To celebrate How to Talk to [High Achievers] about Anything Juleyka welcomes back its host, licensed psychotherapist Stevon Lewis, for a special episode. LWC Studios team members grab the mic to open up about their personal and professional challenges, and Stevon offers his insight and advice to help them level up.
Featured Expert:
Stevon Lewis is the host of our sister podcast LWC's How to Talk to [High Achievers] about Anything. He is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice specializing in the treatment of Impostor Syndrome. He earned his Bachelor’s of Arts degrees in Psychology and Afro-Ethnic Studies from California State University, Fullerton and a Master’s of Science degree in Counseling with an emphasis in Marriage and Family Therapy from California State University, Long Beach. He began his therapy career in 2007 as a therapist at a community mental health agency, working with the families of adolescents involved with the juvenile justice system. Until 2019, he served as the Director of Counseling Services at Woodbury University, a small private university in Burbank, CA. He is a clinical member of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (CAMFT) and am a Past President of the Long Beach-South Bay chapter. You can learn more about his work here.
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Juleyka Lantigua:
Hi everybody. Today we're doing something a little bit different. Our sister podcast, How to Talk to [High Achievers] about Anything is back, and we're going to celebrate and we're celebrating specifically by having the star of that show, Stevon Lewis with us. What's up, Stevon?
Stevon Lewis: What's up Juleyka?
Lantigua: I'm so happy you're here because this is where it all started.
Lewis: It is. It is. This is some years ago and now I'm back.
Lantigua: You came on to How to Talk to [Mami & Papi] as one of our brilliant experts and moments into talking to you, I was like, do you have a show? Do you want a show? You should have a show. We should make a show.
Lewis: I wasn't sure if you were serious.
Lantigua: Well, now you know I was very serious. Tell the folks what you get up to every other week.
Lewis: So How to Talk to [High Achievers] about Anything is all about figuring out how to achieve on our own terms. On the show, we get to hear stories from black and brown folks who are out doing great things, stuff that gets me really excited and then I come in and do some little razzle dazzle stuff and give feedback and strategies and hopefully that stuff helps them level up and that the listeners can also take away some gems from that as well.
Lantigua: And today, some of the folks who are involved in producing both of our shows are going to get a chance to be on the mic. That's because we've invited for this very special episode, the LWC Studios team, to ask you some questions that they want answered or that they want to explore about their transitions, their self-development, their career trajectory, how to deal with particular aspects of their growth, and I am so, so excited to see what you come up with.
Lewis: 100%. 100%.
Lantigua: All right, well let's get into it.
Shaneez: Hi, my name is Shaneez Tyndall and I'm a writer and a producer. I am a first generation Guyanese American. A lot of my family members are teachers or are in healthcare, and so the creative field is really uncharted territories for me and my family. I spent a lot of my 20s really worried about how I'd please my parents, especially after they've made big sacrifices to move to America and give me and my siblings a better life. That kind of guilt really landed me in a lot of jobs where they were good jobs, but they ultimately left me unfulfilled. Fortunately, that's no longer the case, and I actually really, really love what I do, but I've run into a new problem.
The boundary line between life and work has really become very, very blurry for me, and it's become really hard for me to really know when to cut work off, know when to rest, and to just know how to balance it all. In reflecting, I realize this again is uncharted territory. I've seen my parents model hard work. They taught me that, but something that I've never really seen is my parents model rest. And so I don't really know where to start.
Lantigua: Stevon, Shaneez is one of these young talented producers that we brought on for one show. We loved her and we just kept putting her on more and more shows to make sure that we kept her within our group. But she is a really, really hard worker. So when she talks about ways to avoid burnout, what do you hear in her story and what do you have for her?
Lewis: The one thing I would say for her is to kind of think about how to incorporate what she needs and attending to herself to be able to continue on the journey. The analogy I think of is like driving a car. We don't want to wait until the check engine light comes on or a gas light comes on to do something about the car and trying to keep it going. We should be focused on doing those things before we get to that place of where we've depleted all of the resources.
Lantigua: So do you think that folks like Shaneez who are very driven, high performing, high octane to exhaust our fuel metaphor, should they just be really practical and schedule rests, schedule off time the way that they basically schedule their work commitments?
Lewis: That's exactly what I encourage high achievers like Shaneez to do. Incorporate rest into your definition of success so that as you are striving to go do things and accomplish more, you are also recognizing in order to do that, you have to take a seat sometimes and recover.
Lantigua: Absolutely. So I'm going to give two examples of how I do this. I have started to just take an hour in the middle of the day to go do my yoga class three times a week because by the time I get to the end of the day, I'm too tired and I am not a morning person. And then the other thing that I've been doing sort of successfully is every third Friday I try to not schedule meetings unless it's with my team or to take the day off if I'm able to.
Lewis: That is awesome because underlying all that is a belief you've kind of adopted about the importance of self-care.
Lantigua: Yeah.
Lewis: And you've made that almost nearly non-negotiable.
Lantigua: Almost.
Lewis: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're getting there. You're going in the right direction.
Lantigua: Getting there.
Lewis: Trending in the right direction.
Lantigua: Yes.
Lewis: Oftentimes high achievers will neglect their own needs in service of the needs of others because they tell themselves, I can do it and I can keep pushing.
Lantigua: Yeah.
Lewis: And I kind of like to think of it as if you've flown, when the oxygen mask drops, you have to put your own on first before you take care of the person next to you, whether it be a child, your other loved ones, and that's not a guilty thing that's being responsible. If you've filled your day and your calendar and your week with appointments for everyone else, it's important for you to look at where are you on that schedule. It's important for us to sew into ourselves so that we can show up for others.
Tren: My name is Tren Lightburn. I'm an audio engineer and mixer at LWC. I was born in New Jersey, but I'm a digital nomad currently living in the DMV. So at this point in my career, I'm finding that a lot of people, including me, aren't usually fans of small talk. It feels like we're all talking about and hearing the same things, like how wild the weather is, how crazy the newest virus is, who got fired because the economy is bad, all that stuff. It's mad draining and I'm pretty introverted in the sense where my social battery drains very, very quickly and you can't just not do it. You have to network, you have to build, you have to find your tribe, and I want to continue being successful in the field, in the industry. So I do it so that I don't compromise my career, but sometimes it's at the expense of my own wellbeing. Is there a better way to go about all of this?
Lantigua: All right, Stevon. So Tren is actually the last person that we hired that we're like, how do we keep him? He's so talented, he's so chill. Everybody loves working with him and he absolutely is 100% an introvert. So I was listening to him and going, oh my God, I feel for you bro. I feel for you.
Lewis: I can resonate with that. I am an isolator by nature. I like to be by myself. I am an introvert as well. Something that jumped out when he was speaking was when he talked about small talk and what he didn't like, all of the things were associated with something negative. I don't have anything to say. They're going to talk about politics or the world is all messed up. And it's like, well, yeah, if that's how I view small talk, I'm probably not going to want to engage in it either.
Lantigua: Yeah.
Lewis: So I challenge him to think about whether or not it is actually all terrible or if he's kind of putting that on what small talk will be.
Lantigua: The other thing that I was thinking, I was like, get some cue cards. Have some questions that are positive questions that you can, instead of waiting for the doomsday people,
Lewis: Yeah.
Lantigua: When was the last sometime you saw a rainbow? Some random question that's going to get people talking about something positive. And so that's sometimes what I do, like immediately if I see the conversation sort of trending in a way like politics, especially right now, I'll make a comment about their outfit. I'll ask them about their kids. Just like anything to thwart the negativity that is impending.
Lewis: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I also would like for Tren to kind of think about his why, why he doesn't like to be around other people. What is it about being around other people that drains his social battery so quickly? I'm wondering if it's what he's telling himself beforehand or if it's actually kind of being in that environment. My guess is that for Tren, he has some relationships that he doesn't mind engaging in and it might not be 20 people at a time, but even if he's able to do it on a one-on-one basis, then there's something there that's not stealing from him. And I'm wondering why in those instances he's okay and is willing to engage in those and it fills his cup up. In these other places, it doesn't.
Lantigua: And so when you are dealing with someone who is really reticent in a group setting, do you recommend that they just be a little bit more intentional about those one-on-ones because networking is important and Tren recognizes this?
Lewis: Yeah, absolutely. One-on-ones are really good and allow you to kind of focus and pay attention to the individual and remember details about them that will help you be supportive of them and maybe you can share information about you that they will be able to remember and it's not so much distraction. And so maybe that's part of it too, is that I guess quell some of the distractions that might be out there around us when I'm trying to remember five different things that someone said in a conversation with six or seven other people.
Paulina: My name is Paulina Velasco and I'm the managing producer at LWC Studios. I'm a 200 percenter, 100% Mexican, 100% American. My question is about motivation. So when someone is asking me to do something, then I feel motivated to do it. I excelled at school, straight A student, top of all the lists, et cetera, et cetera, and that's translated to being really successful in jobs. My problem is I'm not very self-motivated. I've always wanted to do more creative writing. It's not something I do for work, for money, it's just something I would want to do for the sake of doing it. I can't seem to be as dedicated to it or feel as responsible for it. And I see other people do this successfully. My partner is a very, very intrinsically motivated musician and he can spend hours in his studio writing things and I can't seem to get there.
Lantigua: I have to confess Paulina is absolutely essential to the running of the company, but more importantly, essential to the morale of the team because we depend on her so much for her leadership in maintaining all of the things that make us work. She's so good at the externally motivated things on deadline, working for clients, doing things for our team that I can see how she might put what she really wants to do for herself in the second position.
Lewis: This probably isn't going to feel good. One of the questions I had was what about showing up for others is easier than showing up for yourself? Is there some joy she gets in being able to help others?
Lantigua: Dude, that's a paycheck. Living, paying the bills.
Lewis: That is important. That is, I do need my rent paid. You're absolutely correct.
Lantigua: Right.
Lewis: If that were the case, I mean then everybody who has a job would be stellar employees. There has to be some benefit she's getting and she's not aware of that comes from, I guess, attending to the needs of others or being able to produce for others that she doesn't get when she's doing it for herself. And the flip side of that is then are you okay kind of disappointing yourself? Or if there is something about when she does it for herself, she thinks too broadly about what's going to happen and 10 steps down the road and concerned about all the commitment that it will take, then maybe she needs to change that to kind of micro goal setting. Instead of saying, well, I want to get here and I need to think about all of this in its entirety is say, what do I need to do for myself today to move the ball forward?
Lantigua: Yeah. So in her case, instead of thinking I'm going to write a book, think I'm going to write 500 words today.
Lewis: Exactly, exactly that.
Lantigua: Yeah.
Kojin: My name's Kojin and I'm the lead producer for LWC Studios. When I have personal issues or things that are going on in my personal life, anything that's to do with family or just personal relationships or anything, I tend to instead of deal with it, I just cover it all up by working more and coming up with things to do and fill my schedule up so I don't have to think about it. Work seems to have become my coping mechanism and it's worked out for me on a professional level because it gets work done, but the issues are still there. So I know it's not healthy in the long run.
Lantigua: Kojin is again, one of those rare finds. I worked with him on one day on one assignment and immediately it was like, oh no, you need to be on my team. And I just relentlessly pursued him until he said yes to working at LWC Studios. I completely see because he's also a workaholic, how he could hide away in his work from other things to which he should be paying attention.
Lewis: And that's the interesting thing about some high achievers, it's that they get rewarded for engaging in behaviors that are not the healthiest. He didn't say this, but I feel like there's a narrative he's adopted so that in his intentions they are noble. Possibly his thought process about not wanting to hurt people or wanting to avoid conflict again allows the problem to grow. The outcome though, or the impact of that is not positive. And I think that he's got to figure out a way to become more aware of whatever this narrative is about engaging in difficult conversations or attending to things that maybe are unpleasant to address. My belief and this is what I see oftentimes in high achievers, is that when it becomes too uncomfortable to kind of remain silent on an issue, then they speak up and that comes from a place of duress. I'd like to see Kojin be more intentional and not wait until he can no longer take it to say the things that need to be said.
Lantigua: Preach. And I think also there's a benefit to people who are so essential to a team doing that early because then all of us can huddle around and find solutions and work things through together.
Lewis: Yeah. And to do that proactively instead of reactively. Start early. I think to get out in front of it before it grows and becomes a much bigger problem is better than to kind of put it off and hope that it goes away, which we know it does not.
Amanda: My name's Amanda de Jesus. I'm 22 years old and I'm a production intern at LWC Studios. I'm kind of at a crossroads in my life. I'm moving to Philadelphia. I took a leap of faith and signed a year lease apartment and I'm moving to a new city I know nothing about for the sake of my career and for the sake of branching out. To me, going to a new place can be really scary socially. What if I can't make friends in a new city? There's also the cultural aspect to it. I'm Puerto Rican and I don't know about any Hispanic latino populations in Philadelphia. I'm sure there are, but am I going to be able to find some food that reminds me of home. I'm going to do my best to keep occupied and find ways to be social and meet new people, but still, I just am really scared that instead of thriving I might fall.
Lantigua: So Amanda started out as an intern and got promoted within three months. She has been such a refreshing and welcome young, creative driven part of the team. It's been wonderful. And she literally graduated and moved to another city. How do you think she should approach this life transition?
Lewis: I think it's really important to kind of shift the perspective. For her, it's a shift from what she's losing and what she's leaving at home to what she's going to learn and what she's going to gain from this move and that might transition it from something negative or scary to something more positive and exciting. An example might be that she's worried about losing her community and being able to find ways to attach to her culture. And it might be a thing of where saying that, hey, well Philly has its own culture. This gives me an opportunity to learn Philly's culture and what makes Philadelphia a place where people do want to live and they have pride for it. She gets an opportunity to kind of experience that, to taste new foods, to interact with new people. Embrace the change as opposed to be fearful or focused on what she's leaving back at home.
Lantigua: All right. So besides setting up a sweet crib, what are some of the other things that you think she can focus on to help her with this transition and this acclimation?
Lewis: I think it's to be intentional with trying to get involved in the community in a way that she get out of her comfort zone. That's how we grow. And so I think maybe that's going to be going to different places that are going to have lots of people that she's going to be forced to kind of engage with and interact with so that she can't kind of just sit at home and reminisce about what's different and what's not the same. That this is an opportunity to gain new friendships, to foster new understanding of the different parts of the world.
She can always go back home to visit. There's this permanence we have about like, we've moved and now we are here and this is it. Yeah, you are. And you can find ways and plan for returning home to get what you need and being able to talk to people about what they're doing back home. So you still feel that connection all the while, again, focusing some of your conversation on telling them about all the stuff you're experiencing in this new place too, and maybe even inviting them to come visit so that they can also get an appreciation for the new place as well.
Lantigua: Woo, we put you to work today.
Lewis: Just a little bit. Just a little bit.
Lantigua: No, that was great. I love how we've got these individualized nuggets for the team. Thank you so much.
Lewis: You're quite welcome. It's like rapid fire.
Lantigua: Yeah. To get even more of Stevon's insight and advice, subscribe or follow our sister show How to Talk to [High Achievers] about Anything available now everywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts. On Twitter and Instagram, you can follow the show @talktohighachievers.
Thank you for listening and thank you for sharing us.
How to Talk to [Mami & Papi] about Anything
is an original production of LWC Studios. Virginia Lora is the show's producer, Tren Lightburn mixed this episode. I'm the creator and host, Juleyka Lantigua. On Twitter and Instagram we're at talk to mami papi. Bye everybody. Talk to you soon.
CITATION:
Lantigua, Juleyka, host. “Our Sister Show Has a New Season!”
How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] about Anything,
LWC Studio. August 14, 2023. TalkToMamiPapi.com.