You Don't Have To Figure This Out Alone

You keep ending up in the same place. It's not because you haven't tried hard enough. It's because you've been using the same mind that built the situation to try to solve it.

In this episode, we talk about what it actually costs to go it alone and what changes when a high-achieving woman finally stops having to figure it out by herself. We walk through what the path actually looks like: the relief that arrives when someone else holds the flashlight, the anger that comes before the grief, the reckoning that has to happen before the design, and what alignment looks like when it comes from clarity instead of fear.

Whether you leave, stay, or redesign from the inside, this episode is about making sure the decision is actually yours and not based in fear.

Work With Me

If this episode gave you language for something you’ve been noticing in your work or your life and you’re still sorting through what to do with it, you don’t have to figure that out on your own.

I offer Alignment Calls for women who are beginning to see things more clearly but aren’t interested in rushing into decisions or making dramatic changes.

These conversations are a space to think through what’s actually going on, what you’re continuing to choose, and what a more aligned next step could look like for you.

If that’s something you want support with, you can book a call through the link in the show notes.

https://calendly.com/shainajonescoaching/alignment-call 

Website: https://www.shainajonescoaching.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

What if burnout isn't the problem? But the signal that the way you've been succeeding no longer fits. Welcome to the Era of Alignment. I'm Shayna Jones McGrown, and this podcast is for high-achieving women who look successful on paper but feel exhausted, overwhelmed, or quietly disconnected from the lives they've built. If you've tried rest, boundaries, time off, or pushing through, and nothing actually changed, this space is for you. Here, we don't treat burnout as weakness, we treat it as information. Each episode will name what's really happening beneath burnout, why the old models of success stop working for capable women, and what alignment requires when you're no longer willing to override yourself. Because burnout is the signal and alignment is the shift. And it's not that exhaustion that we normally think about, right? It's not the one from working too hard. We all know that type and we know that it has a remedy. And it's the things that we usually talk about in terms of dealing with exhaustion. You want to take some rest and hopefully build rest into your schedule, or you take a vacation or have a slow weekend, you know, things like that to give the body and your mind the opportunity to come back to center. And when you do those things, the exhaustion lifts. But that's not the type of exhaustion that I'm talking about. I'm talking about the one that doesn't lift. And let me tell you what that type of exhaustion is: it's the exhaustion of trying to use your own mind to try to figure out what's going on with your own mind. You see that? That circular loop, you know, and you are going in circles. You may be journaling about what's going on, what's what you're preoccupied about, constantly thinking about. You may be talking about it to yourself or to others, or reading books about it on that topic or topics adjacent to it that you hope are going to allow you to find some alleviation from this constant problem. But what you find is that with doing those things, you still end up back at the same place you started. Smart women do this, high-achieving women do this often. And that's because these are women who have never in their professional lives failed to figure something out. And that's because they've learned over decades that they're the most reliable resource that they have. And also that asking for help, exposing that vulnerability, is often something they cannot afford in their professional lives. And they also internally may simply feel that their problems are things that they should be able to solve. And so high-achieving women keep trying to solve it alone. And listen, I'm not immune to this. I built an entire framework for this work, and I still had to figure out the messy parts of myself by myself first. Hey everyone, I'm Shayna Jones McGrohn, and this is the Era of Alignment. And I want to talk to you today about what changes, what actually changes when you stop having to figure it out alone. So here's what I know about the woman who's listening to this right now. She's not lost. She's certainly not someone who needs to be rescued or fixed or rebuilt from the ground up. But she is someone who's been carrying too much in one area or another for too long, often with no structure for how to put that thing or those things down. And when I say structure, I don't mean a productivity system. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about having a morning routine that's better, or having a more optimized calendar, or even taking a restful weekend retreat. Those things are all necessary, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the thing that you keep going on and on about in your mind is gonna be different on Monday. No, what I'm talking about to address this issue is a map, a real one. And it's something that's gonna tell you that you're here. This is what's actually happening in your burnout, in your misalignment, and this is the way through that. She treats the symptom as the problem. So she decides she's burned out and then she takes a vacation. She decides she needs boundaries, and then she starts saying no to meetings, if that's an option. She decides she's overwhelmed and she hires an assistant. And even after doing all of those things, the symptoms come back. And it's not because those solutions were wrong, but rather because they weren't pointed at the real thing. And the real thing, the root of the thing, doesn't always show itself easily. A root cause doesn't always volunteer itself during the journaling sessions or the conversation with the friend who loves you dearly. That work requires a specific kind of excavation. And the challenge is you can't excavate your own foundation while you're also trying to live in the house. That's not a personal failing. That's just how it works. And the cost of going in alone isn't just exhaustion, it's also time. It's the months and years of intelligent and capable effort pointed in the wrong direction. It's arriving in your mid-40s or early 50s and realizing that you've been solving the wrong problem for a very long time. So, what actually changes when you stop? Well, first let me say I'm not talking about you having a grand revelation. I mean, that may happen, but that doesn't have to be how it happens. And it also doesn't have to be some type of dramatic breakthrough or awakening. For most women, it's often something much quieter than that. It's actually a feeling of relief. And it's not because someone has handed you the answers, but rather it's because for the first time you're not trying to hold on to the question and also excavate using your mind as the tool and as the flashlight all at the same time. Someone else is holding the flashlight. And you don't have to figure it out all on your own. What changes next is language. So you get language for what's actually happening. The thing that's been living in your body as a vague, persistent wrongness gets a name. And when you name a thing, you separate yourself from it. You stop being inside of the problem and you start seeing it. And when you can see it, when you can really see it from the outside, the grip it has on you loosens. Maybe not completely and not immediately, but enough for you to get that relief. And enough for you to take a breath. Enough to exhale for the first time in years. Now I want to tell you what the path through this actually looks like in an experiential way. The first thing that has to happen before any excavation, before any root cause work, is that you feel safety. Real safety. It's the kind where you don't have to manage someone else's perception of you, where you don't have to show up performing competence the way you perform it, and actually are it, but you get what I mean by performance. But the way you perform it everywhere else. And that sounds really simple, but for high achieving women, for women like you, and that sounds simple, but for high achieving women, for women like you, it's not always that simple. You've been performing for a very long time. Performing certainty, performing capability, performing that you're fine, that you may have lost track of what it feels like to just be in a room without performing. So the first real work is creating enough safety that you can stop. And when you do, when you actually stop, what comes out is often not what you expect. You may expect grief or confusion, or you may expect a big dramatic question of what do I actually want? That does happen for some women, but often what comes out first is anger. And it's not anger at anyone in particular, but rather it's at the story you've been living inside of. It's anger at the invisible architecture of expectation that you mistook for your own choices. Anger at the younger version of yourself who was so afraid that she built something without realizing she was building a cage. And I want to take a moment to say something else about that. Because here's what I want you to know about anger. It's not a problem. Anger is a valid, frankly, amazing emotion that fuels many positive changes. So I'm certainly not telling you to fix or uh just manage your anger or redirect it without examining it and making sure that the redirection or the management isn't actually going to your benefit. And what that anger also is, is information. It's pointing you at directly what matters to you by understanding what you've been angry at. It lets you know what's been violated and what you're still protecting. So we don't rush past anger, we sit with it, we examine it, we respect it because the anger knows something. Dealing with anger is often part of the messy middle of alignment work, and it's also a part that many women try to skip. They want to move swiftly and directly from I know something is wrong to here's my plan without doing the harder work, the harder thing that's in between, which is sitting with that anger, and then often what comes after that is grieving what it actually costs you to be in misalignment and deciding who you are when you stop organizing your identity around something that no longer fits. That's not a small thing to reckon with, but it is the only thing that leads to what comes next, and what comes next, what's on the other side of that reckoning with where you've been and where you are, is space, is the expansiveness to have real clarity, and that clarity allows you the ability to hear yourself again over the noise of obligation, over the noise of an identity, and what you think people will think from that space, from real clarity, not fear, not obligation, not the need to prove something, that's when you start designing what's next. I want to be careful about how I say this, because design doesn't always look the way you expect it. It's not always dramatic. Not every woman, and frankly, most women don't blow up what they've built. That's not necessary for them, it's not appropriate. And remember, this work is all about what works for you. Right? Not every woman walks away. Some women do, but some women stay and redesign from the inside. They reclaim what was always there, they rebuild what actually fits within the life they already have. They create alignment within the structures they already have. Both types of experiences are alignment, both are valid. Some women need and want to leave and create something completely new. Some women need and want to stay and shift and have alignment from the inside. The work of whichever decision you choose is really your choice. And the work isn't even really about the decision. It's about making sure that the decision is actually yours and not a decision based in fear. That's what the other side looks like. It's not perfect, not a perfect way of getting there, and not necessarily an easy way, but it is yours, it is your journey, and there's joy in the journey. If any of that landed, if you recognize yourself in the circling, in the exhaustion, in the specific suffocation of a life that fits on paper but feels wrong in your bones, I want you to know something. You don't have to keep figuring this out by yourself. And it's not because you're not capable of it. Of course you are. You've proven that you're able to figure things out more times than anyone can count. But it is because you deserve to have someone hold the flashlight while you do the work. You deserve to have some help with that. It's because excavating your own foundation while living inside the house is not a sustainable strategy, it's also not an efficient strategy. And it's because the map already exists. And the only thing between you and the continuous circling is the decision to stop going it alone. I built my framework from years of being in this territory myself. It wasn't clean, it was certainly not linear, but I know, I feel, I remember every turn. And I built it so that you don't have to figure it out in the dark the way I did. The alignment call is where that starts. It's a conversation with me, 45 minutes, where we look at what's actually happening, not just the symptoms, but the real thing underneath it. And you leave with more clarity than when you walked in. So that's it for this week. You've been ready. You've been ready for a while. The link is in the show notes for the alignment call. I'm Shayna Jones McGrone. This is the era of alignment. I'll see you next week.