Watch or listen to this episode below.

Brief summary:

Our podcast guest for this episode is Dr. Bonnie Wilson, President & Founder of Xceeding the Mark Executive Coaching and Consulting. Bonnie shared how a seizure got her attention and how every professional can learn to align their daily choices with their own values. Listen in to our conversation.

Key insights from this episode:

• (at 2:27) Bonnie shares her professional background and how she started as ER nurse to owning her own executive coaching company.

• (at 7:38) Bonnie tells the story of when she had a seizure and multiple surgeries and how those experiences became a wake up call for her.

• (at 10:23) Bonnie talks about her ‘fuel’ that had helped her overcome the challenges in her career.

• (at 11:36) Leila and Bonnie discuss how high achieving individuals tend to overwork to the point of exhaustion and burnout, and ways to take a few steps back and recover.
  

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TRANSCRIPT
FUEL Podcast hosted by Leila Ansart
SEASON 2 Episode 2: When a Seizure Gets Your Attention with Dr. Bonnie Wilson, President and Founder of Xceeding the Mark Executive Coaching and Consulting

GUEST INTRO:

Today's guest is Dr. Bonnie Wilson, President and Founder of Xceeding the Mark Executive Coaching and Consulting. Having spent over 20 years as a healthcare leader, today Dr. Bonnie coaches professional women of color to make conscious choices without treating everything in life as an emergency. Her own experiences helped her master skills such as self-awareness, emotional intelligence, accountability, and having successful crucial conversations. When you meet Dr. Bonnie, you'd see that her smile draws you right in. Couple that with her sense of humor and she's really able to say the hard stuff while remaining candid and respectful.During our conversation today, Bonnie shared with me how a seizure got her attention and how every professional can learn to align their daily choices with their own values. Listen in to our conversation.

Leila Ansart, Host

Welcome, Bonnie, to the podcast. I am honestly more than thrilled to have you here today. For all of our listeners, Bonnie and I actually speak about once a week, if not more often. She has been a colleague and a peer of mine as an executive coach for over the last year. And we've gotten really remarkably close. I love Bonnie's sense of humor, her realness. She's very open with her journey and her wisdom as well. I've been appreciative of both of those. So Dr. Bonnie, welcome to the podcast. 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Guest
Thank you, Leila. I was really excited to join you. 

Leila Ansart, Host|
Yeah, absolutely. Let's give all the listeners an opportunity to learn about you first. Why don't you tell us who you are, what you do and what your background has been professionally so we have some context for the rest of the conversation. 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Guest
Sure. So my background is healthcare. I'm an ER nurse to my very heart. No matter what I do, ER nursing is kind of what settles the way I think about things. I've been an ER nurse for many years, a nursing administrator. I was over 9 emergency departments in Oregon for 10 years. Before that was over another ED (emergency room) for 10 years. ER is kind of what I do, but I also had customer service and consulting and coaching in the middle of there. It's kind of all rounded me out to be the coach that I am. About a little less than two years ago, I started my own coaching business, executive coaching when I realized that [I have] all that background I needed to start helping other people. That's how I moved from the corporate world to where I am now. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Wonderful. Two decades in healthcare, in leadership capacities and what I remember the first time you told me, your latest position, you were over nine emergency departments. I cannot even imagine. What was that like on a day-to-day basis? 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Guest
Well, the thing to remember is there was a leader over each of these. My job was to make sure all nine went one, like a ship all going in the same direction. I actually learned then how to take my consulting, mine and my coaching mind and stay focused because I wasn't supposed to be getting down on the weeds unless there was something really going on, then I'd be in there playing whack-a-mole. Other than that, I was supposed to make sure all nine were going the same way and that the like sized departments were functioning pretty much the same. We did policies, procedures, and practices, and then I was responsible for strategy. So it was really fun. I didn't even realize then that I was doing more coaching and consulting until later I thought about it. 

Leila Ansart, Host
That's interesting. I was going to say with nine leaders who are each responsible for their own ER, and then the responsibility that ladders up to you. I would imagine you've gained quite the experience in terms of dealing with interpersonal challenges, managing workloads, managing conflict, negotiation, those types of things. Would you agree? 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Guest
Yes. All of it. It was nine liters plus nine doctors. A total of 18 people that were expected to follow a similar path. All of the negotiation, teaching them crucial conversations, teaching them how to hold people accountable, but then how to also improve their employee engagement was a big part of what I did and to try to make it consistent across all of those departments was important. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Wow. What was the impetus for ending that two decade career and moving into more independent work like you're doing now? 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Guest
Well, I was a Vice President of Patient Care in a small hospital. Actually, it wasn't that small, about 200 beds and didn't stay in that job by the choice of my leader. So I try to learn from everything. I finally decided with the help of my husband, he said, I'd been coaching for a long time talking to my own coach. He's like, you've been doing this since 2018. Why aren't you out on your own? It was kind of a push in the pool and I could swim just a little bit. Now I'm kind of swimming pretty well, actually swimming really well. Like an athlete almost. 

Leila Ansart, Host
You are, you are. That's great. Dr. Bonnie, tell us about who you are outside of work. You mentioned your husband. 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Guest
Yeah. So I'm in love with my husband. He's the best thing since sliced bread. We have four grown children and then one that doesn't know she's not our child. We say we have five, even though she's our niece. We have two grandchildren and one on the way. They don't live around us. One of our kids lives in Oregon. One lives in South Carolina, then the rest live in Maryland. But it's much closer where we are now. We get to see them. We talk to them a couple of times a week. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Oh, that's wonderful. It sounds like a tight family. 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Guest
It is. 

7Leila Ansart, Host
You moved recently, where are you joining us from today? 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, GuestIllinois.
That's funny. “Where are you joining today?” Like you're going to move again. I have not ever. I lived in Illinois now, in Sugar Grove, Illinois, about 45 minutes outside of Chicago. We really do like it. Enough area for us to run around and not get on each other's nerves. So it's perfect. 

Leila Ansart, Host
A key component. Bonnie, were talking today about this concept of ‘fuel’ as the listeners are familiar with. With a two decade career in healthcare and then most recently becoming an entrepreneur and in sparking out on your own, I'm curious to hear about some of what you've realized have been your driving factors over your entire career. And I'd love it If you could share with us something that you've gone through, where you were able to gain some clarity on the motivators that are important to you. 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Guest
Sure. In 2015, I had a seizure on a plane about 10 minutes outside of Oregon. Over the course of the next three months, then I had three brain surgeries. One was to take a tumor out, the second one was the site got infected and I had a germ called E-coli, which is what you find in poop and dirt, in my brain. I had IB antibiotics for six weeks. I wore a helmet and as you can see, I don't like anything but hair on my head. At the beginning of December, I got a titanium plate put in my head. Over that course of time, I had to realize that it was important that I focused on my health and trust me, there were times when I was like balling, dissolving in tears. I would stand at the top of the steps and start crying. Because I wasn't supposed to go up and down steps without anyone, until my husband was like, get a grip, you're still alive and you're fine. 

After  then after having another seizure sitting at a stoplight, three years later, the medication would make me sleepy at the time. And I got really frustrated. I said to a dietician that I was working  with, this is crazy. I don't want to go back to sleep. I don't want another nap. She said, your body won't sleep any more than what it needs. So it really made me start understanding. I need to focus on my health. My priorities used to be God, my family, and work or school. I realized that if health  wasn't in there. It'd be just like a flight attendant says about putting on your own oxygen mask, first. I wasn't taking care of me. 

The way I do that now is, if I get sleepy, I go lay down and I probably couldn't do that if I was in the corporate world. If I want to go to bed at nine o'clock at night, I just go to bed because I remembered that that seizure came from scar tissue, but it was potentiated by not getting enough sleep. I have to have sleep or I could basically kill somebody having a seizure at a light. And all this has been so ,I think, so the way God wanted it to be for me, but he got my attention. I'm not trying to not listen  again and not do what I'm supposed to. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Interesting. Prior to having the seizure, you're a very driven woman, you're intelligent, you pursued your healthcare career and your PhD. What do you think was your bigger driver before the seizure compared to this impetus that you have on the health now, 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Gues
tI think, to use one of your words ‘fuel’, I think what fueled me is ambition. I've always said, I don't have to be perfect, but I don't want to make mistakes. So, while that sounds counterintuitive, I wanted to be the best. And I don't mean the best, like better than anybody else. I could never do half-ass job. I was always trying to do it really well, not perfect, but it had to be as close to that as possible. That was what was so important, that I needed to do everything I needed to do to make sure it was right or as close to perfect as possible, to be excellent. And that was ahead of my health. Honestly, I think it sometimes took precedence over my family, which is why after a while, I'd put family up higher, not just in my brain, but in my actions. 

It just moved things all around. Before it was all ambition and career. Afterwards, it was, have you lost your mind? Actually, as you lost a piece of it, you need to be focusing on sleep and doing what's healthy. 

Leila Ansart, Host
We come back to Bonnie's humor, I love it. She can take such a serious topic and still make you laugh. 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Gues
t popped in my head and then came in, sorry, 

Leila Ansart, Host
No apology needed. So, I find this interesting because you and I both work with leaders. Very often we work with high achieving individuals. And there's so much beauty in that. I mean, somebody who does strive for excellence, who wants to do a great job who is motivated to be the best, deliver the best work product that they can as that contributor. It's hard to look at that and find fault with it, especially in our capitalistic society. At the same time, I find, I'd love to hear your thoughts here, that quite often, in fact, I would say 90% of the time, the individuals who do so well and perform so well, they don't ever have that stop point. They tend to have a career where they perform well, they move up, they do all of these different things that are markers of success, but then inevitably they have some kind of a big line in the sand moment if they're not conscious and intentional around their day to day decisions. Because that kind of an approach to life and career in my opinion, is not sustainable over the long-term. 

First of all, do you experience the same and in the advisory capacity that you have? 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Guest
Yes. All the time. I think the reason people do it is always striving to be the best. As women we feel like we have to work extra hard. As a woman of color, as my mother used to say, I have to work twice as hard to get half as far. You pull that in together and we just feel like we have to keep working hard. The way I like to bring people back is with a couple of statements. One, if you're laying on your deathbed, nobody looks up to their kids or their family and goes, I am so glad I got the report done on time. I mean, that's not what's on your mind. What's important to you is, did you spend time with your kids? Did you spend time with your family? Are they wanting to be there with you? Do they like spending time with you? 

The other comment I use for people, as I tell them, is your hair on fire? Is it an emergency? Is somebody going to die? I was talking to someone this morning and she's doing a salary negotiation. And she said, I'm so nervous. I said, so if you don't get what you want, is anybody going to die? You still have a job. It can be life changing, but is it life altering like a seizure, like, having an accident because you're too tired. It's kind of prioritizing those things. I know they're important. I know you have deadlines and no, I don't always do it perfectly, but are you most of the time paying attention to your body, what your body's telling you than you are to what your job is telling you. 

Leila Ansart, Host
So good. I'm going to play the devil's advocate here for a minute. You ready? Okay. Dr. Bonnie, that's easy enough for you to say because now you work for yourself. You can go take a nap in the middle of the day if you feel tired and you don't have an appointment, what about me? I work in corporate America or I work in healthcare. How can I take this wisdom and applied in a practical way that can really work? 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, GuestSo very good grasshopper. I can give a good answer. What I tell people often is even when I was in healthcare and in the corporate world, there's a way to put a reminder. In healthcare, you're going, ER nurses, we have what we call a nurses bladder where you can just go and go forever. You don't even stop to go to the bathroom. I put reminders on my phone. There is a reminder that goes off at 12 noon that says stopped for lunch. Usually I've already eaten by then, but it's just a tickler to go, okay, it's time. There's one that goes off at six o'clock because I could keep working forever. I love my job. It goes off at six o'clock and it says, wind it up, wind it down and stop working. I have one that goes off at night that's, ‘okay let's slow it down’. Let's start getting ready for bed. 

I would put a reminder on in the middle of the day that says, take five minutes. Even our apple watches tell us to stop and take a deep breath. I encourage people to, instead of saying I can't, to figure out a way how I can. You go in the bathroom as an ER nurse, can you pause for a minute, take some deep breaths and just try to recenter yourself. Can you go outside for lunch and just eat outside for a little bit?  Just so you can, again, recenter yourself to what's important. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Absolutely. 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Guest Yeah.
No hair being on fire and it's not an emergency. Is anybody going to die if you don't get that done? In the ER, yes. Because I'll have an ER nurse go. Yes, I'm saving lives, but can't you take two minutes and go and have a moment of peace. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to add to that. I don't work in healthcare so from the business perspective, the clients that I'm working with, there's been several where we've had to put into place what I like to call a ‘container’. We visualize what is a reasonable amount of time for you to be spending on your position. These are individuals who are high up there, executives in the company and they hold a lot of responsibilities. So this is not an easy conversation for them to have. In fact, it typically comes, quite a few weeks into the coaching engagement because they cannot even fathom having this conversation when we get started. But when we get there, we go through an exercise where we create a container, meaning what is a reasonable amount of time for you to deliver B+ work? And then how many of  the responsibilities that you hold or the projects that you're currently leading need to be A+ work versus B+ work. Again, coming back to the audience, right? 

These are high achievers. These are individuals who don't hold anything back. I mean, like you said, they refuse to do anything less than their absolute best, but what that ends up doing is the smaller things that would be good enough with just a messy one page, set of eight bullets in going into a meeting, becomes a full on, three page agenda with supporting documentation. When that particular meeting with that particular audience may not have warranted that, but because they always deliver on that level, it is an automatic for them. They don't even think outside of the box. 

So the exercises create this container. What are the priorities within your organization? How is your progress and success measure? What are the important values of the company and how your delivery is gauged? And then how can you put that in a container so that what doesn't fit in the container, you feel okay, you can release the guilt of it falling off, because if it doesn't fit in the container, it doesn't. 

I like to do a lot of visualizations. So for clients that that works with when they can see that they can deliver fantastic work, that they can be proud of the contribution that they're making, that they could be doing meaningful work and have it not kill them. Then they start to gain some hope and that hope was some very specific strategies then helps to educate them on creating very realistic boundaries, where a boundary for you might be at this point in your experience stopped to have lunch, stop at 6:00 PM. A boundary for someone else might be, I don't take meetings after this time, or this is my norm and yes, I allow a few exceptions, but it needs to be here's the norm and here's the exceptions. Not all of that is the norm and the expected. I think it's an interesting lesson that they're aware of the presenting pain, right? 

They know they're burned out. They know they're exhausted. They might've even had a frightening wake-up call like you did where their physical body has given in some way. But I think the world at large right now is facing so much of this. I think your message is extremely timely about how we do need to prioritize our personal and our physical health and our mental health, right? Like that's the next step, but physical health being number one, to make sure that we can continue to deliver what we're wanting to deliver and give to the world. 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Guest
Yeah. I do a similar exercise that's only maybe a little step back. I have a worksheet where it has three columns. So column one is your values. Column two is your priorities. Column three is what actions will align with those. Whenever people do it, they go, oh, so my priority, my value is family. My priority is that I'm going to put my family first, but I think of them last. I give them whatever time is leftover. I've had several people, several members and clients just within the past week that have done that. They go, oh, I have them completely out of order. I try to step back even before the, ‘what can you do at work?’ Because no matter how many times I try to avoid it, work-life blend is something that a woman, a man, almost anybody really relates to. 

I don't like the word work-life balance, because like you said, sometimes you're going to be doing more work than you are at home, but that should be the exception, not the rule. How do you make that work so that you aren't working so much, you don't get to spend time with your priorities that align with your values. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Yeah. That's so beautiful. That sounds like a really great exercise. Let's bring this back to your particular experience. I mean, first of all, going through that seizure on an airplane, I mean, I know you're probably much not more knowledgeable about the human body and everything because of what you do professionally, but still, I mean, that had to be incredibly frightening. And then to have a series of surgeries after the fact, and it's not an easy fix, it's not a one and done kind of situation. How did you find that your decision-making was influenced by this experience? Kind of stair-step us through it because this clarity that you speak with. Surely now I'm sure it didn't happen overnight for you. 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Guest
No, no, no. You may remember one of the things that I said that I was standing at the top of the steps crying. One, nurses are the worst patients --- nurses, and doctors. I would try to do things I wasn't supposed to and realize that I couldn't. That would be the awakening of, stop it that's not working for you. Over time I realized that I was hurting myself if I didn't start doing what I needed to. I've had another surgery since the knee surgery and the first one went well, and the second one did not because the physical therapist said, you just set yourself back two weeks because you were trying to do something you weren't ready to do. I kind of get these health things, but I also realized I'm not hurting anybody but myself.  So I’ve stair-stepped from ‘I'm the boss of everybody and I'm going to do what I want to’, -- to  ‘maybe it's hurting me if I don't do what I'm supposed to’ --to  where I am now of, I want to share with other people, what are some simple things you can do to be able to stay focused on your health? 

I went from scared to kind of nervous. I can tell you when the doctor came in and said she was going to have to take me back to surgery because I had pus all the way down to my brain. All the faith in the world doesn't make you not go, oh my God, did she just say what I thought she said? But I had a sense of calmness and peace that's from my faith where I just kind of reached over and patted my husband's hand and said, everything's going to be okay. Of course, as he's staring at me, like, are you crazy? What are you talking about? To the place of where I am now, where you've seen I've had some times where I'm ‘oh, woe is me, life is so bad’. But then it comes back to my faith of life is so bad, but it's bad at the moment. How do you focus on what's more important and the good things that are happening. So it's happened over time. By the time I'm 90, I will be perfect at this. 

Leila Ansart, Host
I love that. So this realization, Dr. Bonnie, of reorganizing your priorities and placing health closer to the top is the way that I'm encapsulating it. How does it influence the work that you do now? 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Guest
It really has a heavy influence when my ideal person that I've been working with, or people, it's been women who are salaried with five or more employees reporting to them and really wanting to get their life back to the place where their priorities drive their work, instead of their work driving their priorities. 

So when they work with me, they end up with a better blend of what they do. I've had so many women go, now it's normal for me to either stop for lunch or to schedule a vacation or onto a holiday weekend, go do what they're supposed to with their family. It also helps them to really get deep into their leadership. When they're in a job to be able to get better at it or be prepared for their next career move or the other one to just embrace that, “I am good enough.” 

Or I like to tell people and a lot of women -- I have been writing on a sticky note for them and put it on their computer  “I'm a badass”,  because I really want them to remember you are good enough where you are and coaching will help you to get even better. So many women, when they're done, they're like, I still have the sticky on my computer. We just say, put it on your computer and tell your kids they're not allowed to say that. But that's really how the women have turned their lives around. One woman said you have completely changed my life. So that really makes me feel good. It reminds me that coaching really does help. It's why I have my own and why I coach other people. 

Leila Ansart, Host
That's awesome. So awesome. It's very clear that you're passionate about what you do. I know, because I know you even outside of this interview, that you're making a huge difference. Bonnie, tell us something fun about you completely out of left field here. I didn't give her any prep on this question, that maybe not everybody knows, or  your average community of people don't know about you. 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Guest"
I was runner up from Ms. District of Columbia when I was about 22 years old. 

Leila Ansart, Host
That's so cool. 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Guest
I was thin and gorgeous and I'm full and gorgeous. I was the runner up and I played concert piano. That was one of the things I did. Yeah. We used to come out of the conservatory. Yep.Runner up from Miss DC. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Concert pianists. That's incredible. Do you still play? 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Guest
I still have a piano. Notice I didn't say I still play right now. Bifocals make it difficult sometimes. Because I tend to send way back from the piano because I have long legs. Now that I have some reading glasses, I should be able to, we brought our piano back with us. Yes, I will be playing at least a little bit.

eila Ansart, Host
Oh, that's awesome. Thank you for sharing that. I love to hear the little not-so-known bits of info.  Dr. Bonnie, how can the listeners learn more about you and get in touch with you if they'd like to do so? 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Guest
So probably the best way is LinkedIn. I'm a heavy into LinkedIn. That's where many of my information is. So I'm Dr. Bonnie on there. The other way is my website XceedingtheMark.com

Leila Ansart, Host
Wonderful. On LinkedIn, you said earlier, Dr. Bonnie, if we just searched Dr. Bonnie, we're going to find you or do we need to include your last name? 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Guest
You probably want to include my last name., Dr. Bonnie Wilson, or you can look up Xceeding the Mark. Remember it starts with an X. 

Leila Ansart, Host
Perfect. Awesome. Thank you so much. I'm really grateful for you sharing your story. It was certainly a personal story that you put out there for all of us to learn from today and for sharing how that experience has impacted your decisions and the work that you do on a day-to-day basis. So appreciate your time. It's been a pleasure. 

Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Guest
Thank you. It was my pleasure, Leila.