Introduction

Host

Hi there, it’s Toto.

Thank you so much for tuning in. Welcome to Beneath the Busy.

We have a really special episode for you this week.

We had the chance to sit down with our host this time and talk to Lauren about everything surrounding her life, her practice, and the experiences that led her to this point—to starting this work and building the practice she’s doing today.

We had a really wonderful conversation that I’m excited to share with you as we celebrate one year of Beneath the Busy.

We’re all super excited to share this with you. Thank you so much for supporting us so far.

We’ve got some really exciting things lined up this year, so stick with us and enjoy these next couple of hours of conversation.

What Led You to This Work?

Host

How do you feel about—or what do you think led you to this point in your career, and also in your professional and personal life, that made you choose this specific area of work?

Was there one defining event, or were there multiple experiences that brought you here? Can you pinpoint a particular moment, or was it more of a gradual journey?

Lauren’s Early Interest in Human Behaviour

Lauren

I don’t think it was one event.

I think there were multiple moments and multiple stages.

From a young age I’ve always been fascinated by human behaviour. I remember constantly wondering why people said the things they said, why I reacted the way I did, what happened beforehand, and how one event led to another.

I was always observing people and trying to understand why they behaved the way they did.

I remember reading a book written by a child psychologist about her work with children, and I became convinced that I wanted to become a child therapist.

Later I completed my Master’s in Clinical Psychology.

Ironically, when I reached my child psychology placement, I realised I couldn’t do it. It was simply too heart-wrenching, and of course you don’t just work with children—you also work with parents.

So my path shifted.

Discovering Organisational Psychology

Part of becoming a psychologist in South Africa meant completing a year of community service.

I was placed at a rural hospital outside the major cities to provide psychological services.

Very quickly I realised traditional therapy wasn’t going to work.

Most of the patients didn’t know what psychology was.

They couldn’t speak English.

I couldn’t speak Siswati.

So there we were trying to communicate through huge language and cultural barriers.

People would arrive expecting medication.

I’d explain that I wasn’t a doctor.

Then they’d expect a government grant.

I’d explain I wasn’t a social worker either.

Eventually they’d ask me:

“So…what exactly do you do?”

I wanted to say that I could listen and help them emotionally, but even that was incredibly difficult because we couldn’t properly communicate.

My colleague and I realised we needed to approach things differently.

Instead of focusing only on one-on-one therapy, we became advocates for patient rights.

We looked at the hospital as a whole.

We started educating staff about psychology and the emotional needs of patients.

We worked closely with hospital leadership.

That experience sparked my interest in organisations and leadership.

Moving into the Corporate World

From there I joined an insurance company and worked in Human Resources.

I became involved in organisational design, leadership development, talent management and career development.

Host

So you were actually working inside corporate yourself?

Lauren

Exactly.

I experienced the positive side of corporate life.

It was a wonderful company with a healthy culture and incredible leaders.

But I also saw the challenges.

Slowly, I started noticing the impact work was having on people’s mental health.

Eventually I left corporate and moved into consulting.

Ever since then my work has focused on leadership and organisational culture.

For years I’ve described my passion as bringing humanity back into the workplace.

Lauren’s Own Burnout

About seven or eight years ago I burnt out myself.

At the time I wasn’t employed by a company anymore—I was working for myself.

But the pressure to perform, to deliver, to constantly prove myself was enormous.

Some of that pressure came from society.

A lot of it came from me.

My ambition.

My drive.

My need to prove myself.

I often describe it as having “Superwoman Syndrome.”

I remember walking with my mentor one day and saying:

“I think I’m going to resign from Lauren Davis Consulting.”

That was the name of my business.

I told her:

“I have the most awful boss.”

“She makes me work all hours of the night.”

“She’s always messaging me.”

“I’m constantly travelling.”

“She says yes to every project.”

“She has absolutely no boundaries.”

Then I laughed and said:

“I think I’m going to go back to the office and hand in my resignation.”

That became a huge turning point for me.

I realised I needed to work differently.

That experience completely shifted my focus toward workplace wellbeing.

Work is important.

But how do we work in healthy ways?

Over the last five or six years I realised something else.

It starts with leaders.

If leaders aren’t healthy, that culture spreads throughout an organisation.

So although I care deeply about workplace mental health in general, my primary focus became helping leaders become healthier.

If leaders are well, the rest of the organisation has a much better chance of being well too.

Because I’d also spent years working alongside HR teams, I became passionate about supporting HR professionals as well.

They’re often carrying the invisible emotional labour inside organisations.

They hold everything together.

Yet they rarely receive the support they need themselves.

If HR is healthy, and leaders are healthy, there’s a much stronger foundation for the entire organisation.

Seeing the System from Every Angle

Host

One thing that really stands out is how you’ve experienced every level of the system.

You started working directly with people in rural communities.

You realised very early that the traditional approach wasn’t working.

Then you started looking at the wider system.

From there you moved into HR, which often sits in the middle of an organisation.

HR has to support employees while also communicating with leadership.

It’s such a vital position, yet it’s often overlooked.

Eventually you started your own business, and ironically that’s when you experienced burnout yourself.

I think so many people can relate to that.

When you’re running your own business, you become the entire team.

Even if you’re working alone, you still experience all the same pressures.

I loved the story about wanting to resign from your own company.

I think so many people can relate to that.

What do you think actually brought you to that point?

What made you realise something had to change?

Trying to Do Everything

Lauren

It was probably a combination of many things.

At the time my biological son was around five or six years old.

I also had my stepson living with us.

On top of running my consulting business, I’d helped start a progressive school because I wasn’t happy with the traditional education system for my son.

Although I wasn’t teaching myself, another mother and I were responsible for managing the school, the teachers and the parents.

I genuinely believed I could do it all.

Society reinforced that belief.

People constantly told me:

“I don’t know how you do everything.”

“You’re amazing.”

Inside, though, I knew I wasn’t doing everything.

I was exhausted.

I was miserable.

Sometimes I’d be standing in front of hundreds of people delivering a keynote presentation and secretly thinking:

“I just want to sit down.”

“I just want to go to sleep.”

Burnout didn’t happen overnight.

It happened slowly.

Every day I’d promise myself I’d work differently.

I’d say I wasn’t going to work after eight o’clock.

Then another deadline would appear.

I’d decide not to travel that week.

Then another important project would come in.

I tried every traditional piece of advice.

Better boundaries.

Time management.

Work-life balance.

I knew intellectually what needed to change.

My family knew it too.

I was tired.

I was grumpy.

I was constantly exhausted.

A colleague once told me something her son had said.

He told her:

“When I remember my childhood, I’ll remember that you were always tired and that every evening you couldn’t wait for your glass of wine.”

That really hit me.

I realised my own son would probably say something very similar.

One afternoon we were at the park after school.

I was rushing.

We had homework to finish.

We had to walk the dog.

We had to get home for supper.

Then bath time.

Then bedtime.

Then I could go back to work.

It was just one endless schedule.

I told my son we had to leave.

Instead, he sat down in the park and burst into tears.

He shouted:

“All you care about is the schedule.”

“That’s all you ever care about.”

That moment stopped me completely.

I realised he was right.

Everything had become about getting through the schedule so I could get back to work.

Was There Any Reward in Working Like That?

Host

Was there any reward, though, in working like that?

Lauren

Yes. Absolutely.

The work itself was incredibly rewarding.

We were making a real difference inside organisations.

I had the opportunity to work with leaders who genuinely cared.

We helped companies shape their cultures, strengthen their purpose, and align their vision.

It was meaningful work.

In many ways, that made it even harder.

Professionally, I was making a significant impact.

Personally, though, my own life wasn’t receiving the same care.

My family wasn’t getting the best version of me.

Ironically, I was teaching people that they should give others the best of themselves—not just what was left over.

I knew exactly what I should have been doing.

I just couldn’t do it.

I was so deeply entrenched in my work.

Around the same time, my father became critically ill. Thankfully he’s fine now, but it happened at a point where I had absolutely no capacity left.

That was really what pushed me over the edge.

Even then, I kept going.

That’s what ambitious, driven people tend to do.

We convince ourselves that we’re the problem.

We think we simply need to work harder.

Dig deeper.

Sleep less.

Push through.

The Hidden Expectations of Success

Host

I think that’s especially true for women.

When you’re balancing a family, your own business, leadership responsibilities, and everything else, there are expectations placed on you that often aren’t placed on other people.

People don’t necessarily respond with compassion.

Instead they say:

“Wow.”

“You’re amazing.”

“I don’t know how you do it.”

They celebrate how much you’re carrying instead of asking whether you should be carrying it all.

I think we see the same thing with young entrepreneurs and startup founders.

There’s this constant culture of pushing harder, working longer, doing more.

It isn’t sustainable.

Yes, you might achieve incredible things.

But at what cost?

If you’re healthy, you can continue doing meaningful work for decades.

But if you destroy yourself getting there, what have you really achieved?

So when you eventually started working with leaders and HR professionals, how did your own experience begin changing the way you approached your clients?

Recognising the Need to Prove Yourself

Lauren

One of the biggest things I recognised was that I could see myself reflected in many of them.

Even though they worked inside organisations and I was self-employed, the pressure was exactly the same.

The pressure to perform.

To succeed.

To constantly prove yourself.

Over time I realised that what we often call ambition or drive is sometimes something much deeper.

It’s the belief that we’re only enough when we’re producing results.

Only worthy when we’re achieving.

People constantly reinforce that.

They tell you how amazing you are.

How impressive you are.

How they don’t know how you do it.

That praise feeds something inside us.

It tells us we’re valuable because we’re constantly producing.

I started naming that with clients.

I’m not saying ambition is a bad thing.

I’m certainly not encouraging people to become complacent.

The question is:

How do we remain ambitious in a healthy, sustainable way?

Why Work-Life Balance Doesn’t Work

One phrase I’ve challenged for years is “work-life balance.”

To me, it’s completely misleading.

Balance is impossible.

If balance is the goal, then we’re always failing.

But there’s another problem with the phrase.

We separate work from life.

We speak as though work exists outside of life and everything else has to fit around it.

That entire equation is backwards.

Why has work become the thing everything else has to balance against?

Instead, I often draw a circle representing someone’s life.

Most people allow work to occupy almost the entire circle.

Then they try to squeeze family, friendships, hobbies, rest and everything else into whatever space remains.

The work I do is about helping people shrink the work portion of that circle.

Not necessarily making it tiny.

Work can still be important.

It can still be your biggest circle.

But it shouldn’t consume everything else.

There should be room for relationships.

For rest.

For creativity.

For simply existing.

Sometimes there should even be empty space.

I also spend a lot of time asking difficult questions.

Why are you so busy?

What is driving that busyness?

Do you really need to attend every meeting?

Do you need to be available every minute of every day?

I recently asked a client whether they truly needed to check their phone during the one hour they were at the gym.

They’re not working in emergency medical services.

Nobody is going to die if they don’t respond immediately.

Yet we’ve become convinced that our value depends on always being available.

Host

It really does feel that way.

It feels like if I don’t answer this email immediately, something terrible is going to happen.

Hurry Sickness and the Fear of Becoming Irrelevant

Lauren

Exactly.

We laugh about it, but that’s genuinely how people experience it.

Deep down, many people believe that if they stop responding immediately they’ll become irrelevant.

People might think they have a poor work ethic.

That they’re not committed enough.

That they’re replaceable.

If somebody solves the problem without us, then we start wondering whether we’re needed at all.

That’s where my background in psychology, leadership and organisational culture all intersect.

I’m constantly asking:

What is happening underneath the behaviour?

What keeps people permanently busy?

What keeps them trapped in this cycle that eventually leads to burnout?

Part of it comes back to worthiness.

But underneath that is something even deeper.

Meaning.

If I’m not constantly busy…

If I’m not needed…

If I’m not producing…

Then who am I?

Sometimes people leave work only to transfer that same striving somewhere else.

Instead of becoming obsessed with work, they become obsessed with marathon running.

Or learning a new skill.

Or achieving perfection somewhere else.

The striving simply moves.

Eventually we have to sit still.

And that’s deeply uncomfortable.

Because then we have to confront ourselves.

How Do We Face Those Bigger Questions?

Host

That might be a huge question…

But how do we actually face that?

Lauren

It is a huge question.

And it’s deeply personal.

A lot of my work draws on existential psychotherapy.

There are four realities we all have to face.

Death.

Isolation.

Freedom.

Meaninglessness.

Most people don’t actually face those realities.

We spend our lives running from them.

Part of the work is simply learning to sit with those questions.

To name them.

To explore them.

Everyone finds meaning differently.

For some people it’s through religion or spirituality.

For others it’s through philosophy.

Some conclude that there is no greater meaning and simply choose to live fully.

There isn’t one correct answer.

The important thing is allowing yourself to ask the questions.

Usually people don’t begin with those enormous existential ideas.

More often they first have to face the uncomfortable realities closer to home.

The struggling marriage.

The difficult relationship with a parent.

The fact that they’re unhappy.

Or unhealthy.

Or exhausted.

Those are often the first truths they have to acknowledge.

That’s why I once called one of my podcast episodes “Busy is the New Lazy.”

Because staying busy is often easier than facing what’s really going on.

We tell ourselves we’ll deal with it later.

But later never comes.

Agency and Taking Responsibility

Host

One thing I find fascinating is the idea of agency.

Some people genuinely don’t have complete control over their circumstances.

Whether it’s a visa situation, financial pressure, or family commitments, they can’t simply leave.

How do you help people find agency in situations where they feel trapped?

Lauren

Agency sits at the centre of almost everything I do.

I genuinely believe people can’t live fulfilling lives if they believe they have no agency.

That doesn’t mean everyone has unlimited freedom.

Sometimes circumstances are incredibly difficult.

But there is almost always something within our control.

Stephen Covey talks about the Circle of Concern and the Circle of Control.

Many things concern us.

Very few things are actually within our control.

Ultimately, our thoughts, choices and responses are what belong to us.

Sometimes the first step is simply accepting reality.

Not because we like it.

But because fighting reality only creates more suffering.

If you’re stuck in a difficult job for the foreseeable future, then the question becomes:

How do you survive it?

How do you separate your identity from your work?

How do you continue doing your job well without allowing it to define who you are?

Sometimes that season won’t be joyful.

Sometimes it’s simply about surviving while slowly creating a path toward something different.