SPEAKER_01 0:05

Dear listeners, you know, like we all talk about work-life balance. But work-life balance has become one of those phrases that almost makes people flinch. Like we have heard it so many times on posters and wellness emails that it started to feel like a kind of myth, right? And something everyone talks about and nobody actually has. I mean it's a it's a it's a it's a very great thing. Like we all talk about it, but some something when we check deeply, we see where is exactly work-life balance is. I cannot find it. So so yeah, and underneath the exhaustion is uh kind of quite a problem, I'd say. And a lot of us are not just out of balance, but we are out of clarity. Yeah, we are moving fast in every direction without ever stopping to ask, like, what we are actually moving towards too. Right? I believe a lot of you are just nodding your heads, so yeah, I'm with you. So today, today we are talking about how to find that clarity and how real balance definitely might follow from it. So, hey day listeners, welcome back to another powerful episode of Healthy Man Healthy Life. I'm your host, Ravik, and this is the podcast where we have honest conversations about what it actually takes to feel well and live fully. And today we are talking about clarity and the work-life balance, and at the same time, a practical framework that my guest uh created to help people actually get there, not just about a talk about it. And I I'll I can definitely assure you that by the end of the discussions, I hope that you all will walk away with something real that you can use it in your daily life. And my guest brings genuine practical wisdom to this. So please welcome my guest, Corey Jefferson. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for having me on your show and allowing me to share your space and talk to your listeners. Uh, I look forward to having a great conversation today.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Amazing, amazing. So, uh listeners, like before we get into the discussion, I'd be love to introduce you. So Corey has developed an approach that he calls uh the COPE method, C O P A COPE method, yeah. Built to help people find clarity in their lives and a healthier balance between work and everything else. So you can understand there are a lot of things to discuss today, so I'll not take much of time. Let's get started. So, Corey, like I I want to start with something with a misconception, like because I think work-life balance, like I was mentioning, work-life balance is one of the most misunderstood ideas out there, and people tend to picture it as a perfect 50-50 split, like equal hours, everything in kind of a neat proportion, and then feel like failures when life doesn't work that way. So, from your experience, what do people get most wrong about what balance actually means? What is it?

SPEAKER_00 3:15

So, in my experience, I think the thing that people get wrong a lot of the times is just like you said, they think it has to be perfect. They think I have to work an eight-hour workday, and then when I get home, I have to do this many hours of time with my family, and then I have to get this many hours of sleep. Life is never like that. Just from my military experience, I was averaging a 10 to 12 hour workday. I would come home and kind of look at my dogs and make sure they have what they needed, and then I would probably get maybe four or five hours of sleep. So, in high stress environments like that, it's very, very tough to have a good work-life balance. And in reality, work-life balance really just comes down to two words, in my opinion. And that is being intentionally selfish. In order to have a quote unquote perfect, even though I don't believe in the word perfect because nothing's perfect, in order to have a good work-life balance, you have to be intentionally selfish with your time. Meaning when you're not at work, you are not at work. That is perfect work-life balance. It like even if you only have two hours of your free time at night, those two hours, you do what you want to do. You pour back into yourself. You're intentionally selfish with your time. You're not checking emails, you're not, you know, planning for the next day because you should have done did that during the other eight hours you were at work or however long you were at work. This is your time. This is your time to refill your cup so that you can go pour into other people. So I think being intentionally selfish with your time allows you that adequate amount of space so that you can continue to pour back into yourself so that you can keep going. That to me is perfect work-life balance to me.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

That's that's a question. And when someone lets go of that perfect split idea, then what do you think what ships for them?

SPEAKER_00 5:21

I think once people let go of the idea and stopped stop trying to believe the lie that we've all been told, as far as, you know, you have to equally split your time. I feel like it just makes life more realistic and be more comfortable because you have realistic expectations. You know, sometimes perfect work-like balance is gonna be I just got home from a tough day, you know, me pouring into myself is me going to bed early. A lot of people feel like they have like I felt like this for the longest time when I was in the military. I felt like, okay, I worked hard all week. It's the weekend, I have to do something. A lot of the times, doing nothing is something. That's resetting, that's recharging your battery. A lot of people feel guilty because they put 40, 50 hours in during the week, and then on the weekend, they're too tired to do anything. No, don't feel guilty. That is the time for you to reset. You maybe you need it a day in the bed or a day to where you kind of just had a lazy day at home. I have those days quite frequently by choice and you know, inadvertently. And that's just what it is. Sometimes you just have to take that step back and just allow your body to get the proper rest. For, like I said, for a long time, I thought that, okay, I'm not at work. I have to enjoy my free time. And that to me caused a lot of sleep issues, especially when I was in the military, because I would be getting off work six, seven o'clock. And I'm like, okay, I owe myself at least six hours of free time. So I'm going to bed at like one, two in the morning, and I'm getting back up at five, six o'clock in the morning and kind of just repeating the process. After a while, that just takes its toll on your body, period, just physically. Not to include mentally, but physically, like your body just starts to just move and act very differently.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

True. And I have to say that. I mean, this is this is a really, really freeing frame because I think a lot of people listening they have been chasing a uh kind of chasing their version of balance that was never realistic and obviously beating themselves up for not hitting it. So yeah, definitely true. Yeah. And like at the same time, if you just go uh little deeper a little bit deeper, uh on the surface, like being out of balance looks like uh being overworked or too busy. You connect it to something very deeper, uh, the the clarity. So what do you think that is really going on beneath the surface when someone feels kind of constantly out of balance and pulled in every direction?

SPEAKER_00 8:14

So, in regard to that, in order for you to get the type of clarity that you need, first you need to address the obvious. A lot of people have the answer directly in front of their face. And like I said, we continue to lie to ourselves and ignore it. So once you address the obvious, you know, that's kind of like that instant gratification, that instant clarity. Within the cope method framework, it goes a little bit deeper than that. So part of clarity within the cope method framework is to be honest with yourself. That's like, regardless of the cope method framework or anything, I my personal philosophy is that you should never lie to yourself. You owe yourself absolute honesty 100% of the time. You can lie to other people, even though I still think you shouldn't, but you should never lie to yourself. You should never lie to yourself. So not only are you taking a step back and addressing the whole elephant, looking at the obvious and acknowledging that, you're also digging a little bit deeper and you're asking yourself those tough questions and you're honest with yourself. You are completely honest with yourself. A lot of the times when when we're faced with a situation and we just need clarity, you know, the answers are there. We just don't want to dig a little bit deeper and find it. We don't want to ask those questions because we're afraid of what the answer might be. And that's not necessarily a bad thing to be afraid of it, but at the same time, you have to be honest with yourself in order to get that clarity. Within those answers lies the the root cause of the problem. And that's the only way you can get to the root cause is if you continue to dig deep, continue to ask yourself those very challenging, thought-provoking questions, and you are honest with yourself. Correct.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Correct, definitely. And uh, how does a lack of clarity quietly drive that feeling of imbalance?

SPEAKER_00 10:12

So clarity, right, is the ability to see what's in front of you. So if you can't see what's in front of you, then it's kind of like you're just going through the motions. And I don't know about you. Imagine, imagine you're trying to walk through your house and all the lights are off. Unless you've lived there for like 10 years, you're gonna hit your toe, you're gonna hit bump your knee, you might fall down some stairs. Clarity is recognizing that it is dark and I need to figure out how to navigate my way through this darkness. The obvious would be turn on the light. That would be like that would be the obvious. Let me turn on the light, let me get that clarity, that that instant gratification, that instant clarity to help me kind of maneuver a little bit. And then once you start to dig a little bit deeper, it's like, okay, why was the light even off to begin with? It's daytime. Why are the windows down? Like you start asking yourself some of those questions and you get a deeper sense of clarity. Correct.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Correct, exactly. You talk about the daily life, right? That's where everything, everything lives. So for someone who is listening, who feels that the lack of clarity and balance, where does it usually show up first in their ordinary I mean in their daily life basically.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

So speaking from personal experience, my lack of clarity, it showed up in the bad decisions that I was just making on a day-to-day basis. So my personal philosophy is uh whenever someone makes a bad decision is usually guided by fear because you're afraid. You are afraid, so you make uh irrational decision. If you have clarity, uh you can clearly see what you should do. And it eliminates fear almost completely. Fear doesn't uh go away forever, but you can keep it at bay, you can keep it at day long enough to make the right choice. So circling back, uh it all comes down to people being afraid to, you know, to make the right decision. And when you have that clarity, you can you can clearly see what you should do and what you shouldn't do. We have that clarity, you are not acting out of fear. You are not letting fear guide your steps, you're not letting fear make your decisions. You're making your decisions, you're more in control of your life that way. I don't know about you, but I love being in control of my life. I used to call myself a perfectionist, meaning I wanted my hand in every single pot because I wanted as much control over my outcomes as possible. And clarity is one of the ways that you can kind of gauge how much control you can actually have in a situation.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Yeah. And another practical one, like for someone who notices those signs. So then what will be the one small thing that they could actually do that day to bring a bit of clarity back?

SPEAKER_00 13:12

So what I do on a day-to-day basis is the first the the the most obvious thing is to not lie to yourself. If you don't know what's going on, you have to admit that. Because that's the only way you can figure things out. If you continue to feed into the lie and you know, navigate blindly, you'll never get clarity. Second thing, deal with things as they come. That's a big one. A lot of the times we're blinded by emotions and other stressors and everything in between, and it just clouds our judgment, it clouds our vision because we're not dealing with it as it comes. We're we're we're compartmentalizing a lot of this stuff. I know I did that for the majority of my military career, and it worked for a little bit, but as with anything dealing with compartmentalization, the box is always too small. And that was a trickle-down effect, at least in my personal life. And, you know, it caused me to make a lot of irrational decisions because, you know, I was guided by fear. I didn't have clarity. I didn't, I couldn't see what was right in front of me. I couldn't see what was right or wrong. Like I was just very indecisive. So I was just following whatever wherever fear led, I followed. So people have to deal with things as they come. You have to deal with your feelings in real time. You have to. Because if you don't, it's going to be one of those things that's gonna cloud your judgment. It's gonna, it's gonna make clarity almost impossible. It's gonna make clarity feel like it's impossible.

(Cont.) Stop Chasing Work Life Balance And Start Getting Clear, with Corey Jefferson

SPEAKER_01 15:02

I love that it's small and doable, and because when you're overwhelmed, like fine balance is far too big to act on. But what you said is something a person can actually do in the middle of a busy day as well, right? So that is exactly the kind of step people can hold on to hold on to. So yeah, definitely. And and also I'd love you to walk us through like your framework because this is uh really, very important, I believe. And you created the cope method. So I uh and so if you can tell us like what the cope method is and how does it help someone find clarity and build real work-life balance.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

So for me, the cope method was created as a mechanism for me to grieve because I had just lost my sister uh last July and I was just struggling really, really bad. I actually slid into my first depressive episode, and then one day, you know, like I still had the stressors at work and you know, dealing with my own internal issues and turmoil, and then, you know, obligations at home. And everything was just starting to kind of mesh together, and I didn't really know exactly what I was doing. So one day, you know, I I frame it as God shined his light down on me, and I got this sense of this overwhelming sense of clarity in the regard of I needed to do something, like I needed to act fast. And that was like the first step. That was the obvious. The obvious thing was I needed to do something. Like I really needed to act fast. I needed to work on myself to get myself out of this hole because I was I was struggling. I was singing, I was singing fast. So it started there. And then it went from that to me trying to work through some of my personal issues in order to correct the life part of the work life balance. I had to correct myself. I had to pour back into myself first before I could go and attack the work part because the the personal life was affecting the work part. Usually it's the other way around. But for me, like the personal life was causing a lot of issues at work. So I shifted all my focus to that first. And the first thing I did was, you know, again, acknowledge the obvious. I'm depressed. Okay, why are you depressed? And then I kind of started to go through the cycle of telling myself that lie, lying to myself, not being honest with myself. And then I wasn't getting anywhere. So I'm like, okay, I owe myself absolute honesty. I have to be honest with myself. So I started asking myself those real thought-provoking questions, and I was candid with myself because I owed myself absolute honesty at that time. And I knew I wasn't gonna get anything out of it if I wasn't. So once I did that, I got to the root cause of my depression. And it was because, you know, I can't make up for lost time with my sister. That's exactly what it was. So that brings me to the Owen Cope method, which is ownership, owning the outcome. A lot of people want to control things that they can't control. And me being a quote unquote perfectionist, I was no different. So instead of focusing on the things that I couldn't control, I focused on the things that I could control. And I put all my energy and my time and my effort into those things. A few of the things that I control all, I could control almost automatically and immediately was my attitude, my outlook, the way I dealt with my emotions in real time, not compartmentalizing, actually dealing with emotions as they came so that I could be more free. So I wasn't carrying this huge weight, this unnecessary weight for gaze. So, and that takes me to the next part of the code method, which is the P, which stands for process or plan. I needed a plan for how I was gonna quote unquote get myself better, dig myself out of this trench or what have you. My plan, it was very simple. It just consisted of getting more sunlight because sun does a lot of great things for your body and just for your spirit in general. I changed my diet a lot. I started eating more fruits and vegetables, drinking more water, make sure I was hydrated, started exercising a little bit more. Now I also cut out alcohol for a large majority of that time because alcohol is a depressant and it wasn't making me feel any better. So that was part of my plan. And that leads us to the last part of the coat method, which is by far the easiest part of the coat method. You already have clarity. You've taken ownership of your outcomes, and you have a plan, you have a process for how you're gonna operate. The easiest part is to execute, you just do it. Just do it. You've already done all the hard work. A lot of people mess up in this framework or just in general, because they'll have clarity, they'll ask themselves those those tough questions, and then they'll take ownership of the outcomes that they can directly affect. And then, you know, they'll have this stellar plan or process for how they're gonna operate, and then they just don't operate. They just don't do anything. They just don't do anything. So I did that. I I did that and it worked. So I took that same framework, and again, like I said, my personal life caused a lot of issues with my professional life. So I took that same framework and I applied it to just how I interact with my team, how I lead my team, how I interact with my colleagues at work, how I interact with customers. Like I just used it as much as I possibly could. And the one overarching theme that I can share with the audience from utilizing the COPE method at work is it allows you to be more free. You have more freedom in your day because you understand exactly what you're doing. You're not putting energy into things that you can't control so you don't have undue stress, you don't have unnecessary stress, you're not carrying around weight that you shouldn't have to carry in the first place. You're planning more, which means your days are more structured, which allows more freedom on the back end and the front end. And then you're actually doing all the things that you said you would do in your plan. Which makes your day easier, it makes it easier to operate, it makes it easier to lead. It just makes the workday fun. Like I used to have a problem sleeping because my mind would just be running so much. Now I have a problem sleeping because I'm just so excited to get up and start the day. Because I know exactly what it's gonna hold, because I cope during the day. I know exactly how my day is gonna go because I cope.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Exactly. Exactly. And also like for the pet person like who hears that and thinks that I want this, but I don't even know where to begin. Then and where do they can start with it?

SPEAKER_00 22:15

So I would say to that person, the first thing you have to do is you have to battle fear. That is the first thing, because that is a fear-driven response. That is not that person talking, that is fear. So once you tackle fear and you understand that you have to control fear, fear doesn't make your decisions, then you start to go down that hole of trying to find true clarity. And you do that just by, again, you start slow, you just address the obvious. A lot of the times the answer is right there, and we don't want to look ourselves in the face and acknowledge it. Acknowledge the obvious. Once you acknowledge the obvious, a lot of the times it's something deeper than that. So that's when you start digging deep. But you can't get to any of those other steps if you do not take care of fear first. You should not be afraid to try this. You shouldn't be afraid to to to put one foot in front of the other. You should never let fear get in the way of progress. A lot of people want a lot of things, but they'll have nothing because they are scared. They won't even try. Do not let that be you.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

Exactly. Exactly true. So also I mean this is this is what nobody really talks about it. That the setbacks. The weak the old uh patterns or the chaos returns, the busy seasons that close everything off, the moment someone feels like they have lost all the balance and clarity they have filled. Because this is not a straight line. So how do you help someone stay steady and kind to themselves? Like when they slip back into the old patterns.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

So a lot of people tend to shift one way or the other because of one thing. And that thing is they feel like they either haven't done enough or they feel like they've done way too much. So when people tend to trend in the opposite direction of work, as far as like just having a more life balance and not really caring about work, they feel like, oh, I've done it all. I don't I don't have to do anything else. I don't have to improve on anything. On the opposite end of the spectrum, people that slip more into working more and putting themselves first less, they still feel like they have not done enough. To combat that, two things actually. To combat that, you have to start measuring your success backwards. Cause a lot of the times we are too busy looking forward. We don't look backwards to see what we've already accomplished. The second thing is you have to write down your wins. Like you have to write down those small victories. Those are the things that are going to keep you motivated. Not only in, you know, your professional life, but also in your personal life. Like I take time out of my day every single day to write down three to five things that I accomplished at work and three to five things that I accomplished just personally for myself. And that helps me keep motive, that helps me keep myself motivated. If I look at my list and I have seven things that I accomplished for work that day, and I have two things that I did for myself, I'm like, okay, tomorrow I need to pour a little bit more into myself. It's kind of like that quick spot check that allows you to see which way the tide is shifting. So to sum everything up, always measure backwards. Don't look forward, measure backwards. And two, count your wins. Appreciate the small victories.

SPEAKER_01 26:04

Exactly. Excellent, next roll. And um, what would you say to someone who's completely out of balance right now and feels like they are just following it all?

SPEAKER_00 26:15

I will say to that person, first off, take a breath. Secondly, very important. Secondly, I would want that person to understand that no one has it completely together. No one. Like I created this framework, this method, and I still am constantly battling a lot of different things. And that's just life. Life is gonna throw curveballs at you. No one's gonna have it together 100% of the time. Most people don't even have it together 80% of the time. 50% is even a high number. Most people aren't together. Like they just don't have all the tools to put everything together all the time. And that's okay. No one expects you to. So I would say the first thing you have to do after taking that breath and realizing that no one has it all together is give yourself some grace. Give yourself some grace. Give your like legit give yourself some grace. I'll I'll I'll share a quick example here. I was attending this conference and I was running late. I was running really, really late. And I just started to kind of deep dive down this rabbit hole, and I'm like, man, like, oh, I don't want to be late. Why didn't I set my alarm like 30 minutes earlier? Blah, blah, blah. Going down the rabbit hole. Then I thought to myself, I'm like, okay, let's say if I was in that room and someone else walked in late, would I be mad? No. I would give them grace. And then I thought to myself, I'm like, then why am I not giving myself grace? Why not? I deserve it too, right? So I think people have to start giving themselves grace. Sometimes we judge a lot of things just wrong. A lot of times we measure a lot of things by the world's standards and not our own personal standards. And that's incorrect. Success to you looks very different than what success to me looks like. Like I could think sending out free emails and, you know, maybe listening in on a meeting is a productive day. Somebody else uh will think about it as like, oh, that's just, you know, my normal weekend. Like I that that's nothing. Like I said, success looks differently depending on the lens you're looking out of. So you can't be too, you can't, you can't really sway too much one way. You have to be able to give yourself that grace. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

True. So if you have to give one advice today, what that can be.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

The biggest piece of advice that I can give anyone is to not let fear get in the way of your progress. Like I said earlier, a lot of people want to do a lot of things, but they'll do nothing and they'll have nothing because they're too afraid to take the first step. So what if you fail? Failure is part of the process. It is. People fail every day. But it only takes one win. It only takes one win. It only takes one win. Do not let fear guide you. Do not let fear get in the way of your progress. You control your own outcomes, you make your own decisions. Do not let fear make a decision for you today. Wake up every single day and fight fear. It's not gonna go away. Yeah, but you can fight it daily.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Very true. Yeah, exactly. I mean, see how how these things are very important, right? And I believe people who are listening, they're definitely feeling it and they can actually relate with what is happening with them and what they should follow. So that is a very great part about it, yeah. So exactly. And it's really, really great having a conversation with you. And if listeners want to connect with you, what will be the great connection?

SPEAKER_00 30:12

So uh if listeners want to connect with me personally, you can follow my company's uh expage, and that is at Esther Media Group and Group is spelled GRP. Again, that is at Esther Media Group and Group is built GRP. Also, you can head over to our our company website. We have a lot of good resources and information on there. And that is gonna be estermedia group.org. Again, that is Esther Media Group.org. Perfect, perfect, lovely.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

So, dear listeners, what I'll do is I'll put all the links, details, everything into the show notes for your easy reference. And with this, definitely, I have to say, Corey, like thank you so much for this. Like giving people an actual practical method instead of just the usual vague and vague advice about the balances exactly with I mean what so many people actually need, right? So, and then for everyone who is listening, if your life has felt out balance lately, then here's one small step. Definitely I would suggest that before you try to recognize your whole schedule, just pause and get clear on just one thing. What actually matters most to you right now, right? And let that answer guide one decision this week. So clarity first, and the balance tends to follow for sure. So I'll see you in the next episode in Hendrick in the light. Till then, be happy and keep spiling. Thanks so much.