Breaking The Burnout Cycle
Are you a service based entrepreneur who currently works 8-10 hours in your business every day and yet you never get to a point where anything feels done?
You end each day frustrated, telling yourself “There just is not enough time in the day”, as you look down at your never ending to-do list that always seems to get longer no matter how productive you are.
And because you have so much to do in your business, every day has started to feel like you are trapped on a never-ending cycle of exhaustion and burnout as you move from task to task, drinking your 5th cup of coffee, working as you eat, never having a moment to just stop and breathe.
You get to the end of every day and just collapse on the couch, mindlessly scrolling through your phone, too exhausted to spend time with your family or even respond to their eagerness to tell you about their day.
And even though you’re dead tired, every night is another sleepless night, tossing and turning, wondering if you did enough as you think about both the tasks you didn’t get to and the family obligations you forgot about leaving you feeling like you just can’t seem to get anything right and that you’re dropping the ball in all areas of life.
But what if you could break the never-ending cycle of burnout for good and have the massive impact you started your business for all while having your time, energy, and health for a business and life that you love?
Because you can!
Dr. Reana over the past 3 years has been helping service based entrepreneurs, like yourself, break free from the entrepreneur burnout cycle by teaching brain-based tools, rooted in neuroscience and neuropsychology, to help you identify, understand, and break free from subconscious habits that are keeping you stuck in the burnout cycle so that you can have the impact and financial freedom you started your business for while still having your time, energy, and health for a life and business that you love.
You’ll be learning the exact tools that have helped her clients double, and sometimes triple, their income all while working less hours and having internal peace to be fully present and enjoy everything from family dinners to work-free vacations.
Join Doctor of Physical Therapy and Master Certified Neurocoach Dr. Reana Mulcahy each week as she brings her knowledge, expertise, and guest experts on to help you break free from the entrepreneur burnout cycle so that you can have a thriving business and personal life that you enjoy and love.
Welcome to the Breaking The Burnout Cycle Podcast
Breaking The Burnout Cycle
How Unspoken Expectations Fuel Your Burnout
Have you ever found yourself seething with resentment toward a family member, colleague, or client, but couldn't quite pinpoint why? That sneaky emotion might be the hidden force keeping you trapped in the burnout cycle.
Resentment doesn't just appear out of nowhere. As I explore in this episode, it emerges from expectations that haven't been met – particularly what I call "stealth expectations." These are the unspoken standards and anticipated outcomes we hold without consciously acknowledging them. Drawing from Brené Brown's groundbreaking work, I detail how these invisible expectations create a dangerous pattern for high achievers.
What makes this pattern so insidious is twofold. First, when others don't meet our unspoken standards, we disconnect through frustration, passive-aggression, and lashing out, damaging our most valued relationships. Second, when our expected outcomes don't materialize, we create negative stories about our worth. The resulting conclusion? "I need to work harder, control more, and compensate for everyone else." This is precisely the thinking that keeps you stuck in burnout.
Breaking free starts with recognizing when resentment appears in your emotional landscape. By identifying the physical sensations and triggers associated with resentment, you can begin unraveling the stealth expectations driving your burnout behaviors. Through brain-based reprogramming of these subconscious patterns, you can neutralize the stories keeping you trapped.
Ready to identify the mental blocks fueling your burnout cycle? Schedule a free discovery call to dive deeper into the tools and strategies that will help you break free once and for all. Your path to sustainable success and fulfillment begins with understanding what's really happening beneath the surface.
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If you've ever felt resentment towards a family member, a friend or even a client, then this episode's for you, because I am diving deep into the neuroscience of why resentment happens and what you can do about it.
Speaker 1:So stay tuned. Hi, I'm Dr Riana Mulcahy and, after burning out not just once but twice, I've uncovered that burnout becomes a never-ending loop unless you uncover the subconscious beliefs at the root of it all. Each week, I'm bringing you brain-based tools and strategies that will help you to identify and rewire subconscious blocks keeping you from the success, happiness, and strategies that will help you to identify and rewire subconscious blocks keeping you from the success, happiness and freedom that you really want. This is Breaking the Burnout Cycle Podcast. One of the biggest emotions that I coach my clients through in the Rewire to Thrive program is the emotion of resentment, and I'm willing to guess that if you think of that word resentment, you can probably bring to mind you know, a situation or a person that you've ever felt resentment towards, and I wanted to talk about this because this was actually one of the most sneakiest emotions that I uncovered in breaking the burnout cycle journey for myself. That is such a subtle, sneaky emotion that plays a big role that I don't think we give it enough credit in how much it plays in the burnout cycle and keeping us on the burnout cycle, and I think that one of the biggest things that I had learned about the emotion of resentment is what causes it, and I learned a lot of this. You know I want to give credit where credit's due comes from Brene Brown's work, where you know.
Speaker 1:If you haven't read any of Brene Brown's work, I highly recommend looking at two books in particular that come to mind around this topic, which is Atlas of the Heart and I think it's called Rising Strongly. Maybe it's Rising Bravely, but if you Google rising and then put her name in, you most likely will find that book. But those two books really talk about not just the differences and nuances of the emotions that we experience and how actually complex our emotions are and the importance of having emotional IQ to understand the way that you're perceiving situations, but not just perceiving situations, but the meaning that you're giving situations in your mind. And this is a lot of the work that I do with my clients is having them understand their own emotions, that they're experiencing around situations that are triggering for them, so that they can start to understand what is the story, that they are, you know, maybe sometimes assuming or filling in the gaps with subconsciously where it's happening subconsciously, and when we talk about resentment, there are actually the.
Speaker 1:The reason why resentment actually happens is because there is an expectation that has not been met. And, uh, where most of us go is, you know, to the immediate thing that comes to mind, which is I explicitly asked them to not do this, like I set a boundary and they broke it, and so now I feel resentment. That's where most people tend to go when they think about resentment. But the scarier part is the subconscious cause of resentment, which often happens from stealth expectations. So when I say stealth expectations, I mean there is oftentimes a expectation that we sometimes hold either another person to the standard or expect if I do this, then I'm anticipating that this will happen, right, this outcome will happen, and so we have these expectations that aren't necessarily spoken out loud, but we have it in our minds.
Speaker 1:And this becomes very dangerous, because what I tend to see happen over and over again with clients is that they sometimes don't even realize they had expectations in the first place, and so they're having these expectations not be met, and then they're making the situation mean something when those expectations aren't met, and so there are actually two reasons why this becomes such a dangerous thing, the first situation being that when they have a stealth expectation of how they want you know someone in their team or their spouse or their kids to essentially perform at, then, when that doesn't happen, what I tend to see is a disconnection, because they start to get frustrated and angry and start to question like why can't my team member or why can't my spouse pick up the slack or do all these things when that was never actually explicitly asked or stated oftentimes, and then that tends to lead to passive aggressiveness or irritation or lashing out and, as we all know, that can then lead to disconnection and repercussions in the relationships that are the things that they value. And so it's dangerous because then they start, you know, feeling like they're losing control of everything on all playing fields and like their life is falling apart in all aspects in career and business, in their family life. The second reason why I see it become so dangerous is because there can sometimes be expectations that we have about an outcome that we want right, and I have potentially a stealth expectation about how many people I expect to show up based on the amount of work that I put in, based on the time, energy and effort that I put in, and if that's not met, then what I tend to see happens next is the stories that they make it mean about themselves and what their worth tends to follow, and that's where it becomes dangerous, because the two combined are. You know, if the two combined happened which they often do, go hand in hand where there's the expectation of how you want someone else to help you and then there's the expectation of how you want someone else to help you, and then there's the expectation of an outcome that you want. Is that I have seen time and time again where high achievers then jump to the conclusions that, well, this is why I need to white knuckle my way and control everything and go above and beyond and work harder to accommodate.
Speaker 1:For why we didn't get the outcome or, you know, because everyone else can't operate the way I do, and that is the very thing that will keep you stuck in burnout is if you have these expectations that are then driving the patterns that are causing you to overwork and over deliver and people please and go above and beyond and burn yourself out as you work yourself into the ground, then the only way off is to, first off, break free from the stealth expectations, and the only way that can happen is if you know that you have expectations. And so you might be wondering okay, well, rihanna, I think I do have some stealth expectations. How do I start to uncover it? And this is, first off, the number one reason why having a coach or an outside perspective is necessary If you want to break free from the burnout cycle. Uh, there's no other way around. Uh, saying this other than that is analogous to a blind spot, right? We sometimes are too close to the problem that we can't even see when we're in the patterns that are happening without us even thinking, and so I can't recommend enough whether it's, you know, working uh with a coach or working with a counselor some way to help you identify where your blind spots are happening. That's first and foremost.
Speaker 1:The second piece is we cannot heal from something that we have no idea is happening in the first place, and so the second part that I teach all of my clients and that I think can help you by just starting today, is starting to recognize when you are having the emotions of resentment, and so, if it helps you, just think of someone that continues to break a boundary I'm sure we can all think of a family member, whether it's our mom and dad, our aunt and uncle just someone who constantly breaks the boundaries. What do you feel around that? What does that feel like? Where do you feel it in the body? That is going to help you to start identifying when you're feeling resentment. And so then it's about okay, this is the emotions I'm feeling. Now. It's about getting curious on why it's happening.
Speaker 1:So then it's about looking at what are the situation that is preceding these emotions, that is preceding these emotions and that might clue you in to, hey, you know what I might be having this expectation. So the two examples I gave were if I did a webinar and I now feel super irritated or super disappointed and all of these negative feelings, I can feel it in my chest, I can feel it in my throat, I feel like I want to cry. Well then, it's about getting curious on okay, why, what was it about doing the webinar that I had hoped for that wasn't met? And you know, more specifically, you might start noticing resistance to certain things, and that's a great indicator. I always tell people when you feel that resistance, lean into that, because that is like a big neon sign pointing you in the direction of what needs to be addressed.
Speaker 1:The second piece is like, okay, where do I notice myself say you're busy cleaning around the house where do I notice myself starting to want to be passive, aggressive, or starting to want to sometimes even be blunt towards someone else? And that can be a great indicator of a stealth expectation. And so you really have to start there. And then it's about learning to identify what is the story that is happening here, the internal dialogue that is happening here that is perpetuating this, and that is oftentimes the subconscious belief driving it. And then it's about learning the brain-based tools to reprogram the subconscious so that those stories become neutralized and do not drive behaviors.
Speaker 1:So if this is something that is hitting home for you, if this is something that you would like to dive deeper in, this is what I do on my discovery calls with every single person is helping them to begin this process of understanding. Where is it that there's a mental block that is causing these, that I can't even talk this emotion to perpetuate and ultimately, you staying stuck in behaviors that are causing the burnout cycle. So if this is something you want to dive deep in, I've put the link below to schedule a discovery call. All it is is a free 45 minute call where we essentially will dive into the tools that will help you to identify the mental blocks. So if this is something you want to dive into, you can schedule by clicking below and other than that, I will see you on next week's episode. Bye for now.