65 – Just Say No to Burnout with Karenna Soto

[00:00] Paulette: Buen día, mi gente, and welcome to La Vida Más Chévere de Childfree Latinas, the only Spanglish podcast for childfree Latinas y Latines, helping us liberate ourselves from the toxic cultural brainwashing we all grew up with so that we can design our best lives instead. I’m your host and resident childfree Latina, Paulette Erato.

[00:24] Remember how last episode I teased you that this was going to be about burnout? The reason I told you the story about me getting sick and having a whole life pivot was because my guest Karenna and I are going to use that as an example of how to handle burnout today. If you haven’t caught up with that episode, I highly recommend you listen to it first.

[00:43] It’s number 64 called The Loneliest Year, a Health Scare, a Lost Circle, and The Power of Rebuilding. As Karenna will explain, burnout is a toxic cultural tendency that we’ve normalized as inevitable. But what if I told you that’s just not true? It’s a lie! You don’t have to sacrifice your health to be a better worker or a better partner or even a better person.

[01:10] In fact, that’s exactly backwards thinking, because there’s no nobility in sacrificing your health, which is actually your wealth, for what I call the Exhaustion Olympics. You’re not going to win a gold medal for that. Part of designing your best life, tu vida mas chevere, is learning what you have control over and releasing the rest.

[01:34] And while we may not be able to control our circumstances, we still get to make choices within them. I did a search on burnout over on TikTok recently, and it was full of videos on burnout recovery. But what about prevention? What if I told you, you don’t have to experience burnout? Yup, the toxic cultural norm we’re liberating ourselves from today is the belief that burnout is inevitable.

[02:00] And if you don’t believe that yet, then I hope that by the end of the episode you will. Because what we’re going to do is give you the exact steps you need in order to keep burnout from ever entering your life. Now you’re probably listening to this and thinking, Paulette, I’ve already experienced burnout.

[02:17] Now what? Okay, I’m with you. So, what can we do to prevent it from happening again, from continuing these same patterns again? This episode is going to have a lot of the same themes you’ve heard of before. In fact, I’ve done two episodes on burnout already. They were number seven and eight. Both of those were about how to avoid creative burnout.

[02:40] There’s more, like how in episode 17, Jessenia Ziennker called her childfree life a gift, something you’ll hear Karenna repeat here, even though Karenna herself, not necessarily childfree. Or how in episode 55, Monica Rivera talked about taking two steps forward when you feel like you’re backed up against a wall, and how that gives you a brand new perspective.

[03:03] Karenna is going to talk about exactly how to take those two steps. Let me give you her bio, and then we’ll jump into the episode. Meet Karenna, a seasoned expert in communication, relationship cultivation, and anxiety management. With a passion for facilitating personal evolution, Karenna thrives on guiding individuals through the complexities of interpersonal dynamics.

[03:26] As a keynote speaker on burnout, the host of The Fully Expressed podcast and a trauma informed somatic practitioner, she brings a holistic approach to her work. Karenna specializes in empowering high achieving women to honor and optimize their capacities, speak their truth, and navigate difficult conversations with confidence.

[03:48] This empowerment enables them to fully engage in both their personal and professional spheres. Through her teachings, she champions authenticity. And encourages women to embrace their fullest expression in life and business. Karenna’s mission is clear, to foster a community where women can flourish and thrive embodying their true selves without reservation.

[04:12] Sounds like our missions are aligned. So let’s get to it. One last note, we ran into some tech issues when we were recording this. So the audio may not be as crisp as you’re used to. The content I think is still pretty good. So I hope you’ll hang in there. And if you got something to say, you can always text me, link in the show notes.

[04:30] Karenna talks about burnout. It’s kind of almost like we’re expected to experience this, especially as Latinas. So Karenna, let’s just dive in. How is it you became an expert on burnout?

[04:44] Karenna: Going through burnout? Well, besides me going through burnout, you know, I think I didn’t realize I was burning out or that I was over stretching my capacity to hold until I got my trauma informed certification.

[04:58] So I’m a trauma informed somatic practitioner. And throughout that eight months of deep diving into learning about trauma, learning about the nervous system and going through the practices myself, I was like, Oh my gosh, I was operating in go, go, go all the time. Not really being in my body, not really honoring my body and just overdoing it.

[05:22] And my mind wanted to, because that’s what it felt comfortable in. But my body was like, no, slow down. But during that certification, I already knew that I had, burnout tendencies because of my people pleasing tendencies, because of the way that I show up for work and this whole idea of like badass culture and hustling and like really wanted to step into that power as a woman. I knew I had those high achieving tendencies, probably a better word for it, but to the extent of, I don’t want to use the word harm, but how it was doing my body a disservice.

[05:55] It really wasn’t until I got my certification back in 2022. And then after going through that certification and then really living it, I was like, wow, I’m really overdoing it for myself. And I went through like a really deep journey from 2022 all the way till the end of 2023, kind of just recalibrated my capacity, creating a whole new relationship to, to show up for the world and asking myself questions.

[06:20] Well, I’m clearly exhausted, but how do I still show up for my responsibilities? And it was a question that I sat on for like a year, year and a half. It’s like, okay, I’m clearly exhausted. I don’t have a lot of capacity, but I have a lot of responsibilities. I have my business, I have my passions, I have my partner, I have my friendships.

[06:40] I have to take care of myself. Like all of those things take energy. And so how do I make that work? And that’s where I got started with this and it became my thing. The other thing I will say too, I don’t know if anyone here, any Latina knows this, but in human design, do you know what your human design is?

[06:58] Paulette: I don’t.

[06:58] Karenna: Okay, so human design is an energetic blueprint, and it’s similar to astrology, but it just put this all together for me. So I’m a projector in human design, and there’s like four or five different energy types, and through human design, as a projector, I actually have the least amount of energy compared to all the other profiles.

[07:19] And I was like, what? And so it was so validating that I was already experiencing that I don’t have the capacity to show up and then noticing that other people have different capacities and that I was putting on so much expectation for me to show up like everyone else. And I had to come back to honoring my unique capacity.

[07:38] Paulette: So human design is based on your birth time, right?

[07:42] Karenna: Yes.

[07:43] Paulette: And since we’re recording this, the week of my birthday,

[07:46] Karenna: Are you going to do it?

[07:46] Paulette: Let’s go find out what I am.

[07:48] Karenna: Yeah. Do you know what time you were born? Okay, perfect. Let’s go figure that out while you’re on there. As you’re looking it up, I can kind of cover what it is.

[07:54] So yeah, it’s an energetic blueprint. There’s projector, there’s a mani gen, there’s a generator, and then there’s a reflector. Those are the different human design charts. As you look at your human design charts, let’s say a reflector for example, they tend to reflect off other people’s energies. As a man gen, their energies are a little bit more like high and low, so they’ll have high pitches of creativity, and then low pitches then need a lot of rest, and they’ll bounce back up to like high creativity, energy. And then as a generator, you actually have the most energy. So they’re the ones that I can go, go, go, be busy bees.

[08:30] They feel really good in that. And then as a projector, I actually have the least amount of energy, but I meant to be more of that, like, Visionary CEO, kind of high level, not the doer doer. And so a lot of people talk about this from a way of like business and like teams, like if you could have every human profile on your team, because in order to achieve the things we actually need all the different people to work together or profiles work together.

[08:56] There’s so much more to human design. You can go all the way into the different openings in your chart, which are the different chakras across your system. I don’t know if you’re seeing that already because you probably have your chart right in front of you. So the different, if it’s defined or not defined, if it’s a defined on your chart, that means your energy is protected.

[09:14] But if it’s open, that means those places in your chakra system are actually absorbing the energy through those places. I am not a human design reader by all, but I highly recommend getting a professional to actually look at it. But the most free versions give you at least a high level overview of what your chart is.

[09:32] So what are you?

[09:33] Paulette: I am a projector, the seer.

[09:36] Karenna: I can tell you a lot about you about projectors because I’m a projector as well.

[09:40] Paulette: Oh, okay. Let’s do that.

[09:42] Karenna: So as a projector, like I said, you have very visionary overlooking. So a lot of people that are coaches or CEOs, think of Obama, as a projector. They can see things above.

[09:53] They say a lot of projectors can see above your life, will see ahead of what’s going on. So you have forward thinking, visionary, futuristic thoughts as a projector. I already mentioned as a projector, you’re actually meant to rest a lot. Rest is like your biggest thing. The other thing as a projector, it’s important for us to be invited into opportunities.

[10:13] And so there’s a lot of surrendering into what it looks like to attract different opportunities our lives, whether they’re professional or personal. Being invited and seen is so important for a projector.

[10:26] Paulette: That was my first foray into human design. Up to this point, I knew less than zero about it. Because this kind of fascinated me, but also confused me, I sought out a human design person who’s also a childfree Latina, and she’ll be on the show in the future.

[10:41] We’ve already recorded that interview as I’m editing this. So, if you’re also a bit confused by human design, or if you’re intrigued, or even if you’re skeptical of it, stay tuned. That’s coming up soon. But now we’re going to move on to learning how to recognize your own capacity so you don’t burn out, again. Or don’t burn out ever if you’ve never yet experienced burnout.

[11:04] I’ve done several episodes on burnout, but that was coming from a creative place. What you do is you talk about it from a business perspective, burning out at work. How do we even recognize that we’re experiencing burnout? Give us the warning signs and how you can stop before you get to that end point.

[11:25] Karenna: I like to think about it as a battery life, and maybe you’ve heard this before. I talk about everyone’s unique capacities in definition is the ability to hold or to be with. And so from a trauma informed somatic perspective, or from like the nervous system perspective, our nervous system has an ability to hold and be with, right?

[11:43] We are expanding our capacity to be with really heavy emotions, to be with stress. And when our capacity is very small, or we don’t have the capacity to do those things, that’s when we’re like easily triggered. If someone gives you a task or you have an opportunity, you go, Oh my God, how am I going to take that on?

[12:01] Like, it just feels so overwhelming. The idea of adding more onto your plate. Maybe you disassociate throughout your days and you’re finding yourself procrastinating because you need the space. Your body’s automatically saying, I need time. I cannot work on these projects because I’m exhausted. Just feeling exhausted, tired, overwhelmed, emotionally reactive is a really good one.

[12:23] It’s basically different signs that your system is completely dysregulated and in a dysregulated space, everything that causes stress to the body feels like a lot, feels very intense. Those are the things I would look for. And so when you look at this as your battery life, I always ask people, well, we’ll get to this part about how to actually determine what your capacity is, but most of us need to figure out what we are from zero to a hundred.

[12:49] And the way that I think about zero, zero means that. It is so hard to get out of bed in the morning. I mean, that’s where people are living in, right? Like, it’s dreadful to get out of bed in the morning. It is difficult to even comprehend the idea of looking at your day. Your day feels like you have this marathon of the day.

[13:08] Every single week feels like the same week over and over again. You’re completely, like I said, exhausted, drained physically, emotionally, and spiritually. So maybe there’s also a sense of not feeling connected to yourself and not a sense of faith or hope and just viewing the world through very negative perspectives, just saying like, this is how life is.

[13:31] That’s zero. A hundred would be I’m excited. I’m regulated. I can show up for everything. If people ask me to do something from a business perspective, I’m like, sure, tackle it on. I could do that. You are in this place and you’re also grounded and you feel very stable. You feel hopeful. You’re connected to your faith.

[13:53] You’re connected to joy. You’re connected to feeling regulated and you’re in your body. That is what a hundred percent battery life is. Basically, your tank is full. You can go do life and feel really good. Most of people in our day to day, you know, we think this is our normal. We’re kind of living in this place of like, well, it’s normal to be exhausted.

[14:13] What do you mean, Karenna? Well, what if it wasn’t normal? And where we have to start is starting to see, well, where are we on that battery life from zero to a hundred? Some, most of us are living at 60, 50, 30 percent battery life. And if you’re at zero, I’m sure you’re showing up some days and like negative 10, negative 20, like barely having anything.

[14:36] The part that truly gets us is the pressure and the expectation to operate like we have a hundred percent battery life. When we really have 60 or 50 or 30 or 20.

[14:52] Paulette: Thinking back on my own experiences. And I’ve had burnout so bad, I made myself sick and had to stop working. So it was a career ending type of burnout.

[15:03] It created a whole life pivot. So what I’m remembering from that time, this is about seven and a half years ago, is that it became so gradual. My new normal just became more and more depressive. And I thought I was suffering from depression. I didn’t realize it was burnout. And then one day suddenly I’m in the ER.

[15:25] So how do you figure out what your capacity is? And as you’re feeling like a, a frog being boiled, it’s all so gradual. If we catch ourselves somewhere between 40 and 60 percent before we’re so far down, you know, 20 percent is when our phones go into low power mode, right? If we can stop before then, what are some tools?

[15:50] What are some prevention methods or hacks that a person can employ where you’re like, wait, this is not normal. This doesn’t have to be my new normal. So how are we figuring out our capacity?

[16:02] Karenna: Yeah. The very first step to this is actually determining where your capacity is. And so most of the times I’m guiding people into their bodies and getting the answers directly within their body.

[16:13] So if anyone’s listening to this, I would say, close your eyes for me and just check in and see where you’re at physically, emotionally. And how much energy do you really have? And being really honest with yourself, like am I tired? Am I exhausted? And so first getting a really good clear awareness of what that looks like in your body and what that actually feels like.

[16:34] If your body feels anxious, overwhelmed, can’t sit still, completely activated, that to me is a sign of, oh, I’m dysregulated, so I don’t really have that. I think that’s the part that’s hard for us to be aware of in the moment. But if you practice this every day, and I really do tell people, practice this every morning, start asking yourself the questions of, where is my battery life at?

[16:59] And the more awareness that you bring to that first thing in the morning, you know, you’re like, oh, okay, I’m at 50 today. Okay, that feels like 50. And that feels like 40. And I would invite you to write that down, like write it in your journal and say, 50 percent feels like this to me, 30 percent feels like this to me, 10 percent feels like this to me.

[17:19] Because every person has a unique, different capacity. And this is so important for you to get into what your capacity is versus what my capacity is. So you start that practice first thing in the morning and you’re going to start to become aware of like, I really don’t have a lot. I don’t have as much energy as I did yesterday, or I don’t have as much energy as I did the day before, or today I actually do have a lot of energy.

[17:45] And we just want to create that habit and awareness within ourselves. That’s the very first step. And then the next step is actually going throughout your day and asking yourself, okay, how can I apply my 50 percent battery life to my day? One is getting really clear on what the priorities are. So from your business, let’s say you have five tasks that are going to move the needle.

[18:07] Okay. I’m going to take part of that 50 percent and apply that to my five tasks. Maybe that day it’s really important to you for you to maintain a relationship, with your partner, a friend or a business partner, whatever that is. That also takes time. The other thing that takes time is taking care of ourselves.

[18:24] And so what tasks are you doing for yourself? So now you’re basically dispersing or sharing that 50 percent value on what’s the priority in your life. Cause I think sometimes that we want to be able to do it all, but the truth is we have to start honoring that we can’t do it all. We can’t just tackle everything.

[18:43] But what are the things in your life that are going to move the needle professionally or personally or maintain where you’re at personally and professionally?

[18:54] Paulette: I think that’s really key where you said that our capacities are individual. Because we live in a hustle culture, we live in a culture that’s very much about grinding until the day you die and producing until the day you die.

[19:09] God forbid you take your full eight hours of sleep, you lazy bum. And that’s this capitalist mindset that most of us are operating under. I like to say we’re indoctrinated to it from a young age because you got to be the best.

[19:24] Karenna: Totally. And it’s ancestral. I mean, it’s a part of our culture here. You know, my parents and the parents before them, like they were known to work hard.

[19:32] I think, especially if you come, whether it is from a Latina background or you’re a second generation or third generation here and like working is the way to do and it’s a part of our ancestry. So it’s, it’s literally encoded into our biology in a lot of ways. Dr. Peter Levine is the master to somatic experiencing.

[19:51] He is the doctor that taught a lot of this work and I got a chance to hear him speak over the weekend. And he talks about how the same patterns that our mothers, our grandmothers and our great mothers experience, we also inherit that into our lives today. And that is exactly what you’re talking to is like in this capitalistic work, work, work mentality, produce more, make more money, keep going harder is a part of our self worth, but I also think it’s because our parents might have felt that too.

[20:21] And now we’re feeling that even doubling down now when we’re actually living in the world.

[20:26] Paulette: There’s good and there’s bad. My mother actually talks about this. Men and women, all people, all genders, we’re all born of a womb, right? We’re all carried in a womb. So it’s not just the matrilineal side. Everybody gets to experience these things that are held in the womb.

[20:46] The memories, the curses, the traumas, the rewards as well, the good and the bad. So don’t think that just because you don’t identify as a woman, you get to not experience this. It’s in, it’s in your DNA too. Like Karenna was saying, your DNA is encoded with it. It’s part of our ancestral DNA. So let’s say I could have avoided getting sick in this scenario in 2016.

[21:14] I knew I wasn’t operating at a hundred percent. But it also felt like my back was against the wall and I didn’t have a choice, but to continue to operate at what my full capacity was, even if it was only 20%. What could I have shifted? Or how could I have reconfigured myself or my life or my corporate work to not feel so overwhelmed, to not feel like I didn’t have choices.

[21:44] Karenna: This is the next stage in recalibrating the capacity that you’re talking to, because there is this internal conversation that we have to have with ourselves. One, I want to remind anyone that’s listening to this is that we always have a choice, and we’re still making choices. What ends up happening to our system when we’re trying to do something different and we feel like our back is against the wall, a lot of the times that is our, our ego or the parts within us that want to keep us safe from the idea of dropping the ball or from messing up, right?

[22:19] Or leaving things behind or being up against the wall and being like, I’d have to operate in this way. The question is more asking yourself, how can I create space for myself? And the next step is where can I start to make different choices? I would say start small. Like if you’re in this space right now and you do feel like your back is against the wall and you can barely get your head above water every single day, you’re trying to just catch your breath. Almost like you’re drowning, you know, and you catch your breath for a second, you just want to hold on to your breath a little bit longer before you get put back down under.

[22:52] I understand those moments are intense. I’ve been there too. I also got sick too, what you were talking about. What is the smallest shift that you can make to be able to give back to yourself first? Because all of that stuff is still going to be there. There’s always going to be more asks, more tasks, more things to do, more fire drills, more urgency.

[23:14] I come from a corporate world too, like I understand that everyone wants something now. I also understand that there’s this cultural expectation to do more with less, and I understand that, and what I’m saying is that I’m trying to empower those listening to feel like, where’s the smallest shift I can do for me?

[23:33] This is where we get to the point of optimizing your capacity is introducing practices that fill your cup up, that refill your battery. In short, what’s going to regulate your nervous system. So is it that thirty minute walk in the morning by yourself. Is it drinking water? Is it eating food? If you asked me back in the day, I would do 20 meetings in a week, 20 to 30 minute meetings in a week, back to back at these conferences, wake up at five in the morning.

[24:04] Work out and live on coffee. I was already doing myself a disservice, not by just everything that I had to show up for, but the lack of boundaries I had just for my own nourishment. And so that is also a part of this. Like, yes, there is this internal conversation that we have to go through in order to make sure the parts of us that are scared show up differently because we feel like in some way, someone might think differently of me if I’m not showing up for everything that I have to show up for.

[24:31] Or someone might judge me or they might view me differently. We all have these other fears. We’ve got to make sure that those fears feel safe again. Remind them that they’re going to be okay. There’s a much deeper process to this, but in short, reminding your parts that get scared of changing or making the shifts, that you’re okay, that you’re safe.

[24:52] And then the next step is really starting to set yourself up and externally honoring your capacity. Really getting intentional of setting up the structure to support your nourishment and regulating your system to a place where you can start to feel like you can have more than one breath above the water.

[25:10] You can actually take your back off the wall and just relax for a second. I get tears in my eyes because that is the kind of breath that we all deserve. It’s our birthright. We’re, we’re here to breathe. We’re here to live, not feeling we’re holding our breath all day long.

[25:28] Paulette: Yeah. As you’re talking, I’m kind of reliving that time in my life. And with the, the, the advantage of having all this time that’s passed and all the things I’ve learned in the last seven years, they say hindsight’s 20, 20, to be able to look back. I realized I was ignoring the signals in my body, you know, the stomach aches, the tight chest. These are red flags that my own body was shooting up as kind of a warning signal, right?

[26:00] So it should have been no surprise that things ended the way they did because I ignored those signals.

[26:07] Karenna: Our bodies are always speaking to us.

[26:09] Paulette: You’ll hear this a lot today about being in your body. We’ve talked about it in past episodes too, but I know it can sound a little woo woo and for that reason you might not take it seriously. But all it means is paying attention to how and what you’re feeling.

[26:24] Yeah, you have to get out your head and stop intellectualizing to do this. It’s about the feelings, which can be hard to quantify sometimes. We’re also taught to ignore our feelings, especially when they’re negative. And that is a terrible practice. You’re human. You’re sometimes going to have negative feelings.

[26:45] That’s normal. Not allowing yourself to deal with them, that’s abnormal, not normal. It’s toxic. Literally, it can make you sick to ignore the signs and sensations your body wants you to feel. It’s what happened to me when I suffered my burnout and subsequent autoimmune disorder. So, the next time you encounter a negative feeling, instead of reacting, because that’s just your brain talking and that’s not what we want right now, see where in your body you feel it.

[27:18] Does it bring a sensation, like your stomach hurts or your shoulders get tense? These are signals to watch out for, especially if they happen when you’re not actively feeling something negative. That’s your central nervous system activating and trying to warn you. Pay attention.

[27:36] So you’ve mentioned regulation and dysregulation a few times. Could you define that clearly for us so that everybody’s on the same page?

[27:45] Karenna: Yeah, so a regulated nervous system feels like grounded, stable, has capacity, you can be with triggers, so like if you’re emotionally triggered, it doesn’t completely take out your day, right? Like you are still regulated in those seasons.

[28:00] A dysregulated nervous system feels anxious, activated, emotionally reactive, like you don’t have your feet on the ground, like you don’t have stability or balance. Like you can’t catch yourself if life throws a curve ball at you or if there’s a challenge that comes up, right? Because we all live in a day of challenges, like things come up all the time. But a good symptom or indicator that if you’re dysregulated, it’s like if life gives you something hard and it completely takes you out, that means that you are dysregulated in that moment.

[28:34] Helpful?

[28:35] Paulette: Yes. So I’m thinking how we live in this contemporary environment where inflation is being felt all around, right? We’re all being asked to do more with less, as you mentioned. Things are costing a lot more. Everybody’s feeling like their dollar just doesn’t stretch. So our entertainment options are more limited.

[28:55] Our going out options are more limited. So collectively, I feel like we’re all undergoing these stresses. So, now it seems normal. This seems like this is how we’re going to operate. We’ve got climates to worry about. We’ve got wars to worry about. You’re carrying all this and God forbid you have an accident on the way home.

[29:16] You’re already stretched so thin and then this big thing happens that probably wasn’t even your fault. You know, what if you’re like rear ended at a light? And that forces you to shift your priorities. So how do we get to the point where we look at shifting our priorities without having the car accident?

[29:35] I think a lot of people listening to this are feeling the strain of life as it is at the moment. And what you’re saying is that we need to check in with ourselves. So we want to feel grounded. We want to feel like we’re in control. I think part of feeling dysregulated, it’s funny, I’m looking at my own language.

[29:56] When I start feeling unmoored, like I’m untethered and I’m just kind of floating and don’t have a path, don’t have anything anchoring me. That’s, you know, look at your language too. See, it’s through these conversations that these revelations become so obvious. I’m like, I’m feeling unmoored. What can I do about that? And the truth is that these societal pressures aren’t going away.

[30:22] So we have to recalibrate ourselves within these limitations.

[30:28] Karenna: One thing I’ll add to that is, for us, like, this is our norm and to our ego, so this is like psychological, we will stay in familiar pain because we’re comfortable versus changing now is more uncomfortable because it’s something that we don’t know, right?

[30:45] It’s a new walk to path. And you were talking a lot to like, how do we prevent that from happening? I think we have to logically understand this, but there’s a body element to this work. Is like, logically understand that we will continue to show up in the world in these stresses because, like you said, these stresses collectively are here.

[31:06] Our relationship to it will stay the same unless we want to change it. Now, I also don’t want to take away from like, wanting to change it is scary. It’s showing up differently in the world. There’s so much that comes with that, right? When you start changing and you start shifting and setting more boundaries and speaking your truth and saying no to things, people are going to respond in a certain way.

[31:31] How do you respond to that? The way that people have a relationship to you, to the relationship you have to life, is how they’re comfortable. And so when you start to make uncomfortable shifts in your life, it’s going to get uncomfortable for other people in your life, whether it’s professionally or personally.

[31:49] And, I think we have to hold on to the vision. The vision of not wanting to get sick, the vision of not putting ourselves last every single day for the benefit of our cultural norms or the benefit of someone else’s safety. Our safety is so true. Every single person that has listened to this, you’re worthy of feeling good.

[32:12] It is meant to feel good. And so I share that with like, how do we get ourselves on board? Well, one is just deciding for yourself that you want to feel good in this world. That you don’t want to feel stretched, that you want to sleep good, that you want to be healthy. One thing I learned after my health episodes, whether it was like my gut health, my hormone health, everything just went to shit.

[32:35] I realized that that health is wealthy. Having my health is so much more beneficial than overstretching myself. Like I ten times rather feel good in my day than feel exhausted, but I had to go through the pain of feeling what it felt like to be really sick. And now I know how wealthy I am now that I have my health back.

[32:56] I didn’t know that before. Now that I’ve been through my own process and I’ve worked with so many clients and I’ve talked to so many people, we always wait until it’s that time where we’re forced to shift. And I understand that we think that we’re strong enough and resilient to handle it all. I get that.

[33:14] What if you use that strength and that resilience to start making the shifts so you can enjoy the strengths of your resiliency in a different way?

[33:23] Paulette: There are so many keywords you just said. Resilient, strong, all of these things that we are taught from a very young age to strive for. And too often, we are the products of sacrifice.

[33:39] And that is the only way that those around us know how to get those things. But there’s a different way. You don’t have to sacrifice your health in order to be resilient, to be strong. Case in point, I go to the gym and I lift weights. What I’m trying to do when I’m fighting gravity is to make sure that 10, 15, 30 years from now, I’m not suffering from osteoporosis.

[34:04] So that’s me trying to make sure that future Paulette has better capacity than expected. That’s why I’m building strength. That’s why I’m building resiliency. And that’s on purpose. That’s proactive, not reactive. How can I take that mindset and those actions and apply them to other areas of my life?

[34:25] That’s the question that I have to ask in order to determine my own capacity, in order to set my life path. And that’s not going to be the same for you, Karenna, and it’s not going to be the same for whomever is listening. But that is a great exercise, and lifting weights is also a great exercise.

[34:40] Karenna: So the weights that you’re lifting at the gym, these are the kinds of weights that we’re lifting in our life, right?

[34:45] Are we going to lift weights that are going to do us harm, or are you going to lift the weights and do the hard in a different way that’s going to support us to feeling stronger and more resilient and increase capacity in the long run? I don’t want to take away from if you are showing up every day. I understand it’s hard.

[35:04] It’s, you are strong. You are resilient, right? And how can we bring that into this way, just doing hard things in a different way. And it’s doing that proactively to your point, to set us up for successful, healthy, grounded, fulfilling life. Which, to use like you said, like your body’s getting stronger so you could be here in 20 years and feel strong in your body.

[35:32] This is the same way as starting to take the task that I did at the beginning, like tapping into your capacity every day. Start showing up in commitment to that and start lifting and building a new muscle that’s going to set you up for a more regulated, fulfilled and healthy life, even if it’s difficult and it’s different.

[35:52] It’s a new room. It’s a room you haven’t been to. It’s a different part of the gym, right? It’s like, it’s the part of the gym that maybe you haven’t gone to because you’re like, I don’t know how to do that. But it’s time to step into that room so that you have the life that you’re really craving. I think we’re all striving for the thing, but we don’t have to feel exhausted and depleted and sick to get there.

[36:14] Paulette: All too often, being busy, being tired, I call it the Exhaustion Olympics, is a badge of honor.

[36:22] Karenna: Exactly.

[36:23] Paulette: What kind of marketing have we swallowed that we sacrifice our own health in search of the of more money and success? Financial success, because success can be measured many, many different ways. But we have determined as a society that is the only metric of success.

[36:41] Keeping up with the Joneses, no matter how ragged you’re running yourself, is the ultimate goal. And that’s just marketing that we all accepted and we don’t have to live that life. We can choose our own paths. We can live outside of that life script.

[36:57] Karenna: When I was starting to break this down for myself, you know, something that blew my mind is that, like, in business, it says busy ness. And I was like, We are literally being wired to be busy. And in a lot of ways, we’re celebrated for being busy.

[37:13] We’re encouraged and empowered to be busy and there is this, like you said, this medal that we’re all having because I’m running the million miles an hour here and I’m doing all this and I’ve checked off all the boxes and I’ve done my to do list. I’m running some business and do do do do do do do do do do do!

[37:30] I’m so successful. Okay, that’s the external view, but like, how do you really feel on the inside?

[37:37] Paulette: This has all been really wonderful. I’m really hoping that the audience is able to really grasp what we’re saying here. Which is that you need to take a very good look at your life and determine where the shifts can be made.

[37:51] Especially if you feel like your back is against the wall and you don’t have choices. But sometimes taking that deep breath and getting some clarity shows you that, yeah, there’s some out of the box solutions that you hadn’t considered before.

[38:04] Is there anything else that you would like to tell the listeners?

[38:08] Karenna: I think reminding yourself that this is for you. You know, I think we live our worlds so often for everyone else in a lot of ways, for the business partner, for our jobs, for these things, and if this is the one thing that you can implement into your life today, what is the smallest shift? It’s the smallest shifts that make such a big difference, and we can start there.

[38:33] There’s a small shift and I think that’s the sweetest invitation because we don’t want to wait for the day that a huge shift is required of us. Because that is life changing versus we can start changing our lives with the smallest shifts now.

[38:48] Paulette: And instead of feeling like you’re a frog being boiled alive, you are ascending to new levels and creating a larger comfort zone around yourself that you can grow into as opposed to reacting to the changes that come your way without your permission or without your say so.

[39:07] Well, thank you so much for coming by, Karenna. Why don’t you tell us where we can find you and the name of your podcast?

[39:14] Karenna: Uh, you can find me on Instagram @IamKarennaSoto. I have a podcast called The Fully Expressed Podcast. It’s truly to invite people into their fully expressed selves and life and relationships and business.

[39:27] One of the foundations to that is honoring capacity so you can live this life that we’ve been given, this gift. It is literally a gift that we get to live this life. And I, I really want to see every human being living that to the fullest as they evolve on their journey. So thank you so much for having me.

[39:46] And that’s a burrito!

[39:49] Paulette: Hey, mira, if this episode made you feel some kind of way, dígame. DM me on Instagram, or send me a text. You can do that right from your phone. If you want to be a guest on the show and put your story out there too, check out the guest form on my website at pauletterato. com slash guest.

[40:08] Yep, just my name, pauletterato. com slash guest. Y no se te olvide que hay más perks when you join the newsletter. Todos estos links están en los show notes. Muchísimas gracias for your support y hasta la próxima vez. Cuídate bien.