor.

And I had no intention of quitting my job to be a yoga instructor. I just wanted to feel at peace. I knew I needed to breathe. I knew I needed to find myself. And all of a sudden, I find myself in this situation where my corporate peers are like, what are you doing? Are you gonna quit this awesome job to go be a yoga teacher? And I'm like, no way. I'm like, I just also happen to like yoga. And I had all my yoga brothers and sisters asking me, like, I bet you can't wait to quit that corporate job, That soul sucking corporate job. And I'm like, I actually like my career. My career is pretty awesome. I'm just trying to, like, do more of what I love. And what I found, and there's a lot of science behind this, is that the and actually, like, sets you free.

It was in the doing of continuing my job and continuing the role as my a mother and a wife and also layering in something that filled me up that my entire life started to change. Why? Because here comes enter enter in the door. Here comes passion, purpose, and with that came momentum, better ideas, more money, better relationships with my children. And it wasn't just the yoga, but it was that I allowed myself to be multidimensional, multipassionate, and show up as my full true self. So how many of you think that sounds like a good idea to embrace the power of band? Woo hoo. We have some fireworks going off. So that's pretty cool. What I'd like to do now is take you through a little trip into the power of and. And so you may not control all of the events that have happened to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

And the reason I chose that quote is we end up as we continue into our career, we end up fitting more and more into a box. And when we thought we were growing, at one point we were, at some point we end up being reduced. So this is your invitation not to be reduced, break through the walls, and embrace the and in your life. So we're gonna talk first about protecting your potential. This is my framework. It's called the power of and or it's called the power method. There's five pillars to it, but, really, today, we're gonna focus on protect your potential and a little bit of rock your radiance because this session is small. So did you know that sixty nine percent of working professionals report living in their unpotential?

And, really, what that means is that sixty nine percent of working professionals admit to being in some form of burnout. And what that equates to, for me, is I I'm a specialist. I'm a trauma informed leadership expert. I specialize in burnout prevention. And what I've come to learn is something really fascinating that I wanna share with you. And we're really for sakes of time, this is the whole pyramid of unpotential. So starting at the bottom here is the uns, and that's really just where things take root. You could tell it's a sad flower. But the level one is called the unders. Level two is called the overs. And these are the three parts that I'm gonna be talking about today. The how we get stuck in our unpotential and get to the point of losing presence in our lives, get to a point where there's no longer any level of of true fulfillment because we've cut out all our passions is because we get stuck here.

And you'll know you're on the trajectory for burnout if you find yourself overing all the time. So if you guys have a pen and paper, this is a great time to write this down because this could this is practical and could help you in the future, if not right now. When you find yourself or if you're leading a team and you see your team doing this, these are really important things to pay attention to. What if you see people overing, so overworking, overanalyzing, overstressing, overthinking. In your personal life, it could be like overeating, getting overstimulation, over shopping. You're overextending, whether that's at work at home. You're over committing. All these overs when they are not short term. Sometimes, like, for an example, you might have a project at work and you have to overanalyze and overwork to get it done. But that's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the commitment to overdoing it. And that's where I was when I had my four four bad days in a row. It wasn't the four bad days that led me up to losing my mind and almost having a nervous breakdown. It was the year and a half of powering through and overdoing it before those four days. Like so put some emotions or something in the in the chat if you're tracking with what I'm talking about. So what I wanna share with you is that with the overs, there is a reason that we over. We over because we feel undervalued, we feel underappreciated, we feel underrecognized, and these unders lead to basic human survival needs.

So I'm not gonna go full psych psych on you today, full psychology on you, but there's a framework called Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is really cool. It's the pyramid of human potential, so to speak, and this would be the pyramid of unpotential. See how that works? But if, in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, there's the two bottom ones that are safety and security. For you to reach your full potential, you need to, there's different levels that you need to go through. And the first one is that you have to have your basic needs met. You need to feel safe and you need to feel secure. And when we feel unloved, unwanted, unimportant, whether it's at work or home, we start to feel undervalued, underappreciated, underrecognized. And then here's what happens from a subconscious perspective.

We start overdoing it. When we feel under from a psychological perspective, we overcompensate, and that's what sends you into your overs. So I just wanted we have a short time together today, but I wanted to bring that to you so you had a practical way of keeping yourself out of out of burnout and into your fullest potential. And then we're gonna use the and as a way to do that. So, you know, in life so in life, there is a whole bunch of ands. I just if you guys wanna put some of your ands, I love starting to explore these. What are your roles? What do you do? Are you like me? Do you are you a wife and a mom? And a, for me, I'm a, I I'm an employee. I work at Cisco. I'm a SD WAN product specialist. I'm a wife. I'm a mom. I am a yogi. I am a best selling author. I am a keynote speaker.

Like, I have a whole bunch of ands, and guess what? You do too. We also have ands in the other direction where you're like, I gotta do this and I gotta do that, and I gotta do this and I gotta do that. And before you know it, you're more committed to the dysfunction of your ands than you are to the quality of your ands. So this again is an invitation to some people are like, I never thought about my ands before. Right? And so this is an invitation to think about your ands and see if you're building within your persona of who you are. Do you also have ands that fill you up? As I mentioned, I'm a writer, I'm a speaker, and I work full time.

And people ask me, how do you have time to do that? Well, because it's important to me, and what I have learned is, again, and and, again, what I had said is that your ants create the quality of your life. So if you have passions, they're going to, fill you up. So we want to put you in a position or you wanna put yourself in a position where you are including the things that you're passionate about and that have meaning to you. So I want to again, this is a short meeting, so I wanted to do something kind of fun, and I wanna invite you to the 8% club. So here's a fun fact. Only 8% of people actually, like, actually hit their goals and see them come to fruition.

So 17% of people so roughly as you see on the slide, two roughly two out of 10 people will actually take the time to set goals. So, you know, if you, you know, set some goals, I wanna, you know, do I wanna lose 20 pounds in six months. K. That's great. But then the cool thing is eight out of 10 people who actually set the goals and take action, and so they put a little action plan to that, they see their goals come to fruition. So what if you were part of the 8% club, which this over here, you set your goal. Not only did you set a goal, but then you took a couple steps to achieve it. So what I wanna do for you guys is I want you to pick one professional goal.

Like, right now, if you're doing pen and paper, I want you to pick one professional goal that you would like to see come to fruition over the next year. Yes, Mandy. You're right. It's the following that's exactly what I'm saying. 17% of people actually do it, but only 8% of people. Yeah. And so this is why we're starting with one. Good. List of list of list. We're one. And this is what these people do make too many lists, especially when we're professionals. We have, so many goals that we wanna achieve. But I want you to pick one professional goal and one personal goal. Yes. Higher level certification. Move into management. Great. Now I want you to pick one personal goal for the year, and you can drop it in the chat too.

I love seeing these come through, but I really want you to write it down, your one professional goal and your one personal goal. Join a hiking club. There. I see you're gonna be Jennifer Baxter, you got it. So you've got a personal one and you got a professional one, and and joining a hiking club is going to give you so much more vitality to hit the other goals you have no idea. Mandy, run a half marathon. That's awesome. The first female man man I'm turning off, I'm, like, loving this. Alright. So we're gonna be coming up on time soon, so I wanna make sure that you guys get what you need to get. That's called a micro goal. So I want you now to take your two big goals, and I want you to set three little goals or three micro goals under them.

So read two books a month. That's two books a month. That's awesome, Ayamba. Like, you can do, that. And then, like so your your macro goal would be two books a month, and then your micro goal would be, like, maybe create a list of five books so you're not, oh, I forgot to I forgot to research what books I wanna read, and then I don't get done. Mandy, maybe for you, you know, maybe run a half marathon is the goal. So you start off small. Like, do you have sneakers? Like, your goals don't have your micro goals don't have to be big, but I want you to set three micro goals to each of those. So if Mandy wants to run a half marathon, my first question could be a simple one. Do you have the shoes to do it? If the answer is no, then you can go you know, your first to do could be like, go get the shoes. Then it's like, oh, what's the best path?

What do I have a five k walking path in my neighborhood? Great. But if you set these micro goals to the macro goal, you you see the percentage, eight out of 10 people. So you have an 80% chance of having your goals come true if you set the the steps. So I see exercise more. So, Dacia Dacia? I'm so bad at pronouncing names sometimes, but fascia is probably how you say it. But if you wanna exercise more, I would get more specific. What is more what does that mean? Does that mean I wanna go to Pilates? Thank you. That's it. So I I would recommend, like, do is that Pilates? Is that yoga? Is that a hit class? And then if you have anything near you. So you could see how, take care of your health.

So you guys have so many wonderful things coming in. And I just, again, this is a short on time presentation, but I want you to close your eyes with me real, real fast because really how you can breathe in addition to the micro goals and seeing them through, another way that you bring your goals to life is embodying them with five sensory.

So I just want you to pick your let's just pick your you can pick whatever goal you want, but pick one, professional or personal. And I want you to just real fast close your eyes and feel what does that feel like when you do that. What do you see? Do you see yourself crossing the finish line? Do you see yourself lifting 20 pounds instead of 10? Do you see yourself completing the books and then maybe sharing them with your friends? Like, what is it that you see? What do you smell? Do you smell sweat? Do you smell the pages of a book? Nothing gets me more than a bookstore. Love that smell. What are you smelling? What are you tasting? Do you taste sweat? Do you taste, like, coffee while you're reading your book? What are you hearing? Are you hearing silence because you're alone?

Are you hearing, the, you know, sounds of fans just because every you're in a marathon, everyone's clapping? So we've talked about what are you feeling? What are you seeing? What are you hearing? You can, well, first, before you open your eyes, if you still have your eyes closed, go ahead and take a deep breath in and just say to yourself, and it is so. These and now you can open your eyes. That was just a quick quick visceral, meditation. You can do that on your own. There's, you could probably YouTube, more ways to do that. But there's nothing better than doing a five sensory visualization to help you bring your ants to life. So you can accomplish this personal goal and you can accomplish this professional goal. The statistics are in your favor. The psychology supports it.

And, I just have one more thing for you guys. This is your opportunity to give yourself permission to have super big dreamy goals and for them to come to life. So just take a moment, claim it. If you want, like, put a heart, put a 100%, put a party little streamer in the comments, but I want you to give yourself permission to have these super big dreamy goals and to chase your dreams with such passion and purpose that it inspires someone else to do the same. This creates a ripple of positive impact, so don't, hold yourself back because you never know who it might influence. I'm Becca Powers. If you would like to stay in contact, that is how you do it. All the information is to the side. I do have a free gift for you. It's an ebook called the high performer's path, the eight forces of potential for mindset mastery, and you could go ahead and scan that.

And I hope you enjoyed the twenty minutes with me. It was so good.