Stephanie: Hi friend. Welcome to The Big Four Oh. It's Stephanie, and today you've got me all to yourself. My recent conversation with Angela Hwang got me thinking about burnout. I got curious to investigate a few past conversations with people who have experienced burnout and explore how it intersects with two larger themes around the transition we go through sometime around our 40th birthday.

Angela Hwang is a high achieving marketing executive and the daughter of Korean immigrants. She spent decades chasing a version of success that she finally realized was not her own, and at age 40 a health crisis and the demands of motherhood forced her to confront the costs of living by somebody else's definition of the American dream.

So many of us spend our first decade or two of adulthood doing all the things we think we should be doing. We chase degrees, careers, promotions, paychecks, stability, approval. We build careers, families, retirement accounts. We check every box we were handed by someone older and wiser than us. And for most of us, it works for a while, until it doesn't.

Here's how my guest Tara McFarland put it.

Tara: There's this great quote that I heard in a personal growth and development class where it's like the Universe will whisper to you. And then it might get a little louder and it might start talking to you. And then it might kind of like tap you on the shoulder. And then eventually you need a big whack with a two by four to wake up. So I'm the two by four variety.

Stephanie: I too was a two by four girl in my mid to late thirties. I've told the story before about the job situation that I was in at the time starting to deteriorate, but I was committed to making it work and succeeding at all costs. Meanwhile, my body was screaming at me to listen to it instead of my bullhead. And I had to be told that I was having panic attacks every night before bed. So there was that, but don't let me get too far off track.

The second and related theme is learning to tune into and then trust your own voice. For much of our lives, we listen to those people that are older and wiser than us, our parents, teachers, bosses, mentors, even society at large, to understand what is expected of us and what path we need to follow to become healthy, happy, successful, and safe.

Let's go back to Tara for a minute. In high school, she loved history. She was artistic, a ballet dancer and self-proclaimed super girly. But she grew up in a science-focused family, and as she got closer to college, she kept hearing, what are you gonna do with a history degree? Her parents told her the only thing she could do with a history degree was become a teacher, and she knew she didn't wanna do that.

Tara: I had no idea what stress did to my body. I had a talk with my supervisor and my superior about a certain meeting that I had been in on this big project that I was managing about how I looked angry the whole time that I was in the meeting. I didn't even really talk in that meeting. I took notes, so I thought I was doing, doing well

Stephanie: This is how the script gets written for us, quietly and with the very best of intentions, but it's insidious. And for a long time we don't even know that it's programmed into our operating system. So this kind of burnout is more than just being tired. It's more than needing a vacation. It's existential. And it shakes your identity, and someone who knows a little bit about that in particular is my guest, AdaPia D'Errico.

Listen to what she said.

AdaPia: it felt like the only thing that I was always so sure about, which was my ability to succeed, wasn't working. And it felt like the floor fell out from under me, because I always knew I could count on myself to succeed, to get things right, to do things well. And so what it felt like was now I really don't know who I am.

Stephanie: I'm no one because if I can't work, I'm like useless. What am I gonna do? When things are stressful or things are crazy we cope with capability. We cope by just getting it done and checking stuff off the list and being so capable and managing it all.

For many of the women I've talked to, burnout wasn't a sign they were failing.

It was the signal they needed to realize that they had to be done playing someone else's game because if they kept going on like this, things were gonna get even worse. Jennifer Arthurton, another one of my past guests, spent decades succeeding by everyone else's standards until the whole thing fell apart.

Listen to what she said.

Jennifer: Probably the greatest realization for me when I was in my bed, unable to get out, forced into a place of stillness. We are given the rule book, especially as women, we are given the playbook early on. Right?

It's like, go to school, get good grades, get a good job, work your way up the corporate ranks, you know, somewhere in there, get married, have a kid check, check, check, check, check, check. I was checking all of the boxes. I was like the good girl, right? Like the good student.

Stephanie: Yep.

So I kept going like, okay, I'm going to achieve more, achieve more, but the more was never satisfying because I was more of the wrong thing. Like, you know, they say you put the ladder against the wall and you climb the ladder when you realize, oh my God, I'm on the wrong wall.

Stephanie: In her forties, Jennifer began to feel a quiet dissatisfaction beneath the surface of a life that looked perfect on paper. She had a successful career, a stable family. All the right boxes had been checked, but by age 50, everything unraveled almost all at once.

Who am I really?

Here's Jennifer again.

Jennifer: By all measures of anything outside of myself, I was living the perfect life. Like, I got to go to Olympic events, I was standing on stage with Lady Gaga. Like I had these incredible experiences. I was really well paid.

And there was still this like little niggling inside me that I would shut it down and I shut it down over and over and over again. Until I really had no choice. And what happened was in the year leading up to my 50th birthday. So, starting from age 49,

Stephanie: all in within under a year, I found myself divorced, an empty nester. My kid moved 3 hours away to go to school. I was let go from my career and I was bedridden with a stress related illness.

Jennifer: Oh, boy, did it ever. And, it was as though, all of my identities who I thought I was in the world was literally stripped away from me in a very short space of time. And I found myself, like, most days, I couldn't get out of bed.

I was, mentally, physically, and emotionally completely spent and I would lie in my bed and like, first of all, throwing myself a big old pity party. Like, what's wrong with me? Everybody else has got their shit together. Why is my life crumbling? And then what I realized was like, if I'm not a wife, if I'm not a mother, if I'm not a corporate executive, then who am I? Right? Like, who I? That question just kept coming up over and over and over again.

And then the other part was. I had no idea what I wanted for my life. If I wasn't consumed with all of these things. Then what was I going to do with the rest of my life? And truly, at that point, believed that this was the beginning of the end for me.

Here's what she said.

Julie: So, this deficiency that I felt inside, I felt like I had to prove myself.

What I learned over time was that all of the things that I was doing for myself they weren't from a place of love.

Stephanie: The truth is we are not meant to be the same person for our entire adult lives. This transition, this midlife reckoning, it isn't a crisis. It's a calling to stop outsourcing your worth to someone else's approval. To stop chasing someone else's version of success. To come home to yourself, even if it's for the first time.

Can you think of anything that you've been chasing that disappears just when you think you've arrived?

Let's hear rapid fire from a few of my past guests, what they had to say on the topic. First, back to Jennifer Arthurton

Jennifer: For most of my entire life, I was trying to prove my own enoughness. If I had a certain job title, I was successful. If I had a certain salary or a certain type of house, or I drove a certain type of car that was like, Hey world, look. Look how good I am.

Stephanie: And Tara McFarland,

Tara: If I feel like I'm effective, then I will be happy. And I was constantly searching for that outside of myself in a job by seeking out promotions.

Stephanie: And my most recent guest, Angela Hwang.

Angela: It was a way of me showing, okay, this is where I am in the corporate ladder. When you're in big cities like Silicon Valley you wanna differentiate yourself and say, I work hard, I have this job, and I have to show that I'm successful to other people. One of the best, unfortunately way to do it is to own material things that kind of support your story. So I was falling into this trap of, I deserve it. I'm going to spend my money on this 'cause I deserve it. This is why I'm burned out. This is why I'm stressed out. And yeah, this is how, a director should be dressed,or this is what a CMO looks like.

AdaPia: I propped myself up with capability until that rug was pulled right out from under me, and then all I had was myself.

Stephanie: And Julie Hutsell Starling.

Julie: I was always looking for approval. And in fact, the same thing that was driving me in relationships was driving me in work as well. So, this deficiency that I felt inside, I felt like I had to prove myself.

Stephanie: Jennifer's realization came after decades of following the Good Girl script of success, career, marriage, family. Her burnout forced her to acknowledge that her life had been built for someone else's definition of enoughness.

Angela had to come to terms with the fact that she had built the life her parents prescribed, and that prescription was born of their own fears.

So let's be clear, burnout doesn't always come in the form of collapse. I mean it can, but sometimes. Sometimes it looks like crying in your car after another quote, unquote, successful presentation. Or feeling hollow in a meeting when you're supposed to feel proud. Or wondering why the life you worked so hard to build feels more like a trap than a triumph.

Number one, quiet discontent that won't go away.

Jennifer kept pushing away the question. Is this it. Julie felt like a square peg in a life that looked good but felt wrong. And Angela woke up one day and realized I never questioned the milestones, I just kept going.

So let's be real. It's just us chickens here. You don't have to share your answers with anyone but your own self. Let me ask you two questions. Are you experiencing a quiet, maybe even persistent, dissatisfaction even when things seem objectively good? And is there any part of you whispering, something's off?

It doesn't have to be that way, and it doesn't mean that you have to blow up your life either.

How about you? Are you getting any feedback from your body that you are ignoring? Are you completely oblivious to nightly panic attacks for more than six months like I was? Where is your body asking you to slow down even if your mind won't listen? Are you overriding fatigue, tension, or illness in order to just keep going?

And I know, I know we're all tired. We're all exhausted, but are you truly overriding your body?

Tara said, my whole identity was wrapped up in engineering, like who am I if I'm not this female engineer climbing the corporate ladder?

Jennifer said, if I'm not a wife, if I'm not a mother, if I'm not a corporate executive, then who am I?

Considering these statements, do you think you could be brave enough to reflect on what would be left if your title, role, or responsibilities disappeared tomorrow? Have you confused what I do with who I am? And don't worry, a lot of us have. You are not alone in that. In fact, you're in some pretty freaking good company considering the women I'm pulling back in today.

Julie Hutsell Starling said it really well.

Julie: Truly the answer to healing burnout is learning to love yourself, all the way around hundred percent inside out.

Stephanie: And Mindy Aisling was very thoughtful on the topic as well.

Mindy: That part of me had to die and I had to go through the grieving process. And I had to get angry about it and I had to be in denial about it, like all the stages of grief to let go of this person that I wasn't anymore. Because as long as that person was in the way, I was never going to become that sort of future version of myself and I saw that. And so then it just became the process of allowing myself to grieve for that and say goodbye to who that person was.

So what do we do when we start seeing these signs? We start listening for something we've ignored for a very long time, our own voice. Which brings me to the second theme I wanted to explore today. Learning to tune into and trust our own voice. This is a big part of the reset we do when we cross the threshold into midlife. And I know, I know you hate that term, but it's true, at least mathematically.

It's around this time when you start to hear the things people tell you you should be doing. You react, maybe even just internally because you know they're wrong. And maybe not objectively wrong with their suggestions, but wrong for you. An interesting thing happens when you turn down the volume on what everybody else is saying.

So if I think about the moment when each of these women stopped looking outward for answers and began listening inward, hearing their own voice wasn't a light switch moment. It was more a slow, sometimes painful, but definitely courageous process. But once they started trusting that voice from inside, things began to shift.

Let's go back to the ladies for some examples. AdaPia described her burnout as an ego implosion that forced her to stop relying on her external identity. She turned to yoga, meditation, and deep self-reflection. Not to feel better, although it did that as well, but mostly to hear her inner truth again.

AdaPia: I eventually landed on, that's just what I do. So what I do is very distinct from who I am and that's only possible by doing the self-reflection.

Stephanie: Say that again, cuz that's the important part. What I do is separate from who I am. And I think so many of us sort of sleepwalk into our identity being connected to something in our lives, whether it's the job or, motherhood or fatherhood or, a hobby or, even a passion. And if you think I am that, then well that might be an area of concern.

AdaPia: And we can only make that distinction by spending so much time with ourselves.

Stephanie: She trained herself to feel her intuition as physical truth, a yes in the body, a no in the body, and that's how she built trust from the inside out.

Here's what she said.

Julie: It was literally like I refound my fire. And for the first time in my life, I started respecting myself.

Stephanie: She went from asking everyone else for answers to declaring, I know what I need. I won't compromise again.

Mindy's trauma from her car accident made her seek external safety through control, money and overachievement, but her anxiety and burnout were signals that something deeper was off. Here she is.

Stephanie: She committed to a daily practice of tuning in, whether through journaling, sitting under a tree, or noticing when her body said no.

Angela realized she had built a life around fear and approval, fears inherited from her parents that weren't necessarily founded for her life. She only began to hear her own voice after rest and nervous system healing, created space for it. Here she is.

I didn't give myself that time to even think. I just didn't have the luxury of thinking, and once I had started to actually get proper sleep. And have time to just sit and think and start writing down what my strengths are and what I want in my career versus what I don't want. And okay, how am I gonna get there and what changes am I going to make? I just started writing and I thought, okay, this is what I want. And I think that also,you know. For,like the elder millennials we're sort of like the ones that just turned 40 or about to, you know. I think that we also are the generation that quote unquote did everything right. We were told to do this and then you can buy a house, you can do all this.

Stephanie: Jennifer's voice was buried under decades of performance and perfectionism. She heard it for the first time while sobbing on a meditation mat.

Here's what she said.

Jennifer: It was probably four or five of those eight weeks I spent on the mat crying with no idea why I was crying. But at some point I was like, okay, well, quite obviously I can't stop this, so I'm just going to let it happen and see where this goes. And that was the beginning of like releasing so much stuff, , that I had been so busy pushing down, pushing down, pushing down, which is exactly what led to my burnout.

Stephanie: She kept showing up week after week until the inner voice was strong enough to guide her toward purpose.

Tara: It takes very little effort to show up yourself once you like really grounded in this is who I am and this is what I stand for, and these are the things I want to do.

Stephanie: Letting go of certainty made space for self-trust.

Are you starting to see the patterns here? This isn't about quitting your job, moving to Bali, or starting a goat farm, unless for you it is. But it's more about noticing the places where the old rules no longer apply, and having the courage to ask what's true for me now?

Okay friend. Thanks for being here with me today. If after listening to this you find yourself lying in bed, wondering who you are or why you're here, like big picture here. Or if you've accidentally built a life you now want to set on fire, welcome. You are absolutely in the right place because I'll say it again, burnout isn't a failure. It's just your soul going on strike until you start listening.

If this episode poked something in you, come say, hi, I wanna hear about it. I'm on Instagram at the big four Oh. Or you can find me at the big four oh.com and spell out all those little words. I'll be the one whispering. You're not crazy. You're just waking up.

I'll see you next time.