Marisa: Life moves fast. Leadership moves faster. Careers, family, expectation, constant change. The truth is time is the most precious thing we have. This podcast is about making sure life and leadership we are building actually matters. Welcome to Uplift Unleashed podcast. I am Marissa Mann, the founder of Uplift All. And this podcast is created for people like you. Leaders navigating real pressures of modern life and leadership. The truth about work no one talks about, it's not obvious. It doesn't hit you all at once, but over time, it costs you. Your energy, ⁓ presence, ⁓ relationships, even the sense of who you are. And the tricky part is you can be doing everything right on paper, building your career, hitting those key milestones, getting those awards. Promotion showing up as your best self every day something still feels off it feels missing but not wrong enough for us to stop Just enough to ignore you keep going you put your head down and you just work harder and today We're gonna talk about where we've actually lived it the true struggles, the impact and cost Henry, do you mind kicking us off today?

Henry Oyuela: I like to always start from an origin I grew up in a family business. we develop a very high work ethic. instilled in me at a young age, a high standard, the belief that anything's worth doing is worth doing right. my dad, would come down on me really hard to make sure I did it right. we had this six car lot in the back, it a massive lot. it was my job to make sure that that lot was always clean. one I had barely swept it and I thought my job was done. my dad came on me like a ton of bricks. what do you think you're doing? Naturally, I ⁓ answered, well, I just finished sweeping. he's like, No, you didn't. I was confused. So then he grabbed me and he pulled me and he started showing me every corner I left like dirt. that when first got my lesson on standards and anything worth doing is worth right the first time. he had me do it all over again. you develop the standard and way it manifests is with everything in life I do I always push harder on myself because to me it's never good enough with my first job this pressure to do well and not just well but exceed expectations sometimes I was working anywhere between 12 or more hours just cranking needed to build faster produce more then you get comfortable with the responsibilities, right? so you start developing speed, then you get promoted. now I'm an engineering lead ⁓ and now I this pressure of people relying on me and being like a model to them. need to figure out their problems as well as the ones I have. you put that pressure and you try to exceed that. Then I made it to director, same thing, and on and on as you continue to grow your careers you keep pushing harder each time because I didn't want to be the person that fails. I didn't want to be called out that I didn't do good enough. I didn't want to let people down. I always wanted to exceed expectations, here's the downside of this. No one taught me the counterbalance. There's nothing wrong with working hard and exceeding expectations, but like running a marathon, if you don't pace yourself, you naturally leave yourself out of the race.

Marisa: Thanks.

Henry Oyuela: I always felt like I have to do everything today, not leave anything for tomorrow. In fact, that was kind of my mom's slogan was, ⁓ leave for tomorrow what you can do today. it's true, but it in a way that I could never slow down. I always felt like I had to work harder, do better. I think a better phrase would probably be, do actually what moves you forward. Focus on what matters. this will balance things out because what matters is your family, your health, your sanity, your happiness. You don't want to live a life of surviving. You want to live a life of intention. I, for one, prefer living rather surviving. Sen, what's ⁓ your take

Scynthea: when I think about it, there was a point in my career where my identity ⁓ and work almost were indistinguishable. like everyone else, I worked long hours, and I think I sacrificed more than I should have, ⁓ especially when it came to my my friendships, my connections. And from the outside, everything about me looked fine. The impact of working long hours, ⁓ were not visible. And I was working so hard, they weren't even visible to me. But I think that the signs showed up quietly. I was there less for my personal relationships with others. allowed my own personal health to be ⁓ At point I wasn't sleeping well. I was constantly tired. I really was the one to really push myself to the brink of burnout. I didn't give the ⁓ people in my life of immediate family the care and feeding that those relationships needed as well. I realized ⁓ that I had normalized that level stress because ⁓ I thought that that's what was to be successful. ⁓ I things the back burner about myself personally my health and with relationships you don't feel those physically, but you feel them emotionally when you don't have connections others. you don't sit down and even question it I tell people always trying to on a moving train. It felt like that was my career. ⁓ I jumped off, would I be able to get back on again? Marissa, what do you think?

Marisa: ⁓ the two things that you both bring up, know, the high quality of standards and then having that identity. I have like OCD sometimes, ⁓ much of my career is compulsive about my work, about standards, ⁓ Henry, that mentioned. Being a child of an immigrant, we worked really hard. So hard work was like the number one value, that's not the value that lends to a good life necessarily. Yes, you will earn, you will continue to earn for your family, which was the most survival thing that my parents had to go through. the costs me. Rather than not influencing and negotiating the terms of my success, ⁓ which I didn't realize till much later in my career. in the beginning, I beat I became manager at ⁓ a big five consulting earlier than anyone in my cohort. became an executive early in my career, but at what cost? What did I need to learn? what did I have to step back as a leader, not just a leader at work, but a leader in my personal life. We all lead our lives. How do you lead your life into something that is more meaningful and what matters most? And after a while, Cynthia, I know we were on some journeys together. I lost my identity too. Didn't know who I was. What did I value? What was I doing it for? I remember after a major project early in my career, I was working till midnight 1 a.m. every day, one year equaled three years of experience. after project was done, I was in my apartment. I had a studio apartment, that's all I could afford. I paced back forth going, ⁓ gosh, what do do with all this time? What do I do? I don't even know what I do, because I only know how to work. the things that you don't realize you sacrifice, your friends were only your work friends. ⁓ You see your family much. You didn't know what was going on with your family. what about the other things you wanted to impact and enjoy life? What about our own health? And it's okay in your ⁓ 20s because healthy and you have the gift of health early in your life. but those things are fleeting moments and you don't realize, we are all realizing right now that vitality is built in your earlier years, in your 20s. I probably did things that cost some longevity, but not too late, we can recover by defining what matters most. we think about these stories that resonate so much and listening to all of that, do we see a pattern? not all these moments equaled failure, but really something else, right? Something was slightly off. And so I wanna ask this question, why was it so hard for us to recognize earlier in our career that something was off, even when you felt it?

Scynthea: I'll take that one, Marissa. You know, I think it's hard to recognize when something's off. When you don't have clarity around what matters most, what should you be prioritizing and what ⁓ are sacrificing, and what cost, right? when you're ⁓ so busy and on the train, you don't recognize the signs. if you do recognize the signs, you override them this is what's expected of me. This is what to be done to be successful. Failure is not an option, right? you begin telling yourself of ⁓ these stories or rationalizing your you put yourself in this situation where you are at a pace that's just not, it's not something that you can sustain. you start to normalize the misalignment instead questioning.

Henry Oyuela: I couldn't even sit down and not feel guilty because I felt like there's something to do. not being able to rest. not even taking the time to actually reflect. work smarter, not harder. I think if you take the time and figure out, am I focused on the thing that matters most right now? Or am I just doing activity but not making progress? I think that that's a dangerous game to play because, time something very We don't get it back. more time we take to actually slow down take a pause and take stock of where we're at, you'll be able to make better progress and be to work smarter. what that leads think, is burnout, right? if you don't, it's not sustainable. what does burnout actually look like when you're still performing at full throttle, at that high level? How can you detect it? What does it feel like? What does it look like? Marissa, you were talking about you all those levels that you hit at such an early age, I can only imagine how hard you had to work to get to those levels. did ever feel it? Did you ever feel a burnout? what it felt like, what it looked like you,

Marisa: there's an image that comes into my head. we talk about it a lot and it's like you're stepping into that hamster wheel and then you start running and you start running faster. I would say that you get tired, fatigued. every waking moment I thought about work to try to solve that next problem. Once we resolved a problem, it was the next problem. you start to not realize is this clarity of like, there are things happening in your life that you should be solving too, not just the things that were in front of you at work. Because time ⁓ is, the precious thing that you have. And as time goes on, those relationships, I wish I was more connected with my family, what they were going through during the times that I was so focused on my career. that's time I will never get back. I believe in living with regrets. So I don't regret anything. But part of my mission now is to get people to wake up, ⁓ smell coffee around you or smell the things around you. Go look at the sunlight and Are you spending time on the things that matter to you most because energy is a finite resources. So not only time, but your energy, thought and your focus.

Scynthea: Henry, why do performers default to pushing harder instead of stepping back? What do you think that is?

Henry Oyuela: I ⁓ don't know if most people are truly able to the different aspects of their life. Heck, don't even know if they can even enumerate them. Life happens and we get pulled in like a vortex, up in the day-to-day operations of living. We stay busy, we keep moving, we handle what's in front us, but we end up just living a life of survival, not intentionally living. does that mean? To me, living intentionally is like your actions, your time and energy with what truly matters, the purpose that you've defined, Think of your life like a ledger. where you have like credits and debts. some areas are in the black and others in the red. life pulls certain into the red and you revisit them just enough to stabilize them. You tell yourself, ⁓ I'll come back to that later. what ends up happening is that we become so focused in one area, there is a work, and becomes that goal, that problem, that obsession, as Marissa puts it, that other parts of our lives get ignored. over time, neglected areas fall deeper and deeper into the red until that imbalance catches up with us. suddenly, that debt feels overwhelming. I'm not talking about financial debt. ⁓ could be debt with your health, your family, your connections, your relationships, even your lifestyle. You step back and realize your life isn't balanced anymore. by that time, you've allowed a lot of time to pass by because you've never balanced your ledger. Here's the part we don't always see. When we're in that get it done mode, ⁓ doubling down on thing, obsessing over it We convince ourselves that that progress we're making will eventually give us the space to come back and fix everything else. I this one thing done, I'll have more time later. that moment rarely comes. Something new always pops up, and it demands attention. Another problem, another opportunity, another urgency. we get pulled in again because we're not living with attention. We're letting things demand our time. if you apply the law of diminishing returns, Working harder on a single thing only helps us to a certain point. After that, each additional unit of effort that we produce is less meaningful and can even reduce the quality of the results. I was reading about this research that shows that productivity per hour drops sharply after about 50 hours per week.

Marisa: Mm.

Henry Oyuela: It's like with minimal gains after 54 hours, virtually just drops down. So there's no point in actually killing yourself. I work to a certain amount of hour in a day after that, you reduce the ⁓ cognitive. ability of your mind ⁓ the performance just declines ⁓ the quality of your work So even though you think you're making progress you're actually not Because you don't have the clarity you don't have the energy ⁓ so your decisions are Worst off had you actually taken ⁓ know that break or spent some time doing something adjusting another part of your life That means attention and so that fatigue starts kicking in we keep pushing harder. We keep pushing ourselves because we're trying to get that one thing done, which is why you have to kind of step back and look at your ledger. ⁓ once a if you can, intentional in living and doing more. there's nothing wrong with working hard, but you got to balance it with like working smart and living that life of intention.

Scynthea: diminishing returns resonates, I'm guilty. the of perfectionism, how many years did have to be perfect? either way, it's all subjective, right? ⁓

Henry Oyuela: Yes. Yeah.

Scynthea: perfection is also subjective. You can think you put something in front of your boss or your client that's absolutely spotless, and then they don't think so. you spend all that time working on something to what you thought was perfection without putting it in front of someone for feedback. And then what was the cost of all of that personally?

Henry Oyuela: yeah, what emotional impact. ⁓

Scynthea: for you and the others around you that had to help you get it to perfection? What did they have to sacrifice as well? it's being conscious of that. ⁓ something the aspects of life that I think really resonated with me as we started to work through it is that I don't think that people are conscious their life is in so many dimensions, We are two dimensional. There's personal life and work. Whereas work really isn't even in the aspects of life. That's what's fascinating about it. it's ⁓ about us making that we are feeding ourselves at any point in time in those areas that people need to feel have a fulfilled life. that's what's profound, I think, about the work we're doing.

Henry Oyuela: 100%. There's a lot of power to that too, If you make it tangible, But if you can't really put your finger on it, it makes it really hard.

Marisa: I love that. you have to fill your cup first before you pour or like the oxygen mask, you know, the airplane, put your oxygen mask first before you help someone else because you need that oxygen first. So if we're not stuck and we're not broken, what's actually going Maybe nothing is wrong. Maybe we just haven't had the space to actually see our life clearly. Henry, we ⁓ a look at that, what do you think? how do we expand our perspective?

Henry Oyuela: ⁓ I think the way we expand it, you have to keep a balance of things. hard for you to keep a balance if you don't even know what you're trying to balance. I think that's where you kind of have to explore what are those different dimensions or aspects of your life that truly matter. are they in the red or are they in the black? ⁓ are you going address it? What is it that ⁓ is going to make you fulfilled? What is going to bring purpose into your hard for you to keep a where have to explore what are those different aspects of your life that truly matter. ⁓ What is it that ⁓ is going to make you feel fulfilled? What it's gonna make you feel with more energy and clarity across those different aspects But without you even knowing what they are How can you even address it? Right? You're of just Like roaming around and just letting the demands of life direct you versus you directing it more energy and clarity across those different aspects You're letting the demands of life direct you versus you directing it

Scynthea: I agree and they control you, I agree and they control you, right?

Henry Oyuela: ⁓ 100%, because you have a strategy, let's say, about how ⁓ to your life. without it, just going through the motions. before you know it, a lot of time has passed by. you don't have a about how to direct your life. without it, you're going through the motions.

Marisa: when you actually step back and look at your life in a more structured way, you do strategies for everything else at work, right? Everyone's working on strategies and solving problems. But when you look at your life in that structured way, patterns start showing up, things that you couldn't see before that were blind spots, not for your work, but for your life.

Henry Oyuela: Mm-hmm. That's it.

Scynthea: I would agree. It's not about a job. It's about how we are interpreting the world around us and how we are interacting and contributing in ways that have helped us from a whole life lens. We have aspects of life where you're talking about fulfillment and environment and vitality, we also have aspects of identity where we're talking about values and beliefs ⁓ and those things we need to be grounded in.

Henry Oyuela: Mm-mm.

Scynthea: to really move forward with how we interact and operate on a daily basis. you know, you're expending your energy and your time and you're prioritizing what matters most and you're moving forward much more aligned than not.

Henry Oyuela: agree with that because it's like that's all interconnected too, Which is it's not easy to sit down and think about it. I expect anyone to just know that out of the gate. when it came to my beliefs with work standard and work ethic. Well, that was all attributed to my values. those values that were instilled in me when I didn't know what they were, I didn't know what my beliefs were. I was letting everything direct me and tell me where, what the most urgent thing was. you know who you are, right? And that's like all those different aspects of identity that you're talking about. then I look at the different aspects of life and I can identify what I want. Then it's just identifying what are the challenges to get what I want and get to where I want to get to. without actually knowing those things, without asking yourself those hard questions, There's a lot of friction to figure that out. That's where people just shut down and just continue going through the motions. Marissa, so how do we start

Marisa: I think that's shift, Henry, not optimizing your life. You're really realigning it. Nothing's wrong, nothing's broken, but it's taking that time to see what matters most. Cynthia, you mentioned connections, your health. Henry, you talk about the cost of time and your energy and prioritizing that. Is there anything more important? That's why we built Uplift All, to create this space and structure for people. The truth about work is it demands a lot, but we pour into it. These are our conscious choices. it quietly takes you more than you realize. we wanted to share our stories because we walked down that path before and we learned some pretty costly lessons that we wanna help people on that journey. the question isn't how do I keep going? how do you join us on this journey to get the support that you need to help to realign your life to what matters most? Check us out on uplift-all.vip for more information. Thank you, Cynthia and Henry, for sharing ⁓ your stories, path that you've been on, the cost. that it took in your life and the things that you learned. We hope that this love and support that we are building is spreading out to all of you. Thank you for joining us in episode two.

Scynthea: Thank