Resilient Relationships: Winning In Life And At Work With Eva Medilek

How can we build resilient relationships while still maintaining our high performance in the work that we do? Too often, high performing individuals get frustrated in their personal relationships. Whether it comes from a lack of time for each other or barriers in communication, these frustrations can only be overcome if each side of the relationship takes responsibility and acts upon it with a level head. Eva Medilek, a certified high-performance coach and a relationship success coach, teaches this and more to her clients. As she joins Rodney Flowers on the show, she shows how success in your career and success in your personal relationships don’t have to come at the expense of each other. Learn how to transform your relationship style and use it to create high-performance mastery and success in your professional and personal life.

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Resilient Relationships: Winning In Life And At Work With Eva Medilek

We’re going to get into a good conversation. I’m excited about it because I know many of you have heard that success, changing the game and getting into the next level requires sacrifice. I believe that many people don’t strive for success or achieve big bodacious goals because they feel it’s going to require some level of sacrifice. Something that they’re not willing to give up either in their personal life or business life. They’ll say, “I’m not cut out for that. It’s not worth all of that.” How many of you have heard that? How many of you feel that? How many of you feel that the level of success that you’re trying to reach is costing you something?

You’re sacrificing maybe your relationship. Maybe you’re in the middle of an argument with your spouse or your kids because you’ve been putting in the work and they’re like, “Dad or mom, I don’t get to spend any time with you. Our relationship is at risk here because you’re so busy.” I know I get that a lot. I’m busy. I feel that my busyness is worth it. It’s the cost to be successful and I love doing what I’m doing. When I’m in that space, it’s not work. I’m living life, but then there’s that moment where you realize you need it or want it in a different area. You’ve been paying a lot of attention over here in order to be successful and achieve those goals, but there’s an imbalance. How many of you feel that?

We’re going to talk about that. I have someone here who’s an expert in that space. She’s here to talk about how we can have success and achieve those goals without that level of sacrifice. I’m very excited to introduce Eva Medilek. She’s a Certified High-Performance Coach and a Relationship Success Coach. She helps successful, driven, high-achievement executives, entrepreneurs, influencers, and business leaders get their drive back. We’re going to talk about how you can get your drive back because sometimes making that sacrifice and the issues that come up during that can suck the life out of you.

It can make you feel that you’re doing something wrong because you are trying to achieve your passion in life. You are trying to bring forward your contribution to life. We’re going to talk about how you can get your drive back. She helps people also go to the next level without isolating, exhausting, and sacrificing their lives in the process. Besides loving her dog and having her biggest distraction in life be dog videos, she loves having dessert with her breakfast. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Eva Medilek. Welcome to the show, Eva.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate that. Dessert for breakfast is one of my favorite things. It keeps me young.

We were having some conversation and I’m not going to disclose her age unless she wants to, but she looks very good for her age. She’s aging gracefully. She is a beautiful and sweet person. I’ve had the opportunity to attend some training with this lady. She’s an amazing person. I’m glad to have you here.

I’m so excited to be here.

Let’s talk about how we can change the game because I understand that what you stand for is helping people achieve and sustain their next level of success without straining relationships, burnout, stress, and sacrifice. All those things are the cost in order to be the boss. What has been your personal experience with stress, burnout and sacrifice?

I’m going to share this with you. When I was preparing for my 50th birthday, my boss called me in our office. I was a dental hygienist at the time. Over 30 years in dental hygiene and told me I was being downsized. At the time, it was very scary. I had two kids in college. I was newly married, mortgages, and all of that. I didn’t know what options I had in life. What I did realize was that I wanted to be an entrepreneur and I want it to have that freedom to live the lifestyle that I want and not ask for time off so I can come and go as I please.

Resilient Relationships: We have to discover more about ourselves in order to show up in the best way for each other.

I know a lot of people that are reading this feel me on that because being under someone’s thumb as an employee is not what I wanted to be living the later years of my life. I decided to start a real estate investment company. I was driven to succeed in that business because I had these goals and these dreams that I want to achieve. We had dreams to live in Europe for the summer. My husband’s European. He’s from Germany. I was like, “I don’t want to be pushing my wheelchair up my cobblestones and not being able to do that.” I’m like, “What kind of job would I have that would say, ‘Go spend your summers in Europe and come back in the fall.’”

I knew that wasn’t a reality. I’m sharing that with you because as I was building that business and creating success in that business, we did achieve success and we got accolades and being in the hall of fame, it was mostly me running the business. I felt a lot of pressure, not only pressure to succeed in a timeframe, but because of my age. I was still working, shopping, cooking, and doing the laundry. I was a superwoman, but I was a martyr about it. I’m doing all of this. I would come home from work and work on the business. I would wake up in the morning, work on the business, go to work and work on the business at lunch. You can imagine the toll was had on my health.

It was mornings, afternoons, nights, evenings, weekends, and it caused a strain in my relationship. I remember one day and I think it was a Saturday, looking for something on my husband’s phone about one of the properties we were working on and I felt like I was punched in the gut. I saw evidence of his involvement with another woman. At that moment, I realized that everything that I was working for, I could lose. I could lose him and the dream of living in Europe. What would happen to all our real estate holdings?

I realized that I had taken the eye off of my relationship and that this man, if you had told me I would grow a third eye, or my husband would cheat on me, I’d be getting eyelash extensions on three eyes instead of two. Reality set into the point like, “What have I done to have him look elsewhere? How was I being? How was I showing up in that relationship? What had the stress of building a business, working, supporting the family, done to my health mentally and physically?” I was always in some physical pain, but now it reached my relationship.

I was scared for the first time like, “I’m working hard for my family and I could lose it all.” Have you ever had that reality like you’re working for something for the people in your life that you love and you’re neglecting them in the process? What’s the point of it all? That was the reality that faced me. I realized at that time, first of all, that I had to take responsibility. I didn’t come to it. There was no waiting to exhale. There was no smell in the clothes out and burning it. There was no throwing him out. It was having a conversation.

You’re an African-American woman and I’m going tell you it doesn’t happen that way. The first thing is taking responsibility. That’s a tough one to swallow, but I get it. What made you feel like you had to take responsibility because most often it’s the opposite? As you said, you’re working hard for the family and you want these to be better for all of you, especially them. That’s your drive and your motivation to get up, work hard, and then you get hurt in this manner. Now you’re saying, “Take responsibility.” That’s pretty radical.

Let me put it this way. We both got to take responsibility. I don’t want the misconception to sound like it was all me. I had done a lot of leadership training and personal development and even though I was working on myself, I was still on that journey and getting better. I knew that there was some damage that would have been done based on how I was showing up. I’m going, to be honest with you, when I decided to become a real estate investor, I did not have my husband’s support 100%. I was doing a lot of work. I was the one taking the education and making the decisions. It was my company that I was building. There was a lot of resentment that was built up in me, a lot of righteousness and making all the decisions and a lot of controlling behavior.

I’m going to lay it out there on the line because I was stressed out, burnt out and overwhelmed, I wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around. I was working all the time and I was not bringing a lot of joy. I know I wasn’t pleasant to be around. I could see him wanting to go out on a bike ride instead of being in the office with me, helping me. I was always in that when you can pick up somebody’s energy and you walk in a room and you’re like, “I think I’m going to go and do something else.” When I say taking responsibility, I saw my way of being was not a way of being that made it safe, joyful, and comfortable to be in a relationship with. I recognize that.

However, I was able to speak to him honestly about what I had discovered. He did not deny it and did not lie about it. I saw how hurt and confused he was too. We spoke a little bit about compassion in the beginning. We were both hurting so much and we were sitting on the couch talking about it. My little dog was in the middle snoozing the whole time. I know that we were not in that space of anger, yelling, and accusations, but just like, “What’s going on here? What are we going to do about it? Are we going to figure out a way to part and break this up amicably? Are we going to have a breakthrough with this?”

Bring joy into your life so you could show up as your best self. Click To Tweet

I knew deep down in my heart that there was such an amazing breakthrough for us on the other side of this, regardless of what ended up. Maybe it’s like the best breakup ever or it’s going to be the best relationship either one of us has ever had because we rebuilt. We did not repair, fix, and save. We tore down that relationship and start it from the ground up again and that was the catalyst for us. I’m not going to lie, it took a lot of work. It was a lot of pain and discomfort, but we made an agreement to go through that together. As we were both hurting from each other and by each other, we were both comforting each other through it. It’s bizarre, what we were able to work through, but I had some negotiables. I wasn’t going to be the only one working on myself. Let’s not get this wrong. We each needed to work together and on ourselves separately because it was a lot of growth and personal development that we had to discover about ourselves in order to show up in the best way for each other.

Now that you’re on the other side of that, what does that look like? Could you explain this to us?

We have a lot of effective communication. We listen to each other more and we make sure we understand what each other’s saying. There’s a book I love called The 5 Love Languages. He was speaking his love language to me, I was speaking my love language to him and that didn’t work. It’s like me saying, “I love mushrooms and you don’t like mushrooms, but I will make mushrooms every night because I like it.” We got to learn a little bit about how we each receive love and be intentional in making sure that we do those things for each other so that we feel loved.

For example, when I cook and I make a special meal that lights him up to a way that he feels loved, cared for it, and nurtured for it. He does it for me a lot. I don’t get the same, “Woo-hoo,” out of it. I’m just like, “I need to eat to live,” but it’s not the highlight of my day. It’s not that I don’t appreciate it, but also being intentional and if we’re talking about relationships, learning his relationship style, and knowing my relationship style. What that means is, how our early life experiences created our way of being and the triggers that we have. It created how we show up, react, and respond in a way that can damage or sabotage not only ourselves but our relationships.

We grew up in two different cultures. I grew up in Paterson, New Jersey. I am African-American through and through. My husband grew up in Europe, in Germany. It doesn’t get any more different than that. It’s very dynamic. If we were on Match.com, we probably would have never been matched with each other. Me having an understanding of what can cause a reaction in him. What could hurt him? What could cause him not to feel good about himself when he’s in a conversation with me is important so that I show up to have him feel heard, acknowledged, appreciated, and vice versa. I’m like you. I’m a go-getter. I don’t have time to be babying people. I move fast, but when you’re with someone who’s not like that, you get to slow down and say, “How can I bring out the best in this person?”

As you said, it’s not about me at this point. When you’re both working to bring out the best in each other and learning, if I say this, it triggers something from his early life experience where he didn’t feel, heard or acknowledged or appreciated. I know not to use that language. It’s authentic. It’s not like I’m trying to pretend something. I’m sensitive to what I know would hurt him to where if he did it to me, it’s like, “What’s the big deal? Let’s get up and move on.” It’s about knowing each other and taking care of each other in that way.

When you talk about some of these elements of how you treat people, this is relationship building 101. This is the essence of building a relationship. Most often, it takes a breakup or some radical thing to happen in our relationship in order to get us back to the fundamentals, the things that matter. You find that it’s not the big things. It’s the small things like being heard and respected. Treating a person like a human being, regardless of what’s going on, because it doesn’t matter how successful you are or how much money you have.

At the end of the day, it’s how you treat people. You’ve probably heard the saying, “They don’t care what you know until they know how much you care.” It’s all fundamentally true. It goes even beyond what you say or what you know. It’s what you have. It’s who you are. If you don’t care about others, it is all about you and that’s not serving anyone. You’re very successful in that. You’re thriving. You’re beautiful, you look like you’re happy and that’s what everyone wants. They want to be happy and live a good life. Was there anything else that allowed you to get to this point?

There were high-performance habits. The first thing with me was to figure out how controlling I was? Being a controller was exhausting and being exhausted meant that I was not taking care of myself, my health physically, mentally, and bringing joy into my life so that I could show up as my best self. When you’re always in a state of exhaustion, burn out and overwhelm, it’s a lack of self-care that causes you to be irritable, to be short, to not have patience and it shows up and affects your way of being. Developing habits of high performance that protect your mental stamina and your physical energy. I like to call it as one of my mentors and coaches, Brendon Burchard, he calls it the MEDS-RX. You take care of M. It is Meditation and Mindset, E is Exercise, D is Diet, S is Sleep, and R is your Relationships.

Resilient Relationships: You need to have healthy relationships for your physical and mental wellbeing.

You need to have healthy relationships. How you do one thing is how you do everything. He adds the X, which is the X-factor in RX, which is supplements. What can you do to take care of your health? I noticed that for myself when I started taking care of my health, my mental, my physical well-being. For me, the big thing was to give up control and to be trusting and let other people have their journey. I gave up control of my real estate company to my husband at this point. I got to trust that he could handle it, be there for him as a consultant, advisor, and still am.

One of the therapists that I had worked with when I was working on our marriage the first time, he’s like, “You have the weight of the world on your shoulders.” I was in physical pain all the time. I couldn’t sleep well, which made me a little bit cranky and irritable. High-achieving and high-performing are two different things. When you’re a high performer, you’re succeeding beyond the standard norms while maintaining joy, vitality, and healthy relationships. That’s high performance. High-achieving is not a bad thing, but you’re often not taking care of yourself when you’re a high achiever and it can show up to damage a lot of your relationships, and the level of success that you achieve and that you can sustain. You can’t sustain it if you’re not taking care of yourself.

I was on a challenge with one of my business coaches. She was giving up coffee and alcohol. I was like, “No.” I’m going to add something to my life that will make it better. That’s when I started to develop a meditation practice. I often felt like a failure at meditation. I don’t know any driven people out there can’t stop and quiet your mind because you are going all the time. I took on this 40-day challenge with her and I started slow. It was five minutes a day with this little either app on my phone or YouTube video. Stop for five minutes and meditate. I increased it and then I learned more about it. I read an amazing book called Stress Less, Accomplish More by Emily Fletcher. It was about her Ziva meditation and that clicked with me.

I had been meditating twice a day for about 3 or 4 months. When I came out of a meditation one day, turned my phone back on and saw a message from my dad that my mom suddenly passed away. The reason why I’m sharing that with you is that I had been training my mind to rest and reset. There’s like this area in your brain that meditation helps heal and connect back together so that you can be emotionally centered, grounded in good times and in bad. I credit my meditation practice through that journey of losing a parent suddenly, having to take care of an elderly father, to uproot my life to get from California to New Jersey in the same day. My dad’s freaking out and alone, and to stay centered through all of that. Even when challenges come in my life and my business, I still credit the meditation for giving me the mental clarity that helps me move through those challenges without becoming the stressed out, burned out, overwhelmed, and the cranky woman that I used to be.

It’s hard to be still sometimes, especially for high achievers and high performers who are heavy chargers get it done, meet headlines, no time to waste, and very busy. I find that it’s as important to perform those tasks and have an outline of your day that includes, stillness, quietness, looking at something green, maybe connecting with nature. You perform better when you can take that break. One of the biggest elements of resilience is recovery. Adam Markel said, “It’s not stress that kills people. It’s not worry that kills people. It’s the inability to recover from stress, worry, and all of those things.”

You have to incorporate that recovery period. Everyone needs that and it doesn’t come at the end of the day. You need to incorporate that in mid-day or several times throughout the day. It needs to be planned because it’s as important as starting or having a designated time to start a task, “This is what I’m going do,” and “I’m going to do it until another point in time,” and then you start another task. If you don’t have recovery scheduled, then you’re setting yourself up for failure. To think about not recovering, it’s not one of those things where it immediately shows up. It’s one of those things that creeps up on you down the road. It’s easy not to do, but the impact of it builds over time, and then before you know it, there’s a catastrophe.

If you think about the cars on a racetrack and you’re at the Indianapolis 500 Speedway and they’re speeding around. When they stop for that pit stop it’s before their tire blows. It’s before the engine has problems. They are recharging, refueling. Not only do you need rest and recovery throughout the day, but you also need habits and practices that recharge and refuel you so that you are on you’re A-game for that next meeting, client, and task that you get to rock out and knock out of the park. It’s like rest and recovery then re-energize and refuel, but you’ve got to do it before your tire blows before you have a sparkplug incident or whatever it looks like going on the car. It doesn’t take a lot of time. You notice how these cars are going around the track. They stopped for less than a minute and they get recharged so that they could go further, faster at a higher speed and win the race. That’s what we get to do as high achievers and as high performers throughout our day. How do we rest and recover? How do we build that into our day? That’s important as a meeting with the next CEO.

You don’t want to be at that meeting hungry, tired, and with brain fog. How can you take care of the engine that you have that you’re performing with so that you can be on your A-game, in your relationships, in your business, and for yourself? I’m missing the gym now, however, it’s no excuse for me not to do something and push myself to do something because having that morning routine for me was instrumental in setting up my day to win. That’s another thing we get to do. Take the time to plan out your day. Don’t be like a bag flowing in the wind, plan it out. Plan out who needs you on your A-game. Think about it, “Who do I need to be 110% and how can I be that way? Who can I connect with?” Ask yourself these questions and build it in. Get your schedule out, look at your calendar. I think the last event we were at was the last trip I took before we got shutdown. Even when you’re traveling, when we get back to that level, how do you maintain your vibrancy through the stress of travel? What habits do you have in place to protect your vibrancy, to protect your energy, to keep your clarity, to be productive and focused, and not let all of that throw you off?

As you’re saying that, I’m thinking about when you have a habit or a way of being. It’s natural to incorporate these things, do these things, or be the type of person that does these things is easy. I’m thinking about how does one get started? If you’re in a space where you’re feeling burnt out and you want to bounce back from that, you want to turn that around, how do you get started? For me, doing the fundamental things that would cause one to be successful are things that I did not want to do, but want to embody. When you’ve done it long enough or you’ve adopted it or embodied it, you don’t have to think about it. It’s something that’s part of your being.

One of the biggest elements of resilience is recovery. Click To Tweet

When I look at successful people, people that have overcome insurmountable circumstances, there’s a thread, a common thing between them in what they do. They all have certain types of rituals. They help them reset. They have a certain perspective on challenges, the world around them, and how they can influence it. It’s not things that they do. It’s not like a checklist. They embody those things and because of not what they do, but how they are? How they show up every day? That’s what causes them to be successful. What are some ways of being in your opinion that we could implement here?

You’ve been there before, “I’m going to do this,” you have your little list of things that you’re going to do in order to improve yourself and then life happens and you don’t do it. I’ve thrown that approach out the window. I don’t even do that anymore. If there’s something that I feel is going to help me be more successful, I want to embody that. I want to make that part of my identity, and of who I am. What are some ways of being? I want to approach it in that light so people can adopt this within their personality in who they are and how they show up every day.

I would say for anybody who’s reading, is to pick three words that embody the best of who you are, who you want to be, and how you want people to describe you as a way of being. Sit quietly for a moment, get grounded, close your eyes, and think, “Who do I want to be in this world? How do I want people to describe me? How do I want to describe myself?” Your best future self. Think of those three words, write them down and put them in your phone. At 10:00 every morning, have your alarm go off so that those three words pop up. I’ve had my three words for about years for who I want to be my way of being, not how successful I want to be or my interactions. I’ll show you how I do it.

In the last fifteen seconds of my shower, I blast cold water. I say my three words of who I want to be. Not only does that recharge and wake me up because usually, I would have worked out by then anyway. It gets into me like, “This is who I am. This is who I’m going to embody. This is who I’m going to be in all of my interactions because this is who I am.” That’s what I do. Those are particular to you. Anybody can do that and have their three words. As far as ways of being for effective communication and connection, when you’re dealing in general with everyone, the number one way of being that I love to embody is generosity and being generous.

What I mean by that, and people may hear generosity, they think to give, being charitable, and giving physical things. I’m talking about being a generous listener because if you want to up-level your influence, you’ve got to learn how to listen more than you talk. You were gifted with two ears and one mouth and you should use them in that in that order. There’s a reason why we were designed this way. There’s a lot of times in our lives where we need to have those important and maybe sometimes difficult conversations. When you are in a conversation with someone, first of all, always ask if it’s a good time. When somebody is talking to you, put down these distractions, don’t be distracted. If it’s not a good time, ask for it 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or “Can we talk at noon?” or whatever that looks like so that you can give that person your full attention.

When you’re asking for someone’s full attention, make sure it’s a good time. I have this joke, make sure that you’re not hungry and the other person’s not hungry when you’re having a difficult conversation because you don’t want them hangry. Also, take the time to repeat what you heard them say, “This is what I heard you say. I want to make sure I’m understanding.” It’s not the outcome that’s more important when you’re in a conversation with someone or a dialogue, it’s the process. How somebody’s feeling when they are in conversation with you, do they feel heard? Do they feel validated? Do they feel appreciated? Do they feel that you are in there 100% seeking to understand or do they feel that you’re rushed, you don’t have time for them?

Are you interrupting when they’re speaking? Our natural tendency is to want to defend, respond, and “No, that’s not right. That’s not what I meant.” What I’m saying is you don’t have to agree with everything the person saying that you do get to give them the gift of being fully heard, acknowledged, and to make sure you understand what they’re saying. When it’s your turn to speak, then you can share what you’ve heard, “I appreciate you saying that and know that you may feel that way, but that wasn’t my intention,” or “No, you’re not wrong for feeling that way.” There’s a way to have a conversation where people feel that they came out a winner because they were heard. Maybe they didn’t get the result that they want it, but you can create those win-wins that I love as a number one way of being. That works not only in your relationships but in your professional relationships as well because people want to feel that they matter and conflict happens when people don’t feel that they matter. That happens at home and business as well.

I get the feeling from listening to you that this shouldn’t be hard. We should want to hear from another person in a relationship or conflict. I feel what’s coming up for me is that we make it about us. That’s the hardest thing for us to realize that it’s not about us, even though we may feel that we’re right or we’ve done nothing wrong and we’re not the cause of the situation. We go into it with that mindset. If we can take a step back and realizing that it’s not about us at this moment. It doesn’t mean you’re lost. It doesn’t mean that you’re less of a person. It’s a great approach to a solution in conflict. If it’s all about us, it’s what you think is what you feel and that blocks the opportunity for that person to be heard and to be seen. If that person doesn’t feel that they matter, then we can’t experience much progress.

A lot of times, we get defensive when we feel wronged or accused of something that may or may not be true because maybe somewhere in that early life experience that we’ve had, we weren’t heard and we were wrongly accused. It’s those wounds that surface that put a block to us, being able to listen generously. My mom, God bless her, I loved her dearly, but she was one of the most defensive people to be in a conversation with where you want it to like, “I’m not accusing you. We’re having a conversation. Just listen.” The need to defend for her was so strong. When you look into her early life experience, being raised poor, one of nine children and whatever that children dynamic is where everybody had to fight to get their own. You bring that into your adult life and you don’t even recognize some of the remnants that come up from that.

Resilient Relationships: When you’re a high performer, you’re succeeding beyond the standard norms while maintaining joy, vitality, and healthy relationships.

It’s not psychoanalyzing and you, but it’s a pattern that was built early that that’s how you operate it. That’s how you got your voice heard. You will always being accused or one of your siblings was blaming you. It’s the feeling arises when you’re in a conversation with someone that can cause conflict or be a difficult conversation and that need to the defensiveness rise up and whatever your reaction is and not a response can have an effect on the outcome. I use this formula called S plus R equals R. You’ve got a Situation, plus your Response, which is acting responsibly or your Reaction, which is usually something knee jerk and not intentional, equals the Result or the outcome. You have a choice. Do you react or do you respond intentionally so that you can get the outcome that you want, which should be no winners, no losers? Everybody’s a winner.

I’ve been so into what you’re saying that I’ve lost where I wanted to go next. Typically, I’m mentally ahead of the conversation but that allows me to soak all of this up because I think it’s good.

It gets easier because I know for the majority of us, we don’t have an awareness of when we’re reacting or when we’re responding and why. That’s why a big part of my work is to spend a significant amount of time creating that awareness. I am not healing your trauma. I’m not fixing you, but when you have the awareness, you’re going to know, “This feeling is coming up in me that wants me to defend myself or have a reaction because of the feeling that reminds me that was born out of X, Y, Z, and my own family dynamic when I was six years old.”

It shows up a certain way. Either as defensiveness, sometimes we get people-pleasing. We shrink back and we ask people because we don’t want them not to like us. There are so many ways that this can show up. I’m speaking specifically into the high achievers and the highly-driven people because very rarely are we people-pleasers, but we get defensive and controlling and push our agendas through. What if we could live that role model lifestyle and be an influencer in a way that we enroll people into our vision? We enroll people into supporting us, into their vision more and live that role model lifestyle, so that like, “I want what he’s got because he’s achieving all of this stuff at such a high level, but he’s also calm and centered, makes me feel good. How’s the time for me, how’s time for the people that are important in his life?”

You feel that when Rodney is looking at me, he’s there. He’s not distracted by all the other things that are in his life. Your family feels from you. Your children feel that from you, your employees, your employer feels that from you. It’s such a high performing way of being to embody so that people are attracted to you, that they feel safe in your space. You’re not the untouchable high achiever. Like, “He won’t have time for me.” You see how this goes, “He’s too busy for me.” No, we’re all human beings and we get to be generous and live that role model lifestyle.

Why do you think high-achievers and high-performers have adopted that philosophy because I’ve read many books? One that I’m reading is Relentless by Tim S. Grover. It’s the complete opposite of what you’re saying. He has a very hard and aggressive approach to success. No cut cars and no BS and it’s that balance because I think that is necessary. I think a lot of high-achievers have philosophy because they see the benefits of being turned on at that level 90% of the time because it does produce a result. If you’re not, you lose or you don’t reach the goal. There’s the element of not everyone is willing to play at that level. They’re going to get what they’re going to get and if you don’t want that and you got that at a higher level. There’s a certain level of tolerance that you have to balance here because I think there’s a level of, “This is what’s required,” and then there’s that you got the pool to throttle back and balance things out for reasons like health and family.

There are times when I am in a project and I’m in it to be successful. This is what I do. I create an agreement with my husband, “This is what I’m working on for X amount of time,” “It’s going to take this much of my time,” “I am not going to be available.” It’s agreements and setting expectations. You don’t do it without being in agreement with the people in your life who matter. Tim Grover’s book was about athletes and what they’ve got to sacrifice. I would imagine that a majority of them had agreements with their significant others. Like, “This is what it’s going to take for me to reach that next level.” I’m thinking relationships specifically have got to be in agreement with that.

When you are in that relationship, you get to be all in when that time is set aside for that relationship. That’s why having a partnership with your spouse, significant other, or kids, set the expectations. I have an eBook called 6 Powerful Ways of Being. You got to be honest. Don’t expect people to guess what you need and read your mind. This is what it’s going to take from me to do this. This is what I want to do. This is my dream. You get to enroll them in that dream and vision with you and let them know what it’s going to take and create agreements. However, at the end of this 3 or 4-month period, then I’m back with the family and I’m all in.

Whatever that agreement looks like, whatever works for your family dynamic, but create agreements and let them know when this is expected to end, because like with all sports, there’s a season. I know from reading that book, those athletes didn’t pull back, but their time was more spent in conditioning, but they also had the recovery. You need the mental and physical recovery for your body, but then when it’s time to rev up again, there are agreements in place. When I’m working on something, I will say to my husband, “I’m not going to be Netflixing and chilling. After dinner, I go back and I create this, but this is only going on until this webinar or whatever is complete,” or “I’ve got this dialed down.” He knows not to expect me. He’s not left wondering, “How come she’s not spending time with me? She’s working all the time.” That’s one I learned in my relationship from not being clear on what I was doing. The time involved in it, the effort and energy for me, and to be in that agreement with him so that he was clear and we had expectations set. When I’m there, I’m all in. I’m not distracted. I’m not on the phone. You’ve got to be in agreement.

Even high achievers have to take responsibility for their relationships. Click To Tweet

Which makes the responsibility to communicate that much more important, especially for you, the high-achiever or the high performer, you have to let people know where you are. I think there’s a tendency to think that, “They should know, this is what it’s going to be. Get over it. I’m doing this for you.” I get it because that’s a part of making them feel that they matter and being able to communicate with, “I know this is going to take away from some time you and I have planned together. It’s going to be a little disruptive and a little different. This is only temporary and we’re going to get back to our normal way of life once this is over.” Eva, if they wanted to learn more about you. I know you’re a coach. If they want to work with you, how can they connect with you?

They can go to my website, which is my name, EvaMedilek.com. I would love to offer your readers something a little bit special. If you’re curious about what high-performance coaching is, what that looks like, the things that we cover, I would love to offer a 60-minute high-performance coaching session to give you a taste of it if they want it to. For that, you can email me directly. My email is Eva@EvaMedilek.com. Mentioned that you read me on Rodney’s show and we will set up some time. I will give you that high-performance experience to know all of the areas that we go into and creating that next level of success in your life around clarity, energy, courage, productivity, influence physiology, psychology, sociology, and necessity. All of that to up-level your game and show up so that you can have win-wins in both your personal and professional lives.

We are game-changers and the element of being a game-changer is putting in the work. It doesn’t come without effort. It’s good to have coaching and someone that is going to help you. I’m here to help you. I’m bringing people that I feel are qualified and validated to also help you change the game. I realized that I can’t help each and every person personally so I try to bring you people that I feel will be able to take you to that next level. If you feel compelled, please hit Eva up on this. I’m sure you will not be disappointed. Eva, I want to say thank you for coming to the show. This has been a wonderful conversation.

Thank you for being so vulnerable, open with us, and be so real. A lot of times we hear a lot of people who are successful. When it’s time to talk about how they became successful with some of the things that they’ve gone through, you don’t feel that level of authenticity with them and I felt that with you. You talked about something that was very personal to you that you’ve been able to overcome it. I feel that the strategies, the tips, and the ideas that you’ve presented a very practical. They’re very real and they can be trusted because that has to happen and they work. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Before we end the show, we always like to ask our guests, what is the game-changer mentality message that you would like to leave with us?

The game-changer mentality message that I know works is transitional breaks in your day. Work on a task no longer than 50 minutes and then give yourself a five-minute transition break because here’s what that does. It releases energy from one task. You can reenergize those high-performance habits. That’ll re-energize you for the next task and this way, you’re not stacking stress. You’ve got your stress from whatever you’re working on, release, re-energize, take it to the next task, and by the end of the day when you’re transitioning into your family time, relaxing time, do a transition out of that.

Leave the work in the office, the bedroom, and wherever you work, while we’re all sheltered in place and then be there fully present for your family. The magic is in the transitions and give yourself the transitional breaks. It’s not to work on a task with 2 to 3 hours at a stretch and without taking a break in between. That’s my hack for the day. That’s kept me feeling re-energized at the end of an eight-hour day. I’m like, “Let’s do it. Let’s cook. Let’s eat. Let’s watch Netflix now.”

This has been amazing. If there is anything we can do to support you in what you are doing in the world, please let us know.

I will. Thanks so much, Rodney.

Resilient Relationships: There’s a way to have a conversation where people feel that they came out a winner because they were heard.

—

There you have it, another successful episode of our show. Recovery, rest, breaks, relationships, connection, all of these things are very imperative to high performance. Communication and win-win scenarios. These are fundamental things, you know this. One thing to know what thing is another to implement it on a daily basis, do a cross-check. How have you been being? It sounds funny to say but think about it. What if we did an assessment on a regular basis to check how we are being, because a lot of times, especially for high-achievers, when things are not working right, we’re quick to say, “They don’t think like me,” or “They don’t have the drive. They don’t have this or that.”

We blame the other person. Sometimes we have to look at ourselves, even our higher achieving high-performance selves. Sometimes that’s hard because we know we put in the work in, we know we’re doing everything we’re supposed to do, but sometimes it’s the way that we’re being, where we’re projecting ourselves on others. Sometimes we have to take a step back and take a peek. Let’s see how we’re being. We may be surprised at what we see. Maybe we’ll see that we need to recover, to rest, to change and to communicate. Whatever it is for you, it is worth it. Until next time. Peace and love.

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About Eva Medilek

Eva Medilek is a Certified High Performance Coach and a Relationship Success Coach. She has coached both men and women in the areas of personal development, leadership and relationship transformation.

She specializes in helping executives, entrepreneurs, influencers and business leaders create sustained, heightened levels of success in business and personal life by developing relationships and influence, taking radical responsibility, and implementing habits for success.

Eva knows, first hand, how a driven personality type can leave you feeling disappointed, frustrated and resentful in your personal relationships, which impacts your ability to achieve success professionally.

She uses her personal experiences along with her leadership, transformational and certified high performance training to teach you the pillars of high performance as well as showing you how to communicate in a way that fosters intimacy and connection in your personal life.

You don’t have to choose between being successful in life or being successful in your personal relationships. Learning how your relationship style can be transformed to create connection and intimacy in conjunction with the mastery of high performance is the key.

Eva believes that the power of your personal and professional relationships can be unlocked in a way the creates success and high performance mastery in every area of your life.

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