“What’s more important: being happy for having some stupid business card?” Asks Bryan Huhn, who joins FRIED today to discuss the relationship between financial stress and burnout, particularly when we allow the money we’re making—and the money we think we can’t live without—to convince us we need to remain in jobs that are making us miserable even to the point of illness. Bryan spent years valuing what people thought of him more than his own genuine passions and in an effort to people-please, pursued a career in finance rather than his dream of becoming a baseball coach. This led to a toxic cycle where his self-worth was tied to a job he had no passion for and therefore didn’t excel at, the stress of which, he believes, contributed to a cancer diagnosis in 2015.

With what he’s learned, he wants to help others make the most of their money so that they can create the best lives for themselves, and don’t have to spend another minute in jobs that they hate. As he explains to host Cait Donovan, this requires being brutally honest with yourself about where your money is going, what that says about what you value, and how you can start financially planning so that you can buy your freedom without wasting any more of that resource that is perhaps more valuable than money: your time.

This requires getting real with yourself, while at the same time refraining from judging yourself or comparing yourself to anyone else. Join today’s episode of FRIED to learn how your approach to financial planning will help you start to live your best life.

Quotes

• “That’s one thing I would say: Don’t ever compare. If there’s something you’ve been through, even if it seems really minor, it has a major impact on your life and the way your brain works. So, having that self-compassion, I think, is really important.” (4:43 | Bryan Huhn)
• “Money is imaginary. It literally is not real. We, as humans, just decided, ‘Hey, this thing, this piece of paper, this U.S. dollar is worth something and we all agree that it is, and that’s how we’re going to interact with one another and get the things we want. It could just as easily be Bitcoin. It’s not real, so why should your goal be to maximize how much of it you accumulate? No, the purpose of it is to live the best freaking life that you can possibly live.” (20:33 | Bryan Huhn)
• “OK, where’s my money going? So, what am I valuing? Because if you really want to know what someone cares about, look at their bank statement and their calendar. The time and the money. It’s a really good way to measure that. So, it almost forces you to do that deep work that so many people resist.” (27:35 | Bryan Huhn)
• “There’s no judgment there. It’s just being honest with yourself and I think a lot of times, especially in my industry, they make people feel really judged. It’s kind of cliche to hear a financial planner say, ‘Don’t spend six bucks on your Starbucks coffee every morning. Shut up. Don’t tell people what they should value, but help them figure it out and help them be brutally honest with themselves.” (30:13 | Bryan Huhn)

Links

Connect with Bryan Huhn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanhuhn/

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Ready to leave burnout behind for good? Join UNFRIED: A Small Group Burnout Recovery Program and start reclaiming your energy and joy. Apply today! https://bit.ly/unfryapply

“The problem isn’t you; the problem is the toxic workplace,” explains host Caitlin Donovan on this latest #straightfromcait episode of FRIED, in which she discusses the dangers of returning to a toxic workplace only to repeat the burnout cycle again, as if you never made any recovery progress. Too often we’re led to believe that if we improve ourselves enough, we can develop an immunity against a bad environment, which, as Cait says, simply isn’t true.

On today’s episode, she explains why you should reconsider returning to your toxic workplace, and, if you do find yourself there, what to do if you find yourself unsupported. She discusses the common feelings of isolation, loneliness, emotional and mental paralysis and low self-esteem that accompany this scenario, and the devastating effects of bullies in the workplace.

You’ve come too far in your burnout recovery to jump back into the very situation that got you burned out in the first place. Join Cait today to learn the importance of being aware of, and listening to your body responses, to better detect and determine if your environment is safe.

Quotes

• “What happens, because of pop culture and pop psychology, is people assume that if they just get stronger, have better boundaries or can manage their emotions better, that somehow they will be able to manage and handle a toxic environment. That would be like saying, ‘If I just meditate enough, I can swim in toxic chemicals and they won’t bother my body.’ That’s just not true.” (2:56 | Caitlin Donovan)
• “There are a lot of people who explain that they, after something like this happens, are left with really low confidence. They’re feeling worthless, they feel socially isolated. They don’t know how to search for a new job; they’re nervous about searching for a new job. They’re wondering if they’ll ever be able to work again. Their social circle often doesn’t know how to respond, which is not their social circle’s fault, most people are just not educated well enough in the realms of burnout to have these conversations easily.” (6:37 | Caitlin Donovan)
• “And then that social isolation turns into loneliness, and you feel like the odd one out and you feel like, ‘Oh, my God, why is everybody around me making it in life and I can’t hang, I can’t hack it.’ And then that turns into a general feeling of despair.” (7:08 | Caitlin Donovan)
• “It only takes one bully, one crappy boss to set things totally sideways. And I know that people who work in HR and leaders don’t want to hear that one crappy boss can really ruin it like that for someone, but they can, and they do, and the cost is magnificent. The cost is immense for this person.” (9:38 | Caitlin Donovan)

Links

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Ready to leave burnout behind for good? Join UNFRIED: A Small Group Burnout Recovery Program and start reclaiming your energy and joy. Apply today! https://bit.ly/unfryapply

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Ready to leave burnout behind for good? Join UNFRIED: A Small Group Burnout Recovery Program and start reclaiming your energy and joy. Apply today! https://bit.ly/unfryapply

“How do we rewrite the playbook together?” asks Daisy Auger-Dominguez, global leader, workplace strategist and author of the upcoming book “From Burnt Out to Lit Up,” on today’s episode of FRIED. The contemporary workplace is in major flux at the moment. In addition to being in collective burnout that we’ve just been able to give a name to, we’re also in what Daisy calls a “messy middle,” where workers are still learning how to effectively use their voices and leaders are trying to navigate these rapidly changing waters with archaic methods. So, how can leaders gain the skills to lead high-performing teams, shift workplace culture, and drive performance without causing more burnout? By showing up differently, modeling vulnerability and humanity for their workers, so that they feel seen, can heal, and eventually, help change the system from the inside out.

Today Daisy talks about what it takes to do such healing. It includes being conscious of your sacrifices, weighing the pros and cons of your decisions, replenishing your social battery and staying on top of your cultural debt. Many leaders fall into the trap of thinking they’re needed everywhere 24/7—when delegating not only eases the leader’s burden but lets capable workers shine.

Daisy explains how we can acknowledge the undue burden many groups experience in the workplace while exercising agency that helps not only us thrive but others as well. By rewriting the stories we tell ourselves, we help remodel the current paradigm of workplace culture into something better.

Quotes

• “That’s what we’re hoping for from our leaders. We’re hoping that they will help us, get us to the other side, and that they will do so vulnerably; that they will do so with humanity; and that they will do so in a way that allows us to feel seen, validated and understood so that we can deliver to our best capacity.” (9:24 | Daisy Auger-Dominguez)
• “I do believe that when you tell the world that you have boundaries, you tell the world that you matter. But I also think …what I do for me is also what I model for others so that—they don’t have to do what I’m doing, but they can create the conditions where they can thrive.” (20:40 | Daisy Auger-Dominguez)
• “One of the practices in the book that I share is about reframing our narratives, reframing our stories, because for a long time, the story I told myself was, ‘As a woman… As a woman of color…’’ all these ‘only’ characteristics that you have, I needed to show up differently. And to be fair, and this is to your naysayer listener, I had to. I really did have to.” (24:07 | Daisy Auger-Dominguez)
• “I know the system has failed me, but how do I exercise my agency to figure out how I thrive in this way, and by doing that, help change the system? Because by my figuring out, ‘How do I show up differently, and ‘How do I help others show up differently,’ we help build that new leadership. We were just talking about how most leaders are using the same old playbook. Well, how do we rewrite the playbook together?” (27:02 | Daisy Auger-Dominguez)

Links

Connect with Daisy Auger-Dominguez:

https://www.daisyauger-dominguez.com

https://www.instagram.com/daisyaugerdominguez/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/daisyaugerdominguez/

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Burnout doesn’t have to be your story. Apply to UNFRIED: A Small Group Burnout Recovery Program and start your journey toward lasting recovery. Spots are limited—apply now! https://bit.ly/unfryapply

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Ready to leave burnout behind for good? Join UNFRIED: A Small Group Burnout Recovery Program and start reclaiming your energy and joy. Apply today! https://bit.ly/unfryapply

“What kind of 85-year-old do you want to be?” asks Cathy Richards, exercise physiologist, wellness coach and best-selling author of “Boom! Six Steps to Living a Longer, Healthier Life” who joins the podcast to help us learn what we can do to protect our brains against neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease. The habits we build now—starting with as little as just five minutes a day—will help, in large part, to determine the quality of our later years.

The best thing you can do? Get moving. This doesn’t have to mean exercise. Cathy and Cait discuss the power of movement to not only yield physical benefits such as weight loss, but helps to promote neuroplasticity that will help us develop healthier thoughts and, ultimately, belief systems. The point is to build small consistent habits over time.

The future is coming faster than we think. Though none of us has entire control over it, we can begin today to form the best version of ourselves in the future.

Quotes

• “I will say that I think that sleep is one of the biggest things we can do…I don’t think in general that sleep is protected as much and it’s not part of American culture to get enough sleep, I would say, in my opinion. I feel like we’re always deciding if we have more to do, we just stay up late and we get up early.” (9:32 | Cathy Richards)
• “Totally modest investment of time can yield enormous benefits. It doesn’t have to be a lot, it doesn’t have to be complicated and we really can’t afford not to. That’s the thing, if we could prescribe movement, whether it’s for migraines, or whatever it is, or whatever your problem, movement can fix it, or can help fix it. Almost every single solitary time.” (17:30 | Cathy Richards)
• “People get stressed out thinking, ‘What do I need to do to prevent my heart disease?...what do I need to do to protect my brain?’ Guess what? It’s all the same list…Moving your body has more impact on your brain function than anything else you could do.” (33:18 | Cathy Richards)
• “You don’t turn into the kind of 85-year-old that’s in a nursing home versus traveling the world at 84. We’re building the kind of 85-year-old we want to be right now.” (47:52 | Cathy Richards)

Links

Connect with Cathy Richards:

https://www.cathyrichards.net/blog/taking-a-year-to-inspire-vitality-in-yourself https://www.cathyrichards.neet

https://www.instagram.com/inspiringvitality

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cathymrichards/

https://www.cathyrichards.net/brainpower.html https://www.facebook.com/groups/intentionallivingandlongevity

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Burnout doesn’t have to be your story. Apply to UNFRIED: A Small Group Burnout Recovery Program and start your journey toward lasting recovery. Spots are limited—apply now! https://bit.ly/unfryapply

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Ready to leave burnout behind for good? Join UNFRIED: A Small Group Burnout Recovery Program and start reclaiming your energy and joy. Apply today! https://bit.ly/unfryapply

“We really need to break our limitations of what we say rest is,” says Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, a board-certified internal medicine physician, internationally renowned thought leader on well-being, and author of the bestselling book “Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity.” By overwhelming demand, Dr. Saundra joins the FRIED podcast to discuss the seven types of rest, which she explains is distinct from—but nonetheless essential to—sleep. She’ll explain how you can determine in which area of your life—from the mental, physical and emotional, to the sensorial, spiritual and creative—-you are experiencing the greatest rest deficit, and how you can begin to fill those empty buckets amidst your busy life, not around it.

Along the way she reveals some surprising insights about the nature of rest and unpacks some of our most enduring misconceptions about it. Often what we think of as rest is really more work and when we think we are relaxing we are just indulging ourselves. She explains the difference between fitting in and true belonging, why trauma dumping can actually cause more stress, and why that watercolor painting class is not as creatively restoring as you may think it is.

Over 250,000 people have discovered their personal rest deficit with Dr. Saundra’s help. Join today’s episode to learn how you can discover yours and start your journey toward overcoming burnout and living your best life.

Quotes

• “I got to this point where I realized all of the work and energy that I put into building that life that looks so good, I could put the same energy into building a life that actually felt good, and that actually was a life that was satisfying and did give me the things that I desire.” (4:49 | Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith)
• “Do something. Don’t settle for exhaustion. I feel like that’s the culture we’ve lived in. We’ve settled for, ‘Well this is just how everybody feels. Everybody’s burnt out. Everyone’s exhausted. Nobody’s happy.’ It’s not true. It’s a lie.” (13:51 | Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith)
• “I think for a lot of people, we feel like sleep is the end all/be all of rest. And so we try to bypass all other forms of stress and just go straight to, ‘Give me six, seven, eight hours of deep, restorative sleep,’ and that’s just not the reality of it. You can pop pills all day, you’re not going to have restorative sleep. It just doesn’t work like that. It’s something that comes when your body, your mind, your spirit, your relationships, all of those components of rest feel safe, they feel rested. So, then it’s like your whole self is able to completely go into the truly helpless state of deep, restorative sleep.” (17:32 | Saundra Dalton-Smith)
• “Fifty years ago…we trained our brains for memorization, concentration and focus, whereas now we train our brains to multitask.” (21:08 | Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith)

Links

Connect with Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith:

https://www.drdaltonsmith.com/

https://www.instagram.com/drdaltonsmith

https://www.linkedin.com/in/drdaltonsmith/

https://restquiz.com/

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Burnout doesn’t have to be your story. Apply to UNFRIED: A Small Group Burnout Recovery Program and start your journey toward lasting recovery. Spots are limited—apply now! https://bit.ly/unfryapply

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“Making yourself feel good in your own space is really important,” urges host Cait Donovan on today’s episode of FRIED, the second in a six-part series dedicated to the various factors that make us more vulnerable to burnout. Following the episode which covered factors in the workplace, today’s episode discusses the impact of our environment—both interior and exterior—on our parasympathetic nervous system and our ability to handle stress. Today, Cait will cover the importance of light exposure—and lack thereof—as well green spaces, clutter piles, and when. You’ll learn why even the way you store your cutlery can change the way you feel in your own space.

No matter how much time, energy or money you have to devote to changing your environment—every little adjustment makes a difference. Cait shares research and science behind her suggestions, while also encouraging you to cater to your own individual preferences. She’ll share the three colors that are proven to inspire calm in the home, how to increase the function of your prefrontal cortex and how to create community around you even when you live alone.

What small shift can you make in your environment in the next week? With that one small change you will begin to buy yourself the energy you will need to make the larger changes in your burnout recovery.

Quotes

• “A lot of times, this is something that we have a lot of control over for relatively low cost—if not totally free—and we’re not thinking about it because so much of the “self-help” work out there is about fixing your mindset, and managing your perfectionism and doing something about your boundaries. Sometimes, when you can’t do any of those things, I want you to know there is still something you can do, some changes you can make, some influence you can have without having to be focused on doing all this work all the time.” (2:02 | Caitlin Donovan)
• “When you view the sunrise and view the sunset and your eyes are exposed—there are actually cones and rods in your eyes that are exposed to a particular level of blue light that’s given out during those hours, that help to set off your hormonal cascade, the circadian rhythm of your hormonal cascade properly.” (6:49 | Caitlin Donovan)
• “When we’re thinking about burnout recovery, we [often think] ‘Go boundaries, and have these conversations and maybe even quit your job or talk to your manager,’ and do all these big life things. Sometimes, the first thing you need to do is buy a round nightstand or something else equally seemingly insignificant in your world that will help lower your stress level so that you can manage the other things in your life with more ease so that you have more buffer in your stress response system to be able to handle the rest of life.” (13:41 | Caitlin Donovan)
• “You should feel community within your household if there are other people who live with you, and/or around your household. So, if there is no community at all in your neighborhood, even if the only community you have is that you have a dog and the fellow dog walkers say hello to each other when they’re out, that matters.” (17:32 | Caitlin Donovan)

Links

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Burnout doesn’t have to be your story. Apply to UNFRIED: A Small Group Burnout Recovery Program and start your journey toward lasting recovery. Spots are limited—apply now! https://bit.ly/unfryapply

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“I completely lost myself, my physical, mental and emotional well-being, but I lost my identity. I was no longer Claudia, I was the caregiver,” explains today’s guest Claudia Taboada, a holistic wellness and burnout prevention coach, bestselling author and international speaker who joins FRIED today to discuss the experience of burnout by those who care for neurodiverse children. After her oldest son was diagnosed with autism in 2003, Claudia left her job to care for him full time. Soon, not only was she mentally and physically exhausted from trying to be, as she called it, the “autism supermom” but she lost sight of her own goals and aspirations along the way. On today’s episode, she explains how a guide dog who had been gifted to the family to help with son’s development, actually helped her realize how important it is for those who care for everyone else to carve out time to care for themselves, to de-clutter their minds, to get their bodies moving and reconnect with themselves.

Of course, for most women, this is easier said than done. Claudia talks to host Cait Donovan about the pressure to people-please, to put one’s own needs last on the list, and the importance of filling your own cup. She also discusses setting mental boundaries against toxic people and influences, while also pushing past our own limiting beliefs and fears, and what she does to foster a growth mindset.

Quotes

• “It was really about decluttering the mind. On these walks, I was by myself—and the dog—but I was into the present moment. They were mindful walks, I called them ‘the mindful walks.’ I was on my stride, and the smells, the sights—everything. So, I was in the present moment and that finally allowed my mind to start decluttering. The mind started to declutter and I started to reconnect with myself.” (9:37 | Claudia Taboada)
• “I crossed the finish line and that was the moment, that was my epiphany—my real epiphany—where I said, ‘This is it. Burnout stops here. I need to take charge. I need to take charge of my physical, mental and emotional health because I have been neglecting myself and as the mother of a severely autistic child who is going to be dependent on me for the rest of his days, I cannot die. I need to recover from this burnout and I need to stay in peak mental, physical and emotional state to be able to not only take care of him in the long run, but also go after my dreams and my aspirations, which I had lost.” (13:26 | Claudia Taboada)
• “I also have my own identity now. So even though my life is harder now because I’m by myself, taking care of my son, I’m also feeling fulfilled and I’m doing my things and I have my business and all that. And I have learned how to put my boundaries around my caregiving role so that I can do my own things as well.” (20:15 | Claudia Taboada)
• “Women, we have been conditioned to give, to be everything to everyone and we put ourselves at the bottom of the priority list, and when we start setting boundaries and when we start saying, ‘Well, maybe I also have needs,’ we feel guilty. Whether it’s at work or it’s at home, we feel guilty.” (22:02 | Claudia Taboada)

Links

Connect with Claudia Taboada:

https://claudiataboada.com/

www.linkedin.com/in/claudia-taboada-216a901bb

https://calendly.com/claudiataboada/30-minute--gameplan-call

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Burnout doesn’t have to be your story. Apply to UNFRIED: A Small Group Burnout Recovery Program and start your journey toward lasting recovery. Spots are limited—apply now! https://bit.ly/unfryapply

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

“Irrational fear is just a sign of depletion,” said Sarah Vosen in a recent conversation with co-host Cait Donovan. This profound insight became the foundation for today’s episode. According to Chinese medicine, the paralyzing anxiety that often accompanies burnout—leaving you disconnected from yourself and others, doubting your intuition, and retreating from the world—stems from a depletion of energy in the kidney system. Citing the book “Rooted in Spirit: The Heart of Chinese Medicine,” Cait explains that when the heart and kidney systems fail to connect and communicate, it leads to insecurity, hesitation, and a loss of perspective on life’s possibilities.

So, what can we do about it? Since fear is a physical symptom of a deeper issue, the solution lies in the physical realm. Sarah and Cait discuss dietary changes, exercise, and environmental adjustments that can help restore kidney energy. They also delve into a specific visualization technique and even suggest the best fashion choices to support this healing process.

Join the conversation to discover the surprising and common physical signs that may be linked to the kidney’s energetic system, along with a specific exercise that could bring you the relief you’ve been seeking.

Quotes

• “When you’re feeling irrational fear, it feels like it’s the biggest thing, top priority, it is coloring everything in your world. It’s a big deal.” (2:31 | Sarah Vosen)
• “It’s just a sign—not to minimize that it feels gigantic, but it’s just a sign—it’s just one of the ways that your body’s telling you, ‘I’m so depleted that I am terrified of everything on purpose. I’m telling you that I’m scared of everything because I want you to sit still. I want you to honor this fear and stop pushing yourself because you are dangerously depleted.’” (3:45 | Sarah Vosen)
• “This goes both ways: when this communication is disrupted, fear is the result. And also, when there is too much fear, a disruption of this communication can be the result.” (9:11 | Caitlin Donovan)
• “Your hesitation to take a step forward in any direction because you feel like it’s all wrong and you’re going to hurt yourself and you just don’t know. You can’t trust because you’re disconnected from your heart. Your heart is no longer leading you in the way that it used to. We didn’t even used to think about it, but a lot of times, you just thought, ‘Oh. That feels good. I’m going to do that.’ But when you’re not connected to your heart anymore and this fear is driving you, it actually just drives you straight into the ground.” (10:29 | Sarah Vosen)
• “Most people don’t necessarily know this but the heart sends more signals to the brain during the day than the brain sends to the heart—this is not Chinese medicine, this is Western research. So, your heart is sending more information to your brain than the other way around. So, your heart has a lot of influence over how you function on a day-to-day basis.” (11:19 | Caitlin Donovan)

Links

Connect with Cait:

Initial Call with Cait: bit.ly/callcait

Initial Call with Sarah: bit.ly/callsarahv

Burnout doesn’t have to be your story. Apply to UNFRIED: A Small Group Burnout Recovery Program and start your journey toward lasting recovery. Spots are limited—apply now! https://bit.ly/unfryapply

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm