Pod Insights LifeBlood 2550: Joyful Living with Amy Leneker About this episode LifeBlood: We talked about the dangers of fear-based leadership, why it happens, what to do about it, reclaiming your agency and autonomy, and how to get started, with Amy Leneker is a Leadership Consultant, Speaker, and Author. Listen to learn why being joyful doesn’t mean toxic positivity! You can learn more about Amy at AmyLeneker.com, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Get your copy of Cheers to Monday here: https://amzn.to/4aYGcbq Thanks, as always for listening! If you got some value and enjoyed the show, please leave us a review here:https://ratethispodcast.com/lifebloodpodcastYou can learn more about us at LifeBlood. Live, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook or you’d like to be a guest on the show, contact us at contact@LifeBlood. Live. Stay up to date by getting our monthly updates. Want to say “Thanks!” You can buy us a cup of coffee.https://www.buymeacoffee.com/lifebloodCopyright LifeBlood 2025.
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0:45 Speaker 01 Amy Leneker is a leadership consultant, speaker, facilitator, and author. Her newest book is Cheers to Monday: The Surprisingly Simple Method to Lead and Live with Less Stress and More Joy. Welcome to the show, Amy.
0:58 Speaker 02 Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.
1:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, excited to have you on. Tell us a little bit about your personal life, some more about your work, and what motivated you to put pen to paper and write the book?
1:07 Speaker 02 Thank you. So I am a wife, a mom, a friend, a sister, all the things. And I'm also a leadership consultant. And I describe myself first and foremost as a joy-seeking, recovering workaholic, because that has been the overarching theme of my life. And so what drove me to write the book was that after decades of trying to get my dream job, I finally landed it, and I was miserable. I burnt out in a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad way. And the book was really my way out of it. And so it's been a really healing process for me. I loved, I was on your website this morning where in your journal, you talk
1:52 Speaker 02 about how writing makes us better thinkers. It makes us better just humans moving through the world. And that was absolutely what happened in writing this book. It became cathartic for me and what I hope is going to be really helpful for other people, too.
2:07 Speaker 01 So you've been working forever. You get your dream job and it didn't work out. You were still burned out.
2:15 Speaker 02 I was. And what was so sad about it in hindsight is that it looked like I was wildly successful.
2:22 Speaker 01 Right.
2:23 Speaker 02 I was, I was meeting every performance measure there was. We were exceeding every performance measure there was. I was on track for the next promotion. So from the outside, it looked like, wow, she's kind of crushing it in this job. But in reality, I was just getting crushed in the process.
2:40 Speaker 01 Yeah. Well, that's a real bummer, but
2:45 Speaker 01 every adversity, every adversity, I'm, I'm sorry that that happened.
2:49 Speaker 02 Oh, thanks, George.
2:50 Speaker 01 Every adversity carries with the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit. And here we are talking about this book.
2:56 Speaker 02 Yes.
2:56 Speaker 01 And your premise is that other people are also experiencing those same feelings or similar.
3:01 Speaker 02 Yes. And we know this anecdotally. We know this just walking through the grocery store, but we've got really terrifying data that backs it up. So I'm not sure if you saw the latest research that shows we are at the same stress levels now in US workplaces that we were at the start of the pandemic. Isn't that fascinating that our stress is now back to the level it was when we just went into a global pandemic? Burnout is at a 10 year high, which is something we all need to be a pay, we all need to pay attention to that. So all of that to say, it's coming at a time where the organizations that I work with, George, they're tired of talking
3:43 Speaker 02 about stress and burnout. One of them actually said, we're stressed and burnout, talking about stress and burnout. And I get it, but we can't afford not to talk about it. With the numbers being what they are, we have to continue to find a new way to work.
4:00 Speaker 01 You know, it's a, we have, we have burnout fatigue. We have
4:04 Speaker 02 Yes.
4:07 Speaker 01 It's in a lot of ways, probably the definition of insanity because those statistics are certainly staggering. And I've been aware that such a massive number of employees all over the world have been not engaged in their work and a pretty sizable chunk have been disengaged in their work. So like actively working to, to, to, to, to screw stuff up.
4:33 Speaker 01 So that's, it's, so, I mean, it's all a bummer and it all sucks, but it's not a new problem. And so it suggests to me that a different approach is, is warranted slash necessary. So I imagine that you're, you probably didn't decide to write a book just talking about the same old stuff that everybody else is talking about. So you have a different take.
4:56 Speaker 02 I do, thankfully, because who would want to read a book otherwise?
5:00 Speaker 01 Oh, awesome. You're rehashing the same crap.
5:02 Speaker 02 My mom would read it.
5:05 Speaker 01 Your mom?
5:06 Speaker 02 But other than that, I'm not sure. So yes, I do take a different approach. And we did hundreds of interviews and focus groups. I led a national research study on joy and stress at work because that's the piece I think that's missing. We talk about stress, we talk about burnout, but how often on your team are you talking about joy? If you're like 99% of the teams I work with, the answer is not very much. We think of joy as this fluffy, kind of feel good, but it's not. I mean, yes, of course, joy feels good, but the research shows it actually helps us think clearer. We make better decisions. It frees up cognitive space in our brain.
5:46 Speaker 02 So joy is one of the most important business strategies that there is in terms of performance and outcome and engagement. I was so glad you mentioned engagement because just last year it was the lowest it's been in a decade. That's a problem. That's a problem for anyone in an organization. And I think that joy is our way out.
6:12 Speaker 01 I think that that makes a ton of sense and and everything you said is is very reasonable and logical and the term, obviously an old term and people probably dismiss it and think joy and business, how how like where where do those intersect in that Venn diagram?
6:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:30 Speaker 01 But to your point, I mean, when we're having a good time, that's when we're having fun and I feel good and I probably get a lot more done and I'm nicer to be around and I like to be around other joyful people. So it's pretty obvious.
6:43 Speaker 02 Yes, and the key is that it has to be real. I don't know if you know anyone who kind of sprinkles toxic positivity everywhere they go.
6:52 Speaker 01 Sure.
6:53 Speaker 02 It doesn't work. It's the opposite. It we actually included that in our national studies. So because we know it anecdotally, we know that toxic positivity doesn't work. But I wanted data to actually show it increases our stress, it diminishes our trust. So all of these leaders that are, you know, running through the workplace with the smiley face sticker slapped on their on their faces. I think while many are good intentioned, it creates a lot of stress in the background.
7:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, I don't want to be around any fake ass people.
7:23 Speaker 02 No, and yet are you? I mean, most people I work with are. I mean, it's it's a real conundrum. And so what I always share with leaders is you've got to find the way of balancing two really conflicting things at the exact same time. You've got to be able to say, yeah, this is hard. We're in a really tough situation right now. And you've got to be able to hold the hope that it's going to get better. And I'm not sure if you're familiar with Admiral Stockdale, the this term, the Stockdale paradox of holding those two competing realities at the exact same time. That's the key. It's not fake joy. It's real belief that things
8:06 Speaker 02 are going to get better while you're acknowledging, man, things are things are tough right now.
8:13 Speaker 01 Was he a vice presidential candidate?
8:14 Speaker 02 He was, so he was a prisoner of war for eight years.
8:18 Speaker 01 Was he Ross Perot?
8:20 Speaker 02 Yes, before, uh, before that, uh, part of his political career. And Jim Collins interviewed him for Jim Collins book, Good to Great. And it was such a striking interview because Collins asked this prisoner of war, this admiral, how in the world did you do it? How, how did you survive what seems completely unsurvivable while so many people around you perished? And that's what he described, this ability to hold these two things at one time. And I listened to the audio and it gave, it gave me goosebumps because what the admiral said is that the people who perished the first were the optimists, that they would think, we're going to get out of here by Christmas. And then Christmas would come and go.
9:05 Speaker 02 And then they would think, oh, next Christmas, we're going to be out of here by next Christmas. And Admiral Stockdale's belief was that they died of a broken heart. And so that optimism without the ability to confront reality had a horrific outcome for them. So I think we can take his wisdom and, and apply the same thing to our work and to our lives.
9:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's, that is really profound. I got goosebumps just having you talk about it and not even hearing him talk about it.
9:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:30 Speaker 01 So I can't even imagine, but I can imagine.
9:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:34 Speaker 01 I've been spending an enormous amount of time thinking about Sisyphus, who is the person condemned by the gods to roll the boulder up the hill every day. And Camus, who wrote about it, said, we must, we must imagine Sisyphus happy. And in a lot of ways, I see parallels between what we're talking about is we're not sugarcoating the fact that we're still having to roll a boulder up a hill every day. And there's a million things that I maybe don't love about what I do, but I can be joyful and I can identify opportunities because I can hold these two things in my head at the same time.
10:03 Speaker 02 Yes, beautifully said. I wish you had written a foreword for my book. Yes, you just summed it up beautifully. The way I think about joy at work is when there are three things that converge at the same time. So I think of joy as when we've got meaning, there's a purpose in what I do, there's mattering, I matter to the people I work with every day, and there's movement. I see some progress, I see some result of the work that I do. And if we can have those three things at one time, joy, it's there, we can access it. What gets hard is when we have one of those, but not the other. So you're in a job and you really have meaning in it,
10:45 Speaker 02 but you work with people that really frustrate you every single day. So it's when all three of those things are happening at the same time. That's the, that's the, that's as good as it gets, the trifecta.
10:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, that certainly does make sense. And...
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12:03 Speaker 01 I mean, at some level, it's possible to find meaning in any situation. And so I guess my question or my point is, this is an individual choice?
12:17 Speaker 02 Yes, yes, and I think we've got to be really careful about the choice because it is. There is an absolute component of that. I think we can go too far to where we start shaming and blaming ourselves and each other if we don't feel that way. So phrases like good vibes only, or choose joy. Like when I see that in the airport, I just want to run up and say, no, it's not good vibes only. So I think we can go too far. So yes, of course, there is a choice we have to make, but we can't underestimate the the impact of the system that we're operating within. Otherwise, I think it becomes a recipe for shame and blame.
12:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, and probably an exercise in delusion.
13:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly, exactly.
13:07 Speaker 01 So movement, that means I have to see progress, that I'm actually having an impact here, that the boulder is actually going up the hill.
13:13 Speaker 02 Yes, and there are some times in my life where I'm doing something outside of work, but there's this instant gratification of, wow, I just saw some progress there. Like mowing a lawn, or leaf blowing, or you know, there's these things where you are vacuuming, I mean, whatever it is. When there's movement, when you can say there is a an impact of something that I just did. And in the workplace, that can look like all sorts of things. That can look like moving a project forward, or moving a vision forward, or even moving an idea to execution. That can all show up as movement.
13:46 Speaker 01 So tangibly being able to see progress in some form or fashion.
13:52 Speaker 01 I've had a couple of conversations and been thinking about flow state as of late, and in some ways, that's what joy is. And I find joy in gardening, or playing pickleball, and in writing. How does that fit in?
14:07 Speaker 02 It does, and I think if you think about work as the convergence of those three things, that is the flow state. When you're doing something that matters, and you're with people, with me, when there's meeting, and when there's movement and momentum, you you do sort of lose sight of it. And I think it's why in the research that many times they'll say it's not just overworking that causes burnout, that there are folks who might work a lot of hours, that doesn't necessarily mean they're burning out if they're doing something tied to their mission, or tied to their values. And so I think there's an absolute connection to flow.
14:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's probably. ER docs that could just be there without stopping ever and probably be perfectly fine.
14:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:48 Speaker 01 And then some people could spend two minutes in, like, for example, when I was in chemistry class in ninth grade, it was the worst thing I've ever done in my whole life.
14:55 Speaker 02 I'm sorry.
14:58 Speaker 02 Your chemistry class sounds like my Excel pivot tables. When I have to work in Excel, I literally, George, I have a piece of paper that says, I am in Excel, enter at your own risk. And I tape it to my home office, like, if you want to come in here, I can't, I'm not responsible for what you find. So I'm guessing chemistry was the same, like, you just, it's not, it's not your flow state, it's not where you're meant to be.
15:22 Speaker 01 No, I experienced time actually standing still.
15:26 Speaker 02 It is, it's a vortex that you can't get out of.
15:28 Speaker 01 It was impossible.
15:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
15:30 Speaker 01 I could still see.
15:31 Speaker 02 Unfortunately, I think a lot of people experience that at work. I think what you feel like in chemistry, what I feel like in Excel, I think there are some people who spend every workday in that place, and that's what breaks my heart.
15:44 Speaker 01 I imagine the book gives a prescription for that. Can you give me a quick rundown of, if I do feel that way, what is to be done?
15:51 Speaker 02 I can, yes. So I created a really simple framework, and I think we've overcomplicated stress. That's what I found in all the interviews and the focus groups. We have overcomplicated stress to where we get stressed about managing our stress. So I created an incredibly simple three-step framework. So step number one is we've got to see stress differently. And that means we take an inventory of all of the things causing your stress. If I'm working with a team, we do it as a team. If I'm working with a leader, we just do it individually. But step one, we have to, we've got to see it, what are we dealing with? In step two, we sort it. So we sort it based on, is it important? Do you have control? And we sort it based on what type of work stress it is.
16:36 Speaker 02 So many people don't understand that there is not one kind of work stress, there are five. And so we sort it into those five categories, which takes us to step three, where based on all of those answers, your stressor goes onto a matrix, a four quadrant matrix, and wherever it lands, there's a next step. Because what we know about our brains is our brain hates open loops. It's why you can overthink and overthink, or you can even get stuck and now you're in analysis paralysis. So having that really simple framework that says, if it's this, then try this, it always gives you a next step, no matter what that stressor is. Then there's a four step with isn't official, but it's my favorite, which is to celebrate it.
17:19 Speaker 02 We've got to, we've got to celebrate living and working in a different way because we're not meant to be this stressed. This is not what we were put on this earth to do. And so there's the celebration that says, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it differently. I'm gonna start shifting my own way of working.
17:36 Speaker 01 I love it. I love it. Understand it correctly, sort it, put it on the matrix.
17:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:44 Speaker 01 And then celebrate.
17:45 Speaker 02 I, when I, it was during the pandemic and I am a trainer and speaker by trade and before the pandemic, 99% of what I did was in person. And so suddenly when the world shut down, I didn't have anything to do. For the, for the first time since I was in middle school, I didn't have a job. I mean, I was doing email, but I wasn't actually doing anything. And so that's when I dove into this stress and burnout and starting to do webinars that we did globally. And hearing from people share how complicated it was and how hard it was, it's like, it doesn't have to be. So that's where this framework really came together and it's been exciting to see it evolve and, and now it's in something that's going to be out in the world, which I find really exciting.
18:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, I think it is an exciting thing. And you've got a lot of work to do for sure. When you do look around and you see the statistics and just how people are, for lack of a better term, suffering and
18:41 Speaker 02 Yes.
18:42 Speaker 01 Getting more stressed out because they're so stressed out, trying to figure out how to be less stressed out about things and trying to, to Be vibes only, or pursue joy, or whatever vapid crap that is written on the break room wall.
18:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think you just hit on something so important, which is that so much of how we try to manage stress actually increases our stress. And I see it in teams all the time. So here's a great example, George. I was talking to a leader who knew that one of their team members, they could see it. The stress was going up, there was no question. So the leader with really good intention, wanted to take some things off of their employee's plate. And so they did. They took off a project, a couple of a project, and then something else. Well, it turns out that that project was the only part of that person's job that they really enjoyed. I mean, isn't that something? And it happens all the time.
19:39 Speaker 02 So now you've got this employee who is feeling tremendous amounts of stress, who had this project taken away, which was the only thing they were interested in. And they're, and now their stress is even higher, the relationship broke down. And I mean, fortunately, we were able to bring them together and talk about it and shift some things. But it happens every day. The ways that we try to manage stress end up making it worse. And then we feel exhausted from trying not to be exhausted.
20:06 Speaker 01 I tell you, chicken and the egg.
20:09 Speaker 02 Yes, and it doesn't have to be. It just takes one person, one moment to pause and say, let's try something different. What do we have to lose? I mean, frankly, stress has never been higher, burnout's never been higher. What in the world do we have to lose? It's time to try something different.
20:26 Speaker 01 Love it. Well, Amy, thank you so much for coming on.
20:30 Speaker 02 Oh my gosh, thank you.
20:32 Speaker 01 Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you? And where can they get their copy of Cheers to Monday?
20:38 Speaker 02 Thank you. amyleneker.com, all of the social media places you would expect. And Cheers to Monday is available now. It comes out in March, but it's available for preorder everywhere books are sold.
20:51 Speaker 01 Excellent. Well, if you enjoyed this much as I did, show Amy your appreciation. Share today's show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas. Go to amyleneker.com. It's A-M-Y-L-E-N-E-K-E-R dot com and learn more about Amy and her work and pick up your copy of Cheers to Monday, The Surprisingly Simple Method to Lead and Live with Less Stress and More Joy, something that we can universally all agree upon. Get your copy and I will link all of those in the notes of the show. Thanks for getting Amy.
21:22 Speaker 02 Thanks so much.
21:23 Speaker 01 Until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best.
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