So how did you get in? How did you kind of fall into an achievement-based identity? And then how did that kind of spiral into burnout? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think it's really representative in many ways of, you know, kind of the world that we live in, right? We live in and work in a world that is constantly telling us for better or for worse that kind of who we are and what we have and what we're doing is isn't enough, you know, it's, it's, you know, it's in our faces all the time.

And I think many workplaces inadvertently perhaps reinforce that, you know, this idea of, you know, the corner office and, you know, there's only one of them, you know, and so it's kind of bred into us from a, from a very early age that, you that kind of this idea of achievement and competition is the definition of success, having more, having the bigger house, having the nicer car.

All of those things, for me anyway, were kind of this representation of success.

And I think I was never taught or told or maybe i didn't pay attention that um you know that like what what was my definition of success and so i kind of defined success in many ways outside of me i looked around and and you know i kind of would point at somebody and say oh well that person's successful so i'm going to do what they're doing or what my perception of what they were doing was without really kind of saying, well, is this what I care about? Is this who I want to be? Does this actually matter to me? So I think I just followed in the footsteps of the people that I saw before me and thought, well, that's what high performance is.

That's what high performance requires.

It requires you to sacrifice everything.

You cannot run your mouth.

What's been something effective for you to develop like an innate level of self-awareness to be kind of more cognizant around like your thoughts and how you're seeing things?

Yeah.

And, you know, I love the fact that you brought up, you know, seeing a therapist or a coach because when I was struggling with my own burnout and, you know, and depression and anxiety, I was going to therapy.

And that's when I actually first learned about hope and hope as a cognitive process and the way that you and I are talking about it.

My therapist was the one that taught me about it and gave me exercises and worksheets and things that I needed to do to create and to cultivate hope in my life.

And so in terms of my own self-awareness, I think that it's becoming aware of more than anything, the things that trigger you and how that shows up in your body and in, in your behaviors.

And so for me, when, um, you know, something makes me really anxious or makes me, you know, I get frustrated or, you know, angry, like I know the physiological signs of, you know, that happen in my body in terms of kind of my heart rate and my Apple watch will tell me you've been standing still for 20 minutes and you're, you're, Your heart rate has been elevated.

Like, how do you, how do you do that in a way where you don't like fall into the place of like, Oh, this is just the way that life is, but also having compassion for yourself so that you don't get into this like severe hopelessness spiral.

Well, I would love it if you could really paint a picture for us in terms of a scene that's memorable for you so we can sort of get a sense for, boy, what's that hopeless Jen look, sound, feel like in terms of what you're doing, what you're saying to yourself, what you're experiencing, as opposed to the hope has been restored Jen looking like.

Yeah, so one of the stories that I tell in the book was really when I was burnt out and the conversation I talk about it is the conversation that changed everything.

And it was a regular check-in conversation with my boss.

And I was going down my list, checking things off, giving her all of the updates.

And she put down her pen and paper and looked me straight in the eye and basically said to me, Jen you're not okay and what's worse is that you're trying to convince everyone else and yourself that this is what okay looks like and of course in that moment my natural reaction was what are you talking about you know the kind of defensiveness right and and she looked at me and she said when was the last time you spent real time with your family without thinking about work And I couldn't give her a good answer.

And then she asked me, when was the last time you felt joy in your work? And I couldn't give her a good answer.

And she went on to ask me a handful of additional questions.

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