Overcoming Burnout in the Quest for Achievement: A Guide to Authentic Success and Personal Fulfillment

Have you ever chased success so fiercely that you've teetered on the edge of burnout? Join me, Lisa Jeffs, as we peel back the layers of high achievement and question the real motivations that drive us. In a candid conversation, we confront the truth about our hunger for personal growth versus the hunt for external approval. I'll even share a piece of my own story, where a single comment sent me spiraling into a relentless pursuit of achievements, highlighting the dangers of goals that don't resonate with our core values. This episode isn't just about self-discovery; it's about taking back control and nurturing fulfillment without compromising your health and happiness.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

As high achievers, we need to be so aware of what is driving us forward. Is it our core desire to be better, to grow, to achieve our vision, because it's something that's aligned with why we are here? Or are we chasing this invisible goalpost that is going to tell us that we are somehow enough if we get there, that we are somehow enough if we keep striving and working really, really hard and ultimately burning ourselves out? Because if that is the case, then it is a never-ending black hole that will never be filled and we are going to exhaust ourselves, even trying. If this resonates, stick with us. We're going in deep in this sense.

Speaker 2: 1:14

You're tuning into the Confident, Connected Leader podcast, your premiere destination for breaking through your current professional barriers. Your coach and host, Lisa Jeffs, will help you transcend limitations and achieve new levels of professional success beyond self-doubt, sabotage and burnout. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 1: 1:40

So the purpose of this episode is to help you if you're feeling a little bit disconnected from your work or you're feeling like you're on an escalator and you just keep going and you just keep going, but you're never getting anywhere. It doesn't feel like you're reaching the point where you're like, yes, I feel fulfilled. This is so soul-fulfilling. So we're going to go into why this is. Why can high achievers achieve a lot and have a lot of success but then get to a point where they're just like what am I even doing? What even is this for? And a component of that is this feeling. Many high achievers that I've spoken to I can resonate with this. The clients that I work with a lot of them can resonate with this. This person has it all. They got it going on, but internally they don't feel enough. They're burning out. Well, they've been burnt out for a long time and it's constantly this kind of chase going on, which has its time or place, but at a period it can really start to fizzle you out. So we have to kind of roll back the gears a bit and look at, well, what was driving us forward in the first place, and did something along that path happen to where we somehow switched gears, maybe forgot our intrinsic why and started going down another path. Or maybe we never had that intrinsic why clear. Maybe it was more of a sense of I need to prove myself. Or I need to make this happen to show the person that spoke some words over me and made me feel small, invisible or not enough. Maybe now I'm on this path to prove my worth and going into that. When people speak words over us, now let's preface and say that nobody can make us feel anything. Nobody can make us feel anything. They can be a part of the equation, but we have to own what we feel. We have to be responsible for what we feel, and this can be challenging for some people who are in a very still a victim consciousness, and this is it can be a fine line, because we can absolutely be in a place where we are victimized. I've been in relationships in my past where I was absolutely victimized by a person who was quite abusive with their words and at the end started to get physical when we had a breakup. But even still, I had to own my own inner working what was going on internally, because if I didn't, then I would have no power to change it. I would have no power to move beyond. Looking at it in the sense of when we get into these paths of trying to prove ourselves a lot of times this is unconscious Many years ago when I started my path of, I would say, really leaning into my type A tendencies.

Speaker 1: 6:25

So I've always had somewhat of a type A tendency. I had my first job, which I wanted, which I begged my parents I could have, and I wasn't even supposed to have it because I was 11 and not 12. It was a paper route but I wanted it, so I just wanted to do it. And then, after the paper route, I had a little hiatus and then I started working again after school, my parents' business, and so I've always been working. I've always been the type to find things to do, to work, always be driven towards something. I always remember feeling a little bit just kind of lost at sea when I wasn't working towards something. And I'm not saying that that's a good thing, I'm not saying that's healthy necessarily, I'm not saying it is or it isn't, but it just was what it was. But I would always feel a little bit lost if I didn't feel like I had a purpose, moving forward.

Speaker 1: 7:26

But there was an incidence in my early 20s where someone I cared very deeply for and respected spoke some words over me that weren't intended to be malicious. They were intended somewhat, I think, to be helpful. I think they were mostly unconscious words that that person wasn't particularly thinking about, but they really stung me. It had to do with me being old and uneducated, which now, when I look back, I kind of laugh at because I wasn't old at all. I don't even think I'm old now in my 40s. Certainly wasn't old. This is my early 20s.

Speaker 1: 8:14

But it really triggered me because there was a part of me that did feel like, oh, maybe I am a little bit behind. I had my daughter when I was 24 and before that that was my rough period. If you know my story, that's the period where I was in a lot of addiction in the adult entertainment industry. It triggered parts of me that felt like I was behind, I wasn't doing enough, I wasn't further ahead. It just sent me into this real insane multi-year I don't even know what you want to call it, but where I was just on this achievement rampage and it was just the I was going to. I was in college. Then I was in university and I was making sure I was getting on the Dean's list and I was graduating with honors, and then I was running marathons and then I was getting multiple certifications and all these just a whole bunch of stuff. I'm not saying it was a bad thing. I learned a lot. I achieved a lot. I was really proud of myself for doing a lot of these things.

Speaker 1: 9:38

But it wasn't driven from a place of hey, I want to do this because it's cool and I think I'm going to learn a lot and I want to be really proud of myself. It was driven from a place of I'm going to prove. First it was to this person, I'm going to prove to this person that I'm not old and uneducated. Then it was just a I'm just going to prove to the world or to myself. I'm not even sure what was going on internally when I was doing all this. It was very unconscious.

Speaker 1: 10:16

It wasn't until later on, when I started digging in, that I could see ooh, this is what's happening. I started getting really tired. I started realizing what am I doing? This is really hard living. I'm actually I love being in my 40s because a lot of things just started making sense in my 40s and a lot of things just started to get kicked to the curb. And one of those things was this drive from a place of not enoughness, because that is a road to burnout and you can never fulfill yourself. From that place, there's never a point where you will get where you feel fulfilled, because it's just a whole. It's a black hole.

Speaker 1: 11:09

You keep putting in putting in achievements, putting in this, putting in that, and you're miserable. I heard today I don't even remember who I was listening to, to be honest, but they were talking about them having. Oh, I know who it was. It was Dr Joe Dispenza and he was talking about how he's had multiple interviews with billionaires who have said, you know, were miserable. And I'm not saying that they are miserable because they are in the same pattern, but there's a disconnect with what they are doing, because if there wasn't a disconnect then they wouldn't be miserable. They've obviously achieved a lot, but it's not fulfilling them. So there's a disconnect here. So I want you to start looking at, if you're feeling like you're in a place where you're just not not feeling this exhilaration for your life and for your work what's going on there? Are you connected to your deeper intrinsic why of why this is important and we go through periods where it's you know we have to stop and reconnect with that why, and maybe that why has changed For me over the past few months.

Speaker 1: 12:38

I would say, well, maybe even a year now. Time is going by so quickly. I really had to tune back into okay, why am I? You know what got me really like, just pushed me, you know, through all the tough times, what was driving this drive? And it was really. You know I'm remembering of a sense that I went through a very hard time in my adolescence and when, anytime I tune into that, those times it really fires me up to where I want to help others move beyond that same challenge, because I know many people are going through similar challenges as I went through feeling not enough, having people speak over you, things where they stick with you and you can ruminate on them, and they're so not the truth of who you are, they're not even close to the truth.

Speaker 1: 13:51

You know, anything that's spoken over you that is not serving you, that is lack in limitation, that is judgment and projections. We have to learn how to see these things just for they are and not absorb them into our being and have them just leave this imprint on everything that we do. These things as simple as a comment or as an experience, whether it is a very painful one or whether it wasn't that painful at the time, but maybe now it's gotten roots, it doesn't even matter, and maybe it was years of people speaking over you or maybe it was just one simple thing that happened, but these things leave imprints. You know, when I'm working with clients, one of the first things that we do is healing work. So even if a client comes to me and we are working on their vision and we are working on helping make more money or have clarity on a decision forward, or whatever it is, fill in the blank, we're going to do healing at the beginning because I know, if someone is coming to me, there's stuff to be done, there's stuff to be let go of, there are fears, there is worries, there's doubts, there's things to do, often with their self-esteem, confidence levels, and when we go through the process that I take my clients through often we can a memory will surface, and this memory is nothing huge. I can't tell you how many times a client will say I don't know if this is even relevant, but this is what's coming through and if it is coming through, it's relevant, especially when we're doing intuitive work.

Speaker 1: 16:14

We are working, when I'm working with clients, I'm doing intuitive work, intuitive healing, I'm working with my guides. These come up for a reason and often it's just this thing that people are like oh, this was just this insignificant thing. But then, when we explore it a little bit more, there's emotions that come up right, whether that is grief or sadness, frustration, anger, and these things that have happened leave this mark and it's like an echo that just continues throughout and it holds people back. It holds people back from taking actions. It holds people back from putting out things that they really want to put out because of fear of judgment, because of fear of what other people will think of them, of their work, and it is a massive epidemic. It really is, and one of the comforting things.

Speaker 1: 17:23

I don't know if this is going to comfort you or terrify you, but across the board, we're all very, very alike, especially if you resonate with being a high achiever, someone who's driven, a leader, you have a vision, you're ambitious. It's just these same things that get in the way of you moving forward. So, okay, what do you do with all this? Great Lisa, what do I do with all this? So, if you're resonating with this, I want you to ask yourself some questions. It really involves self-reflection and if you have trouble with this, you can reach out, apply for a breakthrough call. We'll have a conversation, see if coaching is right for you.

Speaker 1: 18:18

But it's really getting clear why am I doing this? Why do I want my vision? What is going on for me here? Am I in a place where it's almost like an emotional storm, where there's just all this doubt and worry and uncertainty? And it's gotten a momentum, it's gained a momentum to where it's bigger than my why right now and this is why I feel kind of stuck and unsure and a little bit stagnant Then it's tuning back. Well, why? What matters to me? What actually gets me excited when I think about it? Is it helping a certain group of people? For me, anytime I hear anything about youth or adolescence even though I'm not directing my practice towards youth and adolescence anytime I hear, it just fires me up. It fires me up. I get really fired up and then I get motivated to move forward.

Speaker 1: 19:33

Part of the work that I'm doing in my work now part of the future. My bigger plan is to bring in more youth work. Whether that's in a nonprofit space or what that looks like, I'm not 100% sure yet, but that fires me up and it's like, yes, this is why I got into this work in the first place is to impact people, is to impact people who are hurting, who have these limitations that aren't actually real limitations in the sense of they're not movable, but they're so real to the person because they are things that have been spoken over them, that have happened to them memories, situations and these can be really, really challenging to release. And it gets me fired up and that's what you want to feel when you are a leader, when you have a vision, and it's firing that back up to be able to move you forward beyond the doubts, beyond the fear, because there's always going to be if you're growing, there's always going to be fears, there's always going to be doubts. That's okay, that's a problem.

Speaker 1: 21:05

Sometimes we have this expectation that, you know, I should have no fear, I should have no doubt, or it should all just be roses and buttercups all the time and it's no fear and doubt is fine. What's not. What you don't want to do is have them stop you. You don't want the fear to get in the way of you moving forward into what the work is. You came here to do so, asking yourself, getting real with yourself, grabbing a pen, grabbing a journal, and start some self-reflection of why, what is my, why, what is my why, what gets you fired up?

Speaker 1: 22:00

Sometimes it's watching, you know, a documentary, or watching a few documentaries, or watching a few movies and allowing yourself, following what your body is telling you. You know where's your body. You know my mother loves environmental stuff. She's huge on it, so that gets her fired up. For me not so much. That's not my purpose here. That's not my path, at least not right now. You know, when I watch, you know certain things, that gets me fired up. Pay attention. Pay attention to what your body is telling you.

Speaker 1: 22:47

And if you feel like you're in a place where you're needing to prove yourself and you're in this kind of burnout loop where you're giving, giving, giving, but you're not receiving back, you're not feeling like you're really receiving, you're not receiving from your achievements, you're not receiving from the goals you're setting, you're not receiving back, I want you to look at your capacity to receive. Are you open to receiving and when we are in a driving mode of trying to prove ourselves, often we're not open to receiving because we don't feel that we're worthy enough. And if we don't feel that we're worthy enough, we're going to have a real challenge receiving. We're going to keep getting in our own way of receiving. We're going to be blocking it. We're going to be blocking the magic and the goodness that the universe is trying to give us. And we are worthy. We don't need to prove, we don't need to earn our worth. We are 100% worthy as we are Now.

Speaker 1: 24:07

Whether we believe that or not, that's another story, but we are, and the more we can lean into this is my purpose and your purpose, by the way, is just you showing up authentically as you. Whatever capacity that is, does it mean you? It doesn't. I'm not saying that it's your certain work that you're doing. It's really just you showing up authentically as you and you know you're moving with authenticity. When you're feeling it right, when you feel excitement, when you feel joy, when you feel these emotions, this is a good indication that you're on the right track, not saying that you can't feel other things, like sadness and grief, and those are all part of our journey, but if you're looking at your work specifically, you know when you're feeling joy and when you're feeling excitement. You know you're on the right path and you are worthy of receiving back all that you are giving forward. So I'm going to wrap it up.

Speaker 1: 25:22

I know we went on a little bit of tangents here, but this is a challenging. This can be challenging for a lot of high achievers who have trouble making space for rest, making space for things to just enjoy themselves, for pleasure, for fun, and a lot of stress and burnout can happen when we're in this mode of trying to prove our worth through working harder and through doing more and you don't need to do anymore. A big part of it is just you receiving more, receiving what is your capacity to receive. Let me know if this resonates. If you want more on this topic, I can go more granular, more specific into certain parts of the content. Send me a DM on Instagram, reach out if it resonates. I would love to hear from you directly If it resonates and hear any of your topic suggestions.

Speaker 1: 26:46

Have a wonderful rest of your day If you're still here. I honor you. Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I take your time seriously and I want to make sure that I'm sharing value for you. So thank you and, as always, let's stay connected.

Speaker 2: 27:06

Thank you for tuning into the Confident, Connected Leader podcast. Lisa Jeffs is committed to helping you break through barriers and climb to new professional heights. If today's episode inspired you, we'd be honored if you could subscribe, rate and leave a review To stay updated with practical tips and insights, follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook. You'll find all relevant links, including those for our complimentary gifts and trainings, in the show notes. Until our next episode, embrace your confidence and stay connected.