Ep 136 Life After Burnout: Rebuilding a Life You Can't Yet Imagine

What happens when your old routines stop fitting? When the life you’ve built no longer belongs to the person you’re becoming?

This week Carly is talking about something she’s been sitting with personally and hearing from clients — what consistency really means when life has fundamentally shifted. After burnout. Through menopause. When the woman you were and the woman you’re becoming don’t quite match yet.

This isn’t an episode about pushing through. It’s about rebuilding differently. Staying in conversation with who you are now, not who you used to be. And trusting that the life on the other side of the not-knowing can be more you than anything you’ve lived so far.

AND something five-year-old Carly knew that took decades to remember.

In this episode:

→ Why consistency as a contract breaks down when life changes

→ The difference between genuine rest and resistance disguised as self-care

→ Routines that breathe — flexibility without losing your anchor points

→ What rebuilding looks like after burnout, menopause or any major life shift

→ Why the life you can’t imagine yet might be the most you of all

Thanks for listening to Rooted In Presence

If you’d like to get in touch with a question about today’s episode or find out how I can support you with coaching, here’s how to reach me:
📧 Email: carlykillenpt@gmail.com
📱 Instagram: @thestrongbonescoach

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Thank you for being here, and I look forward to supporting you on your journey to strength, health, and confidence! 💪🦴✨

Transcript

0:00

Hello, and welcome back to Rooted in Presence. I'm Carly, your host and your guide for what is now episode number 136. And this week, I would like to talk to you about a topic I have covered probably a few times, but as I say, our learning, our growth is a spiral, so of course I do come back around to similar topics with new perspectives. So I'm gonna talk about consistency in a way that is different to the way it usually gets talked about. It's not about the show up every day, build the habit, become that person version of the way it's often talked about in the coaching world. I would like to talk about what happens when all of that breaks down, when life changes so fundamentally that the routines you've built, the identity you have constructed around those routines, even the person you thought you were becoming, well, what happens when none of that fits anymore? Because actually I think this is where the most important work happens, not in the building, but perhaps in the rebuilding, and rebuilding is a completely different thing. And of course, I see that coming up with my clients a lot. So perhaps it's time I share it, because honestly, it also comes up for me too. Whenever I think I've done this revolution, there's always another one around the corner at some point. So this is one of those episodes where I'm not just speaking from a place of figuring it all out. I'm never actually speaking from that place. I am really speaking from my own personal embodied experience here, and perhaps I'm still quite firmly in the middle of it too. So let's get started. So there is something I wish someone had said to me maybe about three years ago when there were some really big shifts going on for me, when I was on the edge of burnout, and the realization was hitting that I was really about to go through something very deep. And it became apparent that there was a version of my life that I'd been building, really started to look like it wasn't gonna belong to me anymore. It wasn't quite the direction I wanted to be moving in. And I really wish that someone had told me that, "Yeah, life as you know it is over." But that's okay, because there's a life on the other side of this that you can't even imagine yet, and it's going to be even more amazing than anything you've lived so far. And that's probably a terrifying thing to hear. I know it, because I sensed that at the time. 'Cause it's that not knowing. It's one of those hardest parts of any kind of threshold space, because you can't see the other side of it. You can't imagine what it looks like, and when you can't imagine it, it's very easy to assume or believe that maybe it doesn't even exist. But I'm still here, right here on the other side of a lot of change. In a life I genuinely couldn't have pictured three years ago. A life that feels so much more like mine, and I find myself thinking, "If I could access this when I couldn't even imagine it was possible for someone like me, what might be possible for the people I work with who are standing on their own threshold right now?" So, that is the question I'm bringing into this episode. Let me share with you then something that came up for me recently when I was sitting with this theme, 'cause I think it's quite a reframe on the whole conversation around consistency and how it's tied in with identity. So, when I was five years old, yes, so we're going back a good while now, I decided that I absolutely knew what my life purpose was. I wanted to be the first female Catholic priest. So, I grew up in quite a Catholic area. It's very much part of my family heritage at the time, even if it's not something that I connect with now. So, let me offer you some context. So, that's what I wanted then. That was the framework I knew within my life, and I guess at the time, it's all I knew. I was five. You only know what you've grown up with, right? I hadn't explored the world yet. And so when I reflect on this, I can see it wasn't a deep theological calling, but what it was really present for me was I had noticed some imbalance, some lack of equity between what's available to women versus what's available to men. And even as a five-year-old, uh, it felt deeply unfair that women couldn't be priests, and I had something to say about that I felt like I had something to offer, and the idea that there was a structure that said I couldn't do something, well, that just didn't sit right with five-year-old me at all. Now, as I said, I'm not someone that connects with a specific religion now. Um, really, that is not the point of the story. The point that I would like you to take from this, of course, take whatever point you want, but my learning was that this five-year-old me knew something. She knew she had something to say that needed to be heard. She knew she wanted to hold space for people. She wanted to challenge the structures that told people who they could be and who they couldn't be. And somewhere along the way, through the years of being told to be sensible, to be realistic, To fit into the shape that the world had decided was appropriate, that knowing got quieter. It didn't disappear, but it did get pretty quiet, and for a good while, I really felt like I'd lost contact with that. But what I discovered through the burnouts, through the rebuilding, through all the change over the last few years, is that a lot of what I thought was growth was actually recovery. Recovery of parts of myself that were always there. The authority, the desire to hold space, the refusal to accept structures that aren't fair. All of that was in me as a five-year-old. It's just that now, with a few more years under my belt, I'm finding better and better ways to live it now. So when we talk about consistency, I'm much less interested in the question of who are you becoming? As a coach, I'm much more interested in the question of who were you before the world told you who you couldn't be? Because that's often where the most important information lives. So there's the reframe I want to offer. Consistency isn't about who you're going to become. It's so much more about staying in conversation with who you are right now, in this season, with this body, in this life. The version of consistency I used to live by was much more like a contract. These are the things I do. This is what makes me, me. This is the standard I hold myself to, and for a while, that works. It builds momentum. It creates identity and it absolutely feels like progress, and for a time it is. But there is a bit of a problem with creating consistency in the form of a contract, because when your life changes, and it will change, menopause alone will see to that if you're a woman listening to this, never mind everything else life throws at us. But a contract can become a cage. You're holding yourself to an agreement made by a version of you that has long passed. They no longer exist. And you're now in a life that no longer looks anything like it did at the time you made those agreements with yourself. And I see this in my clients all the time. The woman who built a strong fitness routine in her 30s is now in perimenopause wondering why her body isn't responding the same way. The person whose sleep has changed, whose energy has changed, whose capacity is very different, and who is now measuring themself against a baseline that just isn't applicable anymore. And this can absolutely find you wanting if this is the standard you continue to hold yourself to. And I've lived this too. Before my burnout, I had a very good strength training routine. I was genuinely proud of it, and it served me at that time. But then when the burnout came along, it took my energy and my strength with it. The strength I built, the capacity, that identity I'd built around being someone who was able to train consistently and could be super strong. I even went from lifting some of my heaviest weights, over 100 kilos on a back squat, to barely being able to lift a barbell of 20 kilos merely a couple of weeks later. But I had to learn slowly, imperfectly, and alongside a lot of resistance, that rebuilding isn't just about returning. It can mean something new. It's something that fits the person I am now, not the person who I was. So if consistency isn't a contract, if it's a conversation, then the question becomes, how do you know when you're genuinely responding to what you need versus when you're just feeling the resistance to something that's actually good for you? And that's a bit of a change, because that's a really important distinction to make, and it's not always easy to feel the difference. There's a version of self-compassion that can tip into self-avoidance, and that I'm listening to my body, that is actually I'm avoiding the thing that feels hard. And I say that with zero judgment because I've absolutely been there, and I very much still have to navigate this, I was gonna say from time to time, but it's actually all of the time. So for me, the difference tends to show up in the body rather than just in our mind. So when I'm genuinely responding to a real need, genuine fatigue, genuine depletion, a body that is asking for rest, there is a quality of settling into it. I can feel that quiet need. It doesn't feel like I'm running from something. It really feels like something I want to lean into. So that resistance, it feels a lot different. I feel a little bit more agitated, more story driven. I hear the excuses or perhaps I do hear the reasons and justifications, and again, I have to check in genuine reasons versus the justifications that are just trying to make myself more comfortable with avoiding something that's a bit new. I also notice my mind can be very busy, and usually what I'm resisting is something smaller than what I've made it. So I make it bigger in my mind, because the other thing I've learned is that self-care doesn't always need to be a whole production, a whole day, hours of work. It can just be a few minutes. Sometimes it's a small walk. Perhaps it's a scaled-back version of the original thing you planned. Just a smaller version, you know, not the full version and not nothing. Of course, perfectionism loves to present itself as standards, but a lot of the time it can just be a very effective way of not getting started at all. So let's talk about how we can create routines that breathe. Perhaps consistency that moves in a more seasonal way. So one of the things that's really changed most in how I work and in how I live is how I no longer expect consistency to look the same across all seasons. So I live alone now, which gives me enormous flexibility in how I structure my days. So yes, I'm an empty nester, but then it also gives me flexibility without the same kind of rhythm. And quite quickly I found myself feeling a little more adrift. I've had to learn, and I'm still learning, what my anchor points are, and those are the things that when I do them, they keep me feeling more like myself. So not the full ideal version of my old routine, but just making sure I focus on the things that matter most. So for me right now That includes some form of movement. Um, sometimes it's more gentle, even when it's less than what I used to do. It's definitely getting outside for me. And as you'll have heard in previous episodes, I do still challenge myself. I've started an aerial class, so something a bit novel that asks me to use my strength in a different way. It c- also looks like eating something that really nourishes me, and it's also the breath. The breath is always there in some kind of way, of course. But it's a way that helps me keep remembering where I am, who I am, and noticing that drift and coming back to some sense of rhythm. So those little anchor points that I use, they don't look the same each day. It's something that I can flex around how my energy is, how my menstrual cycle is, how we are with the seasons, even the weather at times, depending on what I really need, because I spent time learning all about that. And that's a way of really being able to meet what life is asking of me. And of course, they're always there as an invitation, not a contract, a genuine invitation. And what I try to offer the people I work with is exactly that. Not a structured, strict program that overrides their body's signals, but a flexible framework that moves with them. Something that can be adapted as life changes, as, something that can be adapted as the changes of life emerge to really meet the person where they're at and how they are in that time. Because life really does change. It will change. And that is a great way to hold them through the transitions rather than demanding they perform consistency that they don't have capacity for. So if you're listening to this and you're in the middle of your own transition, a burnout, menopause, or a life that's changing faster than you're able to keep up with, or perhaps the routines are starting to crumble and you're not quite sure how you can rebuild them, I am speaking directly to you now. Just please notice that the fact that your old routines no longer fit you, it's not a failure. It is information. It's your life telling you that the version of consistency you've been holding onto was built for a person and a season that has now passed. And that's not a problem to fix. You are not broken. It's an invitation to get curious. What do you really need right now? Not what did you used to need, not what should you need according to the plan you made six months ago. What does this version of you in this season, in this body and this life, what do you actually need? Now, you might not know the answer right now. I don't expect that, and that's okay. But the not knowing is part of the threshold, and you're standing at the edge of something you can't quite see yet. And I know that's scary, but I also know from the other side of that threshold that what's waiting on the other side for you, the other side of that not knowing, that can be much more you than anything you've lived so far. You just have to be willing to stay in the conversation with yourself, with who you are now, not who you were, not who you're trying to become, who you are today in this moment. So that is what I've been sitting with this week. Consistency, not as a contract, but as a conversation. Routines that breathe rather than cage you into something that doesn't work for you. And of course, that quiet, radical act of remembering who you were before the world decided who you couldn't be. Five-year-old me had a lot figured out, and I'm still catching up and connecting with her. So if any of this resonates with you, if you're navigating your own threshold moment and you'd like some support in finding your footing again, I would love to have a conversation with you. You can find me at carlykillen.com and book a free call for a chat, or perhaps visit me in person at Still Space Hull. I'd love it if you'd come and say hello. So if this episode landed for you, please share it with someone who might need to hear it today. It genuinely helps me find more people who need to hear what I share. So until next time, may you meet yourself with compassion, walk with presence, and remember you already have everything you need.