Season 1 Episode 5 | Before the Breakthrough: What Nobody Tells You About True Transformation

In this powerful solo episode, host Deborah Hartnett dives into what transformation really looks and feels like—before the glow-up, before the clarity, before the confidence. This isn’t about tips or tools. It’s about the truth.

If you’ve been feeling tired of performing, proving, or just pushing through—this is your turning point. Deborah peels back the curtain on the emotional weight many founders carry and the invisible wall you hit when your old identity can’t carry your future vision.

She shares a deeply relatable story of a business owner grappling with people-pleasing and emotional exhaustion, then unpacks the neuroscience, psychology, and soul work behind true inner change.

✨ This episode is an invitation to:

• Recognize the signs of a brewing transformation
• Understand the invisible emotional labor many high-achievers endure
• Break free from outdated patterns and roles (like perfectionist, peacekeeper, or strong one)
• Begin shedding what no longer serves you—with grace and honesty
• Embrace your “dark side” as a doorway to your next-level leadership
  
  

You’ll leave with a powerful reflection:

“Transformation is not about fixing yourself—it’s about becoming someone your past self could never have imagined.”

00:00 Welcome and Introduction

00:48 Recognizing the Call for Transformation

01:32 A Real-Life Example of Transformation

03:07 Understanding Emotional Labor and Old Patterns

05:32 The Neuroscience Behind Transformation

08:18 Signs and Symptoms of Transformation

08:58 The Spiritual Aspect of Transformation

12:10 Embracing Your Humanity

14:23 The Path to Real Freedom

15:02 Conclusion and Invitation

15:59 Legal Disclaimer

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Music Credit:
“Who I’ve Always Been” by Beza, licensed via PremiumBeat (License #7089927, Order #5573317) © PremiumBeat.com / Shutterstock Canada, ULC


Legal Disclaimer:

The Inspired Entrepreneur Podcast and all content posted by Deborah Hartnett are presented solely for general information, educational, and inspirational purposes. The use of any information from this podcast or materials linked from this podcast or website is at the user's own risk.

This content is not intended as a

Music Credit:
“Who I’ve Always Been” by Beza, licensed via PremiumBeat (License #7089927, Order #5573317) © PremiumBeat.com / Shutterstock Canada, ULC

Legal Disclaimer:
This podcast is for educational and inspirational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice. Please consult qualified experts for medical, legal, mental health, or business matters.

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𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐔𝐬:

Website :www.inspired-bp.com
Instagram: @inspiredbusinessperformance
Facebook: @deborahannhartnett

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and Introduction
• 0:48 Recognizing the Call for Transformation
• 1:32 A Real-Life Example of Transformation
• 3:07 Understanding Emotional Labor and Old Patterns
• 5:32 The Neuroscience Behind Transformation
• 8:18 Signs and Symptoms of Transformation
• 8:58 The Spiritual Aspect of Transformation
• 12:10 Embracing Your Humanity
• 14:23 The Path to Real Freedom
• 15:02 Conclusion and Invitation
• 15:59 Legal Disclaimer

Transcript

Before the Breakthrough: What Nobody Tells You About True Transformation

[00:00:00] INTRO Day I'm taking small steps and every time I'm.

Welcome home inspired entrepreneurs. It's Deborah, and this episode is where truth meets transformation. This isn't just any conversation, it's a turning point.  The fact that you press play tells me you're not here by accident. You're here because something in you is ready.  I invite you to listen to this episode in a very specific way, not for tips or tools, but for recognition.

Recognition of a moment you've likely lived through or might be living through. Right now, we're going to explore the sacred signals that your soul is ready to grow. Those moments when who you've been no longer fits and your patterns, pace [00:01:00] and wiring begin to resist the future that's calling you.  Today.

I'm sharing a real story and the deeper truth behind it. Not to teach, but to reveal, to show you what it actually looks like when it's time for you to shed everything that was never really you to begin with. If any part of you is tired of managing, proving, performing, lean in. This one's for you. Let's dig in.

Music 

 So the other day, a team member of mine sent me a message that I thought was perfect for this episode. So let me read you what she wrote. By the way, thank you, Loi I had a conversation recently with someone who's running a small business. This business owner mentioned that they often feel emotionally drained because they constantly overthink what their team feels about them.

They assume the worst, like thinking their staff is upset with them [00:02:00] or that they've done something wrong. Even when no one has said anything negative, they take things personally and it creates this emotional burden that affects how they lead. When I read that, I really felt for this business owner, it's such a perfect example of what transformation often looks like at the beginning, before you really recognize that this is an opportunity to transform. 

That's a signal it's a call to shift a moment where your old way of operating can't carry you any further. You've hit a wall. What it usually looks like is you're doing your best. You are doing all the things you know to do that you have done in the past to have you succeed and you care deeply, yet you're carrying an emotional load that's slowly wearing you down.

It's about finally seeing that the ways that you're operating in life just don't work anymore. They're bankrupt. They're no longer aligned [00:03:00] with who you are becoming. And that's when a transformation is ripe to happen. That emotional labor that founder was carrying, it's not stress, it's old patterning, it's fear dressed up as care.

She cares. But what's in the background is fear. Fear of acceptance belonging, not being liked. It's what happens when your nervous system is still operating from an identity that no longer serves you. That's what I'm calling the wall, and it's invisible until you actually name it. For some the after effect feels like burnout. And for others it's like I've hit a plateau, sometimes it's resentment. For me when I see something that I wish I was doing and I haven't been able to do this, resentment builds up in me.

This envy builds up in me. That's another sign that there's. A possibility [00:04:00] for transforming, and sometimes it's like this aching feeling that something's off. Our brain wants to tell us there's something wrong. You have this uneasiness in your mind that is usually the indication that who you are out to become with this big vision that you have for your life and your business is not able to get there from person that you currently are.

That's not dysfunction. It's your soul knocking.

MIDTRO

Day I'm taking small steps and every time I'm.

it's time to take a deep breath.

I wanna pause here and say, if this is hitting home, that's not a coincidence. It means you're ready. Ready to stop circling your [00:05:00] potential and start stepping into it. If you want support doing that, check the link to book a call for us to explore working together. The link is in the show notes and hey, I'd love to hear from you.

DM me using the link in the notes. Let me know what landed. What you're grappling with right now in your business or life, or a topic you'd love me to unpack in a future episode. Now, back to what nobody tells you about true transformation.

 From a neuroscience perspective, you're living from an old pattern, not your power, not who you can be or who you're becoming.

Your brain is a pattern machine. It wants to keep you alive, not help you grow.

What's happening when you hit that wall is you're living out an old pattern. Your brain is made of [00:06:00] neuronal patterns, and that's all we're doing all day long, is living out these patterns. Many of them got formed when we were really young, and that's all we know.

When we go to success, we reach for those patterns. When we go to failure, we have other patterns, other ways of being an acting to try and survive that situation or make it in that situation. It's our survival brain, and that is not where living in alignment and your true purpose and flow come from.

So what it takes is disrupting those old patterns that emotional hyper-awareness that founder was feeling, that automated survival response. People pleasing, being worried, did they like me? Did I say something to offend them? When's the the shoe gonna drop? Those are all. Patterns based on things that happened to her in the past and we repeat it over and over . 

You're [00:07:00] trapped in an identity that got you here, but it can't get you to the person that you're becoming, the leader that you see. You are the vision of the founder leading your company and your life into that great future that you envision. To your aligned self. these are roles that we adopt when we're children, young adults, to make it in the world, 

Psychology calls this possible selves, the internal roles that we adopt without realizing it.

The strong one, the people pleaser, the perfectionist, the peacekeeper. maybe you're the brave one, the strong one. There's all sorts of roles , identities that we take on as we grow up.

I had all of those rolled in One, I'm a reforming people pleaser, peacekeeper and perfectionist. Take your pick. But when you're out to live a purpose [00:08:00] led life

starting to align yourself with this inner wisdom that you have. Life starts to demand more authenticity from you, and those old patterns become walls.

There's physical signs that you're ready to transform, burnout, trying to do more work harder. Do this differently. Burnout actually changes the brain and it reduces your ability to regulate emotions and make decisions. One of the things that I experience, and I know a lot of founders do, is decision fatigue. You go to a restaurant after a day and I just can't decide. I just can't take on one more decision today. If you're short-tempered or you're foggy, or you're detached, that's your biology telling you something's out of alignment

Musical break 

 No [00:09:00] transformation really occurs without some kind of a spiritual experience. 

I wanna read you a quote by Cynthia Occelli that captures what transformation really looks like.

 For a sea to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks. Its insights come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn't understand growth, it would look like complete destruction. 

And you can hear leaders talk about it the dark night of the soul. This moment where, nothing worked. They were stripped of everything. Some big disaster happened, and it's like they had an awakening, but before they had the awakening, what they had to face was the truth about themselves.

These are the truths that we avoid. . What we do [00:10:00] instead is we numb out or we burn out, or we spiral or we shrink. You numb yourself by watching too much tv. drinking, gambling, having sex, by overworking. A lot of my founders, it's overworking . Transformation does not happen until you start telling the truth that you're outsourcing your worth about how people feel about you. That you're not trusting yourself unless you're being liked you're more committed to being safe than free.

And I'm guilty of all of those and more. This is why transformation eludes us, we're afraid to put the mirror up to ourselves to look and see what's really bankrupt in ourselves and how we can move [00:11:00] forward. You've outgrown that mask You're tired of. Playing this role, it's not serving you anymore, your soul is longing for you to be real, authentic, more who you really are, to stop trying and to start being. There was a study in 1996 done by Eshi and Calhoun, and they studied post-traumatic growth, and they found that when we move through breakdowns, honestly, we often emerge with greater clarity, greater purpose, and greater alignment.

The breakdown is the sacred opening.

This is the truth of transformation. It doesn't always look graceful, actually. It never looks graceful. It often looks like falling apart, like chaos, but it's not the [00:12:00] end. That's the beginning.

If you can hold on and know that it's the beginning, it's all worth it.

Musical break 

You can't transform by fixing yourself. That's not transformation, that's control. And transformation isn't just change. It's not doing better. It's not . Something different.

It's really becoming unrecognizable to the person that you used to be when you hold up that mirror and you tell the truth to yourself about the ways of being and acting that are no longer serving you, there's an impact.

There's an aftermath, there's an effect that you cause in the world with yourself and with other people, and. It's owning it. It isn't easy for you to actually face your humanity, what I call the ugly, [00:13:00] what a friend of mine calls the dark side we all have a dark side. We all have parts of us that don't work, aren't effective.

Downright can be hurtful and destructive,

so here's the part that most people skip once you've faced it, owned it really started to confront any of the destruction it might have caused, the unworkability, the chaos, or the ineffective results. Once you've done that, what there is to do is to breathe into it, to embrace your humanity, to embrace the dark sides of you and just be with it.

Don't try and fix it, just allow it in that moment. And I'm not saying it's easy, it's simple, it's not easy to sit with your humanity that way. But I promise you if you do that, something amazing happens in the moment that you [00:14:00] just allow that way of being and seeing. How it's impacted your life and the life of others.

It actually disappears in that moment. when it disappears, guess what's left? Nothing. A space a space for what? A space for anything. You want a space for that new way of being to show up that new person to arise. When you've sat with it, when you've allowed it, don't resist it, grant your humanity grace in that space, that opens, the next thing to do is to ask yourself a question.

Ask yourself, what way of being is now calling me forward? What way of being would be the highest way of being? For my most aligned self, for me to lead my business and my purpose where I see it could go. And then be still and listen for the answer for your inner wisdom.

That's the genesis of transformation. That's real [00:15:00] freedom. And that's where the magic begins.

You are not stuck. You are shedding, you are not broken. You are unfolding the discomfort you feel right now. It's the stretch between who you've been. And who you're becoming.

This is your invitation not to do more, but to be more of who you truly are.

Until next time, welcome home. Welcome to the Inspired Entrepreneur.

music and then fade in the legal disclaimer

[00:16:00] LEGALE DISCLAIMER (Put at end of all episodes including 1-4) 

And because I care about you and wanna keep things above board. Here's the Quick legal bit. The Inspired Entrepreneur podcast and content posted by Deborah Hartnett is presented solely for general information, educational and inspirational purposes. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast or website is at the user's own risk.

It's not intended as a. Substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional diagnosis or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay obtaining medical, mental health, legal, or business advice for any situation and should seek the assistance of qualified professionals for any such conditions or decisions.