From High-Functioning Anxiety To Intuitive Leadership - Sara Byers : 179

What if the life you’re chasing can’t be caught because it’s already inside you?

In this episode, we sit down with Sara Byers, CEO, intuitive strategist, poet, and leader of her family’s business, Leonardo’s Pizza, for a heartfelt conversation about success, anxiety, and coming home to yourself. Sara also chairs multiple corporate and nonprofit boards and is the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from Champlain College.

She shares how dropping out of college cracked her perfect façade, how a 70% pay cut led her to unexpected purpose, and how an unexpected song the night her stepfather passed reshaped her understanding of connection. We explore high-functioning anxiety, public achievement and private collapse, becoming Reiki certified, receiving over 3,500 poems, and bringing grounded intuition into boardrooms and governance spaces.

This isn’t about escaping reality; it’s about leading with presence. About learning to distinguish fear from inner guidance. About redefining success by how fully you show up.

If you’ve ever felt like an imposter or reached a milestone only to feel empty, this conversation offers practical wisdom, honest stories, and a new way forward.

Listen, share with someone who needs permission to slow down, and if it resonates, leave a review to help others discover the show. 

https://sarasbyers.com/

Transcript

DanielaSm 0:00

Hi, I'm Daniela. What if the light you're tasting can be caught? Because it's already inside you. What happens when achievement looks perfect on the outside, but something deeper is quietly asking for your attention? What if the breakdown you feared? It's actually the doorway back to yourself.

Sara Byers 0:21

If you're holding onto a brick and you feel like you're like a brick stuck, it's like let's chip away a piece or let's crack it open to let some light in, to let the path illuminate. Like it was insatiable. I just kept needing more and more and more because it's like we start off at one space and then we travel around this entire circle almost to land at perhaps the space that we started from. It has a sense of agency about making choices that are right for her that I'm not sure I did. I felt I had to go along with everything.

DanielaSm 0:55

My guest is Sara Byers, CEO of her family business, Leonardo's pizza, board chair, intuitive strategist, podcaster, and poet. She shares a powerful conversation about high-functioning anxiety, achievement, and redefining success. Let's enjoy her story. Welcome, Sarah, to the show. I'm super excited that you're here because there's a connection since we met. Doesn't always happen. So I am really, really happy. Thank you for being here.

Sara Byers 1:24

Oh, I am so excited. It feels like I've been so enthusiastic about being here. So it's just the time has finally come and I feel the exact same way about you. Isn't it amazing when that happens?

Childhood Joy And The Lost Self

DanielaSm 1:35

I know, I know, I love that.

Sara Byers 1:38

Why you want to share your story? You know, I think I want to share my story because I think stories are everything. You know, I think stories, interestingly, are how we see ourselves. And as you and I talk about sort of our connection, it was started because of us sharing stories with each other. And so for me, the more all of us uh feel comfortable enough, vulnerable enough, and I guess self-assured enough to share who we are, the better our world is going to be because we all have something to share with each other.

DanielaSm 2:13

Yes. Yeah. As you're talking, the sun comes down and up and it illuminates you like so mystical.

Sara Byers 2:21

Thank you for seeing and I want to just block it out. Isn't that awful? I'm like, oh gosh. But thank you. It's here in I'm in Vermont. I think we're the second most cloudy place in the United States. So when we do have sun, it's actually a pretty exciting day. So Daniela, I think the sun is for you.

DanielaSm 2:39

Thank you. Yes. You know, in Vancouver, it rains a lot too. So every time we have a sunny day, we we very have to be very grateful. When does your story start?

Sara Byers 2:50

You know, I think my story starts, as so many of us, at a very early age. Um, and so mine probably starts when I'm three and four. And I am so joyful. Like I am so happy. We have tape recorder tapes of me with a microphone, just talking, talking to myself, talking to anyone, just so happy sharing everything that comes into my mind and exactly who I am. That's really where the story starts. For so many of us, the story is like a circle. It's like we start off at one space and then we travel around this entire circle almost to land at perhaps the space that we started from. So for me, that is what that is really lodged in my mind as the most beautiful space. Do you hear those tapes? Yeah. Oh, oh, I have them. Yes. And it is just, it's unbridled. It's sort of unencumbered. It has no worry about uh who's around me, uh, what I sound like. It is literally just the essence of me joyously and boundlessly moving out and being disseminated into the world. And at the end of the day, for me, that is what each and every one of us is here to do. That's a sort of our journey is to find a space where we can without bounds be our true selves and our true spirit. But gosh, the stories along the way make it a little bit hard. But yeah, it's it's beautiful. And I I'm so fortunate that I have touched and remembered that space that we were able to keep those so that I can reconnect with that self because now I see that I think I was always searching for her. So I am now 53 years old. I think I continue to search for her and have for the last 50 years, but I'm getting much closer than I ever was.

DanielaSm 4:58

You know, I always thought that the essence mostly, I mean, I'm sure of course the essence is when we're three, but between nine and ten is when you know what you want or how you wear, and then somehow you you lose it. Some people I never thought about three, but I know five and six, how I was. I was very coquette, charming. I I was happy and yeah, very careless. It's true. I I see those pictures, and and I also think how beautiful and how fun I was having. I was having other fun beautiful. So going back to you, going back to you. So what happened? What happened then?

Anxiety, Perfection, And Dropping Out

Sara Byers 5:36

Okay. So I had some more challenging parts in life, just like we all do. For me, you know, my parents got divorced. That was a little difficult. My sister had a hard time. She's very open about it, but she suffered with substance use disorder for about 35 years. And so I developed this idea that I really had to be, I had to be perfect. Like I had to do everything absolutely right. My parents were having a hard time. My sister was having a hard time. I needed to be the strong one. I needed to be the responsible one. I needed to be the one that helped like lift us out of this space. I turned, turned 18. It was time for me to go off to school. And I went off to school, came face to face with a crippling anxiety. I didn't know it then, though. I thought I was just failing. Like I could not get myself to go to class eventually. I would get so stressed out about class, about finding the class on the first day, that I ended up dropping out of college. At that moment, it shattered everything that I thought that I was, because in high school I was National Honor Society and I'd represented my state in Washington, D.C., you know, and then all of a sudden I have such anxiety that I can't really function in life. Thankfully, the only thing that I seemed to be able to do was work. So I left school and I started working for uh the Gap and Banana Republic around the country for about 12 years. It was amazing. I learned so much. I was still pretty anxious. I didn't do a tremendous amount outside of life, but I was very successful. And I started to move around the country. I moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. Then I moved to uh Miami, Florida, then Charlotte, North Carolina, where I met my husband. So you were a manager in a yes, I would oversee stores and I was receiving leadership awards, and I just kept on moving up and forward. Really stressed though, really anxious under it all. No one really saw that on the day on the day-to-day. And it's interesting. I've heard now the term high-functioning anxiety in terms of their outer world and their work world. Everything looks normal, but then they literally crumble when they're at home. And that was me. But in Charlotte, North Carolina, I met who would soon to be my husband. I was visiting home one summer and I visited home every summer. I got to the airport to fly back to Charlotte, North Carolina, and I out of nowhere just started crying because I felt like I wanted to move home. And I should say I never ever imagined that I would want to be back here because it was the source of so much hard times, my family, my my, you know, college experience, et cetera. But I felt it. It was the first time I'd felt something. Like I felt it deep. And it made no sense. I, the gap I'd gotten to a certain level. I couldn't, there was nothing available here in my in my state of Vermont that would accommodate the role that I had. But my father had a pizza business. So I called him and I asked him if I could possibly join the business. And he said, you know, Sarah, you've moved around the country, you've done this for 12 years, you run, you have hundreds of employees under you, um, stock options, the whole bit. But if you come back here, you're not going to have any title. You're gonna start at the bottom. It was the hardest decision I had ever made, certainly at that time, but I felt it so deeply that I took a 70% pay cut and moved back home to Vermont.

DanielaSm 9:20

What happened to the boyfriend? He came with me. Okay, okay.

Sara Byers 9:25

He came with me. He is the most like chill human being. So he's like, sure, we'll go. Like, yeah. So he came with me. Uh, I end up joining the family business, which is hard at first. Anyone who's in a family business, I'm the second generation with my dad, and I've been out on my own, and I think I know everything. He thinks he knows everything, and together that means no one knows anything. It was literally the best decision I ever made in my life. Coming back and coming face to face with all the things that I'd built up as being so wrong about me. I built up these ideas that I was a failure here and that everyone perceived me that way. And coming face to face with it was the best thing I could have done. I continued to push myself. But nobody thought that you were a failure. It was in your head. See, that's such a tough question. Because do I still think that no one thought that? That's hard for me. You know, did my parents think that I failed when I dropped out of college? Probably. Now do they? Probably not. Because I have gotten beyond. But I still have those pieces. Like they're they are still there. They're like, they're much quieter, but they're still there that those moments were not what everyone had expected them to be, or not what people had expected from me. I came back and I just started to take opportunities. I would, you know, if there was a leadership program happening, I would push myself to do it. I'm like, you know, do they want uh someone who runs pizza stores? Like, I don't know, but I'm doing it. And I just kept pushing myself. I was offered board positions, I took them. I then started to give speeches, became, in essence, a community leader. It's like shocking to me when you look at where I was. Yeah.

DanielaSm 11:11

But wait, wait, wait. So you started to work in a pizza and you didn't know. I mean, besides eating it, do you know anything about pizza? No.

Sara Byers 11:18

I did not.

DanielaSm 11:19

So you started as a what? What did your father gave me?

Coming Home To The Family Business

Sara Byers 11:21

Oh, thank you. Yes. I I mean, I started like learning how to make pizza because as my father said, I didn't know how to boil water at that time. So I like literally learned how to make pizza, but I understood business. I I made myself what I wanted it myself to be. I I took on the leadership that I knew that I wanted to have. It was hard because as someone who's coming in with no title, you're the owner's daughter. People are like, what are you doing here? What are you? And it was really hard for me because I'm like, I'm working just like all of you. When you almost take on the role and mantra of leader within yourself, it becomes that is what happened. And it and it doesn't mean I did it alongside other people because I love, I just love working with people and all of us sort of moving towards the same goal. So then my father took more and more of a step away. My boyfriend, soon-to-be husband, joined the business. And my husband and I essentially ran it for 20 years. My husband was the operations. We have three locations, three locations, two in Vermont, one in the state of Maine. And I got to be sort of community envision, you know, how do we want to make sure that this business does good in the community and that it's really serving a purpose beyond itself? All of that purpose really started to help me move away from those stories that I'd always told myself. Because I think, you know, you asked me a tough question, which I love, you know, were those stories of failure real? I don't know. I mean, I think they were, I think they were definitely real to me. And I had to get to a space where I didn't necessarily think they weren't real, but I didn't care because all of the other stuff was so much more important. But there's sometimes a cost to running as fast as I was. I almost feel like my anxiety was chasing me and I was like running ahead as fast as I could, racking up accomplishment after accomplishment. Um, in 2015, I got a call asking me to give a commencement speech at a college, and they told me they would be giving me an honorary degree. That was um one of the most important moments of my life because that idea that I wasn't smart because I hadn't finished college had stuck with me for a long, long time. So I felt like I was in the community, but I was kind of an imposter. Like no one really knew that I was not capable. So that was that was a big moment for me. But those moments were fleeting. I would, I would do them. I would go up and give the commencement speech, I would get the honorary degree, and then I'd like revel in it for a couple of days and then be like, okay, I need something else. Like it was insatiable. I just kept needing more and more and more because the feelings that I had of unworthiness were always there. It took a pretty significant moment that changed my entire world uh in 2020 to realize that I needed to stop. It was interesting. In 2019, a sister of mercy, someone who was a leader in our community, but I didn't know her very well. But I would see her a couple times a year and we would talk for two minutes. But she called me one day and she said, I need to speak with you. It is urgent. And I'm like, oh my gosh, like this uh, you know, a nun is calling me. I don't know what's going on. And she said, You have been coming up, coming up in my prayers for the last two months, and I just thought that you needed extra blessings. But all of a sudden, you're coming up morning, noon, and night. And I feel the need to ask you, is there something in your life that you're not paying attention to? And I was like, I don't know. I'm just like, I'm busy, but I'm good. You know, people would always say to me, because I was the mother of a, you know, young child or running a business, I would think I was on eight boards at the time. People would be like, How do you do all the things you do? And I'm like, I don't know, I just do. And so I didn't know what she was talking about. Six months later, my stepfather, who had Alzheimer's for 12 years, he was a lawyer. He and I had not tension, but but just I wanted to be a lawyer for much of my life. And so there was just this thing between us because he was so brilliant. But when he had when he got Alzheimer's, that started to chip away. And I connected with him on a level I've never connected with another person or hadn't up until then. And I would feel him. So I when I was in his presence, I would feel him. I would be sitting in my office and feel this magnetic pull that I was supposed to go over to his house and see him. And one day I felt that pull went over, and it was actually the last day he would be in that house before he was moved into hospice. And he went to hospice because he was dying. My mom was there all the time, and I was driving back and forth about 20 minutes, listening to the instrumental from the Titanic movie back and forth because it was like ominous, but I just wanted to feel his spirit as much as I could because I knew he was going to be gone. And he passed away, and I drove home that night listening to my instrumental music. And I got to my road and said, Okay, this music needs to be done now. So I changed the station to The Lumineers, and it was their song Ophelia. That's what showed on my screen. But that was not the song that started playing through my speakers. It was Frank Sinatra's My Way. And it said, and now the end is near, so I face the final curtain. And I knew, and I can feel it right now, I knew that my stepfather was somehow communicating to me. And I sat in front of the garage, the music blaring in my ears, tears streaming down my face because I could feel him more than I had ever felt him before. And that next couple of weeks, he would come to me in my dreams. One night he came to me and told me he was with my mother in the kitchen. And when I told her the next day, she said, yesterday was the first time I made dinner for myself. And so all of this was something that I had never experienced in my life. And so I started to just investigate what it meant to hold energy. I became Reiki certified. I started exploring spirituality and you know, connection to the other side and all of these other modalities like acupuncture, different things.

DanielaSm 17:56

I mean, once again, all these at the meantime that you were in a lot of wars and raising your child. I was, yes. Yes, still still busy. And this is after the nerd the nun ask you this or before?

Sara Byers 18:09

Yes, it was after.

DanielaSm 18:10

Okay, okay. You couldn't figure it out what she meant.

Sara Byers 18:13

No.

DanielaSm 18:13

And then this happens. Okay.

Community Impact And Insatiable Achievement

Sara Byers 18:15

And then this happens, but I'm hiding to your point. Like I'm exploring all this stuff, but I'm not saying any of this in my regular life. Like I'm still going through my regular life just like normal. Until my mother, who's a scientist, my mother was reading a ton of books on the afterlife. And there was this one person, actually a medium, who she just felt resonant was with. And so I purchased her a session with this medium who had an eight-month waiting list. So my mom's appointment comes and it's Christmas Eve of that same year. And my mom gets on the phone with this medium in Arizona, and the woman says, There is a gentleman here, and he is singing. Does Frank Sinatra's My Way mean anything to you? Which was the song I heard. And so that validation changed my whole life. Because if that is true, which I now know that it is, anything in this world is possible. There is so much more than I ever understood. And so I started to believe. I started to believe. And once I started to believe that there was more, my entire life changed. I started to receive poetry in the middle of the night, and I say receive because sometimes I don't remember it in the morning. I've written over 3,500 poems in these last four years that have guided my life. I also all one day decided I needed to step away from the day-to-day of our business. I just began to hear things, began to sort of make space. All of a sudden I had space, and that's what I think the nun was trying to tell me that I was missing myself. And in that spaciousness, my anxiety dropped and really went away because I started to hear the intuition and the guidance that was always available to me. I started to connect with people on the other side. I started to feel energy of people here. But the question was, how do I show people this? Like, how do I, I am still, you know, chair of boards. How does this fit together? It became so strong that it had to because I was either going to integrate it or I had to give up those parts of my life. Today it is about integrating all of them. It, you know, I was recently chair of the Vermont Business Roundtable, and it's a group of 125 CEOs. And I'm the third female chair in its history. And so with that, there's a little bit of risk in bringing in intuition and poetry and things like that. But I'm like, this is what I'm here to do. So I am going to start a meeting with a poem. I'm going to tell other people that I love them, like because I do, because I just feel that, even if you're, you know, colleague, I'm going to tell you that. And you're going to laugh and like be like, oh my God, I can't believe she's saying this. But because that's who I am. And so what's been so lovely is being able to be more and more and more myself, which really is someone who connects to the beauty of life and the beauty of each other and our connection with each other. And having that be infused into the professional and business space, having that be infused in literally every space that I'm in, sitting here talking to you. It's I walk through all of it now with such reverence and trust that even though right now I am chair of a college board, so I am now the chair of the board of a college. And at first I'm like, whoa, that I can't do that. You know, that's my immediate reaction. But now is just trust that I am there for a reason. I might not understand what it is, but I know that it's my whole self. It's the same self who is three years old talking on the microphone and making absolutely no sense. For whatever reason, that same person is wanted at this board. It's wanted in these professional situations.

DanielaSm 22:21

I had so many parts of myself for so long. You didn't go to college, so you're like feeling like yes, like why would it do that? But I feel like, okay, our generation and the boomers, if you didn't go to college, you didn't belong. Yeah. But the millenniums have already demonstrated that a lot of entrepreneurs are, you know, those smart people that actually don't need to college. Yes. School now doesn't have the same value as it used to.

Sara Byers 22:49

Yeah. Yes. Well, there's so many different paths. Every path has value. That's it's basically every path has value. It's almost, I don't sometimes this can be complicated for people to hear from me, but I I really believe every single one does. I don't really believe in good and bad that that's the right one and this is the wrong one. Like I just I can't. You know, my sister and I have had very different paths in life. Her path could just as easily have been mine, and mine could just as easily have been hers. They just are. So I love you saying that. And it just, I see that in my daughter who is 20 years old, that she just has a sense of agency about making choices that are right for her that I'm not sure I did. I felt I had to go along with everything. She feels pretty strong about staying true to herself, which is amazing.

DanielaSm 23:39

Yeah. And I have a guest that I actually posted recently that she was similar age as us. And she had to study. Like she her studies were not enough, so she needed another study, another study to be able to achieve where she wanted to go. So it's you know, it's kind of like the opposite. Yeah. But I feel that there's no right or wrong. It's just personality, maybe desires, maybe being at the right time, at the right, oh, not even right time, it's being at the place where you are and what is needed. So yeah. So it is adaptability is like a big word.

The Nun’s Warning And A Turning Point

Sara Byers 24:14

And acceptance. I mean, I really did. I judged myself more than anyone ever judged me. I was berating myself. I mean, I would chair a meeting and then for the next 72 hours criticize and critique every single thing that came out of my mouth or every single thing that I did. You know, I was my worst judge. But I think that judging anything, I try to move through the world without judging myself any longer and without judging anyone else. Because I think that really tears us apart, both, you know, within ourselves and within community. You're mean about it, yes, but sometimes it's fun. Well, and my husband would say that too, actually. One thing that's interesting where I am is that it's become so strong. And I think because I, and I know this is wild, but because I can, you know, when I'm receiving words and the way that I can feel into things, I feel so much. So I feel another person so much that I almost can't do that any longer. Because I feel like I feel their essence or I feel their soul. And I truly believe that all souls and essence, like at the end of the day, we're all like beautiful human beings who we were at the at birth, but we just had life in the in the meantime. So it's hard for me to do, which makes it like hard for me sometimes to like communicate to other people because they're like, come on, Sarah, this isn't fun. I'm like, no, but they're a beautiful, loving human. But it's literally how I look at the world. It feels Pollyanna-ish, it feels almost woo-woo or flighty or out there, but it's because I feel so much greater, like than I used to. I can't limit them to this one thing anymore.

DanielaSm 25:59

You know, I do believe in souls, and I've been listening to a person who I just recently heard from him. He's from Argentina, and he was talking about souls and how we actually always get together, like, especially when you have like a person that you're really connected, that they come back into life the one way or another. And and I'm like, oh, that's super interesting. They they give us this body, and then you know, it's not necessarily your soul, we we have this body. The other part is too that you know you have a brain, and so sometimes our limited believer, because we're in a box already, right? If we were maybe we didn't have a a body, we they wouldn't be so constructive. But but I I'm learning all this that you're saying, also through art. I vol I volunteer for um five shows that happened in Vancouver about dancing shows, and we went to this one, and uh, there were three men and a woman, and they were all naked, like really, really naked. And so, which I am open about it, but when they were I was shocked when I saw them on the in there on the on the in the stage, and then the dancing was weird, and then I was thinking, okay, my brain is opening with this, and so I'm thinking, and I'm reading a little bit more of art and how it is, and and so I'm thinking that that also helps to be more open-minded in many other things.

Hospice, Signs, And Spiritual Validation

Sara Byers 27:22

Yes, you're totally right. You know, I think it's A, I think it's absolutely amazing and beautiful that you recognize that in that moment for yourself because we all do that, you know, or I'm like, this isn't great, and then I'm like, okay, hold on. You know, I heard something this morning that, and I believe it to be true. Like that creative space is the space of us as human beings. You know, I I mean, we're creating all the time, but that artistry is often where we allow ourselves to be in a space of flow. When I talk about the words that I write, or even before I went through this, I would give speeches often. I would always write them in no time. Like I wrote that 16-minute commencement speech in about 20 minutes because I would just be in a state of flow. And I think that state is when we're kind of tapping into something that's universal among us, whether that's universal love or universal consciousness. And it's like we're reaching up and grabbing it and bringing it to each of us in this beautiful way for us to consume. I think art is that. And I think it is one of the best ways for us to connect to the bigger parts of ourselves. Because I think when you hear artists, musicians, dancers, oftentimes they all talk about sort of receiving and embodying beyond themselves. And so they literally become the vessel through which we feel soul and and spirit, and it's uh absolutely lovely. Um, if we can get out of our head.

DanielaSm 28:59

And that's that's the point. That's a difficult thing. Okay, so if this wouldn't have happened to you, that it was no remote plan, I don't know. You know, I hear these stories, but I I think it's not easy to to get to the level where you are if it wasn't because you got these out of the blue.

Sara Byers 29:21

You know, I I think that, you know, today because I kind of coach coach, I don't I don't like that word, but I I spend time in sessions with people who are in these really unique spaces. I think I see so many people who are at these monumental moments in their lives. So they're at a point where they get to sort of choose which way they want to go. To me, the greatest thing that anyone can do is spend five minutes to themselves every day. Not meditating to check off a box, not necessarily praying to something beyond them, but literally just feeling who they are. Because for me, as I look back over the last five years, that has been just the greatest jumps for me have happened because I understand now who I am. I understand how my body responds. Like one of the biggest things I didn't realize was my body would tell me everything I needed to know. Um, I would sit in quiet, have a thought that was difficult, and I would immediately notice that I would cramp up or that my shoulder, like I would just notice my body and breathe in to my body throughout the day. And I think calming my actual body was the first step in calming my mind. Um, I don't think it happened the other way.

DanielaSm 30:41

Yes, and and I feel like in so many years we've been hearing, oh, meditate, meditate to connect to the universe. And I think that we really need to do is to connect with ourselves, with our body, especially now that when you are over 50, that all these things are happening, and you're like, why? Totally my goal, and it's not easy either. Why am I having this pain? What have I done? Why am I feeling this way? Is it's very difficult. Yes.

Sara Byers 31:07

Oh, I it really is, but I love what you just said because I think it's so important because so many people sort of start to go down this path and try to meditate when really it's just about turning ourselves in. I often describe my old life as living from the outside in. Like I lived according to the outside, and now I'm living from the inside out. It's I am the wholeest version of myself. I want to shine as brightly as humanly possible. Everything else is going to just be. That is that's my I didn't know that that's what I was always searching for, but it was.

DanielaSm 31:47

I still think it's difficult to listen to your body. So how do you Yeah?

Sara Byers 31:52

Oh, oh, it is. For me, it became like I when I wake up in the morning and when I go to sleep, and I don't time it, but I spend anywhere from three minutes to 20 minutes sitting there, doing absolutely nothing, not meditating, not just being letting thoughts come in and out, paying attention to what my body does. I do that every single day. And I think that practice alone has just allowed me to connect to me. Because if we don't take any time, if we don't, and I'm not regimented if I miss it one day or if I don't, I like I don't care. But I'm just intentional about when I start to feel stressed in the middle of the day, I stop. I'm just like, okay, hold on. And I just sit there. I never gave myself that. I never gave myself five minutes. I really didn't. It it sounds so simple, and at first it is super uncomfortable. But if you keep going every day, even though it's uncomfortable, eventually it will be exactly what you need. It's almost medicine for the moment.

Poetry At Night And Integrating Intuition

DanielaSm 32:55

Yesterday I said, okay, I have to go for a walk. And as I'm walking, I'm like, oh wow, I have a pain in my chest, you know. So I thought, okay, that seems to be like anxiety. Why? And then I'm like, and I worry, I worry about something, and I know there is nothing happening, but I have this pressure, I have this pressure, you know, and I started thinking, okay, you feel that you didn't do enough today. And I'm like, yes, you have. And then I just like kind of go through the the list, and then also the weather, you know, like when it comes into fall. I don't know if it's related because I lost a job once at that time, or is because you know, I love fall because of the leaf, but it is not a beginning, is well, it's a beginning of winter, but it's actually the end. I totally know, but so I was walking and then I realized, oh my god, red, you know, red is is is just you know, yeah, bad in a way because that red is death, because you see all the leaf when they're red, they're gonna die, then red is you know, dangerous, red is blood. And you know, I started to think about it like and then I started to think about what is yellow, because you know, after the red comes yellow, and so it's like figure this out, and and then slowly it kind of went away. The but you know, I wanted to okay, I want to stay, I don't want to listen to any audiobooks, any music, just concentrate, just look at the beauty of everything. I think what I would have wanted, and maybe I'm um obviously I'm wrong, but uh is that okay, I have this pain and kind of solve the situation. Okay, I have this pain because it's this, next time it's not gonna happen. And because it's not like that, it's more like observing, discussing, and it goes away, and then for the next time you'll see, it is quite f frustrating when you're a person who likes to solve problems and move on.

Sara Byers 34:38

Oh my gosh, it's so hard. And I I was definitely that person. I mean, I would research things on Google to the I mean, any anything, anything. Um, and now ChatGPT. Um, but it's sort of like allowing what I love that you did, because I think a lot of times when we feel things like that, or when things start to feel really big, which is what I feel for you in that moment, actually, it it was sort of like all of a sudden something's rising up is what it felt like um to be recognized by you. What I love is that many of us in that moment distract ourselves because it's too big and we don't want to, so we distract ourselves. Music, podcast, podcasts are great. We both host them, but um distract ourselves so that we don't have to pay attention to that. You chose not to. So, so to me, you are starting to move through it. I actually don't think it's anything health-wise, just FYI for you, but um, you're like moving through it, which is exactly what you are supposed to do. Not supposed to, but that's what leads you sort of to the path of just recognizing because we all carry in our bodies, you have this beautiful show about everyone having a story. And so many times a lot of the stories that we carry are lodged in our body. They're they're like holding up, like taking up residence in different places. And I think that the more that we expose ourselves, the more that we understand ourselves, the stories can take residence just in the earth rather than stuck inside of us. Stories continue to pull up, things continue to come out, even in this sort of beautiful space that I found myself in, it will continue to happen. I think that's just what life is. It's a journey of not getting to a specific place of finally feeling okay. I think it is a journey of discovery and it's highs and lows that will always be, always.

DanielaSm 36:38

Yeah. This guy that I told you, he says that there is no uh purpose, there is no goal. You're assuming without chore, there's you're no getting there. And so, in a way, you know, you could see it as a two, the glass half empty and the glass half full. If it's half full, you're like, okay, great. There is no purpose, you just have to leave. And every stroke is a learning opportunity, and just enjoy it. But then when you see it half empty, you're like, Oh my god, there's no ending. What that is just frustrating. What is the point? Totally.

unknown 37:13

Yeah.

DanielaSm 37:16

Which class am I gonna give?

Sara Byers 37:18

Well, it really is. I I just said that to someone else, and I don't know what I was talking about, but I I think it was myself and someone else who had the exact same experience, which probably could have been negative and probably was in some ways. But the way that I viewed it, I didn't let myself be mired in it. And so our the results of us were very different. But but that does matter because it is very easy for my mind, like with what you just said, it is very easy for my mind to be like almost panic in that space. Like that's what I I could easily go there, but I now see my mind the same way that I see like my arm. Like I'm making choices with what my arm does, and I'm making choices with what my mind does. So I choose which way I want to look at it. Because to me, that choice is the power that we have in our lives.

DanielaSm 38:14

And I agree with you that if we sit on the fence, you know, because I I for years I thought in any subject, politics or whatever, I was always on the fence because I see your point of view and I can see the other point of view. And then I thought, oh, I'm not very smart because I don't have a point of view. Yes. Then I realized that's not true. I see both points of views. So it's actually maybe I'm smarter than them because I can see both instead of holding one. I think that depending on the situation, you can see. Oh, totally. Okay, today today I'm sitting on this side and the other, you know.

Leadership With Heart In Boardrooms

Sara Byers 38:47

Well, I think that's true. You know, I think in every moment, like I'm so present, like I really am. So I don't know what I'm gonna feel tomorrow. Like, and I don't bind myself to that. Like this is this is where I am right now. And I love that that what you're saying is you're just allowing yourself to be in every moment. And good for you recognizing both sides. That doesn't mean you're not smart. It means that you're just sort of seeing the macro level picture of something. And I think that we need this world, it needs all of those thinkers. They need thinkers who can sort of be the umbrella over all of it. Um, I think we need that right now.

DanielaSm 39:23

Well, it is true that there's some subjects that I only need one side. Yeah, me too. So, Sarah, going back to you. So we have all these boars. You your daughter is now 20, so you're an anti nester, and you're still involved in many things in the community, plus you have a podcast and you write poetry.

Sara Byers 39:42

Yes, but taking a step away from the day-to-day of our business, which was big. So we so that that was a big and and to me, they just all fit together now. Nothing's regimented. Every day is just I just sort of move through all of it in a beautiful way. So it's not like I have to write or I have to do this. It's just every day brings something new, and I just let it. With the podcast, what is it about? Um, it is called Collecting Insight on Being Human. A friend of mine and I who we were really acquaintances at the beginning, but we looked at the world really differently, ideologically and otherwise, but we both had very similar hopes and dreams for the world. And so we would have coffee meetups where we had these amazing conversations, and so we brought it to a podcast, which has been fun.

DanielaSm 40:28

Wow, that's amazing.

Sara Byers 40:29

Yeah.

DanielaSm 40:30

And the poetry just comes to you during the night.

Sara Byers 40:33

Yes.

DanielaSm 40:34

You wake up in the middle of the night to hear.

Sara Byers 40:35

Yes. Initially the hot flashes that I was going through really helped because they would wake me up. But now, yeah, I do. And when they first started coming through, there would be words like harken, like words that I don't use. And now it's it's just been wild to watch it evolve. Sometimes it's science fiction-y, it's like a whole new invention. I this week had an entire business idea like drop in in whole form into my head. It's in the middle of the night. It's just, it's wild. Yeah.

DanielaSm 41:05

Wow.

Sara Byers 41:05

And you're sleeping. I know. That's what my acupuncturist asks. I'm not tired, but I do, I do wake. I mean, I go to bed at a reasonable hour. So I go to bed at 9 30. And so I, you know, get up at 5 36. But yeah, it's a different space. So it's hard for me. I don't feel tired when I'm it it's invigorating. Yeah, because I'm tapping into just somewhere else.

DanielaSm 41:28

Have you taken naps? Maybe you don't get during the day. They're busy with other people in different timestamps. I know.

Sara Byers 41:36

Totally. No, I would take a nap if I needed to if I felt tired. It is. It's it's really wild because sometimes, I mean, my husband, I've got this night light. I will sometimes be writing for because it will be pages, an hour and a half sometimes. Wow, beautiful. And are you in a book with these? So I've done two poetry collections because I just heard that I was supposed to. So I did one of the really I have short ones. I have like one sentence, just like sayings. So I did one book of those, and then I did another book last December. So the first is Heart and Moon, and the second is Wise Stars. There will probably be another one fairly soon as well because I don't know what else to do with all this. I'm just like, why I'm holding it all and I it's just too much information and we all should share. But I also on my Instagram page, Dear Joy Love, I share a lot of it as well.

DanielaSm 42:27

Great. You said you were a coach too.

Sara Byers 42:29

Yes. So I have what I call present sessions, and I coach is not the best because I don't, I don't want it to be ongoing, but I love meeting with people where they are. It could be ongoing if they wanted to, but really finding what they're dealing with in every moment in that moment and using both my sort of CEO business brain and my intuitive, energetic understanding to try to help find a path forward. It's like I explain it, it's like if you've got a, if you're holding on to a brick and you feel like you're like a brick stuck, it's like let's chip away a piece or let's crack it open to let some light in to let the path illuminate in front of you. So that's what I do with people, which is so much fun. And that's on my website, which is Sarah Sbiers.com.

DanielaSm 43:15

Yes, we'll put that on the show notes. Thank you so much for all this beautiful conversation.

Sara Byers 43:19

I enjoyed thank you, Daniela.

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DanielaSm 43:22

Thank you. Remind us that success without presence feels hollow. And that sometimes the life we are running towards has been waiting patiently inside us all along. If something from this conversation stays with you, leave us a message and share it with someone who might quietly carry the weight of having it all together. Join me next time for another story conversation. Thank you for listening.