Balance & Beyond
Balance and Beyond is the podcast for ambitious women refusing to accept burnout as the price of success. Here, we’re committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive and where you have the power to define success on your own terms.
Balance & Beyond
Moment: Breaking Free from Self-Sabotage
We often know exactly what we need to do to improve our lives, yet fail to follow through despite our awareness. This common pattern stems from becoming chemically addicted to emotional states like guilt and shame, creating barriers that prevent us from making positive changes.
• Recognising when we give others advice we need ourselves
• Understanding how our brain prioritises survival over happiness
• Breaking the cycle of guilt and shame that weighs us down
• Learning why comfort zones are actually emotional addictions
• Reframing fear as a positive sign of growth and expansion
• Developing strategies to push through discomfort toward joy
• Creating new meanings for the fear response when making changes
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Welcome to Balance and Beyond Moments. Your weekly dose of insight, wisdom and mindset shifts all in 10 minutes or less, whether it's a powerful truth, a fresh perspective or a spark of inspiration. This is your space to pause, reflect and reset. Let's dive in. Every day, I hear from women who say to me Jo, I can see what I'm doing, I can see that I need to exercise, I can see that I should go to bed, and yet I am not doing it. What actually needs to shift so that you can get the life you want? Now tell me if this sounds a little bit like you.
Speaker 1:You know that you need to go to bed early or you need some sleep, and yet it gets to 10.30 at night and the house is really quiet. And you think, oh, I've got a really busy day tomorrow. Let me just get one more email done, let me just finish that report. And then, before you know it, it's midnight and then you're really tired. You think, oh, I really need some wind down time. So you grab your phone or you turn on Netflix and suddenly it's one in the morning and, poof, another hour has gone by. Does that sound familiar at all? Or how about the? I need to move my body. I'm going to go for a walk, oh, but this meeting's come up, oh. But if I go for a walk now, then I'm not going to have time to do this and I'm going to let somebody down. Well, I know I'll go after work, but then a kid needs you and you really need to help with homework, and life just keeps getting in the way. And yet, when you think about a colleague who comes to you, who's on the verge of burnout, you say be kind to yourself, just move your body, get to bed earlier, don't worry about that email, it can wait till tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Does this sound familiar at all? Are you finding that you're dishing out all the advice that you know you need to take for yourself, and yet you're the one up at midnight binging Netflix or stuck on your phone or procrastinating, and are not doing the things that you know are going to make a difference to how you feel, whether it's exercise, whether it's meditation, whether it's eating? Well, stop the procrastinating. Actually be present with the family, doing something for yourself. Stop beating yourself up.
Speaker 1:What tends to make this even worse is when you can see what you're doing. You beat yourself up even more because you know you're doing it, and so you get stuck in this loop of frustration and guilt and shame and I should be doing this and I'm not and you should yourself all the time. When you should yourself, you are really inflicting guilt and shame onto your own body, and guilt and shame are two of the heaviest and most burdensome emotions to carry and they're one of the big reasons why women who come to me are so exhausted is because they are beating themselves up and just constantly adding more and more shame and guilt to their backpack. So what's really going on here and how do we stop life feeling like this train crash that is often in slow motion? Well, what is happening when you are procrastinating at midnight or when you're saying just one more, or when you're not moving your body is you have actually become chemically addicted to certain emotional states. I know that sounds silly. Why on earth would you be addicted to these things? But because you have been in fight or flight for so long, emotions like guilt and shame and fear become your emotional home and every time you get in those emotions they elicit certain neurological chemicals and your body now believes that this state of guilt and shame and fear and frustration and disappointment that you live in.
Speaker 1:This is safe. This is how I'm going to stay alive, Because what's in between your ears, 99% of your noggin? Your brain was actually built for the savannah and so this thing is primarily the only thing really your brain is concerned with. Its primary goal is to keep you alive, doesn't really care how you feel about that. It doesn't care how you feel if it's guilt, if it's shame, if you're exhausted. It wants to keep you alive, and the way it does that is by doing today what you did yesterday. So if you, living in a cesspool of shame and guilt and fear and frustration, meant that you survived yesterday, your brain goes right, that's going to work for me again. Let's do it again.
Speaker 1:And this is why, when you try to change, when you try to do something, let's say you know you do end up going for a walk. It's like awesome, that's what I need. You then feel guilty for going for a walk because you've conditioned these emotional states and your brain goes hang a second, it's eight o'clock. We're meant to feel guilty right about now and you're going for a walk. All right, I know, let's make you feel guilty about going for a walk. Does this sound familiar at all, where it often feels like, well, I'm trying to do something to get outside of myself, and yet these emotions, like a bad smell, just keep following me. And this is because you've become neurologically and chemically addicted to them. Because you've become neurologically and chemically addicted to them, now what happens is any time that you try to leave what is called a comfort zone and that's why we have this thing called a comfort zone because your brain says right, this is the range of emotions of guilt and shame. This is where I am safe.
Speaker 1:What happens is, any time you try to leave your comfort zone like I'm going to go for a walk and not feel guilty, I'm going to go to bed and not worry about what's going to happen tomorrow your brain goes whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This isn't how we operate. We are always guilty. So as you start to change, it throws up fear. Now, your brain doesn't care that that emotion you're sitting in isn't good for you. It doesn't care that it doesn't make you feel very nice, it makes you miserable and grumpy and all the other things. It just says, well, no, you are changing. And it puts up fear, it puts up discomfort. This is why it's called a comfort zone, because leaving it is uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:But what's really interesting is, in order to get to the emotions that you want what everybody tells me they want joy, peace, calm, contentment, fulfillment you're actually going to have to break the habit of feeling guilty, and to do that you're going to have to work through this discomfort. So what happens? You say right, I'm going to go for a walk, I'm not going to feel guilty. Your brain puts up, like these gates up, they come Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, no, no, here comes the fear. What you have to do is you have to be strong enough in that moment to go.
Speaker 1:Fear. I see you, but what I want is on the other side of you, because when you turn around and go oh, you know what, here comes the fear. You're right, I shouldn't go for a walk. Your brain goes yes, she's staying in the comfort zone, and the fear subsides. Because, as a human, you're a meaning making machine. What you do is you go. That's right, that was the right decision. I shouldn't have gone for a walk. Well, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Out comes the barrier. I need to make a decision about this. Oh, no, no, no, no. It's very scary. What if it doesn't work for you? You shouldn't make that. What are they going to think of you? That's right. I'm going to stay where I am. I'm not going a story that actually now, that was the right decision.
Speaker 1:When all that happened was, you stayed in your comfort zone. And what's really interesting is, as you start to learn that you know what, as this fear is rising, this now you can make a meaning that this fear rising is an empowering thing and it's actually a good sign. I know it sounds crazy, right, but go with me here. I have conditioned in my body that when fear comes up about a decision I'm about to make, it's because I'm about to leave my comfort zone, and I know that what I want is on the other side of my comfort zone. What I want is more joy, is more abundance, is more challenge, is more learning, is more growth, and to do that, I'm going to have to work through that fear that inevitably comes up. But I've now conditioned my body that when that fear comes up, I'm like, yes, this is awesome. I'm now pushing myself, I'm now going outside my comfort zone, which means I am expanding.
Speaker 1:Can you see how, by putting in a different meaning of that fear of really this is when we hack our biology, because this is what our brain does to keep us safe. It's okay, there's nothing wrong with it. We don't shame our brain, it's simply running the program. Thanks for taking this moment for yourself. If this resonated, share it with a friend who needs to hear it today, and don't forget to subscribe to Balance and Beyond for full episodes and more of these bite-sized breakthroughs. See you next time.
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