Cycle Syncing: Using Your Natural Rhythm to Bust Burnout and Optimize Energy

Hustle culture has a nasty way of sounding like wisdom until you’re exhausted, snapping at everyone you love, and wondering why you can’t “just be consistent.” We sit with that tension head-on and ask a better question: what if the problem isn’t your ambition, but the model you’re trying to run it on?

I’m joined by Renee Fieck, a feminine leadership coach, cycle syncing expert, and business strategist who helps high-achieving women scale without burnout. Renee shares the flashbulb season that changed everything: her husband’s brain tumor diagnosis, a new job, and a third pregnancy colliding at once. That experience forced her to build a life and business that works now, not someday, and it pushed her to challenge the masculine productivity frameworks so many of us inherit.

Together, we break down how hormones can influence focus, creativity, communication, and energy, and why women often thrive when they plan in cycles rather than forcing the same pace every day. We talk estrogen and progesterone “superpowers,” how to use mood and irritability as useful data, and how cycle thinking can still help in perimenopause and menopause through simple tracking, body cues, and even moon rhythms. If you want practical cycle syncing tips, healthier boundaries, and a more sustainable approach to leadership and productivity, this conversation will give you a new lens.

You can find Renae HERE

https://renaefieck.com/

Subscribe for more conversations like this, share the episode with a friend who’s running on empty, and leave a review so more women can find the show.

Transcript

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The Rhythm That Prevents Burnout

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It really is this beautiful rhythm. But when one piece is either as stigmatized or shamed, or we don't allow ourselves to do it, then it throws the whole rhythm off kilter. And then we get to burnout.

Reclaiming The “Shrinking Violet” Story

Mary 0:18

For centuries, the phrase shrinking violet was used to diminish women, to suggest we were meant to be small and meek. But in nature, violets are anything but weak. They're resilient, beautiful, and essential to the ecosystem. Hi, I'm Mary Rothwell, licensed therapist, and each week I sit down with women who remind us that being compared to a violet isn't an insult. It's a testament to strength, endurance, and the power of taking up space and living by your true nature. If you're ready to stop shrinking and start thriving, you're in the right place.

Why Leadership Models Miss Women

Mary 0:51

Hey violets, welcome to the show. Several years ago, I enrolled in a PhD program in administration and leadership. Having held a few administrative positions in higher education, I was intrigued with what I was learning. I had never had leadership training, and my understanding of systems theory and organizational psychology grew from my therapy work, not a business background. Although I ultimately unenrolled in the program, I don't like to say quit, there was one truth I took with me, and it wasn't really something explicitly taught through the curriculum, at least in the courses I took. It was that most respected models of leadership are built by men and measure success through typical male gender traits. Assertiveness, including directness in communication and comfort with confrontation, competitiveness and a drive to win or outperform rivals, emotional restraint or stoicism, sometimes framed as keeping a level head under pressure, physical or vocal dominance in group settings, like commanding a room or speaking with authority, and finally consistent, high-level productivity. Now, of course, these are stereotypical male leadership traits. Plenty of research, including work on transformational leadership, finds that traits like empathy, collaboration, and communal orientation, often coded feminine, predict leadership effectiveness just as well or better in many contexts. Many of the women I've talked with on this program coach leaders and females in the workplace, and they often espouse connecting to their bodies as a strategy to remain grounded and focused. But today's guest takes the idea of our bodies informing our strategies to a whole new level. Renee Fick is a mom of three and feminine leadership coach, cycle syncing expert, and business strategist, helping high-achieving women scale their businesses without burnout or overworking. After her husband was diagnosed with a brain tumor and having three kids under six, she decided to build a business that allowed her to live the life of her dreams now, not one day in the future. With a background in occupational therapy, somatic healing and breath work, she now blends science-backed productivity, feminine wealth energetics, and cyclical business strategy to help women build the life of their dreams without having to hustle so hard to make it happen. Welcome to No Shrinking Violets, Renee.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

Thanks for having me. I loved that introduction about the male leadership. I can't wait for this episode.

Mary 3:21

Oh, thank you. Me too. I'm excited to talk to you because it's rare that there's some topic that a guest is going to talk about that I don't have some idea about. And before I hit record, we sort of talked about the way I frame a cycle, but we'll get into that. So I want to start with you telling us what I call flashbulb moments. And there are times in our life, if we look back, there are certainly things that it's like somebody took a flash picture of it, that it stands out like, oh, that was pivotal in getting me to where I am. So can you, I know one of those was probably

A Crisis That Redefined Success

Mary 3:53

your husband's illness, but can you talk about that or what other things may have informed this path that you're on now?

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Yeah, you are 100% correct. That story, that moment was about 10 years ago. I in the same month found out that my husband had a brain tumor, that I got what I thought was my dream job, and that I was pregnant with my third baby, all in the same month. We had all of these things just like hit one after the other. And that next year really became about survival and figuring out like, how do we just get by? How do we figure out like how do I take care of three kids and drive my husband back and forth to work, drive me back and forth to work, drive the kids back and forth to school and all of the things. And about a year post his surgery, we were in Hawaii on our anniversary trip and really just having that realization of we only get one life. We're never guaranteed tomorrow and we never know when it's gonna come. And I had reached such a burnout point at that place that I knew I wanted something different. I didn't want to be going to work every day. I didn't want to be having somebody else raise my kids. I wanted to be able to be there and I wanted to be with them, but I also wanted freedom. I wanted to be able to, I have such a strong passion to travel and to go do things. And I wanted to still be able to do that. And so that's when I started my business and very quickly realized how starting a business, most of the tools, like you said, leadership, but like most of the business stuff out there too is really built around this masculine sort of structure of how to build a business. And again, probably a year into that, my mentor at the time, I reached out to her and I was like, I'm not hitting the goals that I need, that I want. Like, what do I do? And looking kind of for any last straw. I was like getting up early, I was going to bed late. I remember being at the hospital. I worked at the children's hospital at the time. And so I'd be on my lunch break pumping and eating my lunch and messaging people and trying to just build this business in every little nook and cranny. And when I reached out to my mentor, she said, business is just numbers. So if you're not hitting the numbers, you just have to do more. And at the time, there was like my knuckles were bleeding. There was no left to give any more. And that's what set me on the quest of really thinking either a business isn't going to work for me. Maybe there are certain people out there that have some magic wand and they're going to be successful and I just don't have it. Or I need to be more productive, like figure out some sort of a hack, something, and went down that road and read all the books that I could get my hands on, you know, the atomic habits and the miracle morning and anything that I could find, and implemented strategy after strategy after strategy. And it was in that season that I really discovered how men and women's hormones are different and how our hormones

When Hustle Advice Hits A Wall

SPEAKER_00 6:50

impact our brains. They literally impact everything about us. It's really fascinating. And most of us just don't know about it. But that impact that it has in our brains, all the way down, impacts the way we show up every single day. So how we think, how we focus, how we create, what we feel like we have the energy for, how we communicate all of it. And so in that season, there were so many times I would get down on myself and say, I can't do this anymore. I'm so overwhelmed. I'm frustrated. Maybe I just burned the whole thing down. And after I started learning about the hormones, I was like, oh, these are just the rhythms. Like this is the rhythm of my cycle. And instead of then letting those feelings or those thoughts take me down, I started to kind of strategize with them. So one, it just gave me permission, but two, there was like so much grace in it. And then I started actually saying, okay, this is when my brain is the most creative. So I'm gonna do most of my creative work here. And this is the time when I absolutely don't want to talk to anybody. So I'm gonna block it out and not schedule any podcast interviews. And so I started really working with it that way and found it does make you more productive. It makes you feel more balanced, it creates more ease, and it just had these constant ripples going forth from there.

Mary 8:07

Wow. Well, when you started describing what was happening when you were trying to do the hustle, I felt myself getting tense because I know what that is like. And, you know, having built a business, it is you get a lot of examples from, you know, here's the way to do it. And even the books you mentioned were written by men. And, you know, so that part's really interesting. And I think the other thing, um, well, one of the other things is I write about nature and nature has a cycle. You know, we flat we know flowers are not going to bloom 12 months of the year. There's always a rest period, there's always a cycle. And, you know, I think that so that's very fascinating. So, of course, we know. Well, first of all, let me ask how's your husband?

SPEAKER_00 8:54

Everything's fine.

Mary 8:54

Okay. Okay. So he got through that.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

He's great now. His seizure meds are under control, so he doesn't have seizures anymore, knock on wood. Um, we're doing great. Everything's good with him. Yeah.

Mary 9:05

Okay. And it's really this story is what I hear so often on this podcast is there is a moment of reckoning for a woman because we are trying to do all the things and we're really good at it. Like, first, let me say that we're very good at it. But if you look back through generations and centuries, there wasn't a world of work that was eight to four, nine to five shift work. You know, I don't know if you had to do this swing shift kind of stuff, but that's like the death knell for being healthy. So all of these things were put on us as women, fit into this cycle that works for industry and corporations. So I think that's one more thing. But so we instinctively know that men or women are different, but how do you feel like it really impacts us as women?

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Yeah. Well, I think even like your message to about nature and the rhythms of nature, the more work that I've done in this, it's like there are so many rhythms that interconnect. And the men represent the sun, you know, this daily rhythm that we have, and women's hormones function like the moon. And so we have more of that monthly rhythm. We you just you saying we don't expect flowers to bloom all year long. And if we did, like that would be crazy sauce. Like, why would we expect the flower to bloom all year long? Like it's understood that they're gonna birth and they're gonna bloom and they're gonna be beautiful in the spring, and in the winter, they're gonna go and rest and start preparing for dormancy. And it's us as humans that have forced Mother Nature to continue producing crops and to continue producing things on this annual, like all year everyday sort of production. And if you read the stats, is specifically in the United States, the soils are like 50% less nutritious, like the food. So an apple grown in the soil today is 50% less nutritious than it was even like 40, 50 years ago. We've depleted the nutritional value of a lot of our foods because we're wanting this production all the time. And so, to your point, it's like Mother Nature has said, I can't produce like this. So, why do we as women think that we can produce in that way, or men even. But women, to go on your point, like we can handle a ton and we can balance a lot. But if you look at the stats also, women are statistically, I think it's like, I don't know, six ten to ten times more likely to develop an autoimmune disorder. Oh, yes. Like it's and that number might be totally wrong, but it's like way it's way more. And we just haven't studied women. We don't have the research and the information around women. It's becoming more researched, but you know, it wasn't, did you? It was like 1993 that it was mandated that women actually be included in medical studies. 1993 was not that long ago. And so you think we we didn't have information about how men's hormones worked and how women's hormones worked and how that really functions. We just assumed that women were men and that they functioned like men. And the data that we're coming out with now is that we're very drastically different. And that progression or the cycle, even across the lifespan of how we enter into puberty and then we start menstruating and we go through childbearing age and then pre-menopause and then menopause, and that whole journey itself could stretch out to like a cycle of the year as well. It's really fascinating to kind of sit at that and think about that too. And so that rhythm exists literally everywhere. And I totally forgot what your question was because I went on a little bit of a tangent there.

Mary 12:46

Well, you did a great lead up to it. So you talked about men being like the sun. It's like we instinctively know we're different. Yeah. But if we're looking at it, let's first put it in the context of work. How do you see that women functioning differently if we're honoring the way that our cycles run?

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Yeah. So men have that 24-hour rhythm, like the sun. So every day they wake up in the morning, their testosterone's high. They kind of maybe go up and down as the day goes on. If you have a male partner and they go away to work and then they come home, maybe they sit in the toilet for an hour. And I'm like, I know it doesn't take you an hour to go to the bathroom.

Hormones Change How We Work

SPEAKER_00 13:23

But it's like that's their little moment of needing to kind of recharge a little bit at the end of the day. And then they go to bed, they wake up the next day, and they've got a fresh dose of testosterone and they kind of function in that cycle. So habits that are based in these daily routines, like you wake up at the same time, even like the miracle morning we talked about, like those are really strong with that daily routine type of energy. Women are different. So we have estrogen in the front half of the month and progesterone that's more dominant in the second half. Estrogen feels like kind of like the testosterone. It's like, let's go, let's get this thing done, let's create new things, let's we feel really confident, especially around the time when we're ovulating. We feel beautiful, we feel radiant. Like science has actually shown like we smell differently, our skin changes, we glow, like our saliva changes, our heart rate, like so much of us changes to where we actually are physically more attractive. Like if people have come up to you and say, you look so beautiful today, chances are you are probably ovulating or thereabouts, because we do, we do change. And so in that estrogen dominant phase, it's really easy for us to start new projects, to get things moving, to check off the to-do list. I love this phase for getting any of that like nitty gritty stuff done that just is unimportant that I don't want to do, you know, like taking the dog to the vet or getting the tires rotated or like whatever needs to happen. I'll make a list. And it's like I can bust it out really quickly during that phase because it's easy just to move and get it done. And then progesterone kicks in. Progesterone can feel really productive, but it's a different type of prediction. So oftentimes in the progesterone dominant, it's more you want to turn in, you don't want to be really out with talking to as many people. You probably don't want to be on camera. You chances are, if you've ever gone through and like said, I'm gonna just declutter my whole closet spontaneously, it was probably this phase because it'll be like a nesting type of energy. I'm gonna clean and sort and organize and details and purge and cleanse all of the things that are no longer serving me. And so that progestone phase also comes with oftentimes what we have characterized as PMS. It's a little bit more moody, it's a little bit more emotional, it's a little bit more irritable. Maybe you get triggered easier. And a lot of women see that as a very negative thing and kind of wish that we could just ride in this estrogen-dominant phase all the time because that's what testosterone is like, right? That's what has been coined in our society is this is the norm, this is the standard. But progesterone actually in that phase has some really strong strengths for women. And when we look at each of the different phases and we look at how we move through that, it's all preparing us for the next one. So, you know, the phase when you're on your menstrual phase and it's geared around resting and recharging, that's preparing you to like take off in the next phase. And then once you're at the top, you hit that climax and you're like, this is it. I feel amazing. And then after that, it's like, okay, like let's get ourselves prepared to take a rest again. So we sort and we organize and we clean and then we get everything ready and then we take a rest. And then we come back and we start the cycle over again. And so it really is this beautiful rhythm. But when one piece is either stigmatized or shamed, or we don't allow ourselves to do it, then it throws the whole rhythm off kilter. And then we get to burnout, and then we're frustrated, we're exhausted, we're triggered, all of those types of things.

Mary 17:06

Yeah. And I think about, I don't know if you've ever seen this, but on social media, they will put some kind of electrodes on men's abdomen to mimic cramps and they they act like they're dying. And it's it's just funny because I never thought about it that we have to deal with that pain every month and act like we just show up the same way,

Nature, Research, And Women’s Health

Mary 17:30

especially if you're in a work situation. So the things that we have kind of just not allowed ourselves to really think, wait, this is crazy. Why am I pushing through this? So, yeah, I think that's that's part of it too, is that we just kind of shoulder all of this and go on.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Yeah. I I do think too, like I always love the caveat because I look at the menstrual cycle in the work I do is it's so empowering. It creates so much potential for women. There's a lot of women out there that talk really negatively around it, or they'll hear things like this and then kind of use it as a means of an excuse for not actually showing up or not working or not doing what they need to do. And they're like, oh, I can't, I'm menstruating. Like, and they kind of take a step back. And so I mean, I really look at it as each of the phases has a particular energy, it has a superpower, it has a gift that we get to tap into. And we can do any of it, right? Like to your point, you said at the beginning, we can, I can show up on a podcast like this if I was menstruating. I could, you know, do it any phase of the month. But there are going to be phases when I actually do it better. And there are going to be phases of the month that maybe it takes more energy out of me. And so even just that awareness of where I am allows me to make adjustments and it makes me, you know, be more a conscious leader of my life, of how I and the intentional about what I'm going to say yes to and what I'm going to say no to and how I'm going to take care of myself. So if I knew today, you know, if you and I were doing this and I was bleeding, I know that I would have not, this would probably be the only thing on my schedule this morning. And then the rest of it's going to be more of that admin behind the scenes type of stuff. So I'm going to make modifications and adjustments in order to stay true to the commitments that I've made and said yes to, but I'm also going to do it in a way that honors and supports where my body's at. And I think that's the most powerful thing is that it this isn't like, hey, I'm giving every woman a permission slip to just give their boss or whoever, if they're themselves, an excuse to just get by and do nothing. It's like, no, this is a way for you to actually be a bigger leader. This is a way for you to step into more empowering and sense of how do I take care of myself? How do I truly honor who I am and what I need and still create magic in the world?

unknown 19:57

Yeah.

Mary 19:58

Well, I love that you first that you addressed that. This isn't a permission slip. Yeah. Because, you know, and there are days people have issues, you know, endometriosis, or there are, you know, really, really painful, painful cramps. So acknowledging that. But at the same time, yeah, I think what I'm hearing, and again, I love this so much too, is that it's about knowing who you are, connecting to who you are. And instead of the world dictating what you do, you decide how to do what needs to happen, how to accomplish what you want in a way that's going to maximize your ability to do that.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, endometriosis is a whole can of worms of itself, but I think that there's a lot of women's health issues like endometriosis, painful periods, infertility, all of these things that are exist like they do today, because we've been working so out of opposition of how we were really designed to operate. And so we take generations of generations of women who have been with increased probably cortisol levels because they're, you know, trying to manage all the things and working really hard and didn't have this awareness. Like most women didn't. So we can't fault previous generations or, you know, because it just wasn't education and information that was available. And so we've seen all of these things rising and getting more and more and more common. And I think there is a direct correlation to how we have been working and how we've been really supporting ourselves and not just us, like there's no shame there, but like the world as a whole, how we support and honor in women. So whether it's an understanding of how our habits and how our lives and the pesticides and all of these things that are impacting us are impacting the way we show up, and also like doing a better job of understanding it and like doing research there. So I have clients who work in that sphere of like helping women, you know, heal from PMDD or heal their, you know.

Estrogen And Progesterone Work Styles

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Infertility or PCOS, like things that have been labeled as just this is what we have to deal with. And they've been able to help women like really relieve a lot of those symptoms. And I think just putting that out there too, that if that is where you're at, like don't give up hope that there's options, things out there for you.

Mary 22:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

Yeah. For sure.

Mary 22:19

So the one thing that I want to make sure that we address, because I know a lot of my listeners are perimenopause through menopause age. And we're talking about this cycle, which when you start to enter perimenopause, your progesterone drops first. So then your estrogen becomes unstable, which is why we have these mood swings. So if there are people listening thinking, well, wait a minute, not only do I either not have a period at all, because that's me, that's I'm, you know, past menopause, or it's very unstable. What does that mean for me?

SPEAKER_00 22:53

Yeah. Yeah. I think, I mean, in that stage one, it's looking at the whole, the whole concept of everything, looking at cycle thinking or learning how our bodies work is really about us learning to listen to our bodies and learning to listen to the subtle cues. As, you know, there's the phrase that goes like the universal give you a feather. And if you don't listen to the feather, it's going to throw you a rock. And if you don't listen to the rock, it's going to throw you the whole boulder of the bus. It's kind of that same idea that the cycle sinking, I think, is just a gateway for women in learning and giving them some structure to actually learning to listen to their bodies. And so even beyond that, we all have a rhythm. We all have cycles. There is research that I've done that has said that, like prior to the introduction of artificial lighting, it was believed that all women, their cycles like sunk, synced, synced up to the moon. And that the moon was that guiding force that really like helped every woman kind of operate. And so when we look at that and we look at that, that is our reflection in nature. I oftentimes find a lot of women do that are in that perimenopause stage, like to actually then transition to syncing with the moon because then they can continue to build those rhythms and those habits for them. I have noticed, like people always ask, is it the habits that's creating the cycle or is it the cycle creating the habits? And I think it's one of those chicken and egg questions, you know, but our bodies are very responsive to the habits that we give it. If I like lately, I've been wanting to get up a little bit earlier. I love the mornings when my kids are asleep, especially with summer, they'll sleep in really late. So I get so much work done and things done in the morning when they're sleeping. So I've been trying to get up earlier. And initially, you know, you set your alarm and it's like snooze, snooze, snooze. And then this last week, I think I've woke up every single day without the alarm even going off because your body responds and it learns like, hey, this is the rhythm that we have now. We're waking up earlier. And so it's the same thing when we look at whether it's the menstrual cycle and it's maybe way irregular, or you are on birth control and you don't know what's happening with it. Like our bodies will learn when we start to kind of impose a little bit of rhythm on it. But also into perimenopause and menopause is when we establish these rhythms, it helps our bodies take a little bit of a breath. There's a little bit of the sense of predictability, this knowingness of what's coming and it rides in that rhythm of how nature really designed us to live. So it may not be your hormones at that point in time that are the things that are really guiding that rhythm. But when we look at that grand, bigger scheme of how we integrate into nature, I really do think that the moon is such a beautiful reflection of women. And that oftentimes is a great way for women to reconnect with that rhythm.

Mary 25:47

So I the other thing that I think happens with that perimenopause, kind of that on ramp to menopause is with that instability, we start to feel sometimes destabilized emotionally. And so something that I'm sort of taking as a subtext of what you're saying is to have grace with yourself. That, you know, when we are in the phase of menstruation, you know, this saying, and usually it's men saying, oh, she's on the rag, you know, that, oh, she's she's being a bitch, like whatever it is. And I think when we have days like that, just kind of accepting, like, and again, not a permission slip to go through the world just, you know, just doing what you want. But I think it's that time where some days there are hormonal issues, some days there are just an accumulation of things because we're trying to hustle, because we're pushing. And I think trying to find curiosity, like, wow, I am so irritable today. Instead of why am I like this? I'm feeling guilty for having those emotions like anger and irritability, and understanding a little bit, okay, well, this is a cycle too. You know, like I'm going through something, let me be curious about it and compassionate with myself and figure out maybe I need something that I'm not giving myself right now.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Yeah, I love that you brought that up because I think curiosity could change our entire lives in so many ways. That if we got really curious about why we believe things, why we do things certain ways, why we enter into certain relationships, like why other people do things. Like, and I don't know if it's partly me becoming I hit 41 this year. And so I'm in a whole, I don't know if it's my 40s, just being like, why do I believe this? Why do people act like this? Why, why have I always accepted this? But I think that sense of curiosity plays out in so many different ways. And those phases when we do feel more irritable, maybe and more emotional, we're on our edge. I look at that as an opportunity for us to really define what is meant for us and what's working, what's not working. And so when we feel those feelings of being irritable and frustrated, like you said, how do we get really curious about that and say, okay, what is actually happening for me? Why am I feeling so irritable right now? And oftentimes it illuminates something. I need, I need help, or I need to ask something of my partner, like I need my partner to step in for me, or I need a break, actually. I need to go for a walk. And when we can get curious about those questions, oftentimes it can dismantle the actual irritability or frustration or feeling that we were having in the first place, just getting curious about it. But then again, it puts us back in this place of how do we actually support ourselves? How do we actually, you know, not become a victim to whatever's just happening to us? Like it puts us in a place of, okay, I'm observing right now that I am feeling very triggered right now. Why am I feeling triggered? It's probably because I added too much to my plate

Empowerment Without Using Excuses

SPEAKER_00 28:50

today and I didn't give myself enough space in the moment. And the kids are constantly asking me something, like, what do I actually need right now? And that gives you then the opportunity to find a solution instead of just letting things keep hitting you and hitting you and hitting you. And I find like the one of the models that I use for my clients is this upward spiral. And so, what a lot of times is in our society, we we think we should be like men, right? That same constant state all of the time. That when we start to dip into that phase and we start to feel slower and sluggish and more irritable and frustrated, all those things, we think that we have to keep just holding on to that stable energy all the time. Instead, when we actually tap into it and lean into it and trust the process, is when we really refine the things that are meant for us. We let go of limiting beliefs, we move through fears, we let go of doubts, we process, you know, and refine what and how we're living our lives. And then we go into that next phase, kind of a little bit more of an expanded version of ourselves, a little bit more of that next level. And if we look at it from that way, every single month there's this opportunity to step into a like more fully expressed version of ourselves. And I think that that's really incredibly powerful.

Mary 30:05

So when you talk about trying to find balances being stuck, is that what you mean? Like trying to stay at that high level of productivity, trying to be consistent all the time.

SPEAKER_00 30:16

I think that that like that's why people feel a lack of balance, is that we have this idea that balance is everything all at the same time and everything is equal all the same time, and that we're functioning all the same time. And I really do believe that balance for women wasn't made for we do it all the same all the time, but more in this there are seasons for each part of us to get attention. There's gonna be seasons of us when maybe our kids are the focus of our attention. And there's gonna be seasons of our lives that are, you know, going and having fun and adventuring is gonna be the focus. And then other times when it's work, and there's gonna be seasons of not all of me is being fully expressed at every one point in time, but that as I move through the month, as I move through the year and I work through these stages of my life, like all of them are getting that. It's about, but it's about intentionality, it's not just expecting it to happen that way. It's about how do I intentionally curate so that each parts of me are getting met at certain points.

Mary 31:17

And we've been talking a lot about the workplace and leadership, but this is really for anything. I mean, in the home, especially if you're raising children and you're trying to work or you aren't working outside the home, you're raising children, you're the domestic engineer. This all applies. And so I'm curious too, because sometimes I think that can be harder. That if you've been doing all the things, you're cooking the meals, you're taking care of the kids, and if it's a more, I'll just say, American traditional home from the 1950s, you know, you may feel like when your partner comes home from work, you still need to be doing all the things. So if somebody really feels like disconnected and stuck and like I'm in this pattern and it's not sustainable, how would you tell them to start? Where do they start to kind of get connected to themselves and make some change?

SPEAKER_00 32:09

Yeah. One of the biggest things I kind of tell all my clients is just every day having a practice of asking yourself, like, what do I need today? Like, where am I today? And it's something that most of us don't do enough. You know, we just wake up in the morning, we get our coffee and we keep go out the door and we just keep going. And that actual, especially with phones and the internet and all the things coming to us, there's so much sensory stimuli and so much information that's always coming to us and telling us how we should dress, how we should work, what we need to cook, what's the best diet, what's the best way to sleep. Like there's always things coming at us, telling us what to do and how to do it. And there's very little that's actually saying, Hey, are you actually listening to you? Because your body is very different than somebody else's body. And so I think that's a number one would just be to start having a practice. Maybe it's one minute of when you know you're brushing your teeth in the morning. You just have that question of what do I need today? Like, what do how do I want to show up today? How can I bring that intention into the day? Because even that, like even if you have the crazy busiest of schedules, or you know, you're home with the kids all day and there's nothing you can do about that, just the intention of how am I going to be more spacious? How am I going to create more balance today? Begins to create it for you. Our minds go to there's like so much science and spirituality that kind of both

Perimenopause, Menopause, And Moon Syncing

SPEAKER_00 33:39

of them point to the same thing that our minds focus on what we give it attention to. And so if we're focused on, it's there's so much to do, there's never enough, I'm always exhausted, I'm always overwhelmed, there's no balance, like I'm depleted in every which way. That's all we ever see. But if we start focusing on even just the micro things of like, okay, how am I going to create balance today? How am I going to create a little bit more spaciousness today? How am I going to create a little bit more fun today? And you start asking the questions, your mind and the universe go into playing. How do we answer that question? How do we make that happen? So if you say, What do I need today? And then the need that comes up is spaciousness, you say, How do I create spaciousness today? And you from that curiosity place, like you talked about before, not the place of like, how the heck am I actually going to do that? You know, but that energy of how do I, how do I do that today? And your mind will start finding small ways of I'm actually just gonna go walk outside and I will have a rose garden. I'll go outside and pick a rose and I come in, I put it in my kitchen. And that sometimes is like, oh, that felt so good to me. But if I could go pick a rose and put it in the kitchen and it does nothing, like it doesn't, but it's like the intention that we bring to the action. So I would say no matter where you're at and what's happening, just asking yourself every day, what do I actually need today? And presencing into that and then creating that little bit of an intention with that.

Mary 35:10

Yeah. I also think about for me, I don't allow myself to pick up my phone when I'm still in bed. So I wake up and I actually, and we and even if you need to get up and address a situation, a kid, whatever, you can take 30 seconds and just listen, do the grounding. Like, what am I hearing? Birds or the air conditioner, whatever. What's what's the bed feel like? Where's the cool part of the sheets? Just being in the moment before you start to take out a leap out. Here's all the stuff, because I think that we immediately want to hit the gas. And so being that, setting that intention in the morning, paying attention to like, how do I feel today? Am I feeling like I want to do what I thought yesterday I was gonna do? And the other part that I wanted to mention, because I hear it from my clients all the time. I've I work mostly with women in midlife now. This idea of I should be doing this thing. So if you have a list, I think a lot of the um the exhaustion comes from berating ourselves internally for not doing all the things. And I really got to the point, we just moved it two and a half months ago into a new house. And so, you know, there's always boxes. Yeah. But I started to learn several years ago that if I don't feel like doing something and it's non-urgent, I just don't do it. And I know that there will be a day, and it's kind of like you're talking about there's a day where I'll wake up and be like, oh, I want to unpack these three boxes today, and I just do it. Yeah. But that's when I would have done it anyway, but I just don't waste the energy of feeling guilty that I haven't done it a week sooner. So I would invite people also to if you don't feel like doing the non-urgent thing, how important is it really to have some boxes in the corner? I think that's another part of where we really wear ourselves out.

SPEAKER_00 37:04

I think what you brought up too, it's like the the energy behind what we're doing is the

Curiosity, Balance, And Daily Check-Ins

SPEAKER_00 37:10

energy coming from a place of like, oh, I should unpack these boxes because I've moved in and it's been a week or whatever, you know, and I haven't done it and I whatever, then we could force ourselves to do that. And then that just wears us out versus the energy of like, I'm actually excited to do this today and I want to do this today, and I'm gonna do it today, you know, and I think that that that makes a huge difference too. And so, like you said, the lot of the work I do is helping women kind of predict when those places would be. So if we know, like, hey, actually, unpacking is best in this phase. This is when you're gonna be the feel that energy. It's not just random. It's we know and we schedule and we create our to-dos and our calendar and things around that so that they know ahead of time, hey, I'm not just waiting for one day, someday when I feel really like I want to do it, because sometimes then we never do those things, right? That need to get done. But how do we actually know, like, you know what? I'm gonna actually save this for two weeks from now. And that's when I'm gonna feel great about doing that.

Mary 38:08

Yeah. I think also I'm thinking about the application of this. And I hear in my head a lot what clients protest. So I rarely prescribe journaling anymore. I don't have time to journal. I do that in a different way. So if people are thinking, well, how do I track? I don't know how to track my energy. I'm thinking something like if you just have a calendar, just do a number scale, like one to 10, 10, you feel great, or a little smiley face or an emoji, something that takes you a nanosecond. And then you can look back over and oh, this is this, I have a lot of eights this week or nines this week, but this week I either have frownies or or I have like twos or threes. It is it something like that? Can that be a start to just sort of tune into how you feel?

SPEAKER_00 38:56

Yeah, a hundred percent. And if you have a menstrual cycle, it's easy to just put that on your calendar. Like I have a Google calendar that's only my cycle. And so I can look forward and know like exactly where it's not like a separate thing that I'm having to track and somewhere else I'm having to look. It's just like integrated into every day where I'm looking to your point. We don't need necessarily extra added things on there. But if you don't have a cycle or you're not sure what's happening there in the cycle or post-menopausal or any of those places, then yeah, like having just a quick little check-in number scale or a smiley face or not can give you a starting point to one, it's just the intention of checking in. And then two, you may actually start to predict patterns. And I think we don't realize how much pattern and rhythm exist in the world. Like I think if we, you know, you and I started there on this conversation, but going back to it, there's so much more than we really notice. I noticed one year I was sitting on the couch and I opened up my Facebook and Facebook memories popped up. And for five years in a row, on that same day, I had posted something about being sick. And I was like, how have I been sick this same week for five years in a row? And so then I started kind of backtracking it and looking and saying, okay, is this a rhythm that just exists or is there something else? And it comes out. It came shortly after Halloween, and I was like, oh, it's because I ate a whole bunch of sugar right there during Halloween, which tanked my body and my immune system. And then I got sick. So now I'm a little bit more mindful of how much sugar and things that I eat and what I eat in that, you know, time between December and November, um, October and December when everybody's eating really crappy. It I stopped getting sick as much. And so this is a whole other conversation, but I've heard people say, like, we don't have a flu season, we have a high sugar season. Kind of this like that, you kind of wonder, it's like we're eating so much sugar and carbs and bad food from October to December. It's no wonder that we all get sick from January to March. Yeah. And so just kind of having that awareness of is it a habit that's happening in my world and existing? Like, what are those patterns? So I think if you do start just having some

Simple Tracking And Finding Patterns

SPEAKER_00 41:10

simple way to track that pattern, I know for menstrual cycle purposes, there's so many different apps or things that will help you kind of look back over years of data if you wanted to kind of do that and kind of use that way. Um, I'm sure there's gonna be some AI system out there now that's that you could plug in your little emoji codes and it would tell you, like, hey, every fifth week you feel this way. But and I did, I started noticing that like every fourth menstrual cycle I had was longer than the other ones. And so, you know, people always be like, Oh, sometimes my cycle is really irregular. Mine felt that way, but then I started noticing it's not irregular all the time, it's just the fourth one, like every single fourth one. I was like, that's weird. Why is the fourth one always longer? So you start to pick up on patterns and trends the more that you just kind of observe and take note of them.

Mary 42:00

Isn't it weird that we live in this body and we so we can be so surprised because I know you're talking about the sugar and I know how important it is. And I think I do a good job with that until my doctor said you, I want you to track this for two weeks. And I was like, oh my God, I eat a lot of sugar. So there are these things, and I also love the idea of the moon phases because a lot of calendars do show you where the moon phase is, and I think it would be really interesting, especially again for women past menstruating age to see if that's syncing with my mood at all or my energy. So I think that's really cool. Yeah. This has been such a fascinating conversation. I learned so much from you because, like I said, I always think about nature in terms of it and how we can look to nature to learn

Where To Find Renee And Support

Mary 42:50

so much about ourselves. But really, you're putting in a pivotal piece, is that we need to look to ourselves to learn about ourselves, which is so important. So, can you share what you offer for people and where they can find you? And then I'm gonna put all the links in the show notes.

SPEAKER_00 43:05

Yeah, for sure. If you want to come hang out with me, Facebook, or not Facebook, why did I say that? Uh, Instagram, not Facebook. Instagram is my favorite place to hang out. I am on Facebook too, but it's just like stuff that gets pushed over from Instagram. If you want to come really hang out with me, Instagram is the place. It's just my first and last name, Renee Fick, over there. I would be happy to give anybody that's listening the first three chapters of my my book, Cycle Sync Your Business, on the audio version. You can just go to ReneeFick.com forward slash chapter, and that will give you the audio version of the book. You can just pop it into headphones and kind of listen there. And it goes into more detail of the things that we talked about today.

Mary 43:45

So and her name is not phonetically spelled like it sounds. So that's another reason I'm gonna put it in the show notes. You can go there and just click on it.

SPEAKER_00 43:53

Yes. It's like I wish my maiden name was Ryan. And now that I have a business, I was like, darn it, I should have just kept Ryan. It would have been so much easier. But yeah.

Mary 44:03

Well, thank you. I really appreciate you being here, Renee. This was a great conversation.

SPEAKER_00 44:08

Thanks so much.

Mary 44:09

And thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoyed this episode or are a frequent listener and would like to support the show, I'd love to keep it ad-free for as long as possible. Click on the support the show link in the show notes. And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.