Navigating your un(Balanced) Life Character: The Lonely Achiever

Tiffany Sauder [00:00:01]:

Welcome to Scared Confident. I'm your host, Tiffany Sauder. So here's what we're going to do today. A couple of weeks ago, I dropped an episode on the feed called the unbalanced character. What is your unbalanced character? Something like that. Unbalanced characters in the title. And if you haven't heard me talk about this concept of what is your unbalanced character? I'm going to give a couple of minute overview refresher course. If you listen to it, you don't totally remember, no problem.

Tiffany Sauder [00:00:30]:

And then I'm going to take one of those. Today, we're going to focus on the lonely achiever and tell you what it sounds like, and we'll double click a little bit into that. So that's what we're going to do today. Okay. We're all about the life of and on this podcast, right? It's like, how do I live a life where I get to say yes to all the extraordinary parts and I manage the most ordinary so that it fits in a very tiny container and I get to live my life at Bandaid. It kind of caused me to think what happens when we're not living inside of our life of and and I define my life of and where these three circles, my career, myself, and my family, those three circles, when they are overlapped, if you think about, like, a Venn diagram, when I'm in the very center, that is my life of hand, where myself, my commitments to myself, my goals for myself, my commitments, and my goals for my family, and my commitment and my goals to my career, when all three of those things are being served in this stage of life, at the intensity that I've decided that is what my life of and is that is what your life of and is when those three things are clearly defined and you're sitting in the middle of it, what happens if we're not sitting there? If we're not in the middle of these three circles of this Venn diagram? You can see it in your head. I know you can. One circle is family.

Tiffany Sauder [00:01:45]:

One circle is career. One circles south. When you're in the center of that Venn diagram, that's your life of. And so I talked about in this other episode when we are just in an area of that Venn diagram where only two of the circles overlap. So the one that we're going to talk about today is the lonely achiever. So this is the person individual. When we get tired, when we have a crappy week, when we're not our best, when we're like left to our natural way of interacting with the world, I think we naturally slip into one of these areas where only two circles are predominantly coming forward. So the lonely achiever, left to their own devices, when they're not operating in full capacity, they move to this part of the Venn diagram where only your career and yourself is most naturally being served.

Tiffany Sauder [00:02:33]:

The lonely achiever wants to prioritize. Family is a family person, wants to have that, be part of who they are and what they're contributing and all those kinds of things. But when they're tired, when they're left to their most naturally natural state of prioritization, they oftentimes will accidentally give up the family stuff first. And so they go into this quadrant, this area of the Venn diagram, where only self and career is being served. And so what happens is you start to feel really lonely. You start to feel like, man, I'm on this road of life all by myself. Nobody understands what I'm dealing with. Nobody in my family understands these pressures.

Tiffany Sauder [00:03:12]:

My friends are not, like, dialed into my life. All I'm doing is I'm getting up early and I'm working out and I'm doing my job and I'm answering every email and I'm giving, giving, giving of myself and taking care of myself. But other tribes, families, friends that you're part of, can naturally dissipate and go away when you're sitting in this little native space. And again, this is like the unhealthy version of us. So a couple of weeks ago, I asked for newsletter subscribers and I asked you guys to tell me, what are your questions? What are you dealing with? What's hard right now in your life? And it was very interesting to me to see across these unbalanced characters, these places that we sit when we're not perfectly in balance, when we're not inside of our life of and we sit in one of these three areas, the lonely achiever, which we're going to dive into today, the fearful loyalist. And that's where you're serving yourself and your family, but have less confidence in serving your career or the grumpy servant. And this is where you're serving your career and you're serving your family, but you don't feel like there's any time in the world for yourself. That's where I tend to land.

Tiffany Sauder [00:04:17]:

But as I was getting your feedback and hearing where you're having problems, I started to see, which makes sense, that they so clearly lined up underneath one of these three areas, a lonely achiever, a fearful loyalist or grumpy servant. So we're going to take the next three weeks and walk through each one of these. I will share some of my, I don't know, ideas about how to keep yourself out of one of these unbalanced characters and stay inside of your life of hand, but you're honestly going to have to solve uniquely on your own. I think the first step is to, like, acknowledge, holy crap, that's totally how I'm behaving. That's totally how I'm showing up in the world. That is totally the talk track in my head. And for me, when I'm able to, like, full stop like Tiffany or being a brat right now, that is the first step in being able to say, okay, I have got to, like, name and claim this behavior. I have got to change my reactions and change the track in my head.

Tiffany Sauder [00:05:17]:

And so seeing it, to me is always the first step. Step. So as we go through each one of these, think about which one do you become when you're tired, when you're, you know, not well resourced, when you have food in your body and when you're, like, off of center and things get crazy, who do you become? I love this because we don't need to stay in our unbalanced character, but I do think that we have to have an awareness of who we become when we get tired and cranky and not living inside of the perfect version of ourselves. Okay, so, lonely achiever. So I shared a little bit, I guess, already about what the lonely achiever is. They're naturally going to prioritize their self, and they're naturally going to kind of, like, stay committed to their career. They're really good at keeping up their workout routine. They're really good at keeping their commitments to their self because those feel clearly articulated, and they're really good at being responsible to their career like, commitments and stuff as well.

Tiffany Sauder [00:06:11]:

So somebody wrote in this question, and this is a lonely achiever issue in my mind. I need help connecting with my elementary and middle school kids. I need help creating the mental space for family and not just work, even though I love work and I want to think about it most of the time. So again, I think first is awareness of, like, okay, I'm in this place where I am having a hard time finding, finding authentic energy for connecting with my kids. And I get this. There are times when the thing that's going on in my head is so much more interesting to me than the vignette that is playing out inside of my house. Like this business idea that I'm working on or this new hire that I'm thinking about, or an.org structure that you're trying to think through, or a presentation that you're writing in your head, like this stuff that goes on in your head where you're like, oh, I have a minute where I'm not doing a task. I want to allow my brain to creatively explore.

Tiffany Sauder [00:07:15]:

And I get that I am not a natural sit and play mom, and I have had to learn that that's okay. And sometimes I think, how do I connect with my elementary and middle school kids? And I'm going to take this really literally. How do I connect with them? I have both elementary and middle school kids, so I'll talk explicitly about mine and how I think about that, and maybe this will be helpful to you. So just literally, last week, I just had my two little ones at home. Everybody else was gone, and my eight year old said, mom, I want to play town, where all of us have a little area. Like, somebody would be a sewer, somebody would be a baker, somebody would be a banker. She wanted to play town, and I suck at make believe. Time comes to an absolute screeching halt when I play make believe.

Tiffany Sauder [00:08:12]:

I don't like it. I'm not good at it. It's like I just hate it. And so for a split second, I wanted to say no, but technically, we had the time and there was nothing going on, but I don't like it. So what I did instead is I said, how about if we call your cousins and we have them come over and you guys can play make believe, and I'll have Aunt Sheila come over, and we'll make you guys, like, a little picnic outside, and you guys can have a tea party and a picnic. My brother ended up picking up tacos, and we had the most fun evening. And my daughter got to play town like she wanted to, and I got to not play town. And it wasn't because I didn't want to connect with her.

Tiffany Sauder [00:08:57]:

Again, I am not saying this is the right way to do it. I am just saying I wanted to be with my kids. I had, like, a couple hours that evening. I wasn't going anywhere. I didn't have to pick up kids. It was like we were going to be home, and I wanted to do that. I wanted to be present for them, but I did not want to play town, so I was able to be there, and we brought out popsicles, and we were able to be a customer, and we had dinner with them, and we were able to laugh and they jumped on the trampoline, and the whole town thing only lasted, like, 45 minutes. Because I love to be social.

Tiffany Sauder [00:09:25]:

I love to be with people. I love to create experiences for, like, big groups. And so I was able to do something that I really loved and had a natural energy for just being present for that evening. But I did not want to play town, and so I didn't play town, but I was still with my kids. So I don't know if that is helpful in saying, sometimes the way that your kids want to connect is not the way that you connect with them. And that can be okay sometimes. My kids know I love playing games. Like, we play games, we do crafts, we sew.

Tiffany Sauder [00:09:59]:

Sounds silly, but we, like, clean stuff out together. Like, cleaning out the garage is such a big group project. They get to, like, wash the wagon and get out brooms, and I'm teaching them how to organize. Like, it seems silly, but those kinds of things can also be ways to connect with your kids. It does not have to look like playing paw patrol again, if you have the energy for that and you love that, and that is a natural way where you have creativity. I think that's incredible. It is just not who I am. And instead of fighting it and feeling guilty about that, I have taught my kids, here is how we are going to connect.

Tiffany Sauder [00:10:37]:

And so we do. We go on nature walks where we'll take a bag because I love to go outside and walk when I'm in the office all day long, I want to be outside in the evenings. And so we'll go on nature walks, and I'll make a list of stuff that we find, like a pine cone and a stick and a dead fly. I mean, it is, like, not luxurious, but I get a walk in and they get to go on an adventure. That is a great way of spending time together and still getting something done. I already said, like, oh, you have a list of, like, these are games. I love to do puzzles, things that are tactile. We cook together.

Tiffany Sauder [00:11:08]:

That's a huge thing that we do. We'll make peanut butter balls or brownies or they'll chop produce. Like, it gives us a chance to be together, do something that, to me, is productive and tactile, and I can bring the energy and creativity that I, like have into those spaces that I really enjoy. And oftentimes I'm teaching them something, too, because that is important to me, that they know how to do this stuff. And if they want to play, then I will get a friend to come over, and then I'll make lunch, or we'll try an interesting snack off of Pinterest. I made these really fun. You take an apple and cut it. Like, how do I explain how you cut it? Not like in a slice, but as you would, like, vertically across it so it looks like a doughnut.

Tiffany Sauder [00:11:59]:

And then you cut the center out, and then you can put peanut butter and, like, sprinkles on it and it looks like a doughnut. It was, like, so fun. Or, like Nutella with some chocolate chips on it and it, like, literally looks like a doughnut. It was, like, so fun. We made, like, apple donuts. So if you have a hard time, I can also move into this lonely achiever space where it's like, look, work is contained. I can be efficient there. I can see progress.

Tiffany Sauder [00:12:22]:

That feels really good. And working out and doing that kind of stuff, like, feels great, too. And I can get up early and it's done and it's got a plan, and everything goes exactly the way I want it to, and I love that stuff. And then reaching into your family can feel messy and sometimes draining. And I have just flipped the script. I don't know if I flipped the script, but I have said the way that I enjoy my kids is also important to the things that we're going to do. And so if I go play Barbies with Ivy, I will do more things. Like, we have this huge bin of fabric, and so I'll get, like, a glue gun out and make some dresses or I'll make a bed spread or something like that.

Tiffany Sauder [00:13:04]:

Like, to be like, this is the Barbie and she's walking across, and this is the dance floor and she's dancing with Kent. And I just can't do that stuff. It is, ah, what happens inside of my body. I just can't even explain it. I just. I just hate it. And they know that I hate that. And that's okay, that I don't like it.

Tiffany Sauder [00:13:24]:

I can find ways to participate in their playing or participate in their experience or make a fun snack when their friends are over so that we are still doing something together. I hope that helps that if you're having a hard time connecting with your elementary kids or having a hard time connecting with your middle school friends or kids, don't be afraid to bring your interests into your shared experience, because it can be a way to teach them stuff. It can be a way where you're more in your natural energy and, like, natural creativity, and you're bringing them into that. My middle schoolers, what do I do with them? Let me think. I have girls, and so they mostly want to, like, shop, get their nails done. We'll do, like, sometimes dances on a dance that's trending on TikTok or something that's, like, silly and fun, and sometimes we'll do stuff like that. What else do I do with my middle school kids? I really like to do on YouTube, there's, like, these drawing things, you know, like how to draw a bear in 25 steps. Something like those things are fun to do together where you're just doing it side by side, and it's creative.

Tiffany Sauder [00:14:37]:

That's something that we'll do sometimes. That's what's coming to mind. Right now, I feel like we mostly are in the car driving together. So that would be my advice. Or try, how do you do something that you bring a natural energy to? The other thing I would say is, why don't you give yourself a great big dose of grace? That even though you are, like, background processing, some problems that you're dealing with at work or some really cool opportunities or creative stuff, like, I have this idea. I'm not gonna say all of what it is right now. Cause if I do it, I wanna do, like, a launch around it. But I have this idea that came to me while I was sitting at my daughter's volleyball games.

Tiffany Sauder [00:15:17]:

And when I'm sitting on the sideline, it really looks like I am watching volleyball. And I am. But I bet 30% of the time, I am thinking about this, the go to market strategy for this idea that I have in my head. And it's okay. That doesn't mean that I love the idea more than I love my daughter. It means that it is just, like, a natural energy of mine to think about. What could I make? How could I sell it? What would happen? How would I price it? What would the cost of goods be? How would I market it? Who would like it? Who's the Avatar? What would be the use cases? Like, I just love to think about that stuff. I just love it.

Tiffany Sauder [00:15:53]:

And so that is okay. One of the things that is coming to mind right now is I have an uncle that is, like, super mechanical. So we're knowledge workers. I don't know if this will come out in a way that makes any sense, but we are knowledge workers, though. Most of us, like, where we're not working with our hands during the day, we're, like, working on a computer, and we're knowledge workers. You know how there's, like, on tv shows, and I have an uncle who loves cars. He loves doing stuff with his hands or like that grandpa in a tv show that's, like, always in the garage tinkering with, like, an old mustang or something, and he's out there fixing it up all the time. And the grandson ends up coming out and doing it with him.

Tiffany Sauder [00:16:34]:

Like, when that was your job or that's your hobby. It's easy to bring people in to what you're doing, but because we're knowledge workers, it's hard to bring our kids into our jobs. It is okay. Sometimes I am doing spelling words with Ivy for 20 minutes, and at the end of it, if you ask me what any one of those words were, I could not tell you because I was saying them to her, but I was not thinking about them. I was not actually paying attention to them. And to me, I have just given myself grace that that is okay. Sometimes it is a little bit messy. Sometimes I'm a little bit distracted.

Tiffany Sauder [00:17:15]:

Sometimes I'm still finishing up something in my head, but I'm physically present for them. I love them, I want the best for them. And they feel that. I know they do. And sometimes I'm distracted, and sometimes they have to say, mom, you're not listening to me. And I have to say, you're right, honey. I'm not. I'm so sorry.

Tiffany Sauder [00:17:35]:

I was thinking about something in my head, or I'm driving to location C, and I am not thinking because I'm just, like, blindly driving and we end up halfway to location a. That is a tale sign that I am thinking about something else. And that's okay. It's okay. To me, that's okay. Maybe it's not okay for you, but to me, it's okay sometimes. That's how it is. We are trying to get a lot, lot, lot done in a day.

Tiffany Sauder [00:18:01]:

And while my time might look compartmentalized, sometimes my brain isn't. And that's okay. There are times when I'm at work and my mind is preoccupied with maybe something that went weird that morning with a kidde. And that's okay. It's just how it's going to be sometimes. So I think, be creative. Bring your kids towards some of your own natural energy and interests and places that you have curiosity and creativity, bring them into those things. Instead of always feeling like you have to go to the thing they want to play.

Tiffany Sauder [00:18:35]:

If they are really set on what they want to play and you are not good at it, or don't have natural energy towards it, or just okay and figure out how to conjure it up like me. Go grab a friend and then create a fun experience around that. And then the last one is just give yourself some grace. So anyway, if you find yourself in this lonely achiever place where you are doing a good job of taking care of yourself and you're doing a good job of taking care of, what, I would say, your external commitments, I use the word career because for most of us, that's like a for profit endeavor for us. But there's a lot of different ways that that can look, ways that you're expending your talents and energy outside of your home and outside of yourself. What does that look like? If you're finding that those are easier for you to tend to, you may need to look at what are the ingredients in serving your family that you need to alter so that you start to have a compelling energy towards that. Because if being with my family full time looked like only creative play, it would be hard for me to have sustained energy towards that because I don't enjoy it. And so how can you be creative about crafting what that looks like in a way that you have natural creativity and energy towards it? So that is this episode on the lonely achiever.

Tiffany Sauder [00:19:53]:

If this concept is connecting with you or you're feeling like, oh, my gosh, this is totally me or somebody in my life is this lonely achiever. I think a lot of times the husband can fall into this where it's harder for them to know how to connect into the family. Not always, but I think sometimes that can be the case. I'd love to hear from you on it. So, as always, thank you for listening, you guys. The show is growing so much, and it is totally because you are sharing it with friends and family. So please continue to do so. Thanks for being on this journey with me and go crush your version of your life.

Tiffany Sauder [00:20:27]:

Abandon. Thanks. Thank you for joining me on another episode of scared confident. Until next time, keep telling fear. You will not decide what happens in my life. I will.