My guest today is Christina Eanes and get this, she was an FBI agent and trained other agents. How cool is that?
Through more than fifteen years of public service with a California police department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Christina worked on an array of programs, including the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program and the FBI’s Leadership Development Program, where her teams helped train thousands of leaders.
From there—all before she was 40—she knew it was time to jump into entrepreneurship. In her leadership development and coaching company Christina inspires others to take responsibility for their success at work and home. Along with her team, she provides invaluable strategies that lead to better professional and personal relationships, improved communication skills, and, ultimately, increased productivity in accomplishing personal and organizational goals.
Which brings us to Escape rooms or games.
Really?
According to Christina, “Escape rooms help us see clearly how we create our own realities and how we experience life.”
She and her husband are pr0- escapeletes (pronounced escape-leets) with a 97% success rate. You def want her on your team when the zombies are approaching.
For those who don’t know what an escape room is, here’s a Wiki on them.
A good part of their success is setting an intention for the kind of experience they want to have. For them it’s always relationship first.
“When you walk in with relationship first, it really changes how you communicate with each other, the level of stress in the room and realizing that we're here to get through this together, it just creates more collaboration, too.”
It's great for emotional intelligence, too.
Like many of us having come through Covid, “nothing today is taken for granted” she told us.
And I’ve heard from other coaches that many more women are waking up to “I just realized that if this is all there is, this is not enough for me” or “this is not the way I want this to be.”
Have you experienced feelings like this? Dissatisfaction with something in your life?
When you are in that place there are plenty of new opportunity, a lot of excitement or enthusiasm. But I know that it can be scary when you don't know what to do or how to make change happen.
Christina’s latest book is:
The Secrets to Super Productivity
The secret to super productivity is all about managing your energy, not your time,
Here’s her 3 step system for productivity
1. Know yourself—know when your energetically the strongest
2. Know your "ECs" and your ECs are your energy consumers and energy creators.
3. Plan accordingly.
In her system she identifies 4 levels of energy
4. super productive, firing on all pistons
3. productive, getting stuff done just not bursting with energy
2. Meh, you can do things but not with great enthusiasm
1. Zombie mode, binge watching, lights are on, no one’s home
TL;DR -- know where you're at on any given day and be prepared to pivot.
CE: “A lot of people think that they can multitask. And they actually can. It's just their brain is switching back and forth constantly, which takes up more energy.”
And when energy management is the key to getting more done then maybe we should stop.
This is also true for willpower. We only have a certain amount each day and it is tied to the energy you get, the budget we’re given.
Living this way is not a one and done, it takes constant awareness.
Just like emotional intelligence. We must constantly manage our perceptions, our emotional intelligence, and our energy.
#adultingishard
Christina’s system gives us permission to practice self-care. It almost ensures we’ll do the work to find out how we protect our energy—the right food, water, good sleep, staying away from toxic people—if we want to be successful at it.
Like many of my listeners, Christina is experiencing the symptoms of peri-menopause. We agreed that hormones really drive everything. How she deals with unexpected hot flashes or other irritating symptoms is to ease up on her commitments and give herself some grace.
Did you know that the little three pound thing in our head, aka the brain, takes up 20 percent of our daily metabolic energy. The more breaks we can give it the better.
Who doesn’t love a pity party?
Pity parties are important but only if you limit them, as in, set a timer, wallow on the clock, feel what you want to feel and then get back to life.
CE’s final words of wisdom, “Keep going to be self-aware of your energy levels, your emotions, your perception, how that's getting in your way. And quit bleeping around and keep moving forward.”
Christina’s website
Quit Bleeping Around The Podcast
Secretive to Super Productivity On this page you can find a link to the book and the class
Life Is An Escape Room
Here you can find Christina’s recommended reading list
