How to stop finding your self-worth through your job (w/ Gloria Chan Packer) (Transcript)

[00:00:00] Chris Duffy:
You are listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy.

[00:00:10] Gloria Chan Packer:
I started struggling with debilitating chronic migraines that for me, meant that after months of no change and no medication or treatment working, I knew I had to take at least a leave from work. And that was devastating for me because work had really become my everything.

[00:00:28] Chris Duffy:
Gloria Chan Packer is a management consultant, but not just any consultant. She was and is one of the best in the world. She was working with people at corporations all across the globe. But when illness forced her to suddenly take a step back from her job, it felt like she was losing herself.

[00:00:44] Gloria Chan Packer:
There is a memory that haunts me from that time. Um, it was the night before I was about to go on leave and I was just grabbing dinner with a friend and my husband, and I said to my friend, “Work is my entire worth and my identity. I don't know what I'm gonna do without it.” And my husband's body language and face dropped in a way that I had never seen it.

And after my friend left, I remember him saying to me, “I can't believe that you think that work is your only worth when I see so much more. And I can't believe you can't see that either.”

It's a poignant memory for me because I remember it feeling so true.

[00:01:25] Chris Duffy:
Today's episode is gonna deal with issues that many of us struggle with every day. How do you draw boundaries at work? How do you balance, ambition, and drive with taking care of yourself? What is really important in life? I know intellectually, I know that how things are going at work is not a reflection on whether I am a good person or not, and yet it is so hard when I hit a roadblock or I have a rejection to not feel like that reflects on me as a person.

These are things that I really struggle with, so I'm so excited to talk about all of them and much more with Gloria Chan Packer today. We're gonna get into all of that right after this quick break. Don't go anywhere.

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[00:02:13] Chris Duffy:
And we are back. Today, we're talking with Gloria Chan Packer about how work is not your family.

[00:02:17] Gloria Chan Packer:
I'm Gloria Chan Packer. I'm a mental wellness educator, a TED speaker, and an experienced corporate leader. I'm also the founder and owner of Recalibrate, a workplace mental wellness provider that serves corporations worldwide.

[00:02:32] Chris Duffy:
What was your own work experience and your path that led you to caring so much about workplace mental health?

[00:02:39] Gloria Chan Packer:
So I studied business in college and I was probably borderline obsessed with figuring out how to have a successful career. I ended up landing a gig in consulting, which felt very shiny, especially from the business school side of things.

I really enjoyed my career in consulting. It was challenging. I got to travel a bunch, and I got to learn a lot of different skills in a lot of different types of companies. One thing that was difficult that ended up kind of catching me and making me look at a, a blindspot maybe I had, was how much stress and my propensity for overworking could really cause me to burn out a lot more quickly and a lot more often than I realized.

In consulting, because you're in client services, uh, you're, you're somewhat expected to please the client as much as you can. And when you're a people pleaser or a perfectionist and aren't used to setting any boundaries, that can be a, a pretty rough formula. Um, I, I had a really unexpected medical battle that popped up in the form of chronic migraines in 2017.

Then I, I took a leave from work and finally started therapy that I had been thinking about starting forever and really learned so much about not only myself, but a lot of the science behind everyday shared mental health experiences like stress and people pleasing and perfectionism and burnout, and just felt so strongly through that experience that so many more of my own peers and colleagues could find so much benefit in knowing the science behind some of these concepts that maybe otherwise would feel too soft or too in the woo for them to wanna look at otherwise.

[00:04:30] Chris Duffy:
Can we talk about that moment where you're having these chronic migraines, nothing is working, and all of a sudden you realize, “Okay, I have to change something big about my relationship to work”? Do you remember the fears or the barriers that you felt in that moment to, to changing your relationship to work?

[00:04:49] Gloria Chan Packer:
Yes, very much so. It was terrifying. You know, even though I wouldn't say that work felt like my everything, it was a really, really, really big piece. It was kind of the center, if you will, of my day-to-day and of my safety, and I think work and doing well in work was so tied to my own sense of emotional stability and safety that not being able to have that just had me feeling completely lost and completely powerless.

We get taught in many aspects of our society… Actually, we, like, don’t get taught at all how to define our self-worth. I think that's just like something that is very nebulous, and where we subliminally get taught to define our self-worth is through our work and through our job. And that’s, like, the only language we have for it.

And it's the only place we focus. And, and so for many of us who don't have tools or education around mental health or emotional health, we, we don't have any other sense of self-worth besides what we do for a living. And so, yeah, I, I think so many people relate to that, myself included, Chris, where it's like, I don't, I don't even know how to tell you about myself without talking about my work.

[00:06:03] Chris Duffy:
So what advice do you have for people who feel that their identity or their passion is so tied to their work that they're, they feel really reluctant to step back from it? It feels dangerous.

[00:06:12] Gloria Chan Packer:
The longer and the harder path of advice is to really kind of do the self-reflection and do the self-work to understand what it is that makes work or overworking or being the best feel so safe.

Or in other words, what would make it feel so unsafe to not be the perfectionist or not be the XYZ job title? What does that mean? And maybe even just ask yourself, like, “If I didn't have that, what would that mean?”

And normally your most kind of extreme gut reaction is the one that's the most informational, right? Something like, “I'd be worthless,” or “People wouldn't like me.” But really we wanna pay attention to that because that's what we technically call kind of a cognitive schema that we've developed. Technically a cognitive schema is, is basically just a learned behavior or thought. It's almost like a mental map for if we're in this kind of situation, then this is how we should think, act, and feel.

And so many of our schemas are developed early on in life when our brains are really blank slates and we're trying to figure out how the world works and how we either navigate to safety and resourcing or navigate away from danger and de-resourcing. And so, I think a lot of times for our overachievers that tend to burn out a lot and tend to tie ourselves too much to work, there are big aspects of our upbringing where we learned that being the best was safe, and not being the best was really unsafe.

[00:07:52] Chris Duffy:
Okay, so your TEDx talk was “Work is not your family”, and this was one of the most viewed talks of the past year. People, it really resonated with people. Other than the fact that you're a great communicator, I wonder if you have some thoughts about like why this struck a chord with so many people.

[00:08:09] Gloria Chan Packer:
Calling work our family, I think was something that became so commonplace, but I, for many of us maybe had some detrimental effects that we, we couldn't quite put a pin on, but we were experiencing that I think the TED talk resonated with so many people because it, it gave us a more tangible understanding of why sometimes that can be problematic.

And also I think just a little bit of understanding on, on how that relates to each of us individually as well and our own wirings. ‘Cause I think a lot of times when we're talking about anything related to health and wellness, it can feel so big and generalized that it doesn't feel as helpful or applicable or actionable until we can figure out a way to tie it to ourselves and our own story, too.

[00:08:58] Chris Duffy:
I completely agree. I also think that one of the key parts of a family is that you're stuck with them, right? Like, no matter what happens, you kind of can't change who your family is. And that is actually, definitionally not the case with the job, right? Like you, your job will fire you if you don't do your work.

And if your job is terrible, you have the option to leave. And so viewing it as a family kind of puts us in this, this trap where we are supposed to give everything, and yet we don't get that unconditional love back. And I think we're just supposed to work and give everything without thinking about whether we're gonna get something back in return, other than actual money.

[00:09:33] Gloria Chan Packer:
Yeah. The interesting part too, right, is that I think especially for people… For people who came from biological or, or blood family structures that were healthier and had healthier dynamics, I think that means in work, the whole work-is-family concept isn't going to probably hit us as, as unhealthily, but for those of us who maybe had family structures where there were big bleeds and boundaries or, or things were just not as healthy, and dynamics were chaotic or constantly in conflict, that's more likely to mean that we had to adapt and survive through things like people pleasing, putting other people first, ignoring our own needs.

And so when we get into a workplace, that, one, is probably feeling like safety because it gives us a sense of autonomy and power that maybe we are our, our brains weren't used to before. But two, it ends up kind of having more of a propensity to, to have us working unhealthily because we didn't have a, a healthy structure from the get-go.

[00:10:41] Chris Duffy:
So we often have these conversations about work-life balance. And in those conversations, a, a very common topic is setting boundaries. In, in your view, what is the problem that boundaries solve and, and why have they been so topical lately? I think it's really at the heart of a lot of what we're talking about.

[00:10:58] Gloria Chan Packer:
Burnout and boundaries have become so topical in recent years, largely due to the pandemic. The pandemic, I think, was almost an amplifier or a magnifying glass for where all of us were in our own mental healths. Where if we had a pretty strong foundation, the pandemic would really amplify on the fact that, okay, we have some skills to navigate this. But if we didn't really have a, a solid toolbox, the pandemic really, really tested that.

And I think for most of us, just because societally mental health just started being less stigmatized, a lot of us found ourselves in a place where we're realizing that we don't have the healthiest boundaries or relationship to work, and now that we are working physically in our homes and our work is physically closer to us, when it was already probably mentally too close to us, we all really struggled with that ‘cause we didn't know how to draw some boundaries and, and not be at work all the time.

[00:11:59] Chris Duffy:
Boundaries—it, it is a term that comes up a lot and I think as a result, there's become some blurriness around exactly what boundaries mean, right? So for some people, the way they use it, it feels a little buzzwordy. So, what are boundaries and how do we put them into practice in a way that actually works?

[00:12:16] Gloria Chan Packer:
I think of boundaries as really the ability to identify and communicate our needs. It sounds very, very simple, but it's so much more complex for many of us because when it comes to identifying and communicating our needs, a lot of us have learned that maybe it's beneficial to deprioritize or delay our needs.

And in some instances that can be true, but for many of us it's become such a autopilot, kind of one size fits all rule that we've delayed and deprioritized our needs so much that our nervous system kind of just subconsciously thinks, “Oh, we can’t. We always can't be resourced. We always can't speak up for our needs.”

And I think boundaries, again, are, are pretty simple in definition in that it's all about us identifying and communicating our needs, but they end up just feeling a lot more complicated to put into practice because of each of our very complicated personal past and behavioral patterns that are tied up in, in not wanting to speak to our needs or thinking that that'll result in negative consequence.

[00:13:23] Chris Duffy:
One example that comes to mind for me is, you know, if I got an email from my brother saying, “We need to talk,” it feels, and I'm not proud of saying this, but it feels like the kind of thing that I might say, like, “Great, once I get out of this meeting, I'll call you.” But if I was talking to my brother, and I got an email from a boss saying we need to talk, I'd probably be like, “Hold on, I need to talk to the boss right now.” So, it feels like that's completely upside down, and yet it's a hard pattern to break.

[00:13:45] Gloria Chan Packer:
I think a big core piece of this is really around your values and your priorities, and that should drive where your boundaries are. It’s, I think that a lot of us, we just want boundaries to be like one size fits all.

[00:14:01] Chris Duffy:
Definitely.

[00:14:01] Gloria Chan Packer:
And for some to be like, “These are your boundaries. This is the language you use, and now life will be well and better.” And that's just really, could not be, unfortunately, more opposite from the truth, because all of us are different. We're all in different seasons of life. We all have different priorities, and so therefore, all of our boundaries need to be designed and communicated in different ways.

Like, if I am in a season of life where my top priority truly is work and achieving something because it's the most meaningful to me and I am truly okay with, like, making some sacrifices in the meantime and I feel like I can be healthy for, for this season in life then sure, answer your text during the weekend.

And that is something that is funny. It's poignant to me right now ‘cause I am, I just had my first baby and so I'm still in this like kind of odd identity transition and postpartum haze where I, I thought, right, especially working in mental wellness, God I was like, “Yeah, I, like, have these part-time hours figured out to where I can spend time with him and prioritize him, but I can also spend time in my work and I can also be a wife and I can also be a friend and involved in all of this stuff.

And that could not have been farther from the truth. Like, I just feel overwhelmed all the time and I have to, like, really have a hard look at myself and look at my own learnings and, and, and knowledge and, and burnout and just over scoping and wanting to do it all and realizing that a lot of times you just can’t.

[00:15:31] Chris Duffy:
That I think, is such an important point—the idea that in different seasons, different things can be the priority, but what are the other misconceptions or, or misuses of boundaries?

[00:15:41] Gloria Chan Packer:
So one other one that I see a lot is that, like, boundaries are almost like a way to demand or, or control other people. To be like, “You have to do this,” or almost to use it as like a threat, which also kind of quickly bleed, bleeds into using boundaries to kind of excuse bad behavior, too.

That's just kind of a, a cringey uncomfortable truth about mental health becoming more commonplace too, is that with anything good comes a lot of good, but sometimes you'll have misconceptions and, and unfortunately, sometimes you'll, you'll have people kind of using these concepts to almost weaponize them, you know? And I don't think anyone ever does that intentionally. Right? But a lot of times they're just—

[00:16:30] Chris Duffy:
Well, come people do. But hopefully not many people.

[00:16:31] Gloria Chan Packer:
Yeah. Some people. Hopefully not many people. And, and burnout's an interesting thing ‘cause I think a lot of times burnout is like, it's a result of us feeling generally powerless.

And so when we have boundaries come into the equation in an emotionally charged situation already where we're maybe triggered from something complex in our past, then sometimes we might be prone to being like, “Oh, this is, this is like my defense weapon.” So it's like, no, I have power. Like, you have to do this.

That's just really not the, the healthier, productive way to apply boundaries. Right? We can't control other people, and we also can't always completely, like, offload blame or, or we can't have just like a free pass to, to behave poorly or unhealthfully. Boundaries are really hard to design and they're really hard to, to execute sometimes too.

And so when you, like, go through all of that work to figure out, like, what the source of your problem is and what you need to change, and a lot of times it, it'll feel like a tough change ‘cause it's so unfamiliar or scary and then you do it and then you don't get what you want. That sucks. But that'll just be the case sometimes, right?

Boundaries are about you communicating what you need and what will happen if you don't get that need met and how you'll respond in turn. I always like to try to highlight that communicating boundaries really shouldn't be, like, a me versus you defensive fight or should, should hopefully really be, like, more of a collective discussion around what needs should be met and, and how we can problem solve for that collectively to sustain our, our work, our relationships, and, and so many other things that we need each other for in life.

[00:18:13] Chris Duffy:
Okay. I'm gonna communicate a much less important boundary right now, which is the boundary between our conversation and an ad break. We will be right back after these messages.

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[00:18:30] Chris Duffy:
Today’s guest is Gloria Chan Packer, who gave one of the most viewed TED Talks of last year about how work is not your family. So here's another clip from Gloria's talk that explains why the idea that work is our family is so unhealthy and how it can lead to burnout.

[00:18:44] Gloria Chan Packer:
When it comes to burnout, our workplaces and employers do own a big part of the equation. However, what I find to be somewhat of an overlooked part of the equation today is what piece of the problem we individually own ourselves too. If I inherently have a tendency or a pattern to overwork or not be able to set boundaries, no matter what workplace or organization I change, if I never take accountability to drive my own internal change, then no matter what external change I make, I will likely keep suffering from the same patterns over and over again.

[00:19:21] Chris Duffy:
Well, I’m curious to talk about boundaries from kind of two different angles, right? The from the top down, and then when you're not the leader. So right now, you are the leader of an organization. You have people under you.

[00:19:32] Chris Duffy:
Yeah.

[00:19:32] Gloria Chan Packer:
And I think that sometimes I, when you are the one in charge, it can be really hard to set boundaries because a lot of stuff falls on your shoulders, and so you want to take care of it and the buck stops with you.

And so it can be hard to set boundaries for yourself because at the end of the day, you want things to get done, and you feel a lot of responsibility to the people who are working for you. But just in your personal situation right now, I imagine there's also a challenge where you're like, “I could do a bunch. But I also have a six-month-old at home, and I want to be spending time with him.”

And there's this other layer of “I wanna be modeling the boundaries that I want other people in our organization to have around their own families and their own children.” So, how do you manage those tensions in your own life when you are the, the person that everyone looks to at the top?

[00:20:21] Gloria Chan Packer:
For me, I think it's a lot about anticipating. And so for me, I knew that I was coming up in this very big seasonal shift, and so for over a year ahead of time, just because I, I knew that we were trying to conceive, I did my best to try to set up our team in a way that I was much less of a bottleneck and that the team had a lot more autonomy to, to drive the business without me, especially when it came to, to time for me to go on maternity leave.

And also knowing that I, I wouldn't be as, available to work the long hours like I was before, once, once I had the baby. And so, parts of that worked really well, where, where the team did great while I was on leave and everything, I mean, ran smooth, even more smoothly than I, than I could have hoped for. Um, it's such a good question to have me even reflecting on in the moment because there are certainly aspects where things don't feel as clean and it's, it's a place where I, I feel somewhat of a privilege, right? And being able to, to be at the top and, and make those calls of, “Hey, I, I just can't take on X, Y, Z and set that boundary for myself.” But I, I don't know.

[00:21:40] Chris Duffy:
Honestly, I think it is so helpful and useful to hear that it's not a clean, easy answer for you. I think that that's really important.

[00:21:48] Gloria Chan Packer:
I guess maybe one tangible bit out of that, besides just being like “it's kind of messy”, um, is, is that a lot of times I just look at my workload for the next two weeks and I'm like, “Okay, how are we feeling right now?” And how doable does this all feel? And it's almost like either every week or every two weeks, I'm somewhat, for lack of a better word, recalibrating what the workload looks like, where I maybe need to offload some work onto the team or ask for some help or think about, okay, we have, there's too much, so we need to throttle the, the pipeline for client work and, and set different expectations for timelines.

And sometimes I think that's kind of like all you can do when it comes to setting boundaries when things are just changing too quickly and, and you kind of have to be reactive is just like make, make yourself an accountable time each week to ask yourself how things feel and how they're going and what needs to change and, and make those changes.

[00:22:46] Chris Duffy:
It's perfect ‘cause obviously you started an organization called Recalibrate, but I think that that's a really important piece here, right? Is the idea that sometimes it feel so overwhelming to set a boundary and be like, “This boundary is now carved into a stone tablet for the rest of time.”

[00:22:58] Gloria Chan Packer:
Yeah.

[00:22:59] Chris Duffy:
As opposed to, “Okay, that's my boundary for this week. Maybe for next two weeks, and then I'm gonna go and see how it works. I'm gonna test it against reality and I'm gonna be able to change it.”

[00:23:08] Gloria Chan Packer:
The other tricky thing too, is for many of us who tend towards overachieving and, and just achieving in general, like even solving for our burnout and setting boundaries feels like something we need to either achieve versus fail at.

And so when we, like, set that boundary and we're like, “Wait, this isn't working,” then we feel like we've failed. And a lot of times we're like, “This whole wellness thing is, like, not working out for me,” and we give up and… So, yeah, I, I try to also remind myself and everyone else, right, that this entire journey around behavioral change and just feeling more sustainable and more healthy is not linear.

I think the goal should be almost like acting like the stock market, where it's like up and down and up and down, but like generally trends upwards towards something healthier and towards more behavioral growth and change. But knowing that sometimes you're gonna feel up and sometimes it's gonna be like, a giant regression backwards, and that's just the nature of it.

[00:24:02] Chris Duffy:
What are some ways to effectively manage burnout and, and set some boundaries? What are, what are maybe three things that you think that listeners should try to, to work that are strategies that you’ve seen?

[00:24:11] Gloria Chan Packer:
I think one place where many of us struggle is around our work hours, and for a lot of us, we try the one size fits all approach of like, “Okay, my work hours are nine to five and I'm not gonna be on Slack, or I'm not gonna be online outside of nine to five.”

And then we try that once and we're like, “Oh my God, that was horrible and completely unrealistic, so boundaries don't work.” Try to design something a little bit more specific. So for me and for my team, especially during the pandemic, it became so much easier to work with our global clients where we weren't traveling there in person and we could just hop online.

I ultimately designed boundaries for our team where we accepted global client requests outside of our hours Mondays to Wednesdays. But Thursdays and Fridays were strictly protected. Thursdays are strictly protected to our hours. And then Fridays we actually work half days, um, so that we can accommodate that client work that we wanna grow Mondays to Wednesdays, but on Thursdays and Fridays, when we're more tired, when we have more personal and familial engagements, those are strongly protected and we have those boundaries, and it allows for a little bit of everything that we need and everything that we're prioritizing.

Another tip I would offer when it comes to just boundaries and burnout, and I think a lot of us struggle with burnout because we just over-scope and say yes to everything. Uh, I'm guilty of this too.

[00:15:29] Chris Duffy:
Absolutely, yes.

[00:15:30] Gloria Chan Packer:
So if you have a propensity to be like a yes person, to always say yes without thinking, try to start buying some time for yourself to truly evaluate your bandwidth and your priorities before you say yes.

So when someone asks you something, like, you don't have to say yes or no right away. Say like, “Okay, I hear you. Um, Can I have until the end of the day to get back to you?” Or just say, “I need a little bit of time to evaluate what's on my plate and where my priorities are. When do you need to hear back from me? Bye.”
And then I think my last thing when it comes to, like, communicating boundaries, uh, we really wanna focus our language, like I said before, around really specifying our need and what the impact will be if we don't get that need met. So like if, if you need this deadline to be two weeks earlier, like right now, everything's just full. And I don't see how that's gonna happen without something suffering. So maybe I know there's this team member who has a little bit of extra bandwidth. Could I maybe borrow them halftime? And if that's not possible, can you help me figure this out? And sometimes too, right, a boundary can really look like asking someone for help after you've stated what you need. And I think remembering that and remembering that you can make communicating boundaries feel authentic to you is important.

[00:26:47] Chris Duffy:
So we talked about setting boundaries from the top when you're the boss, but this seems like a really applicable one for when you are, you know, in the middle or in the bottom of an organization.

And it's really hard, I think, to set a boundary when you feel like it might put your job at risk. It might make the person think less of you. You're, you know, maybe you feel like this is. You know, you can't afford to lose this job, you can't afford to find a different job, so you, you wanna make sure you're not doing anything to jeopardize it.

[00:27:31] Gloria Chan Packer:
Yeah.

[00:27:31] Chris Duffy:
Are there other ways that work when you're specifically, kind of, lowered down and you're worried about building a reputation and also keeping your, your job?

[00:27:22] Gloria Chan Packer:
I think the way you summarized it, um, is what I would prioritize the most is really to focus on like what the, the need and the impact is to the work and the organization. Right?

Because like, this won't always be the case, but truly functional workplaces and leaders want to know when there are problems so that we can solve for them. I know again, unfortunately, that's not always going to be how, how workplaces function, but that is the goal, right?

Uh, is that like a good manager, a good leader wants to know when there's a problem and wants to figure out how to solve it. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that there are just certain industries and workplaces where this is gonna be harder ‘cause I think a lot of times with boundaries at work, sometimes it, it's almost like making a choice on what exactly you want to change and, and what feels realistic and sustainable for you too.

‘Cause for some industries, the culture is actually not to have boundaries and that sucks ‘cause that's, that's hard and, and you probably will have more negative consequences than if you worked in a, in a industry where wellness is really supported and boundaries are supported. And so I feel like in those instances, you, you have a tough choice to either make a micro change or a macro change, right?

You can either be like, “Okay, I'm gonna change this culture in this industry and make it more amenable to boundaries and wellness.” And if you feel up to that and you feel resourced for that, good on you. Go do that. But if you're like, “There's no way I can do that, I have no energy to do that,” that probably means you need to make a micro change for yourself.

That might mean that maybe you need to switch industries or, or switch workplaces or switch your situation. Personally and I, I think that can be one of the most difficult choices in boundaries too.

[00:29:14] Chris Duffy:
Well around that, is there actually an ultimate fix to burnout? Is it possible to get rid of it altogether?

[00:29:20] Gloria Chan Packer:
My short answer is no. I personally do not feel that the goal should be to eradicate burnout. In my personal and professional opinion, eradicating stress and burnout is neither realistic, nor makes any sense because stress is really this biologically wired human reflex, right? And so the goal shouldn't be to, I think, get rid of burnout, but really to build a healthier and more sustainable relationship with your stress and your, your burnout too.

I've been reflecting on this personally a lot. Right? And there was so much of me caught up in the, what you were alluding to too, Chris, like in the like, “I feel like I have failed” and that feeling of, like, “I feel like I've, I've failed at what I should be good at” was actually what was really keeping me from being able to help fix where I was because it was almost like what I tried to prevent burning out from being a new mom and working in a business owner, and blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, my fear of failing at that is what actually I think guaranteed and like kept me stuck in burnout mode. ‘Cause I was like, “No, this should have worked. This is gonna work.”

And I was really like, “No, this is not working.” What do you need to change? And that's always probably gonna be a pretty tough moment and a pretty tough change. But you make the change and you heal and you move forward and you kind of just keep doing that as you need to throughout the different seasons of life because, if there's any, I think guarantee in life it's that shit doesn't go your way and might go sideways sometimes.

[00:30:53] Chris Duffy:
I don't know if this is helpful. I mean, I'm sorry to hear you're going through the burnout right now and if really, it makes me think, for me, sometimes I have this, I really struggle to kind of see accurately from the outside and I think like, “I have to do all these things because I'm not doing enough and I'm not, I'm not doing enough impressive things.”

And I'll just say, as a person who didn't know you before this conversation, from the outside, you are doing so many wildly impressive things all at the same time that I think you could probably do 80% less, and I would still be like, “Wow, that's an incredibly impressive person.” So, I don't know if that's helpful, but I just wanna say, like, you’re helping a lot of other people, but it also is, it's important to help yourself too, I think. I think that's really an intense thing. Absolutely.

[00:31:36] Gloria Chan Packer:
I appreciate you saying that and, and I would, Kind of like challenge you to apply that to yourself too.

[00:31:42] Chris Duffy:
Oh, I can’t do that. Oh, no, no, no, no. It works for other people. It can't work for me.

[00:31:45] Gloria Chan Packer:
I know!

[00:31:45] Chris Duffy:
That’s the role with all advice, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's just for other people. I don't do the healthy thing myself. No, no, no, no, no. Yeah. I have to keep working because otherwise, I won't have worth. But you have worth regardless, regardless or not.

[00:31:56] Gloria Chan Packer:
Right? Ugh, isn't, isn't that just like, we'll just summarize the entire podcast episode with that.

[00:32:01] Chris Duffy:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, Gloria Chan Packer, thank you so much for being here. It's really a pleasure to talk to you.

[00:32:07] Gloria Chan Packer:
Thank you so much for having me.

[00:32:11] Chris Duffy:
That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Gloria Chan Packer. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and information about my live comedy shows at chrisduffycomedy.com.

How to Be a Better Human is brought to you on the TED side by Whitney Pennington Rodgers and Jimmy Gutierrez, who, no matter how many times I invite them to my family reunion, always RSVP no.

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