Breaking The Burnout Cycle

The Success Paradox: Why Internal Work Outperforms Working Hard

• Dr. Reana Mulcahy PT, DPT • Episode 53

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Chances are you have heard the phrase - "Hard work = Success".  

But have you ever had a moment where everything you believed was success feels like anything but success? That moment when you've checked all the boxes society told you to check – education, career, financial stability – yet find yourself sitting alone wondering, "Is this really it?" 

If this is you, chances are you can relate

My breaking point came in a hospital parking lot after a 12-hour shift as a physical therapist. Despite having the career I'd worked so hard toward, I was burnt out, drowning in student debt, and constantly overlooked for promotions. Like many entrepreneurs, I believed changing my external environment would solve everything. I quit my job and started a business only to find myself even more burnt out a year later, working longer hours with nothing to show for it.

The transformation began after my tenth consecutive sales rejection when I finally asked a different question: "What am I not seeing here?" The answer changed everything – life isn't determined by external circumstances but mirrors our internal world. My business struggles weren't about lacking the right strategy or working hard enough; they stemmed from subconscious patterns and limiting beliefs actively sabotaging my success.

After becoming certified in neuro coaching and applying these techniques to myself, clients began appearing effortlessly. People said yes without hesitation, regardless of price. The difference wasn't a new marketing funnel or business tactic – it was rewiring my mind to stop self-sabotage. Your brain is designed to protect you from perceived threats like rejection or failure, creating procrastination, distraction, and avoidance that keep you "safe" but unsuccessful. No amount of hustle can override these subconscious blocks until you address them directly.

Ready to discover where your mind is creating a "full stop" in your business?

Book a free strategy call  and learn how changing your mind truly changes everything – your business, your bank account, and your life.

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Speaker 1:

Have you ever been in a place where you look at where your life is? You look at your career, your marriage, your friendships, your financial circumstances, your happiness and you maybe begin to feel angry or feel resentment as you ask yourself is this really it? Is this all there is? If this is you, then chances are you can probably relate to what I'm about to share on today's episode. So stay tuned you, hey, everyone, welcome into another episode. The other day I was actually talking with someone about success and just about you know where they were in their lives. They were kind of just sharing with me this moment that they had of, in a sense, questioning where their life ended up being at the moment. And you know, I wanted to ask you guys the same thing of have you ever been in a place where you've you know, you've quote, unquote made it? And yet you look at your life, you look at all of the things that you've accomplished your career, your marriage, your friendships, your financial circumstances, your happiness and while on paper it looks amazing and it looks like, wow, you've really accomplished a lot, you can't help but feel resentment or feel a little bit of disappointment and anger, as you ask yourself the question is this really it? Is this all there is to life? Because, to be honest, life might not look the way you thought it would and as you look back, you don't even know how you wound up here. Almost like your life feels like it's just been driven on autopilot, and if you've ever been in this place or maybe you currently are in this place then chances are you can probably relate to this. See, back in 2020, I found myself sitting in the parking lot of the hospital at 8pmm, and I remember just sitting there after my 12-hour shift and really just like dreading going home, because I knew that I was about to go home to yet another fight, because I had missed yet another dinner due to working late. I had missed yet another dinner due to working late, and as I sat there, I can so vividly remember asking myself is this really all that there is to life? Is this it? Is this what success really is? See, the thing is, not only was I burnt out which, to be honest, that's somewhere I never even thought I'd be in my third year as a physical therapist but I was also nowhere near what I had envisioned as success in student loan debt, living paycheck to paycheck, working 40 plus hours a week for a healthcare system that cared more about profits than patients. And I remember just constantly being overlooked for promotions in the clinic to the men who, despite the number of certifications and accolades that I continued to work hard and add to my resume, always got promoted before me.

Speaker 1:

And you know, it was at that moment that I questioned everything that my parents had raised me to believe that this whole story of go to school, work hard, um, and get a good job and that means success. I was sitting there wondering, like, if that was success, then why was I here, sitting in my car, crying angry at the way that my life was going? And at the time, you know, like most people, I made the mistake of going straight to blaming the external circumstances. I believed that the reason I felt this way and didn't have the life that I wanted was because of my boss, and it was because of the system, and it was because of all of the external circumstances the corporate greed, the uh, you know, men getting promoted over women, all of these things are the things that I blamed for the reason why I was not happy and why I was not having the life that I wanted, and if you're like most entrepreneurs who start out, I know I made this mistake.

Speaker 1:

I believe that if I changed the external environment, then I would have the freedom, have the happiness and income and fulfillment that I wanted. And so what did I do? Well, naturally, I changed the external environment. I quit my job and I started to try a business, only to find myself one year into my coaching business with nothing to show. In fact, I was even more burnt out than I was in my nine to five. I was not only burnt out, but I was more in debt, working 10 to 15 hour days, jumping from strategy to strategy, desperately searching for the missing piece that I thought would open the floodgates of abundance. And I think you know, looking back, that that was my biggest mistake, because at the time, what I never realized was that I was actually operating on a false premise.

Speaker 1:

I was operating on this premise that I will be happy once I achieve X, and by X I mean, fill in the blank, happiness, freedom, financial success. And, to make matters worse, I genuinely believe that the only way to be successful was to do even more, to work even harder, to push and push and push like nothing else mattered, not my health, my family, my life. And you know if I think about where that came from, that is one of the biggest ways that we've all learned how to get success. And you know that phrase. I hear this phrase all the time and I love this phrase, but it's the phrase of first God throws a pebble and then he throws a rock, and if you still don't get the message, well then he throws a big old boulder. Well, I ended up getting my boulder, because what I thought was rock bottom wasn't even close.

Speaker 1:

See, then, if we were to fast forward, in October of 2021, I got yet another email from a prospective client saying no, thank you, we are choosing to go in another direction, we're choosing to go with someone else. And I so vividly remember reading that. You know, for context, this was my 10th no on a sales call. So I remember reading that and just dropping to my knees, not literally, but just that feeling of dropping to my knees. I sank into the chair and blankly stared at the email over and over and over again, reading and rereading the same sentences for like the 20th time, as I stared at the email through tears that were beginning to well up in my eyes and I just remember sitting there feeling the weight of defeat, feeling it on my shoulders, and I remember crying and crying, just trying to make sense of what it was I was missing or what it was I wasn't doing that all of the other people, you know, in my coaching groups and all of the people I looked up to, were doing, and why was it that they had what I wanted, but I, for whatever reason, success just seemed to be out of reach for me and I was so frustrated with the fact that I had just spent not only the last year and a half trying everything, but at the fact that I had tried everything, I'd gone even more into debt and nothing was working.

Speaker 1:

And it was in that moment. You know that was rock bottom, and it was in that moment. You know that was rock bottom. And what I decided to do in that moment was to take.

Speaker 1:

For me, water is my calming element, so I decided to just take a long hot bath to just calm down, to gather my thoughts, and I swear I must have sat there for nearly two hours. I must have sat there for nearly two hours because the water at that point was starting to get lukewarm and pretty much cold. And I started in that moment, where the water was getting cold, that I started to notice myself sitting there and asking actually a different set of questions and I started asking myself what is it that I am not seeing here? What is it that I obviously need to learn, because I keep getting the same situation over and over and over again. And you know what they say all the time. You know my coach, my mentor, james Wedmore. He says this all the time that the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your questions. And, just like that, the quality of my question changed instead of why me, it became. What is it here that I am not seeing? That I have not learned yet?

Speaker 1:

And it was like as soon as I started asking that question, I started to hear the answers and for the first time, I noticed that I was missing the key component, the biggest lesson that would change the trajectory of my career as an entrepreneur and also just my life in general. See, the biggest lesson that I started to notice was that, as I was looking back, I started to realize that the biggest lesson I missed was that all I had done here is change the external. I had done everything in my power to change the environment, to change everything, only to find myself in the exact same scenario. All I had done was literally go from being burnt out as a PT to being burnt out as an entrepreneur. And that's the biggest aha for me, because this time I had no one else to blame but myself. I had no one else to blame but myself.

Speaker 1:

And to look inward, to look in the mirror which for a lot of us can be a very hard thing to do, but I had to do it. This time I had to look in the mirror and what I saw was that the biggest lesson was sitting right in front of me, and it was that life is not a result of the external, but rather it's a result of the internal, it's a mirror of our internal world. And so I began to investigate all of the ways that my internal world, my thoughts, my emotions, my belief systems, how all of those things may have been holding me back. And you know, it took me down this path of curiosity of like. I wanted to learn everything that I could about the power of our thoughts, the power of our emotions, the power of our belief systems and how it impacts the results that we either get or do not get. And it really took me down a path of learning everything I could In fact, I remember, you know, getting master neuro coach certified for myself at first and then seeing how much of an impact I could create in other high achievers lives like yourselves of looking at the power of the subconscious mind and all the ways that it affects our energy, the way we show up our body language, the way we speak in our voices, our decisions and actions and ultimately, like I said, the results that we get or do not get.

Speaker 1:

And as I began to implement the techniques that I was learning to work on just reprogramming my subconscious mind and to work on managing my energy, managing my vibration, I started to see results. Before you know it, I got my first client, and then my second and then my third. And every time that I was getting clients, each time I began to work less and less where each time it became effortless. It became this magnetic attraction of the right people at the right time who came through the doors already as hell yeses, and it didn't matter at the price. They didn't even bat an eye. And that is the point is that fast forward to today, this is the norm and that's when I started to realize that if you change your mind, you can change your life. And it's such a powerful realization because not only does it take you out of the helpless feeling of there's nothing I can do about my circumstances, but the opportunities, the clients, the income, the fulfillment, the things that you want also want you, but it can only come to you if we are in this energy of receiving.

Speaker 1:

And this is one of the biggest things that I work with all of my clients through is how to change their minds so that they can change their lives. And I've seen it work time and time again where my clients come to me and they're in the same scenario of hustling and grinding and working long hours and putting so much effort in but not seeing the fruit of their labor. And the minute they go to change their mind, to reprogram and rewire their minds, everything changes for them. In fact, one of my favorite clients that I always, you know, talk about of how he came to me originally thinking that believing 10K in two not two months, three months was impossible, especially with where he was in his business journey and the minute that I challenged that and we had worked through rewiring his mind, boom. Within 60 days, he hit his first 10K. And that is the power of changing your mind. Change your mind, change your life, change your mind, change your bank account.

Speaker 1:

And chances are that if you're sitting there, if you're wondering like, well, how is it that rewiring my mind is going to get me from point A to point B, he's going to get me the level of success, the level of abundance that I want in my business and in my life, then I'm about to explain all of that. You see, what is happening here is that, essentially, you are experiencing a situation, you're experiencing something and you maybe have a memory in this moment that your brain has already categorized or labeled as bad, wrong or painful. And, in an attempt to protect you from ever experiencing the emotions that you experienced during those scenarios that are, you know, embedded and ingrained in your memory, your brain goes to protect you from experiencing something like that by coding that as a warning. And then, of course, right, you decide that, hey, I'm going to be a business owner, which means you're putting yourself at risk, you have to take chances, you have to put yourself out there you have to face rejection, criticism, refunds, even.

Speaker 1:

And if you haven't cleared any of this stuff, any of the stories that your brain has encoded as bad, wrong or painful, then anytime that you are facing one of these situations that reminds your brain of that experience, your brain immediately goes into overdrive. It is going to do whatever it can do to protect you from that. It'll keep you busy, busy doing all of the wrong things you might just be sitting there looking at how busy you've been and yet you have little to show for it or it'll make you procrastinate, where you're literally always finding something else to do that somehow is vying for your attention that is more important, and giving you all the reasons why now is not the right time. And this is a trauma, informed response. This is a trauma that is triggered by the subconscious memory, and what your brain is trying to do is it's trying to predict an outcome in order to keep you safe.

Speaker 1:

Your mind is literally filling in the gaps, creating the story and telling you to stop to procrastinate, to stay busy on insignificant things, and so my question to you is how are you ever supposed to get what you want, let alone work less, if your brain is telling you to stop each and every single time. Do you really think that you can override and overpower your brain's need to protect you and keep you safe? And, even more importantly, do you really think that you'll be able to perform at the level that you truly desire to make the money that you deserve and work less, if you don't rewire these patterns in the brain, these patterns that are constantly sabotaging you from implementing the strategies that you have consistently enough to get them to work for you or to show up in that strategy as the most confident, powerful version of yourself? Like, how much have you chased? Working harder, longer, chasing new strategies, more courses, more programs, just trying to override the brain's desire and drive to keep you safe? And so, are you starting to see just how much easier it will be if you simply rewire your brain, if you can eliminate these stories that are causing you to go to full stop right, like?

Speaker 1:

Can you begin to imagine how your life, your business, your family, even your health all of what matters to you most how all of that changes when you aren't fighting against yourself any longer, when you just say you're going to do something and you just do it. There's no mental drama about it, there's no emotional triggers around it, when you're about to do something scary, but you don't feel the fear, you're present, you're alert, you're in your power. When you stop using this busyness as a distraction and when you just no longer procrastinate, hibernate, where you go into a cave for a month and you don't do anything and you continue self-sabotaging yourself like how much more would your business grow and how much more sales would you be making? How many more lives and people would you be serving and creating an impact in their lives? An impact in their lives?

Speaker 1:

And so this is the work that I do with my clients, and this is something that, if you are struggling with this, then I would invite you to book a strategy call on that call. You know there's no cost to it. It is literally to just help you begin to understand where the full stop is happening in your mind, so that you can only right I tell my clients this all the time you can only heal from what you know is the problem, and so that's what the discovery calls for. So if this is something you're struggling with, you can book a call. The link is down in the show notes below, and other than that, I hope you guys have an amazing rest of your day and I will see you guys on next week's episode. Bye for now.