Breaking The Burnout Cycle
Are you a female entrepreneur who is currently spinning your wheels, doing all the right things, yet continuing to find yourself hitting an invisible wall that is keeping you from the success, fulfillment, freedom, & happiness you want?
You’ve read the books. Taken the courses. Implemented the strategies. You know the “how to”...but somehow they either don’t work for you when you apply them OR you can’t get yourself to stay consistent with them to get them to work for you.
And because of that there is a part of you that wonders deep down
“Why is this working for everyone else but me?”
“Maybe I’m doing something wrong? What am I missing?”
“Am I not doing enough?”
…or worse - “Is something wrong with me?”
And because you’ve only learned one way to achieve success, you now find yourself believing that the only way to achieve your goals is to work even harder. To push and push and push, like nothing else matters, not your health, not your family, not your life.
Here’s the truth: You’re not broken. You’re just burnt out from doing success the way you were taught — the hustle-harder, push-through, ignore-your-needs kind of way.
Breaking the Burnout Cycle is the podcast that finally speaks to you. Hosted by Dr. Reana Mulcahy, subconscious reprogramming coach and former hustle-addict turned aligned success mentor, this show is your permission slip to stop over-functioning, start honoring your truth, and finally create the next level of success from a place of alignment, not exhaustion.
Dr. Reana over the past 4 years has been high achievers, like yourself, break free from the 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 from the success, fulfillment, and freedom you crave.
Each week, we dive into subconscious mindset work, nervous system healing, and the invisible beliefs that keep high achievers stuck in survival mode — even when they look “successful” on the outside. You'll hear solo episodes, client breakthroughs, and expert conversations designed to help you rewire your beliefs, reclaim your energy, and rise into the results, relationships, and reality you know you’re meant for.
It’s time to stop chasing success that costs you your peace. It’s time to break the burnout cycle — for good.
Subscribe now and let’s rewrite the rules of success, together.
Breaking The Burnout Cycle
Episode 64: The Truth About Progress In Different Seasons Of Life
Life throws you curve balls and now you just can't catch a break to find time to catch up on your never ending to-do list.
We've all been there...Your kid gets sick, family events that need your time and attention, clients who need you and suddenly you're behind on checking things off your to-do list and the things you know you need to get done to move the needle forward towards your goals and dreams gets put on the back burner.
You can't help but look at colleagues around you who seem to have it all together despite them having the same 24 hours in the day and busy schedule like you and think to yourself "I am failing"
But what if I told you that the meaning you are assigning to the unfinished list is not only the reason you aren't as productive as you could be, but is also the reason you aren't seeing the results you want.
BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:
- Why you find yourself in constant comparison
- The common self-sabotaging behavioral patterns that comparison and story of "failing" leads to
- The true measurement that you need to look at to break free from the cycle
When you finish listening, I'd love to hear your biggest takeaway from today's episode. Share it with me by sending me a DM on Instagram!
While you're there, make sure you follow me on Instagram so you can see behind the scenes of how I help high achievers like yourself break free from comparison and quiet their inner critic.
Have a question that you want answered on the show? Send us a text!
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Love the show? Leave a 5-star review, and let me know what was most helpful for you.
Discover more ways I can support you in breaking the burnout cycle. Visit my website.
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 freedom that you really want. This is Breaking the Burnout Cycle Podcast. Hey, everyone, welcome into another episode. I hope that you guys are having an amazing start to your June.
Speaker 1:I seriously cannot believe that it is already June 18th, right, and I just can't believe that time is flying so fast. You know, our son Kellen just had his nine month old checkup and I cannot believe that I have a nine month old. And you know, someone was telling me yeah, once you have kids, it's like a visual, physical representation of time. And I was having this conversation with a one of my clients and she was just kind of talking with me about how the struggle is so real between balancing all of these big, ambitious dreams that she has and the amount of work that obviously needs to go into making that dream a reality which that's true, reality, which that's true and also just trying to be a good mom and trying to be fully present for the moments that matter. And how many of you guys out there are also struggling with something like this, where it's you have these big dreams, you have these big ambitions, but, at the same time, the reason why you have these dreams and these ambitions whether it's to get to the next level in your business or it's to get that promotion, or it's to, you know, attain the dream job that you are looking for and whatever it might be for you there, if you were to dig into why you're going for that, chances are you are going after those big dreams and ambitions because, well, part of it is, yeah, you're just very driven and like, you're just very like personal growth and those things are one of your highest values, where you're always in this state of learning and growing, and I love that about you guys.
Speaker 1:And on the flip side, there is also a reason that's driving of what you think that that growth will give you. And oftentimes that comes back to the things that matter most to us. Right, like we are going for the promotion, we are going for the six figures in our business. Whatever it might be, we're going for it for a reason and that reason often comes down to more freedom, more time, more income, more abilities to enjoy and spend time doing the things we love with the people we love. And so the irony is that we often get to this breaking point where it's like I'm not getting to the next level but I'm sacrificing my time and energy away from the things that I'm doing this all for in the first place.
Speaker 1:And you know, that is something that has been a struggle on my heart as well, and as my client and I were talking this through, I was just fully transparent with her, like I am not perfect by any means, and there has been so much that it's so easy to fall in the trap of looking at your peers, looking at social media, looking at other people who are just appearing to kill it in whatever they're doing, and then to look at yourself and look at where you are and where you want to go, and look at that gap and then to just unintentionally question like what is wrong with me? Why is it that I can't have the same level of discipline? And to look at, okay, you know this person, they have kids or they have a family, and yet they're still posting on social media every day, they're still sending the emails out, they're still excuse me, they're still launching all of these things, and yet I can't seem to do that. And we get so hard on ourselves where we then start to berate ourselves internally, where that internal critic, the inner critic, just really starts to get louder and louder, and louder as we talk down to ourselves and as we tell ourselves these stories of like I am not as disciplined as insert, whoever you're comparing yourself to, and therefore you know I'm not as far, I I'm not good enough or I'm not strong enough, I'm not disciplined enough, and we start to say I should be doing that, I should be doing this, and because I can't or because I haven't been, that means that I'm not successful enough or I'm not good enough. And these stories that we tell ourselves then become the internal dialogue that is the norm, and it not only reinforces the subconscious limiting beliefs that we have, but it creates such strong emotional responses to any time.
Speaker 1:The cycle happens where you find yourself in that start, stop or procrastination or avoidance, and we start to almost like shame ourselves. And you know, one of the biggest things that I tell my clients all the time is that we as a society have mistaken shame with guilt. When we think about guilt, then we think about just kind of more of the behavior itself, like it's I did something wrong Versus. When we talk about shame, we are talking about the emotion of. This is something wrong with me, and so often what might start as guilt of, let's say, you know you had it every intention of getting everything on your to-do list done for the day and you didn't get it done and so you felt a little bit of guilt. Well, it can start as guilt, but then what are the stories you're making it mean about you that you didn't get it done? Typically, if you were to look at that, what are you telling yourself after that? And that's where that then shifts from guilt to shame. And when you start to believe the stories that are associated with the emotion of shame, this is where it becomes a very powerful perspective shift, a very powerful shift shift.
Speaker 1:That happens because shame thrives on isolation and so we start to withdraw. It also is one of the biggest things that starts to make us feel unworthy of the success and the things that we want, and so we start to then resort to all these patterns of needing to prove ourselves or needing to work harder, and it just creates that vicious cycle that you know we're talking about on every single episode of trying to break. And so I share all of this. Why is because you know some of you guys and I just want to thank you guys if you have been following the show and you have been with me every Wednesday when, when typically episodes drop, and some of you guys who have been the loyal listeners, like you might have noticed just how there has been a pause periodically throughout the episodes and getting them published and those things. And you know I share this because my goal of this podcast isn't to just tell you the tools that will help you to rewire your mind so that you can get to the next level of success without burnout, but it's also to let you know that you're not alone in this Because, like I said, shame thrives on isolation, and when we are living in this continued, perpetual state of beating ourselves up for all of the things that we haven't gotten done, or all of the things that we haven't accomplished yet, that we haven't gotten done, or all of the things that we haven't accomplished yet because we're comparing ourselves to other people, then it can become a very isolating, a very lonely journey, and I don't want that for you guys, because that is the number one reason why people stay in suffering for so long.
Speaker 1:And so if this can serve as just like a beacon of you know, yeah, there are going to be days, there are going to be seasons of life where everything doesn't look the way you hoped it would and everything doesn't work out the way you hoped it would. And there are going to be days where you feel like you're failing because you are not crossing the things off the list. But here's the thing it's only a failure if you make it mean that you're failing. So in these moments where you know this past few weeks have been just so busy as we're trying to find childcare for our kiddo, it can be very easy to just fall into a trap of starting to hear that inner critic telling you all of the things that you're behind and telling you that you are not doing enough, that this is why you never get the things that you're behind in, telling you that you are not doing enough, that this is why you never get the results that you want, because you never are on top of it right.
Speaker 1:And then it starts comparing where you are in your journey to the journey of others, and maybe you've even heard your mind start to say things like it must be easier for everyone else because they don't have this, or they don't have a family member who doesn't support me, or they don't, and just kind of giving all of the logical reasons why you don't have what you want yet and why this becomes so dangerous, like I said, is it's because this then becomes the reason why you don't deserve, you know, more clients, more money, the promotion, whatever it is you're going after. It then becomes the justification for why you don't have what you want, and what I've seen time and time again is it either does two things. Number one is it causes overdrive, where it's like, well, I need to get my butt into gear, I need to control the outcome, and so we go into things of like working longer hours, pushing harder to try to get a better outcome, or we go into underperforming, underdriving, which is essentially we start feeling sorry for ourselves, and suddenly we find ourselves in these start stop cycles where, okay, let me hide in my cave, not literally, but let me hide and avoid kind of these uncomfortable feelings, these uncomfortable things and, at the end of the day, the reality is you are not behind, but your mind is telling you that you are behind, that you aren't doing enough, and it's comparing yourself to other people out there, when, in reality, the only thing that we need to be worried about is did I do one thing to move the needle forward? And whatever that one thing might be, it's not always a matter of being productive. It's not always a matter of, you know, checking something off the checklist.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, in a season of life, the best that you can do is making sure to take care of yourself. It's about slowing down to speed up. It's about giving yourself grace for where you are in your season of life and understanding that there's no timeline that we have to get this done by. If this is truly your dream, your vision that you are going after, and if you believed, without a shadow of a doubt, that your success is inevitable, that as long as you continue to take one step forward, even if the one step forward might just be a day of you know what, like. I know that I needed to get this out like.
Speaker 1:Let's use a podcast example, right? I gave you the examples of how, last week, a podcast episode didn't go out and and you know I had those stories coming up of like oh man, I needed to get one out. What are people going to think? I didn't get one out and subconsciously there was just this fear of like, because I'm not consistent, then that means I'm going to fail and it's like no, that's not true at all.
Speaker 1:It seriously just means that in this season of life, there are situations that will arise, and it's about giving myself grace and also understanding that this isn't a do all like a black and white Armageddon type of situation where if I don't get a podcast episode out, then that means my business will fail. But our minds will play that card on us. It will tell us all of the reasons why you are failing and why it's a threat and why you need to be doing more. And that is the very thing that causes so many people to put this undue pressure on themselves to perform, to push, when they have nothing left in the tank and, at the end of the day, not only are you unable to create your most impactful and creative pieces of work, but you also are pushing yourself beyond capacity, which it's no different from pushing a car beyond capacity. If you do that right, sure, it might not be immediate damage, but if you keep on doing that, over time, it will cause physical damage to the car, and the same is true for the undue pressure and stress and anxiety that you put yourself under each and every time you're holding yourselves to these deadlines.
Speaker 1:And it's not to say right. I can just hear the naysayers out there saying well, there are deadlines to be met. And while that is true like if you were to look at everything on your to-do list chances are 60% of those things are not do or die, but we make it that way in our minds, and so the point being that if you are currently in a season where you feel like there's never enough time, you never have enough energy, all the odds are stacked against you to you reaching your goals. I'm here to tell you that it's just one step in front of the other. Whatever you have capacity for at this season of life is good enough, and it's just a matter of like seeing it, as you are still committed to the vision that you set out to achieve. It's just that the timeline right, like go over our attachment to the timeline.
Speaker 1:So I hope that you found this helpful. If you are going through this. If you ever want to chat about it, just shoot me a DM on Instagram. I'm at Dr Rianna Mulcahy, so it's D-R period R-E-A-N-A, m-u-l-c-a-h-y. Dr Rianna Mulcahy on Instagram. Shoot me a DM, Let me know how things are going and what kind of the undue pressure you're feeling is. And other than that, I hope you guys know just how amazing you guys are and I will see you guys next week on another episode.