“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

“Part of the empowerment is recognizing that the things that you’re weak in are actually just the flip side of your strengths,” explains Sarah Yovovich, teacher writer and body worker, who joins FRIED to discuss the kind of burnout which results from emotional abuse. The same emotional intuition that kept her empathizing with her abuser makes her a profound healer, deeply tuned into her clients’ emotional, physical and energetic layers through Thai massage--a meditation on loving kindness. Today, she speaks to Sarah Vosen about the five elements of Chinese medicine, how they changed her life and helped her heal from burnout.

They also make her feel more connected to all elements of the world around her, a concept with which Sarah Jovovich, in turn, empowers her clients. She discusses the importance of community supporting each other and working in tandem. She also explains how she learned to set boundaries, for others’ benefit as much as her own.

Join the two friends in a discussion about healing and empowerment, the pitfalls of being a “terminal optimist” and why abuse is like an expressway.

Quotes

• “The way my sister put it was that when you live by an expressway you get used to the noise and the pollution and you don’t realize how much it’s wearing you down until you step away from it. And the stepping away from it was really difficult in this case because the expressway was my co-parent and my roommate in a very expensive city.” (10:22 | Sarah Yovovich)
• “When you’re in an abusive relationship, your nervous system is constantly being attacked. You’re in fight, flight, freeze or fawn all the time. If you’re living with somebody who’s being abusive of you, you never relax, and so your body starts to wear out from that.” (12:28 | Sarah Yovovich)
• “It allows me to recognize just how much I am a part of everything that happens all around me—of the seasons, of the planet, of the flow of energies in the universe, and to create stories around that that help me make sense of my life and my experiences. It’s also been really empowering in my healing work as a way to help other people make sense of what they’re feeling in their bodies and not feel like they’re at the whim of some tyrant body that’s misbehaving, but start to put together authority… to see how all these things are connected and work with them instead of against them.” (27:25 | Sarah Yovovich)
• “That’s actually part of the empowerment is recognizing that the things that you’re weak in are not something to beat yourself up about. It’s actually just the flip side of your strength and that there are four other kinds of elements who have the strengths that you don’t have that are probably part of your community and you can support each other. It just proves to me we’re meant to work together.” (39:17 | Sarah Yovovich and Sarah Vosen)

Links

Connect with Sarah Yovovich:

https://www.sarahpeutics.org

https://instagram.com/acro.mama

www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-yovovich-2124b07

https://sarahpeutics.mn.co/plans/52216?bundle_token=62c36ddc4adc3001097cd7c8962de3f4&utm_source=manual

One-on-one coaching free call with Sarah Vosen:

https://caitdonovan.as.me/coachwithsarah Element constitution quiz: https://s.pointerpro.com/primaryelement

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 just didn’t feel like I had the permission to bring that part of myself into the workplace and say, ‘Hey, I want to start making some shifts,’”says Roslyn McLarty, of her time as co-founder of the GIST, a women-run sports media brand, making sports more inclusive. As the company grew, so did the responsibilities and overwhelm, and she found herself growing away from the company. Since completing burnout recovery coaching with Cait through Cait’s Wayfinder program, Roslyn has learned that when you act in integrity with what your mind, body and soul want to do, not only do you deliver the most impact, you have more to offer the company, and as a founder, set the example for those around you. On today’s episode of FRIED, she shares how her journey through burnout has informed the founding of her latest venture Within, a personal development platform for purpose-driven leaders. 

A large part of Roslyn’s burnout recovery included learning to be present in her body—rather than just living inside of her own head—and get in better touch with her intuition. She learned to get to the root of her people-pleasing tendencies, to release her resentments and frustration. 

Roslyn’s story proves what a difference a year can truly make. Join today’s discussion to hear the advice she has for founders based on what she’s learned throughout her own journey. 

Quotes

• “I think awareness is the first step. I think the harder thing, for me, is even just believing that you are deserving of doing work that you enjoy and that maybe you have something to bring to the table other than what you thought.” (12:35 | Roslyn McLarty)
• “Those parts of me weren’t being fully utilized at the company, and I think they could have been really valuable but I just didn’t feel like I had the permission to bring that part of myself into the workplace and say, ‘Hey, I want to start making some shifts toward these energy-giving areas for me, so that I can stay in the company sustainably, so that I can have something that’s filling my cup so that I can do this and some of the other things that I inevitably need to do that maybe aren’t the most energy-giving but can we at least figure something out.’” (13:10 | Roslyn McLarty) 
• “Before going through all this I was someone who operated fully from the shoulders up, in my head. I wasn’t connected to my body’s intuition. I wasn’t hearing the signs that I was burning out or that things weren’t right, that something wasn’t integrity for me, in my life.’” (19:43 | Roslyn McLarty)
• “When you’re someone who’s been holding it all in and putting everybody first… you don’t know another way of being, whether it’s how you cope or how you were taught. So, to realize there’s a different way and you can let it all out is really empowering.” (24:50 | Roslyn McLarty)
• “I think that’s the thing that gets in the way: people just believe if I’m not working hard, I’m not going to be successful or I’m not creating value, and actually, if you’re working too hard, you’re not of service to your company. So, trying to shift to this idea that you should be working in a scope that works for you and lights you up.” (36:14 | Roslyn McLarty)

Links

Connect with Roslyn McLarty:

https://within.beehiiv.com/

https://www.instagram.com/roslynmclarty/

www.linkedin.com/in/roslyn-mclarty-51058223

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

“Cool, this is an emotion, but what is it telling me? What is the information?” asks Nicole Maitland, host of the podcast “Yarns for the Soul” and today’s guest on this episode of FRIED hosted by Sarah Vosen. The same high level of sensitivity that made Nicole an effective human rights lawyer in her native New Zealand made her vicariously vulnerable to her clients’ trauma, and her people-pleasing tendencies drove her to give her best to those clients even as her body was screaming for her to stop. Today, Nicole explains how she is learning to give herself the time, space and permission to feel her feelings without guilt or judgment, and what’s more, to learn to determine the message and information her emotions are trying to deliver. 

She compares emotions to waves, and the messages the emotions contain, to boats. When we let the waves wash over us and pay attention to the boats, we can receive the message that ultimately helps us bring ourselves more into what Sarah calls “soul alignment”— the lack of which is what leads to burnout in the first place. Nicole also talks about listening to the messages your body is trying to tell you, either through the symptoms of burnout, or in the subtle ways your gut and heart are trying to lead you in the right direction. 

Currently, Nicole is living the life of a “slow nomad,” and in turn is learning to let her soul be a “free and easy wanderer.” Learn more about her journey, how working with a naturopath changed her perspective and what she learned about life from growing up on her family’s farm. 

Quotes

• “As I look back now, that was kind of the last domino to fall. I can see that I was already chronically stressed probably from when I first started as a lawyer, even maybe before, when I was studying at university. And then I kind of just kept pushing because I didn’t know what else to do.” (6:13 | Nicole Maitland)
• “Riding those waves, you can see if there’s a boat that’s coming along and so, the wave itself is a certain emotion—it could be anger, sadness or whatever it is—but if you detach from the wave and look at the boat, which is a message…What is it trying to tell me?” (18:54| Nicole Maitland)
• “I know some people aren’t label-oriented, they don’t need a diagnosis but I think, for me, that’s where I’ve struggled because I find those labels helpful… now having the words of ‘highly sensitive person,’ I can use that as a lens to reflect back on everything, particularly my work as a lawyer and thinking, ‘Oh, that’s why I was different. That’s why I functioned differently,’ kind of bringing kindness to previous versions of myself.” (31:20 | Nicole Maitland) 
• “Physically, it can come from different places. It’s the heart, or the gut, possibly. The heart is, ‘What am I really feeling? What feels aligned?’ The gut is more the intuition, those things that you maybe can’t explain, but a little message or a tap on the shoulder, ‘I don’t know why, but let’s follow that.’  (44:18 | Nicole Maitland)

Links

Connect with Nicole Maitland:

https://nicole28j.wixsite.com/nicole-maitland-1

https://www.instagram.com/yarnsforthesoulnicole/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-maitland-4544706a/

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

“What’s more important: being happy for having some stupid business card?” Asks Bryan Huhn, who joins FRIED today to discuss the relationship between financial stress and burnout, particularly when we allow the money we’re making—and the money we think we can’t live without—to convince us we need to remain in jobs that are making us miserable even to the point of illness. Bryan spent years valuing what people thought of him more than his own genuine passions and in an effort to people-please, pursued a career in finance rather than his dream of becoming a baseball coach. This led to a toxic cycle where his self-worth was tied to a job he had no passion for and therefore didn’t excel at, the stress of which, he believes, contributed to a cancer diagnosis in 2015. 

With what he’s learned, he wants to help others make the most of their money so that they can create the best lives for themselves, and don’t have to spend another minute in jobs that they hate. As he explains to host Cait Donovan, this requires being brutally honest with yourself about where your money is going, what that says about what you value, and how you can start financially planning so that you can buy your freedom without wasting any more of that resource that is perhaps more valuable than money: your time. 

This requires getting real with yourself, while at the same time refraining from judging yourself or comparing yourself to anyone else. Join today’s episode of FRIED to learn how your approach to financial planning will help you start to live your best life. 

Quotes

• “That’s one thing I would say: Don’t ever compare. If there’s something you’ve been through, even if it seems really minor, it has a major impact on your life and the way your brain works. So, having that self-compassion, I think, is really important.” (4:43 | Bryan Huhn)
• “Money is imaginary. It literally is not real. We, as humans, just decided, ‘Hey, this thing, this piece of paper, this U.S. dollar is worth something and we all agree that it is, and that’s how we’re going to interact with one another and get the things we want. It could just as easily be Bitcoin. It’s not real, so why should your goal be to maximize how much of it you accumulate? No, the purpose of it is to live the best freaking life that you can possibly live.” (20:33 | Bryan Huhn) 
• “OK, where’s my money going? So, what am I valuing? Because if you really want to know what someone cares about, look at their bank statement and their calendar. The time and the money. It’s a really good way to measure that. So, it almost forces you to do that deep work that so many people resist.” (27:35 | Bryan Huhn)
• “There’s no judgment there. It’s just being honest with yourself and I think a lot of times, especially in my industry, they make people feel really judged. It’s kind of cliche to hear a financial planner say, ‘Don’t spend six bucks on your Starbucks coffee every morning. Shut up. Don’t tell people what they should value, but help them figure it out and help them be brutally honest with themselves.” (30:13 | Bryan Huhn)

Links

Connect with Bryan Huhn:

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

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

Ready to leave burnout behind for good? Join UNFRIED: A Small Group Burnout Recovery Program and start reclaiming your energy and joy. Apply today! https://bit.ly/unfryapply

“The problem isn’t you; the problem is the toxic workplace,” explains host Caitlin Donovan on this latest #straightfromcait episode of FRIED, in which she discusses the dangers of returning to a toxic workplace only to repeat the burnout cycle again, as if you never made any recovery progress. Too often we’re led to believe that if we improve ourselves enough, we can develop an immunity against a bad environment, which, as Cait says, simply isn’t true. 

On today’s episode, she explains why you should reconsider returning to your toxic workplace, and, if you do find yourself there, what to do if you find yourself unsupported. She discusses the common feelings of isolation, loneliness, emotional and mental paralysis and low self-esteem that accompany this scenario, and the devastating effects of bullies in the workplace. 

You’ve come too far in your burnout recovery to jump back into the very situation that got you burned out in the first place. Join Cait today to learn the importance of being aware of, and listening to your body responses, to better detect and determine if your environment is safe. 

Quotes

• “What happens, because of pop culture and pop psychology, is people assume that if they just get stronger, have better boundaries or can manage their emotions better, that somehow they will be able to manage and handle a toxic environment. That would be like saying, ‘If I just meditate enough, I can swim in toxic chemicals and they won’t bother my body.’ That’s just not true.” (2:56 | Caitlin Donovan) 
• “There are a lot of people who explain that they, after something like this happens, are left with really low confidence. They’re feeling worthless, they feel socially isolated. They don’t know how to search for a new job; they’re nervous about searching for a new job. They’re wondering if they’ll ever be able to work again. Their social circle often doesn’t know how to respond, which is not their social circle’s fault, most people are just not educated well enough in the realms of burnout to have these conversations easily.” (6:37 | Caitlin Donovan) 
• “And then that social isolation turns into loneliness, and you feel like the odd one out and you feel like, ‘Oh, my God, why is everybody around me making it in life and I can’t hang, I can’t hack it.’ And then that turns into a general feeling of despair.” (7:08 | Caitlin Donovan)
• “It only takes one bully, one crappy boss to set things totally sideways. And I know that people who work in HR and leaders don’t want to hear that one crappy boss can really ruin it like that for someone, but they can, and they do, and the cost is magnificent. The cost is immense for this person.” (9:38 | Caitlin Donovan)

Links

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Ready to leave burnout behind for good? Join UNFRIED: A Small Group Burnout Recovery Program and start reclaiming your energy and joy. Apply today! https://bit.ly/unfryapply

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