#awinewith Dr Rebecca Ray
MEET Dr Rebecca, founder of rebeccaray.com.au
You can find them here:
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:07):
Dr. Rebecca Ray, welcome to Spark tv. I'm so excited to have you here.
Dr. Rebecca Ray (00:12):
Thanks for having me. I'm really, really happy to be here, Danielle.
Danielle Lewis (00:15):
So good. I already know we've talked to each other for about three minutes and I already know that this is going to be a good conversation. So let's set the scene. Let's tell everyone who you are and what you do.
Dr. Rebecca Ray (00:29):
I'm Dr. Rebecca Ray. Where do I start with what I do today? As it looks currently, I write books and do keynote speaking and do a lot of media, and all of that is simply about taking my knowledge as a clinical psychologist and all that wisdom gathered over a couple of decades of practice and using that to translate it into concepts and I guess a lay person's understanding so that you and I can understand it and be able to, I guess, receive that knowledge without necessarily having to pay for the privilege of therapy. So everything that I do now is about being able to, I guess, craft psychological concepts in such a way that they're able to reach as many people as possible far more than I could do. So that's looked like a career that I didn't expect, really kind of a cobbled together existence where I'm using psychology for the benefit of as many people as I possibly can.
Danielle Lewis (01:44):
I love that. And there's so much to unpack. Do you target a particular group or is it just get the word out to as many people as possible?
Dr. Rebecca Ray (01:53):
It depends what I'm doing, and it depends which platform I'm on. So I guess the group came to me accidentally. So the people that seem to be most attracted to my work are women between about the ages of 25 and 55. There's spectrums as well that are slightly younger and slightly older. About 93% of my audience is women or fem identifying folk. And there's sometimes a vocal majority of the 7% of men. I've had men on Instagram say, I'm shocked.
Danielle Lewis (02:29):
I'm shocked
Dr. Rebecca Ray (02:30):
Maybe too. And I get the odd message. I had a message from a tradie the other day, a DM saying, as a tradie or a fellow tradie, I'm just here to say that I love your work. Because I posted something, a woman had posted her husband on a ride-on lawn mower with his headphones in, and apparently he was listening to one of my podcasts. And so I posted the fact that I love when men respond to my work, and I just think that's so phenomenal. But the vast majority is women. And then what I'm doing or what I'm asked to do is often speaking to industries that are female dominant. So I'm speaking to the Australian Veterinary Association later on this month, and 73% of their workforce is women. I'm often on channel nines today extra. Their audience is a little bit more, it's more balanced. But I guess at the start, I would've said, these psychological concepts are for everyone, but when it comes to a marketing perspective, they're actually not. They're for people that are psychologically minded. They're for people that are interested in personal growth, and oftentimes that means I'm speaking to women and f identifying folk.
Danielle Lewis (03:45):
Yeah, and that's an interesting, so you said people interested in their personal development. Is that the goal of your content, of your keynotes, of your books, of your presentations? Is it I guess all areas of personal development or do you specialize in say, relationships or business? Or is it just the full spectrum?
Dr. Rebecca Ray (04:05):
Definitely not relationships. I'm not a couples therapist, so it's not my area of expertise, not kids either. And yet actually get asked a lot to speak on parenting, and I'm always like, no, I'm not the right person. It's like going to a doctor and saying, can you check out this mole on my back? It's not every single doctor's area of specialty. But I guess again, over the years, I've kind of been forced to distill down A, what I'm interested in, and B, what I think about it. Yeah, it's just tended to be what, because I guess when you get pigeonholed into the thought leader kind of category, and sometimes people refer to me as that. I don't love that title because of the pressure that comes with it, but it's just what happens when you are out, I guess, in the media landscape, you then need to be able to put labels to what's your thing?
Danielle Lewis (05:10):
Yes.
Dr. Rebecca Ray (05:11):
So there's the likes of Brene Brown, who we all know as shame and vulnerability and courage. And then there's the likes of Mel Robbins who has the five second rule. People will say, what is your thing? And my thing has, I guess, accidentally become just the very nature of instilling in people a sense of empowerment to be able to live life on their own terms. It's simply about being able to say, I'm allowed to do it my way in my own time. I think.
Danielle Lewis (05:45):
Yeah, I love that. And I just think, I mean, obviously interesting that women resonate with that, but that is a concept that should be instilled in everybody, that they can be empowered to live their life on their own terms. I think that's incredible. So tell me how you got here. You mentioned 20 years in clinic. What's been the process to get here? What's been the career journey?
Dr. Rebecca Ray (06:11):
So it's been just over 20 years as a registered psychologist, a little less in clinic. So I studied psychology from the moment I left school. I knew that I wanted to be a psychologist when I was 15. I think we had a careers night in grade 10, and I don't even know whether there was a psychologist there. I just remember clearly knowing that I wanted to study psychology. And then when I left school, I went straight into a double degree studying psychology, and I also started learning to fly. And I had this little deviation where I was a pilot for a while before I realized that that absolutely violated so many of my life. So I'm very much a creature of routine, and I like doing the same thing each day. And when you fly, everything changes every day, and it requires you to use maths and physics every day.
(07:06):
And I'm an English girl, so ask me to write an essay and I'm all over it. Ask me to fly a small piece of tin through the sky, and I have to work very hard to do that. So I went back to psychology and started my own practice. And that practice was very successful. And the short story here, Danielle, is the fact that I did too much of it in too shorter space of time. Now, it wasn't a short space of time. I was in clinical practice for just over 10 years. But what happened is I kind of got to the point where my devotion to my patients, my clients and to my referrers meant that I really didn't say no very often. And so I was seeing up to 40 patients a week. Wow. It was a lot of work. So I got, unsurprisingly, I got burnt out and I got so burnt out that I ended up getting to the point where burnout made the decision for me.
(08:10):
I actually didn't have any say in it. It got to the point where had I have listened to the burnout, maybe five years earlier, things might've changed, but I didn't because I'm stubborn like that and I like to do things my way and I like to be the boss. And it turned out that actually no burnout's the boss of me, if you don't listen to your feelings, your feelings will tend to be the boss of you. And so we got to the point where I had to kind of walk away from a career that I thought I would be in until I was 70. I actually thought I would be in clinical practice until I was 70. And at the ripe old age of 35, I had to not do that anymore. And so I was kind of left with this idea of, holy shit, how do I pay my bills?
(08:54):
I walked away from very comfortable multi six figure income to what do I do? How do I study for eight years and not use what I love anymore? And yet, how do I use what I love without seeing patients? And so no one was really doing what I do today. And so I didn't have anyone that I could look to and go, well, maybe I could do what they're doing. And so I just accidentally tried stuff until it stuck and experienced a very lumpy income, what my bookkeeper calls lumpy income as a result. And I am still trying to stabilize that income. Honestly, it's been since God, 2018, the last client I saw was the day before I gave birth to my son in 2018. And I promised myself that I would not go back to it. And here I am. I just accidentally became a published author and I'm writing book number 11 as we speak, and I occasionally do speaking events and go on tv. It's a weird job, the job that you have when you don't really have a job,
Danielle Lewis (10:04):
I'd say you work very hard still. I
Dr. Rebecca Ray (10:06):
Do, but it's weird. It's not like your normal job.
Danielle Lewis (10:11):
Yeah, no, I love that. And there's so much to unpack there. So let's go back to burnout because I think that that's a really key one that I'd like to dive in just a little bit deeper because I know that, so our audience is women in business. So I would hazard a guess and say there's somebody listening to this podcast who is either starting to experience the signs of burnout and ignoring them because we're all overachievers or really getting to that point where they're done. So what was it like for you? I mean, you said that burnout made the choice for you. Would there be anything that you would suggest to someone? How do you identify the signs of burnout and what should we be doing to try not to get completely burnt out?
Dr. Rebecca Ray (10:56):
Look, I think the signs are many and varied, and there's no clinical diagnosis of burnout. So it's not like it's in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders that we use to diagnose depression and anxiety and those types of things. It's burnout is not a recognized diagnosis. It's kind of more vague than that, I guess, because it can show up in many ways. But burnout can definitely show up as having a causal relationship with depression and anxiety. And I think that's what happened for me. I had enough vague symptoms that then I finally got to the point where I noticed my mental health was deteriorating. So what I would want people to be looking for is changes in your attitude to work. So for me, what that looked like was Sunday Night Blues, which then became Saturday afternoon blues, which then became Friday Night Blues, which became every night before work blues.
(11:55):
So this pervasive, I need to be away from it. I then also experienced these really interesting symptoms, interesting in hindsight, not so fun while I was experiencing them, but I had this quite severe anxiety response to things that were unpredictable. So phone calls I would be anxious about who was on the other end of the phone. I would be anxious about opening my inbox in case I couldn't predict what was sitting in my inbox. And so I even got to the point where I doubted my capacity as a therapist. Now on the other side of this, I'm a damn good therapist. It's ridiculous. But minds do funny things when we're kind of stuck in this cycle of self-criticism and fear around the overwhelm that comes with burnout. And so for me, my mind was saying, what if you can't do this? What if you're not good at this?
(12:48):
And then I would get in the room and be absolutely fine, but the anxiety prior was just so palpable. And so all of that then collectively kind of occurred to the point where even days off. So what I did was I took more days off. I then changed my hours so that I was actually doing fewer days in the week, and then I reduced the number of hours I was doing per day. I took more holidays, I did all sorts of things like that, and it stopped making a difference. So it didn't matter how little I did, I still had those symptoms. And then it kind of crosses over to not wanting to talk about work outside of work. So if anyone, I have a lot of friends who are psychologists, which is super beneficial. I get lots of free therapy, but I give lots of free therapy too.
(13:36):
It's very helpful. But one of the things that happened was if they brought up a case that they wanted to discuss from work confidentially of course, and anonymously, I just couldn't talk about it. I would just be like, I cannot do any more that involves anything about psychology outside of work. And so it became quite pervasive and that was the key. And then I had lunch with a psychologist friend of mine, and I explained how I was feeling to him, and he called it and he said, Beck, if you don't stop, your body's going to stop for you. So you are closing your clinic. This was on the 15th of January, 2015, the first time I walked away and my clinic was closed on the 30th of January.
Danielle Lewis (14:21):
And I was going to ask whether you actually spoke to someone about it, like having other psychologists in your friendship circle and your network, whether you actually did sort of One thing that I say to people is it's very easy. We all sit at home, work from home by ourselves, very isolated, a lot as a business owner. And it's difficult sometimes to talk to people about these things because also there's a lot of shame associated with, I don't like my business anymore.
Dr. Rebecca Ray (14:50):
That's actually really common. Psychologists have to have supervision as part of our professional development. So I certainly did talk to psychologists, I'm just not sure I was as honest with them as I could have been because I wasn't being honest with myself. So the shame came from if you were a decent enough psychologist, you should be able to manage this. You should be able to manage this load and these stop gaps that you're putting in place should work. The fact that they're not working means that there's something wrong with you. And I can only say that in hindsight. I think really what I needed to do was stop at the time. The friend of mine that told me I had to was correct, but it took a very long time for me to recover, for me to even be able to put those sentences into some kind of meaning, I guess.
(15:40):
So for business owners, and I've done business coaching before in this kind of iteration of my career, and it's a really common thing that I see for women in particular, this kind of sense of shame that A, they can't balance it. Balance is bullshit, by the way. So especially women who are mothers, this idea that they should be able to spend all their time on their business, but also be a mom a hundred percent of the time with this kind of devotion to their kids. And then this sense of my business isn't doing as well as what it should be. Because so often what we see glorified on Instagram and LinkedIn and whatever is this kind of overnight success experience. And so people start to decide that they're not good at business and it will never work out. And I think that's really common, this sense of uncertainty of how long do I give this before I actually have to walk away from it?
Danielle Lewis (16:39):
And it's really interesting. I love that you brought that up in terms of what we see online as the measure of success, it really bothers me because it's just people have this mentality that that is what success is. Unless I have the fancy holidays, have the billion dollar Shopify screenshots, have the Chanel handbag that I'm not a success. And until that point, I will not be happy and I will not think I'm good enough and I will not think that I can succeed in business. But it's such a trap and it's just so frustrating because every person's needs are completely different. We do this process in Spark where it's like the minimum viable revenue calculator. Like your goal might not be a million dollars. Your goal might be what does it cost to contribute to the household? What does it cost for All I want to do with my businesses one family holiday a year? And that is success. And then if we put these crazy benchmarks on ourselves that have no alignment to our own values, all we do is set ourselves up for failure.
Dr. Rebecca Ray (17:46):
Absolutely. And especially when the decision of what that alignment looks like comes from a place of comparison, I think that's really dangerous because so often we don't stop to go, well, hold on a second. What are the life non-negotiables and ingredients that I need in order to be able to say that I'm a success and what would that look like? And I think sometimes it's so much less than what we think, and it can be things that we just take for granted, but stop to see as a celebration. So I just helped in Bennett's classroom this morning, and every time I do, every time I can just drop everything and just pop in there for half an hour. And he gets so excited that I'm in his grade one class, I stop and go, I created this. I literally consciously created this life so that I can be in here for half an hour a week. And for me, that's priceless. That because he will remember that. That's right, that's right.
Danielle Lewis (18:50):
I think that that is so incredible. It's just so interesting how we do, we often benchmark ourselves and use comparison as this metric and measure of success. It's so funny. I always think you go through these exercise where you say, what would my ideal day look like if money wasn't an object? If I could do anything, what would my ideal day? And I often write down things like, well, I would do yoga every day and I would read every day. And I'm like, that's funny. You can do that now. You don't need a billion dollar business to be able to do those things that you want to do every day. If you do those things, you can consider yourself a success.
Dr. Rebecca Ray (19:25):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Even though money is time and time is money. And sometimes having more money does create space to do those things. But so often we're so caught up in this sense of scarcity that we don't see the time available that we have today to be able to do those things. But also, I think sometimes we put expectations on ourselves. We should want to do those things. We should want to exercise every single day and have these amazing meditation and journaling sessions. You don't have to want that just because people do their, I don't know, whatever fucking 5:00 AM morning routine. Routine or whatever. You don't have to want that. You can be like me and want miniature donkeys, and that's your sign of success. And the more self-determined your success is the more powerful it will feel when you get there and you recognize it.
Danielle Lewis (20:23):
And I just think, I love that term, the self-determined success. We need to coin this right here, right now, everyone listening because it is so important. And I think that that's one of the keys to trying to stay away from burnout is by figuring out what actually brings you joy and what helps you see yourself as more of a success and stop having to work yourself into the ground for a goal that you don't want anyway.
Dr. Rebecca Ray (20:51):
Exactly. Right. Exactly. And that's it. A goal that you don't want anyway, because some iteration of you decided, I don't know, years ago or someone told you that you should decide to pursue that thing, but it doesn't actually belong to you, whether that be a number or whether it be what you think you should do in your business. I've been told a million times I should have an email list. And I did for a time. I did sell online for a time, and I fucking hate it. I hate it every minute of it. I don't like it for a time. It kind of worked. But the energy that I hold around it means that I can't make it the full success that it could be because I just don't like it. And so I think sometimes we're just told so many times by so many different people, you have to do it this way, that it stops you from being able to look at, well, what are the other possibilities? If I can genuinely say that this doesn't work for me, it doesn't feel good for me.
Danielle Lewis (21:53):
I love that I heard this great one that there is evidence for every strategy. So you can wake up at 5:00 AM and be a millionaire. You can wake up at midday and still be a millionaire. You can exercise everyday, journal, meditate, all the things, be a millionaire. Or you can eat junk food on the couch. And there's somebody who will be a millionaire who fits that profile. So it's like, just pick what you love, just pick what feels good for
Dr. Rebecca Ray (22:16):
You. Yeah, that's it.
Danielle Lewis (22:19):
Incredible. I love it. So talk to me about your, so obviously having the clinic that was running your own business, so you've obviously been in business for quite a long time, and now business has changed in the sense that it's content, it's books, it's speaking, it's all of these things. What do you think has been a consistent lesson over that time? What have been some really big things that you've had to hold in business to be a success and be able to change? With the times
Dr. Rebecca Ray (22:49):
I don't change. So let's take that off the table. I mean, I, I don't tend to follow what the algorithm wants me to do, so I couldn't give a shit if I'm losing followers on Instagram or whatever. I could just, I'm not someone that goes, oh, now I need to do reels. No, if I don't want to, I won't do it. But the consistency has been the meaning behind the work that I do. So it doesn't matter whether I'm being asked to be interviewed on TV or I'm writing my next book, or I'm doing some speaking gig in front of hundreds of people, the meaning is the same. So I'm arriving at that point in exactly the same state, which is, it's kind of difficult to describe, but
Danielle Lewis (23:37):
Well, it's almost like what I'm hearing is that the channel doesn't matter. So if it's one-on-one in the clinic, if it's a book, if it's a speaking, if it's your mission doesn't change,
Dr. Rebecca Ray (23:47):
That's right. The channel doesn't matter. It's very much like there's a message that I need to get across, and that message will be whatever the audience needs to hear right now or needs to read right now. So I almost trust that I can be the vessel for that. And that message will always be, what's the thing that I can say that will have this person walking away feeling okay in their own skin and empowered to make the decision that fits best for them?
Danielle Lewis (24:19):
I love that. I just think that is so applicable to every woman in business because we are all on our independent missions. And I know especially in the smart community, we have so many people who are impact driven or serving their community in some way. And I do love that. I think you're right. We do get trapped a little bit with, oh my God, I got to do a reel every day. Or, oh my God, the algorithm's changed, but you're so spot on. That doesn't matter. There are so many ways to reach the person that you're going to ultimately serve. If you stay true to your mission, then the rest doesn't really matter.
Dr. Rebecca Ray (24:58):
Exactly. Right. And I think it's just coming back to burnout again. The reason I have strong feelings about not doing those things is because what burnout taught me is if you can't sustain it, it's going to harm you
Danielle Lewis (25:12):
Or
Dr. Rebecca Ray (25:12):
It's going to harm your expectations of yourself, or it's going to harm how you see your workday. And I'm just not available for that anymore. I'm too old for that now. I just turned 45 and I love aging. I think it's the most beautiful thing. It's been the most powerful thing that I've ever had access to and had the privilege of doing for becoming more comfortable in my own skin. And so I think from that place, I'm just very clear on, I don't really care what people put out there in terms of what you should do if that's not a fit for me. What I'm most interested in is what feels good for me, what feels meaningful for me and can I sustain it? So in what form do I need to practice that so that it's sustainable? And sometimes that means it will be sustainable for a chapter or sustainable for a test. And then at the end of it, I'll stop and go, actually, that test wasn't great, so I'm not going to continue that, but I give myself permission to test it out anyway.
Danielle Lewis (26:12):
Oh my God, I love that so much. And what's interesting about this conversation is you are a successful business owner and you've chosen to do it on your terms and do what feels right for you. And I love always circling back to that to remind people that this is available to them as well. If they can choose to or choose not to do whatever it is that they want. In business, you are the business owner, by definition. You get to define the rules.
Dr. Rebecca Ray (26:37):
That's right. And I'm doing this from the other side of burnout. So even if you get it wrong and you get it wrong as badly as I did, there's still recovery available. And in some ways it's the things I get wrong that have enabled me to be so clear on what's right. I can very clearly tell you what I will and won't do simply because I know how bad it feels for me to be on the wrong side of that.
Danielle Lewis (27:03):
Oh, I think that is absolutely beautiful. Okay, Beck, let's wrap up. So reflecting on your time in business, what would be one last piece of advice that you would give to another woman in business to help her on her journey?
Dr. Rebecca Ray (27:19):
I'd ask her to ask her 80-year-old self what she wants to do, because it's her opinion that matters. No one else's.
Danielle Lewis (27:29):
Oh my God. No one has ever said that. And that is just the most gorgeous sentiment. And I just think it underpins everything that we spoke about today. You're in it for you. This is just beautiful.
Dr. Rebecca Ray (27:42):
Yeah, you're in it to make a difference too, but if you are not okay, the work that you're doing won't be okay. You can't disseminate your work to the rest of the world if it's not coming from a place where you are. Okay.
Danielle Lewis (27:55):
Absolutely. Could not agree more. Dr. Rebecca Ray, you are incredible. Thank you so much for sharing your time and your wisdom with our Spark community. I'm so grateful for
Dr. Rebecca Ray (28:06):
You. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Danielle. I.
✨ Thank you to IP Australia for supporting the SPARK podcast and women in business ✨
