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Kamini Wood works with high achievers on letting go of stress, overwhelm and anxiety that comes with trying to do everything, and trying to do it all perfectly
Voiceover: [00:00:00] Rise Up Live Joy Your Way from emotional intelligence through cognitive distortions, certified life and wellness. Coach Kamini Wood is on a mission to help people see the magnificence of their own unique human spirit. Through these small bites of self visualization and self-confidence, you can have healthy relationships, success in business and career, and live the life you want to live, Rise Up Live Joy Your Way.
Kamini Wood: Hi there, and welcome to another episode of Rise Up Live Joy Your Way, whether it's morning, afternoon, or evening. Thank you for taking some time to hang out here with me today. So there's a sentence I've been hearing more and more lately. It's not whispered in crisis. It's not said through tears.
It's often said calmly and almost, almost slightly apologetically, and it sounds something like, I'm not burned out, I'm just done. [00:01:00] It's not quitting, it's not falling apart. It's not even asking for a dramatic reset. It's just this sense of tiredness in a way that doesn't come with collapse. And for people who have always been capable, driven, responsible, steady, this moment can actually feel deeply unsettling and very uncomfortable because if you're not burned out and you're not depressed.
You're not in crisis then what is this feeling of I'm, I'm done. And why can't you just push through it like you always have pushed through it? This usually doesn't happen during the hardest part either, right? It comes after that challenge, after the deadlines have eased, after the crisis has passed, after the relationship has ended, or you have chosen to leave after the kids get older and potentially move out.
After your leadership role has actually stabilized, so on paper, everything looks like it should be better, it should be calmer. There's less [00:02:00] chaos, there's more predictability. There's a sense of actually being slightly more in control. But on the inside, internally, something has really shifted. You're still showing up, you're still performing, and you still do what needs to be done.
The drive feels different. It feels distant. It feels slightly muted. It just doesn't, it doesn't feel the same. You don't feel pulled forward anymore like you used to. You feel like you're actually dragging yourself through things that once felt purposeful or once felt doable, or. The desire to do it. And that creates this quiet internal panic because for such a long time, the motivation that we're talking about here is how you survived.
And this is where most people turn inward with, with, with blame. They go into this place of self blame. They assume, okay, I've become lazy, or I've lost my ambition or lost my edge. Or they start saying things like, I should be grateful. So why am I not more [00:03:00] energized? Why am I not more motivated? Why can't I just do this?
Something is wrong with. Me, right? That's pretty self shaming. Something's wrong with me, something's wrong with my mindset. This is something I've always done. Why can't I do this? I just need to try harder. And they end up adding pressure and they force routines and they push productivity systems and they tell themselves, I just need to be more disciplined.
And the the more they push, the flatter, they actually. Which then reinforces the fear. What if I can't access this drive anymore? What if I can't access the thing that used to create success for me? And so here's the part that I don't think it's talked about enough. A lot of high achievers. We're never motivated by joy alone.
They were motivated by urgency. They were motivated by a sense of responsibility. They were motivated by fear. Fear of letting other people down, fear of falling behind, fear of failure, fear of see being seen as weak or unreliable. And those things don't make you broken. It just makes. [00:04:00] You having had adapted it.
It what happens when we internalize certain beliefs, when pressure is constant, the nervous system learns to mobilize under that stress. So that sense of the adrenaline rush, it becomes familiar, it becomes the known and that urgency becomes normal. We actually normalize that responsibility becomes part of the identity.
And so when pressure, when that pressure lifts, the system doesn't automatically switch to inspiration. It doesn't automatically switch to joy and meaning. It often goes quiet and that quiet can feel like emptiness. And if you don't understand what's happening, it can feel very discombobulating. It can feel so uncomfortable that it creates this sense of.
The sense of loss being lost and this moment is not a failure of character. It's actually a shift. It's a transition in what your motivation is. Your nervous system no longer is willing to run on fear or urgency or pushing through, and it's not [00:05:00] because you're incapable, it's because you have actually moved past survival as the fuel system for a long time pushing worked because it had to.
Right, and now you're at a place where your system is act asking a different question. Your nervous system is actually asking, you know, what actually matters to me when I'm not in survival mode, when I'm not in danger? And that question doesn't come with instant energy. It comes with pause. So when somebody says, I'm just done.
What they're often naming is a limit that they've reached. It's not a dramatic one. It's more of a quiet internal one. It's a boundary that says, I am at my limit. I can't keep producing from a place of depletion. I can't keep performing without having some sense of meaning in what I'm doing. I can't keep overriding myself, and this is the nervous system saying no to another form of self [00:06:00] abandonment.
And so when people who are used to being dependable shift into this place, it can actually be slightly terrifying, right? Because if I'm not the dependable one, who am I? If I don't push? Who am I? Right? So there's almost like this identity crisis that starts to happen. So let's see if we can just simplify this a little bit.
When you've lived in high demand environments for a consistent amount of time, for a long period of time, your system stays in activation mode. And that mode, that activation mode is great. When you're in a, a place of problem solving or you're about to perform or you know, you're about to, it's great for sports, it's great for crisis management, but what it's not great for is longevity.
It's not great for creativity. It's not great for actually feeding your intrinsic motivation because those things require safety. And so when safety finally arrives, the system slows everything down. It's not to punish you, but it is to protect you. [00:07:00] If this resonates, if this hit is hitting home at all, I just want you to notice what are you no longer willing to do?
The way that you used to do it, and I know this is something that comes up for leaders and corporations routinely, as they start moving up that leadership role and the promotion track, there comes a point where maybe. The motivation has shifted and it can be scary. And so for many people, motivation wasn't just a feeling.
It really was an identity, right? Their motivation was how they identify themselves. I'm the driven one. I'm the reliable one. I'm the dependable one. I'm the one who can fix it. I'm the one who holds everything together. And so when that energy has faded. It can feel like you are losing a part of yourself.
And again, that can be really scary because we're now separating you as a person from how you are surviving. And there's grief in that. There's fear [00:08:00] in that, but there's also freedom that we get from that. This phase though, that we're talking about, there's a gap, right? Survival has ended. The chaos has ended, but the meaning and the reclamation and the reconnection with who you are outside of that identity hasn't fully arrived, and that's the gap that feels really uncomfortable.
It can feel somewhat uninspiring. It can feel just downright scary. It can feel, like I said before, where this feeling is I'm just done. There's just this numbness. And so a lot of people try to skip it, right? They, they immediately rush into reinvention. They set new goals, they define new projects. They try to re-identify with that.
Let me push through, let me, let me go to the next thing. But meaning doesn't respond well to pressure, it responds to curiosity. So let me offer a couple different. Takeaways one. Disengagement is often a signal, not a symptom, and what I mean by that is your nervous system is telling you something about capacity, [00:09:00] not your actual commitment.
Number two, motivation doesn't just disappear. It changes fuel sources, right? 'cause fear-based drive fades before a values-based motivation can turn on. And that values-based motivation is what we equate to intrinsic motivation. And number three, you don't need to push through the phase. It's about listening long enough to understand what's trying to emerge.
This phase is not asking you to, you know, not be disciplined or not hustle, right? It's really asking for other things. It's asking for self-honesty. It's asking for pacing. It's asking for you to give yourself permission to not necessarily know. Exactly how this is gonna unfold. And this is where the uncomfortability gets people, uh, it, it unravels them because not knowing feels unsafe for a lot of high achievers.
There's a sense of safety and certainty, but this is where alignment really starts to unfold. So I just want you to hear this. If this, if this is. Hitting it all. [00:10:00] You're not broken, you're not lazy, you're not failing. You haven't lost your edge. It's just transitioning out of a way that you used to operate that required constant self override into a transition that feels quieter and hopefully will get to some place of clarity.
It's you're shifting outta survival mode into thriving mode. If this resonated and you'd like to hear more about how coaching could help you move forward, whether professionally or personally, feel free to book a call with me anytime at coachwithkamini.com and until next time, stay well.
Voiceover: Thank you for listening to Rise Up Live Joy Your Way. For more information, Book a chat with Kamini at www.chatwithKamini.com, or visit her website at www.kaminiwood.com. You can also find Kamini on Facebook or Instagram username, it's authentic me. Thank you for listening! [00:11:00]