In this deeply personal and insight-packed solo episode, Kristen shares a powerful reflection on what she calls “dumpster decisions”—those all-or-nothing moves we make when we’re on the brink of burnout or buried in overwhelm. Drawing from her own journey of business pivots, personal healing, and rediscovery, Kristen opens up about how she threw away more than she needed to, only to later return and reclaim what still sparked joy.
She walks listeners through the difference between rage cleaning your life and intentionally evaluating what still serves your evolving self. Along the way, she delivers relatable stories, thoughtful metaphors (hello, Marie Kondo and Harry Potter’s phoenix!), and a massive announcement that longtime listeners will love.
Spoiler alert: She’s officially back in the weekly coaching chair—and you’re invited.
What You’ll Hear in This Episode:
- What “dumpster decisions” are and why we make them during burnout
- How Kristen’s business and personal life were shaped by burnout recovery
- The importance of honoring your evolution without shame
- How your nervous system holds the key to better habits, performance, and joy
- The birth of Sondera, Kristen’s newest company helping people regulate, realign, and rise
- A sneak peek into the tools, coaching, and transformation waiting inside her new membership
- The full-circle moment: Kristen’s return to live weekly coaching (and how you can join!)
Key Takeaways:
- Burnout doesn’t always mean burning everything down.
- Regulating your nervous system is the missing link between knowing what to do and actually doing it.
- Sometimes, the things you walked away from still belong with you—you just needed space to see it.
- Sustainable success is rooted in self-awareness, alignment, and nervous system integration.
Special Announcement 🎉
Kristen is back in the coaching seat! Starting November, we’re offering a new membership tier called the Sondera Signature Membership and it includes LIVE weekly coaching with Kristen. If you’ve ever wanted direct guidance beyond the strategy—this is your moment.
Join before November 1st to lock in the special pricing: Sondera Signature Membership
Just want the DIY Sondera Membership? Click here!
Timestamps:
00:00 – Welcome + a teaser about a big reveal
02:00 – Rage cleaning, burnout, and personal “dumpster decisions”
06:30 – The Marie Kondo method for life clarity
11:00 – When everything you built no longer fits
14:00 – The myth of business vs. life separation
20:00 – The real gap: strategy vs. nervous system regulation
27:00 – The story behind “Sonder Era” (Sondera) and what it helps people do
34:00 – A return to coaching & why Kristen is more lit up than ever
39:00 – Final encouragements + how to join before November 1st
“Burnout doesn’t always mean you need to burn it all down. Sometimes you just need to put everything in a pile, sit with it, and ask—does this still fit who I am today?” – Kristen Boss
Transcript for episode 234 “Dumpster Decisions and Burnout Recovery”
Kristen Boss (00:04):
Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of the podcast this week. I’m excited. I have a very special, big announcement for you that I will be sharing with you towards the end of this episode. So lock in, stay with me because there’s a little bit of storytelling leading up to it, but it’s going to, my hope is that it serves you and I think you’re going to be pretty excited about what I’ve got coming down the pipeline for you. So I want to talk about this concept that I’m calling dumpster decisions. And I want to ask you if you have ever like me been overstimulated, exhausted, and if my mom ever listened to this episode, she’s just going to laugh at me and be like, how is that true? But I will get to the point where I will see enough clutter, and if there’s enough clutter on my countertops, I will snap.
(00:54):
I go into what I call anybody who’s been there. It’s called rage cleaning, where you just get a trash can and you’re like, everything must go. It’s all going in the trash and nothing is safe. And even my kids know this, even my husband is like, kids, if you want to save your art project, if you ever want to see that again, do not leave it on the counter because nothing is safe When mom is overstimulated and she decides to rage clean, I think we do this same thing with our personal life when it comes to how we approach burnout. Recovery. Hear me out. I believe when we are on the verge of burnout or we are maybe on the back end of it, or we’re in burnout recovery, I think we do something called dumpster decisions. And I think it’s something worth exploring and talking about because I noticed I did it and maybe you do it too.
(01:55):
So I kind of want to take you back to 2019. Maybe it was like 2018. I know it was pre pandemic. And do you remember Marie Kondo where she was like, her cleaning method kind of swept social media, and if you’re not familiar with it, she, oh, goodness, I can’t remember if she is Japanese. I feel like she is Japanese. But she has this approach to cleaning, and it felt like a radical approach at the time, but she would work with people on decluttering and organizing, and it was a very different approach than what most people saw. And so what she would have people do is she would have them go room by room in their house and in each room they would take absolutely everything they own and pile it. So we’ll just start with the bedroom pile, everything they own, every piece of clothing, shoes, socks, literally everything into this giant pile on the bed.
(02:56):
And then from there, she would them pick up each item and hold the item and ask, does it spark joy? Does this item spark joy? And what was interesting is in the beginning, people would sit with an item for a long period of time. And the reason why they would hold onto it would be interesting. It’d be like, well, they’d hold onto it for sentimental reasons or nostalgic reasons, or guilt. Well, somebody bought it for me so I’d feel bad throwing it away. Or if you’re like me, like, oh, well, what if I wear it someday and maybe I’ll drop a few pounds and I can finally wear that and the tag’s been on it for two years or whatever. Or what if I gain a few pounds? I should keep those pants. Whatever our reasons are, we tend to negotiate the reason why we hold on to things.
(03:46):
And so she would ask them like, Hey, does this spark joy? But what happened was with a lot of repetition as they moved through each item, it would become faster for them to identify what truly brought them joy versus something that they could let go. And I will say the letting go wasn’t like throwing in the trash. She would have them also do an exercise of acknowledging the item for what it had brought to them prior. Like, oh, thank you for these memories. Thank you for the way it clothed me and served me at this time, and now I release you. And it didn’t have to be that long-winded every time, but eventually with time and practice, people were able to discern what does it do? I want that. I want, what aligns for me? What reasons am I holding onto something for myself and not for reasons that no longer serve me?
(04:37):
And I think we do this in our personal life. I think we owe it to ourselves to take a minute to inventory the things in our life. And so for me to bring you back, I think in my desire to really get aligned in my life and in my healing, I did the, instead of the Marie Kondo method of what sparks joy, I did the rage cleaning, overstimulated, throw it all in the dumpster approach to my prior business. I knew I wanted to do something more expansive and different. I knew I felt very confined and limited to only talking about marketing and copy and sales. And that felt very tedious and limited, especially when I was like, I want to help people on a deeper level. Do I still want them to succeed in business? Absolutely. Do I still want them to win and grow their paychecks and grow their revenue and see success?
(05:43):
Absolutely. But I felt like I was neglecting the human behind it. So I knew there was a pivot. But I think because, and if you haven’t listened to the three part episode of the Rise and the fall and the healing of the last business I built, it might not make sense for you to understand of why I rage cleaned my life, and that is what I did. I just assumed all of it hurt me. None of it serves. I never want to experience that level of pain or emotional suffering again, therefore, it all must go. And so I think I kind of did a clearance sale, for lack of a better term. If you’ve ever walked by those doors where it says everything must go, I kind of did that mentally and emotionally with my business. It was just like it all has to go letting go of my podcast of the business.
(06:37):
And I also knew the audience I was serving at the time felt too limited, and I knew I wanted to expand my scope, but I had shut all of it down. And I do think I did it and service to my healing. But what I think, I overdid it, and I think I went through the burnout means I have to burn down everything. And I’ve seen people do this. I’ve seen people do this when they’re either on the brink of burnout, you will know you’re on the brink of burnout when you start fantasizing about burning it all down, being like, I will tell you this right now, if you are fantasizing about burning it all down, you are flirting with burnout, my friend. This is a mental and emotional and psychological cue to check in with yourself and ask, okay, where am I depleted? Where have I not poured into myself?
(07:31):
Because I would say burnout is when we have overextended what we are giving and we’re not filling our cup with things that truly to borrow Marie Kondo’s language, spark joy. We do the things. I think we end up doing things out of nostalgia. I owe it to myself, and I even think I talked about this in one last episode of why we’re afraid to pivot. It’s either because we have sunk cost, the sunk cost bias, where it’s like, I’ve already put so much time and effort and energy into this, therefore I have to keep putting time, effort, and energy into this. And that’s actually how businesses tend to go bankrupt when business owners ignore the signs and they stay in it because of sunk cost bias. Or there may be with this idea of why do we hold onto things? I think nostalgia or fear of disappointing people, if I let this go, people will be upset with me.
(08:29):
They’ll be angry. And so there’s a lot to contend with when it comes to realigning our life with what truly matters for us. And I will also say, what matters to you at 20 aren’t the same things that matter to you at the age of 30. The things that matter to you at 30 are not the same things that matter to you at 40 and on and on and on. I will tell you for me, when I set out with my first business, my 30-year-old self and how she viewed the world, set those terms, and she decided what those goals would look like, and she decided what success looks like, my 40-year-old self has a completely different view on what success is, what fulfillment is, what impact is, what happiness is. Did I have to experience a lot of pain to redefine those things? Unfortunately, yes.
(09:15):
If I could spare you from some of that pain, I would love to do that. But this idea of when we are on the precipice of burnout or we are in burnout, I think our natural tendency is to think everything must go burn it all down. Is there a time and place for that? Maybe? And maybe there is the idea of like, I’m going to nerd out and use my Harry Potter reference, like the idea of the phoenix, the bird that bursts into flames and becomes a pile of ash, and then from the ashes it rebirths and it goes through this cycle. I do think we do that. I think this is our life. I think we go through the birth, the glory, so to speak, the look, I’m a big, beautiful bird at the height of the height of our beauty. And then in the movie Harry Potter, it’s like Harry notices the bird and Dumbledore is like, oh yeah, she’s due any day to burn up or something, or the bird was looking great, Harry’s in the office, and all of a sudden the bird just bursts into flames.
(10:21):
And Dumbledore says in the book, he says, oh yeah, that bird was looking real sad. Its feathers were molting. It was looking pretty pitiful. It was due. She was due. She was ready to burn up. And I think maybe that’s what happens in our life personally. We start looking, we outgrow that version of ourselves, and there is the part that has to burn it down, but does it have to stay burned? Does it mean everything goes in the dumpster and we never see it again? Or is the burning it down really a more I’m going to deconstruct or clean out the closet of this era and put it all in the center and sit with each item and ask myself, does this still fit who I am today? This shoe, this piece of clothing, this, I loved it 10 years ago. It fit me like a glove 10 years ago, but it does not fit me or serve the person I am today.
(11:17):
I think this happens in so many areas of our life, and I think when we do this, I think people freak out. I think people were like, wait, but this used to be my favorite outfit. This used to be my thing. Why isn’t it fulfilling for me anymore? And we have an identity crisis and we think something has gone terribly wrong. I actually don’t think anything has gone wrong. I think it’s an opportunity for a realignment with the current version of yourself. And if we can remove the shame around it and be like, Hey, nothing’s wrong with you, this is actually a really healthy part of the human experience to ask yourself, Hey, how have I evolved and what gets to come with me in this next season? So here’s what I did. I did the dumpster thing and I threw everything out. And from that place, I thought, I can’t have a personal brand.
(12:01):
I knew I still loved coaching, but I was like, all right, I’ll be consulting for larger companies. I’ll be consulting leaders, and I’ve been working with really great people who have massive responsibility and weight on their shoulders, and it’s a real privilege to coach them in leadership and performance in these high stakes environments. And so in all of this, what has been interesting is in the past year, I didn’t realize this, but I told someone that I worked with, I said, I feel like I’m diving back into the dumpster of the things I threw away too soon because I made a dumpster decision from my burnout thinking I had to burn it all down and I had to throw it away and this thing didn’t have value. And I found what has been so interesting in the last year, giving myself some distance, some space, some time and reflection.
(12:52):
I’ve been going back to the pile where I threw everything and thought, I don’t think any of this fits anymore. And one at a time, I’ve been pulling out pieces and being like, I actually, this particular thing lights me up. This particular thing fills me with so much joy and purpose and fulfillment. I’m going to bring it back. One of these was the podcast. I found myself missing it. I was like, gosh, I miss it. I miss talking to my people. I miss their insights. I miss their feedback. I know people were telling me, I listen to it every Monday. I’m excited. I’m like, gosh, I miss it. I don’t know how else to describe it. It just felt like a scratch between my shoulder blades that I couldn’t reach, and it was driving me insane. I’m like, okay. And no part of it felt like obligation.
(13:36):
It lit me up. That’s when I knew, oh, this is right for me. So I picked up that item. And then as I’ve been doing more things like realizing it’s time to tell my story, I was holding that close and it’s like, alright, it feels right and aligned to tell my story. And then there’s been the other thing. And so here’s kind of where we’re kind of leaning into the reveal in this. There’s been one other item that I sat down that I didn’t think I would pick up so soon. And as I’ve just been working on this new business in the startup season and healing and kind of realigning myself with what feels right and purposeful at this time, I will tell you, I have to rewind back a little bit to a year ago. So a year ago when I was in starting my healing process and before we closed the social selling academy, I had this, again, the scratch between my shoulder blades that I couldn’t reach was I felt like my students were suffering with things that weren’t necessarily related to their paycheck in business and the areas that were suffering was actually impacting their paycheck in their business.
(14:57):
And I thought, okay, if I’m only ever talking about their business, but I’m never addressing their big beautiful life that is 90%, that is like 90% of their mental real estate that they’re thinking about their kids, their spouse, their family, their work, their nine to five, the mental load that they’re carrying around on top of trying to be a business owner. If I’m not addressing that 90%, what good is the 10%, especially if the 90% informs and has a direct impact on the 10%. So that’s where I was. It feels like a disservice to only be like, all right, let’s talk about your sales, your marketing, when there might be something weighing deeply on them that’s preventing them from being consistent, managing their time, why they’re procrastinating, why they’re spiraling and shame. And so we did this thing where I invited my husband on and I was like, you know what?
(15:48):
We’re going to do this thing called a Beyond the Business call, and I decided to start a free Facebook community. I was like, Hey, you guys can be in here. We’re excited to have you. And how we’re going to open it up is maybe it was a Facebook community later. I can’t really remember. All I know is that I announced to all of our students in both our programs and social selling academy and social selling Leadership school. I was like, Hey, life cannot, business is not done in a vacuum. I don’t know any human that’s able to fully compartmentalize and shut off their humanity and show up as a robot and just do their business without while ignoring all other parts of their life now. Now I’ll nuance that and say some of us, me, hi, my name is Kristen. My way of escaping my life was running to my business.
(16:43):
So that created its own set of problems. So I was able to recognize those people being like, oh, I see my people that are running to business because that gives them more dopamine and validation and happiness and worth and whatever than what’s going, whatever’s going on in their personal life because it’s easy. It’s easy to go to work and feel good about myself. And so I would see this and I was just like, all right, life business isn’t done in a vacuum. Come to this call and I will coach you on anything, anything you need coaching on anything that is weighing on you that is preventing you from showing up the way you want to. Because most of my audience was entrepreneurs and some people were like, I haven’t worked. And I even put in a little, what’s the word? Oh my gosh, it’s, I’m totally spacing the word right now, but I kind of create a little side note and I said, even if you haven’t worked your business in years, come to this call.
(17:42):
I will coach you. And I had a certain number of attendees that we averaged in our academy for our coaching calls when we opened it up beyond the business, call it like five xd, our normal average attendance. I think we had 250 people come to that call. And it told me people were starving to talk about the things that were impacting their business, but they didn’t have a place to sort through it. And we just kept doing it. And we kept it at, I think once a month, and I think in December of last year, we did it every week during the holidays. And I got off every call and my heart was bursting. I’m like, this is it. This is what I care so much about. This is how I want to help people. Did we sometimes talk about their business? Yes, but oftentimes if someone was coming to the call, they’d be like, I don’t know why I have such a problem with procrastination or time management or productivity, and I have all of these tools available to me. And this is where I started to see the gap. Friends, this is where I saw the gap. I said, okay, all these people have a library of knowledge that they can access it any time.
(18:59):
What is the gap between the information and implementation of what they want to be doing? And it was also when I was building and developing the leadership school and I was teaching people about how human behavior works at the neuroscience-based level, I started to see an overlap and I realized, I’m like, oh, all my days, I think this is it. And that’s when I knew, I was like, this is it. This solves our infobesity problem. I mentioned that in the last episode, but infobesity is our propensity to take in a ton of information, research and knowledge and all of these things online courses and trainings and downloads and PDFs, and we are stuffed like Thanksgiving and we aren’t able to mobilize ourself. We’re not burning any of the stored energy or stored knowledge. And so it’s becoming, it’s a massive problem. So I’m like, okay, why is it that people who know better are struggling to do better?
(20:03):
And I’m like, wait a minute. This is it. And this is where I started to really unpack and I brought in experts because I am just like, Hey, who can I bring into my circle who are educated experts in the areas of neuroscience, of human behavior, of trauma, of how we are wired, our needs as a human? I know this all fits. And so that’s when I realized, I was like, okay. And I talked about this in the last episode of how our nervous system is actually the hidden driver to all of your behaviors. And when I realized, I’m like, well, what am I always coaching on? And it’s always, if it’s not like everybody wants the how, and I will give you the how all day long, that’s what I was doing with people. I’m like, I had a whole library of how to talk to people, how to start conversations, how to write copy, how to have a good hook, how Listen, listen, listen.
(21:02):
You do not need another. How don’t you dare? Don’t download another how. What you actually need is to learn to integrate the information, integrate it into your brain, into your body, and implement it and consistently do so. This is the massive gap I saw. And so I’m like, wait a minute. If we can help people bring their brain back online faster because do you know what in the front of your brain, we’re going to get a little nerdy here in the front of your brain. That is where your executive function, your ability to prioritize tasks, that is where your critical thinking is. Your ability to be curious, your ability to be empathetic and understand things from somebody else’s lens, your ability to prioritize urgent tasks, your ability to, again, critical reasoning, critical thinking, all of that is in the frontal lobe of your brain when you are activated, when your nervous system senses any kind of threat, this is a threat to your sense of belonging, which by the way, your fear of judgment threatens your sense of belonging, your sense of security, which by the way, if you’re freaking out about paying your mortgage, that’s your body’s sense of security that feels a threat.
(22:21):
You feel like you are misunderstood. That again triggers your sense of belonging. You see where I’m going here, your nervous system, it is quite primal. All it cares about is how we can get away from the thing or offload the stress or whatever trigger is causing us to have a fight flight, fawn or fawn or freeze response. And I could watch, I watched this as I listen, when you’ve coached thousands of people and you’ve watched their faces for years and years, I could literally picture the faces of my students, the ones that would be chronically in freeze response, where they would sit with the information, they would have a to-do list, they would have a little task list of what they were setting out to do, and as soon as they sat at the computer, it was like their brain got erased. They would suddenly forget everything that they were going to do, or they would suddenly be like, oh, I forgot.
(23:08):
Or they would suddenly feel ill-equipped and they’d be like, I think I need to go watch one more training, prepare myself a little bit more. I need more analysis. Or I would watch people with a fawn response. I would watch them over and over feel so worried about their dreams, their goals, their business, maybe being an inconvenience to someone they love or taking away time from someone they love, where they felt so consumed by guilt that they would be like, I don’t think I should have a business because it’s taking from others. I’d watch them collapse. I’d watch my flight people, people that were like discomfort. Don’t do that. They’d be lost in the scroll. As soon as they sit down to work, they’re like, what’s that? Is that my laundry? What other things can I get doing? They would procrastinate or I’d watch my people in my fight response that would be just an over anxious mess where they would run a hundred miles an hour and burn out two days later, or they would take on too many tasks or they would have such perfectionistic standards that nothing would get put out.
(24:10):
Do you hear what I’m saying? I look to all of these things and I’m like, this is not a knowledge problem or a strategy problem. What we have is a dysregulation problem. We have people whose nervous systems are chronically in a state of fight, flight, fauna freeze. They do not know how to get their body out of that state in order to access their frontal lobe, where all of the critical thinking is where they’re able to actually access the strategy and implement the strategy. Friends, do you realize how profound this is? The nervous system, nervous system regulation has kind of been hanging out in the therapy spaces that’s kind of been hanging out in trauma PTSD and therapy, but the conversation about pairing nervous system intelligence, meaning understanding when your body is going into some form of stress response, being able to identify that and regulate in real time, meaning get out of your back, the back of your brain, calm yourself down so your brain doesn’t no longer register as a threat and you can actually access your frontal lobe and actually implement and do the thing you guys, no, it’s not happening.
(25:20):
That’s where I saw this massive gap. I was like, no one is teaching how the nervous system is the key to absolutely everything. How you respond to your children, how you respond to your spouse, your coworkers, the social media. If you are chronically exhausted, hear me out. If you are on social media and you are exhausted, you get off and you are exhausted, angry, frustrated, emotionally down, confused, you find yourself wanting to eat or shop. I promise you that in some form, social media has you dysregulated. Your nervous system is dysregulated, meaning you are feeling some form of stress response. And so your body is going to be like, Ugh, I feel all kinds of wired. I don’t feel good. And so I’m not surprised when people are like, Kristen, I hate being on social media. I hate it. I’m like, well, how are you caring for yourself?
(26:08):
If you’re already stimulated in your everyday life and you go online and you literally watch the dumpster fire that is the internet and you don’t have parameters in place to care for your mental health to regulate yourself as soon as you’re done scrolling and then you’re going to put your phone down and go into the chaos of your every day, are you tired? I just can’t help but wonder, how tired do you have to be to realize, oh, I might actually need to do something about this. And we are early in the conversation when it comes to nervous system intelligence and how that directly impacts high performance and leadership and productivity and how you show up in your everyday. And that is where I was like, this is what it is. This is where we’re going. And that was the birth of Sondera, our new company.
(26:53):
And if you’re like, where’s the name come from? Sondera means it’s the realization that everyone around you is living a rich and complex life just like you are. They’re the main character in their own story, and their life is just as nuanced and complex as yours. It’s almost a story of empathy. And then obviously era, the start of a new chapter. And so putting that together. And so we built this library of tools because I was like, I don’t want to have a library that’s like a huge course where people have to go in and consume a bunch of knowledge. What if I could create a mental gym where people can pick up a tool and use it in real life when they are dysregulated? What if we can teach people how to understand their unique nervous system response? And we actually developed 10 different personality types, essentially like we call ’em adaptive personality types.
(27:43):
It’s how you adapt to stress when it happens in real time, when your nervous system is triggered. Most people, of course, you’re going to have a different response based on the scenario, but we have found most people will default to one primary type of stress response. There are some people that primarily they’re a fighter or a freeze or a fawn. And based on that, it’s like, okay, now that we understand that one size cannot fit all meaning, guys, this is why this handing someone the how does not work unless you understand who they are and where I’m like, wait, hold on. If someone can understand how they’re wired, how they are neurologically and psychologically wired to handle stress, we’ve just handed them the secret code because they will understand, oh, wait, hold on. Somebody who has a freeze response has to approach goals completely differently than somebody who is a fawn response, a fight response or a flight response.
(28:47):
Every single nervous system takes in stimuli or circumstances differently. This is why I can hand out a playbook to every single person, and there’s going to be a million different results because everyone is integrating and implementing or not implementing the information differently. But I’m like, man, if we could give people tools based on how they’re wired, if we can teach them how to regulate in real time around these areas in life, they can do anything. And so that’s what we built. We built Thes membership, and that’s all well and good. That was what I built. And then we’re coming back to my special announcement. So I had that and it’s been great. I will tell you for, but one of the things that we built in there was just like, okay, how do we help people measure change and success? If it can’t be just about somebody growing their paycheck, how are we measuring success outside of that?
(29:50):
Especially if someone is wanting to measure their relationships, their communications skills, their resilience, their grit, their time management, their productivity, how they’re utilizing support, how they’re showing up in the workplace. All of those things we’re like, well, how do we measure those? If it can’t be measured always by a paycheck, how does the stay at home mom measure this change without if there’s not a paycheck? Or how does a man measure his success with his wife at home that’s not showing up on a paycheck? And so it’s just like, all right, so how are we doing this? So one of the things we did was we’re like, okay, what if people can audit, take an audit of how their stress, how their essentially, how their primary stress response, how they respond and adapt to pressure when it hits, if we can get them to score across six different areas of life and kind of be able to know where they’re bleeding.
(30:50):
So the six different areas is identity and confidence, productivity and time management, career and finance, relationships, relationships. And then we have, oh, goodness, guys, this is what I get for not doing it. Doing it on the spot. Hold on. Oh, emotional regulation and stress management. And we already said identity and confidence, stress management, career and finance. Oh, wellness, goodness, wellness, your overall health, goodness. Sorry guys. It took me a while to get through that. But in those six different categories. So if we’re like, okay, if someone could assess across score across these six areas, anytime if they did this monthly or quarterly, they could actually actively look at, so to speak, where they are bleeding, and we can actually teach people to triage where their pain is. And then from there, they’re always able to grow. And then we created another thing where we’re like, what if we can actually score how people are their resilience, how quickly they’re able to come back from conflict, how they’re able to handle emotional stress, how they’re able to bounce back from conflict in real time, how they’re able to ask for help when needed.
(32:08):
So we have these six areas that kind of score what we call your cognitive flexibility or your stress response. It’s your emotional resilience index. How resilient are you when it comes to conflict and those things. So we built that. And here’s the crazy thing. So we launched in May and we’ve had our clients and we also, we have our membership, and then we have people that work one-on-one with our certified coaches that went through an extreme vetting process. And our coaches are amazing. And so what we saw, what we have been seeing is people with their emotional resilience index scores were almost doubling after 60 days when they were taught the regulation skills, when they were using the tools. And then we were actually noticing what was coming up in their life audit, how they scored across the six areas, and they were actively able to see measurable change in the areas that had been causing them pain.
(33:07):
That’s where I’m like, we have to be able to measure people winning in this. And so we did that and I’m like, oh, this is so great. And so that’s when I realized all well and good, but my heart, I still had the itch between my shoulder blades, and that’s when I knew what I was missing so much. I was missing coaching. I used to sit once a week and get on a Zoom with the students and they could bring any, it was limited to business for two years, but they’d get on and I’d coach them. It was the best part of my week when the company scaled and grew. I own it. I think I made, do I want to call it a mistake? Sure. Whatever. My ego is so beat to a pulp at this point. I’m like, fine. I’ll say it on my podcast.
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Did I maybe, do I regret that feels better? Do I regret scaling away from coaching weekly? I do. I do. I don’t think I realized just how life-giving and vital it was to me. I don’t think I realized how much joy it sparked until I had scaled away from it and I had become a company owner and I was less of a coach and I couldn’t identify why I was so miserable. You know why? Because I had moved myself away from the thing that brought me so much joy, so much fulfillment where I could actually see on the screen somebody having a breakthrough and realizing that I wasn’t seeing that anymore. I don’t know, I just wasn’t happy. And so I’m like, wait, I miss this. And I’ve since started working privately with clients this year of people that own large businesses and they have a large income.
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And so I have my private clients and I’m like, oh my goodness. Starting with my private clients, I was like, I miss this so much. I was so happy. They’re the best part of my week. I’m like, you know what? I’m bringing this back. I’m coming back to coaching. This is the big announcement. I’m coming back to coaching weekly. And we are offering, we have a DIY option for our sonera membership, which is like if you just want the tools or access to the gym where you have all the equipment, you can understand yourself, you can take the adaptive personality type quiz, learn about yourself. It’s a 26 page report. I mean, you’re going to feel like we’ve read your diary and we have cameras installed in your house. We’ve had people say, I’ve never understood myself at this level ever. And I’ve taken every personality test out there.
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We’ve had, by the way, all of our material is backed by an advisory board of psychologists and therapists and people that specialize in neuroscience. So this isn’t pseudoscience. This is actually stuff that we’ve brought in people to help make sure that we are doing it right by you. But this is where people, we’ve even had licensed therapists come in, not on my board and be like, I’m blown away by how accurate these reports are. And so from that, once you have the awareness, then you can actually learn to retrain and rewire your brain to handle your stress differently, how you respond to things. And so that is what sand is. So we cover the six areas in the life audit, and I was just like, I want to be back in the chair. I want to be coaching people. This is what makes my heart so happy.
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And so we are starting that in November. Friends, I’m back in the coaching chair in November. So if you’re like, I want access to weekly coaching, you’re going to want to check the link in my show notes. We’ve got emails going out, but this, I am so delighted to be able to do this. And so we actually sent an email out and we asked like, Hey, what’s most important to you? What do you want coaching on? What’s coming up for you? I was floored. The number one thing that came up for people kind of blew my mind was identity and confidence. Those were the biggest ones. And then of course we heard time management, productivity and relationships. I was like, done, say less. I’ve got you. We are finally going to tackle this at the root. We’re not going to be treating this symptomatically with strategic medicine.
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Listen, strategy’s all well and good, but if you have a nervous system that is chronically dysregulated, strategy will never show up for you when you need it because we do not default to strategy. We default to survival every time we feel unsafe or triggered. This is why some people are like, why do I procrastinate? Why do I overthink? Why am I prone to distraction? Why do I micromanage? Why do I people please? It’d be like it’s our nervous system and we’re actually going to teach you how to do this. We’re going to give you the tools and it’s going to be, and none of it is like this cumbersome. Great. Now I have to watch this one hour, one hour thing and fill out a workbook. I mean, if you want to, but you don’t have to. It’s like, Hey, here’s the tools. Here’s how to understand yourself and then come to weekly coaching and we will help you integrate.
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That is what it’s about. It’s not a how to. The weekly coaching is for integration and implementation. In any of the six areas of your life, we’ll have themed calls. I am beyond pumped. Guys, if you haven’t been able to catch my vibe this whole episode, so listen, that was my big exciting, but I’m just going to circle back to the whole when you’re burning out, I know you’re tempted to burn it all down, but that might not be the answer. What might be the better answer is to take it all and put it into a big pile, put it all there. There is nothing sacred. There is nothing that’s like, I know for sure that I want this, so I’m not going to put in the pile. No, everything goes in the pile, not the dumpster. Everything goes in the pile. And being willing to sit with each thing and ask, but why do I feel the need to hold onto this?
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And do I like those reasons? And if the reason is like, I don’t want to disappoint people, do you like that reason? Ew, I don’t like that reason. Maybe it’s because I’m 40 and I’m like, I don’t want to live my life afraid of disappointing people. And chances are I’m already a disappointment. I’m already a disappointment to someone out there. So might as well just go full steam ahead and be like, cool, I’m disappointing somebody, but do you know who I’m done disappointing is myself. And maybe you are done disappointing yourself too. So here’s what I want to encourage you to do. If you are tinkering on the edge of burnout, if you’ve done burnout, if you’re dancing with burnout, if you’re like, I don’t do burnout, whatever. Have you be willing to ask the hard questions of like, is this aligned with who I am today?
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This served me five years ago. This served me two years ago. Does it still serve me now? And what is the most loving decision I can make that honors that version of me today? And it might be relationships. There might be someone you need to say goodbye to, and it might not be a goodbye. It might just be like a, I’m just going to have boundaries in place and I’m not going to initiate anymore. I’ve had plenty of those. Maybe that’s a whole man. Should we do a podcast episode on friendship breakups and you’re in adulthood? Oh my gosh, no one prepared me for that. Anyways, I digress. Friends, we have a special going on if you join before November 1st, so be sure to check the show notes. Join me in there. I’d love to coach you up. I’ve had so many people over the years say, I’d love to be in your programs, but I’m not the audience who serve.
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I’d be like, guess what? If you’re a dysregulated human being that struggles with nervous system regulation, if you also feel stress from time to time, newsflash, you do. If you are also wanting to improve any area of your life, guess what? You’re my people and we want you there. So friends, I hope you’re ready for a good ride. I’ve got lots more good episodes coming your way. I hope you have a really fantastic week, and I hope we see you inside the Son signature membership that includes live weekly coaching. Alright, friends, we’ll see you next week. Have a fantastic week.
