the bossbabe podcast - 480: High-Functioning Burnout Exposed: When Sleep isn't Really the Solution
Episode Date: September 9, 2025Why do so many high-achieving women do all the right things - get 8 hours of sleep, take the supplements, follow the routines - yet still wake up exhausted? In the first episode of this series, we un...packed the overwhelm loop. In Part 2 of our 5-part High-Functioning Burnout Exposed series with Awaken the Muse, Natalie, Alexi Panos and Emily Gallagher dive into energy, vitality and why sleep isn’t solving what’s actually nervous-system and emotional-load related. You’ll hear why healthy habits alone can’t create true vitality, how to reconnect with the signals your body is sending, and the exact reflection that reveals where your energy is leaking: What are you avoiding or pretending not to know? After listening to this episode, you will walk away with simple regulation tools, a new way to understand your body’s needs, and a gentler path to real, sustainable energy. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Doing all the things… and still running on empty 01:18 Vitality vs. cortisol: a new definition of energy 04:33 Burnout as initiation (when old tricks stop working) 08:03 Rebuilding self-trust: listening to your body first 12:16 Looks vs. feels: caring for your body from the inside 14:18 Feeling the unfelt (grief, numbness, stored emotions) 16:48 The diagnostic question: What are you avoiding/pretending not to know? 24:07 The true cost of not looking (energy, love, creativity) 29:14 A one-week practice to reveal what you’re avoiding RESOURCES + LINKS Click Here To Join Soft Success: A Free Live Masterclass Experience Taking Place On September 24th To End High-Functioning Burnout And Redefine Success On Your Terms. Sign Up For Our Free Weekly Newsletter & Get Insights From Natalie Every Single Week On All Things Strategy, Motherhood, Business Growth + More. Drop Us A Review On The Podcast + Send Us A Screenshot & We’ll Send You Natalie’s 7-Figure Operating System Completely FREE (value $1,997).
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                                        Welcome back to day two of our five-part series, red flags every boss babe needs to know.
                                         
                                        If you haven't already listened to episode one, pause here and go back because we unpacked
                                         
                                        one of the most common and misunderstood patterns living in a constant state of urgency and mistaking
                                         
                                        anxiety for productivity.
                                         
                                        Today we're diving into a red flag that's so many high achieving women right off as just
                                         
                                        being tired or busy, but it's so much deeper than that.
                                         
                                        This episode is for the woman who's doing everything right, the sleep, the supplements, the morning
                                         
                                        routine and still feels bone deep exhausted. This kind of exhaustion isn't about how many hours
                                         
    
                                        you slept last night. It is about how long your body has been running in overdrive and when it
                                         
                                        finally stops, it doesn't feel like rest. It feels like collapse, numbness, freeze, like no amount
                                         
                                        of hustle hacks are working anymore. We are calling this episode tired to the bone when sleep isn't
                                         
                                        the solution because what you're feeling is not laziness. It is a body that has been in survival mode for
                                         
                                        too long and does not trust rest to be safe. This is the episode where we really start to
                                         
                                        unravel what burnout actually is and why it might be the gateway to a completely different relationship
                                         
                                        with success, energy and worth. So let's start the conversation. I'm excited about this episode
                                         
                                        specifically talking about energy. And the reason why, I mean, I can remember for myself
                                         
    
                                        times where I have been doing all the things. And I'm talking about all the things.
                                         
                                        and I'm an overachiever.
                                         
                                        So I'm like getting all the sleep, even with kids.
                                         
                                        I'm taking all the supplements.
                                         
                                        I'm doing extensive blood work.
                                         
                                        There's hydrogen in my water.
                                         
                                        I'm getting sunlight in my eyes.
                                         
                                        Strength training.
                                         
    
                                        Dada, da, da, da, da.
                                         
                                        Like, doing all the things.
                                         
                                        And I've still done all of the things and felt like there is nothing in the tank.
                                         
                                        I remember specifically, it was a couple years ago.
                                         
                                        Naomi was still really young.
                                         
                                        And I just had this full moment of unraveling and sobbing to Stephen.
                                         
                                        of there is nothing left in the tank. I have nothing left to give everyone. But on paper, all my
                                         
                                        routines and all my habits, they were the habits of a very high performing, high energy person.
                                         
    
                                        And to contrast that with, you know, how I feel now, which is quite pregnant, but waking up
                                         
                                        every single day feeling so alive, so energized, but not from a cortisol place, from this deep
                                         
                                        aliveness in my bones and listen it's not always that way sure go through seasons but I feel like now
                                         
                                        I have a reference point of that vitality and I know how to get myself back here I have that roadmap
                                         
                                        yeah and I know for you Emily you've talked a lot about your real burnout movement can we go there
                                         
                                        because I just think there are a lot of women listening who probably have or are doing all the things
                                         
                                        they've got the red like they're probably listening to this while at the power walk and getting their steps in
                                         
                                        and they're like I still feel like I am running on empty
                                         
    
                                        and I need help. Yeah, it's such a big piece. And I love that word vitality, right? Because it's
                                         
                                        like how we're feeling that felt experience in our life that really only can kind of come from
                                         
                                        inside. And I think that's a big piece because so many of us are conditioned from trying to get
                                         
                                        there from the outside in. Like, what supplements should I take? One of my routines that I should
                                         
                                        do. Am I doing it right? Am I doing enough? Like even that energetic is what keeps so many women
                                         
                                        outside of that experience of vitality because it's not attuned. It's like, what is the
                                         
                                        person tell me that I should do what's the science what's the expert you know telling me about how to get to
                                         
                                        that place so that already is such a big piece and for me was was massive I was always outside in like
                                         
    
                                        what's the things I should be doing how should I be moving my body what are the you know what should
                                         
                                        my business look like was all this kind of externalized drive of how I should be living and what I should
                                         
                                        be creating there was no real connection to that internal voice and that internal drive and so you know
                                         
                                        naturally because I spent years ignoring all of those little signs that we're sharing
                                         
                                        I'd just come back from traveling, you know, overseas.
                                         
                                        We had been running an event in London, in Australia, and I was planning launches,
                                         
                                        and I was running my team, and outside life looked amazing.
                                         
                                        I was planning my TED talk.
                                         
    
                                        I was in the midst of TED talk rehearsals, and I could knock it out of bed.
                                         
                                        It just hit me for more than three weeks, where I was just, I've never had depression,
                                         
                                        but I had this moment of feeling like I have a textual feeling for what that would feel like.
                                         
                                        Nothing felt like it mattered.
                                         
                                        I had absolutely zero drive, energy.
                                         
                                        I felt apathy.
                                         
                                        I mean, I just couldn't get out of bed.
                                         
                                        And I was writing in my journal.
                                         
    
                                        I'm not even that bunch of a big journal,
                                         
                                        but I just recall it so viscerally writing.
                                         
                                        Once I get through the launch and the event and the verse and the Tid talk
                                         
                                        and it just hit me, I was like, oh, so once I get through my life,
                                         
                                        then I'll have experienced my life.
                                         
                                        Like I was like, oh, I just saw it so black and white,
                                         
                                        the wiring that I was running through my life.
                                         
                                        It was always something else I had to get through.
                                         
    
                                        And it really landed for me.
                                         
                                        obviously just really having bottom of the barrel, like not getting out of bed, nothing, just
                                         
                                        feeling like it mattered. It really took that for me to go, oh, okay. So this isn't working. And this
                                         
                                        isn't also the way that I'm going to keep moving forward. It was so sobering. And again,
                                         
                                        so unavoidable. Like at that point, I couldn't argue with what was showing up. It was like,
                                         
                                        all right, I'm being invited to notice something here. Like, what am I going to do differently moving
                                         
                                        forward? Yeah. It's so big. And I think that's the piece about burnout that, you know,
                                         
                                        we hear burnout culture, we hear that women are impacted by burnout in the crazy numbers these days. And
                                         
    
                                        in some ways, we're like racing against the clock to try to avoid it with all these biohacks and all this
                                         
                                        stuff. But really, like, burnout is this deep invitation from our body to go stop. Just stop. It's not
                                         
                                        working. And what a gift, right? Because oftentimes we hear those signs of, hey, maybe slow down a little
                                         
                                        bit. Maybe take a break. Maybe go for a walk and get some sun on your face or whatever it is. We hear these
                                         
                                        little signs and we're like, not right now. I got to finish this thing or I got to get through
                                         
                                        this launch or I got to get through the TED Talker, whatever it is. And we ignore and we stuff
                                         
                                        and we suppress. But burnout is when our body literally goes, hey, babe, that's not working anymore.
                                         
                                        And so it's a gift because all of our old tricks that we are so well conditioned to use to get us
                                         
    
                                        through the next thing, they're not going to hold up in this season. And so when burnout hits or if
                                         
                                        you're close, hopefully you hear this and you're like, you catch it before. It's literally your body
                                         
                                        going, okay, we're inviting you into a new season of life where you're going to do life completely
                                         
                                        different and you're going to have to because there's no other option. Yeah. It's so big. I mean, I remember
                                         
                                        because again, you know, how we do anything is how we do everything. So the way we're running our
                                         
                                        business is the way we're running our bodies is the way we're running all of it. And I remember
                                         
                                        being in L.A. dragging. I was so tired. My body was so fatigued. And I was obviously in L.A.
                                         
                                        trying to do the meetings and running my business. But I was also planning training for this hell on the hill race
                                         
    
                                        at Jesse Ips this house again because you know oh who will I meet there and like there was such
                                         
                                        this like that's a place to be you know and I just remember that I had already done my training run
                                         
                                        that day but again my mind was okay I've got to do this is how I live again externally like you
                                         
                                        have to work out every day this is how you have to eat like it was all very outside and there was
                                         
                                        no attunement to my actual body I just remember hauling myself to the circuit training class like
                                         
                                        an LA Venice Beach circuit training class like you can imagine how psycho that class is right and it was
                                         
                                        just like, because this is what I've got to do. And it was, again, that same mentality that I was
                                         
                                        approaching everywhere in life. And I think when you're a high achiever in one place, you're a high
                                         
    
                                        achiever in a lot of other places. But again, like this invitation with burnout is such an initiation
                                         
                                        into firstly really getting into our bodies, which is wild how much of a journey. I mean,
                                         
                                        they say that, right? The longest journey you'll take is from your head into your heart, like into
                                         
                                        your body. And really cultivating, and this is such a big piece about this whole journey, this
                                         
                                        ability to have such a deep trust within ourselves as women. Again, as women, we're so conditioned
                                         
                                        outside to trust what's people say or who we should be. What should I do? And this is such a
                                         
                                        big piece of that initiation to really go, oh, like what is being asked of me? Not of you, not of you,
                                         
                                        not this other person's journey. And to really have such a reverential sense of trust for like,
                                         
    
                                        all right, like, I'm on my friggin journey. And what is being asked of me, of my body right now? And I'm
                                         
                                        going to cultivate the capacity to really listen to that. That's such a big invitation of this
                                         
                                        journey. And that's why, like you said before, like your level of alignment, like your level of just
                                         
                                        capacity now, because you're so attuned to yourself. But actually being able to build that muscle,
                                         
                                        like the burnout is a big piece of that because it's like, all right, you're likely listening to this
                                         
                                        knowing that there's all these things you should do. And there's the strategies and there's all these
                                         
                                        pieces that the result of all of this is becoming so connected to your own truth, so connected to
                                         
                                        your own body. And that's when again, opportunities come to you. Like you're magnetic. You're like
                                         
    
                                        all of these outcomes of how we can still create a big life, but from a different way, they require
                                         
                                        really connecting and building this capacity, which burnout is the door for unless you listen sooner.
                                         
                                        Yeah, which we're hoping you hear this and you're like, oh my gosh, I may be headed towards
                                         
                                        burnout. Take heed from our story. Exactly. But something you said that I think requires
                                         
                                        talking about, because I don't know about you, but a lot of the women we work with, they're like,
                                         
                                        what does that mean to go into my body? And like, we used to think that. Like, what does it
                                         
                                        actually mean? And we live in a society that has largely conditioned all of us, no matter your
                                         
                                        gender, to focus on the intellect. The intellect is our gateway to all of life. And if we can
                                         
    
                                        understand the mind, we can understand life. If we can hack the mind, we can hack success. We can hack
                                         
                                        life. And what we've forgotten is, ultimately, we're all animals and we're mammals. And our mammalian body
                                         
                                        actually has so much wisdom, has its own intellect, has its own powers. But we are disconnected from that
                                         
                                        because we're not actually attuning to it. In fact, as you said, we're ignoring it. We're suppressing
                                         
                                        the science. We're pushing it down. We're working over our body's capacity instead of working with
                                         
                                        our body's capacity. So when we say like moving from our head into our bodies, we're really talking
                                         
                                        about, number one, attuning to the body signals. It is a learned art because we didn't grow up in
                                         
                                        households, most of us, that taught us how to listen to our bodies. In fact, we went to school and
                                         
    
                                        whenever we felt like even the urge to pee, we were told sit and wait until the break. So we're
                                         
                                        taught to actually ignore our bodies for the sake of productivity. And so re-learning your body
                                         
                                        signals and cues is an art and a practice. That's number one. Number two, your body actually
                                         
                                        stores emotional trauma. And trauma isn't always like a big capital T trauma, big thing. Sometimes it's
                                         
                                        little things. But we don't live in a society that really welcomes feeling much. And
                                         
                                        And so we've got to feel the unfelt, so we've got to open that pathway so that our body has reprieve so that it can actually go,
                                         
                                        okay, now that I'm not holding and thinking we're still stuck in this survival state from this little trauma that happened or this big trauma that happened, now I can actually be present.
                                         
                                        And once we're present in our bodies, this is when we turn on our superpowers, especially as women.
                                         
    
                                        Intuition gets amplified.
                                         
                                        Our life force, like you said, I feel lit up from my cells, like in my bones.
                                         
                                        We can feel that sense of aliveness because the channel is fully.
                                         
                                        open when we're in that sense of aliveness imagine energy because we're all energetic beings just moving
                                         
                                        and radiating from us creating a field of energy that is a magnetic force field now we are like the most
                                         
                                        attractive being that walks into any room because people can feel us and we've all been in a room
                                         
                                        where you feel that person walk in and you're like who is that i don't know what they're doing
                                         
                                        i haven't even talked to them but oh my gosh it's palpable and then we also have felt the person
                                         
    
                                        that knows a lot says all the right things but it's like talking to a dead fish right it's
                                         
                                        energy, right? We are energetic beings and we're attracted to that. So I just wanted to ground that
                                         
                                        because I think a lot of women, self-included, for a long time, I'm like, what does that even
                                         
                                        mean to get into our body? Like, am I just supposed to dance? Or I work out. I'm in my body all
                                         
                                        the time. Yeah. That's a different thing. That piece is key because, I mean, all of us in this room,
                                         
                                        like, take care of our bodies. I was obsessed with my body, my entire life, but I wasn't in it. And that
                                         
                                        distinction is really key because, oh, yeah, working out or taking care of your body again,
                                         
                                        I know for me it was always how it looks.
                                         
    
                                        Like, I'm taking care of my body because it needs to look a certain way.
                                         
                                        Like, how should I look?
                                         
                                        How do I feed my body for how it will look?
                                         
                                        How do I move my body for how it looked?
                                         
                                        It was never about how it feels.
                                         
                                        And so it is important to make that distinction because, again, when we say high achieving
                                         
                                        one place, you're probably high achieving somewhere else.
                                         
                                        If you are, you know, moving your body and taking care of it, like you said, you were doing
                                         
    
                                        everything.
                                         
                                        But again, kind of outside in, what are the things to do so that I'll be healthy versus like
                                         
                                        really actually being in our felt experience of our body?
                                         
                                        And also, like, just also reiterating, like, it all makes sense.
                                         
                                        Like, it makes sense we're not in our bodies.
                                         
                                        It makes sense that we, because also once we do get in there, those stored traumas, that emotion, that energy, like, that is in there.
                                         
                                        There's a reason why we're woke up as a society, right?
                                         
                                        Porn, food, overworking, like shopping, all of these coping mechanisms that keep us out.
                                         
    
                                        Because it's a lot.
                                         
                                        I mean, when I finally got initiated basically into my body, I didn't grieve my dad until 10 years.
                                         
                                        after he died, eight or nine, ten years after he died. So I just did not have the system. I didn't
                                         
                                        have the tools. I didn't, I wasn't in my body at all. So there was just like a numbness and not
                                         
                                        even cognizantly aware of it. Like it wasn't like, oh, I haven't grieved my dad. It was just
                                         
                                        didn't sort of come up. And again, it's like when we, when we slowly build this practice of like
                                         
                                        actually being in the practice of like, you know, and I joke all the time about, you know,
                                         
                                        when people say, where do you feel that in your body? It's like I would, I would want to
                                         
    
                                        literally punch someone in the face because I was like, fucking talking about.
                                         
                                        Like, I just had no awareness of being able to actually feel the sensations in my body, which is
                                         
                                        really common for a lot of the women that we work with.
                                         
                                        And so, again, it makes sense because we don't have the skills or the capacity to actually
                                         
                                        be with that felt experience until we do.
                                         
                                        And our bodies are so smart.
                                         
                                        They only give us what we can actually hold.
                                         
                                        And so it's just trusting, like, the more and more we build that practice, that our body
                                         
    
                                        just slowly titrates us on, hey, it's time to feel this.
                                         
                                        hey it's time and that's why even just a part of this conversation it's trusting this innate
                                         
                                        wisdom of also just life presenting you the situations that are actually initiating you into your
                                         
                                        expansion and then also your body like your body is this beacon of wisdom it's like wow why
                                         
                                        am i so tired okay baby maybe we need to look at something actually really cultivating that
                                         
                                        trust versus like something's wrong i got to fix something it's like oh there's a message here
                                         
                                        even that approach is well you can feel how much softer it is how much less energy it takes than
                                         
                                        fighting and pushing against it right um that's part of what this cultivates us into i think the same i think
                                         
    
                                        if someone had said to me a few years ago maybe you're exhausted because of the emotional load
                                         
                                        yeah in your body i would have said you have no idea it's my mitochondria right i just wouldn't have
                                         
                                        even accepted that as a thing yeah and i think for me i just grew up not trusting my body
                                         
                                        and there was so many reasons that i didn't trust my body at all and that only really came to
                                         
                                        in my late 20s. But I think, you know, from having so many health issues, you know, from a young
                                         
                                        age, we had black mold, we had so many health issues to then going into really severe hormone
                                         
                                        issues being told by four doctors, you'll never get pregnant naturally to, I think just created
                                         
                                        this real disconnect between me, my body. And there was a lot of store trauma there. Generational
                                         
    
                                        trauma that has showed up. And we have had to look at. But I just had this very untrusting relationship
                                         
                                        with my body as my body lets me down.
                                         
                                        My body isn't functioning.
                                         
                                        My body isn't doing what it should do.
                                         
                                        But what's really interesting was repairing that trust.
                                         
                                        My body does function the way it's supposed to function now.
                                         
                                        And my biomarkers look better than ever.
                                         
                                        And it's not that I'm doing more.
                                         
    
                                        I'm probably doing less now than I ever have just because of the season that I'm in.
                                         
                                        And so it's really fascinating.
                                         
                                        And I know one of the things we were going to say on this episode was for women that are relating
                                         
                                        to this and are looking for, okay, well, what's the step?
                                         
                                        One of the questions being, well, what are you avoiding that?
                                         
                                        And I'm very curious for both of you when this started coming up.
                                         
                                        What was your answer to that question for you guys?
                                         
                                        I mean, for me, I mean, a lot of things.
                                         
    
                                        I think, I mean, for sure the grief, actually creating enough time and space to actually feel,
                                         
                                        to actually cultivate the experience of the coming a woman who has capacity to feel.
                                         
                                        There was just no capacity there.
                                         
                                        And so much of that, too, was because of my really dysfunctional relationship with
                                         
                                        my body we were enemies ultimately you know like it was like you're wrong like you're not doing what
                                         
                                        you should be doing just because of how it looked and my my dysfunctional relationship there so there was
                                         
                                        so much of an adversarial experience which kept me out of my body so really this journey from me
                                         
                                        has been a massive initiation into feeling into becoming whole like I was like I wasn't living as a
                                         
    
                                        whole woman and that's also created this really beautiful healing connection like with my body
                                         
                                        Like, was just avoiding, I think, even realizing how out of my body I was, how out of my life
                                         
                                        I was, and really being initiated into what actually, like, how do you want a woman?
                                         
                                        How do you want to live your life?
                                         
                                        How does it get to feel?
                                         
                                        And that's being something that's, you know, unfolded over time.
                                         
                                        But I think really the big piece was was actually realizing how just not in my body and
                                         
                                        therefore, like, really not in my life I was.
                                         
    
                                        My life was constantly over there, somewhere over there.
                                         
                                        So, so crazy.
                                         
                                        Yeah, mine's slightly different, but similar through.
                                         
                                        line. I was avoiding, well, first of all, I'll say this. My burnout was in my relationship.
                                         
                                        Like, I felt so exhausted in my relationship. It's like, I'm doing all the things. We've got
                                         
                                        the therapy. We have all the tools. We're having the conversations. And I just felt so
                                         
                                        exhausted. I'm like, I can't keep doing this. And so what I was avoiding was the fact that even in
                                         
                                        the trying to fix things and make things better, I was people pleasing. I was self-abandoning. I was
                                         
    
                                        self-betraying. I wasn't using my voice and asking for what I need. I didn't even know what I
                                         
                                        needed because I was so practiced in thinking about him and the family and what does he need and what do
                                         
                                        they need. What do I need? How do I want to feel as a woman? I just kept putting myself on the shelf
                                         
                                        for later. I'll get to you later, Lex. I'll get to you later, Lex. And that's why I was so exhausted
                                         
                                        because the overfunctioning of trying to make sure he was good and the kids were good and the house was good
                                         
                                        and the businesses were good was exhausting me because the true self that I was going like, hey, I'm here.
                                         
                                        Can we do this thing called life? And so for me, the invitation was, I
                                         
                                        was avoiding myself. I was avoiding my needs. I was avoiding even asking what I needed. I was
                                         
    
                                        avoiding my own experience of my life as a woman because I was so outwardly focused on everybody
                                         
                                        else, including my clients, including my clients. It was always like their needs come first. And
                                         
                                        you'll be on the shelf for later, Lex, once their needs are handled. But I never got to the
                                         
                                        shelf. I never got to the shelf until I did, until I was forced to go, okay, I'm going to take you
                                         
                                        off the shelf, Lex. We're going to start asking the heart questions. What do you actually want
                                         
                                        in your life. What is not working for you in the relationship? Stop trying to fix what's not
                                         
                                        working for him. What's not working for you? What's not working in your business? What needs to
                                         
                                        change? Who do you need to bring in? And I had to ask all these really hard questions that the overfunctioner
                                         
    
                                        and the one who just has high capacity and could just do it all never even thought to ask. And that
                                         
                                        was for me, it was like the linchpin. You pulled it. I pulled it. And it was like, oh, oh, the amount of
                                         
                                        self-betrayal around my entire life is massive.
                                         
                                        And of course I'm exhausted because I am trying to over function and create safety and
                                         
                                        control and relationship with all these people without being in relationship to myself.
                                         
                                        So of course I'm tired.
                                         
                                        Oh, of course.
                                         
                                        And I had so much compassion.
                                         
    
                                        But also, whoa, I got a lot of work to do.
                                         
                                        And that, I mean, it shifted everything for me.
                                         
                                        I love that.
                                         
                                        Thank you both for sharing.
                                         
                                        I think it's always so helpful to hear, especially for the women listening who have been avoiding
                                         
                                        things for so long.
                                         
                                        Yeah.
                                         
                                        And I mean, for me, I feel like any time I am feeling like I'm jumping back into performative patterns or fight or flight or taking on way too much, I normally have to look at what I'm avoiding.
                                         
    
                                        And it even hit me recently.
                                         
                                        I mean, this is never one and done.
                                         
                                        Like I can think about my big moment.
                                         
                                        But even recently, I noticed myself jumping into all of that overfunctioning.
                                         
                                        I noticed myself being in fight or flight.
                                         
                                        And when I really slowed down, I realized in the first trimester of this pregnancy, I was really.
                                         
                                        sick. And I stopped doing the work. I stopped looking at myself and giving myself what I needed because
                                         
                                        I was so sick. I was just trying to function, you know, get up with my toddler, like make sure she's
                                         
    
                                        taking care of. Don't be too hormonal with my husband. Execute the launch that I committed to.
                                         
                                        There was these things that I felt I had to push through. And so the good way of saying it, I was putting
                                         
                                        myself on a shelf. And when I came out of that sickness, I realized there is a lot to look at. I wasn't feeling
                                         
                                        good even though I wasn't feeling sick anymore and what I really started to realize was for me
                                         
                                        what's been really interesting is watching noemi grow up has been like watching my inner child grow up
                                         
                                        and the age that she turned a few months ago was the age I had one of my like big early traumas and
                                         
                                        that was coinciding with the sickness of my pregnancy and I avoided all of it oh wow and I just
                                         
                                        spent a week going there and looking at it and naming it and bringing it up to Stephen and
                                         
    
                                        And on the other side, like, I remember going into that week thinking, oh, here we go again.
                                         
                                        Am I going to burn everything down?
                                         
                                        And I remember coming out of that week feeling light and energetic and ready to prioritize myself again.
                                         
                                        Because I just realized I was avoiding that.
                                         
                                        Like, it had been sitting there.
                                         
                                        And I think I knew.
                                         
                                        There was part of me that knew, but being sick was a really great way to hide it and avoid it.
                                         
                                        And like, no one, Stephen, I'm being a bitch because I'm hormonal.
                                         
    
                                        Like, no, I'm like, rejecting you because I'm this.
                                         
                                        And like, I'm pouring all my energy into everyone else.
                                         
                                        don't have to look at myself.
                                         
                                        Yeah.
                                         
                                        And it was an excuse and that's my pattern.
                                         
                                        And so it's just like, it's never won and done.
                                         
                                        No.
                                         
                                        Always going to come up.
                                         
    
                                        But for me, the win was, oh, a week?
                                         
                                        Right.
                                         
                                        Yes.
                                         
                                        That's a win.
                                         
                                        To do the work.
                                         
                                        That's a win.
                                         
                                        Yes.
                                         
                                        I want to just underline that because I think it could be easy to just count having time to do all
                                         
    
                                        of this.
                                         
                                        But I think it's really important to know for anybody listening.
                                         
                                        It's already there.
                                         
                                        Yeah.
                                         
                                        So there's already an impact of not doing it.
                                         
                                        It's not really like, yes, it's a choice.
                                         
                                        You can choose.
                                         
                                        when you want to take this on, it is going to come for you, and it's also currently present in
                                         
    
                                        your life. And it's already costing you. It's already costing you. It's already costing you,
                                         
                                        it's already costing a price. So it's not even like, oh, do I have time to do it. It's like,
                                         
                                        oh, it's just kind of shifting a resource. It is actually going to create, like you said,
                                         
                                        more space, more alive and it's actually looking at it. So it's not that whether or not it's
                                         
                                        currently in your life, it's actually just when do you want to sort of start to make enough
                                         
                                        space to look at it? Because, yeah, there's already a price we're paying for not kind of being
                                         
                                        proactive about it. So this is just giving us the option going, all right, well, let me
                                         
                                        just allocate the resources to actually looking at it because I'm currently allocating the
                                         
    
                                        resources to not looking at it, right?
                                         
                                        Which is an energetic cost. It's a massive energetic cost. For me, personally, it was bigger.
                                         
                                        The energetic cost was bigger. What it was costing me was bigger. It was costing me connection in
                                         
                                        my relationship. It was costing me connection to myself. It was costing me energy that I could be
                                         
                                        pouring into my parenting or my work or my friendships. Yeah. So it was costing me in some way.
                                         
                                        Yeah. Yeah. And it was just, yeah, it's, and I think that's the beautiful thing about
                                         
                                        learning these tools is you can shorten how long it takes.
                                         
                                        You know, it doesn't always take a week.
                                         
    
                                        Maybe you need a day.
                                         
                                        Maybe you need a therapy session.
                                         
                                        Maybe you need to, like, it doesn't always take like a long time.
                                         
                                        And you can keep shortening that window when you stop resisting it and diving in.
                                         
                                        So is the thing we really, because I know why showing up, we've got so many more.
                                         
                                        We've got more coming tomorrow.
                                         
                                        Is the thing we really want to leave them with today is like, what is that thing for them
                                         
                                        that they're avoiding?
                                         
    
                                        Because I bet it's so freaking heavy.
                                         
                                        Yeah.
                                         
                                        It's either what are you pretending not to know?
                                         
                                        what are you avoiding? What have you been avoiding feeling? Right? If you had like M, you had your
                                         
                                        father pass away. And it was years prior, but she hadn't really ever grieve that. And grief is such a
                                         
                                        dense emotion, but it's such a human emotion. And it's beautiful when we fully allow ourselves
                                         
                                        to experience that grief. It actually allows us to feel like how much we loved, how much we
                                         
                                        held for that person. And so again, energetically, emotionally, relationally, businesswise,
                                         
    
                                        what are you pretending not to know? Or pretending isn't they?
                                         
                                        Like, what is under the rug that you've just been sweeping and going, I'll get to it later?
                                         
                                        That question is sobering.
                                         
                                        So, sobering.
                                         
                                        Yeah.
                                         
                                        Because, and I also think, too, and I've been so guilty of this, my whole life is outsourcing my power.
                                         
                                        Mm-hmm.
                                         
                                        Right?
                                         
    
                                        Hands up if you relate.
                                         
                                        Yeah.
                                         
                                        They know better than me.
                                         
                                        They're better at this.
                                         
                                        Like, I need help to do X, Y, Z.
                                         
                                        And, you know, I mean, I even remember the first ever business that I started, I co-founded a
                                         
                                        supplement company with my boyfriend at the time. It was a terrible decision. The only reason I did it was because I thought I needed him to help me do it. Or there's been so many moments in my life where like I've avoided looking at something because I thought I needed someone to guide me through it. But that question, what are you pretending not to know? I think we'll highlight for women listening how powerful they are. Yes. Because they already know the answer. Maybe they need to actually stop and go on a walk or like, you know, take a minute. But I hope that highlights to them how much.
                                         
                                        much they know already. Yeah. It's so true. And there's so many women that should I stay,
                                         
    
                                        should I go? What's the next thing? And if you truly get, get still and listen, you already know
                                         
                                        the answer. Yeah. You do. But often again, we're trained to think we don't. Yeah. And the more space
                                         
                                        that we make to actually cultivate that connection of listening, of attuning to self, of being in the
                                         
                                        practice of actually like going within first instead of without. And again, it all makes sense.
                                         
                                        We've been conditioned this way. There's a lot of really important, like really important reasons from a whole
                                         
                                        lineage and generation down on why we do that and why we've actually had to for a lot of women.
                                         
                                        So it is a practice and it is a muscle that gets stronger and stronger.
                                         
                                        So even if anyone's sitting out there right now going, no, but I don't know, even that can be
                                         
    
                                        just a conditioned pattern that we're so conditioned in that way, that just being in the practice
                                         
                                        of like, okay, but if I did know, okay, but if I could trust myself, okay, but if I could listen
                                         
                                        and knowing that the more and more and more that we do that and we go here first and then we
                                         
                                        kind of act on the little nudges, oh, okay, look, even like, I know I need two hours off.
                                         
                                        Took two hours off. Business was fine. People were fine. Everyone was fine. So all the fear that we have around actually trusting that voice, we get the reassurance that we can trust it. And then over time, we can learn to trust that with even bigger and bigger pieces. So it is still a muscle and a practice to actually cultivate that knowing of that voice too within.
                                         
                                        Yeah. And if anyone is listening and saying, man, I'm so far from knowing, just sit with a question almost as a thought and spend a week with that thought kind of just over your life in your awareness.
                                         
                                        And you'll start to see. You'll start to see if life will show you. Yeah. If you truly,
                                         
                                        if you truly bring some consciousness and intention to that thought every single day. Okay, today I'm
                                         
    
                                        available to see what I'm pretending not to know. Okay, today I'm available to see what I've been
                                         
                                        avoiding. You'll see it. Yeah. And like friction points. Friction points in your life are a really
                                         
                                        great insight, right? All of these, we came to a lot of this from friction points. Like, oh, I'm really,
                                         
                                        I feel so frustrated with my body, like this amount of body image stuff that I had. That was a
                                         
                                        friction point that was an entry place that was a place i was not knowing that i was outsourcing my worth
                                         
                                        and value right the the friction points in your life are going to leave clues as to where there's maybe
                                         
                                        something you're trying not to know yeah or could be invited into if this episode really made you feel
                                         
                                        seen if you're in that place where your body is tired your mind is tired and even the things that
                                         
    
                                        used to work just don't anymore then i really want to invite you to join us inside of soft success
                                         
                                        It is a 60 minute masterclass we're hosting at bossbib.com forward slash soft success and it is designed
                                         
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                                        We are going really deep into the exact frameworks that have helped us recover from that
                                         
                                        bone deep fatigue, not through doing more, but by really healing what was underneath it.
                                         
                                        So if your body is asking you for something different, this is the same.
                                         
                                        the sign to listen. So go to bossbub.com forward slash soft success. Get yourself registered and we will see you
                                         
    
                                        there. You do not have to earn your rest and you do not have to do this alone. We would absolutely
                                         
                                        love to walk you through this. We'll see you in the masterclass. Wait, wait, wait, before you go,
                                         
                                        I would love to send you my seven figure CEO operating system completely free as a gift. All you've
                                         
                                        got to do is leave us a review on this podcast because it really supports the growth of this show.
                                         
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