A New Way To Rethink What's Possible with High-Performance Coach Alison Wheeler
Episode 140
Have you ever stood at a crossroads, staring down two very different paths, each with challenges yet with opportunities? Perhaps you’re considering a pivot in life but are haunted by the fear of failure. You're not alone.
Today's guest exemplifies grit and resilience in a way that will make you rethink what’s possible. Her story is a testament to the power of aligning your life with your values, even when that means making brutally hard decisions.
After this Episode, You Will Be Able to ...
Identify your values with the Sandpaper Effect
Overcome burnout and find solutions
Define and pursue your success version
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About the guest:
Alison Wheeler—CEO, High-Performance Business Coach, Amazon Bestselling Author, and a Pro Athlete. Alison has faced a messy ending after a 13-year journey in a business, leaving behind stability and comfort because it no longer aligned with her values. Starting from scratch was a choice, a daunting one, but she made it with conviction and courage.
Connect with Alison Wheeler:
Book: Living from the Inside Out: How to Become a Modern-Day Wonder Women
LinkedIn Page Link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisonwheeler1/
Facebook Page Link: https://www.facebook.com/alisonwheelercoaching
Website: Alison Wheeler, High Performance Business Coach
About the host:
Danielle Cobo is an international female speaker for organizations, associations, and the public sector. She works with audiences to harness the grit and resilience to lead through change.
With over 15 years of corporate experience in the medical sales industry, she knows how to build high-performing teams that increase sales, productivity, and employee retention. Her expertise includes corporate resilience and burnout prevention.
Danielle is the author of “Unstoppable Grit: Breakthrough the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Achieving Your Goals” and hosts the globally top-rated podcast "Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo.”
As a former Fortune 500 Senior Sales Manager, she led her team through downsizing, restructuring, and acquisitions to become the #1 sales team in the nation. As a result, she was awarded Region Manager of the Year. Her resiliency motivated her to earn four consecutive national Sales Excellence Awards in a male-dominated industry.
While her husband, a Blackhawk pilot in the Army, deployed to Iraq for a year, Danielle learned to balance a demanding job while caring for their energetic 1.5-year-old twin boys, who possess more energy than a squirrel after a triple espresso.
Danielle’s resilience led her to start her own business, helping others develop the grit, resilience, and courage to thrive in life and business.
Her tenacious attitude stems from being raised by an ambitious mother and recovering from being taken from her father and cast out at 17 years of age.
She is a two-time 60-mile walker and a monster truck driver in Louboutin’s.
Danielle has a bachelor’s in communication with a minor in psychology from the California State University of Fullerton, Certification in Inclusive and Ethical Leadership from the University of South Florida Muma College of Business, and accreditation in Human Behavior from Personality Insights. Inc., and Leadership from Boston Breakthrough Academy.
She is a member of the National Speakers Association, the Central Florida National Speakers Association Chapter, Innovation Women, and a former member of Working Women of Tampa Bay. Danielle serves on the Military Advisory, Workforce Development, and Women of Influence Committees of the Tampa Chamber of Commerce. She is also a contributing writer for Women's Quarterly Magazine.
Her experience includes serving as a Training Pillar on the Military Spouse Economic Empowerment Zone Committee and Career Transition Advisor for Dallas Professional Women.
Through Danielle's captivating storytelling, content-rich and motivational style, she empowers individuals and organizations to cultivate unwavering resilience, igniting a transformative path towards increased sales, productivity, employee retention, and collaboration.
About the show:
The Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo explores the journeys of people who have overcome adversity and harnessed the grit and resilience to thrive in all areas of their lives, Guests share how they overcame difficult times - the strategies, mindset shifts, lessons they learned along the way, and actions that propelled them forward. From navigating career setbacks to overcoming personal obstacles, each episode is a testament to grit and resilience.
You'll learn how to develop the grit and resilience to lead yourself and others through change.
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Have you ever stood at a crossroads staring down two different paths, each with challenges yet with opportunities, maybe you're feeling stuck in a job that doesn't resonate with your values, or perhaps you're considering a massive pivot, but are haunted by the fear of failure. You're not alone. Life rarely has a neat and clean narrative.
Usually, it's a messy field with uncomfortable decisions that test us, but guess what? These are the moments that define us. These are the moments where grit isn't just a ‘nice to have’. It's an absolute necessity.
Stay or Leave the Path
When was that exact moment when you realized that staying would cost you more in terms of your values and soul than the courage to leave?
Because I would imagine that would probably be very scary. 'Petrifying' would probably be the correct word.
Look, there were two points. One, the pandemic stopped me in my tracks, and it did a lot of people. Because within that business, part of what we did, we did a lot of events. We couldn't run them anymore. Apart from the standard, stuck to new tracks by the pandemic in terms of not being able to move places, having to work from home, you know, all of those things, what that allowed me to do though was pause for a moment and realize that I was ignoring something inside that was there anyway. I thought, I can outwork this. I can push through this. I can do it anyway. It's just me. There must just be something that I need to fix, need to fix me or I need to fix something. I didn't stop enough. I was so hungry to achieve the goal that I wasn't stopping to listen to that little bit of misalignment, right? And it would come out in all sorts of different ways. So that was one.
The other one was when my daughter walked into my office one day and said, 'Mommy, why are you angry all of the time?' Ouch. That is gut-wrenching. That is hard to hear. And I believe that sometimes our kids can be the best reflection in the mirror as to what's going on. Not what we perceive, maybe what we ignore, but sometimes our kids can see things in us that we may not see in ourselves, and they are sometimes the reality check of what's going on and where we get to course-correct. A hundred percent.
Literally you could have ripped my heart out and jumped up and down on top of it because that is not one. It's not why I started the business. I started it to have more time and to be a better mom and be more present and provide the life that we wanted, but it had become all-consuming. Six days a week, 12-hour days plus, and something that I could never put down and walk away from within the structure that it was. That's how I chose to run it, but that's how it needed to be run to achieve the results that I wanted to.
It was a very challenging time. I was frustrated and annoyed because it put so much work into this thing that I built and I thought was going to be the thing I did forever. And, wonderful, great, but to realize it wasn't. And I was aligned with the wrong vehicle. I'd also done my reflection time, and tried to work it all out.
I'd achieved everything.
There was no more growth.
I'd tapped the vehicle out. I'd done everything I could. I truly believe, Danielle, we're meant to grow. We're not meant to stay still or stagnant. And we do become problematic when we do to ourselves or to the people around us, to the organization we're with. Whatever that is, we will create a problem so we have something to do. And I would much prefer to create problems that I do not want to create problems for the sake of something to do, you know, and like I burnt myself out because there was just this constant battle between my values and then what I needed to portray as the values of the company and the business and the ethos. They were not the same.
So I want to dive into something real quick here because a lot of times we believe that resilience is to just keep pushing through and I don't believe that that's what resilience is. I believe that resilience is taking a step and looking at what's working, what's not working.
Positive vs Negative Problems
What is a good problem?
Depending on your belief system, and what you choose to believe. I choose to believe that I create my life, and I create what's happening in it, whether that be through what I choose to do or what I choose not to do. Both have consequences. So in terms of creating a negative problem for me, creating a negative problem from that was I created burnout in myself. I created that where that's a negative problem. Like that's not a great problem to be creating.
A good problem might be that I created a team so large that I had to suddenly upskill my leadership ability because I didn't know what to do. So still it's a problem. That's a problem too. I don't have the skills. I don't know how to handle this. And you could back away from both of those problems. Both of those problems need solutions. I would much rather step into a problem that causes me to grow.
I'm sure that does not resonate with everybody, and that's okay. It's what works for me because the philosophy of I create it means that I can solve it or I can then solve or then find the solution. The problem with believing in my opinion, the problem with believing that you don't create it is you then don't feel like you are the focal point for being able to resolve it or find the solution.
Now, does that mean you don't ask for help or you don't find experts in the area to help you? No, that's not what I mean at all. It means you're actually more hungry to do so because you're driving the solution.
Locus of Control
In my previous occupation, we would call that locus of control. So you're either going to place that with yourself or you're going to give it away to someone else. And I just don't believe, I think to stay within your powerful self, then keeping the locus of control with yourself is essential. And that means also even when you choose to work with an individual
So let's say, from my experience, when I had burnout, I had to consult health professionals. I needed extra support, but I also made sure that any of the recommendations or the advice that I was given, I just did not follow that blindly. I ran that through my filters. I ran that through my values because there are certain things that I will or will not do because they don't resonate for me or they're not right for me. Like if someone had said, 'Oh, you've got to take six months off work or six months from what you're doing and do nothing.' That might work for some individuals, but that would be more detrimental to my mental health. Like me knowing me, then, so might I slow my recovery down in some ways because I wasn't going to take six months off? Maybe. But I also knew that I would lengthen it exponentially by taking six months off because of the detriment to my mental health.
So running, keeping that locus of control and that belief allows me to move forward in a way that. Things are of my choosing, even when I'm consulting, even when I'm utilizing external help.
Four Things To Do When You Feel Stagnant
Ownership of Burnout. Overcome it by creating a healthier, more fulfilling work-life balance.
Living by Values: Learn the process of identifying our core values and living them out in real-time.
Defining Success: Align it with our core values and priorities.
Embracing Transitions: Make those difficult choices that can lead to growth and fulfillment.
Ownership of Burnout
When we take ownership that we are in control of creating our burnout, then we take ownership and control of finding the solutions to take ourselves out of burnout. Versus saying I'm just a result of burnout. No, I've created the burnout. I take ownership of the burnout. And I also get to be part of the solutions to overcoming burnout. Whether that's getting support from a psychologist or it means bringing on additional resources within our business or it means having that difficult conversation with your manager and saying, 'I am burnt out. And I would like your guidance and support in helping me remove some of these obstacles that are creating the burnout and provide some suggested solutions so that I can move forward.'
And I agree with you there. There was one time I started working full-time when I was 16, 16 years old. I started working when I was 14, making $4.75 an hour. Then when I was 16, I started working full time, and I've worked full time ever since I was 16, except for 2020. And I remember taking a couple of months off, but like you, I then realized that. I have a difficult time just relaxing. That actually could be counterintuitive for me. I ended up just shifting my to-do's or shifting where I was focusing my energy instead of being in the corporate world or starting the business, I was shifting that energy and adding more onto my plate. Painting Christmas decorations because it's my favorite holiday, so I just spent hours upon hours, creating Christmas decorations. So I was creating burnout, but in a different way, which is also interesting.
I think if you're not taking ownership and don't truly understand, understand yourself as well, you will repeat. Like you, I deal with a lot of people who have experience. I'm going to create it again. What if I create it again? And it's like, yeah, but if you take full ownership of the fact you created it in the first place and take full ownership of the solutions and a greater understanding of yourself and make those things like, for example, you like being busy. So I like feeling productive. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a productive individual, and you know, and I know we will just redirect it somewhere else. Then how do we read? How do we repurpose that productivity and ensure that we are? So filling that cup of productivity, so it doesn't become detrimental to ourselves, but then also make sure that that productivity is in a values alignment because I think one surefire way to hit burnout is to be doing things that are out of alignment with your value system.
Living by Values
A lot of times we talk about values. In fact, in my upcoming book, 'Unstoppable Grid,' there are some exercises that take people through how to identify what their values are so that it does align with the choices that they are making in their professional and personal lives. And any of these decisions that they're making and saying, 'How does it align with my core values and helping them take it out of burnout as well as putting together a plan and saying, 'What do I want this next phase of my life to be? Or how do I want to apply this and always use my values as my alignment and my direction and my compass?' But what I want to ask you is, how did you know what your values were? How did you find, how did you go through a self-discovery to say, 'Okay, these are my core values. This is what I'm going to use as my barometer for any decisions that I make in the future.' You look, you know, one, I stopped and took the time to do it because often we, we can know, but not have articulated it because we've never stopped to look at it. And I think the way I did it, I started with the list of things that I knew they weren't. Because that was easy for me to identify, right? So sometimes it's easy to identify all the things you don't want in your life before you can identify the things that you do. So that, I sort of started like, I knew it wasn't, these things were not important to me. It's very glaringly obvious. These are not my values.
I then went through an exercise with myself and I picked three or four. Well, I picked five initially. I'm going to go through an exercise of living to these values that I've chosen for the next week and see how they feel, see how they fit. And that allowed me to change the order of them a little bit. Some got swapped out because it's like, yeah, not quite that. And so for one of a better word from narrowing it down to wearing it and living it in real-time in reaction, because it's great to say these are all your values, but are they to live them real-time I think is an important part so that you, you know they are.
Sometimes that requires an adjustment and what they were 10 years ago may very well not be what they are now or the order of importance has changed because I think there's also an order in your core values as well.
So for our listeners out there, I've got some exercises and activities that I provide our listeners when they pre order my book, Unstoppable Grit. They are some workbooks that take people through these exercises and provide a list of values so that they can go through them. And there are some specific instructions to help you narrow it down because there's a list of over a hundred values. It's helpful to have some guidance on how to break that down.
Sandpaper Effect
But what was something interesting that you said? And this is different than what most people will say it's the sandpaper effect of checking what your core values are. A lot of times people will say, 'Oh, just circle what resonates with you,' but you take a different approach and say, 'When does something not feel right with me?' And it's that sandpaper, which is an interesting perspective.
What I've found in working for myself and working with a lot of people is, particularly for women, we can think what we're supposed to be, be the good girl, there are so many cultural reasonings and justifications, and this is what success is supposed to look like.
There's so much confusion and then not enough allowance for yourself to allow yourself to be one, be yourself, to be your value system. That's why I think the sandpaper effect is important because we can go through a list like that. I've done this. I've done this before. I think it's all of these things. That is not my list of what I think success is. It's what I think other people think it should be for me or what I've been told it is for me and say, 'Well, that's not working, but why is that not like, well, it just doesn't that, that it's harsh. It feels harsh, right?
Whereas as opposed to value should feel like a silk robe, you know, like smooth and comfortable and resonate. And then. Like she sent me high, right? He talks about flow. If people haven't heard of him before, great guy. Doesn't he talk about beautiful books, right? And he talks about flow. To me, that's like how your values are. It should flow through you and out of you, not be something that you even really, once you've identified them, it should be like, 'Oh, that makes sense. That makes so much sense.'
Defining Success
With the rise of social media, we've always had a narrative that has told us what success looks like, and it happens through movies, it happens through magazines, it happens through the news, and now with social media, it is in our face all the time of, 'This is what success looks like,' and it's gotten to the point where people are leading with, 'Do you want to be successful?’
This is what it takes. Do you want to be successful? This is what it is. Success means different things for everybody. My version of success may differ from yours, which, in turn, may differ from one of our listeners' versions of success. It's important to sit down and identify what success means to you.
This is another section in the book, involving activities that examine the narratives we've grown up with, shaping our definitions of success. This exercise helps you redefine success on your terms and correlates with your core values.
It's a valuable exercise. I'm glad you've included it in your book. How often have you encountered people who say they want to be successful, but when you ask them how they'll measure it, they struggle to provide an answer? It's essential to define success for yourself. What does it mean in your life? What does it look like?
Success varies from person to person. There's a prevailing notion of rapid success in today's culture, but that hasn't been my experience. What's considered fast success? Fast compared to what? People might look at my life and say I've achieved a lot quickly, but they don't see the hard work behind the scenes. So is it truly fast, or am I just willing to put in more effort than most?
The issue with social media is that it showcases the highlight reel but often skips the starting phase and the challenging transition. Change is challenging and uncomfortable. Few people genuinely enjoy change. However, nothing happens within our comfort zones. So, we must choose between the discomfort of staying stagnant in an undesired life or the discomfort of actively pursuing our goals.
I've encountered many individuals who perceive my journey as success, leaving the corporate world to build my own business. While it's true that I've achieved a lot since leaving corporate two and a half years ago, it hasn't been an easy journey. It involved self-doubt, fear, and walking away from job security and financial perks. It was an uncomfortable and scary transition.
When people look at successful individuals, they often see the final step but not the journey. They don't see the late nights, the countless hours, or the moments of self-doubt and struggle. Social media portrays success as rapid, but it doesn't reveal the challenges of starting a business or climbing the corporate ladder. Authentic leadership and making a positive impact take time, not an overnight transformation.
Moreover, many expect fear to disappear, but that's not the case. I haven't experienced fear going away. You learn to live with it and understand that it's an indicator of growth. It's not a sign to avoid something due to past stories or failures.
I've faced moments of anxiety and doubt while finalizing my book. I looked at my husband and expressed my nervousness. He hadn't read the book yet, as I shared deeply personal stories. As the publication date nears, I question if I should have shared those raw moments of my life. However, I remember that growth occurs when we confront fear.
One of my core values is impact. If this book transforms just one person's life for the better, it's worth it. It's scary to know that my words will be preserved in a book, but I'd rather be judged for taking action and making a difference than be judged for standing still. Those who judge you are often the ones unwilling to embrace discomfort, which you're willing to face.
Embracing Transitions
The naysayers, the people who want to pull you back or criticize you, they're more fearful than you are. And it's just a reflection of, in a projection of their internal dialogue.
It's good. Nothing. Those words are not for you. Not for you. They are purely coming out of their mouth based on them. And it's like, hmm. Interesting. That's why I always say, I'm like, “Hmm, interesting” and throw it through to the gatekeeper, right? That's not for me. Acknowledge them because they don't want to make the person wrong because that just makes it worse.
They're just going to go even further and harder. I'm continuing anyway. So there it's just, you know, that acknowledge they're entitled, someone else is entitled to their opinion, but their opinion is not for me. It acknowledges their comment.
What they share with you, ask yourself, is this a trusting relationship? Do they have their best, your best intention in mind?
And if they don't, then I believe taking in that information, you get to take it in and determine does this serves me or not, or if you, or if they do have your best interest in mind. Then dig deeper and ask, will you elaborate a little bit on this? I'd like to understand your perspective a little bit because maybe it is a blind side that we don't know.
Maybe it's not, but be open to the conversation when you know that it's a trusting relationship and they have your best interest at heart.
Seven Key Takeaways that Reshape Your Values Mindset
Take Ownership: Overcoming Burnout. Recognize responsibility for creating burnout and take proactive steps to overcome it.
Seek Support: Mental Health Professionals. Seek assistance from psychologists or mental health professionals to address burnout effectively.
Align Values and Choices: Personal and Professional Life. Recognize the importance of aligning values with choices to avoid burnout and create a fulfilling life.
Discovering Core Values: Guide for Future Decisions. Identify core values and use them as a compass for making decisions and planning the next phase of life.
Personalized Meaning of Success. Determine what success means to you personally, beyond dictionary definitions, to measure progress accurately.
Live Values: React and Adjust. Take real-time actions that reflect core values and make necessary adjustments to truly live them.
Filter Decisions: Through Values and Beliefs. Before taking action, ensure decisions are filtered through personal values and beliefs for a fulfilling life.
