122. Pushing Through Isn't Working Anymore - Here's What Will

What happens when your body starts keeping score?

Every fire you put out, every hard decision you make, every time you show up when you're already depleted—it all accumulates. Your nervous system is tracking everything, even when you're not. And at some point, it starts sending signals you can't ignore.

In this episode, Jenn shares the story of the Tuesday morning she woke up and couldn't push through. Instead of powering through her packed calendar, she canceled everything and sat in stillness for hours. What she learned changed how she thinks about rest, capacity, and what it really means to take care of yourself as a business owner.

This isn't about bubble baths and self-care platitudes. It's about recognizing that your exhaustion is data—and learning to respond to it before it turns into a crisis.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why "pushing through" is costing you more than you realize
• The invisible weight of being the person where everything converges
• How to recognize the early warning signs of nervous system overload
• Why admitting you're struggling is the first step to recovery
• The difference between rest that restores and rest that just passes time
• Physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral signals to watch for
• What it actually looks like to honor your nervous system in daily life
• Why rest isn't the opposite of productivity—it's the foundation of it

This episode is for you if:

• You're tired in a way that sleep doesn't fix
• You've been pushing through exhaustion and calling it discipline
• You feel guilty when you rest (or you don't rest at all)
• Your body has been sending you signals you've been ignoring
• You're successful on the outside but running on empty on the inside
• You need permission to slow down without feeling like you're failing

Key quote from this episode:

"Your nervous system is keeping score even when you pretend it isn't. The exhaustion you feel isn't a personal failing—it's data. And ignoring it doesn't make you stronger. It makes everything harder."

Thanks for listening! 

Connect With Me:

📩 Join my email list: https://www.solutionsforscale.com/subscribe
📱 DM me on Instagram: @solutonsbyjenncody

If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend who needs to hear this message!

🎧 Subscribe to and Review The Create Your Day Podcast on:
📌 Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Buzzsprout

Transcript

Welcome And The Nervous System Frame

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Create Your Day podcast. I'm your host, Jen Cody. Thank you so much for being here. Hope you are having a good week so far. I want to talk to you today a little bit about your nervous system. Um, I don't know if you are already aware of this, but your nervous system is constantly keeping score for you, right? The exhaustion that you're feeling, all of it is really data that your nervous system um is paying attention to. And ignoring this data does not make you any stronger. It makes you like it makes it harder to get through the day. So I want to talk to you a little bit about over the past couple of weeks, things were really crazy um in my life, and there were I had some personal situations going on, and I woke up on a random Tuesday with a really full calendar. I had calls booked back to back for the entire day. I also had a deadline that I was trying to meet for some content that I needed to get to my marketing team. I had a client uh package that I was putting together. A lot of things needed my eyes on them. Nothing unusual though, right? Just a normal busy day in a business that I designed and built and I love. And I woke up that day and I really just felt like I couldn't do it. It wasn't that I didn't want to do it, okay? That's a really important distinction. It's that I felt like I couldn't do it. My body just felt like it was filled, it was dead weight, like filled with water, filled with sand, something. My chest was really tight. My brain was like, um, you ever read the same thing over and over and over again, and then you realize you still don't know what you just read. So I sat on the edge of my bed and I thought, okay, I need to push through this. I've been here before, right? I'm gonna take a little extra coffee today, power through, I can crash later. Like my eyes were on seven o'clock that night, thinking I just need to get through it. But then this little voice came through, a little quieter, but much clearer. Or I could not do all of that. So I didn't. I actually canceled my morning. I sent apologetic messages, but I was also honest. I rescheduled what I needed to reschedule. I pushed the deadline that needed to be pushed, and then I did something that I almost never do, and I just sat still. I didn't go on my phone, I didn't listen to a podcast, I didn't have what I like to call like active rest, which other people have called productive rest. Like my resting is usually just, I don't know, organizing some papers, catching up on admin work, but I didn't do that. I just did nothing. And I felt guilty about it. I felt like I was being weak. I felt like I was being dramatic. It didn't feel natural to me. It felt self-indul self-indulgent. And I had a lot of thoughts, right? So I was thinking, there are people out there that have to manage way more than what I'm dealing with right now. I chose this life, I don't need to be tired, I need to push through. But underneath all of it, my body was still saying something very simple to me. Please just give me a minute. And something did change for me by doing this and actually listening to my body, and that's what I want to talk to you about today. Because it's not just the tasks out there that are exhausting you, it's carrying. What are you carrying? Are you the person who holds all the context for everyone around you? Are you the one who is remembering your clients' preferences, the quirks of the next person that you're supposed to speak to, um, the team members that are coming to you with their struggles that are going on at home? You have payments that are coming due, you have to adjust strategies for um people that you're working with, opportunities are presenting themselves that you're not sure about, the decision, you know, that you make every day, decisions that are happening all the time. You have 17 tabs open in your brain, even when you're technically off. And the mental load of that, of being the one place where everything converges, even if you've delegated beautifully, right? You can have systems, you can have an amazing team, but if you are still the center of gravity, that weight accumulates in your body, whether you acknowledge it or not. And like I said, your nervous system is keeping score. So every single fire you put out, every hard conversation you have, every uncertainty you hold, every time you smile when you're really exhausted, it's all registering. Your body is keeping track of all of it, and at some point it's going to start sending you signals if it hasn't already. So maybe it is that tight feeling in your chest. Maybe it is, you know, your body feeling like I said, mine just felt so heavy, like it was filled with sand, literally, just could not move. Maybe you're somebody who the headaches are the what, you know, the um signal that your body sends you. Or maybe you notice that you start snapping at your kids or at your partner over nothing. Sunday nights, do you get that Sunday scaries that where you're not able to sleep at night? Are you lying awake at 3 a.m. with your brain running through every single thing that could potentially go wrong? These are not failure, right? These are not signs that you've you're failing personally, and they're not signs that you're not cut out for what you're doing. They're just your nervous system saying, hey, remember me, this is a lot going on. I need you to pay attention. But what do we do? We most of the time ignore it. So why don't we listen? And it's because we've been taught that pushing through is a virtue. We've been taught that rest is earned, that we don't require it, exhaustion is just the price of the success that we're going after. If we just work harder, if we just optimize better, hustle longer, eventually we're going to get to the other side. And that other side is mythical, right? Because everything is easier on the other side, but we never actually get there. We've been taught this all of our lives that our bodies are machines. They should perform on command, on demand, right? And if they don't, that's a discipline problem, not a nervous system problem. We immediately think we have a discipline problem. And sometimes it's even deeper than that. We're afraid that if we do slow down, what is going to fall apart? Are we the only thing holding everything together? Because if so, then needing rest means that we're not strong enough for the life that we literally created for ourselves. So what do we do? We ignore everything, we caffeinate the exhaustion, we push through the tension, we keep telling ourselves, I'm gonna rest later after this next launch, after this next quarter, once things calm down, but things don't calm down ever. There's always something else. The signals just get louder. Eventually, your body stops asking nicely. And that's what we call the breaking point, right? So I need you to understand there's a spectrum between I'm fine and I'm completely burned out. And a lot of us do think of burnout as this dramatic cliff that we fall off one day. One day you're functioning and the next day you can't get out of bed. But it really isn't like that, right? It's totally gradual. It ha it's happening incrementally, slowly accumulating all the overdraft from your energy account, right? We've spoken about our um accounts, right, that we're depositing value into every single day, and we're depositing um energy into our accounts every single day. We can't keep running on overdraft because one day you're gonna try to make a withdrawal from that account and there's nothing left in there. So the tricky thing here is that you can function for a really long time in the danger zone. You can keep being productive, keep showing up, keep performing, but you're actually depleting yourself to the point of crisis. And I know this personally because I've done it. I have had seasons where I was technically, you know, just killing it, hitting all my goals, impressing clients, growing revenue, but privately feeling like, oh my God, I'm going to die. I'm so exhausted, but I'm wired at the same time. I'm successful, quote unquote, but miserable, and all of my plates are spinning and my hands are about to drop them all, right? My hands are shaking. So I did learn that the earlier that you can catch this, the easier it's going to be to recover. I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that. So let's go back to that Tuesday morning when I woke up and I canceled everything. That really was me catching this early. That was me seeing the warning signs and actually responding to them instead of overriding them. A few hours of stillness, fine. It did cost me a morning of productivity because otherwise I would have been productive, right? But if I had kept pushing, I may have cost myself weeks or my health in some way, or my relationships, my love for the business and the life that I've built. I don't want to risk all of that so that I can say I had a productive morning. So the earlier you honor the signal, the smaller the price is going to be. So remember, your nervous system is collecting data this whole time. So let's reframe the exhaustion that you feel. It's not weakness, it's just data, the anxiety that you're feeling, or if you're overwhelmed. Um, I've had a lot of my clients will sometimes say, I hear the word dread a lot. I have this sense of dread being stretched too thin. These are not character flaws, they are just information. And if we can reframe it and have you look at it that way, they're your nervous system telling you something true about your current reality, your current situation. So the question that we go to automatically is how do I push through this? I want you to now instead ask yourself the question, what is this telling me? Is it and you might not want to hear the answer, but it's important for us to ask these questions because maybe it is telling you that you've taken on too much. Maybe it's telling you that there's just something that's not working that you need to look at. Um, do you need more support, more rest, more space? Maybe it's telling you that you've already been running on empty for so long that you don't even know what it feels like to be full of energy anymore. But whatever it is telling you, I need you to listen to it. Because if you ignore your nervous system, you can't override it. You know, you can ignore it, but you cannot override it. The bill is always going to be due, it's always gonna come collect. And the only question is whether you pay it in small installments along the way or in one giant catastrophe collapse at the end. So when you admit that you're struggling, there's something really powerful in there to just you don't have to power through. Let's just stop and admit, oh, this moment, this time right now feels like a struggle. So I want you to admit it, not to everyone. You don't have to like go out and shout it from the rooftops. This is not a performance, but if you could admit to yourself and maybe to a few trusted people around you that you're struggling a little bit, when you stop pretending that you're fine, you stop performing that you're well while privately falling apart. When you say the hard things out loud, this is hard. I'm tired, I need help. That might be something that really will create a powerful shift for you. So for me, sometimes it means that I have to tell my partner, I can't do anything tonight. You know, I need you to help me handle whatever it is that's coming on. Um, I'm gonna go sit, have some quiet time. Or does it look like telling a client, I need to push our call today, something came up. You do not have to explain what what is, because I need to take care of myself is valid. And that's another thing we need to talk about because we don't think that putting ourselves as a priority is a valid reason for doing almost anything, and it really is. So if you need to tell your client, I'd like to reschedule this call, I'd like to push this meeting, something came up. You do not owe everyone a window into your private life. So that's one thing that may happen. Maybe you need to tell yourself, through a little self-talk here, you are not failing, you're human. And humans, guess what? They have limits. Doesn't that suck? Because we really want to be limitless all the time. Admitting any of these things is not defeat. It's actually the beginning of the recovery phase, the positive phase that's going to come because you can't heal what you don't acknowledge. You can't address what you refuse to see. You have to take care of yourselves by committing to prioritizing yourself. You can't take care of yourself if you're committed to pretending that you don't need anything. You know, that's never going to happen. So I know you have real responsibilities out there. You can't just wake up every day and when you're tired, say, oh, I'm going to cancel my morning. I know that. You're right. You can't do that. I can't do that either. I want you to just consider for a moment that rest is not the opposite of productivity. It's actually the foundation of productivity. So if I go back to that morning that I had to cancel, when I did go back to work in that afternoon, I was clearer, faster, more creative, more present than I had been that whole prior week. Because decisions that had felt really impossible, suddenly I had clarity around them. They seemed obvious to me. I had a client situation that I had been really dreading because honestly, when I think back, I was dreading it because I didn't have clarity. That really is what it comes down to. And now that I had this clarity, it became a conversation with my client that I really was looking forward to because I knew I could deliver on it. So that little bit of rest, just a few hours, gave me a more productive output than a full day would have that I would have gotten of a full day of pushing through that exhaustion. Because we do think that rest costs us productivity, but exhaustion actually does cost us a lot more. So we just don't track that part. We don't notice the decisions that we're making poorly because we're just checking the box that we made a decision. We don't see that we're really making bad decisions because we're tired and exhausted. The emails that we've sent out, right? How many of you have sent out an email and then realized, oh, I forgot to add this or I forgot to put I just did this last week. I sent an email out that was like, click here to listen to the podcast. And there was no click, there was nothing to click. There's no, you know, so those emails create more work. If we just take a moment to slow down, there's strategic thinking that we can't do because we don't have the cognitive space. We have to give ourselves that space. So when you think about all of the things that are suffering, relationships that are strained when you're running on fumes, rest all of a sudden doesn't feel like a luxury anymore. It's actually a strategy for your life, for your business. So let's listen to our bodies and hear what they may be telling us. So what I want you to do right now is a quick check-in with yourself. Take a breath. Put your hand on your chest if that feels okay to you. You could put both hands over your heart. Ask yourself, how is my body actually doing right now? And I want you to think about this in the context of not what you would tell someone if they asked you, hey, how are you? Because your reflex there is great. How are you? I want you to think for a moment, like slow down, take some deep breaths. How are you actually doing underneath the performance of being fine? So just think about that for a minute. Is there tension that you've been ignoring? Is there a tiredness that you have been pushing through, or a heaviness like that body filled with sand that's become so familiar you actually forgot that that's not how you're supposed to feel. What has your body been trying to tell you that you haven't been listening to? And you're not gonna fix it right now. I just want you to notice it. I want you to acknowledge it and to admit to yourself what is actually true. Because remember, that is the first step. We can't fix what we don't acknowledge. So I'm gonna give you some specific things to look out for. These are the signals that your nervous system is telling you something important. And there's physical signals, emotional, um, behavioral, cognitive. So let's just go through some of them. We'll start with the emotional ones because those actually, I think they kind of show up first, for me at least. And this is things like being irritable, feeling tearful or emotional over small things. Hello, I think we can all relate to that. Um, numbness, apathy, right? Something that you really used to care about. Has it become something you just don't care about anymore? You want to look out for things like that. Is there work that you used to enjoy that now you're dreading? You don't look forward to it, feeling disconnected from people that you love. These are all emotional signals to be looking out for. Then there's the physical, right? There's the exhaustion, persistent exhaustion that sleep never seems to fix. Things like headaches, clenching your jaw, like stop right now. Notice if you're clenching your jaw, drop your shoulders, tension in our shoulders. We keep our shoulders up to our ears without even realizing it. Have you noticed like that you get um stomach irritation, like you're you get upset stomach more often than usual? You know, changes in your appetite, changes in your sleep patterns, all things to look out for. Then there's the cognitive signals, which we tend to chalk up to just being exhausted. And that's I have trouble concentrating. Decision fatigue is a real thing, right? Like we just put off making decisions because there's too many things to focus on. Are you forgetting things? Word finding, are you having trouble finding your words? Are you having difficulty thinking strategically? Is there a lot of brain fog and feeling scattered? Oh, none of this is comfortable. But we, when we feel these things, we do tend to try to explain them away. That's because I had a really, you know, long day yesterday, or that's because I didn't sleep great last night. But there's a pattern here, right? Like there, think of all the things that I've been saying. All of them are feeding each other. And then they all kind of feed into our behavioral signals, which include, are you reaching for more coffee every day? Like, did you used to have two cups a day and now you find that you're grabbing more at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, 3 o'clock? Are you, you know, self-medicating with alcohol, sugar, whatever it is that makes you feel, you know, are you like just power eating at 10 o'clock at night? Um, withdrawing from your relationships, wanting to cancel your plans, working all the time, but getting less and less done. Um, Instagram, right? Scrolling endlessly, all of these things, every single thing that I just mentioned, if you look at them in isolation, yes, could just be a bad day. You need a break. But if you're experiencing a few of these consistently, it really is your nervous system asking for help. And we need to honor that. We want our bodies to be able to trust us that we're going to be able to hear them when they're talking to us. So, what does it look like to honor your nervous system and take this seriously? Because sometimes we don't pay attention to it, we push it aside because we think we have to completely redo everything overnight. And that's just not the case. These things can all be addressed through consistent, small moments. So maybe we need to build um more transition time into your calendar. Look at your calendar. Is there, are you meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting, or are you buffering in some time? Can you put like 15 minutes between calls, things like that? It sounds like something so simple. It makes a huge impact on your ability to just process in the day. So this way you're not running from one intense conversation directly into another. You haven't been able to even process the first one. So is there a morning or afternoon that you could set aside each week? Just one that you can protect, not for productivity, but for whatever you need in that moment, maybe to do this, check in with your body, um, notice, are you holding your breath? Can you do some breathing exercises? You know, give yourself the space to do that. Are you giving yourself the space to say no to things, even if there's something that seems good, but you're already at capacity, so you have to be able to say no once in a while. Um, when someone asks how you're doing, can you tell them the truth? And that's a big one, right? Just being able to say out loud, um, you know what, kind of struggling today, but I'm working on it, and tomorrow's gonna be a better day. That's it. Just stop pretending. Um, and it lets your body and your nervous system know that you're hearing it and paying attention. And your phone, oh my goodness, can we leave our phones in another room once in a while? Take a walk without listening to a podcast, sit in your car. For five minutes, just quiet, take a bath, take a shower, go to bed early. All of these things will be helpful, and they're not dramatic. It's not completely overhauling your life, it's simply paying attention and then responding to what you notice with just a little bit of care, right? Just saying, Oh, I hear you. Let me give you a little something. And you deserve to do all of this. You are important enough to take care of yourself, even though you're taking care of so many other things and other people. And I do want to leave you today with a little bit of permission because you do have permission to be tired. You have permission to admit that this is not easy. It's hard, this life. You have permission to not be okay. You don't have to pretend to be okay all the time, and you immediately have permission to rest, to support yourself, to give yourself space, to have some stillness in your life. You have permission to take care of yourself, even when there's more you could be doing in that moment. It is not self-indulgent, it's not weakness, you are not letting anyone down. You are simply being a human, a human who has built something real, who carries real weight, and who deserves real care. Your nervous system is not your enemy. It truly is your ally. It's trying to help you. It's giving you information that could save your health, your relationships, your business, your joy, but it only helps you if you stop to listen to it. So this week, as you go through the rest of your week, can you take some inventory? Use those signals that I mentioned and honestly assess where are you at? Not where you're performing being at, but where are you actually? And then identify one signal that pops up that maybe you've been ignoring. Just one. Don't worry about all of them right now. Is it the tension in your shoulders? Is it the Sunday scaries? Is it that you've been snapping at your kids? Just name it. Just say out loud one thing that you've been not paying attention to. And then do one thing that honors that signal. Again, just one thing. Move something on your calendar, go to bed earlier, take a walk, give yourself 10 minutes of silence, whatever feels like care in that moment. Remember, you do not have to fix everything. You just have to start admitting what's true and then respond to yourself with just a tiny bit of kindness. The kindness that you would want to extend to someone else, turn that kindness towards yourself. That is just the beginning. Your nervous system is going to keep keeping score, even when you pretend it's not. So you can't escape this process. The exhaustion that you feel, right? It's it's going to be there. It's not a sign that you're not cut out for this life. It is just data. It's important data about how you're living and whether or not how you're living is sustainable for you. So the only way to move past it is to move through it, right? The only way to go forward is to go through. And that starts with admitting that it's even there in the first place. You're not a machine. You are just a human being running a business, having a life. And you want, you want to be like happy in your life, right? And what you're doing is one of the most demanding things a person can do. You're allowed to feel the weight of everything that's going on around you. You're allowed to need support, and you're certainly allowed to rest. And that rest is not a reward, it is a requirement for everything that you're building. So until next time, I hope you take care of yourself, take care of each other, your business, your family, your life. They need you healthy. And they need you healthy more than they need you productive. Right? Okay, have a great one. I will see you guys next time. Go out there and create your day in the best way possible. See you next time.