Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.

We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career and life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside Her Collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com.

Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. Welcome to the Glass Ceiling and Sticky Floor podcast, the podcast where we get real about the challenges women face in work, life, and leadership. I'm your host, Erica Rooney, HR executive, keynote speaker, and executive coach, and I'm on a mission to get more women into positions of power and keep them there. This is the space where we call it the paradoxes: being told to lean in but not too far, to speak up but not too loudly, to be ambitious but not too ambitious. Does that sound familiar?

Yeah. We're over all that. Here, we break down the sticky floors that keep us stuck, from imposter syndrome and perfectionism to burnout and fear, and give you real strategies to shatter those glass ceilings once and for all. So if you're ready to rewrite the rules, own your power, and take your career and life to the next level, you're in the right place. Today's guest is a leader and author who is challenging the pervasive culture of not enough and guiding us towards a life of peace, fulfillment, and true authenticity.

And y'all, when I took a big old sigh of relief, and also a little sigh of anxiety and expectations, all the things coupled up into one, that is exactly what I did. Barbara Burgess wrote this book right here called Enough: Finding Peace in a World of Distractions, Hustle, and Expectations. And y'all, in this book, she empowers high achieving women, and men too, but y'all know I like to focus on the girls, to break free from the not enough mindset, navigate constant distractions, and cultivate a deep sense of inner peace. Barbara's work emphasizes creating beautiful boundaries, embracing vulnerability, and finding joy in life's small moments. So, Barbara, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

Barbara: I'm doing great, and I just loved when you said what your mission is, to get more women in those places. I just wanted to high five and say, me too. Whatever works. I want to help in that mission.

Erica: You're like, I'm doing that too. Me too. Oh my gosh. Well, you are doing that, right, partially in writing this book Enough, because I can't tell you how many women I have interviewed for this podcast who say they wish they knew their worth earlier. They wish they recognized the value that they brought. And I don't just mean externally, but internally, how they felt about themselves. So I think you're absolutely doing that work. I'd love to dive in just by talking about the book. Tell me a little bit about you and what led you to writing this book.

Barbara: You know, I think in retrospect, you have what you think you're doing when you're doing it, and then you have the wisdom of looking back on things. I think, truthfully, I just wrote it for me. It was like, hello, universe, these are all the lessons I need to reinforce. I don't think any of us are ever arrived. There's just always this journey of continuing this process. I had been with a company for twenty two, twenty four years, I've lost count. But I finally launched out on my own and started my own business. And I feel like there were cracks that were created in that, not just in a time perspective, but in a mental mind share perspective, that allowed for insights and flow and some different creativity that I hadn't learned to quite embody where I was.

And truthfully, this book just started coming. It was not like I was like, hey, I can't wait to go write this book, I have an agenda, I'm gonna go do this thing. It was literally without an outcome. The journaling was coming as I would be working at a coffee shop, getting ready for a consulting gig or whatever it was, and I just was capturing it with no real intent, until finally I was like, okay, I think this is supposed to be a book and I'm supposed to publish it. Okay, here we go. And a lot of the messages that are in there were totally apropos for that moment. Like, but what's your agenda, but what's the outcome. I was like, yeah, no, I'm just supposed to. And, oh, by the way, the perfectionism that I would have spent rewriting this thing and editing it a thousand times over would have stopped it from being out in the world right now. I was like, we're just gonna follow the message in the book and get it out.

So I had several moments that really led to the content itself. But as far as the process goes, I think it was really having that mind space available to allow some of this to come, and then just being unapologetic about putting it out. My slice of the world of empowering women is, we have so much to share in that regard. And we are so set up to play a game that's not our game. Part of it for me in this season of life is just creating stuff, allowing, flowing, and not getting overly stuck in the historic paradigms that, frankly, we never designed anyway, we just sort of moved into. I think that's what we get to do as women. We just haven't really educated ourselves in that regard. So it was my version of that, I think.

Erica: Yes. We just live in this world that tells us we have to be more, to do more, to have more. It's constant go, go, go. You never arrive.

Barbara: Yeah.

Erica: You know, it's no wonder that we're exhausted. So what are some of the subtle ways that this not enough mindset manifests, in my language, as a sticky floor for women in both their personal and professional lives?

Barbara: I think we can all call it different things. It is all those voices in our head. I love your sticky floor metaphor because it's so useful, because that's what it does, that's the outcome of it. But whether it's something we grew up with or grabbed along the way, it's all that limiting talk, that limiting dialogue, the limiting behaviors we've done, all of those things become the not enough. For me, I literally had a felt experience when enough, like really as an entity, entered my life. It's the first story I tell in the book, about the Chuck experience, but that was a transformative experience to me, of this overwhelming sense of wellness and well-being that I hadn't experienced before.

What was interesting is that it then threw not enough into stark contrast. And not enough became a character to me. It's an amalgamation of all that. Some people it's not enough, some people it's not worthy, whatever the personalized versions are of your sticky floor items. What was useful is that he was a character, because then I didn't have to have his voice be my voice. I could create some distance between my thinking and that thinking. By giving it a character's voice, I could also wrest its power from it. I think when those voices are so infused, so part of our DNA, we just think that's who we are, we're buying that old narrative that we're selling. But those voices and messages aren't who we are, it's just how we've gotten in the habit of talking to ourselves. By separating those voices out and creating this character of not enough, for me it became easier to be like, oh, I see you there, I hear you, thank you, I have another agenda, I gotcha. It's not that I'm deaf, but I won't be playing your game. It was more useful as a tool and an active practice to tease out those voices and really change the story about who I am and what I'm doing.

Erica: So as cheesy as this is, is it easier for you to name it? If we're trying to tell somebody, hey, you've gotta start working on separating your beliefs, how do you work with somebody who is really married to those thoughts of not enoughness, to actually break that relationship?

Barbara: It's one of the most tactical things I say. It is totally cheesy, but it works, so who cares. I'll do cheesy if it's effective. I'm all about, does it work or not, does it do more of what I want or not. And by turning those voices into a character, giving it a name, literally mine's Not Enough, but yours could be Harry, whatever, by doing that it really does create a distance and a separation from something so innate for us. Even for me, it was interesting, as that character evolved over the course of the book I learned more deeply about him. He used to be somebody very slick in business suits, but by the end of the book, he's ludicrous, he's a farce, like the court jester you can't take seriously, because I had become more trusting of myself. I had more of a sense of enough, more solidity in some of the contrary beliefs, to the point where I was like, what was I even doing listening to that, you are hilarious. I think there is something to giving that collection of beliefs a name and some distance that's really practical and useful. As a practical step, that's one of the good ones for people to do: picture it, give it some clothing, give it whatever, and give it a name, so that when that voice shows up you can have a dialogue with this thing outside yourself rather than this internal fused entity that is too much your identity.

Erica: You know what else I want to talk about, and this rang very true for me, was the self improvement trap. The constant hunt for certifications, new education, this person's doing that, I gotta know all the things, Enneagram, DISC, I'll do them all. Being a woman, being in corporate, we're always told, not yet, wait your turn, you're not quite there. And we know we have to perform before we get a promotion, whereas men have to have the potential. How do we know when we actually need to invest in our growth, or when we are already enough but we're just not telling ourselves that?

Barbara: Let me name it for folks who haven't read the book. I was the one, I did the class, the certificate, whatever the thing is, and I thought that was all great because I am a seeker, I've been a seeker and a learner and an adventurer since early on, so that was very much part of my identity. I love to learn, I don't ever want to stop learning. But I hadn't realized the inherent systemic messages in that, particularly for women. It's another version of the Vogue ad of the rail thin person I could never be with my genetic DNA, because what it can do, doesn't have to but can do, is keep telling you, well once, if I'm just a little more conscious, a little more spiritual, a little more efficient at work, a little better at personality, that's all really sending a profound message that you aren't enough right where you are.

Doing a lot of executive coaching for both men and women, I take people's life stories, that's often one of the first things we do. I saw a stark difference between men and women, where it doesn't occur to many men to not raise their hand even though they're not fully qualified. I think back to a coach I had in my career. I was in a position of COO, but I had imposter syndrome. He said, do you understand that in the big companies, they don't put people in positions when they've already handled every aspect and are perfectly qualified. They put you in them when you're ready to expand and learn into them. And I said, no, that's not what I thought at all, I thought as a woman I have to already have mastered a job I've never had experience in. When you see that difference between men and women, you start to see what contributes to that. I think the personal development thing is just as dangerous as the diet or the ad, because it's telling us where we are right now isn't enough. I learned I was performing at like a 70, 80 percent level of a job where somebody else might have been at 50 percent and I still didn't feel qualified. That's not accurate, that's just not how it goes. But it's a total framework shift, and I think we have to watch it.

When I talk about change, what I talk about in the book is change is an option, not an imperative. I can leave everything as it is right now and there is no problem. Thinking there's a problem is society's message. Now I get to, and I can change anything I want. If I want to lose 10 pounds, I can, I get to do that, if that feels delightful when I'm tuned into my internal GPS and it feels exciting and compelling, go at it all day long. But if the truth is I'm doing that because there's an outside message reflecting some other place I'm supposed to be, then that tells me, no, you're doing that on someone else's behalf, not because it's here to bring you joy and delight. Even for me, if my insides tell me this sounds fun, I can't wait to listen to her book, I think it's gonna have beautiful messages, go do that. But if it's because everybody's recommending it and you should, I'm just not interested, no thank you. That's the distinction to me. It's not that personal development and learning doesn't have a place, but what drives us to make that choice is really compelling, and it's revolutionary for us as women to tune so deeply into ourselves that we're not even looking to other female executives to tell us by example what we should do. We're a sample of one, here to do whatever that gift is in whatever spaces we're in. It's moving from have to, to get to. I get to make any of those choices. The irony for me is leaving that job and learning to be in that space of enough, I've almost done more, wrote a book, wrote and performed a one woman show, and I'm building this business, but not out of any need to. It's just been more play and joy and expression. A very different kind of way of being productive.

Erica: Hey there, listeners. If you have ever felt like you're stuck in a place, held back by self doubt, perfectionism, or that pesky inner critic, you're not alone. We all face those sticky floors that keep us from reaching the heights we dream of. But guess what? It's time to shatter those limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors to uncover infinite possibilities. My book, Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors, is your ultimate guide to smashing through barriers, overcoming limiting beliefs, and stepping into your full potential. This book has been endorsed by none other than Mel Robbins, best selling author and motivational powerhouse. It's also been featured in Success Magazine. Inside, you'll find real life sticky floor stories, practical strategies to help you navigate your own sticky floor moments, and a whole lot of inspiration to keep you climbing. Grab your copy of Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors today at www.ericaandersonrooney.com. Whether you're in the boardroom, the classroom, or just starting out, this book is for you, because no one deserves to stay stuck, no one deserves to feel small, and you have glass ceilings to shatter. Let's do this.

And I appreciate that, because originally when I asked the question I was thinking about all the professional certifications. But as you were talking, I started thinking about how we add all those things we think we should be doing to be healthy, or happy: get up early, brush your teeth, have the green juice, whatever else is on the list. How do we separate ourselves from those pieces of our identity that we're locked into, if it really doesn't bring us the joy and delight?

Barbara: I think one of the most powerful things we can do, that I learned by accident, was tuning into that internal GPS, because I think it's an easy thing to say but a much more difficult thing to live, because we're trained as women from birth to ignore ourselves and our senses and our inner knowing. We're trained to orient to knowledge versus wisdom, and we have immense wisdom within ourselves. When I was COO, I also had my kids, so you're working and being a mom and doing all that. I started these mommy getaways, every quarter I'd go away by myself to a little cabin, just to be alone with myself and my thoughts, and it was hugely empowering. At the beginning I had a really hard time, because I thought I had to achieve those too, they had to be successful, and what did that look like. There were unconscious rules I hadn't realized. If I came back and had binge watched TV the whole time, that would be wrong, and there was something that was right, so I started defining what that was.

I got in this practice where, because I didn't know myself as well as I thought I did, I took an old fashioned yellow notepad and filled it with everything I could think of that I could do: go to the cabin, cook something, walk on the beach, binge watch Netflix, do something creative and artistic, sleep, watch TED Talks, watch a movie. I'd fill it with all these things. What I started doing was, I'd unpack my bags, look at the notepad, and say, right this second, what feels most delightful to me, no shoulds here, what feels most interesting. I would do that, for as long as it was interesting, and at any point I could abandon it. So I might start cooking, get bored, and stop, no rules on any of it. It truly is a playground, like a little kid would have. Even if I was just tired and had had a rough quarter, and I literally was gonna sleep, that was allowed too, as long as I kept tuning in.

Over time, what I learned to do was tune into that inside in a deep way. I know we talk about women and intuition, we're good at that, but I think we tend to get good at that to serve, for situations, for cross-functional business meetings, we can read a room. But not for our own pleasure and satisfaction and joy and well-being, I don't think we get good at that. This exercise of doing this once a quarter really helped me learn to tune in to myself in a deep and profound way. So that's the thing I have muscle in now that I didn't before, and it really was practice, it was an unlearned thing. Now people might ask if I want to go to an event, and even this weekend we had three events planned, I'd had a tougher week last week, and I said to my husband, by the way, I know we have these three things on the agenda, and at any point I may pull out because I don't know what's gonna work for me. He knows me, and he said got it. Even the event we went to last night, we rode in the same car, but we already knew in advance I might leave early and he might Uber home, because I get to make that choice at any point.

Which is a very different perspective. I would have felt obligated to be there for the full event in the past, because I wasn't orienting to what served and was desirable to me moment by moment. It was what was appropriate, what was expected, what was needed. If we talk about women in leadership, I think that can really get in our way, because the spaces that are radical and new for us to stretch into as female leaders are that sense of knowingness, knowing ourselves and going for what we need and want, which I think can have a huge positive impact on our teams, our companies, all those kinds of things. We're just not in the habit of it.

Erica: So you think we just kind of revert back and go to what do we think John's, Bob's, and Tim's would do, rather than viewing it through our own lens. Well, that leads me to my next question, because in the book you talk a lot about just be yourself, this is the stay in your lane energy chapter. I'd love for you to tell me what is stay in your lane energy, and let's talk about this concept of showing up as yourself.

Barbara: I think one of the things I learned about myself was that I tended to stray outside my energy lane. It's hard, because I'm also an incredibly practical person. If I'm working with somebody in a company, one of the things we do is, what is the reality of this environment? I may want John, Bob, and Tim to change, they're not gonna, period, end of sentence, the company is not gonna change, whatever it's been showing you through its actions, it's gonna keep doing. So there's a radical understanding of, given that that's so, watching ourselves when we tend to step outside our energy lane, to get into somebody else's drama, solve somebody else's problem, overly caretake a situation that's truly beyond our job description, what we've agreed to. We're not protective enough of our own energy and life force. Companies measure time, it's the least relevant thing to measure, we measure time more than we measure outcome, and we don't think of the humans on board as the vital resources and beings that they are.

For me, staying in my energy lane is taking that pause and saying, is this mine to solve, or is this one of those places where I should reflect back and say, I got it. I literally had this a week and a half ago, somebody texted me, an organization I volunteer in, saying I need you on this call because this person did it, and, you know, I'm a good mediator, a good facilitator. But I paused and went, hang on, is this mine, is this in my energy lane? And it wasn't, there was a lot of drama, a traditional drama triangle kind of thing, and it actually wasn't mine, I didn't originate it, it wasn't mine to solve. I texted her, an acquaintance slash friend, and said, listen, I've written about this in the book, and I'm taking my own advice, this is outside of my energy lane, I get the challenge you're in, I wish you all the best in solving it. I would never have done that before, because I would get my needs met by being important, fixing everybody else's problems instead of my own. But that would be stepping outside my energy lane.

There's techniques, from a corporate perspective, how do you do that with class and grace, and make sure you don't tick off the wrong people, those are nuances. But having that self awareness to understand is this mine or not is one piece of the energy lane. The other piece is when it comes to comparing ourselves to others. It is not my job to be a better Erica. Erica is going to be an amazing Erica, period. If I'm trying to get into her energy lane and be better than her at who she is, that's a bad use of my life force, because I'm always gonna be not as good at being you as you are. To notice, oh, I love how Erica's doing this thing, that's a great insight, but it's not my job to do that. It's my job to continue to follow my own insides, my own drive, my own contribution, and step into that.

The part about be yourself, that phrase used to drive me batshit crazy, people would say just be yourself, and I'm like, okay, great, who is that, could somebody give me the playbook of who myself is, because I don't know. We get into habits of who we are, statements of well I'm this, I'm that. But the muscle of tuning into my own GPS started to teach me what pleased me, and I also appreciate the fact that I'm a dynamic being. If you and I talk next week I may have some different opinions on things, I have another week's wisdom under my belt. So to respect the fact that there is no fixed me to be found, and therefore be. I get to engage with the world, make choices on this wonderful playground, corporately, professionally, personally, and discover what fills me up, what doesn't, where I feel of service, where I don't, what feels like my next adventure. Those things don't even have to go well in the traditional ways. It's a grand adventure. What I don't want is to get to end of days and have regretted that I never played my own game. I want to be able to say, I tried this, I tried that, I loved this, I hated that.

Erica: Yeah, I think it's so interesting, because at certain points throughout our lives we stop ourselves because we're like, well, I've always done it this way, or that's who I've always been, whether that's professionally or personally. Maybe you've been married a long time, you're too scared to go find a partner who would really match your needs, maybe you've always been in a certain role. Can we limit ourselves? One of the messages I love from you is, you're allowed to change your mind about any damn thing, any day, any minute, about anything, and that is okay, and that still means you are enough no matter what you choose. I love that message.

Barbara: I think it's such a practice, because there's so many typical criticisms that fall much more in the female category, well you're constantly changing your mind, and now I'd be like, did you have a point in that, was there something you wanted to let me know, because, cool, great, look at me, look at my dynamic being, thank goodness I'm not stuck in one thing that's always supposed to be growing and changing and evolving.

Erica: So yes. Thank you.

Barbara: Yes, thank you, what a lovely compliment about me as a human, I will take that in. I think we really need the strength of those counteractive beliefs about ourselves, that I do get to change my mind. There were certain decisions that when I was an executive a coach helped me come to, it's like, I get to lead the way I lead, that's not gonna look like anybody else. We talk about these assessments, and I remember taking one and, as I'm taking it, I can see exactly what they're looking for, and I was so frustrated because I know what you're trying to do, figure out what leadership looks like and categorize me. At the time I'm COO, I have this team, and none of that's how I lead, what you're asking are the wrong questions and you don't even know what the right questions are, it was maddening. I literally took this assessment twice, once answering what I knew they wanted, and once answering authentically as myself, and it was fascinating to watch the difference, because that's not how I lead. One of those choices was, I get to lead the way I lead, and I get to know what I know.

You have this thing with imposter syndrome, such a popular term, but sometimes we just know stuff, and we don't know how to analytically articulate how we know it, but we know, and it proves out. I have story after story in my career, I remember one company where my CEO wanted to invest in a big marketing initiative, and I knew it was not right from the beginning. I didn't have the data I could calculate, but my belly kept crunching. What we know now is that emotional intelligence isn't a fluffy thing, our eyes and senses are taking in so many bits of data. I guarantee it was something I heard in his voice that was off. We went back and forth with my boss, these are days before online ordering, and he wanted a wire transfer in full payment, and I'm saying to my CEO, why would we do that, why not a credit card, but they were having some guy to guy bonding thing, and he dismissed me. Not a surprise, but that guy took our money and ran, and we couldn't afford that at the time. How do I know that, I don't know, but I get to know what I know. That's the choice and decision. I get to lead the way I lead, I get to know what I know, and I get to change my mind, those are all things I've chosen as precepts for how I live my life. As women, the more we can embrace our version of those, I really think there are so many more possibilities for our companies, our people, and our planet that we haven't seen yet, because we haven't let ourselves experiment.

Erica: What do you think would be the best first step for someone to start experimenting today?

Barbara: For me my step one is usually identifying the not enough voice and making it into a character. I think that's important because all these things are so fused together, my sense of identity, what that not enough voice is. So doing that so it can be separated out is my number one. Then, doing a mini experiment of what my equivalent version is, it doesn't have to be a weekend away, it could be a half a day where you follow yourself, where you truly say, okay, right this second, what do I want to do, to be in that dialogue and discover, because I think that develops the muscle of tuning into yourself. It's crazy what you'll discover, I didn't ever think I was gonna do this one woman show thing, that was not on the agenda at all, but it was just this process. Separating out that not enough voice and having some practical experience of tuning in.

I think even back to Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way, she would talk about taking yourself on an artist date, where you can just take yourself out and explore and see what you feel like, and follow that wherever it goes, which helps you develop the same kind of internal GPS that helps you in a corporate boardroom, because you have that muscle of tuning into what your insides are telling you. I do a lot of teaching on emotional intelligence, I think particularly for women it's so much more embodied than we think, it's not intellectual. Bless Daniel Goleman who wrote the book that popularized it, but this is something that is in our physical system. A lot of people talk now about the full body, that's what that is, listening to your physical body and seeing what it tells you. When I teach those classes, I'll often teach people to make their own dictionaries, okay, gosh, when my heart starts beating like this or my stomach starts crunching, what does that mean for me, my dictionary is different than Erica's, different than somebody else's. But that's helping you tune this beautiful instrument that we have, that can help inform us in a really profound way. I think all of those steps can make a difference. The not enough one, I think, really helps as a first step, because it really does separate out a lot. If we don't get those feet unstuck from the floor, it's really difficult to even find a ceiling.

Erica: Amen. A lot of what you're talking about, the very first step in my SNAP process, is stop and take notice of how your body is reacting. Because when you actually pay attention to that and make that mental note, it sticks in your brain. I can't even think about the number of years where I knew it was happening, but I was just shoving it down to make it through. When you finally slow down enough to say, let me connect the dots, why is this physical feeling, whether that's butterflies in the stomach, sweaty palms, nervous leg tapping, connected to this, you start to work through it so much faster.

Barbara: I love that your step is stop, because you're right, we have a mythology about stop, we think it means I've gotta have a weekend free to stop, no, it's a micro moment. I have a couple of female executives working on emotional intelligence, and one of them always says, I gotta take a beat. That's helpful, because it's just that momentary pause for a breath. Stop can feel like an eternity, but when we're measuring, it might only be a couple minutes, and we think we don't have that couple minutes to stop. In reality, that couple minutes saves us hours or days on the other end. That makes so much sense, because without the pause, how can we reflect on what the body's actually doing?

Erica: Yes, yes. Oh my gosh, Barbara. Well, I love to end on a question that takes us back to the beginning. If you could go back to before this book was written, before you had this idea for a manifesto, what piece of advice would you give that girl today?

Barbara: I think I would just unleash her like a crazy woman, give her a little pep talk. I think about the Barbie movie, when they're pulling them all into the trailer giving them the pep talk. I think that's what I would say to her, and it's the theme I'm leaning into this year for myself, being unapologetic. I get to be unapologetic, I get to have people not like me, or like me. I would tell her, you can do all of that and you're gonna be fine. I think that person before really thought that if she didn't follow the rules, play the game, do all the things, the sky was gonna fall, the ceiling was gonna crash in, she wouldn't be successful. What I've discovered, if I was giving that younger self advice, is, oh my goodness honey, you're so much more successful when you're not doing all of that. I think I would just want to empower her with that kind of pep talk, or you go back to the Incredibles movie, she's Elastigirl, I'd give myself my own little intervention, go out there and play, kiddo, and don't worry about everybody else, you're gonna be fine.

Erica: I love it, that's amazing. Well, Barbara, thank you so much for joining me on the Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floor podcast today. Y'all, if today's conversation lit a fire under you, here's your next move. Don't keep it to yourself. Share this episode with a friend, drop a review, and let's keep the conversation going. Remember that your potential is limitless, and the only thing standing in your way are those sticky floors. But guess what, you have the power to break through them. So go out there, take up space, and let's shatter some ceilings together.