Burnout Isn’t Just Exhaustion: How Hustle Culture, Overgiving, and Self-Abandonment Disconnect Us from Ourselves With Melissa Hussong

In this episode of The Visibility Standard (formerly All Our Parts), I’m joined by Melissa Hussong, co-host of the Full Time Freedom Podcast, for a powerful conversation about burnout recovery—and the radical role self-love plays in actually healing it.

Together, we unpack what burnout really is beyond chronic exhaustion. We talk about the quieter signs that show up long before the crash, how hustle culture trains us to override our needs, and why rest isn’t something you earn after burnout—it’s something you’re entitled to before it.

In this episode, we explore:

• How to recognize the early, subtle signs of burnout
• Why rest is not a luxury, reward, or productivity hack—but a right
• How self-compassion helps us break free from hustle culture
• What it means to choose yourself without guilt when you’re used to overgiving

If you’ve been running on empty, struggling to rest without shame, or trying to build a more sustainable relationship with work and yourself, this episode offers both validation and a path forward.

Burnout isn’t a personal failure. It’s a signal. And self-love isn’t indulgent—it’s how you survive and sustain a life you don’t need to recover from.

Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/59YI5SECPNYJVtC92Z7dMT?si=7f37c89913924223IG: https://www.instagram.com/melissahussong/Blog: https://www.herhandlebars.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to All Our Parts, where all of it is brought to the table. The messy, the joyful, the mundane, and everything in between. Where we talk about that terrible friendship breakup, where we talk about how we've lost ourselves and how we've come back to ourselves. This is the show that will offer strategy, a laugh, and maybe a cry, where you'll leave feeling like you can make the steps towards being your most authentic self. This episode is for my corporate baddies, my girl bosses who have attached so much of their identity and self-worth to their work. This conversation with Melissa was just the reminder that I needed that our identities, that our worth, our value is not attached to our work and we are inherently whole just as we are and so I'm gonna let Melissa and I take it away and hope you really enjoyed this episode. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to All Our Parts. I am your host, Jasmine Proctor, and I am here with Melissa. She's the co-host of Full Time Freedom podcast. She is based in Australia. I'm so happy to have you here today. Thanks, Jaz. So we are going to be talking about burnout and self-love. So just to start us off, big question, is burnout and self-love correlated in any way?

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Yes. Oh my gosh. In a big way. Yeah, definitely. I think the reason that we go into burnout and we have all these behavioral stages that like eventually lead us to burnout is because at the core of it, we're not valuing ourselves. We're not being ourselves and we're not just loving ourselves as we are in this moment and realizing that that is enough. And then because we don't see that we're enough, we push, we pull, we strive, we hustle, we grind. We do all of these things that we isn't like natural for ourselves. It's not natural for our bodies or our brains. And then we lead into these stages of just chronic health issues, chronic, tired, just unhealthy states. And it's very common. Like, I think that's the other thing. A lot of us beat ourselves up when we feel like, Oh, I'm burnout. I'm like, I'm so tired. I just want to sleep through my alarm again. I, I just That is actually not uncommon in this society, this world, but realizing that, okay, how do I feel this way? Why do I feel this way? And then leaning more into that self-love piece.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Yeah. You just spoke to so much, which leads to just to get us all on the same lay of the land. I mean, when we think about burnout, burnout isn't just being tired. It's not just feeling better. up with work. It's not just feeling like, oh, I think I want a different career path. It's so much more than that. So how do you define burnout?

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Yeah, I define burnout as something that's really chronically affecting you and affecting your ability to show up as your best self in probably more than one aspect of life. So let's be real. It's chronic exhaustion. It's just not feeling like yourself. It's feeling like oh today I just don't want to do it but like all week you just haven't been in that zone either so it really has a chronic piece to it it's not just like oh I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today or I am you know just having a mood it's like something that's affected you longer term that you can't seem to shake no matter what you try

SPEAKER_01 4:04

yeah it's it is a physical it is physiological it is psychological It's this idea that, oh, man, I'm waking up, I'm feeling physical exhaustion, I am feeling mentally exhausted, not able to quite pinpoint what. And I feel like it's almost terrifying sometimes to look at our jobs as the source of burnout, because then that means we have to do something about it. We might have to do something with it or come to terms with the fact that we have invested so much of our time. Yeah, I

SPEAKER_00 4:46

feel like burnout, you know, when I think about this, I'm like, it's like, we're like batteries, right? And my phone shows me the percentage of like juice that I have left on my battery. And like, I could leave my house in the morning on 30%. And I feel like a lot of people are just like, kind of going around at like 30% fully charged. And then I know, but at some point during the the day my phone's gonna die or like I'm gonna basically ration the apps that I use because I don't want to use up all the battery before I can recharge but like that's not a way to live like we need to be able to access all of our parts all of the time and show up as ourselves as our true selves so we need to get to 80% so we need to be like recharging our battery before it's like mission critical we need to be like at that 80% And I get a notification that says your battery is fully charged. You can unplug now. And I'm like, nah, I'm going to go to a hundred percent just in case. Like I always do that. And I don't think it's good for the battery. Someone told me that, but I'm like, no, I want a hundred percent. So, you know, I feel like we need to be functioning at that 80%. Anything on top of that is a bonus so that we can start our day. We can live our lives knowing that we can tap into all of our potential all of the time and be okay with that because we are taking care of ourselves enough to get to that point.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Yeah. And then, I mean, tagging right along the battery analogy, once we are charged up to 100%, we don't need to go full throttle and use up all of that 100% that we have. We don't need to wake up and say, oh, 100%, boom, go back and practice the old habits. It's almost like, okay, great, I'm at 100% and now I need to evaluate and really look at how can I incorporate self-love how can I prioritize myself in my work in my business

SPEAKER_00 6:52

yeah no that is so real jazz and yeah I agree and I feel like where the self-love piece comes in is you know when we're functioning at that 30% like if you were to sort of get a transcript of our thoughts throughout the day it would be appalling how mean we are to ourselves and like that negative self-worth, I would not speak to anyone else in my life, anyone else in the world. But like I say the meanest things to myself and I think we all do, right? Like it's just– just rife the amount of negativity that we have absorbed from other people, from society, from people, like it's no one's fault. But I think we do have a responsibility to sort of unpack that and be like, well, whose thoughts are they? And Jaz, I know you thought about this on the podcast, but like, okay, so, you know, for probably 32 years of my life, I walked around telling myself, I'm an effing idiot. I'm effing dumb. No one ever thing cares what I say like and that was real talk my internal talk I was like wow that wasn't me yeah I didn't think of those words like that came from my brother when I was growing up he didn't say it all the time but he would say it occasionally and I absorbed that and that became my inner self-talk yeah and we just we go around beating ourselves up but it but you you know okay so we know that that didn't come from us so what does like take that out unpack it and say like, okay, if I don't have those thoughts, then who am I? Oh, I'm actually not that bad. Like people do care about me. People do listen to me. I am making an impact and getting real about that. And starting from the inside out to say like, I believe that I'm okay. I believe that I'm enough. And then watching our external reality start to reflect that because we're no longer being so mean to ourselves. We're getting closer to that 80% charge.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Yeah. I mean, you just spoke to a really critical piece, but a very challenging piece, and that's identifying what is our internal voice? Who is our internal voice? Is it ours? I find myself with work of when I'm getting into that spiral of, I'm not doing enough, I'm not enough, and this, that, and the other, I have to stop myself and ask, when I was born, did I think about myself this way? Or when I was two or three, is this how I felt about myself? And when I asked myself that question, it was honestly jarring at first, because I recognized, I'm like, child me did not think of myself this way. The innocence, the naivete is lost when external factors start to develop our internal voice and then I realized oh it was family it was people who I surrounded myself with so often that were starting to be a culmination of my internal voice and I basically had to spend lots of time in therapy unpacking like okay this is where I got it from I do not want this clouding or muddying up my internal voice because I I want to be able to move with confidence. And truthfully, I don't want to always be beating myself up every time something that isn't going to plan happens. Because that also contributes to burnout. When we are beating ourselves up, when we are working from a place of shame, we are just, we are not, like that self-compassion isn't being incorporated. And then we're just tired because it's just a spiral and it loops and it goes round and around, basically.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Yeah, absolutely. And what you just highlighted there, Jaz, is that becoming aware. And I think sometimes, you know, we're living our lives and we're like, oh, I don't have time to like sit down and think about it. But it's something that we can just track throughout the day. Like, for anyone listening, it's like, just write down. Okay. I just had like a really mean thought, write it down, look at it, be like, wow, who does that sound like? Oh, if I were to guess, it sounds like my uncle, you know, whatever. And, um, that can be a great activity, but I think what, what you're really, that next step there is okay. Figuring out, we know who it came from. It didn't come from us. So we need to radically, deeply, unconditionally, love and accept ourselves anyway, despite what we're going through, despite our perceived failures, because that's what it is. It's not real. Failure is not a thing. It's just what we think of. It is a judgment. And like kind of a modality, a therapy that I love to share with clients is called mirror work. And it is, it really pairs affirmations with that radical self-love. But the unique piece is that you're actually looking yourself in the mirror. So you're standing in front of the bathroom, like obviously keep it private, shut the door. That's how I do it. And, you know, you start by just saying, you know, insert name. I love you, Melissa. I really, really love you. And anyone would, you know, insert your name. But you're looking at your eyes in the mirror. You're addressing yourself. You're addressing your body. And you're just saying, I love you. And something happens when we say those words to ourselves, looking at ourselves is so emotional and it's quite confronting because we've lived our lives the opposite. We've been taught to hate ourselves. And I think that translates to everyone. But when you can actually stand there and like have that piece of resistance and be like, no, plant your flag in the sand and say, I'm not doing that anymore. Like I'm going to love myself no matter what. And then the shame starts to dissolve. And then like the, everything else starts to dissolve because we say, yes, even though I didn't send all those emails today, I still love myself and that's okay. Even though I didn't reply to all my threads today, that's okay because I still accept who I am. Yeah. And when that happens... it is really that kind of concrete step to like get us to that next stage of like, okay, I don't need to do the burnout activities anymore because like I don't feel like I need to be more than who I am because that's enough.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Melissa, that was just so powerful what you just shared. I mean, my first thought is the research says that eye contact is one of the most vulnerable things we can share with another person. But to have eye contact with ourselves to look at ourselves deeply and say you know regardless of the day regardless of what you did or did not do today you are enough you are still loved you are still so worthy and that all that just peels away the layer that our worth is defined by our action or our work and it it is the affirmation that we are whole regardless of and I I think we don't always give ourselves enough space to do that. I know I do not always give myself enough space to do that. And thinking about when, I think my two jobs ago, I worked in like a case management setting and I was so passionate about the work and I was like, okay, I want to do more. I want to do more. I want to do more. And it was right around COVID as well. And I'm buying things for the kids and I'm just doing so much. And I am exhausted. Like I've hit my peak and I'm like, oh, I need to take a nap. And then the nap doesn't work. And then I'm like, oh, I need to go to the beach. And then I'm going to the beach every single weekend and that's not working. And then I'm coming into work sobbing because I'm not quote unquote doing enough. And it got to a point where my immune system was like, you have to make active changes Or I'm going to sit you down. And it actually did sit me down. I was deeply ill. I fevers. I mean, chills. heavy fatigue, like chronic fatigue. It was so hard to even like cook meals sometimes. And long story short, I quit that job and my health made significant improvement in a way that no blood work could even conceptualize. And so after that, I was like, oh, shoot, I got to make some real changes. I deserve to offer for myself so much more love. And it totally rippled having to set better boundaries with what work looks like for me. And even it also reshaped a lot of my relationships, how I show up in my relationships because I can't say that the patterns that were showing up at work weren't also showing up in my relationships. They all ultimately work together. And now I am much more vigilant about when my stress levels become too high because I'm like, it's not worth it.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Yeah, absolutely. And that was so beautiful, Jaz. Thanks for sharing. What sort of, you know, do you do self-care techniques now? Like how do you kind of get to, how do you sort of stop yourself getting to that burnout point?

SPEAKER_01 17:17

That actually happened this week. I found myself working. I was working and I kind of have given myself a mental stop sign. And also I have been on antidepressant that works for me. I'll be very honest about that. I've been on Prozac for the last two years. And that has really helped me put up a mental stop sign of like, oh, stop and listen to your body slow down your body is like tired it is allow yourself to rest allow yourself to just do an admin day on the couch and watch TV no one says those two things cannot exist at the same time society might say I need to be in the office 9am with my coffee having a working lunch but I can decide like no my body's asking for something different it's asking maybe to take a nap in the middle of the day and so I'm much more aware And I'm almost much more sensitive of the awareness to my body because I know what the other side of that feels like.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Oh, that's so good. You're a pro. I love that mental... mental kind of stop sign I have something similar where yeah I um four years ago probably five years ago I was in my my very last corporate nine-to-five and I was working in a hospital during COVID and enough said right we can all imagine and I just ended up in the emergency room with like chronic abdominal pains one night like I felt like my body was exploding and the no one knew what to do they were like okay we did all the tests we ran all the things I don't know like go home and see how it goes I was like but I just I couldn't stand up like I had these chronic pains and I think when our body says like no enough is enough that's always the the sort of catalyst for these like journeys right and um I remember just being like that's that's not good enough I need to figure this out and you know the more you dig the more you realize it's like no I actually that was a significant time in my life of several years in a row where I hated myself like I look back in those photos and I just have such compassion for who I was because I just want to reach out and hug myself because I it was a tough time mentally, uh, self image wise, you know, all of that. And, um, yeah, so I've definitely seen that side of what that burnout can lead to. But before, before I, now, when I, in my business, I get to the point where I'm like, I have a similar thing. If I have these racing thoughts, I'll stop. If I, the other thing, the one trigger that I'm like, no, I need to shut my laptop and go to bed is when I'm like, oh, let me just do one more thing. And it's like eight or nine o'clock and And I'm like, oh, let me quick just like send that email. Let me quick just review this marketing, whatever. And I'm like, no, that's it for me. Like if I have a scarcity mindset, and I think that's what it is too, is if I feel like a scarcity of time or a scarcity of ideas or something, that's where I'm like, no, because abundance is where it's at. That's like our natural state. And that's where love is. You know, you don't ration love. You don't say love only goes to this person, this person, you get this much, you get this much, you know, abundance is our natural state. And then every time I go into the scarcity, that's where I'm like burnout territory because I'm like going to hustle and I'm like trying to, you know, work it and stuff. And those are my indications of like, okay, enough is enough.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

Thank you so much for sharing that. And I so deeply resonate and empathize with what you just shared because all of my health stuff was also during COVID and I was getting blood work done. They were like, you don't have COVID. I'm like, well, I'm falling out in my garage. I would like to know what's going on. And they're like, okay, we'll run these tests. And there was still nothing. And to tie in both of our stories, it's not just the mind, But there's this deep connection to the body that we don't always pay attention to, that we don't always trust is giving us honest indicators. Why? Because society says laziness. Society says you need to do more to have more. Society says this is what the American dream looks like. And our bodies are telling us when enough is enough. And our bodies will, as I say, it will sit us down if we are not going to sit down ourselves. And it sounds like both of us can attest to that's something that it's harder to get back up. It takes much more work versus just saying, you know what, there are some limits that I need to set. I think for me, it's one of my main, I think entrusting myself is one trusting my gut feeling about something and allowing that to be enough and processing it from with an outside third party or with my therapist, if my gut might be misleading me or might be responding just based on previous experiences, but truly leaning into the knowing what is right for me and trusting that, trusting that without an outside opinion, trusting that without it looking like the right thing to do or whatever the case may be. But even that is sometimes it's, it's frowned upon because our intuition will sometimes steer us from what is popular or what is, or what is, um, you know, what is considered a productive

SPEAKER_00 23:33

work dynamic. Absolutely. And intuition, like it, I love that you bring this up, Jazz, because intuition can't be proved. It's not, it doesn't always match what we think is logical. Like you can't always back it up with data. And that's why it freaks us out because, you know, we're like in this burnout, like super highly dysregulated state and we need data and we need to make the best decision and optimize and all that. But it's like intuition Intuition is our inner guiding light. It's like our inner compass, right? And like the magnetic north, like when the needle goes magnetic north, like that's going to take us to the thing that's best for us. But how often do we have examples in our life of going against intuition? And you're like, I knew it. I knew that person was shady. I knew that they were going to do me wrong. I knew that that was going to happen. I knew that was a bad choice. I knew I shouldn't have done business with that person. Like everyone has a million examples of those. For sure. Yeah. But it's, but it's like, we need a million examples of the other side of like, wow, I really leaned into my intuition when I was at a fork in the roads. And, you know, I just listened to what my gut was telling me and I went with it unquestioningly. And it led me to this amazing outcome. Like that's what I would love for the world to do more of. And, I think when we can start to lean into our gut for our intuition, like you were just saying, Jazz, is like you start to develop that muscle. It becomes stronger. And that can kind of become a little part of your internal voice is like, oh, hang on, I'm going to turn the chit chat off up in my brain and listen to what my gut says. And what I love to do with clients is like figure out in your body, like how does a yes sound? Like actually kind of get quiet, take some deep breaths. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then lean into that and say, okay, what does a no feel like? And then you ask a question of what you know is a no answer. And then you pay attention and you lean into, okay, how does a no show up? Is it the opposite? Is it something else? Maybe it's like a pit in your stomach or maybe it's like a little shiver or something. Yeah. And those that that kind of when you calibrate your intuition in that way, you can start to leverage your intuition for decision making. And that is where it gets so juicy for business. So juicy because it's like you can't make a bad decision with your intuition like it's got your back.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Well, that you just tie up the scarcity versus abundance mindset so clearly. I think abundance is terrifying because Because sometimes we can look at something and say, oh, it worked out and then go, oh, it was that simple. Like we have this idea that something has to be hard or it has to come with a struggle. But if we are truly in alignment with our intuition, if we are in alignment with abundance, it will flow. That's not to say that there won't be work attached to it. I won't say that there's no effort required, but it will flow. And because burnout disconnect us too much from our body, we often then get into this idea that urgency is what is going to drive us and make us move. And I recently made a post where I was like, urgency is basically fear on Red Bull. It's like this need to do, this need to accomplish, this need to overcompensate for the insecurity that we are feeling about ourself in that moment, because that burnout has connected us to urgency and has disembodied us from our intuition. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

Yeah, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

It's... And I mean, I want to even discuss COVID a little bit because I feel like COVID also really shifted the way we address burnout, even with a lot of us who now work from home, mostly. And... how have you been able to set limits in your business post COVID?

SPEAKER_00 28:24

Yeah, what I love is just boundaries, like time boundaries at a very like low hanging fruit kind of basic level is just decide what you have capacity for, like on any given day, on any given week, like what are the things you want to focus on sort of at a starting point? And there might be two to three. We don't want to get crazy because if we go 10, then it's like, it's not going to get done. And then you'll, we'll feel bad about it. So let's start with just a couple of priorities and then decide, okay, today's Monday. what time am I going to fit this in? And sometimes that might look like, you know, taking clients from nine to 12 or nine to 11. And then that's your client time for the week or for Mondays. And then it might be emails from one to two sort of thing. So it's like, it's deciding what that time boundary is and sticking to it. So to give you a real example from my life, today is Thursday for me. So I do podcast kind of first thing in the morning. And then I run into clients. So I'll do clients for a couple hours from like nine to 11. And then I have that lunch break. And then I'll do sort of podcast recording or radio slots, you know, radio interviews for my radio show. And I know when my week starts that like on this day, I'm going to be doing this. And that just, it puts it in a container for me. So I'm not spending, you know, an hour every single day being like, Oh, I have a client. Okay. I've got to mentally get in the zone. I've got to energetically get in the zone. I got to look nice. I got to put my camera on and get the light out. So it's like, okay, it's, it's finding these efficiencies. It's kind of a, it's a time boundary setting those boundaries, but also like a batching mindset. So like figuring out, okay, how can I batch this work so that I'm doing it in one short sprint, as opposed to like spreading it out throughout my day and then And like mentally you have all this back and forth of like, oh, I haven't done that yet or I still have to get that client call. So those are the big ones for me is setting that time boundary and then batching the work for efficiency.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

Yeah. That I think a time boundary is, it also allows space to like compartmentalize the day, like podcasting in the morning, working with clients and this, because you're right. It's, you have to get into a mindset when working with other people, when talking with other people and being a vessel for someone else to support them. It's a totally different mindset than having a conversation with a friend or going out to dinner, being with family. And so I, am with you with the batching piece because I like to be in it. And then when I'm out of it, I like to be out of it. I don't like to jump out of it and go eat lunch and then jump back into it. I'm like, once I'm done, I'm done. And similar to you, I think time boundaries have also been a real gift for me. In the morning, I love a slow morning. I will wake up at 6 a.m. and I will just enjoy For like four hours, I'll walk my dog, I'll eat breakfast and sit there. I'll read if I feel like reading, but I give myself that space in the morning to just be and not expect any urgency. And I've also been incorporating where I don't make any decisions in bed because I'm not awake yet. I am kind of still tired, but I'm laying there. And I found that when I was doing that, I was more likely to order out or I was more likely to get less than what I needed to done or I would often make decisions based on how I was feeling in that moment and not how I was feeling at 2 p.m. or 3 p.m. and then I locked myself into this mindset of so tired getting up at 10 a.m. and so I wake up I get out of bed at 6 a.m. and I just allow the morning to be the morning and then 10 a.m. is when I say okay work eat lunch take a little lunch break and then the evening really 7 p.m. is when I brains off. Like that is it. I can't do anything. I'm on, I may be on threads because I feel like that's a bit of a lower maintenance social media task, but I am, I cannot respond to an email. I cannot plan. I cannot plot because, and I know I'm tired by then. And so I feel that urgency start to creep up if I'm planning or have this bright idea. I might take a after 7pm for me, it is a recipe for that burnout.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

That's beautiful. Slow mornings, everything. That sounds so nice.

SPEAKER_01 33:37

It's amazing. It also has helped with regulating my nervous system. I think that I don't know where I saw it. I've seen it in multiple places, but this idea that our bodies are not meant to jump from one task to the other, but we need like breaks. We need that, that buffer, that intermission to go, okay, now I'm going to do this and now I'm going to do that.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Yeah, absolutely. I love to bake in little breaks into my day for that reason. Cause yeah, I, I get on this burnout cycle and I can quite easily get back on the treadmill. Like towards burnout like I'm always like on the edge of that going in the fast lane but I think it's hitting like that cruise control and being like okay no I'm cool cruising I'm gonna get to my I ride motorcycles so I think very much like in this all the time so it's like I'm gonna go cruise control I will get to my destination eventually it won't be as fast as I could have got there but it's still I'm gonna reach my outcome I'm probably gonna see more of the scenery I'm going to enjoy the ride and I won't use as much gas because I'm going at a comfortable pace.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Yeah. And then it's that reminder, that mirror technique that you shared of even going at the pace that is comfortable is enough. We are enough as we are. We are already whole.

SPEAKER_00 35:12

Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 35:15

absolutely. enough

SPEAKER_00 35:44

yeah I would say for starters yeah just recognizing that you're in a state of like emotional chronic physical um strain and burnout and just okay stop pause everyone pause and then work yourself out of it and and the piece that I really want to talk about there is like do what you love okay that's gonna pull you out that's gonna pull you out not more emails not more social media not more doing things for other people not more taking on projects at work what's going to pull you out is doing what you love and what pulled me out of my chronic burnout and I didn't mention this but when I was at the hospital like that that went into about a two year infertility battle I don't know how you want to say that crisis health situation health situation and for two years I didn't know if I could have kids because of that and no one could tell me if I could most people were like I don't know like wait and see but like not positive you know and um I just thought okay like I've done all the things I've even exhausted all my options I kind of went into a burnout cycle of like figuring out my health because that's just like the patterns I was into but doing what I loved and that was riding motorcycles like I was like F this, I'm done. Like I'm tapping out of this health BS and I just need to do what I love right now. I just need to ride. I just need to go hit the Mississippi and ride as far South as I can. I'm going to, I lived in Minnesota. I'm going to ride to the black Hills for five days and just camp in nature by myself. Like that's how I did it for me. And I think when we lean into and give ourselves permission to love what we love, do what lights us up for no other reason than it lights us up.

SPEAKER_01 37:43

Yes, 100%. I want to co-sign. Do what you love. What you just spoke to is... I mean, we don't always give ourselves enough space to enjoy something. We look for ways to monetize. And that's the world that we live in where it's tough. It's hard out here sometimes. And... We look for ways to capitalize or leverage our skills and we don't give ourselves the space enough to just enjoy, like just be. I also didn't speak on the, you know, incorporating the things that I enjoy, but I love to paint, not good at it. And I can't, I won't sell it, but it's this creative medium that allowed me to get out of my head, which I think is also another piece that you're speaking to with motorcycling, with going outside. It's not, it's not something we can journal our way out. It's is expression. through the body in a way it is connecting with nature it's connecting with all the senses and saying okay this is what is going to light a fire in me it's not going to be how much money I make it's not going to be my work it's not going to be the notoriety of my work it is going to be being able to just sit down and paint I even when slime was a big trend I bought like a gallon of glue and I was like I'm gonna make slime I was like this the sensory aspect of of it and I still have not made the best slime yet and that's okay it is just nice to also be able to make a mess with no repercussions like that's almost inner child healing in a way like no one's gonna say oh you're making a mess don't get it on the carpet don't get it on the couch it's like nope it's my couch and I'm gonna make I'm gonna make slime and another hobby I guess hobby creative outlet that I enjoy is cooking I love to cook I love to cook for the people in It was something that I recognize that I didn't need to be perfect, but if I was doing it from a place of love, it would always taste good. There's no measurement. I don't need to be like a Michelin star chef. I'm not nitpicking or critiquing how I'm slicing something. I am simply serving it from the purest place of my heart. And that has been its own opportunity being able to cook for other people as well as myself, because I'm also pouring that love into myself as well. And so I love what I eat. eat and I want to be able to enjoy what I eat and I want it to be nourishing. And that has allowed me to definitely be more connected with my body and spirit.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

That's beautiful. And I would bet, Jazz, that when you do those activities, you probably hear your intuition more. You're probably breathing slower. You're probably all the chit chatter of like all the worries and stress that we have probably goes away. That's sounds like just some beautiful practices

SPEAKER_01 41:17

same to you as well motorcycling is cool

SPEAKER_00 41:22

thanks I love it I've uh I've been riding for like five years and um it's just something that I I haven't I haven't experienced anywhere else it's it's different

SPEAKER_01 41:33

yeah that's how I feel about painting and it takes me to a different place and it's not a place that I've found with anything else, really. It's just his own special place.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

Yeah. Special.

SPEAKER_01 41:54

Melissa, this was such an enriching conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk and share. And I can't wait, you know, to, I hope we stay connected. Just to close out, are there any offerings that you wanted to share with the audience?

SPEAKER_00 42:13

Yeah, I do. So my signature offer is called Burnt Out to Badass. So I incorporate all my learnings from my business podcast, Full Time Freedom. It's a top 10% podcast. And then I have a radio show as well, talking to business women. And I incorporate all those learnings into this 12-week program. So I take women entrepreneurs who are scaling their businesses from burnt out, you know, struggling with the overwhelm, all the stress, all the anxiety. And in those 12 weeks, we work through all those modalities, some I talked about today. And at the end of it, you're a badass. You feel like you can handle anything and you're just confident you have that clarity and you're also making cash flow in your business and scaling in a way that feels really good and aligned so that's my signature offer I'm also on all the social medias I share a ton of free content so even if you never work with me like hit my content because I share a lot of my things that I'm just going through that I've learned that clients are going through sharing it not gatekeeping just want to help raise up women everywhere so I'm on social media at Melissa Hassong. My website is www.herhandlebars.com because I started as a motorcycle content creator. But yeah, if you want a free call, DM me and we can set something up. We'll talk strategy. We'll figure out where you're stuck in your business and help you get from where you are to where you want to be.

SPEAKER_01 43:40

Amazing. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 43:43

Thanks, Jaz.

UNKNOWN 43:47

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