TGP #57 Toxic Person Proof With Sarah K. Ramsey

 

Toxic people are a problem for many and their relationships. What do you need to do to make your life toxic person proof? Aaron Civitarese dives deep into these questions with Toxic Relationship Specialist and host of the globally-acclaimed Toxic Person Proof podcast, Sarah K. Ramsey. Sarah shares her story, giving us a glimpse of what led her to become a specialist in toxic people. She also gives her insights on how to deal with toxic personalities in your personal and professional life.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

 

Toxic Person Proof With Sarah K. Ramsey

This is episode 57 with the bestselling author of Becoming Toxic Person Proof, Sarah Ramsey.

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I am here with a super fun and very inspiring guest, Sarah Ramsey. She is a Toxic Relationship Specialist and has a top 5% podcast, which I need to take a couple of notes on that. She also has her book coming out called Becoming Toxic Person Proof. Sarah, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. I am excited.

I am excited, too. We’ve got to know each other in previous mentorship programs. I love what you are doing. That is why I was adamant to bring you out here because your message is very powerful. I want to share it. Tell us a bit about yourself. You have a pretty cool backstory. Give us a bit of who Sarah is.

At what stage of life? I have multifaceted for sure. I am so grateful for the experience. It is cool how you can pull in from all those things. I was a pastor’s kid growing up. Even the idea as an entrepreneur of being careful about somewhat being neutral in what you post or being aware that everyone is going to see this or, “Do I want that on the internet?” My whole life was like that. It has been such a great gift as a business owner. It did not feel like a gift as a kid. I do not think anyone says, “I am going to be a preacher’s kid. That will be awesome.” It was awesome, and I have mad social skills from all the people I talk to in that arena.

Within that concept is a pretty good bridge into who I used to be. There are a lot of people-pleasing, managing everyone else’s expectations all the time, and also image management. To the point that I thought, “As long as I was nice, people would be nice back.” It sounds ridiculous saying it at this stage of my life but it made a lot of sense. For so many people, that message does resonate because someone is being mean to you, ugly to you or bullying at work and you think, “I will be nicer to them tomorrow, and maybe they will be nice back.”

I will never forget my grandmother. We were sitting in a car talking to my son about a bully at school. He goes, “He is always bullying everybody.” She goes, “He is probably lonely and needs a friend. You should be nicer to him.” That is where it all started. When someone treats you badly, you need to change your behavior and work harder in the relationship to try to make them better. That is the message I bring to the world and helping people get clarity on that, get conversation and confidence around that and help them become toxic person proof.

The bully is toxic. What is the remedy? Can you say it differently?

If you have researched online or anything, there is this whole conversation around narcissism and personality disorders. “They are narcissists.” It is good because it is putting a framework around bullies or negative behavior but in some ways, it is bad because first of all, we are diagnosing all these people and missing the conversation, which is about power dynamics and manipulation like, “How can I use your kindness against you? How can I use what is important for you to flip on you to get you to do what I want?” That is a much better conversation than trying to diagnose someone’s personality disorder.

If you are changing your behavior or you are trying to please them more, what you are doing is giving them more energy, ammunition, and power.

 

 

I was on vacation at this condo, and there was a coffee maker. I’ve got the coffee cup and kept pouring it into the coffee maker. It was spilling everywhere on the condo. I was making a mess. I tried to pour it a little slower, not fill as much water, pour it higher or lower. I kept changing my behavior to try to prevent the water from spilling out.

Finally, 4 or 5 days in, I used a different cup. The problem was the cup, not how I was pouring. When you are talking about bullies or toxic people, if you are self-reflective and into personal growth, spirituality, religion or whatever that is for you, you think, “I need to be better, so they act better.” The problem could be the cup or their bad behavior, not you trying to be good enough to change their behavior.

It is funny. No matter what part of the inner work journey you are going through, whether it is for business, for yourself or a relationship, it always seems to point in this direction. Stop looking outward, look inward, what you focus on expands, do not give your power away, fill up your cup and all of these things that we read in these memes and the motivational tapes. It is also true. Different people say it in different ways but when you get niched into something as potent as toxicity in human behavior, it becomes even more powerful because people are dealing with this shit constantly.

I have never told someone what I did and they said, “You must be hurting for business.” They never say that. I do want to get the conversation. I started in this journey about romantic partnerships. That is a huge piece of it but that is such a tiny sliver. If you remember Bill Cosby, at one point, we all thought Bill Cosby was so amazing, funny, and cute, and then we hear these stories. I remember talking to friends like, “That can’t be true. That girl must be lying.” There is another girl and another girl. It is so hard for us to see the image people present sometimes and what is happening.

There is this real stigma around if you’ve got fooled into a romantic relationship, you are going to show in a bad category. If you get fooled in business or some other place, it is like, “It is not that bad.” That is one of the ways toxic people are winning because someone toxic at home also goes to work. They are conning us there. We just do not know it because we do not see them as often. That toxic person-proof conversation and the book is about, “What are the loopholes that toxic people use to fool us?” That is a much bigger conversation than, “That girl needs to break up with that guy.”

There is a lot of pattern recognition going on like this.

That is an important point because sometimes people say, “What is toxic? Who is toxic? Come on, Sarah. Hurt people.” That is true. This is not a conversation about whether or not someone is a worthy human. This is a conversation about, “Are you worthy of my time, energy, and resources?” I do not want to get into good people, bad people, and the conversations of, “A toxic person, what does that mean?”

It is like, “Do they have a pattern of always winning and you always losing, constantly blaming you, switching your words around to leave you confused, dishonesty and anger?” It is a pattern. We all have bad days but if there is a consistent pattern, that is not a bad day. That is who they are, and there is a huge difference. It is like, “What is a good dog and a bad dog?” A good dog might bite you once. A bad dog bites you every day.

I had a Chow puppy as a kid, and it bit all our neighbors. It was a mess. I asked my mom, “Why did you get that dog?” She said, “Sarah, it was before the internet. We could not google, ‘Good family pets.’ It was cute, so we went with it.” It bit all my friends and my sister. We did not keep that dog too long. It is very cute, though.

Toxic people can be cute, too. They look so good, charming, and great. This is not something we think about often but many years ago, we were not mobile. You and I talked about visiting each other. We are so mobile. There are all these different places. In this stage, first impressions are important. It is a big deal to have a good first impression because we need that. That is not just a toxic person conversation. We all have to think about our first impressions.

 

When someone treats you badly, you need to change your behavior and work harder in the relationship to try to make them better.

 

Think about many years ago, they were not talking about first impressions because you lived in the same communities and families. You were a good person like, “I will have another for generations.” The character was a long-term endeavor. First impressions are a very quick and short-term endeavor. You see how toxic people can play a bigger and better game and do more manipulation because it is in their wheelhouse. “I can look all cute and furry and then bite when you are not looking. I can look all amazing and catch you from behind.”

With social media and ways to present yourself, you can curate your character and put whatever persona out there you want. No one knows when people are wearing masks all over the place. It can hide behind a veil of something crazy. It makes me think of certain influencers that I am aware of. There are some influencers out there that I followed. I love what I believe they are doing. The message is cool. I am like, “The person is all about spirituality. This is cool.”

The deeper you get into the industry and the more people you meet, all of a sudden, I will be having a conversation with someone, and it will be a sales conversation about his sales team, not the person. The person is a sales rep, and I am a sales manager over here. We are talking sales one day randomly in a group setting with a couple of salespeople. Someone is like, “I used to close for so-and-so.” You are like, “How is it? How was the experience? It must have been awesome.” My ears perked up and I was like, “Damn. That is cool.” He was like, “It was brutal. I could not wait to get out of there.” I was like, “What do you mean?” It is a Bill Cosby almost.

I was like, “I love that guy. I follow him. He is awesome.” He is like, “He runs his team shitty. He is not that nice and is unorganized.” He started saying all these negative things about it and I was like, “Maybe it is just you.” That is what I was thinking. Like with the women, “She is probably lying.” I was like, “You had a bad experience because you could not do your job. He fired you, and then you are pissed off.” I met another closer, also the same story. These guys do not even know each other. I was like, “That is a pattern, a persona, and a character that the guy is playing but behind the doors, he is a beast.” This is exactly what we are talking about. People can hide.

Everything you said was so important because we want to defend our impression. We all like to think that we are good at spotting toxic people because then we tell ourselves that we are safe. This is what everyone does. What you did, every person does that, including me. I am raising my hand, not pointing a finger. I had to work untrain myself out of this thinking. I know who they are. You were very aware that there could be other things. That is who they seem to be, so your brain says, “I am good at keeping myself safe. If there were a problem, I would have seen it.” That is what our brains do.

Someone says, and they interrupt what we think is happening. It is like, “Maybe they are not safe. Probably it is just you and the experience you had. You thought they were unorganized.” It became a pattern. It was two people. It was harder to believe that but do you see how the loopholes that your brain went through to convince you that you were right to your first impression?

I see it very clearly. That is exactly what is happening. It is trying to convince you that you are correct and safe. I am safe. I know what is happening. I am aware but in reality, you believe what you want to believe to verify that to validate yourself.

You are not super emotionally invested in this person, being a good person or not. Let’s say that person was going to hire you as their sales manager, and they were going to give you however many million dollars a year guaranteed on top of bonuses. You are super emotionally invested in it working out. You have a friend, and they have been single forever. They bring home this girl and you are like, “I want him to have somebody.” You start to overlook things like, “It is not that big of a deal.” Whoever it is in your life, the more emotionally invested you are in your first impression being right, the harder your brain will learn to defend it, “It is two people. I need three people. It is three people. I need four people.”

You said something so relevant in the last couple of years through this US presidential election. People, no matter which side of the fence they are on, could be presented with the most ridiculous evidence on both sides. In my opinion, it is all a big shit show. You can be presented with concrete, super logical evidence on something and simply cannot believe it to be true. You are like, “No way. It cannot be like that.”

That is where I want to expand the conversation. Say you have a daughter who’s 30 goes through a horrible divorce. At that point, you have ears to hear about toxic people because it is like, “That guy was a dick.” You grow ears. Unless it happens personally, when it is like Bill Cosby and not that big of a deal, it is like, “I do not have ears to hear. This is not something I need to worry about.” You are not even in the US like, “I do not have to worry about that.” That is where we do ourselves such a disservice.

 

 

We tell ourselves, “There are not toxic people out there. I do not know them.” We teach our kids to be afraid of strangers, not sociopaths. Except with all this statistical data, we all know some sociopaths, narcissists, and borderline personalities. They are saying 1 in 10 people have some type of personality disorder on the low side. It is also on the rise for lots of reasons but a different conversation. When you tell yourself, “There are not toxic people. I do not know toxic people,” you say, “Toxic people will not bother me.” We all do it. We have all done it. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

The election was a good place that you have. I had very close people on both sides of the spectrum. It is like, “This is exactly what it is.” It is terrifying. The best debaters are those that can argue both sides of the coin. The safest people are those that can see both sides of the coin. It is not that everybody is toxic and horrible. They are not. It is awfully helpful if you know how to keep yourself safe.

With the election, we don’t want to go too far on it but it is such a good case study because the whole world is polarizing. I have opinions on everything. I am very opinionated in certain ways but I pride myself on trying to see it from an eagle’s perspective, try to get as much information on all sides, and whittle it down to the happy medium because I know they are both lying. I feel that way. One thing that I do is that a couple of my friends said that it was not a smart thing to do, I was like, “I do not care what you think. I am doing it.”

This is what I did during the election. I picked a couple of my friends who are hardcore into politics. They are very researched people. They are not lunatic emotional. They are smart, educated, and have good jobs. They are on it both sides. I picked a couple on both sides. I set them to follow first during the most potent of the election.

I would see my feed, and it would be that post, and then right below it would be the other guy’s post. It was about the same thing. They were just saying it the opposite way, which was fascinating. I was like, “You are both saying the same thing.” One is like, “Fascist this. Rights and freedom.” The other guy is like, “Communism, freedom, socialism, and rights.” I am like, “You are on the same team and do not even know it.” It blew my mind.

It is that whole, “Us versus them.” You lead a growth show and do not know each other well enough as a few growth junkies. If I had an addiction, it would be personal growth. I am happy to say that. Most people do not use critical thinking to critically think about their lives. They go along, wait it out, and hope it gets better. You and I align a lot on being active in your life. You did a Facebook post and I was like, “I am going to copy and paste that.” You have to be the problem solver of your life. There is no one coming to save you.

Even within the concept of toxic relationships, people and encounters, I had people say, “I am trusting the universal. Bring whoever it needs to my path and keep the bad people away. I am not going to attract toxic people anymore.” At least 1 in 10, it’s maybe 1 in 5. They exist and are looking for people who are self-reflective, kind, and willing to work on themselves because those people are more willing to take the blame than other people.

People are like, “How much do they ship off to an island somewhere? How do I find a nice guy?” It is like, “There is a whole government data thing on who all the bad guys are. All the good guys get Starbucks in New York City every Thursday at 10:00.” Take responsibility for yourself. It does not work that way.

Sometimes we want someone else to do the grown-up work for us. Thinking everybody is nice is a very immature way of thinking. Thinking everyone is horrible is also immature. That is not true either but doing the grown-up work of your life to say, “I can critically think about my life. I am emotionally invested. Am I missing something?”

When I married my husband, I went to all my friends and said, “What do I complain about? When I complained about him, what do I say? Is there anything that I am missing that bothers me that I should pick up on?” That is a brave thing. I was determined. I asked them at different times but if they all come back and say, “This bothers you,” and they are all saying the same thing, and there is a pattern, it is the integrity to myself. I was very serious to say, “I am going to listen to you and have ears to hear.”

 

We all have bad days, but if there is a consistent pattern, that is not a bad day. That is who they are and there is a huge difference.

 

That reminds me of an exercise I went through at one point when I was getting into consulting, trying to find your niche, and the thing that your superpower is because a lot of times, you are blind. One of the exercises was to reach out to 10 or 20 of your closest friends who are switched onto business and ask them, “What can you always count on me for? What am I the best in the world at to you? What am I not good at? Where do I fall short almost every time?” It was nuts, the things you get back from people that you would never see in yourself. I was like, “What are you talking about? I am not good at that thing.” A good majority said a couple of the same things. I was like, “Interesting.”

One of them was similar to you. It was speaking, communication, helping people understand things, breaking down complex shit, and making it easy to understand. The other thing was persuasion and selling. This was way before I did sales. It turns out that if we are in a group and we are deciding what to do, it goes the way that I am saying.

It used to be that way because I was very pushy like, “Come on, everybody. You know want to come this way. Let’s go.” It sparked in me shows, doing Facebook lives, going out there and talking more, also in sales and coaching. It led to a point but you have to get feedback from people. It is not an easy thing to do.

What I have noticed in that journey to become toxic person proof is, “What do I not want to say out loud? Which question do I not want to ask? I know the answer.” You think about keeping yourself safe. Those are the questions that you need to focus on and the main problems you need to solve. Those are your red flags. We have these crazy lists of red flags that are things like, “He has got big arm muscles. She takes too long doing her makeup.”

The whole conversation around narcissism, some of it is ridiculous. It is like, “Was I worried about what my friends were going to say? Was there a friend I did not ask because I knew they knew something more than some other friends?” That is where you start paying attention and say, “That is the crap that is going to take my life. I am trying to hide it.”

We share a sales mentor, and he said that one thing about journaling, writing the question, “What is it that I am not asking myself?” I have been doing that ever since he mentioned that because I journal every morning. I write that question, “What about myself am I not seeing?” I worded it differently every day. Some things come out there, and it is all the shit that you do not want to admit.

It is like, “I said I was going to do that thing, and I still have not done that thing.” Without asking yourself that or doing it that way, you would cover your eyes and ears and be like, “I forgot about that thing there. I am going to tuck that under the carpet.” We should have the courage to ask ourselves those questions. Things pop. That is when you can go a layer deeper and work.

That is where you start to notice that that is weird. I am big on, “That is weird.” You have an interaction with someone and you are like, “That is weird,” and then you instantly say, “Sarah, you are being judgmental. Aaron, you are having a bad day. It is just that one guy.” We start making these excuses in our heads. The more, “That is weird,” there is, the greater the pattern, the greater sense of toxicity. Have you seen the Sherlock Holmes thing on Netflix? Sherlock Holmes solves all these mysteries. He goes in mind palace. He sits there and his mind on this stuff. He is a sociopath and incredibly intelligent.

He said, “My subconscious is smarter than I am.” I was like, “I believe that. My subconscious is smarter than me.” Your subconscious goes, “That is weird.” That is your sign. Even when I listen to people’s stories, I am sitting, and as soon as I go, “What did you say,” or someone is a little too interesting to me or something along those lines, it is like, “That is weird. Something does not add up.” It will keep you safe in ways you will not believe.

It is all about keeping yourself safe. The same reason you can’t get off the couch to go for a run. You think you are going to get eaten by a tiger. It is all the same. Our cave person brain can’t understand how safe, awesome and abundant we are. It does not get it. It does not know that I have bottles of water here beside me, and I am talking to my friend over this piece of plastic. It does not know these things. It thinks we are going to die pretty damn soon if we move from this room because there is death out there.

 

 

Our cave person brain says, “My tribe is safe. Tribes I do not know are dangerous.” That is why we say, “Be afraid of strangers,” rather than watch out for sociopaths is. We miss that there could be people amongst our midst that could be tricking us. It is super-inconvenient to see this stuff.

It is not pleasant, warm, and fuzzy. It is like, “Damn it. I’ve got to work on this. I do not want to do that. That is effort.”

Thinking that is weird for new people is pretty assessable or there is a situation and you are like, “Something feels off about that couple or that deal.” Start pay attention to how often you are right, and it starts to build this confidence. I cannot tell you how. Intuitively, I thought, “I did not need to do a call at 8:00 tonight.”

Someone signed up for it. I am going to hold myself accountable and say, “I am going to reschedule her call.” I hardly ever ignore my intuition. I was like, “You did not cancel that call for some reason, did you?” I did not. I am going to hold myself accountable in front of you because I worked very hard not to ignore that feeling even when it does not make sense.

It is the higher consciousness. It is downloaded. It has been around much longer than your great, great grandparents. 7 or 8 generations deep of wisdom is in your cells. They understand vibration or frequency. Our conscious mind is not there. There are levels to the onion and the conscious mind that is here that is to talk us. It is not there and not that part of the energy field. It can’t fathom it either. The whole thing is being intuitive enough to feel it. When people say, “How do you feel? How does that make you feel and the emotion behind it?” That is the strongest word out there.

If you can tap into intuition, use it in your daily life to guide you, not worry about why that message is coming through, and simply follow it. That is why people say, “I have been in flow ever since XYZ thing happened to me. I have been going with the flow. Everything seems to work out for me.” You see “other people” out there and think, “Why with that person, no matter what they do, is it terrible or seems to work? What is up with that?”

If you could break down the way they are thinking, the one is overthinking things and trying to logic trap themselves into doing stuff. The other one is like, “I feel like doing this. That person seems cool. I like their vibe. I am going to hang out with that person. That business deal feels weird. I am not going to do that.” They are going with it. It is not something that you can feel from wanting to feel it. It comes from a deep inner journey.

My number one strength finder is an activator. It was not before. I was not an action-taker. I was an over-thinker. I had been successful in other areas of my life but they were very safe endeavors I was successful in. I set myself up in a situation where there was an unlikely chance that I could fail. My life very publicly blew up and affected hundreds of people. There was no way I could hide or pretend like everything was okay. I was a very public mess, in all honesty. After that, it was like, “What is going to be worse than this? Let’s try it.” I saw those two people and the person who was like, “If I wait, it is all going to work out.”

Why did we think that strategy is useful? I waited around and did not become the superhero of my life. I ended up with magical fairy dust all over me, and everything was perfect. That is not the story people tell. They tell about the hours they put in, the chances and risks they took, the people they connected themselves with, the chances and sacrifices. It is a very consistent pattern of successful people versus none. It is easy but can be scary. All the scary stuff got me where I needed to go.

There’s an old saying in a book, “Growth comes from outside your comfort zone.” Outside your comfort zone is scary because you are uncomfortable. That is where growth comes from. That is where the next level of the game is for you, no matter what it is, athletics, health, relationship, business. It does not matter.

 

The best debaters are those that can argue both sides of the coin. The safest people are those that can see both sides of the coin.

 

Most people’s comfort zone sucks. That is one of the conversations I have started having. It is like, “Why even call that your comfort zone? That is uncomfortable.” Your comfort zone blows. You do not have any money, you are overweight and your relationships are all failing or you are making tons of money but your kids hate you, whatever it is in your life that feels like taking inventory. I did high-performance coaching with Brendon Burchard.

I finished my book. I have been doing the podcast that is blowing up. I take inventory of my health. It was like, “Do I write a chapter or go workout?” I had a deadline. I wrote a chapter. If I let that go on for years or months, what is the result of that? Nobody is creating their best wealth with poor health. We have to take inventory. One of the good ways to do that is if you were a character on a TV show, who would you be? Which part would you play?

What are the options?

I would be like Zooey Deschanel in the New Girl show. That would be a pretty good fit. Are you the main event? Are you someone else’s sidekick? Are you the character that everyone says, “Why in the world are they not doing something about this?”

Using the character from TV shows to look at yourself, put yourself in those shoes, and then ask yourself, “Are those the shoes you want to be in?”

It’s the 30,000-foot view that you talked about. Stepping outside of your mind and trying to see the truth. “Would you be the TV character everybody loved or the TV character that everybody did not want to invite to family dinner? Do you want to be the TV character that every episode was a hot mess that you were getting yourself in or the TV character that was always the brunt of everybody else’s jokes and never stood up for themselves? Who would you be?” I am going to be Wonder Woman 1984 when I was one year old. That would have been interesting. I want to be the superhero in my life.

Take inventory is huge. If you are out there and focusing heavily on one piece of life to get that done, we have both been there because you did that with your book. I did that when we hit rock bottom financially and had to start over. I focused so heavily on the online space because it was our only source of income. I had to figure that shit out fast.

I was like a laser beam. Health is important to me. I used to be an athlete back in the day. I like exercising and adrenaline-type sports but when I’ve got into the online thing, I stopped everything. I did not even get up and go for my runs in the morning. Usually, I run every morning. The minute I would open my eyes, I would be instantly into work and do that.

I did that for a long time like 6, 7, and 8 months. My wife is very switched on and was like, “You are losing balance.” I was like, “I know but I can’t now.” I said it a bunch of times. I was like, “I have so much to do. I have to do it.” A month later, she would be checking in. She is very intuitive, switched on, and gentle but also knows what is best for me because she can see it from the outside. She is like, “It’s the balance.” I am like, “I know but I can’t.” One day, I looked in the mirror in the bathroom and was like, “I am fatter than I have been before.” I can see it physically on me. I am not a fat person. I have always been in shape and everything.

I was like, “That is different.” It took that visual shock, which is weird to go that narcissistic about it but it did. I was like, “What is that all about?” Andy Frisella is an influencer guy. He has a big business but he has Instagram. He has a program called 75 Hard. It is 75 days of mental and physical toughness. He has these challenges each day. It is 2 workouts a day, 1 outside, 1 gallon of water, read this and that, and cold showers but back-to-back for 75 days. It is not easy. It is hard.

 

 

It sounds like I do not want to do that.

You do not want to do it. It is hard. I was like, “I need to do something.” That is what I did. I was like, “I am going to do that challenge.” I completed it and was super proud of myself. I felt good. My muscle of internal integrity was strengthened again. From there forward, I am back on it. I run and do my yoga but it took a jerk and an, “Oh shit,” moment. It should not get to that point. How do people keep a balance? What is your take on that?

I try to balance the week and sometimes even balancing two weeks rather than trying to balance my day. Sometimes my days are way out of balance. I will have some days where my kids will have events, and I have to hang out with them. On the days my kids do not events, it may be a 14 or 15-hour workday. My neighbor said, “I want to do what you do. You have on the phone all the time.”

It is 9:00 at night, my time. He was like, “Why are you still holding the phone?” The people in California just got off work. It is that life. I have a real sense of drive. I do not like going to sleep feeling like a failure but if I only judge each day, I would always be failing at something like being a good mom, a wife or a friend. If I balance my week or even two weeks, can I get all those pockets in within that period? I usually can.

I sleep in sometimes. That is 8:00 AM for me, not even that late. I am usually a 5:00 AM or 6:00 AM girl but to take a day off or a day with my husband to chill out, take time for a hobby or coffee with a friend, I can’t do that every day but I am always going to feel like a failure. I can’t do that every 2 or 3 days. If I broaden the horizon and stretch out the report card, it is like, “Do I have a balanced week? Did I accomplish what I need to this week rather than what I needed to?” The day stresses me out. I never get done what I need to in a day.

You have seen my journey. I have got a lot of things happening. I still think I do a pretty decent job of showing up, committing to myself, showing up to things I am trying to commit to, and showing up in personal growth. If not, let that fly by the wayside. That is how I do it. It is stretching out that and thinking, “What am I accomplishing this week,” rather than in the day.

I am going to take note of that because I do daily, weekly, monthly, yearly goals and chunking. I take inventory on the Sunday of my past week and my future week but I never thought about it from a balanced perspective. I’m more look like, “What went well? Where do I need support?” Those are the two things I asked myself but I am going to add a third one. Thanks to you. “Was it balanced?”

That was within Brendon Burchard’s stuff. I did the high-performance coaching thinking, “They are going to teach me how to go harder. I want to do more.” They were like, “You are going to crash if you do not slow down and move on.” There is great wisdom learning from other people’s strategic thinking and other people being like, “These people are active participants in their lives. They live and float. They do not want to be.”

Someone tells me, “A lot of high-performers crash.” That is exactly what they said because they do not find that balance. They do not take inventory, so one area of their life falls off the rails. That is something I have to work very hard at. I need to give myself more credit. I am good at it. It is not natural. It is something I have to be very mindful of. I do think I am good at it if you looked at my calendar but it is something I have to do very intentionally. I would love to work eighteen hours every day if I could.

We have a lot in common.

 

There is great wisdom learning from other people’s strategic thinking.

 

Even in our outfits. It is funny how often when I do these interviews, I end up matching whoever I am interviewing. It is crazy. It is synchronicity and all that good stuff. We even match.

I love your energy and everything you are doing. It is amazing. Thank you so much for coming to the show. For the readers out there who are getting so much value from you here, if they want to come to find you, where can they go?

Check out my podcast, Toxic Person Proof. You can find me on Facebook, @SarahKRamsey. When Rachel and I started this, it was that whole journey of bouncing back better. When life knocks you down and how to rebuild a better version of you, I started noticing what was knocking people down, which ended up being toxic people so often. That is where I realigned because it was like, “It is the same pattern. It is always these toxic people.” I also run a Facebook group, Finding Love and Success After a Toxic Relationship.

Go check Sarah out. That is very cool. Listen to the podcast. It’s top 5% of the world. Congratulations.

I am so happy, and I have got such cool people on there. It has been this amazing journey. I had never even been on a podcast. I honestly did not even listen to that many podcasts. I had a social media strategist say, “You need to podcast.” I was like, “It seems like a lot of work.” It is a lot of work. People do not know how much work it is. I have a team that handles it. I get to do the fun stuff, the chatting, and everyone else does the buttons.

Sarah, it is a pleasure again. Thank you so much for coming to the show. I appreciate your time and your amazing messages. It is needed and loved.

Thank you so much, Aaron. Thanks for having me.

 

Important Links

• Becoming Toxic Person Proof
• Instagram – Andy Frisella
• 75 Hard
• Toxic Person Proof
• @SarahKRamsey – Facebook
• Finding Love and Success After a Toxic Relationship – Facebook
• www.SarahKRamsey.com

About Sarah K. Ramsey