Maggie's Story: Simple, Powerful Patterns

Speaker 1: (Singing).

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: This is Write Your OWN Story: Three Keys to Rise and Thrive in Life and Business. I'm your host, Rebecca Fleetwood Hession. Here we are with our final Rise and Thrive participant, Maggie Miller, to give us some context about the story that she told on March 8th, International Women's Day at our 4th Annual Stand Tall in Your Story Event. But you know, thriving is never done. None of the women from any of the years, any of the seasons Rise and Thrive experience will tell you that once you're finished with that, you just check the box and say, yep, I'm thriving now. It is an ongoing part of our lives to continue to create the conditions to thrive. Which is one of the reasons why I created an experience for you, literally for any woman out there that listens to this podcast and says, I resonate with these topics, these women, these men that we interview, that has a desire to feel better about your life and career. I was passionate to get a solution out to all of you, that it's not just for seven women in Indianapolis each year. And so, it's ready for you. I am calling it a 1000 Thriving Women because I'm believing in having at least 20 women from each state in the US join this experience. I have a year's worth of content loaded and each month, at the first of the month, a topic downloads into our community, the Badass Women's Council community, and it's three to five little short videos of me sharing a concept about thriving. And then you get to spend the month applying those concepts, really just studying your mindset and your beliefs and your behaviors, and mostly just asking yourself some questions about what's serving you and what's not. And mid- month, the second Monday of each month, we get together live in a Zoom webinar. And it's not a presentation, it's a conversation. And I'll ask you some challenging questions and I want you to ask each other questions, and I'll do live coaching with you about your experience. And then at the end of the month, on the fourth Friday of every month, I will ask you to come back on and we're going to celebrate how you progressed with the monthly challenge. And by challenge, we don't mean that we are competing and challenging against each other, because we all going to win in this thriving game. But it's challenging our mindsets and our beliefs and how are we doing about reframing and writing a new story for ourselves. I've tried to make this, as I always do, the least disruptive to your busy lives and the highest impact. So it's about three hours or less a month and$ 30 a month. So I've tried to take all of the barriers off the table for you and just literally deliver you a master's degree in thriving with me walking and talking alongside of you, as well as all of these other women who are joining so we can do this together. Because if we can band together across this country with a handful of women in each state, Lord knows what's possible in shifting from striving to thriving and stewarding in the age of humanity. We got this y'all, let's do it. So go to rebeccafleetwoodhession. com, click on a 1000 Thriving Women. Check it out, I'd love you to jump in. Here we go with Maggie Miller, who's going to share with you how those simple things can have such a profound impact in thriving. Here we go. We have the distinct honor of getting a smidge of your time during a maternity leave break, so I feel honored that we broke through the barrier of protection of your time.

Maggie Miller: You are one of the very few people who has the privilege of doing so, but this has been a really important experience for me, so I wanted to make sure I could prioritize it.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Thank you for saying that. I receive it. And I am most excited when I talk about you and your maternity leave that you are fully embracing this maternity leave for all of the beautiful love and snuggle time that it is. And as we were working together with Rise and Thrive, that was the thing that I just love so much, is you were fully ready for a complete checkout and baby snuggle time was the only thing on your mind, and my heart lit up every time I heard you say that with conviction. So the women of the world, and men, listening today need a reminder that the world doesn't stop when you take important breaks for important life events.

Maggie Miller: Yeah, that's so true. And if any of my colleagues or team members are listening to this, they can definitely vouch for the fact that is true, but it's also only possible because I work at a place that allows me, one the time, but then two, the support to step away and not reach out to you during that time period is only respectful. But I think the only people who have reached out to me are ones that are just asking how the baby is, asking how I'm doing, and congratulations. Those types of things.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: That's good. And that they honor, respect of just not talking about work, just they really want to know how you are you and the baby. Because our work relationships are our friends, too. And so, we miss people when they're gone. So that's a beautiful thing.

Maggie Miller: Yeah, somebody reached out to me yesterday and I was like, " Oh my gosh, I miss you guys," but I don't miss the schedule or all of those things that go along with working hard every day.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: This is a perfect time to just shout out to your company, Delta Faucet Company, who is a longtime sponsor of the Rise and Thrive experience and supporter of mine. And I'm just so grateful for you and the company.

Maggie Miller: inaudible as I went end of this experience and started it, it's kind of rare you have an organization that's willing to support you in that way and be really open to the time commitment and even financial commitment. And they've just been fantastic. So super grateful for the support I have there at Delta.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: And I just received an email that they were asking about season five already.

Maggie Miller: All right.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: So I think the support is continuing.

Maggie Miller: Yeah.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Yay. Go Delta. I'm actually coming to talk to the women's organization there in a few months too.

Maggie Miller: That'll be fun.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: So you have the distinct honor of being the first of something as the rise and Thrive community grows and you are a part of season four, is you have been our first pregnant on a stage, delivered your Stand Tall in Your Story talk the day before your delivery.

Maggie Miller: Yeah. Wow.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: All of us were just, me especially, I had just already seen it and heard it and known that you were going to be on that stage. I just had this confidence in it.

Maggie Miller: I see you had that confidence.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: I did.

Maggie Miller: I never did. Never.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: You didn't? We haven't talked about that. Interesting.

Maggie Miller: Oh, no. I really could. You would have these moments. You'd have us, Syd, and envision the event and picture it in your head, walking onto the stage. And I couldn't envision any of it. That's never going to happen.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: So I manifested it for you. Awesome. But it was such a powerful reminder, visual reminder, of women can have maternity leaves and be strong leaders, and we create life and we create the life of our working career. The visual of strength of you standing up there on that stage, so confidently delivering your message just made my heart so happy. And so many comments from people afterwards saying that is the true badass, is her ability to do that.

Maggie Miller: Oh, well I appreciate that. That truly is a once in a lifetime opportunity. You only get to 40 weeks pregnant so many times and you probably never ever schedule a talk in front of hundreds of people on that exact same day. So I think it was when we were getting down to the last week or so, definitely after I had recorded the backup.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: The backup plan.

Maggie Miller: I really want to do this now, this is such an amazing opportunity to actually, one, stand tall, but show the strength and versatility that women have and that you can do all of those things. I'm not saying you have to do them all of the time because that will lead you to burn out, but you're completely capable and strong and able to do that should you so choose so. It was just a really amazing experience. And yes, I was on the stage at about 7: 00 PM on a Wednesday and by 7: 00 PM on Thursday I was checked in at the hospital.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: It all worked out just as it should. One of the things you mentioned to me that I think is interesting, and I want to dig into a little bit is, when you joined the Rise and Thrive experience and Delta had reached out to you and said, " We are a partner of this program, would you like to be a part of it?" You said, " It was the right time for me because of all the changes I'd been going through," which I really want to dig into because oftentimes women will say to me, because women, I love you, I love you all, but there's a couple things I wish were different about us. Women typically come at opportunities with why it won't work or it's not the right time, instead of why it is the right time. There's just always this, I probably don't have time for this, I probably shouldn't spend the money. This deflection is the first response. And you saying that there were a lot of changes going on, so the Rise and Thrive experience actually made it a good time. Tell us more about that.

Maggie Miller: Yeah, it's funny, the way you described it, I certainly have phenomenal excuse for why it was not the right time, right?

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Yeah.

Maggie Miller: I think about six weeks after I made the commitment is when I realized I was pregnant. And that would've been a great time to back out, right?

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Yeah. Everyone would've given you grace for that. Totally fine.

Maggie Miller: But no, I think what I was reading about the program and hearing from others at Delta that have gone through the experience and talking with you, all of it really resonated with me about trying to maybe find yourself, find this part of yourself that's going to actually thrive through all of these different experiences in your life. And those certainly resonate with me to make me realize I needed that because I was in a place of such significant change and perhaps even amount of pressure I was putting on myself in order to do all of those things really well. So I had become a new mom, I was a mom, a parent for the first time. The previous year, and we know all the things that go along with that that are significantly challenging both physically and mentally. And so I become a new mom, so I was experiencing that. And then, of course, a working parent has all of those pressures and challenges of juggling on top of it. And then I had my second new leadership or second new job in basically two years that I was learning to do as I went along, as well as lead a new team. And so there's just a significant amount of change in my career and my life at home and really thinking about who you are again through all of those experiences, because if anything is going to change you, it's becoming a parent. And so it really was a great time to dig in and do that hard work to figure out what success means and looks like with all of those new different things in my life.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Yeah, and what success means for you because it's not going to be the same for me or anybody else.

Maggie Miller: Yeah.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: I think that's the other part that is so significant about the work that we do together is you get to decide, it's unique to your needs and it's not a template or a copy and paste from somebody else. It's doing the work to decide it for yourself.

Maggie Miller: Yeah. Because there's so many different, I think, facets of the program because it looks at you as a whole person, where really you can dig into whatever area you're most passionate about or how the most inaudible resonates with you the most. So I think that's what is really neat about the experience. It's not template. There's so many different paths that can go down.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: So I'm just going to underscore again for anybody out there that has considered Rise and Thrive, or is thinking about is this the right time. Sometimes the biggest changes in your life are the exact right time to come in and do this kind of work, so I love that that was the way that you saw the situation. Which is indicative of what I learned about you through the experience is there's this level of humility, strength that is just, I think one of the things that makes it easier for you to bring people into the changes that you need to and build trust quickly with your team. I know the folks that work with you just speak so highly of you and your ability to do that. So I love that about you.

Maggie Miller: Oh, well, thank you.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: And your organization has gone through significant change over the last several years, and being in charge of the marketing of those changes and how the world sees the Delta Faucet Company is no small feat.

Maggie Miller: Yeah. And I've been fortunate enough to be a part of those changes, I think significantly. And it's just, for a lot of companies, we're an almost 70- year- old organization and the world has changed a lot in those last couple of decades, certainly the last decade. And so there's a lot of, well, the corporate stake of change management that we're continually working through that is continually challenging you and pushing you. And I think that's what continues to make the work exciting, is you're kind of on that forefront of change and what you hope the future looks like for such a great organization.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Yeah. People don't necessarily think about all the intricacies of that. We had great conversations about the business and I love digging into business, especially from a marketing perspective. The person who bought a Delta Faucet 50 years ago was a contractor. The person who buys a Delta Faucet oftentimes today is me. I went to Lowe's and I got a faucet, and by God, I want it to work by this afternoon. And I'm reading the instructions and trying to figure out how to install a faucet. Even things like that from a marketing perspective, the message that you put out is going to be very different to me than it is to the contractor who bought 500 of those faucets for the hotel down the street.

Maggie Miller: Yeah, it's a message, as you described, the end purchaser and the channels of distribution for our product where that contractor may have particularly gone through large flying distributor, someone like you might start your purchase journey by searching online for a pro....

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Pinterest.

Maggie Miller: Yeah, exactly. Pinterest or Amazon or Home Depot, who knows. And are researching that way in order to figure out what the right product is for them, the right brand. And that is a completely different set of capabilities that our organization has to have in order to win.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Business in general makes me happy. It's fascinating. So another thing that makes me happy is the talk that our audience is going to hear today after our interview is from our fourth annual Stand Tall in Your Story event on International Women's Day. And when we first sat down to talk about, hey, you're going to be on stage giving this seven minute TED- like talk, and everybody knew from the beginning, I didn't surprise anybody with it, but there's always this moment of I don't have a story to tell. What was going through your mind when you were thinking about what am I going to share on stage, in the very beginning.

Maggie Miller: I have lots of ideas of stories. I was super surprised that I came up with so many options for stories. Oh, wow, I do have a life full of stories, of full experiences from parenting to travel to professional experiences. I'm really surprised I had those many options.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: You even had a Jennifer Aniston story that got cut?

Maggie Miller: Oh yeah. inaudible. That was part of it. I had so many, I had 30 great ideas. I narrowed them down. I was working with Alex and I'm like, here's my best ones and here's all again, lessons that I really feel will resonate with me the most I want to share. And she's like, you got to talk about eggs. Really?

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: I tell you, when you spend seven months with a group of women, you learn a lot about these women and we learned about your love of eggs and it resonated with us.

Maggie Miller: I told her I wanted something up that was easy to resonate with, kind of the simple parts of life and those types of things. She said eggs. I was like, really? That's the one you think that's going to be most powerful? And as soon as I came around to the idea, it was so natural to write what that meant in my world. But I think what was really interesting is the lesson or the takeaway actually evolved throughout the process of writing the story. And it turned into one of my biggest takeaways from the overall experience, which is what I ultimately got to share on stage that day. Because I think as we were initially talking about it, was my obsession with eggs was a bad thing, and there's elements of the program we were letting things go, Stephanie talks about that in her speech and living in the moment and not being so tied to all of these other things. And then as I spent one more time with it, and I even got into Eliza's work and how you regulate and keep your mind body connection strong, I was like, no, this is a key part of my patterns that keep me strong and healthy. This is one of those. And so then it really built from there to think about all of those key things that I was doing are really important to me that we've talked about through the program that are key to preventing burnout. And that turned out to be really powerful.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: And it's one of the messages, maybe even The most important message that I want people to associate with working with me and Rise and Thrive is that we tend, as business people, to overcomplicate things for a lot of reasons. One, business is complicated sometimes, and sometimes it's about sounding smart and ego, and sometimes it's, we think there needs to be far more data than just our gut feel. There's all kinds of reasons for it. But the most profound answers for our business and in our life are the simple things that have a powerful pattern that lead us to where we want to go. If you boil it all down, that's what it is. And eggs represent a simple, powerful pattern that has existed in your life for maybe ever.

Maggie Miller: Yeah, I think for 10 years. It's funny how often eggs are coming up now about how just powerful they are in terms of nutrition and balanced day. But I think as we work through the program and all of the different signals you have, things might not be going well, you might not be in that place, when you were heading towards burnout. What I realized is a lot of these things that you maybe thought were just a convenience or were optional, like just push through. You don't have to have those or maybe they're even selfish, such as exercise or daily stillness or time to yourself. Those are actually those simple things that are critical to keeping you strong and healthy and being able to enjoy and fill these roles really well and enjoy them for yourself. And I think that's what was really transformational is you, maybe prior probably saw those things like eggs as a silly obsession, or exercises, maybe that's selfish to take time to do that. But I think once you realize that's the key to keeping you strong and healthy and that's good for all everyone around you.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Yeah. And so often those are the thing first things that get thrown out in frenetic times of busy, and that's the worst thing that you can do for yourself and for others. And you said something as well that I think is important is our careers, we want to create a career and a life that we enjoy, that it's not just something that we tolerate for the paycheck or the title or whatever. Let's build a life that we like.

Maggie Miller: Our time is precious. It's the most valuable and limited resource you have. So spend it wisely.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Yeah, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. Anything else about the experience that you want to share today that has stood out for you?

Maggie Miller: Maybe what we were just talking about, is how valuable time is. There's this, I know, I think it was something I saw online recently about time billionaire. It's not like you're a dollar billionaire, you're a time billionaire. When you're a certain age and you think about how you're spending all those seconds and all those moments and how really fleeting they are. I think that's absolutely reflective of where I am in my life now and in this second go around maternity leave, it is way more prevalent or obvious, crystal clear to me now than it was last time. Because the first time around, you're kind of stressed and you're still adjusting to everything and you haven't experienced it before and you just don't know how fast it goes by. And all these things are really challenging, are still challenging, but you know they're not going to last forever and you know that it happens really fast. And so I think we did some of this dream guide or really figuring out, like prioritizing what's matters most to you. And I'm making that a priority. And I think that's just so important right now for where I'm at with a newborn baby and a two and a half year old. It's like these moments are so incredibly precious and special and I'm super passionate about my career and my job, but I'll have 30 more years to work. These little babies aren't going to cling to me for very long. So I certainly have that top of mind to really appreciate the time we have right now.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Everybody needs to be reminded of that. And I would say as someone on the other side of that, from a parenting perspective with a 21 and 25 year old, that every chapter of your story has some aspect of that. So my son is moving to Nashville in a week and we just had a conversation before I logged on about U- Hauls and getting things scheduled and ready to go and being able to even be in the moment with him during this chapter feels really special and important too. And I had a couple of days of frenetic pace where I was cranky and my nervous system had not been regulated. It needed to be. And I was actually feeling burnout. And one of the thoughts I had in my mind is, slow down. He needs you as much right now as he would've at younger times in his life to enjoy this with him. Not that he needs me to go pack his boxes. I'm sure he'd appreciate that, but just to be along with your kids through all the things that they're going through is special for a mom. So I'm excited for him and I want to be present in this week that he's got wrapping up things and not be so distracted with my work that I don't enjoy it with him too.

Maggie Miller: Yeah, that's such a great point. The needs are going to evolve and change with her, always going to be there. There's always going to be that moment to be present in. And so I think that's what's become a really key part of the program is figuring out what that looks like for you and how you do that well and what your priorities help you to thrive in those different environments. Because it's not like it's going to magically not be a priority when they turn five or something like that.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Nope. It's just different. Just shifts. And you mentioned Eliza, Eliza Kingsford comes along as a Thrive Guide and the key element for her is to help us understand how our brains work. And one of the biggest takeaways is teaching us about our nervous system and how to regulate it and connect our mind and body. And it has had a significant impact on me working with her in the last, I don't know, four years, to recognize that some of my biggest challenges or disappointments or things that I'm just not proud of about my life, things I would go back if I could change the story and probably change it, are often associated with a time in my life when my nervous system was so dysregulated that I wasn't responding in a way that was true to me and my values and my priorities. And once you learn how to do that as a practice, it's a game changer, man.

Maggie Miller: That is a superpower. It is, in everyday life, at home and at work.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Yep, yep. I have a client that two of their executive team were just in a major dysregulated state from things that were happening personally and it was keeping them from being able to show up in a way that they wanted to at work and people were noticing but not sure. And just to be able to assure them that everything was going to be okay and giving them some of those skills and practices to do that is profound. And you mentioned them, getting out in nature, taking time to move or work out daily stillness, feeding your body, like they're basics. They're as simple as eggs.

Maggie Miller: Yeah. You just got to prioritize them.

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: So as our listeners are about to hear your talk from the stage that night, and if you are listening and not seeing this on video, I do want you to picture Maggie standing there pregnant, but what else would you want them to hear and know or take away as they get ready to listen to your talk?

Maggie Miller: I think there's small things in there that resonate with everyone around what is your simple powerful pattern and what are you obsessing on is actually really good for you. I think that's something to think about as you listen. I did not think I was going to make it to this stage today. A lot of you didn't think I was going to make it to this stage today, but I am so glad that I did. Something really important to me has been in the news a lot lately, causing a bit of an uproar, threatening to disrupt our daily lives, has probably impacted a lot of you, but maybe not as much as it's impacted me. You might be thinking of the war in Ukraine or our latest social justice issue, but that's not what I'm thinking about, even though those are really important. I am talking about eggs. That's right, eggs. There are plenty of people who can agree breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Well, I am certainly one of them, but for me it's much more specific. It's more like eggs are the most important meal of the day. I bet a lot of you have your coffee every morning. I do not. It's more like don't talk to me until I've had eggs in the morning. Each morning I like to fry or scramble three eggs and enjoy them with a side of fruit and a cup of green tea. And there's just so many wonderful ways to cook eggs. You can have fried eggs, scrambled eggs, eggs casserole, egg sandwich, eggs sous vide, deviled eggs, boiled eggs, omelet, quiche. Get the idea? So I think this ritual started for me about 10 years ago and you could definitely say or see it's become quite a bit of an obsession. But is it a problem? I don't know. You tell me. So first, like I said, if I don't have eggs in the morning, I'm probably grouchy, maybe even weak. There is a farmer and a farm stand who live on my street. So yes, I have an egg guy. You might call him a bit of an egg dealer. He is in my phone. It's personal. He comes to our Christmas party. You have to know the source of your egg supply. I have gotten up in the middle of the night to go over to his farm stand and get eggs because I realized he didn't have any in my fridge and I couldn't handle what was facing me in the morning. And I think there's only been a couple of times that I have texted him to find out when he was going to restock his supply so I could get there right on time. My husband and I have a saying in our household, when you go to the grocery store, ABE, always buy eggs. It's more like, don't come home without eggs. I have nearly missed my flight at the airport because I was standing in line waiting for eggs. But don't worry, I have fixed that. I've figured it out now. I cook eggs the night before and I pack them, carry them through security to make sure I'm going to have a great start to my day of travel. Speaking of travel, Starbucks officially secured my loyalty when they launched the egg sous vide menu item like delicious, simple, perfection. Won't go anywhere else and I'm on the road anymore. We have just entered deviled egg and Easter egg season. Talk about a good time. And I think it was about three or so years ago, I was planning our next trip or vacation when my husband pointed out to me that I was choosing where we were going to stay based on how I would get eggs in the morning. And that's when some alarm bells went off. I started to have to ask myself some tough questions, were eggs controlling my decision making, were eggs like interrupting my life. Was I missing out on the world because of eggs? No. See, when you're going a thousand miles a minutes and you're thrown curveball after a curveball and you are exhausted and you are stretched, both physically and mentally, may not feel like there's an end in sight, like Rebecca said, you might be at risk of a burnout. And I bet a lot of us in this room tonight could be at risk of a burnout or at one point in time. Over the last three years, I have gotten two new marketing leadership jobs. I have built two new marketing teams from scratch. I lead a team of excellent marketers at a Fortune 500 company here in town. And during that time I also drove significant organizational change at that same company. I led through a pandemic. Didn't we all? I pivoted strategies when this recession first started to rear its head. I transitioned to leading a hybrid and remote workforce. I finished my MBA. I grew and delivered our first baby. Stayed up all night for months, I think probably more like a year. Nursed that beautiful baby girl for well over a year. Talk about a time commitment. And it must have been about exactly nine months ago that I decided to grow our second baby who is due literally any minute. Now, don't get me wrong, I do not do all of these things alone. Simply would not be possible without the help and support of my amazing partner and husband, Ben, who's here tonight. So thank you honey. But through all of that, oftentimes it could feel like I was striving, and striving felt like being exhausted, trying to get from one place to another, losing my sense of empathy, becoming short and snappy with those around me, not living in the moment, of course exhausted but feeling groggy and unable to focus and in short I didn't feel great. And that certainly isn't sustainable for the long run. Something I think about a lot is that I'm probably going to be working for the next 20 to 30 years. Like that pace certainly isn't sustainable for the long run. And so what I have learned through the Rise and Thrive experience is that the key to staying sane, the key to preventing burnout, is obsessing over simple, powerful patterns. It's these things done day in and day out every week that keep us healthy. And it's only with mental and physical health that we can enjoy all of these amazing things going on in our lives at once. And so yes, for me, one of those obsessions is eggs. It is also exercise, time in nature, prayer, stillness, nutrition, and of course, eggs. So eggs weren't controlling my life. Eggs were a part of a greater pattern that was keeping me grounded, strong, and healthy. You see, by nature, we want to believe that the answer to preventing burnout is expensive and complex, when in reality it is simple and free. We just have to put in the hard work of doing it every day. And so the simple answer is powerful behaviors. And for me, nothing could be more simple or more powerful than the egg.

Speaker 1: (singing)

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Thanks for listening to this episode. I would love it if you would leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts and then go to wethrive. live. First thing you'll see is a place to drop your email and join the movement. I'll send you tools that you can use to thrive in life and business.

Speaker 1: (singing)

Rebecca Fleetwood Hession: Hey y'all, fun fact. Did you like the music for the podcast? That is actually my son, Cameron Hession. And I would love it if you would go to Spotify and iTunes and follow him and download some of his other music. My personal favorites TV Land.