Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]

“This isn’t some soft skill, or a ‘nice-to-have.’ It’s a must-have,” says Jennifer Moss, workplace strategist, co-founder of The Workplace Institute, and author of award-winning books on leadership. Her latest book, “Why Are We Here?,” discusses how we can use hope as an operational strategy at work, how employees can learn to bring their whole, best selves to work by meting out goals in small steps and celebrating each small win en route to the larger goal. Leaders, in turn, can learn to, rather than mitigate those efforts, be conduits to employees’ mental health, in part by being encouraging and being receptive to employee feedback.

This isn’t about drumming up toxic positivity but creating a safe and openly communicative environment, which is more easily said than done when employees feel, even subconsciously, that their freedoms are being taken away and that promises have been repeatedly broken. Jennifer and host Cait Donovan discuss how to foster trust between leaders and employees and how caring for oneself creates a feeling of safety—starting at a physical level—which is the first step in opening up lines of communication, and facilitating what Jennifer calls “a culture of positive gossip.” 

As many as seventy percent of employees report that their managers make or break their attitude toward their jobs. Join today’s episode of FRIED to learn how to introduce a hope-based strategy into your own work environment. 

Quotes

• “We can help our employees have quick wins every day, celebrate the smaller wins, recognize that we spend a lot of time lately only celebrating and rewarding and recognizing the big project end goals, not realizing that the day-to-day ennui, the day-to-day tedium is what is burning people out. And if we just made these goals more incremental — it’s actually how you support young kids, especially kids who are neurodivergent—you chunk out the goals and adults need those same inspirational ways of working, and that’s how we make hope a strategy.” (12:29 | Jennifer Moss)
• “That’s where we make hope a strategy and operationalize hope. It’s first recognizing that it isn’t some sort of soft skill or a “nice-to-have,’ it’s a ‘must-have,’ that it’s real. The military abides by this rule, and it can be operationalized on a day-to-day engagement in our work and in our employees’ tasks.”  (13:10 | Jennifer Moss)
• “You can be highly passionate about what you do, and highly driven and care about your organization and…highly engaged, but you can be similarly at the same stage of burnout. And if we can’t talk about those things, no one will know, and that’s when people quit, that’s when people hit the wall. It’s where everything just ends.” (24:33 | Jennifer Moss)
• “We are subconsciously rebelling because our freedoms are being taken away and we’re not necessarily aware of why we feel this dissonance.” (33:51 | Jennifer Moss)

Links

Connect with Jennifer Moss:

https://www.jennifer-moss.com/

https://www.instagram.com/betterworkinstitute/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenleighmoss/

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]

“We’re at a time when things are going to be shifting and changing,” says host Cait Donovan who, on this solo episode of FRIED, shares a workplace forecast for 2025 and explains what business leaders can do to best navigate this new landscape, rocky as it’s predicted to be. Today, Cait shares findings from a number of experts, including the future of DEI initiatives, how AI will affect employee benefits’ packages, which position on the corporate ladder will likely burn out en masse and what leaders can do now to best mitigate the fallout. She also discusses the increasing opportunities for freelancers as more and more workplaces continue to embrace flexible work. 

It’s not enough, she explains, to prevent the workplace environment—and the burnout that transpires therein—from becoming worse. Steps need to be put in place to actually make things better. Employers must be trauma-informed, to create psychological safety and transparency in the workplace, and in turn, employees need to be especially transparent and communicative about what they really need and want from their jobs. 

Join Cait to learn more about what to expect in the year ahead and how to continue championing employee wellness throughout 2025. 

Quotes

• “We can approach DEI practices through the lens of biology and physiology. So, I believe that the biology of belonging and the biology of psychological safety really roots the things we need for real true DEI overall into a science-based model that helps people feel a little more grounded in the approach and makes people less likely to have bad reactions to it.” (1:47 | Cait Donovan)
• “The reason that I think it’s important for them to be burnout-informed is because we can’t shift things in the culture to protect people if we don’t know what the risks are. And I think, we can’t really also create a positive culture without knowing which things make a negative culture.” (4:14 | Cait Donovan)
• “I think this is going to be probably a little bit messy to start out, but longterm, I think everything is getting more customized. Medicine is getting more customized, jobs are getting more customized. So, I do think this is the way of the future, I just think we need to be really careful, very inclusive, very transparent, and very clear about our intentions as we’re doing this, so we don’t create more problems as we go.” (6:50 | Cait Donovan)
• “I think we need to really be focused on that mid-level manager and their well-being because that’s where a lot of the well-being of the company spreads from.” (8:13 | Cait Donovan)
• “We’re going to have to make people more comfortable around change. We’re going to have to create a different level of psychological safety so that change can actually be absorbed and actually dealt with.” (9:33 | Cait Donovan)

Links

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]

“People leave the field not because they don’t love the work, but the confines of the work structure make it impossible for them to do it,” says Regan Parker, Chief Legal and Public Affairs officer for Shift Key, a technology marketplace that connects licensed independent healthcare professionals with facilities who need their services. As healthcare workers continue to feel overworked and undervalued, they continue to burn out, leaving healthcare facilities with staffing shortages. By allowing professionals to set their own rates and to select work on a shift-by-shift basis, Shift Key’s model offers the flexibility and autonomy to maintain a work/life balance. It also provides relief from the expectations of a traditional employee’s schedule, while providing similar relief to company teams who are understaffed and thus at equal risk of burnout. 

On today’s episode of FRIED, Regan joins host Cait Donovan to discuss why this approach to work—which is gaining traction across all sectors—is especially helpful for those who are natural caregivers and nurturers and, as a result, don’t have the most business acumen or are even sure they should be charging for their work at all. The two discuss the importance of offering per diem workers a social safety net and protections under the law which, at least in the U.S., have traditionally only been offered to a company’s employees. 

Join today’s discussion to learn why Shift Key’s system is the future of work and how it could be game-changing to a number of professions. 

Quotes

• “At my very first marketplace company, I got to see how technology could enable people to work on their own terms, and the people that that impacts the most are moms, caregivers, people with disabilities, people who can’t work in a traditional setting, who really need flexibility and autonomy and choice. So, I saw the ability for technology to connect those parties to work.” (4:08 | Regan Parker)
• “When you understand the humanity of how certain aspects of the healthcare system currently works and how that impacts the person, their home life, how they feel, how they’re able to perform their work, it really changes the conversation in a way that I think was important.” (5:05 | Regan Parker)
• “The reason people leave the field is not because they don’t love the work. They love the work. These are people who get into it because they want to care for people. They care about keeping people healthy and safe and heard, but it’s the confines of the work structure that make it impossible for them to do that.” (6:08 | Regan Parker)
• “I was always turned off by the notion that anybody would ever incentivize a race to the bottom. ‘How cheap can we get that one task to be?’” (20:58 | Regan Parker)

Links

Connect with Regan Parker:

www.shiftkey.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/regan-parker-58ab531a

https://www.shiftkey.com/trends

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]

“I want you to forcibly slow yourself down,” says Cait on this #straightfromcait episode of FRIED where she offers three tips—and a special bonus—to help you create more ease throughout your day, without taking away from any of your responsibilities or plans. These are short, simple yet effective ways to check in with yourself physically, mentally and emotionally to eliminate unnecessary tension and make life’s tasks more bearable. 

Cait will share which parts of the body to focus on to lower your overall stress response and signal to your vagus nerve that you’re OK. She’ll explain why slow grooming reminds us that we’re safe and how we can cut down on the false sense of urgency that drives most of us throughout our days. 

Life is busy, and no one can expect to be relaxed all day every day. But taking a few extra minutes to incorporate these tips into your daily routine will do wonders to make you feel more relaxed, at peace and at ease as you tackle your tasks. 

Quotes

• “With only those three things, you will create more ease throughout the course of your day, and you will be signaling to your vagus nerve that you’re OK, that you’re getting through the day, and you’re not adding any extra tension where it’s not necessary so this will lower and damper your stress response over all.” (1:42 | Cait Donovan)
• “When you take those extra few minutes to slowly groom yourself, you are giving your central nervous system a signal that you’re safe and OK because you can’t groom when you’re in danger.” (3:09 | Cait Donovan)
• “Not every task is going to feel wonderful and I’m not asking you to make it feel wonderful, but what if you could take just a few moments to turn on the Spotify playlist that you love that makes you feel good while you are folding and putting away laundry.” (4:23 | Cait Donovan)
• “Because so many of us function with this really false sense of urgency in every single task we do, I want you to forcibly slow yourself down.” (5:05 | Cait Donovan)

Connect:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]

“What am I doing? I’m performing for other people,” says Rochelle Younan-Montgomery, published author, keynote speaker and founder and CEO of The Reset. In the wake of a physically and emotionally agonizing miscarriage, Rochelle attempted to override her grief by powering through at work. Like so many who experience burnout, she felt her worth was tied to her productivity and performance, and today on FRIED she discusses how she learned to overcome that mindset, as well as how it was shaped by religion, racism and growing up in an immigrant family. 

Rochelle discusses how she learned to listen to her body's cues as a means of gaging a misalignment with her authenticity and soul's purpose. She talks about knowing when it's time to stop excavating and to start putting knowledge into practice. She also shares her "Open the Front Door" framework for entering into discussions that prevent the build up of resentment and allows both parties to be heard and to set clear boundaries. 

Join today's discussion to learn what Rochelle has learned from her years of deep spiritual work as well as from her yoga practice. 

Quotes

• “I thought I could power through. I thought, ‘No, I’ve got this. I’ve held a lot in the past. I’m good. I’ll show up. Work matters most. Productivity matters most. I have responsibilities. I can grieve quietly and secretly. I had a male boss, so I didn’t feel safe to share with him.” (7:10 | Rochelle Younan-Montgomery)
• “And then it just became clear, ‘What am I doing? I’m performing for other people. I’m performing like this, ‘I’ve got my shit together,’ kind of person that can handle anything. What is that saying, especially to my daughter? What message does that send that I don’t deserve time and space to grieve and for my body to heal?”  (8:21 | Rochelle Young-Montgomery)
• “I don’t have time and energy nor do I want to choose to override my body and mind and spirit anymore because my family and my kids and my well-being matter more to me than performing and being perfect and showing up as ’the strong leader.’” (9:50 | Rochelle Younan-Montgomery)
• “When I don’t feel authentic, when I don’t feel like I’m in my truth, my body tells me. And I, for a long time, have not been in tune with my body, so looking back, I can look at that situation more clearly now. At the time, I just felt, ‘Oh, maybe I’m a little bit nervous because I’m doing something in front of a group.’ But that’s never been an issue for me, I love having a captive audience. It’s more about—now, looking back I can see—oh, prayer, in that way, felt like I was maybe lying. Something felt disingenuous and my body was screaming trying to tell me, ‘What are we doing here? Do we really believe this?’” (19:22 | Rochelle Younan-Montgomery)

Links

Connect with Rochelle Younan-Montgomery:

https://www.rochelleym.com

https://www.instagram.com/the_reset_by_ro/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rochelleyounanmontgomery/

https://www.rochelleym.com/download

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now! [http://bit.ly/unfried]

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“Spoiler alert: You’re not stuck. There’s always something you can do,” explains today’s guest Erica Rooney, keynote speaker, highly-sought after executive coach and author of the best-selling book, “Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors,” the latter of which, she explains, are the limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors that keep so many of us from moving forward and reaching our goals and potential. On today’s episode of FRIED, Erica joins host Cait Donovan to discuss the fear of asking for help, the fallout within a generation of women who were raised to believe they can have it all, and why, for most of us, burnout started before we even reached the age of five. 

Like so many women, Erica was “working like she didn’t have kids and parenting like she didn’t have a job,” and turned to alcohol to cope with the never-ending list of “shoulds” she kept piling onto herself. She and Cait discuss the parallels between addiction–so much of which is not to substances but feelings and expectations—and burnout. Erica discusses her SNAP method, a four-step science-backed framework to help you become more aware of your body’s signals, to ask yourself the tough yet important questions and to pivot into a new and more productive mindset. 

Join today to learn the mentality that makes Cait want to kick people in the teeth—with love—and how to choose a better way of thinking. 

Quotes

• “The core of the problem wasn’t my corporate job, it wasn’t anything external. The core was within my own expectations and what I felt I had to do. No one else was putting those expectations on me.” (5:43 | Erica Rooney) 
• “There’s a very similar stigma that we’re holding onto with addiction, alcoholism and also with burnout because burnout often feels like, ‘Well, I should have made better choices, I should have done something differently.’...Burnout is not your fault. This shit started way before your burnout happened. If you’ve burnt out in your life, let me promise you that that shit started before you were five.” (12:42 | Caitlin Donovan)
• “Addiction is so much more than substance. Absolutely agree with that because when I think back on the things that just fueled me up, kind of like that first sip of wine—yes, here we go—it would be a raise, a new job, a new title. ‘Oh, I’m being sent to France for work. Look at me. Look at my fabulous life.’...it is very, very addictive to be able to call people and, ‘Oh, what’s going on with your life?’ Oh, I just got promoted to this.’ And it’s all crap. (20:40 | Caitlin Donovan and Erica Rooney)
• “I recognize that the system is the problem. The system is the problem but what I know about changing systems is it takes generations and generations. And we are changing the system, we are, but it will not be at the level that I want it to be until I get six feet under the ground. So, for me, I thought, ‘What can I do? What can I do? There’s got to be something that I can do, not to change the system, but for my own self, so that I don’t have to be person experiencing all these gaps.’” (30:24 | Erica Rooney and Caitlin Donovan) 

Links

Connect with Erica Rooney:

https://www.ericaandersonrooney.com

https://www.instagram.com/ericaandersonrooney/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericarooney/

https://ericaandersonrooney.myflodesk.com/

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“Your biology could be working against you,” says host Cait Donovan, when it comes to your ability to foster a hopeful and positive mindset. As it turns out, those with adverse childhood experiences (ACE) can lack the brain plasticity necessary to adopt a new growth mindset. Luckily, you have the power to change this and in this episode of FRIED, Cait shows you how. 

She shares the three steps necessary to bolster and support yourself in order to enable the process. She reiterates once again why safety is the building block to resilience, change and burnout recovery, and the importance of movement, sleep, proper nutrition and hydration. 

The body and the brain are more interconnected than we tend to recognize in Western culture. Join today’s FRIED episode to use that connection to foster, rather than hinder, growth and recovery. 

Quotes

• “The idea is if you could just get more growth mindset, then your brain will respond and everything will work swimmingly. But Chinese medicine philosophy taught me to look at bodily systems and how we function in the world and how we behave a little differently than how it’s taught in the West. Things are more connected, more interwoven, less separate and there’s an emphasis on the fact that most causes could be effects and vice versa. And also, a cause might only have an effect if there’s an underlying, pre-existing risk factor.” (1:20 (Caitlin Donovan)
• “The questions we need to be asking are, “Why are some people able to access hope more easily than others? Why do some people react to stress in different ways than others? What are the pre-existing factors over the course of someone’s life that allows them to create a more hopeful outlook or mindset? Are there biological factors that support hope? Are there biological factors that impede hope? Are there biological factors that support positive mindsets or that impede positive mindsets? What I’m looking to explain is that there is more to positive mindset than just deciding to think differently and then think differently.” (4:02 | Caitlin Donovan)
• “Your brain cannot change, you do not grow courage, nothing happens until your body feels safe. Your nervous system doesn’t create more resilience, your Vagas nerve doesn’t tone—none of the things that all the people are talking about when it comes to burnout recovery happen unless your feelings of safety are improved.” (10: 40 | Caitlin Donovan)

Links

https://www.friedtheburnoutpodcast.com/post/jeff-harry-leave-your-serious-grownup-behind-and-heal-your-burnt-out-brain-through-play

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now!

“Differentiating burnout from stress is one of the most popular questions around burnout,” says host Cait Donovan. On today’s #straightfromcait episode, she will reveal what she calls ‘the line in the sand’ that separates “mere” stress from the kind of burnout that requires recovery. She’ll explain what it means when your downtime—even if it is weeks or months long—leaves you feeling just as overwhelmed and depleted as when you were working. 

She will also walk us through the first few steps that make up the FRIED framework which was designed to help us recover from burnout. She’ll also explain what you can expect from UNFRIED, her four-month small group coaching practice cultivated based on years of various practices. 

Join today’s episode to learn more about what it means to be truly burnt out, and move one step closer to recovery. 

Quotes

• “Chronic stress is the cause of burnout, so a better question would be, ‘Is my stress chronic enough to lead to burnout? Has my chronic stress already led to burnout, or not yet?’ Because you can’t have burnout without stress but you can have stress without burnout.” (1:21 | Cait Donovan)
• “The continuum of chronic stress that leads to burnout, there is a line in the sand that gets drawn. Just one. A really simple one. A really easy ‘is-this-already-burnout-or-not?’” (1:41 | Cait Donovan)
• “You decide to take a few days off, and you have a long weekend, and at the end of those few days you’re thinking, ‘It doesn’t feel like I took any time off at all. I don’t feel at all better, I didn’t manage to get anything done. I don’t feel like I’m going to be able to get anything done tomorrow.’ …You find yourself at the end of it saying, ‘I’m supposed to feel better now, right?’ But you don’t.” (2:27 | Cait Donovan)

Links

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Burnout Recovery works better with support. UNFRIED is our small group (5 people max!) coaching program to help guide you through your recovery. Apply now!

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“It’s praised in our culture to have a bold, clear, big vision for the kind of impact you want to make in the world and in your life, but what’s not talked about is, ‘Is it realistic?” says Sarah Vosen as she joins Cait Donovan to co-host this latest episode of FRIEDguides. Today, the two discuss why high achievers tend to be the first to burn out. It has to do with unrealistic expectations–both for their achievements and their capacity to achieve. As a result, high achievers continue to expend more energy than they receive in return, and–being so doggedly ambitious--don't stop, even when they’re on the verge of breaking down.

Many high achievers are people who are operating from trauma and wounding, perpetually chasing a dangling carrot of success in order to feel worthy. Today, Sarah and Cait discuss the common signs of energy depletion, how we can manage them and start restoring our input. 

Join Cait and Sarah to learn more about savior complexes, controlling people through indebtedness, and the hidden hazards of having high kitchen counter tops.

Quotes

• “It’s praised in our culture to have a bold clear, big vision for the kind of impact you want to make in the world and in your life but what’s not talked about is, ‘Is it realistic?’ For your capacity as an individual and/or your team, if you have one, to actually achieve what you’ve set out to achieve without digging yourself a hole of depletion in the process.” (1:49 | Sarah Vosen)
• “Perfectionism and people-pleasing tend to be two sides of the same coin…and these things are rooted in wounding. It’s rooted in wanting to be seen, to be praised, to be loved, really, at the root. So, when you’re operating from this place, this wounded place, you feel like the more you achieve the more you’ll be loved, and so why wouldn’t you, especially if it’s possible.” (3:14 | Sarah Vosen)
• “The more you do, the more you output. So, the only way to get better and recover from burnout is to decrease your output and/or increase your input because you’ve got to fill that hole of depletion somewhere, somehow.” (8:53 | Sarah Vosen)
• “I feel like people who really get stuck in the burnout cycle are the high-achievers, first and foremost, because they wait the longest to get the support. And the habitual drive is strong, so until your literal will to push breaks down, you keep using it to keep going.” (17:48 | Caitlin Donovan and Sarah Vosen)
• “You can still make a difference and achieve, make an impact, have a vision in the way that you want to when you come back to it from this shored up, energetic, conscious place, where you are spending only what you want to spend on only what you want to spend it on, and you’re consciously receiving more than you were before.” (25:11 | Sarah Vosen)

Links

Connect with Sarah:

One-on-one coaching free call with Sarah Vosen:https://caitdonovan.as.me/coachwithsarah

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“I often say that story is the most powerful tool on earth and I really believe that,” says today’s FRIED guest Jacquelyn Fletcher Johnson, who, as the founder and CEO of the Heartwood Leadership Institute, has helped countless Fortune 500 executives step into their leadership. Today she joins host Cait Donovan to discuss the stories we tell ourselves—about who we are, what life and work are meant to be like and how these stories manifest in our lives and even in our bodies until we finally dig deep down and investigate what’s underneath them. The two women discuss the most common stories people—particularly those who end up burning out—tell themselves about worthiness, visibility and attempting to go the journey alone.

Ingrained into us at the deepest cultural level are all the variations of author Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey”—wherein the protagonist sets out on a journey, encounters and overcomes obstacles and emerges victorious. Jacquelyn and Cait discuss the destructive messages this classic trope can nonetheless instill in us about our value being determined by how hard we struggle. 

One of the most powerful aspects of storytelling is its malleability. Join today’s conversation to learn how to shape the story you tell about yourself. 

Quotes

• “I really had to look myself in the face. I had to look at what I was doing, how I was behaving, and for me it really came down to one internal state and the stories that I was telling myself about who I was…and story was a huge part of that…Story helped me come back from that experience and become someone else.” (9:07 | Jacquelyn Fletcher Johnson)
• “It said to me, ‘I will only have to overcome something hard once, and once I’ve overcome this hard thing, I’m good.’ You know what it said to me? ‘Until I overcome a hard thing, I have no value, because if I haven’t overcome a hard thing, then where’s my value?’ And I didn’t give any credence to any of the hard things that came before burnout because those hard things were not as hard as other people’s hard things.’” (19:29 | Jacquelyn Fletcher Johnson and Cait Donovan)
• “This is story. It is malleable. It is based on our own interpretation of it, and so if we are living story unconsciously without actually looking at it, without talking about it, without seeing it for what it is and surfacing it, boy is it powerful and it is operating underneath everything.” (22:03 | Jacquelyn Fletcher Johnson)
• “We have our own legends. We have our own myths in our lives and that legend influenced much of my life and many of my decisions and it wasn’t until this big diagnosis where I was like, ‘Honey, you can’t do this alone,’ and my gosh—I learned more about love and about the people and what support looks like and what acts of love look like than I have ever experienced in my life.”(35:50 | Jacquelyn Fletcher Johnson)

Links

Connect with Jacquelyn Fletcher Johnson:

https://www.heartwoodleadership.com

https://jacquelynfletcherjohnson.substack.com/

www.linkedin.com/in/jacquelynfletcherjohnson

bit.ly/bouncebackorder

https://www.amazon.com/Coyote-Wisdom-Power-Story-Healing/dp/1591430291

https://www.jcf.org/learn/joseph-campbell-heros-journey

https://bit.ly/exec-retreat

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“I want you to give yourself permission to live in this rule of thirds,” says host Cait Donovan, borrowing a concept that Olympic runner Alexi Pappas recently shared online. Alexi's coach told her that anything you're doing right will feel a combination of good, bad and just neutral. Cait explains how this applies to burnout recovery, and how to incorporate it into your own life.

She also discusses fourth grade teacher Ryan Brazil's viral clip which explains that we are not obligated to blindly follow our first and, perhaps, most impulsive thoughts. Instead, we have the power to adhere to or act upon any one of the many successive thoughts that align more with who we want to be.

Cait shares a story from her own life where she chose to place emphasis on her second thought of compassion over her first thought of judgement.

Quotes

• “If you are adhering to those thirds, it means you’re on the right path. You’re doing the right things. You’re pushing yourself hard enough but you’re not pushing yourself too hard. You are enjoying the good moments, you are paying attention to the things that aren’t great so you can fix them. You’re sort of doing all the right things. This is so true in burnout recovery.” (2:13 | Caitlin Donovan)
• “The fact of the matter is, your sleep is going to be bad, something external is going to happen, you’re going to have to prep for a conversation or an action item. You’re going to be disappointed in yourself for not sticking to a food regiment, or you’re going to—whatever. There are a million reasons to be in that space, but we don’t want you to be in that space for four days a week. We don’t want you to be in that space for seven days at a time, unless the next week is neutral and the week after that is great.” (4:58 | Caitlin Donovan)
• “I do remember having that second thought and thinking, ‘I would rather choose this way to think about myself and other people because I think it’s healthier and I think it’s safer.’ That doesn’t mean that when somebody’s really doing something terrible, you should excuse it and try to interpret it differently so you can explain it away.” (9:31 | Caitlin Donovan)
• “You get to decide which thought you stop on because the thought you stop on is probably the thought that you’re going to repeat to yourself.”  (11:12 | Caitlin Donovan)

Links

Alexi Pappas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKndqq0CsRc

Ryan Brazil: https://www.instagram.com/mrs.brazil_28/reel/C_MRG4vSh4g/

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm