How Introverted Leaders Can Quiet the 2 A.M. Anxiety Loop with Cara Lai

Have you ever been awake at two in the morning, your heart is pounding, the voice in your head is questioning, am I really cut out for this? Am I cut out to lead? And for many introverts, this anxiety isn’t a single moment. It’s a constant loop. And the more you try to control that voice, which you know isn’t right, the tighter it grips. My guest today spent years white-knuckling her own anxiety before she discovered that the way through this isn’t through control at all. It’s meeting that fear with kindness and compassion. Welcome to The Introverted Leader. It’s a podcast helping introverted leaders embrace your underrated quiet strengths so you can get promoted and start earning what you deserve. I’m Greg Weinger. I have over 25 years of leadership experience and yes, I am an introvert. My guest today is Carl Lee. She’s a meditation teacher who’s appeared on national shows like Dan Harris’ 10% Happier. And her work shows introverted leaders how to soothe that inner critic and lead from a much steadier place than most of us think is possible. One more thing. Before we start, I made a free master class covering the most important subjects that I cover on my show. It’s called Why Everything You’ve Been Told About Getting Ahead As An Introvert Is Wrong. It’s 30 minutes, no slides, no pitch. And it’s about three moments that decide whether you advance in your career or you stay where you are. Plus one practice you can put into place immediately. Get started at gweinger.com slash masterclass. That’s G-W-E-I-N-G-E-R slash masterclass. That’s one word. All right, let’s get into it. All right, Carl. Welcome to the conversation today. Hey, Greg. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me. Carl, I’m so happy to have you here. I’ve been listening to your talks on sub-stack and you’re simultaneously very, very soothing to listen to and funny as hell. And, you know, those are both qualities that I aspire to. So I really appreciate that. Oh, thanks, Greg. I didn’t realize that. That’s awesome to hear. Appreciate that. I think your show is awesome and needed. So I’m pretty psyched to be able to be part of it. Awesome. Some additional bit of introduction for the audience and why am I speaking to a meditation teacher. I personally have had a practice for about 30 years and in the mornings, I will sit from anywhere between 10 minutes to an hour or something like that, just depending on what’s going on in my life. And it’s been a necessary part of my life because part of my leadership journey is I’ve had quite a bit of anxiety and what comes and goes. And it’s been kind of in the background for a while for me. But ironically, this week, I had a certain flera. And so when I talk about panic, anxiety actually mean panicking. You know, it can get to a point where I’m awake in the middle of the night with my heart pounding. But I know from one of the things that my practices taught me is to bring as much acceptance into the feelings that are in that situation as possible. And really, for me, that’s the only thing that can pull me through that. Also, for people who maybe haven’t experienced a panic attack, the first time it happens to you, you can feel like you’re dying. The first time that happened to me, I went to the ER with my wife. They were like, what’s happening to me? This feels very weird. But something that extreme can be fully accepted. And this week was kind of a reminder to me for that. So I just wanted to anchor in that about what we’re going to talk about, what Kara does for a living is that powerful. Wow. Thanks for sharing that, Greg. But I just really appreciate you naming that. Thank you. And so now I’ll kick off with my standard question for my audience, which is, do you consider yourself an introvert, extrovert, or other? Yeah, I had to read like Carl Jung’s definition of introversion and extroversion just about half an hour ago, just to make sure that I was really clear about what that meant. And I do think I’m an introvert by that paradigm. I like being in social situations, but it’s not where I want to live. And I definitely feel like I get most of my nourishment from quiet time and non-social time. And I love both of the things. And I know it’s kind of like a, it’s a continuum. And sometimes I feel more extroverted than I do introverted. But I think most of the time I default to introversion. Yeah. Well, you’re in good company here. I agree. It does feel like it’s a continuum and it fluctuates and you can perform differently in different situations. I appreciate Carl Jung’s definition quite a bit. And so that was a very accurate response. Thank you for that. Good. I’m glad I brushed up. Yeah. So maybe we could start with talking about some of your earlier work. You started out in activism. Maybe talk about that earlier journey and how your introversion played into that. It sort of came to me over the course of a few meditation retreats where, especially those early ones for me, where what I was doing was I was really getting in touch with my own fear around climate change and my own kind of punishing of myself that I was doing. Because I was sort of punishing myself by making myself take cold showers and riding my bicycle everywhere. And there was this denial of my desire to be comfortable that I felt like that’s what we need to do as a species. We just need to deny ourselves of our wish to be comfortable and then we won’t have this problem of climate change. And that wasn’t a tenable solution. And so I actually had to get in touch with the part of me that was just a simple animal that wanted to be okay and comfortable and safe and soothe that part. And that really helped me see that it’s just all about fear. Fear is what creates all of the greed that contributes to climate change. We’re afraid of not having enough. We’re afraid of not being comfortable. And the solution isn’t to get more and have more, nor is it to deprive ourselves, but it’s actually just to be with the fear. And so over the course of a couple retreats and my own daily practice, just sitting with that fear and tending to it with kind attention was so soothing. And it didn’t mean that there was a clear answer about what was going to happen next or whether or not the problem of climate change was going to get better. But it did mean that in this moment, I felt much more available to care and not be driven from a place of fear, which is what I had been doing. I was going about approaching the problem from this place of, oh, shit, the world is going to end. And that’s actually only contributes to the problem, because it’s just more fear. And the way to change it is a total paradigm shift where we’re approaching it not from a place of fear, but from a place of compassion. And there was a real shift in my mind about that when I could feel the impact that compassion was having on me. And then transpose that into, wow, what if we could bring this into the world? And as the fear fell away from me, I had a lot of, you know, speaking of anxiety, I had a lot of social anxiety when I came into my meditation practice. And there was a real transformation for me around that as a result of practicing. There was a real shift of just feeling like I was worthy and I was enough. And maybe part of the social anxiety for me was just being someone who was a quiet introvert in a world of extroverts and not feeling like I really belonged. At least, you know, I don’t know if it’s a world of extroverts, but it’s a culture that’s oriented around extroversion. And I was always kind of tentative about whether or not I fit into that. Or if I had to somehow morph myself or change who I was to look like I fit in. And then meditation helped me to really just open to who I was and to feel comfortable and confident in that. And so that really shifted for me too. And so just owning who I was and the way that I wanted to move about the world was a huge factor of transformation for me from my practice. Being in your own fear and the compassion for yourself and recognizing that in yourself, you really couldn’t help other people through that or recognize that. You couldn’t be an agent of change of that without having recognized that in yourself. Right, exactly. You came around to you’re a teacher, teachers need to be leaders, and then you have more of a platform as well. And tell me, how did you get to a place of comfort where you kind of transformed and all these things are easy or standing up in front of 800 people? Can that be a challenge for you? Well, okay, I don’t stand up in front of 800 people on a regular basis, but that is a thing that I did that I talked to you about in our interview. There was a time in my life actually when I was working in outdoor education where I was talking to groups of people all the time. It was kids and large groups of kids and yelling because that’s the only way you can talk to a big crowd of kids. And also speaking of belonging, finding a real sense of belonging in the world of outdoor education and the community that’s formed there and helping each other and feeling like it really express parts of myself that were hidden. And so over the course of time of being in that world, I just had my people and I felt accepted and I felt more able to be more and more myself and express myself more and more. I’m curious, do you have any stage fright at this point, like if you would get it up in front of the group? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I kind of had stage fright at this very moment, Greg. Yeah. I mean, yeah, every time I do a podcast or I do a lot of public speaking and I give talks to rooms full of people who are sitting on meditation retreats and who are listening extremely intently because all they’ve been doing all day has been in quiet, attentive meditation. And so when I say anything, it’s very open to scrutiny. So I’m really used to doing it and it still is nerve wracking, but it’s gotten easier for sure. And I actually like public speaking a lot. And it’s, I’m not definitely afraid of it and I’ve never really was. I think I, there’s a part of me that really gets a high off of it actually. And I feel when I do it that I can actually get into some kind of flow state where I’m channeling some, that some transmission that the audience is receptive to. And that feels very, very aligned somehow with my purpose in the world. Yeah, that’s been my experience too. So I do have to ask about, because I just love the title so much, meditating your face off. Could you describe what that is? That’s a class that I offer. It’s a drop in meditation class that I offered that I just playfully titled, meditate your face off. But I think the origin story of that title is, I sometimes I talk about letting your face fall off when you meditate because a lot of us, I don’t think everyone, but maybe particularly introverts find ourselves composing our face in a certain way to present our face to the world. Because it serves as some kind of barrier between what’s happening inside and what’s happening outside. It’s a protection that we have so that we can keep ourselves a little bit hidden. So we plaster some expression on our face of like, I’m happy, please don’t pay more attention to me. And so it was actually quite a relief for me to be on a silent meditation retreat where the instruction is to not make eye contact with other people so that people can have their own sense of privacy and not having to be social. Feeling a deep muscular release of my face just melting and not realizing that I had been holding my face in a certain expression for a very long time, who knows how long. And then it being almost painful to let go of it, kind of like you’ve been gripping something for a really long time, and then you finally let go. And your hand kind of hurts, it was like that, but with my face. And it was such a relief to just let that drain away. And so that kind of stuck with me. And I think it’s something that introverts do, but probably everyone to some degree has some barrier like that because we don’t feel ready to share all our vulnerabilities with the world. And so there’s guardedness up. And so the invitation when I teach is to let some of your guard down or begin to let some of it down and see, maybe it’s okay to just feel this and for other people even to know that you’re feeling this. And just like you shared something that was pretty tender at the beginning of this podcast. And that was really cool. I don’t feel like that happens very often. But if it happened more often, then we would be able to connect more easily than we do. Because you doing that gave me permission to share my own vulnerabilities. And that’s what it does when we are real with other people is we invite them into that same shared real authentic space. And we kind of say it’s okay to bring whatever you’re bringing. Yeah. And I think that’s your opportunity as a leader. And if you can create that safe space for your team and the people you encounter and even for senior leaders, you can do that for your entire company or community leader out in the community. There’s kind of a paradox there because that vulnerability feels, I mean, it feels wonderful. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s scary. Now, you know, it’s scary to kind of bring, bring that out. But it’s so powerful. And it really allows other people to be themselves and allows other people to bring the best aspects of themselves into that situation and to their workplace, that kind of thing. So that’s kind of the thing. And I still do, I’m still a leader. I still do that in my, my day job. And that’s kind of what I’m trying to do is just see how far I can push that. Yeah. Yeah, I really like that. Because it, what that makes me think about is how many problems in the world are the result of people not being willing or feeling safe enough to be vulnerable. You know, and, you know, people in power, instead of naming what their fear is or or what, what’s at the heart of the decisions that they’re making. And actually it’s, what’s usually going on is they’re afraid or they feel insecure or they want people to like them or they, they don’t feel like there’s, they have enough. Instead of naming that and seeking the direct support that that needs, it’s just, there’s like an acting out of it. That’s really unhealthy. And trying to get your needs met externally can cause a lot of harm. And so if people in leadership positions are willing to, first of all, see the benefit of and then are willing to begin to open the door to vulnerability. It actually, you know, we think that it’s going to detract from one’s power, but it actually only adds to it. It actually just generates real power instead of a kind of false power, the power of having control over what’s around you and the people around you. That’s not real power. It’s not actually true power. True power is much more subtle than that. And it’s more about awareness of what’s going on inside and operating out of a healthier heart and mind state. That’s right. I think it’s not an actual paradox. I mean, it’s a perceived paradox. Like because we’re so used to this paradigm of control, you know, or the illusion of control as what power is. And so it really requires that different definition of power that’s driving internally. Yeah. And seeing that control, it’s not that we don’t have any control, but what we have control over is just much more limited or recognizing what our real scope of control is. And that has, that’s more subtle. It’s just more subtle than controlling other people and, you know, large amounts of money. I want to explore a little bit what this looks like and this idea of where this power comes from, the strength. We talk about it as stillness. You develop stillness and then you can do that in your meditation practice. But I’ve always been very interested in taking that out into the world. Maybe it’s really about listening and, you know, how do you listen in a way that can change the situation? As a leader, what are you bringing into a situation that makes a difference, makes it safe for people? Yeah. I think we talked about one of the things and I can’t talk enough about this, but we talked about one of them already, which is vulnerability. To listen, one has to be open and vulnerable. One has to be available to let something in. And so me bringing my own authenticity and my own sense of not knowing, like, oh, I actually don’t have an answer. And when I’m listening to a student or when I’m up in front of a group of people and not having a plan or not knowing what I’m going to say next, there’s like a quality of receptivity there that is so helpful in being able to speak from a different place that’s not just my own ego. And to really attune to what’s needed and to receive something coming in through me to the group or to the person. And I feel like that’s maybe considered kind of woo to some people, but it’s what I do. That’s like what I do all the time. And it feels very right. And it feels much better than believing that I am the one who has all the answers and that I have them in advance. And that, you know, having a canned answer to something that is really, really flat and boring for me. And it’s more intense and maybe scary, but it’s much more responsive and attuned if I can come into something not knowing and speak from that place or channel something from that place. And that’s actually what a lot of meditation practice leads us to is just this realization that we don’t really know anything. All we really know is this moment of sensation and sound and thought, but anything beyond that is just imaginary. And so when I keep finding that place of listening and attuning to this moment, it seems that all the answers come through. I’m thinking about leadership situations where I’ve been in crisis situations where in a company, the CEO was deposed in some scandal and some guy had to get up and finance guy wasn’t used to being up in front. And he was just very human in this situation. And he listened to people. They read these town hall things and he described what he knew, what he didn’t know. And he was vulnerably shared, you know, how he felt about it. And I think that you could have approached that situation completely differently. You could have had canned answers, speeches and not be attuned to the people, the humans asking questions in that situation. And it would have been completely different. What happened is this guy, that wasn’t his day job, he didn’t do that. Like it really turned that situation around and the company went on and it became successful. And he was a quiet guy also. One of the things we talked about was you drew the distinction between yin energy and yang energy and as it relates to organizations or the way people behave. Could you talk a little bit more about that? Yeah, I think a lot about things in terms of yin and yang and there’s these two energetic forces in the world. And the yang one is much more active and probing and prodding and manipulating things and not in a bad way, it’s just an energy. It could be good or bad. And then yin is more listening and receptive and feeling and sometimes I use a hand as a metaphor because a hand is a way that I can demonstrate the presence of both of those energies, you know, like the hand can push and prod and move things around and poke and but it can also feel and just hold and understand just through touch. And actually those two energies can’t exist without each other. You know, you can’t move things around if you can’t feel them and you can’t really feel something without messing with it a combination of yin and yang as a part of what’s built into our beings. And the tendency I think in our culture and in the world maybe is to value yang energy more than yin. This outward doing is better than inward receiving, reflecting, feeling. And so there’s some pressure, I think, to dismiss the part of ourselves that wants to just be and listen and hold and not do. And the pressure is to be someone who does stuff a lot, you know, like makes active change in their lives and in the world. And it’s really problematic, I think, for that to be the way it is because both energies are really valuable. And if we’re only doing and we’re not receiving, then all of our doing comes from this place that is not informed or responsive to what’s needed in the moment. It’s just kind of blindly or ignorantly doing and not in touch with why or if it’s actually going to be beneficial and not tuning into the clear results of our actions or reflecting on them and just keeps the same momentum going of what often in the world is just more greed, aversion, and delusion to put it in a Buddhist way of framing things. So I want to help people, if they’re interested in adopting a contemplative practice of some kind, a meditation practice, maybe they don’t know where to start, where would you recommend them to go? Yeah, I guess I would say a couple of things. One, I started meditating just by doing eight minutes of meditation a day and it had a profound impact on my life. And eight minutes is kind of a random number that came from a book that I had read called Eight Minute Meditation. And it’s not a long time, but that doesn’t mean that’s the amount of time that everyone else has to try it for. You could be just like three minutes or four or like whatever feels doable for you. For some people, actually sitting and doing meditation has zero appeal or it feels like impossible. And so if that doesn’t feel interesting or doable for you, then my encouragement would be to pick something that you do every day and see if you can be fully present for it. And receive. So change from a mode of doing while you, for example, brush your teeth into a mode of receiving. Receive the sensations instead of what we usually do is some form of doing. And it’s not even usually doing the tooth brushing, it’s planning what we’re going to do after we brush our teeth. Just notice that and see if you can shift back into a receptive mode. And this would be the same instruction I would give if you’re sitting for eight minutes is see if you can shift out of doing and the mind and thinking mind is often just doing stuff. And whenever you notice that you’re in that mode of doing shift back into receiving the real time experience of the present moment, sensations, sounds, what’s happening right now and just stay with that in a receptive way. And then another way of approaching it that I find helpful is notice the times when you’re the most emotionally charged and let those be the places of your practice. Yeah, so something happens and you’re triggered or it doesn’t have to be super extreme. But maybe there’s you’re in the car and somebody cuts you off, or maybe you’re having the same fight that you always have with your partner or your coworker or your kid is like you’re just getting overwhelmed with childcare. That’s what’s probably going to happen to me later today. But see if in those moments, you can move out of the mode of doing and into the mode of receiving. Because usually we’re like, I got to do something to change how I’m feeling. I’m going to do something so that I don’t have to feel this anymore. But we don’t realize we’re doing that because we’ve kind of not even realized that we’re feeling anything, we’re just already doing something about it. And often it’s like, I’m going to change how you think or fact in order for me to feel better, which is not a great approach. And it often leads to a sense of helplessness and rage or fear or shame or something, another bad emotion. And this is a way of just checking in with, oh, well, actually, what am I feeling? What if I could just connect with that feeling for a little while and give it some space, let myself feel that, what is that feeling? Can I explore it with some curiosity and some kindness? And immediately there can be a shift just from that. And it might inform what we end up doing next. And so it’s not that you can’t do anything. But it’s just that we’re more informed. Yeah. And just for to expand on what is that receiving is that’s focusing in on your senses or just really trying to take in what’s going on rather than planning, yeah, the thinking, evaluating, whatever that is. So it’s widening the attention to be moving from being kind of stuck in thinking and doing and widening to feel what’s happening in your sensory world, your body sounds, what’s coming in through your eyes and just broadening everything. Actually, we could do right now. However, you are listening to me might be in some way that’s like, oh, like, okay, well, how am I going to respond to this? Because that’s what most of us do in a conversation. But what if we listen kind of with our whole body? And I could even maybe a little more tricky for me to do this. But while I talk, I can feel the sensations in my body. I can soften. And instead of like looking at you, I can receive the image with my eyes of you and let it into my eyes instead of kind of there’s like a weird grab thing that the eyes can do where you’re just like holding tension in your eyes as if they’re hands and just soften them and like let the image come in and let the sounds come into the ears. And I can hear the sound of my own voice. I can feel that there’s like a little bit of attention in my throat as I talk and there’s a desire to appear a certain way and say the right thing and make sure I sound good. And I can kind of hold all of that just really gently. You know, I have to I don’t have to be hyper aware of every single thing, but I can just hold that now in my awareness. And there’s a little bit of natural compassion that arises for this being that is just trying to do a good job. I’m trying to be good. I’m trying to show up while I want to be liked. And that now it gets to be included in what’s happening. And it’s vulnerable. But it’s connecting with that vulnerability in me that makes it much easier for me to connect with you or with anyone, even the people I might be fighting with if I’m having a fight with someone because I see the humanity in me, which makes it possible for me to see the humanity in you. That was really cool. We can just do that. And that’s the practice. And so yeah, so this doesn’t, I don’t know if you’d consider that mindfulness, but it is essentially the same thing or some very similar to what you’re doing in meditation, only that you’re doing that in relation in the world. Yeah, exactly. It can help, I think, to sit formally, but you don’t have to do it that way. And you don’t have to start that way if that doesn’t feel doable for you because it doesn’t always feel doable for everyone. Even if you’re an introvert, if you think you’re an introvert, it doesn’t always feel like the easiest place to start because it can be a lot to just sit and feel what you’re feeling at first. Yeah. And I think it can feel unsafe depending where you are. And that’s why it can be helpful to do that in a sitting situation. You’re protected. It’s okay to feel these things and go into all that. But ultimately, that’s not the goal to spend your life in a room meditating. You want to be in the world. And that’s where I think the thoughts that are coming in, that’s your habit that it feels like that’s protecting you because you’re coming up with the next thing and you’re ready to go, whether it’s to look better or defend yourself or whatever it is in the situation. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, when you recognize that you’re doing that, there can be this possibility that opens up of, what if I don’t have a plan? Will I be okay? If there’s just awkward silence after this, then I’ll just be with that feeling. And maybe that can be okay. So our capacity to be with ourselves starts to grow and grow. And then we can just start to be more comfortable no matter what’s happening. And actually, it’s from that place of not knowing that what actually wants to be said can come through, not just what I’m trying to say to fill the awkward space, but what I feel interested in saying or that I care about. And then more and more what comes out of my mouth actually is meaningful. Yeah. And this sounds like what you were doing when you were talking about earlier standing up in front of a group, not necessarily having a plan, not necessarily thinking, but letting things that you’re most interested in or seem most vital to automatically come up and say in that moment. Yeah. It’s taken some time and practice to get more and more to that place. But it feels like such an interesting and alive place to be. Yeah. And my bottom line here is folks, that’s also leadership. That’s what the best leadership looks like. Boom. Cara, this has been super fun. Super fun conversation. Yeah. It’s been really fun for me. This has been one of the most real interviews that I felt like I’ve been able to be a part of. So thanks for making that happen. I think a lot of it was to do with your own realness and vulnerability and the authenticity behind this whole podcast and also your way of approaching it. Yeah. Thank you. That’s a great compliment. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. I definitely want to give the audience a chance to could you share if they want to learn more about you and your work? Where should they go? Yeah. So one of the main places where I am active is Substack. I put out a Substack essay with a guided meditation every one to two weeks and most of it is completely free and it’s available to anyone. So that’s CaraLie, C-A-R-A-L-A-I dot Substack.com. And then I also have a website CaraLie.org and on the website I offer drop-in meditation classes such as Meditate Your Face Off. Those meet regularly and they’re also freely offered. You can also find my teaching schedule on my website where you can see where I’m teaching meditation retreats and other upcoming events. I teach them online retreats too. And then other podcast episodes that I’ve recorded are on that website as well. Excellent. Well, it’s very enjoyable to listen to your talks and I hope people really enjoyed our talk today. Yeah. Thanks again for having me. If you take one thing from Cara today, I hope it’s this, the anxiety loop that keeps introverted leaders up at 2 a.m. doesn’t shrink when you try to control it. The only way through is to meet that with compassion. It’s the whole practice. That’s takeaway number one. Number two is that vulnerability is true power. Cara made this point and I agree with it that the leaders who are able to admit what they don’t know and admit how they’re feeling, create the conditions for others to feel safe and to actually be at their best. This isn’t weakness. Admitting what you don’t know, admitting your feelings is strength. That’s true authority, true power. And number three, you don’t need an hour of meditation to be successful. Start with three minutes, five minutes. And if that doesn’t work for you, you can try just being totally focused on some task at hand, brushing your teeth, washing the dishes. You can get tremendous benefits from this just by attuning to your senses. If this content resonated with you, the best thing you can do now is to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. That way you don’t miss an episode and it helps other introverted leaders find this content. We need more of us introverted leaders. I’m Greg Weingar. Keep