Makena: Hello, hello, hello. I’m so excited for this episode today, and it is my birthday. Yay! 

I love birthdays, and anyone in my life will tell you that my birthdays are not just a single day. They are usually at least a week of celebrations, and this year is no different. So, my family is in town visiting this week, and I’m recording this a couple of days ahead, but my actual birthday will be the day that this goes live.

I’m super excited and wanted to bring a special episode for my birthday to talk about a topic that I get asked about a lot. It’s a huge part of my story. I just led a workshop on this in Austin, Texas, a couple of weeks ago. 

The topic is around burnout and getting stuck in go mode. 

I talk to so many women when I say, “Who in this room feels like you are in go, go, go mode most of the time?” About 90 to 95% of the room of women typically raises their hands. And burnout might be a slightly smaller number, maybe 50 to 60%. These are high numbers. 

For many, many years, that was my story. That was my journey. I would venture to say that for most of my adult life, I was in this go-go-go mode, flirting in and out of seasons of burnout. 

I’ve really shifted this over the last two to three years. It’s been a journey for five to six years, where I’ve been intentionally making changes in this, but really in the last couple of years is when it started to click, and my experience of life drastically changed.

So, I’m going to be looking on and off if you’re watching the video, because I’m actually going to look at my handwritten notes here from my workshop that I led. 

I thought this is something I would love to share with women everywhere, not just the people who could come to my workshop. I’ll be going over some of what we covered in that live in-person experience. 

My experience of life and work is very different today, and I’ve touched on this in previous episodes. I love what I do, and I make great money at it. I’m relaxed and in a lot of flow most of the time. 

It doesn’t mean that I don’t have days that are stressful or where I don’t feel like I’m in flow, but I would say 80% of the time, I have a lot of that feeling of coming from ease. 

Even when life is busy or there’s a lot going on, my inner state feels peaceful and relatively easeful. 

I still tap into go mode. I really like go mode. 

If you listened to our previous episode on go mode and flow mode, then you know a lot of what I’m talking about here. 

If you haven’t listened to that episode, I recommend going back and checking it out because we really go deep into what is go mode and what is flow mode. We’ve re-coined the terms masculine and feminine because they’re not necessarily gender related. We all have both energies within us. 

When it comes to generating results, to creating and moving something forward in the world, go mode is a really powerful and can be a fun energy to tap into. So it’s not a bad thing in and of itself. 

It’s just when we get stuck there and we can’t seem to shift out of it that it can be really detrimental. 

Especially, I’ve observed, to women, and women’s physical bodies don’t seem to be designed quite as much for this. I don’t think anyone’s designed to be in this all the time, but we especially aren’t designed physically, physiologically, as a generalization, to operate in go mode all the time. 

So I’ve really learned how I can harness go mode, how I can utilize this energy at different times and places in my life, but also really tap into that flow. That dance between these two energies has been so freeing. It has shifted my experience of my life so much that I have more energy and feel more inspired. I have far fewer health issues, which I’ll talk more about in my story. 

That’s really where I want to begin: to tell my story, which some of you have heard, but even if you have, I recommend listening from the perspective of this topic of burnout to balance, or being stuck in go mode and learning to dance between the go and the flow. 

Notice if there’s anything that really resonates with you today. If you’re hearing it for the first time, same thing. Then, I will tell a couple of other stories of clients because I love to teach through stories. I want to share how I and Gigi, how we’ve helped them shift out of burnout into more balance, but also grow their incomes in the process and grow their businesses and have better lives. 

It’s not just this one piece. It’s really holistic. 

That’s the way we work with people, whether you’re just listening to our podcast or actually working with us in a program. You’ll be able to really take something away today from either my story or maybe from theirs. 

The first part of my story is really this phase of starting from a really young age. We went through financial ups and downs in my teens, and we had a lot of other stressors going on with both my parents getting sick and moving multiple times. 

Especially around the financial insecurity, I thought, “I never want to struggle for money again.” 

This was something that I made a decision about at a young age. Because of that decision, I said, “Well, I’m just going to work really hard to be successful, whatever that means to me.”

So I studied really hard, got straight A’s, went to university after being homeschooled K through 12, got straight A’s there pretty much throughout, and worked really hard. 

I had multiple jobs on campus, not only to support me at that time but also to gain experience. I partied a lot, got involved in extracurriculars, burning the candle at every end there possibly was. 

By the time I graduated, I was so exhausted. I was sleeping sometimes four hours a night, and then I would just crash by Thursday every week. I remember because I was so, so tired. 

But I was in so much fear underneath around, “Well, I don’t want to struggle financially. I want to make sure I get a good job. I want to make sure I’m going to be successful.” This really created this go, go, go inside of me. 

That’s not the reason it starts for all women. 

We see different reasons that it starts for different women, but often there is some aspect of financial desire for financial stability or success, or maybe to prove something to someone. 

There’s some reason, and you can kind of track back for yourself and go, “Where did this all start for me? Did someone say something to me that made me think, ‘You never want to depend on your partner to support you financially?'” 

There are so many reasons I see that women get caught up in this go-go-go, but it started in my teens, carried through university, and then into my first business as a marketing expert and direct response copywriter. 

I started my first business six months out of university, and I was just full-on, working 60 to 80 hours a week building this business. I grew it to six figures very quickly and was still burning the candle at both ends. 

It got a little better over the years in the sense that I wasn’t working quite as much, but I was still exhausted. I would go through these periods of feeling like I just couldn’t handle it anymore. 

I had a lot of deadlines, a lot of different clients, and I was making great money. Things were great on the outside at that point, but inside, I was falling apart. I started to have anxiety and full-blown panic attacks. This went on for several years before I got to the point where I was so done with it. I had tried everything I could think of, and I just knew that I had to make a change. 

In 2016, no, 2017, I finally said, “Okay, I feel like my body is talking to me. This anxiety, these panic attacks must be my body trying to tell me something.” 

So I thought, “I feel like it has something to do with making a shift in my career, that this isn’t right for me anymore,” even though I liked many aspects of what I did and I was successful at it.

But there was something telling me there was something that needed to change or something more I was meant to be doing. 

I thought, “Well, I’ve always wanted to coach. I’m going to try stepping into coaching.” 

So, in 2017, I tried and failed to start a coaching business. I went out there, put myself out there. I didn’t really have a plan or support. I flopped. I was not making enough money to sustain myself and was barely making any money at all. It was really embarrassing and disheartening. 

I thought, “Maybe I’m not supposed to make this change after all.” 

I went back into my marketing business just to pay my bills, and the cycle continued. In February 2018, I had a huge pivotal turning point moment. 

This was when Gigi, my mom and mentor who co-hosts the show, and I were leading a mastermind retreat in Costa Rica for a mastermind that she led. I was one of the coaches. We went a couple of days early, and she led me through this really powerful experience that I didn’t even know was happening at the time. 

She was asking me questions and got me into a space where I was so relaxed. I wasn’t trying to think about what I wanted next. This is huge because if you are stuck in go-go-go mode or you are feeling burned out and exhausted and you’re just so busy in your life, in that energy, you’re not going to be able to see clearly. 

I hate to say it, but that’s just the way it is. We’ve seen this again and again with clients. 

It’s like that Einstein quote we talk about a lot: “You can’t solve a problem from the same level of thinking that created it.” 

So, you’re in a certain energy and a certain level of thinking, and that’s not going to be the place where you solve the problem because you’re stuck in the problem. 

What happened in those two days in Costa Rica was that whenever I would try to figure it out and solve it from my mind, Gigi would distract me. We would go get a massage or go for a walk on the beach. 

I started to unwind physically and emotionally. I felt this unwinding and relaxation coming in that I hadn’t felt in a long time. 

Then, she would ask me questions, or we would just dialogue in a way that felt more in flow. It wasn’t structured or trying to figure something out. 

Over the course of those two days, clarity dawned. 

It was like, “Oh my gosh, I see my life stretching out in front of me. I see exactly what I want to do. I definitely want to coach, and not only do I want to coach, but I want to learn from Gigi, my mom, and have her mentor me.” 

I saw this vision of us leading retreats around the world and programs with people all over the world. I asked her, “Would you consider this?” I was turning 30 that year, and she was turning 60. 

She said, “Yes, but you’re going to need to learn some things first. You’re going to have to let me coach you, essentially.” 

I had so much energy and inspiration from this vision. 

Also, I saw that if I didn’t make a change, I didn’t like what I saw in the future. I kind of fast-forwarded a couple of years into the future and thought, “The version of the future, if I keep going the way I’m going, doesn’t look good.” 

It was frankly a little scary to me, and I thought, “I can’t keep going this way. I have to shift something. My body is telling me I have to shift something.” 

I had these two different pieces: I didn’t want the path I was on anymore, and I couldn’t continue this way. On the other hand, I saw this vision and felt this desire for this other path, this other way forward. 

I made a choice. It was a decision point where I said, “I am absolutely choosing this other reality.” 

From that decision point, everything changed. 

It wasn’t just that one moment; I had to keep choosing. I went all in on a different path. That was what really led me to step into coaching, with Gigi mentoring me, getting support from her and other coaches, learning the business side of coaching as well as the coaching side of coaching, and applying what I was learning to myself, having my own transformation in the process. 

Within eight months, I had successfully replaced my six-figure income through coaching and was able to make the transition fully into work that I loved. 

I had this limiting belief before that I couldn’t make great money doing what I loved. 

But once I did it, once I proved that wrong, it was such a powerful awakening for me. “Oh my gosh, I can! I’m doing it. I’m making great money doing work I love.” 

Within a few months of making that transition, the anxiety went away. I’d say the panic attacks went away completely. The anxiety went away 90%. I would have it pop up every once in a while, but for the most part, it was a total shift in the way I experienced life. 

I felt so excited and on path. I was working hard. It was not easy in those early days. I don’t want to make it sound like it was all sunshine and butterflies. 

It was hard work starting a new business and starting over. I had to learn sales and marketing in a new way. It was a totally different experience doing it for my own business and not for somebody else. 

There were many challenges, but deep down, at the end of the day, I felt like I was on the path. I was doing what I was meant to be doing. 

That was in 2018 when I made that transition. Looking back on this first big breakthrough, this first big death and rebirth, as I like to call it, or rebirth cycle of reinventing myself and completely changing my direction, I learned a couple of things. 

First, I disproved this belief that I couldn’t make great money doing what I loved. I proved it wrong, and I did it anyway. 

Second, I saw that the burnout wasn’t just because I was working hard. It wasn’t about how much I was working, although that sometimes played a role. It was because something wasn’t in alignment for me. My soul was asking me to do something different, and I wasn’t listening. It got louder and louder until it finally got my attention. That was what the anxiety and panic attacks were about. 

I came up with this quote that I often share: “Burnout isn’t just physical exhaustion; it’s exhaustion of the soul.”

“Burnout isn’t just physical exhaustion; it’s exhaustion of the soul.” 

So, a lot of the times, if you’re feeling burned out or stuck in go mode, something might be trying to get your attention. It doesn’t mean you need a full career change or some huge change, but there might be something you’re not listening to that’s deep underneath. That’s what this is really about. It might have to do with how much you’re working or the way that you’re working. It just depends. 

I wanted to share that part of the story. The second rebirth was when I was in that business, built it up to half a million dollars a year, was leading retreats and programs all over the world, really fulfilling this dream and vision. 

We had our coaching certification going and all kinds of different programs, our mastermind. In 2022, about four years into that business, I had a health scare. I had some health issues pop up that had happened in the past. They weren’t life-threatening, thank goodness, but it really brought me face to face again with, “What is my body trying to tell me?” 

I remember sitting on my bed in Austin, Texas, where I was living at the time, and freaking out. The last time my body was talking to me like this, in a different way, it meant I needed to make a career change. I did it. I was courageous. I took the step, but here I am doing this work that I love, and my body’s telling me something. What is this about? 

I kind of stopped my world for a short time there. I didn’t stop my business, of course, but internally, I had to stop and face what was going on. I knew better than to ignore it. 

With Gigi’s support, we had some conversations about this, and I did some deep diving. I discovered over time that it wasn’t the work I was doing that needed to change. I was in alignment there. It was the way I was working. 

Even though I had stepped into work I loved and was making great money, the alignment piece was there. The actual way I was working day to day, I was overworking. I was still burning the candle at both ends, but now it was in work that I loved. That really had to change. 

My body was saying, “You can’t push this way and keep going, going, going. It’s not sustainable.” 

As a result, I leaned into that rebirth cycle. 

Even though it was painful and uncomfortable to do the soul searching and figure out what was underneath, I said, “I know from last time that if I take my time with this and don’t lean into it, it’s only going to drag out and take longer. So I’m going to lean in fully. Whatever the message is here for me, I’m going to receive it. I’m up for it.” 

Within about six months, I had the clarity, the new energy and inspiration. I had completely shifted the way I was approaching not only my work but my life. 

I saw that for me, I wanted to have this feeling of creativity and bringing through what wanted to come through me. I reoriented my life that way. 

We simplified a few things in the business, restructured a little bit. Most things stayed the same from the outside, but internally, the way I was working changed. That was a huge breakthrough for me in terms of my experience of life. 

To this day, that was 2022, and now in mid-2024, I have a very different experience of my life and work. I rarely have times where I feel that way anymore, where I feel stretched in a negative way and I’m pushing harder than I’d like to. I have a lot of ease and balance. I end work at a good time, I exercise, I care for myself. I’ve really shifted things so much in this regard. 

This was about a different kind of shift, a different kind of rebirth, learning to dance between go and flow. 

Hugely what I learned in that time was my limiting belief: I have to work harder to be successful. I have to work really hard to be successful. 

What I disproved through this rebirth was that when I’m attending to myself, caring for myself in the right way, dancing between these energies—utilizing go mode at the right time and flow mode at the right time, designing my life around the lifestyle I want and how I want to feel—I actually thrive on all levels: financially, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. 

That was the new belief and experience I stepped into. 

Gigi taught me a lot about rhythm and environment, the importance of your environment as a woman, work, self-care, and how to care for yourself in such a way that you’re nurturing yourself and you actually unwind and get into that flow. Not all self-care is created equal. You can get your nails done, be totally multitasking, and not be relaxed at all. How to set up the support and systems in our business, which is more the “masculine” or go-mode side of things, to support more of the flow. 

This has been a continuous learning, a continuous journey. We have a program coming up on this topic in the collective, our monthly membership program. We’re doing a course on the way of feminine business, which Gigi taught me and has made a big difference in my life and business. 

This is the second part of my story, the second big rebirth in the last six or seven years. I’m curious for you to reflect on what resonates with you from these stories. 

Are you stuck in go-go-go mode or is your soul trying to tell you something? Are you in that burnout as exhaustion of the soul part? Or are you aligned, doing what you love, but still stressed or burned out or stuck in go mode? Notice any tidbits from these stories that resonate. 

I want to tell a couple of other stories quickly. 

One is a client who, when she started working with us, had anxiety and burnout. She was running a business but wasn’t inspired to grow it. She was around the 90K mark and exhausted. 

Over the course of our work together, she went from 90K to 145K in her business in the first year. The second year, she went over 200K. We just had a session, and she told me she’s already 35K higher this year than last year. She’s on track for amazing results. 

But it’s not just the financial results. Within a few months, similar to me, her anxiety attacks were gone. She was having them almost daily when she started with us. Now, she’s moving into her dream home, her relationship with her husband has changed completely, and her relationship with her kids. She has more support in her business and has started meaningful projects. 

She enjoyed aspects of what she did, but there was a piece of wanting to feel like she was contributing in a bigger way. How did she make that change? It’s great to hear these stories, but how did we do that? 

I went back and thought through the progression. First, we cleaned up energy leaks in her life and business. We looked at what was draining her time and energy, distracting her, and draining her vitality. 

We talk a lot on this podcast about aliveness—what brings you alive and what drains your energy. 

We systematically went through those over time and started to clean those up. As we did that, she had more energy, less push-pull, and drain, and more energy for what she wanted to do. We got clear on a vision. What was her deeper desire? It’s great to make more money, but why did she want that? What else was she longing for? 

She wanted a certain experience in her family and marriage. She wanted to travel with her family and take big trips abroad or travel in the summers. She wanted to move into her dream home. We crafted a vision that pulled her forward. 

As we continued the coaching, we designed a vision that gave her the fuel to make the necessary changes to grow her business and change her life. 

That’s great for you to look at in your own life: what are those energy drains, and what is that vision that pulls me forward? 

The other story is another client who had been doing her work for about 20 years when she came to us. 

A lot of times, our clients have financial components. It’s not always the case. Some of our clients are retired, in a different stage of life, don’t need to earn, or are home with their kids. There are different aspects, but for many of them, there is this component of either starting a business or growing a business or growing in their career.

It has something to do with them growing in that aspect of the business side of things. And so often, these stories will have an aspect of that.

So, she had never made more than six figures and was feeling totally burned out, ready to do whatever it took to change. That was important because it was in my story too. I was willing to do whatever it took. 

Sometimes, for us to do what it takes to make that change, we need to be at the point of “I can’t keep going this way. I’m 100% ready to shift.” If you’re at that place, it’s a powerful place to be because it can be a turning point for you. 

When she reached out to me, we did a breakthrough call, a deep dive, two-hour session. In that, she saw that she loved her work but needed to approach it differently. She wanted to earn more. We looked at the life she wanted, the vision. 

Now, a couple of years later, she’s made over six figures multiple years in a row. The first year, she still had that hard work paradigm, but the next year, she cracked the code, learning to dance between go and flow, having the energy, focus, and determination, but also caring for herself, and enjoying her life. 

Now, she’s making over six figures multiple years in a row and has designed the lifestyle she wants in her business. 

We’ll talk about this in the Way of Feminine Business program: how to design the lifestyle you want as a woman. It’s not just the next goal or target but what will give you the energy and fuel to fit your desires and how you want to feel. 

Do you want to travel, live in different places, or have a home that looks and feels a certain way? What is your vision for your next chapter so that you can step into it? 

If you don’t have clarity on it, if you don’t see the vision clearly, you’ll just go through the motions. 

She saw that she wanted to work with clients online and have them come in person sometimes. She’s now started a new relationship, which she’s very excited about. I led her through a breakthrough experience, and she saw that the fear of not making a change was bigger than the fear of making a change. 

That was the same for me. If I keep going this way, I don’t like what I see. That’s interesting for you to think about: if you continue on this path without making a change, where will you be a year or two from now? Do you want that vision for your future? If not, what’s the alternative? What do you want? 

Another aspect is how you want your success to feel. Not just what you want, but how you want to feel. This is so important. A couple of years ago, I wanted to feel creative, lit up, in flow, like a conduit for love. I wanted to feel ease and magic. So much of that has become my day-to-day experience. 

One last thing I want to share before we close out for today is the biggest roadblock I see for women making a change around go-go-go mode or feeling stuck in burnout or exhaustion or cycling back and forth between periods of not feeling that way and periods of feeling that way. 

The biggest roadblock I see is the fear of losing what’s working. 

This was huge for me in both of my big rebirth experiences. I was scared to lose what was working: the income I created, the reputation I built. 

The first time, I was scared about paying my bills. I’d worked so hard, why would I walk away from it all? What if it affected other parts of my life? 

I was scared to lose what was working the second time: the business I’d worked so hard on, the work I loved, my team, and all the things I loved about what I do. 

Notice if this fear is stopping you from making a change. Are you scared to lose your income, job security, or certainty? 

When you step out of the known and into the unknown, it can be scary. You don’t have certainty or control. 

That’s where the magic happens, but it can feel like, “I don’t know if I can handle that.” 

Maybe you’re scared to be less productive. We think, “I’ve operated this way my whole life, and it’s gotten me a lot of success. If I make this shift, will I be less productive?” What if I just want to sit on the couch all day? 

For most people, unless you really slingshot the other direction, which I’ve seen happen, especially if you have support, that’s not likely to happen. 

You can learn to harness both energies, go and flow. 

I want to share a resource with you, the Rebirth Roadmap. It’s a guided visualization and worksheet that I created. It’s included with a few different things. 

I’ve talked a lot about rebirth cycles today. I want to give you a freebie around that, something you can use to guide yourself deeper through if you feel like you’re going through a rebirth or transition. 

The URL is wayofthemuse.com/rebirth-roadmap. 

If you go there, you can download the visualization and guide, which will take you much deeper into some of the things we talked about today, especially around rebirths into the next chapter and seeing what your soul is telling you. I wanted to share that as a resource. 

What else do I want to talk about before we close? 

The main thing is that what got you here isn’t going to get you where you want to go. That’s always the case in life. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, it means we get to keep learning and growing. 

If you’re in a place where you want to make a shift and feel like you need to break free of burnout or shift out of this pattern of go mode, know that it will take educating yourself, learning new ways, or getting support. 

You’ve operated one way up to this time; it’s what you know. 

There are great things about that. You can keep the great things while learning and evolving the other parts. 

When I talk about a rebirth, I often use the analogy of a phoenix, burning down or burning up and being reborn from the ashes. It doesn’t need to burn your life down, but you can consciously burn away the parts that are no longer in alignment for you and keep the parts you love. That’s possible. 

Or, another way to say it is that it doesn’t have to break you down, but let it break you open. 

Whatever you’re going through right now, it doesn’t have to break you down. It doesn’t have to be a breakdown, but it may need to break you open. This is happening for a reason. 

If you believe in a higher power and that life is happening for you, not to you, then whatever you’re going through is for you. It’s for your highest good. 

I get it. I’ve been there. 

Probably the biggest challenge of my life was what we’re talking about today: too much go mode, the burnout cycle, all the things that went with that, the health issues, hormonal dysregulation, anxiety, panic attacks, the strain on my marriage in the past, everything that came along with that. 

I truly am on the other side of that now. I can say that with a lot of certainty and clarity because it’s been years. 

Though I have my moments, as we all do, my experience of life is so different. 

I wish when I was going through it, I had someone to pull back the curtain and show me. I saw people talking about having lives of ease and flow, and ease and flow doesn’t mean you never have challenges or struggles either. 

But I didn’t understand how they got there or how they shifted. Maybe they didn’t relate to my struggles. 

Hopefully, my story today and the stories I’ve told give you some inspiration. 

Happy birthday to me. My birthday gift is sharing this with you. I love helping women in this arena. 

Thank you for listening. We’ll see you on the next episode. Bye, everyone.