Have you ever looked around and felt that the way you live and work isn’t sustainable? 

It’s hard to find anyone who hasn’t felt the weight of this relentless pace and the intense pressure to keep up as if this is just how modern life has to be.

But what if it doesn’t have to be this way? 

Our culture in the U.S. is burdened by pressures to keep up, excel, and do it all, often without the support systems to help us carry that load.

What if we paused to question the assumptions driving us to stay so busy and overextended? 

Today’s guest invites us to imagine stepping off the hamster wheel and envisioning what it would look like to challenge the norms we’ve been handed about work and life.

We can’t all pack up and move, but we can make small but powerful steps towards a more sustainable way of living, working, and leading.

Kirsten Powers is a New York Times bestselling author and writes the bestselling Substack publication Changing the Channel. Jon Meacham called her most recent book, Saving Grace: Speak Your Truth, Stay Centered and Learn to Coexist with People Who Drive You Nuts, “a great gift at an urgent hour.” 

Kirsten served as an on-air CNN senior political analyst for seven years. She has been a columnist for USA Today, the Daily Beast and the New York Post, and a political analyst at Fox News. Before her career in journalism, Kirsten was a political appointee in the Clinton Administration, worked in New York Democratic politics and was Vice President for International Communications at AOL, Inc.

 

 

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Kirsten’s awakening to the fact that American culture is “not normal”
• How neoliberalism reshaped our relationship with work, class, and consumerism
• A reality check on what it takes to make radical changes in your life, at home or abroad
• How unpacking paradigms about work and being busy has led Kirsten to question so many other norms in American life
• The intense and long-term physical toll of our culture’s obsession with overwork
• What gives Kirsten hope that America can do and be better in the future 

 

Learn more about Kirsten Powers:

• Changing the Channel
• Instagram: @kirstenpowers
• Saving Grace: Speak Your Truth, Stay Centered and Learn to Coexist with People Who Drive You Nuts

 

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

 

Resources:

• The way we live in the United States is not normal
• The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era, Gary Gerstle
• Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-And What We Can Do about It, Jennifer Breheny Wallace
• Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church, Eliza Griswold
• House of the Dragon
• Pretty in Pink

 

Transcript:

[Inspirational Intro Music]

Kirsten Powers: I was like, “Yeah, you just do this. You just keep working when you don’t have energy. Why wouldn’t you do this?” Now, of course in hindsight, I was doing it because I was like an addict. You know, some people are addicted to alcohol. Some people are addicted to drugs. I was addicted to work, and I was addicted to accomplishment.

Rebecca Ching: Have you ever looked around and felt the way you live and work isn’t sustainable? Do you see what passes for “normal” feels anything but? Yet everyone else is pushing through just trying to keep their heads above water. These days, it’s hard to find anyone who hasn’t felt the weight of this relentless pace and the intense pressure to keep up in how we do life and how we work as if this is just how modern life has to be. But what if it doesn’t? What if we pause to question the assumptions driving us to stay so busy and overextended?

After everything we’ve been through culturally, nationally, globally, it’s no surprise that more people are asking about the cost of living this way. Still, even daring to consider change can feel indulgent, maybe even offensive. But in today’s Unburdened Leader conversation, my guest and I dive into what it takes to make radical changes in how we work and live and how to handle the push back when we decide to step off the hamster wheel.

I’m Rebecca Ching, and you’re listening to The Unburdened Leader, the show that goes deep with humans who navigate life’s challenges and lead in their own ways. Our goal is to learn how they address the burdens they carry and how they learn from them and become better and more impactful leaders of themselves and others.

Back in the late 1990s — it feels so funny to say that but back in the late 1990s, I had the chance to live and work in Zürich, Switzerland for about four years.

2:05

My life there connected me deeply with the local Swiss community and a rich third culture group of people from around the globe who were also living in Zürich at the time. It was a life-changing experience on so many levels. Living overseas gave me a fresh perspective on the US and, more personally, on how I wanted to live and lead. I traveled to places, embraced new cultures, gained insights that I never would have had if I stayed in The United States. I learned a lot about myself and especially what it meant for me to be an American, and I also heard a lot about how others saw America.

Now, while some perceptions were tough to hear, like the view of Americans as loud and self-centered and morally superior, others made me reflect on how our cultural values, especially around work, have also had an intense impact on how we lead our lives, especially myself. For instance, there’s this relentless drive and work ethic, right? We wear it like a badge of honor, almost this obsessive dedication on pushing through and working long hours and priding ourselves on productivity at any cost. In Europe I saw a contract. Vacations were taken seriously, people took real breaks, and the pace of life felt different, if not jarring for me a lot of the times. There was room for rest, balance, and a social safety net that softened the blow of life’s hard edges, and I was in awe of how people revered that and didn’t take it for granted and just, yeah, had a very different relationship with that too. And it made me think about how our culture here in the US is burdened by these pressures to keep up, to excel, and do it all often without the support systems that help us carry that load.

So when I read Kirsten Powers’ Substack essay on her choice to leave the US and find a more sustainable pace of life abroad, I knew I had to have her on the podcast to talk about her journey to this realization and the steps she took to bring that dream to life.

4:12

Kirsten has long been someone I admire. She’s a leader and public figure with a thoughtful approach to her work, life, and relationships, and she wrote candidly about how she came to question whether the unrelenting pace of life in the US was normal or healthy. Her honesty resonated with so many, and her words struck a chord because so many of us are reaching that same breaking point.

And as I reflect on the last handful of years, I see how we’ve been stuck in this hyper-non-stop loop, especially since March of 2020 when lockdowns hit due to COVID-19. And as restrictions eased, we hit the gas pedal without looking back. And since then, the weight has only grown heavier between global conflicts, economic strains, and political tensions. So many of us don’t have the resources or the options to move overseas, simply, and that’s not what today’s conversation is about, though Kirsten does talk about that.

Kirsten’s story invites us to imagine what it could look like to challenge the norms we’ve been handed about work and life. And this episode’s a call to action, a chance to use our imagination, creativity, and courage to rethink how we want to live, work, and lead even within our current realities. Because while not everyone can just pack up and move, we can all make smaller, powerful changes that bring us closer to a more sustainable way of being.

So if you’re feeling the weight of the constant hustle of doing life the way you’ve been told it has to be done, I invite you to check out this conversation, and let Kirsten’s journey inspire you to reflect, question, and explore what could be possible for you.

5:59

Kirsten Powers is a New York Times Bestselling author and writes the bestselling Substack publication Changing The Channel. Historian Jon Meacham called her most recent book Saving Grace: Speak Your Truth, Stay Centered, and Learn to Coexist with People Who Drive You Nuts “a great gift at an urgent hour.”

Now, listen for Kirsten’s reflections on why she does not accept anything as normal anymore, and pay attention to why Kirsten pushes back when people say, “This is just the way it is.” (I’m with her on this). And notice how Kirsten came to the thoughtful conclusion, after much reflection and research, that moving to another country was not a luxury but a necessity for her health and wellbeing. Now, please welcome Kirsten Powers to The Unburdened Leader podcast.

__________

Rebecca Ching: Kirsten, welcome to The Unburdened Leader podcast! And I’m really looking forward to a deep dive on a post that you wrote recently. It went viral. It’s about you and your husband’s decision to move to Italy, and you titled it “The Way We Live in The United States is Not Normal.” [Laughs] And a big bulk of that conversation is you highlighting waking up to the burden of the US’s understanding or version of “normal.” And what did it take for you to realize that your understanding of normal makes it harder for you to thrive?

Kirsten Powers: Well, it was a really long process, actually. In that piece, I go through the various sort of moments of, you know, where you just sort of wake up little by little, right? Something happens, and I’m like, “Oh, yeah, that’s probably not normal.” I obviously knew that I was burnt out and exhausted and had chronic fatigue and all the things, and almost everybody I knew was in the same boat, and you kind of realized that something just feels off. Especially because I’m generation X, so I actually grew up during the seventies and early eighties before things became the way they are now. So I have a reference point.

8:18

Now, I had sort of forgotten about it, honestly. But as I started delving into this, my awareness really started — I think I started to wake up to it a lot by speaking to friends in Italy. And the more I talked to them about things that were happening or the way we did things or even Americans who had moved to Italy and then just realizing, like, “Oh, yeah,” right? “That’s not normal.” School shootings are not normal or, oh, working 24/7 actually is considered antisocial behavior in Italy, you know what I mean? And starting to just realize, “Oh, yeah, this isn’t normal. People in Italy don’t do this,” but then also thinking back onto my childhood and going, “Yeah, and also this didn’t used to happen,” you know, like medical debt. I mean, of course, the internet didn’t exist so you couldn’t have a GoFundMe campaign for your medical care, but you also wouldn’t need to have a GoFundMe campaign for your medical care because it was pretty affordable, and people had insurance. And we did have uninsured people, obviously, but in terms of the middle class I would say it wasn’t an issue that really anybody was talking about. Whereas now, I don’t know anybody who doesn’t talk about their fear of being bankrupted by medical care, for example.

So there just were a lot of different things that sort of happened where I would go, “Oh, in all these other countries that are our peer countries, they do it so differently, and I have kind of just accepted that we do it this way.”

10:02

And we don’t need to do it this way, and it’s miserable, and people are working all the time and exhausted and isolated and sold “remedies,” right? You know, the self-care, wellness industry, which is worth billions of dollars to fix a problem that was created by late-stage capitalism. So it’s like, “Hmm, and more capitalism to fix the capitalism problem? Okay, thank you.” And then it becomes all you can see, right? It’s like as soon as you start to become aware of it you just are like, “Oh, my gosh. It’s just everywhere.”

And so, I just got to this place finally where I thought, “I can’t live here anymore. I have to leave. I don’t even know how to be a normal person,” because I live in a culture that is so weird.

Rebecca Ching: Now, you grew up in Alaska. Am I correct on that?

Kirsten Powers: Yeah, Fairbanks, Alaska.

Rebecca Ching: And you currently are based in the Washington, DC area?

Kirsten Powers: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yes.

Rebecca Ching: I mean, even growing up — I’m a Gen X-er too. I just think even those two cities, even in the seventies and eighties, were very different?

Kirsten Powers: Oh, Washington DC, when I was in DC — I went to college at The University of Maryland, and I worked in the Clinton administration in the early nineties. The city that I’m in right now has nothing in connection with that place.

Rebecca Ching: Mm-hmm.

Kirsten Powers: That was some little backwater town compared to what’s going on now, you know? It was much slower. It was very lowkey. I mean, it wasn’t — I don’t know, I can’t really explain it. It just wasn’t — the amount of money that is here now, it was not really a place for people with money, you know? And now it’s just there’s so much money and it’s just obscene. And the competition and the way that people live, it’s just so disconnected from I think how 98% of the world lives.

12:02

And yeah, Fairbanks is different. I think Fairbanks is still closer to normal than a lot of places. But it’s still not normal because, I mean, any place in The United States that has access to the internet [Laughs] and television is getting — you know, I didn’t have that. I really didn’t have any influence outside of what was around me, which is true with pretty much everybody, right, during that era. So you weren’t being constantly pulled into this, “Oh, my life and the life of the –.” You know, now kids today somehow think The Kardashians are like them or something. We never thought we were like movie stars; you know what I mean? There was an understanding of you have a middle-class life, and it’s nice. You have enough food, and you have some time, and maybe you go to the lake on vacation, you know what I mean? It just was very simple. There wasn’t this, “I need to be like these people that I see on TV.” I just feel like we looked at them and were like, “That’s them, and this is us,” and we weren’t really trying to be them.

You know, people weren’t going into insane amounts of debt to have a wedding or, you know, just these kinds of things now where it’s become so consumerist and just everything is just an opportunity to go into debt, right?

Rebecca Ching: Ooh, that’s a good point.

Kirsten Powers: But yes, I think every place was different. I think even if you spoke to people who lived in New York City they would tell you it was different, right?

Rebecca Ching: Yeah. So a couple things I want to follow up on. You talked about this enough, like kind of having — our concept of enough has been shaped a lot by the 24/7 news cycle access to internet. But that’s interesting looking back on what was enough, enough food on the table. What was the idea of providing for your family? When did your concept of enough start to shift? When did that realization, “I need more. I need more,” and you found yourself in that cycle?

14:06

Kirsten Powers: Yeah, for me, personally, it happened around the year 2000, and I do want to say also, you know, people are gonna say, “Oh, you’re romanticizing the seventies and the eighties,” like I’m saying it’s perfect. It wasn’t perfect, trust me. Women were treated like garbage. Racism was terrible. There were poor people. I’m not trying to say that. I’m talking very specifically to sort of economic expectations and reality for the majority of Americans who were, at that time, middle class compared to today.

So I feel like during the nineties I was in DC. I was working in the Clinton administration. It was pretty lowkey. I didn’t really think about money or things or that kind of stuff that much. This is pre-internet, right? So this is my twenties. And then I left, and I went to AOL. I was running their international communications, so the early tech boom, the first one, and I started making a lot of money because it’s the tech industry. That, for me personally, was the turning point where I lost all perspective, where I became actually greedy. I went from being a person who never thought about money, who never thought about making money, who never — it just wasn’t even a thing. I worked in the government, and I didn’t make that much money and didn’t even really want to go to AOL. They recruited me, and then all of a sudden I was making all this money, and it was like, yeah, everything shifted.

I don’t think I’m the only one who was shifting around that time, you know what I mean? There was something that was shifting, I think, with the tech industry, with all of sudden all of this money. Of course the economy was doing really well, and I can’t trace exactly when it all starts to completely fall apart. But if you want to know where it really started is it really started in the eighties. It really started with neoliberalism.

16:04

So basically shifting from what had been the economic system that was set up by FDR. Basically shifted after Jimmy Carter was president. Reagan came in and adopted neoliberalism, and then neoliberalism kind of became the new economic order. It’s falling apart right now. None of this really happened by accident, so we all can have our personal stories about how it happened, but it was happening at a much higher level in terms of what now was being taught in schools to people who were studying economics or business. It’s cliché but it’s true. It was the greed-is-good era. It was the all of a sudden there was this thing of the private industry and serving the shareholders was what was most important. Whereas when we were growing up, that wasn’t what was most important. Most companies didn’t even have shareholders, you know? It was you served your community and you served your employees and that’s what you did. And now we shifted into a shareholder economy where the only thing you care about is your shareholders.

Look, I worked at a company. A lot of people got very, very wealthy because they were catered to these shareholders, and I’ll tell you exactly what makes shareholders happy: fewer people doing more things.

Rebecca Ching: Ooh.

Kirsten Powers: That’s what they like. So they like firing people and making people work harder, right? That’s it, and it’s like if we wanted to make the stock go up, layoffs. People weren’t getting laid off because we couldn’t afford to pay them. People weren’t getting laid off because they weren’t doing their jobs. They were getting laid off because they wanted to make the stock go up because they wanted the shareholders to make more money, and they wanted to make more money. I mean, that’s just the way it was.

So we shifted into this completely different way of thinking, and there was this idea that everyone’s become rich, and everyone’s gonna be like a millionaire and a billionaire, and everyone’s redoing their kitchen every two years.

18:06

You know, it’s just all this kind of madness that you don’t see in Italy. Not to say they haven’t been affected by globalization. Of course they have. But we are the absolute worst. Canada’s not great. The UK is terrible in terms of late-stage capitalism. New Zealand and Australia, all the English-speaking capitalist countries are a mess. But the US is the absolute worst, and I say it’s like the canary in the coal mine. It’s just coming for everybody.

And so, it cannot go on here. It just can’t. People will not survive it. It’s gonna destroy all these other countries. It’s already caused a lot of problems. Like I said, globalization’s already impacted a lot of people but even when I’ll have Italians say, “Oh, yes, I know. We have all these things.” But then I’m like, “No, let me tell you what’s going on in The United States.” And they can’t believe it. So they’ll say, “Oh, we thought we had it so bad. But, you know, we have free healthcare. We have free education. We have –,” you know what I mean? They have a very different life than we have.

Again, when we were growing up, going to college was — you know, if you went to a state school sometimes it was like $500 a year. I mean, we had a lot of these things. And so, people will say to me, “Oh, well, it’s easy for these small countries to do it. But we can’t do it because we’re so big,” which is the most nonsensical thing I’ve ever heard in my life. But yet everybody says it all the time. It’s like, okay, we’re the biggest, baddest country in the world, we’re the most innovative except when it comes to providing healthcare or education? Like, why would this little, poor country in Southern Europe be able to do it but we’re not able to do it? And we were able to do it. We did it.

Rebecca Ching: Mm-hmm.

Kirsten Powers: It started with Millennials graduating with all of this debt. That’s a new thing, you know? So Gen X-ers graduated with debt, but it wasn’t the kind of debt that destroyed your life.

20:02

I just really feel for the younger generations. I feel so bad for them. They’re so burdened with so much when they’re starting out in a way that previous generations that are alive, you know, weren’t. And so, I do think a lot of Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers don’t get that. They’re kind of like, “I did it on my own.” It’s like, “No, you didn’t. First of all, you went to school for almost nothing. You bought a house for, like, $5,” you know what I mean? It’s not the same world.

Rebecca Ching: So for you, as you were talking to folks, obviously, here in The States but also outside of The States, it came to the point where you can’t live here anymore. And I know you had a little push back on this too. And just briefly — because some people were like, “Oh, how privileged of you. Oh, you must be so wealthy to be able to go and –.”

Kirsten Powers: Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Ching: Because there is this kind of — I mean, I’ve lived overseas for a handful of years. When you went to AOL I went to Europe. [Laughs] I left DC and went to Europe.

Kirsten Powers: Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: I went to New York and then Europe. But just briefly respond how — just to address that because I hear a lot of people kind of tap out of this idea of making a radical change like this because they think it’s not for them or it’s not within their means. And it might very well be, but I’d love for you just to speak to how you responded to some of those kinds of objections or reflections when you shared this move.

Kirsten Powers: I mean, I think it’s very uninformed, you know? And I don’t blame people for that because where would they be being informed about it? We’re really indoctrinated with this idea that where we live is the best place in the world, and so, there are just all of these assumptions that are made about Europe, and for some reason one of them is that it’s expensive to live there. And it’s so much cheaper to live in Italy than to live in The United States., in particular the area that I’m going, which is Southern Italy because they have had a population drain because it’s basically farmland.

22:05

It’s where olive oil comes from, and most of the young people don’t want to be farmers. And so, they’re leaving, and they’re going elsewhere. And so, Italy’s really doing a lot to try to attract people to move there because they — and in the area I’m in, there are still people. There are a lot of places where there are almost no people. I mean, really, huge incentives to get people to move there.

So the privilege would be you really need to be able to work remotely or you have to be able to get a job with an American company or you have to have a European passport, which some people do have. I don’t. So you can’t — you know, when I was still at CNN, this is not something I would have been able to do. But financially, first of all, a lot of my decision is driven by finances because I don’t want to work seven days a week. I don’t want to do what I have to do to afford to live in The United States and to live in a place where I want to live. And I actually don’t know where they are, but people will say, “Oh, well, there are places in the US you can live that aren’t that expensive.” I mean, I did look other places, and I want to live in nature. If you want to live in nature and you want to have what I’m gonna have in Italy, which is six acres of farmland, you can have it, but you’ll be living literally in the middle of nowhere. There will be no people around you, and you will still pay more for your land than I paid in Italy. I know because I know people who’ve done it. So it is less expensive.

Of course, health insurance, if you’re there as a resident, it’s a couple thousand dollars a year, and it covers everything, right? Compared to what I’m paying here, and everybody knows how much health insurance costs here. I don’t have to worry about being bankrupted if I, God forbid, got cancer or whatever it is. And so, you don’t have those kinds of costs. Food’s a million times cheaper, about a third of the price. So everything about it is less expensive.

24:06

So, you know, as I look forward in my life and I think, “Do I really just want to always have to do work all the time, especially at a job that I hated in order just to live in a place that I don’t even want to be?” And where I’m moving to, the closest you could compare it to in The United States would be Southern California. It’s near the ocean. It’s temperate. It’s whatever. And we all know how much Southern California costs, right?

Rebecca Ching: I’m living there, so I get it. Yeah.

Kirsten Powers: Yeah. Yeah, and also I will live near a lot of culture. I’ll be near a lot of things that matter to me, nice restaurants, plays, people who are interested in similar things as me. That’s not a judgment on people who aren’t interested in that. If you want to live in the middle of Iowa or the middle of Ohio or whatever and that makes you happy, I think that’s wonderful! There’s nothing wrong with that.

Rebecca Ching: Yeah.

Kirsten Powers: I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska. I love Fairbanks, Alaska. I just don’t — at this stage of my life, I really am a person who wants to be able to hop on the train and, what, as I’ll be able to for $40 and then be in Rome in 4 hours, right? So that’s just me. For some people who don’t want to leave The United States, I think there are ways to find places, if you are the kind of person who could live that life.

There’s a woman that I follow on Instagram I’m gonna interview actually who, she and her husband, they moved way out in Virginia. You know, they’re not really near anything. But they have a little cabin, and they’re very happy, and they were able to afford it (they’re Millennials), and they’re incredibly happy.

So I think there are creative ways for people to do this, but the thing I would want to say to anybody who wants to move overseas, and they think that they can’t because it’s going to be more expensive than The United States, I really urge you to do your research because that just isn’t the case. The people that are fleeing right now are middle class people. It’s not the rich people. The rich people have a second house, you know what I mean? They live in The United States. They can afford it. It’s not a problem. But the people who are moving their families to Portugal or Panama or Mexico or Italy or Spain, those are middle class people for the most part.

26:22

Rebecca Ching: And I think what your question — it really isn’t like The US or move outside The US, it’s really getting clear on your resources, your thrive list, what your family needs, and doing some research and exploring. If you are not questioning the normal that you started questioning of what it means to be in The US, that grind and all that fuels that, to take a beat and get curious.

I know my husband and I have been, for a variety of reasons, just exploring, “Is this what we want,” and for our kids, or when our kids are done with high school, those kinds of things, and just doing the research and not thinking that there aren’t choices. I know sometimes people are so overwhelmed and exhausted, doing research feels like too much too.

Kirsten Powers: Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: So I just wanted to acknowledge that, but it’s also probably worth taking a beat to explore.

Kirsten Powers: I didn’t think we were gonna be able to do this. “Where will we go? How will we do it?” I didn’t know, you know? It took years of having to look at different things, and we looked at Northern Italy where my husband really likes and we go a lot on vacations, and it was just too expensive. It’s less expensive than The United States, but it was too expensive for what I was trying — I was basically just trying to create a scenario where I can do the work that I want to do and not worry about making a lot of money, you know what I mean? It’ll pay some money, but I won’t have to be under this pressure of, “I have to make X amount of money because I have a mortgage that I have to pay or I have to be always prepared for a medical emergency,” or whatever it is, right? Like, really just what is the kind of minimum that I need? You know, I didn’t need six acres. It just happened that that’s what was available. For three acres, it was basically what we paid, and then they were like, “Oh, and then we’ll throw on these.” So some land is worth more than other parts. So it wasn’t like I needed six acres. It was just a tiny bit more to add it onto the three acres that we wanted.

28:18

And so, it has this little they call them Trullos there. It’s a thing that is known in Puglia. It’s like a little stone hut, and it’s about 300 square feet, and we’re talking really small. And so, I’m renovating that and will probably add a kitchen onto it, and so, it’s gonna be very small. So it’s not — it’s gonna be a much smaller life than I have in The United States, certainly. To pay for the Trullo renovation and the land are a quarter of the townhome I live in in DC that has no yard.

It’s so interesting to me when people are like, “Oh, that’s so privileged of you to move to Italy.” And it’s like, well, then I must be super privileged to live in this kind of average neighborhood in DC, you know what I mean? Because it costs four times as much to live here. Everybody’s fine if I’m living here in this ridiculous situation. Like, how could it be so expensive? We just accept it, you know?

Rebecca Ching: And I want to jump in on that. Let me jump in on that accepting piece.

Kirsten Powers: Yeah. 

Rebecca Ching: Because you referenced at the beginning of our conversion there was that, “This is normal. This is the way it is.” And I kind of remember pushing back on that a little bit as I was kind of growing and building up my professional experience, and I’d be like, “Is this really what it takes?” They’re like, “Yep. This is the way it is. This is the way it is.”

Kirsten Powers: Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: That’s kind of the general message. So what are you still struggling with regarding kind of rewriting your idea of normal and that kind of voice of just accepting this is the way it is? What are the tensions you still wrestle with, and what’s helping you move through them?

30:00

Kirsten Powers: You know, I don’t accept anything as normal anymore. Everything that anybody says I kind of go, “Is that true?” I really have started to just really question everything. I feel like I went unconscious for, like, 20 years or something, you know what I mean? When you kind of look back on it you’re like, “What were you doing?” Because I just was following the script and doing what you’re supposed to do, like, “Be successful.” “Make money.” “Do jobs you hate that destroy your health that give you no free time to be with your family or friends,” you know what I mean? Just like, “Yeah, this is just the way it is. This is just what we’re all doing.” I just don’t accept that.

And in fact, as I’ve created more space in my life for a different kind of life and different kinds of relationships, I mean, one thing I’ve noticed is just it’s hard — especially where I live, now I’ve created the space that nobody else has, you know? So it’s like, “Well, who am I supposed to be spending time with because everybody works all the time.” And so, I’m really attuned when I meet a new person and they talk about how busy they are, you know, in a good way, you know. “And I’m just crazy busy. I’m always busy.” It’s like a red flag, you know? Whereas in the past I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But of course no one in Italy would ever say something like that.

Rebecca Ching: No one would say, “I’m busy,” in Italy?

Kirsten Powers: I have never heard anybody say it. When you’re like, “Hey, how are you doing?” The response is never, “You know, just busy. Just keeping busy.” You hear that and I feel like in the US people just say that all the time like, “Yeah, just so busy. Just crazy busy.” It’d be a strange thing for somebody to say, you know? And if they said it, it wouldn’t be like, “Look at me. I’m so busy. I’m doing the thing. I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.” It’d be more like, “Ah, I’m so busy. I don’t want to be so busy. I want to, like –.” But they don’t really do that because they have, for the most part — you know, and there are places — I think in Milan it’s different. But certainly where I’m going in Southern Italy they have a right-sized life.

32:06

They work hard when they’re working but then they also are like, “And now I’m not working. Now I’m spending time with my family,” or “I’m in my community.” It’s right sized. And so, people will sometimes say, “Oh, Italians are so lazy in life,” but that has not been my experience. They don’t seem lazy at all. They just seem like they have their priorities in order, you know? And they don’t think their job is their identity.

[Inspirational Music]

Rebecca Ching: Leading is hard. It’s also often controversial as you navigate staying aligned to your values, your mission, your boundaries. Navigating the inevitable controversy can challenge your confidence, clarity, and calm. And I know you don’t mind making hard decisions, but sometimes the stakes seem higher and can bring up echoes of old doubts and insecurities during times when you need to feel rock solid on your plan and action.

Finding a coach who gets the nuances of your business and leading in our complex and polarized world can help you identify the blocks that keep you playing it safe and small. Now, leading today is not a fancy title or fluffy bragging rights. It is brave and bold work to stay the course when the future is so unknown, and the doubts and pains of the past keep showing up to shake things up. Internal emotional practices and systemic strategies are needed to keep the protector of cynicism at bay and foster a hope that is actionable and aligned.

So when the stakes are high and you don’t want to lose focus, when you want to navigate inevitable conflict between your ears and with those you lead, when time is of the essence and you want to make hard decisions with confidence and clarity, then Unburdened Leader Coaching is for you and where you deepen the capacity to tolerate the vulnerability of change, innovation, and doing things differently than you were taught. To start your Unburdened Leader Coaching process with me go to www.rebeccaching.com and book a free connection call. I can’t wait to hear from you!

[Inspirational Music]

34:18

Rebecca Ching: I want to touch base with something specifically that you wrote. You said: “After a lifetime of pushing my body beyond its limits, I wonder if I can repair the damage.” And that just stood out to me. I think we’re in a similar age range, and a lot of people that I know, a lot of people that I work with are kind of feeling like — well, I mean, menopause is a whole other issue. They’re like, “Nobody told me about this, and now we’re finally asking good questions.”

Kirsten Powers: Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: But there’s also this toil of work and all that’s related to it. So tell me about the damage to your body that you’re referencing and what do you think led you to push your body beyond its limits, particularly around the work and the enough zeitgeist?

Kirsten Powers: I mean, I think I pushed myself so hard partly because I could, and I kind of prided myself on it, you know?

Rebecca Ching: Right.

Kirsten Powers: I was like, “Look at me. You can never wear me out.”

Rebecca Ching: Yep.

Kirsten Powers: “I’m so strong.” I was talking to a friend of mine, actually, who I’d worked with in the Clinton administration, and then she also went to AOL. We were there at the same time. And we were kind of reflecting back on it, and she was saying, “I was like an animal. It was just like, ‘What more do you want me to do?’” And I was like, “Yeah, that’s exactly what we were like.” And a little bit I think was being a woman because you had so much to prove. You had to be so much better than everybody else. And so, it was always like, “I’ll do anything. You want me to work three days straight with no sleep? No problem,” you know what I mean? It just was insane.

So part of it was I could do it, it was expected, it was rewarded. I think you do believe when you’re young that your body will just keep doing it.

Rebecca Ching: Totally.

36:01

Kirsten Powers: You know what I mean? Because people didn’t used to do this to their bodies, right, for the most part. Chronic illness wasn’t really a thing. And so, I didn’t understand that could happen because I’d never heard of it. The first time I heard of chronic fatigue I was in my thirties. Well, I was like, “Yeah, you just do this. You just keep working even when you don’t have energy. Why wouldn’t you do this?” Now, of course in hindsight, I was doing it because I was like an addict. You know, some people are addicted to alcohol. Some people are addicted to drugs. I was addicted to work, and I was addicted to accomplishment. And I obviously had a lot of emotional issues that I just kept pushing and pushing and pushing, and it was until my body gave out that I was forced to deal with those issues, but I pushed it so far that I just really don’t know if I’ll ever be fully healthy again.

Rebecca Ching: Wow. I suspect that’s got to feel a little scary and sobering.

Kirsten Powers: Mm-hmm. And it’s why when people say things to me like, “Oh, you know –,” and give me a hard time about moving to Italy, it’s just like you know what? I’m not gonna apologize. Like, I’m not gonna apologize for moving somewhere to try to possibly be healthy and to not end up in that place again. The pressure of The United States, it just feels like so much economic pressure. And I’ve been pretty successful, you know? And even with having worked at AOL, even with all those things, I’m like most people. I don’t have a pension. I don’t have a — you know what I mean? Like, yes, I’m investing money, but the stock market has crashed, like, 14 times since I’ve had my money in it, you know what I mean? So it’s not like I have some set future. I worry all the time. So that I want to go somewhere where I can feel like, look, I can spend $300,000 and have a place to live and know that I have that and know that my health insurance is covered and know that I can just take a breath and not feel constantly terrified about my economic situation or my future or if I’m gonna be able to get a job where I can support myself. I don’t feel like I have a choice. I truly don’t. And I don’t think there’s anywhere in The United States where I could go where I wouldn’t feel this because of the healthcare issue and because of the guns.

38:20

You know, I find the gun situation very stressful and the violence. Even in the neighborhood I’m living in, people get murdered. That’s just accepted. Literally, like, a 16-year-old boy shot at the Metro in the middle of the day. Yeah, totally normal. That’s totally normal. Where in The United States would I go where these things don’t exist? And we’re not even talking about the politics. That’s what’s amazing. You can have a whole conversation and never even get into the politics.

Rebecca Ching: I was to follow up with something because I’m thinking about this kind of path that, again, especially those of us of a certain age that grew up in the eighties, which led to, whether it’s our family of origin or just the culture, all the different things about being a Gen X-er, and a lot of us chose to work through our emotional baggage through work, through achievement. There are a lot of us that found that path to be able to kind of disconnect, numb, comfort, soothe through achievement, ambition (and not just a genuine ambition but a toxic one).

And then you’ve got this awareness, right? You flash forward twenty-some years, and you’re like, “Wait. My body’s saying no. My values are saying, ‘This isn’t normal.’ And I’m questioning it.” And the same folks are still in the place of, “Oh, you’ve got to leave America because you couldn’t cut it here.”

Kirsten Powers: Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: That’s my summary. Like, there’s a little bit of, “You’re quitting.”

Kirsten Powers: Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: “I’m still gonna do this.” And you’re like, “But why? But why?”

Kirsten Powers: Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: And some people are just holding onto something. Like what are we really holding onto and even just questioning it sometimes I could suspect is — the deconstruction that could follow is probably really scary for folks. But it’s an interesting vice grip of what got us here and you’re trying to find a solution. It’s still not enough.

40:03

I’m wondering for you if your body didn’t start going through what it was going through and you hadn’t stopped working at CNN, do you think you would have noticed the damage being done?

Kirsten Powers: Yeah, I mean, I guess if it’s working for you then, no, you’re not going to. I mean, if you’re the kind of person who just likes to work all the time and your body never does anything that lets you know that it’s too much — I mean, I feel like I would have developed depression. I just feel like I would have developed something. I mean, I did develop depression, but you know what I’m saying? It’s kind of inconceivable to me that I could live that way and not develop those things. So I think anytime you are doing anything that is really ultimately an addiction, at some point it’ll come into your consciousness. You’ll have all the bad relationships. It’ll manifest in something, right? You know what I mean? So it’ll be either you’re destroying your body or you’re destroying your relationships or something’s gonna go awry, right, that’s gonna show you that you’re off track.

Rebecca Ching: Yep.

Kirsten Powers: And so, I think that it’s just kind of inconceivable to me that at some point it wouldn’t have come into my consciousness.

Rebecca Ching: But you chose to listen. You chose to listen.

Kirsten Powers: Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: Your body — I mean, our bodies sometimes scream at us sometimes until we do.

Kirsten Powers: But the other thing I have to say is that let’s just say somehow I had gotten through this unscathed, you know? I have a lot of Millennial friends, and they all have chronic illness, you know what I mean? They either have anxiety — you know, clinical anxiety or depression and/or chronic fatigue or whatever, you know what I mean? They’re all exhausted, they’re anxious, they’re worried in a way that I don’t remember being at their age, you know what I mean? And certainly when they were in their twenties, you know, and then in their thirties and now some of the elder ones are getting into their forties. It’s different. I think even if somehow I’d gotten through this unscathed I would have noticed what was happening around me, you know what I mean?

Rebecca Ching: Yeah.

42:08

Kirsten Powers: It’s the same thing with the anxiety and depression of teenagers and college students. Time periods like college in particular that used to be kind of, like, a carefree period, right, that now so many of them are struggling so much, and well before COVID. And so, I think I would have taken an interest in that separate from my issues. I just think that the fact that I’ve had these issues has made me more aware and more sensitive and more empathetic. I also think if I had been as wealthy as I think some people think I am, [Laughs] I actually wouldn’t be doing this.

And so, I wouldn’t even be able to relate to the fact of people — because I have a lot of friends who are very wealthy. They don’t worry about health insurance. They don’t worry about, “What if something happens to me?” They don’t worry about, “What’s gonna happen to me when I’m older and I need someone to take care of me?” They don’t worry about these things. And so, because I’m in enough of a space that this stuff is real to me, I think it’s just made it a topic of interest. But I do see it with my friends who are really so financially well off that they don’t have to worry about these things is they’re oblivious.

Rebecca Ching: Yeah.

Kirsten Powers: They don’t know what late-stage capitalism is. You could say late-stage capitalism, and they wouldn’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. And they’re the ones when you say something about, “Well, you know, America’s kind of messed up,” and they’ll be like, “What?” They think politically, yes, but outside of that they don’t really see the problem. I think I’m in a kind of unique situation where I actually can see it because I’ve experienced it.

Rebecca Ching: So I want to shift a little bit to you also wrote something that really stood out to me. You’re leaving the US. You’re still on target to leave at the end of 2024, is that timeline still working?

44:05

Kirsten Powers: I’m going over in September. Yeah, I’m going over in September, and then I have to come back here for some work stuff, and then I’ll head back over in December and then stay, is the plan.

Rebecca Ching: Nice. So you’re leaving, but you write about how much you care about our country, and one of the quotes I want to share here, you said: “It’s not just important to me personally that the US survives and thrives. It’s essential to the world that this young and incredibly immature nation grows up and lives up to its claims and promises about what it is. I have not stopped believing this is possible, and I never will.”

What fuels your belief in what’s possible, still possible, for our country?

Kirsten Powers: I’m not sure, honestly, why I still feel so strongly. I mean, I will say my hope is completely a hundred percent in the younger generations, particularly Gen Z. I think people are starting to see that something’s wrong, and because it’s gonna collapse on itself, something will have to change, and I just do see in the younger generation that they see it with a clarity that I don’t think a lot of older people see it as well. And so, that really gives me hope, and I see myself as somebody — I’m actually gonna be writing a book about this. Sort of the working title is It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way. And it’s looking at, yes, we have peer countries that we know they live very differently, so we know it’s possible. But we also know from looking at our past that we’ve been able to do so much better, right, and that all of the growth that people talk about all the time really just accrues to a few people. It’s not anything that has been really shared broadly. I see myself as almost like a supporter or like a backup to support whatever the younger people are gonna be doing, you know what I mean? I have the perspective and I have the experience, but I see it as their time to step in and change things. And I’m really hopeful that they will, that they see how wrong this is.

46:11

Rebecca Ching: Kirsten, I was taking my daughter to school this morning — just to share briefly — and she goes, “Do you think that I’d be a good school board member?” And I’m like, “You mean like to the elected school board?” And she’s like, “Yeah!” And I said, “Yeah, tell me why you’re interested in that,” and she went onto share some of her thoughts, and I’m like, “All right, game on. Let’s go. Let’s go! I got you.”

Kirsten Powers: Yeah. Yeah!

Rebecca Ching: [Laughs] “I’ll fundraise!” But I think, though, there’s a role that we have to help fight the exhaustion and the cynicism, and I’m curious for you, you’re touching on this a little bit. But say more about what you’re doing today to fight, I think maybe cynicism within but also around us and support this vision. What are some specific ways that you want to counter cynicism around you and when it shows up within you?

Kirsten Powers: Like I said, I don’t feel like we really have a choice because it’s not just making people’s lives miserable here. It’s what I said. It’s the role The United States plays in the world.

Rebecca Ching: Yeah.

Kirsten Powers: And so, if we continue going in this direction, it’s devastating for us but it’s also devastating for everybody else. And in terms of how I deal with myself not becoming cynical, ironically, moving to Italy is part of that.

Rebecca Ching: Mm.

Kirsten Powers: It’s like moving to a place that’s beautiful, that I’m in nature, that I can go to the ocean, things that are very important and nurturing to me. You know, I grew up in Alaska around a lot of nature, and just being in a really healing environment and being around people who think differently so I can learn, “What is normal? What’s a normal life look like? Help me understand,” you know? That is something I can then resource myself to pour into my work, which is still about The United States, right?

48:05

My writing is about The United States. This book is about The United States. But I do feel like I need some sort of distance or something. And so, I do think people have to figure out, yeah, how are you gonna sustain yourself, right? I don’t know. Is it finding somewhere where there’s cheap land? I don’t know where that is. Let me know if any people know —

Rebecca Ching: [Laughs]

Kirsten Powers: — in The United States, and building a commune, you know what I mean? What are the creative things that you can do?

Rebecca Ching: Yeah, I’ve been seeing a lot of creative things. The one that’s really attractive is women who are divorced are buying property together and blending their families in that way.

Kirsten Powers: Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: I’m seeing retirement communities make space for three generations to live together. So I’m seeing some interesting things. But I hear what you’re saying. Just the overall system though is still pretty sick.

Kirsten Powers: Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: And unless that heals it’s hard for you to heal and hard for many of us to heal, and I think this is a real important and very timely rumble.

So before we wrap up, I wanted just to ask kind of traditional quickfire questions. And the first one is what are you reading right now?

Kirsten Powers: Oh, gosh, I’m always reading so many books!

Rebecca Ching: [Laughs] Me too.

Kirsten Powers: I just think which is the one that I want to say. Well, you know, I’m getting certified in the Enneagram, so I’m reading all these — do you know the Enneagram?

Rebecca Ching: Oh, yes I do!

Kirsten Powers: Yeah, so I’ve been reading a lot of Enneagram books, but I can’t even remember the names of them. And then I have a whole bunch of late-stage capitalism books, like The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order. Oh, there’s another one called Never Enough, which is about achievement.

Rebecca Ching: Yeah.

Kirsten Powers: Yeah, it’s really interesting about sort of achievement society and what it’s doing to kids.

Rebecca Ching: Ooh.

Kirsten Powers: And so, I’m always reading various things. Yeah, Eliza Griswold has a new book out. It’s an interesting book about basically a progressive church coming to terms with racial issues and kind of being torn apart. So I’ve been reading that. So, yeah, I’m always reading a lot of books.

50:02

Rebecca Ching: What song are you playing on repeat right now?

Kirsten Powers: Binaural Beats or whatever you call them. [Laughs]

Rebecca Ching: Mm-hmm.

Kirsten Powers: Do you know what those are?

Rebecca Ching: Totally! They’re good for your brain, good for your nervous system, yep.

Kirsten Powers: I’m always just trying to regulate my nervous system.

Rebecca Ching: [Laughs] I love it!

Kirsten Powers: I just feel like, I mean, again, living in The United States, especially in DC, is just about being constantly dysregulated. I know that’s insane.

Rebecca Ching: Oh. No.

Kirsten Powers: It’s not a good — but literally that’s all I do is just meditate and listen to Binaural Beats and try to calm down.

Rebecca Ching: What is the best TV show or movie that you’ve seen recently?

Kirsten Powers: So I hardly watch any TV or shows, but I watch House of the Dragon, and I just finally watched — the season finale was this week, and I watched that, and I just loved it. I thought it was — just really I love the kind of magical realism. That’s really the only thing I’ve watched lately.

Rebecca Ching: What’s your favorite eighties piece of pop culture?

Kirsten Powers: Yeah, for me it would be Pretty In Pink and all the Molly Ringwald —

Rebecca Ching: John Hughes movies, yep.

Kirsten Powers: John Hughes movies, exactly. That would be my absolute favorite, yeah.

Rebecca Ching: Yes, even though they did not age well, I’m with you. I love them.

Kirsten Powers: Sixteen Candles, yeah.

Rebecca Ching: Yes! What is your mantra right now?

Kirsten Powers: It’s actually “I don’t know.” I’ve been very open to kind of not knowing, you know, to not feeling so sure about things. For so long my job was to have opinions and know things, you know? And I’m now much more in a kind of like — and also questioning all these things that I believed about The US and all these things. I’m always kind of asking myself, like, “Is that true?” or “Am I sure?” or “I don’t know,” you know what I mean? I really am kind of just sort of looking at things with more curiosity and less feeling like I really know the answers to things.

52:16

It is the thing that the irony of getting older is that the older I feel — like the older you get, the more you’re like, “I actually don’t know anything!” [Laughs]

Rebecca Ching: Exactly. Isn’t that the truth?

Kirsten Powers: Yes!

Rebecca Ching: Isn’t that the truth? Oh, my gosh.

Kirsten Powers: Yeah, it’s just like I — yeah. Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: So true. Who or what inspires you to be a better leader and human?

Kirsten Powers: I don’t really think of myself as a leader, so the leader that I admire the most in history and who I think has impacted me the most is Martin Luther King Jr., and I think it’s because he had so much grace, which is not something that comes naturally to me. So I always have turned back to him whenever I’ve been feeling like going off or — you know what I mean? Kind of my natural inclination to be like, “No, that’s not what leaders do,” or “That’s not what people who are trying to –.” Like I said, I don’t really think of myself as a leader, per se, but somebody that’s trying to maybe influence how people think, right? He was so effective while being so graceful and so fearing but never nasty.

Yeah, I just always go back to it, and I’m kind of like I could never achieve this, but it’s a nice Lonestar to come in and be like, “If I’m moving in that direction, then I’ll be doing better.”

[Inspirational Music]

Rebecca Ching: Before you go, I want to make sure you take away these key points from my Unburdened Leader conversation with Kirsten Powers.

53:58

First, challenging the status quo or how things have been taught to us takes courage, especially regarding the pace and structure of our lives. Kirsten’s journey reminds us that we don’t have to accept the cultural narrative that life has to be all push and no pause. Second, sustainable change often begins with imagination. Kirsten didn’t leap to a new way of life overnight. It took time, thought, and much reflection. And when we imagine different ways of living and working, we open doors to new possibilities of how we can lead and live. And lastly, creating a life that nourishes rather than drains us is an act of self-respect, not an indulgence. So many of us are conditioned to see rest or rethinking our lives as selfish. Still, Kirsten’s story shows us that setting boundaries around our energy, wellbeing, and capacity is vital to healthy, wholehearted leadership.

So as you reflect on this conversation, here are a few questions for you to consider. What assumptions about work or life have you accepted without question, and how might those assumptions be impacting your wellbeing? If you could design your life in a way that truly sustains you (and dream big on this), what would that look like? What small step could you take towards that vision just this week? And where are you pushing through when you could be pausing instead? How might your capacity and connection improve if you allowed yourself to slow down?

In a world that glorifies hustle and productivity at the cost of wellbeing, Kirsten’s journey reminds us of the importance of stepping back, questioning the norms, and creating a life that sustains rather than depletes us. As leaders making space for rest, reflection, and reimagining our daily lives is not a luxury. It’s essential for meaningful, wholehearted leadership.

55:56

So as you think about how you’re living and leading, remember that choosing a path that honors your limits and values isn’t just possible, it’s necessary. And it’s on us to create and lead spaces that honors the limits, needs, and values of others too. And this is the ongoing work of an Unburdened Leader.

[Inspirational Music]

Thank you so much for joining this episode of The Unburdened Leader. You can find this episode, show notes, and free Unburdened Leader resources along with ways to work with me at www.rebeccaching.com. And if this episode was particularly impactful to you, I’d be honored if you left a review and shared it with someone you think may benefit from it. And this episode was produced by the incredible team at Yellow House Media!

[Inspirational Music]