Best of PART II | ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL | A Conversation with Lauren Davis

It’s our anniversary, and we’re turning the mic inward.

In this special episode of Beneath the Busy, our Producer and Editor Toto sat down with our host Lauren Davis, for a raw, honest conversation about her own journey. Beyond the podcasting, Lauren shares her personal experiences, the moments that shaped her, and what it truly means to lead with authenticity in both life and work.

Burnout doesn’t always arrive with a dramatic crash. Sometimes it shows up as “I’m fine” while you keep delivering, keep people-pleasing, and keep proving yourself until your nervous system has had enough. We share a best-of clip from our anniversary conversation with Lauren that gets uncomfortably honest and brilliantly practical about what changes after you step back from work and decide you’re not going back to the same old patterns.

We dig into the moment-to-moment choices that quietly rebuild (or wreck) your wellbeing: why you say yes, why you work late, and what you are really chasing when you feel hustled. Lauren challenges the belief that deadlines are sacred and reframes boundaries as risk management, not laziness. If you keep doing it all, the system learns you can do it all. Sometimes the healthiest move is admitting you will not meet the deadline and letting leadership feel the pressure your body has been carrying.

We also explore workplace culture through a generational lens: why younger workers are less willing to “sell their souls” to a job, how companies can earn genuine commitment, and what makes discretionary effort sustainable. That leads into mental health days, recovery time, and the crucial point that wellbeing policies fail when leaders do not model them. Finally, we talk about HR as the “marshmallow layer”, the hidden toll of compassion fatigue, and why support, coaching, and community are non-negotiable if you want to lead well.

If this resonates, share it with someone who’s running on empty, and subscribe so you don’t miss what’s coming next. Leave us a review and tell us: what boundary would make the biggest difference to your week?

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https://www.ljdwellbeing.com/courses/

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Transcript

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Why We Are Sharing Highlights

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi there, it's Toito again. Thank you so much for tuning in for another episode. We uh have had so many questions and requests after the release of our last episode. Um in our conversation with Lauren for our anniversary special that we uh felt like putting out a couple of best offs over the next couple of weeks. Some of our favorite moments, some of your favorite moments from these two hours that we spoke with Lauren. And yeah, um we're we're really excited to share these with you. And yeah, if this sparks your interest, if this is where you're joining us, you can always go back to the main um to the main interview, that's the full two hours, which I think is still very much worth it because there's so much beautiful stuff set in there. So, yeah, enjoy these next couple of weeks. We're gonna have some special bonus content for you before the start of our next season, season three, which is gonna be very, very special with lots of amazing guests and collaborators. So, yeah, enjoy until then and you'll hear from us soon.

Regulate First As A Leader

SPEAKER_02 1:07

As a leader, the the core thing, the first thing that is the most important is for you to regulate your own nervous system. Because if you're sympathetically activated, that is unconsciously physically going to activate the people around you. And so we can do all these other things and we can talk about, I mean, a big, a big concept at the moment is psychological safety, and I'll I'll speak into that a little bit. But we can we can uh you know talk about all these amazing theories and thoughts and practices, but if your own system is not regulated, um, none of that's really gonna hold because people won't, it won't be credible because in your presence, they're gonna feel activated. They're gonna feel unsafe because you are emitting danger signals, because you're wired. So all the stuff that I spoke about on an individual level, I think that's the first thing a leader needs to do is make sure that they are taking care of their own health, their mental well-being and physical well-being, and continuously activating the parasympathetic nervous system so that they're calming themselves down. Um because only then will people start to feel safe in

Workload Reality And Listening Properly

SPEAKER_02 2:19

your presence. And that's that's essentially what organizations need to start doing is I mean, obviously, systemically, we need to look at workload because I think it's unrealistic at the moment, resourcing everything, people trying to do more with less at the moment, cost cutting. And I get that they're financial strains, but I think some companies are just taking it too far and they're cutting teams down to the bare minimum. And there's three or four people now doing the work of what should have been six or seven. And back to my point, those individuals just keep delivering because they're scared that they'll be next. And so the the leaders are like, well, we're managing on the smaller team. So, yes, it's for those individuals to push back, but the system has to listen to that. And if people are saying we cannot deliver, they've got to step back. Because leaders, in their defense, they've lost touch with the the the nitty-gritty of what the job entails. So if you're saying yes, it can be done, they're gonna take your word for it. So so as a leader, it's if somebody comes to you and says, this is not possible, or I don't have capacity, it's to listen into that and not be so scared of people are taking advantage, they'll take advantage of the system. Like, why do we immediately default to the worst-case scenario?

SPEAKER_03 3:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

Yes, there is always maybe one in ten that will take the piss out of a system like that and will, you know, take advantage, but then you performance manage them. But why must we punish everybody who's actually doing a good job? And so your first thing is if somebody's saying, I don't have capacity, or we won't meet that deadline, or that's unrealistic, listen. I'm not saying you have to immediately agree, but just listen to what they're saying. Try and understand how they are thinking about this thing. How maybe they are being, they're not being as efficient as they could be. So give them that support to say, I hear you, let's think it through, or let's try and how how can I help you prioritize? So, so you know, the resourcing and workload really needs to um be looked at because that's when people feel all anybody wants is to feel seen, heard, and loved. And when you can help, and I know people don't like to use the word love in the organizational space, but seen, heard, and valued. So when somebody is feeling seen, then, you know, then you're working together in a partnership here because ultimately it's really fundamentally believing your people want to deliver. They want to do a good job. They don't wake up in the morning thinking, well, how can I stuff up today? Or how can I do the least amount of work? And I know a lot of leaders challenge me on that because they're like, yeah, but you haven't made my team. And I'm I really fundamentally believe majority of people want to do a good job. And if they're not, there's something getting in their way. We want people to be able to bring their full brain to work. Um so if you're activated sympathetically and you're giving out danger signals, if people are completely exhausted and burnt out and overwhelmed all the time, their prefrontal cortex does not work. And that's our thinking part of our brain. That's the executive part of our brain that that helps us do our work, helps us think, helps us reason, you know, emotional regulation, all those things. So creating psychological safety says to people, you can bring your whole brain here. Other people are coming to work in in their fight or flight, and you're not getting the best out of that.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

And then you just have leaders and workers activated and actually wheel spinning often the time.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

And that's we're just busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. That's it's just become the default because everybody's just activated. Nobody is pausing, breathing to say, what are we so busy about? Let's reevaluate. What are we what's kind of most important? And then to your point, reflecting in what do we have capacity for?

SPEAKER_03 6:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

And that needs to go all the way to the top. And I mean, I work with a lot of senior execs, and we and when they start realizing the pressure that they're putting underneath on the people below them, it starts to shift the system. But for many of them, they've spent their whole life striving this drivenness, this ambition. It's what got them to that position. And now to hear, well, you have to actually take your foot off the accelerator a bit and slow down, it's like it's hard for them because they've got all this responsibility. But also what they realize, what you know, often in the work with me is they realize they've got this responsibility to deliver for the business and the shareholders or the board or whatever it is, but they also have a responsibility to their people and to make sure that their people are healthy because that's just a it's plain business risk if we want to talk business language.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Yeah.

Can Leaders Shift Without A Crash

SPEAKER_01 6:53

So do you think there is a because you just mentioned it can be quite an intense like shift going from having one sort of mindset that is maybe build this whole company and you're, you know, you get a lot of rewards and it's it's it's paying off essentially. Um and then, but maybe then at some point realizing, oh, this it it it used to pay off, but now I don't feel so good and something needs to change. Um, but then maybe then you come in at this point, maybe and you introduce a new sort of mindset and approach. W like what do you think is maybe does it need like smaller steps in between so that the shift isn't as extreme when it can be built like gradually? Um or do you think sometimes it needs like a hard, like maybe in your case, like a hard out, and like do people need to be shaken sometimes? Or um is it I'm guessing it's also depending on every individual, but um yeah, how has that been? How's that experience been in your work just with your Yeah?

SPEAKER_02 7:53

I mean I think it does, it it can for some people it's it's lots of layers unpeeling and peeling and kind of realizing and kind of making small shifts. Um most often though, I think at that level, what I see is it does require, or not require, what happens is it's a crash. Something happens, they collapse, they have a health issue, they get divorced, the something happens that they then are forced to pause and re-evaluate and and and shift. And and I wish that it wouldn't have to be that.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

It wouldn't have to go so far in the first place.

SPEAKER_02 8:35

Because the repercussions are so huge and damaging and the and that often it's trauma that people experience. But I think sometimes maybe that's just the way we are as humans, you know, it's like we need that big wake-up call before we're willing to to actually do they know something needs to change, they don't know what. Or they're often quite terrified to do that that change, and then your body will do it for you. I always say if you don't make time for your wellness, you'll be forced to make time for your illness. And that's what that's what I see time and time again. Um there's been some cases where it's just happened without that, and that's obviously much nicer for the person and their family and the system. Yeah. Um, but they also then have to be in a system that is uh receptive to their shifts. And so sometimes it if the individual is struggling and the system is putting pressure, the only thing that's gonna help shift is some kind of crisis. Let's pause

Beyond Burnout Course Invitation

SPEAKER_02 9:38

here for a second. If you're listening to this while running on empty, pushing through, holding it all together, and still feeling wiped out, then this next bit's for you. I want to tell you that you're not broken. It's not an inherent flaw. It's most likely you're experiencing a level of burnout. And there's a real difference. That's why I created this course called Beyond Burnout: Shifting from Surviving to Thriving. It's a self-paced online course for people who are done with pretending that they're fine. In it, you'll learn what's really burning you out. And let me tell you, it's hardly ever your schedule. You'll learn how to set boundaries that hold under pressure, how to manage stress in ways that fit into your life, and how to build resilience. That doesn't mean pushing harder, but it's about making more room to recover. This isn't about adding more to your already overbooked schedule. It's about offering you an opportunity to reset. So if this sounds like something you need, the link is in the show notes. Enroll now and take the first step towards building a life that really supports you.

Superwoman Mode And The Breaking Point

SPEAKER_01 10:44

We're able to go pretty far beyond our boundaries if we want to. We choose that, right? Like external things make us choose that, but it's also a drive. I think a lot of people, if you become a leader, there is a certain drive that you have to push forward to push boundaries. But I think you know, so the pushing boundaries is to me, I think can have a positive impact on a company, on on whatever you are working towards, if it's a product or um or other things. But yeah, what do you think got you to that point and what was that point like that made you want to shift something, want it want to change something? Was it did did you feel like you wanted to change where it was heading or just step out of it? Like what was that point like?

SPEAKER_02 11:28

So I think a bit of both, but I I I really I I had taken on way too much. So I I think my child was about five or six at the time. So I was a mom to my biological son and a stepson. He had just come to live with us, so I had two boys at home, my own business. Um, and then I also started a little school for my youngest son because I wasn't happy with the traditional schooling system. So I started a progressive school. And so whilst I wasn't doing the teaching, myself and this other mom, we were still having to manage this whole thing and the teachers and the parents. And um, and that was part of my superwoman. I thought I could do it all, and society really reinforces that. Everybody was like, Oh, you're so amazing. I don't know how you do it all. And I remember when people would say that to me, I'm like, I actually don't know how I'm doing it all because I'm not. Like inside, often I was just exhausted all the time. I was miserable. Sometimes I'd stand up to deliver a keynote or run a workshop with a room full of people, and I would just stand there thinking, I just want to sit down and go to sleep. Like I just want to curl up into a pedal and just go to sleep. And so so it was kind of insidious. It wasn't all at once, it was this slow and just constantly trying to do things differently. Okay, so I'm gonna set a boundary, I'm not gonna work after eight o'clock at night, but then there'd be a big report or a design that I'd have to do and I'd end up doing it. Or I'm not gonna travel this week because it was something important for my son, and then there was a big job. And so I tried all the typical boundary setting, time management, all the external things because I'm separating also private life and work and get the work-life balance and all of that stuff. And um cognitively I knew something had to change. My family knew it. I was grumpy, I was miserable. Um and I'll never forget a colleague of mine said she had asked her son, he was older at the time, you know, what he would remember her by. And he said, Mom, I'll remember that you were always tired and all you wanted was to wait for your glass of wine on a Friday night. And I thought, my gosh, if I asked my son that, that would be the same thing. In fact, and so, yeah, and so we had a c so I had a couple of those awarenesses, and then one day um I was with my son in the park, and you know, it was after school, we had done homework, we had to go and walk the dog, then I had to get him back so he could have supper, so he could have a bath, so he could get back into so he could get into bed, so I could get back to work. And it was this like cycle that I was just on and rushing, and and I was in the park and I was like, come, we've got to go, we've got to go, I've got to get you supper. And he sat down in the park and just wailed. I mean, neighbors, everybody was looking and he just screamed and he was like, All you care about is the schedule. That's all you ever care about is the schedule. And at that moment, I was like, What am I doing what am I doing? You know, because it's true, that was all. And it wasn't even it was just to get through the schedule so that I could sit at my desk and carry on with my work.

SPEAKER_03 14:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

Um and I had completely convinced myself that it's fine because, you know, I always used to say there are these people that say that their family is their most important thing, but yes, my family's important, but work's my thing. Like that's and and I was quite proud of it. That I'm okay to say it's not my family, it's work. And but it wasn't giving me joy. It wasn't, you know, and so that's when I started to think, well, if work's my thing, I should be feeling a lot more, not always like happy or joyful, but just a lot more energized. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Was there any kinds of rewards though? Like within that?

SPEAKER_02 14:59

Yes, loads, loads. I mean, the work we were delivering was incredible work and the impact we were having with companies and you know, where I got to work with leaders who really got it and saw their shifts and company cultures where we did um we worked with their values and their mission and their vision. Like it was really impactful. And that was a bit of the drug, in a way, because it was so so I was making this amazing difference in the organizational space, but my life and my family's life was not that amazing. You know, they were not getting the best of me. And I was, you know, all this stuff I was sprouting to everybody, you know, people, you know, that you must give the best of you, not what's left of you. And I had all this like rhetoric. So I knew what I needed to do, but I could not do it because I was so entrenched in my business. I had a business partner at the time um in the school where I had this other mom I was doing it with, with my family. Then my father also got uh quite critically ill. He's fine now, but um that was kind of like the final, I just had no capacity to deal with, I had no slack for that. And that really took me over the edge, but I kept going because that's what those of us that are driven and ambitious, we just keep thinking it's a fault with us. So we're like, okay, I've just got to dig deeper and I've just got to work harder and I've got to sleep less.

Hidden Expectations For Parents And Founders

SPEAKER_01 16:18

And it's like you said, I think specifically when you're in a position where you, you know, as a woman in a with a family and their own business, like you things are just expected of you that aren't of other people. And that is, I think, also something that is really important to stress and talk about. And, you know, like the there there's like a blind spot, I think, in in corporate and and company structures about this specific thing. And it's not just a gender issue or anything like that, but I think specifically in a situation where you are, you know, often, you know, if people are like in needed positions and they have kids and they are a single mom and they or single parent, um, yeah, there's like a lot of things you are expected to do. And then when you like you said before, when you then share these things with people, they are just they they are more um they are more amazed and they are compassionate or empathetic. Um and that that I think is disguised as like that's not my problem. It's like, wow, that's incredible, go off and do it, and then versus, oh my gosh, what do you need, you know? Yeah. Um, and I think that is that is so interesting because um also with a lot of people with new startups or young people um that are leader positions, they are often, you know, like a lot of my colleagues and and peers, um, you know, people in their like early 20s, early 30s, they there's no space for mental well-being because it's all about pushing and and going harder and faster and bigger, and it's just not, I think it's not sustainable. It's it might get you, like you said, it might get you some rewards on the way, and you might look back and think, oh, that was great, I did that, but what's to what cost, you know, what's the price for that? And you just will not be able to do it until the rest of time. And that's that that should be the incentive, right? I think to do it in a way that it is fulfilling in all parts of your life, and also sustainably fulfilling um in a way that you can do it for multiple decades or however long you want to, you know. I think that's the beauty about being um having your own business is that you can if if you're well and healthy, you can do it until you until you're bored of it, essentially. Um but yeah, I I'm so curious about um how that then started changing for you when you started working with people in this position.

The Proving Trap Behind Ambition

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Because you were just describing how you went through the machine in a way. Um what changed for you when you then this is kind of jumping over a step in between that I'm curious about also. But w if you like jump a couple steps forward to the point where you maybe had your first clients in the leader leadership positions or HR, how did you start looking differently at your own experience in that?

SPEAKER_02 19:13

Yeah, I mean, I could see a lot of myself reflected in them and the pressure, because even though they were in the company and I was working for myself, it's the same pressure to deliver, to show up in a particular way. Um, and what I started to really recognize through my own work was this internal, we call it drive, we call it ambition, um, we call it achievement oriented, but actually it's this deep-seated need to prove and that I'm not I'm only enough when I'm delivering, when I'm when I've got the results, when I'm showing up in this particular way. And so part of that um reinforcement that we get from society of, oh, you're so amazing, I don't know how you do it, feeds into that of like, you see, look how worthy I am, look, look how important I am. Um and so I started to recognize that in a lot of the leaders and HR um professionals I was working with, and just started to name it and call it out and say, like, I'm not saying you can't be ambitious, and I'm not saying that you need to be a couch potato and never want for anything and just be complacent. But how to your point, how can we do it in a way that is healthy and sustainable and it's part of our life? It's not so long, I often love to play with like language and and the the rhetorics we've been fed.

Why Work Life Balance Fails

SPEAKER_02 20:35

And so a long time ago I started thinking this firstly, the work, the word work-life balance is a complete misnomer because balance, you'll never get the balance. So we're always failing. So you're always feeling like I'm not doing this right because you can never get the balance. So that I started questioning, and most of my clients, even now, they'll know like balance is a swear word for me because it's just it sets us up for failure. But then I started saying, we actually, in one sentence, we're saying work and life. So we're literally being told we have to balance work with the rest of our life. And that whole equation is completely wrong. Because why should work be separated out from every other aspect of our lives and be the thing that is most important to be on those scales to balance? And that that work is that it's we literally have been conditioned to believe that work is that thing that is the most important, and then the rest of life we have to fit in the in in somewhere else. Yeah. And so for me, it's around um, I often draw these circles where if this is your life, at the moment we've been told work needs to fit almost right inside of it, and then you in those little spaces you can fit other bits of life. But what the work that I do is trying to help people get to a place where that circle of work shrinks. It doesn't have to be the smallest, it can still be your biggest circle, but it's To make space for the other things and to have space. It doesn't have to all be filled. And I think that starting to like name that, starting to call that out, starting to question why are you so busy all the time? What is fueling it? Do you really need to be in every meeting? Do you really need to be on all the time? Just the other day I had a conversation with a client. You know, do you have to check your phone for the hour you're at gym? You know, you're not in emergency medical services. Nobody's gonna die. But we're so hooked in because we think that we that's how it feels.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

Yeah. It it feels like if I don't check this email, if I don't respond at like at this moment, someone maybe I will die in the U.S.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

Well, it is to that point. I mean, we laugh, but it is yes, it is that we worry somebody else will die and they think they will die because of this urgency hurry sickness. But but we do think we'll die. We won't we won't be relevant. So if we don't answer immediately, then maybe people think, well, I'm I don't have a good work ethic, or I'm not a good team player, or you know, they don't need me as much. And so then, you know, if if I don't respond and they manage to solve the thing on them on their own, well then what role am I playing? Then I'm gonna be irrelevant and disposable. And so, you know, a lot of the work, and this is really where I think my intersection of psychology, leadership, HR, you know, workplace dynamics really intersects is trying to look at what is our psychology underneath it.

Busyness As Fear Of Meaninglessness

SPEAKER_02 23:29

What keeps us so busy, what keeps us in this driven, ambitious space, and what constantly causes us to burn out and stay in burnout. Um, and I think it's layered. I think there's the, well, am I good enough? Am I worthy? And underneath it, which is the harder thing to name, is a real existential angst of like meaninglessness. So if I am not busy all the time, and if I'm not needed, and if I'm not, you know, pouring myself into something, if it's not work, then I see people just transfer that to a hobby. So they say, well, I'm not working, but then they're now training for marathons and they're trying to do their personal best, and they, you know, all they're learning guitar and now they're killing themselves to learn guitar. So it just gets transferred. And actually, if we have to stop and do nothing, it's terrifying for people because then we have to confront the like that essence of the human condition and the frailty of like, yeah, well, what is there really?

Where To Find Lauren And Closing

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Hi there, this is Toto. I'm the producer and editor here at LJD Headquarters and Beneath the Busy, and I just wanted to leave you with a quick note before you head out into the rest of your day or your week. If you also want to get some more information on Lauren and dive into her work further, which I highly recommend, you can find her at ljdwellbeing.com or LJD Wellbeing on YouTube and Beneath the Busy Podcast on Instagram. Aside from the keynotes and workshops that Lauren's doing, and also the one-on-one coachings for leaders in HR, there's an array of online courses and a free mental health masterclass that you can find on our website as well. Again, that's ljdwellbeing.com.

SPEAKER_02 25:19

And as always, please remember it's okay to not be okay, but it's not okay to stay that way. You are not alone, help is available, and please be gentle and kind with yourself and others. Thanks for listening. Until next time, take care of