How to Overcome Burnout and Take More Risks with High-Performance Coach, Andrew Pearce
Episode 135
If you're feeling burned out or disconnected, this episode is your blueprint for aligning your career with your deepest desires. In today's must-listen episode of the Unstoppable Grit Podcast, we're joined by high-performance coach Andrew Pearce. He bares all about his 2021 burnout crisis, revealing how chasing someone else's dream left him unfulfilled. Andrew shares how to tune into your intuition to distinguish between forced desires and true callings.
Learn how willingness can be your secret weapon to overcome fear and achieve unstoppable success. Tune in and reignite your inner fire!
After this Episode, You Will Be Able to ...
Steps to get back on track and be in alignment
Distinguish between forced desires and actual desires
Explore the relationship between burnout and willingness to take risks
Overcoming Fear and Building Resilience
Free Resources: Thank you for taking the time to write a review and for sharing the podcast with your friends. To claim your free resources send a screenshot of your review to UnstoppableGritPodcast@DanielleCobo.com. We appreciate your support!
Want to work with Danielle? Schedule your call today: https://bit.ly/3OnuLLO
Let's Connect!
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellecobo/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MsDanielleCobo
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedaniellecobo/?hl=en
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DanielleCobo
Website: www.DanielleCobo.com
Join the Unstoppable Grit Podcast Facebook Community:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/unstoppablegritpodcastcommunity
Book Recommendations: https://www.amazon.com/shop/influencer-de49157c/list/2W8I8NWS6N4CJ
About the guest:
Andrew is a Professional Stress & Performance Coach showing High-Achievers how they can maintain performance through mastering the skill of emotional release meaning that they are able to rest and regenerate without needing to stop doing business. Through this work Andrew's clients also experience moments of awakening where they connect to clarity direction and deeper meaning/purpose in their lives. All of which results in them being happier now through the beauty that is surrender.
Connect with Andrew Pearce
LinkedIn Page Link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-pearce-980a07123/
Instagram Page Link: @andrewpearce89
Facebook Page Link: https://www.facebook.com/andrew.pearce.5496
Website: www.andrewdpearce.com
About the host:
Danielle Cobo is an international female speaker for organizations, associations, and the public sector. She works with audiences to harness the grit and resilience to lead through change.
With over 15 years of corporate experience in the medical sales industry, she knows how to build high-performing teams that increase sales, productivity, and employee retention. Her expertise includes corporate resilience and burnout prevention.
Danielle is the author of “Unstoppable Grit: Breakthrough the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Achieving Your Goals” and hosts the globally top-rated podcast "Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo.”
As a former Fortune 500 Senior Sales Manager, she led her team through downsizing, restructuring, and acquisitions to become the #1 sales team in the nation. As a result, she was awarded Region Manager of the Year. Her resiliency motivated her to earn four consecutive national Sales Excellence Awards in a male-dominated industry.
While her husband, a Blackhawk pilot in the Army, deployed to Iraq for a year, Danielle learned to balance a demanding job while caring for their energetic 1.5-year-old twin boys, who possess more energy than a squirrel after a triple espresso.
Danielle’s resilience led her to start her own business, helping others develop the grit, resilience, and courage to thrive in life and business.
Her tenacious attitude stems from being raised by an ambitious mother and recovering from being taken from her father and cast out at 17 years of age.
She is a two-time 60-mile walker and a monster truck driver in Louboutin’s.
Danielle has a bachelor’s in communication with a minor in psychology from the California State University of Fullerton, Certification in Inclusive and Ethical Leadership from the University of South Florida Muma College of Business, and accreditation in Human Behavior from Personality Insights. Inc., and Leadership from Boston Breakthrough Academy.
She is a member of the National Speakers Association, the Central Florida National Speakers Association Chapter, Innovation Women, and a former member of Working Women of Tampa Bay. Danielle serves on the Military Advisory, Workforce Development, and Women of Influence Committees of the Tampa Chamber of Commerce. She is also a contributing writer for Women's Quarterly Magazine.
Her experience includes serving as a Training Pillar on the Military Spouse Economic Empowerment Zone Committee and Career Transition Advisor for Dallas Professional Women.
Through Danielle's captivating storytelling, content-rich and motivational style, she empowers individuals and organizations to cultivate unwavering resilience, igniting a transformative path towards increased sales, productivity, employee retention, and collaboration.
About the show:
The Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo explores the journeys of people who have overcome adversity and harnessed the grit and resilience to thrive in all areas of their lives, Guests share how they overcame difficult times - the strategies, mindset shifts, lessons they learned along the way, and actions that propelled them forward. From navigating career setbacks to overcoming personal obstacles, each episode is a testament to grit and resilience.
You'll learn how to develop the grit and resilience to lead yourself and others through change.
Join host Danielle Cobo, keynote speaker and author of "Unstoppable Grit: Break Through the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Your Goals." A new episode is released every Wednesday at 4:00 AM EST.
Rate, Review, & Follow on Apple Podcasts
"Danielle and her guests are so Uplifting." <-- If that sounds like you, please consider rating and reviewing the show! This helps me support more people- just like you -- develop the grit and resilience to thrive in all areas of their lives.
If there's anybody who knows how to overcome anxiety, stress, and burnout, it's definitely Andrew Pearce who works with high performers. However, in 2021, he found himself in burnout and overwhelming stress. And it was affecting his business.
The Culprit to Burnout
It was the end of 2020, we were in the early stages, mid-phases of COVID. I'd had a good year. However, I wasn't creating business in the way that I really wanted. The flow and the ease and the receiving and the results showing up, and despite 2020 still being a decent year, there was still the element of me pushing and chasing and doing some figuring out.
In early 2021, I moved back to Bali. My friend was having some success with online webinars and I'm like, “Oh yes, although the lowest hanging fruit, I'm going to go after that and make that happen.” Even though at the time I could feel within my body that this wasn't what I actually wanted to be doing. It's just an idea that I can see the potential of and I'm going to make it happen and go after it. So I did for a little bit until I really came to the point when I didn't want to be pushing and making stuff happen in this way. I want to tap into that flow and that ease and receptivity.
I made the commitment to myself to trust and prioritize my inner peace, which in the early phases of doing so, even though internally I was feeling more and more at peace, my external world didn't seem to be matching my efforts just yet. In fact, I had to sell some shares to pay rent and things of that nature. I stuck the course of trusting what felt true within myself and within my body. Eventually, things began to turn around. I see this a lot with entrepreneurs or even working in corporations where we see somebody else's success.
We believe that in order for us to be successful, we should be emulating what that person is doing. However, it may not align with our core values or what is fulfilling to us in what we enjoy, and then it becomes a misalignment and I can see why you fell on yourself in that situation.
Where you're chasing what somebody else is doing, but it's not what you want to do. It's counterintuitive. We definitely don't feel fulfilled. We don't enjoy it as much. And we're not going to reap the financial benefits because it's not in alignment with what we enjoy.
How to Reclaim Your Life and Career After Burnout
Alignment is essential: Chasing someone else's version of success is counterintuitive . It's important to align our actions and goals with our core values and desires to find true fulfillment.
Trust your intuition: Our bodies and intuition provide clues about what is truly aligned with our desires. Listen to that inner guidance and recognizing the difference between forced desires driven by fear and actual desires that create a sense of flow and excitement.
Willingness over fear: Overcoming fear and building resilience require a deep willingness to confront personal truths and make necessary changes. Becoming unstoppable is being willing to face the parts of ourselves that are out of alignment and make a conscious shift towards a new way of creating and receiving in business.
Define Your Own Goal
Forced and Actual Desires
The first step was I get clear on what I actually wanted. A thing that I teach people is a distinction between actual desires and forced desires. A forced desire is something that comes from fear. And the thing is, creating from force still works. People can create from it but it will need to be sustained and maintained from that same force. A forced desire is a fear-based desire. It's usually the lowest-hanging fruit or something that you've seen someone else do that makes logical sense. It has societal influences and conditioning on it.
The actual desire is from intuition. It's that guidance that you don't know how it's going to work out just yet. You can't see steps one through 10, but there's a felt sense within you. So the first step that I took was checking in with myself. I knew that there'd be some fear, some judgment, some self-doubt around the desire. I just checked in. What do I actually want here? How do I actually want business to happen? And in the process of setting that direction and getting honest with myself, I had the connection to the actual desire, which is a felt sense with this distinction, someone will be able to feel in their body. I can feel this is just what I want to flow. It's where the body opens up and there's some excitement.
Listen to Intuition
That's so important to listen to our intuition because so often we will look at something and say, “This is what I should be doing”. But if it doesn't feel right and it doesn't align with us, it doesn't feel intuitive to us, then that's misalignment.
One of the exercises that I'm working on with my clients is to look at our business or if we're in our corporate environment; write down specifically the activities that I enjoy doing and what are the activities that I do not enjoy either in my business or in my career. Then look at certain activities that I can delegate to somebody else or an opportunity to do what I love. Does this role support these particular activities, or is the area of my business supporting the activities that I enjoy doing?
Overcome Fear
Fear and Willingness
Fundamental within the fabric of the human experience is willingness. There is an ever-fluctuating relationship between fear and willingness. If fear is greater than willingness, fear wins. If willingness is greater than fear, willingness wins.
Every single person has access to willingness, every single person has access to greater depths of willingness. There's a very interesting conversation around where one is directing their willingness. So someone who burns themselves out, for example, and a key element of burnout is the energy that it takes to keep our emotions at bay and to fight our emotions on a daily basis.
They're not willing to slow down and sit with themselves and be with themselves. But they are willing to push forward and take risks. You've got a lot of people in life who aren't willing to take risks so they go with the comfortable and the familiar. In this process of developing grit and resilience, was a deep willingness to be with myself and to confront.
Some personal truths. So for example, there was a question that was coming up, “Am I the loser in the group who can't get it together?” And I know that if I'm asking that question, then I'm already feeling like that which is a great insight into human behavior. If someone's asking a question of something of that nature, it's because the feeling's already in the body. And so with my willingness to look at those parts of myself and go to those depths, I faced the parts of myself that weren't in alignment with the new way in which I wanted to create and receive. I think if someone's burned themselves out, they've got a willingness to take on risks and push, like I said, but their willingness is actually out of balance.
When it comes to grit and resilience and perseverance and stuff like that, I speak a lot to my clients about the fear of fear. It's not the facts that we fear, but the strong feelings and emotions associated when we are willing to be with ourselves and be with our fear at depth. I think that is a superpower, an absolute unstoppable superpower, because if you can go that low and handle it, which I have, then bring it on.
There's not that fear of the deep. It's just like, I've been there. I've done it. I can handle it. And there's an absolute superpower in that type of experience.
There is a big misconception about people who are very successful. And this is a question that I get quite often, I can never do what you do. I can never be a speaker. I get so nervous on stage and I always respond. I still get scared. I still have a fear. I still get anxious and my hands get palmy and sweaty. Those that are successful don't mean that they haven't had fear. I believe what you're saying is, we're going to experience fear and the value of sitting in that emotion and acknowledging it and recognizing it and then reminding ourselves of the times that we have had fear and the steps that we've taken to overcome it and know that we've gone through it before helps us build the resilience to get through that fear again.
Get Out of the Comfort Zone
Explore the Worst-Case Scenario
Two things I'll just add a little bit to the willingness is the potential. I was on the credit card and at one point I had to sell some shares. I had what helped me in continuing to follow and trust the internal peace that I was cultivating. I was willing to have to ask someone for money to buy a ticket to go back home if that's what it got to. I was willing to face the shame and the embarrassment that would have come with that process. If I wasn't, I would have gone back into the forceful business. If I wasn't willing to face the potential of that worst-case scenario, I would have gone back into the forceful business. I would have downgraded to a cheaper villa or something of that nature because I wasn't willing to face that potential risk.
A step that was super helpful for me was exploring what's the worst-case scenario here. How willing am I to go the distance? If I wasn't willing, a lot of people would get caught up. I want it. I want it. Yes, I'm willing. And it's like wanting and willing are two very different things.
If I wasn't willing to face that potential risk, I would have avoided it and gone down a different pathway sooner. The exploration of worst-case scenarios and then being willing to go the distance.
Be Honest and Willing
I was really working on cultivating a deep felt sense of embodied value, which required me to be honest with myself about how valuable I felt I was, and how valuable I felt my work was.
There were some admissions throughout the process of I think it's crap, “I don't think it's all that good.” I don't think I've got much to bring to the table. I don't feel like I've got much to offer. And I knew that throughout the process, what was coming up was coming up to leave and be released because it was no longer in alignment with the intention that I'd set for myself. The willingness to go the distance helped me to trust the process.
Ask for Help
A lot of times there's this misconception that there's a weakness in asking for support, a weakness in asking for resources that we possibly might need if we want to go to that next level, or if we've found ourselves in a significant setback, and I see this for people that are working in corporate environments, it could be they want to promote to the next level.
But are they taking that time and the willingness to ask what skills I need to develop in order to get to that next step? Where are my blind spots? Can you give me some transparency on maybe some blind spots that I may have that I can focus on developing? Would you be willing to mentor or sponsor me?
As entrepreneurs, the willingness to ask for guidance and mentorship from other people, but also the willingness to ask people for support. If maybe we aren't achieving some of the goals that we want, we might need to get creative, asking for referrals or creative ways of different revenue streams within our businesses.
But I really like how you mentioned that willingness to ask. It's not a weakness. It's helping us get to the goals that we want. I'm not willing to be seen as weak. They associate asking for help and weakness together, and asking for help runs the potential risk of being seen as weak. If they're not willing for that, they'll shut down asking for help, even if it's the most logical thing for them to do moving forward.
Say that again, because that is a profound statement: If they're not willing to ask for help, then they're willing to remain within their current state.
Another example is if someone is in a job that they hate, but they're unwilling to face the uncertainty of leaving the job, being unemployed, starting their own business, and meaning that they don't do that, what they need to understand is that they are willing to tolerate a job that they hate where they're treated poorly. The good thing about this bit of awareness is this lights a little fire. I don't want to be that person.
I don't want to be, I don't want to be willing to tolerate that. And it's just like, well, you currently are, which is no shame, no judgment. It is what it is. But it sets the wheels in motion for it to be like, okay, well. the scale begins to tip towards, I'm not willing to tolerate this anymore.
I am willing to face the uncertainty of change. All of a sudden, bam, things change. Willingness is so fundamental to human behavior.
I can just feel my stomach turning, turning a little bit with that statement because it just hurts to even hear that statement. I can't even imagine if I was in a position either within a professional or personal life where I'm saying specifically, I know that these circumstances are not good.
I'm not happy. I'm not fulfilled. I'm burnt out. I'm overwhelmed. But I'm willing to stay in this state because I'm not willing to ask for help or not willing to make a change and to say that out loud to hear it and say it hurts.
Match Willingness and Desire
The interesting thing is when we look at some of the research that's out there, the research shows that a lot of people want to help, but they don't know how to help. In actuality, when we help somebody else, we get an increase in dopamine, which is a chemical that releases a happiness chemical within our brain. So when we help others, we get a release of dopamine. And so a lot of times when people say, I don't want to be a burden onto somebody else. But in reality, when we ask for help, people get a release of dopamine and they are fulfilled and happy by helping somebody.
I believe that that's another shift that we get to make that it's not a sign of weakness. It's an opportunity to connect with somebody on a deeper level. It's an opportunity to learn from somebody. It's an opportunity for somebody else to have, to experience joy and fulfillment because they are helping somebody else.
It's an exchange that benefits both parties. yeah, when the willingness is present. There's a shift in behavior and it's, this conversation's great because it will give the listeners a felt sense of the distinction between wanting and willing.
That's the eye-opener. I think so many people who aren't experiencing the changes that they want are stuck in wanting, thinking that they're willing, but actually not being willing. But when you match your level of willingness with your level of desire, that's when you'll see the change. It really puts such a responsibility on myself and kind of calls out the excuses, the time, the money, the timing, the energy, got to get my mindset right, all of these things first.
Underpinning all of it is like if you're willing or not. And also that's something I want to throw in is that not being willing is actually a statement of empowerment. There's no right or wrong. I've got a scale of willingness I've created. There's no right or wrong on the scale.
It's just where you are or are not. And to say, no, I'm not willing to stretch myself further right now is a statement of empowerment and, might be, what someone who's in a position of burnout needs more than anything else. Being willing to stretch themselves again and again and again, and get them burnt out.
So just for everyone listening, when you're at a place of like, no, I'm not willing to do that. There's nothing wrong with that. There's no shame. It's a statement of empowerment and an honest answer as to where your willingness is at is the fastest way forward because you can't move forward in a nice, easy-flowing way when you're not being truthful with yourself.
I want to add to that too because you talk about, I'm not willing to add more to my plate because of where I'm currently at right now. I'd also like to add that phrase of possibly what somebody might be thinking of adding onto the plate could be, that's just not a priority of mine right now.
There are a lot of times when people will say, well, I don't have time. Well, a lot of times we do have time. It's just that that particular task is not a priority for us at this time. I could be spending my time.
I remember at one point in my life when my husband was deployed and I had six-year-old twins at the time. And I remember I had completely, I was sitting on the floor, my entire pantry is on the floor because I decided that it would be the right time to reorganize the pantry and make it this Pinterest-worthy pantry and make it look all pretty, and then I looked around and saying, why did I do this?
Is this really a priority or is this causing burnout? Is it something I want to do? I'd like to have this beautiful pantry, but is it something that needs to be added to my plate? And is it a priority in comparison to all the other tasks that I'm doing, juggling a full-time job and kids and, being the primary caretaker where the husband deployed?
So I believe a lot of times it's also saying. Is this a priority right now, and if it is, am I willing to make it a priority to achieve our goals?
I think it's a good internal inquiry check-in that can get us out of the judgment. There's a freedom that comes from the permission that we give ourselves to say either, no, it's not a priority or, no, I'm not willing. So I think that's a great point.
Four Steps to Realignment:
Get Clear: Know what you want, not what you think you should want.
Listen to Your Gut: If it feels wrong, it probably is.
Face Your Fears: Being willing to confront what scares you makes all the difference.
Be Honest: Align your roles and tasks with what truly brings you joy.
The Power of “Right Now”
There's such a power with putting right now at the end of the question because that will bring you to either a yes or a no. There's no 50-50 with your answers. If you're sitting on the fence. By that's not a yes, by virtue of not being a yes, it's a no.
So a great question that your listeners can ask themselves is how willing am I to face and feel whatever emotion it might be right now will take them to a yes or a no within themselves. If the question doesn't have the right now on the end, it just makes it a bit too open-ended and they're like I'm willing just when I get all these other things in place and it's like, you're willing to now, but you're not willing to now, but you're willing to in the future, which still just has that person suppressing that emotion.
How willing am I to face and feel this emotion right now is a super powerful question when it comes to developing the willingness, the grit, and the resilience to go to those scary parts within ourselves that we all have, that we most certainly all have. so we can face them, release them, get them out of the body, and stop fighting them.
Have a new level of automatic, calm presence and peacefulness within ourselves. I'm also hearing, being by the questions that you're suggesting we ask ourselves, it's a level of kindness to ourselves by asking it right now, it's the level of kindness that we're in grace that we're giving ourselves.
Sometimes if we are willing or not, and maybe it's not a never, it's just not right now.
