Career Burnout or Misalignment? How to Know When It’s Time to Pivot

Most people think career burnout comes from doing too much.

But what if the real exhaustion comes from carrying something that was never clearly yours anymore?

In this episode of UnCeiling You, I sit down with former concert cellist turned coach, Kate Kayaian, to unpack what happens when a high-performing career no longer fits—even when it looks successful from the outside.

We go beyond surface-level burnout and into something deeper:
 👉 identity misalignment
 👉 over-responsibility
 👉 and the hidden cost of staying in roles that no longer align

If you’ve ever felt like you “should” love your career… but something feels off—this episode will help you understand why.

💡 What You’ll Learn

•  Why career burnout is often not about workload—but misalignment
•  The moment high performers miss when things start to feel “off” 
•  How to recognize when you’re carrying responsibility that isn’t yours 
•  Why being good at something doesn’t mean you’re meant to keep doing it 
•  How to pivot without burning everything down 
•  The difference between a breaking point—and catching it early

📘 Ready to Go Deeper?

If this episode resonated, it’s time to get clear on what’s actually yours—and what’s not.

👉 Get the Responsibility Reset Notebook:
https://unceilingzone.com/rrnotebook

This is the exact framework to:

•  stop over-carrying 
•  reduce burnout 
•  and reclaim your energy and focus

🌿 From Kate Kayaian

Want a structured way to reset and plan your next 90 days?

👉 Download Kate’s Quarterly Retreat Planning Guide:
https://mailchi.mp/585d0fbc5a61/quarterly-retreat-planning-guide

You’ll learn her 4-part method to:

•  Plan 
•  Create 
•  Organize 
•  Optimize 

so your next quarter actually works.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Most people think burnout comes from doing too much, but what if the real exhaustion comes from caring something that is not clearly yours? Today's conversation is about a quiet moment when something that once fit perfectly, your role, your identity, and your success just suddenly stops fitting. And you can't quite explain why. I'm joined by Kate Kyan, a former concert cellist who performed at the biggest level, built a career most people dream about, and still found herself asking, why doesn't this feel like me anymore? What unfolded for her wasn't failure, it was evolution. And what we unpack in this conversation is something I see all the time, especially in high performers. You can be excellent, you can be reliable, you can be the one everyone depends on, and still feel like you're slowly getting lost inside what you're doing. This is exactly what we talk about on Unsealing You, how ambition, identity, and growth evolve, and how to recognize it's time to reset. Not because you're burned out from working hard, but because you've been carrying something that no longer belongs to you. Let's get into it. Thank you so much, Kate, for being on. Most people think burnout is about doing too much. But what if the real exhaustion comes from carrying something that was never clearly yours to begin with? So, Kate, I want to ask you you delivered at the highest level of a professional musician playing the cello. As we discussed, we I played the cello in college, not to your level, but oh my God, it's such a beautiful instrument. It's the best. It's the best. It is nothing like it. And it takes precision, excellence, to and deep commitment to be at the level that you as a concert cellist. But somewhere inside all of that delivery, you describe feeling like a person doing the delivering, but you got a little lost. When did you first notice that you were getting lost in the actual what you were doing every day?

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Yeah, thank you, Natalie. And uh thanks for having me here. I'm thrilled to be here with you all today. You know, it's uh I played the cello since I was four and a half. It's when I started, and I absolutely loved it. There was nothing I wanted to do more than play the cello, and I couldn't wait to go to music school. I went to the New England Conservatory of Music. I had this incredible career, got to play all over the world with amazing people. I was really living the dream as a cellist. And it was about in my late 30s, early 40s, and I realized I was like, you know what? Something just feels off. I loved the music. I loved being around my friends. I mean, when you're a professional musician, all of your friends are professional musicians too. So going to work is like going to hang out with your friends. But there was something about it that I just, you know, I say my whole life, there was nowhere I'd rather have been at 8 p.m. on a Saturday night than on stage playing the cello. And suddenly things seemed to start started to shift. And I was like, well, I could be at a dinner party. I could be watching a performance myself and just relaxing and enjoying it. I started to feel like I was like a paid trick pony, sort of paraded out on stage for everybody else to relax and be entertained. And yeah, suddenly it just felt off. And of course I couldn't understand it because here's this thing that I've done my whole life. It was my entire identity, and I truly loved it. There was never a point where I was like, I hate this, I don't want to do it another second. It just felt like it was like a like a favorite jacket that didn't fit anymore.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

I wanted to pause on that because what Kate just described is something I see all the time with high performers. It's not burnout from doing too much, it's misalignment from carrying an identity that no longer fits. And most people don't recognize that moment, they override it. You know, I kind of can relate to that because for me as a sales leader, I loved the hustle. Like going to that meeting, this meeting, having the high-stakes discussions. And one day I was racing through the airport as usual, but just a little bit late because I could do that one extra thing before I have to take off for the airport, which always brought me just a little bit late. And as I'm hustling, I'm like, wait, I'm not into this anymore. It's like a sudden realization.

SPEAKER_02 5:03

Yeah, it can hit you like that, and you realize it's kind of been building up. And I talk about how we as human beings just, I mean, this is not about being in sales or it's not about being a musician, right? It's just as a human being, we we evolve, we grow, we all know this. It's obvious, right? And then we somehow think that all of the things that we've loved to do should just remain, like they're part of our personality, and they too are allowed to grow and evolve and shift. And sometimes we see that shift happening slowly, and sometimes we're just so busy doing the thing that, as you said, like just that moment in the airport, we were like, Whoa, how did I get here? But here I am.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Yeah, and from the outside, I'm sure everybody, especially people that are striving to be at your caliber, from the outside, it looks like everything's working as perfect, like they are dying to be there. You know, all the performances, the accolades, the signals that you have made it, but then there's a version of that story that only you know who you're living it. So, what actually happened on the inside of that career and what was it like, do you think, for people outside?

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Yeah, well, um, it was interesting, the other people's reactions to it was really not what I expected. You know, as I said, I started when I was four and a half. Most of us start at a very young age, and we are the ones who don't quit after high school. We're the ones that went on to study music in college and get the degrees, and then we're the ones who didn't decide in college that this isn't what we wanted to do. We went on to have those professional careers. So there are a lot, especially as a musician, as a creative, as an artist of any kind, where you've, and I'm I'm sure it's the same medical school, law school, engineering, like these things where you just dedicate so many years, and there are so many points where you can opt out that by the time you get to the point where you're having that successful career, and all of your colleagues, you've all gone through that same process together, and here you are reaping the rewards. For me to say, I'm not injured, I haven't had some sort of mental health crisis, I just am deciding I want to do something different. Was very difficult for a lot of my colleagues and friends to wrap their head around. Now, all these years later, they say, Oh, I love your podcast, I love your book, I love everything you're talking about, it's so great. But at the time it was really difficult when I talked to them and said, you know, I I think that I want to not perform anymore. They looked at me like I had five heads and they'd be like, Well, you can't quit. You know, like you're too good at what you do. You can't just quit. And I said, But I want to. And I expected people to be more supportive and say, like, you know, it's your life. Like, if if you really were ex I expected them to sort of lean in with follow-up questions, and no, none of them, they were like, Nope, you cannot do that. And so everybody's advice to me was that I should just lean in harder, I should play better concerts, more concerts, I should just push my career up to even, you know, to the next level higher, and then I would enjoy it more. And I'm thinking, I don't think so, but but maybe, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Let me pull something out of what Kate just said. This is such a critical leadership moment because what these people were asking Kate to do was to double down on performance, double down on what success should look like instead of questioning the alignment. That's where a lot of people get trapped.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

And so in 2020, you know where I'm going with this. I had this big two-week concert tour planned for mid-April. And on March 13th, I happened to be playing a recital here in Bermuda where I live, which is rare. I didn't perform here a lot. I performed everywhere else. But on that Friday night, I happened to have a recital here at home, and it was packed because the big performance on the island had to get canceled, right? Because you couldn't have more than, say, 50 people in a room. So all of those people flocked to my recital. So we had way too many people in the room. And I got up on stage and I talked about how this was likely to be the last time we would all gather like that, and the last time to hear live music, and the last time I would be performing. And people remember that I was a little emotional. I mean, I didn't burst into tears or anything, but they could tell I was feeling a little emotional. And people would come up to me, they still say this to me six years later like, oh, it was so touching how how upset you were at the idea of not performing. And Natalie, what they don't know is that I was feeling emotional because I was so relieved. I was so relieved that I didn't have to do it, that that pressure was taken from me, and not pressure like a boiling point, but just the pressure of having to do something that I had inside decided I didn't want to do. And that was when it was really clear that I had made the decision. It was obvious to me. I was like, no, I have decided I don't want to perform, and now nobody can make me.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Because it's powerful. What Kate felt wasn't relief from work, it was relief from carrying something that wasn't hers anymore. And most people don't give themselves permission to feel that. It was a signal to Kate that she was on the right path. Oh wow. Nobody can make it. It was almost like uh you manifested your what it your dream in a sense.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

I know, and I hate to say this because, right, that pandemic was horrible for so many reasons for so many people, but it was for me in some ways a bit of a gift because it gave me that that time. I just said, you know what? Okay, let's just say looks like all my concerts are canceled for the next six months. So let's just say I have a six-month sabbatical. I was still teaching my students online, and I started an online cello festival. I used it was great. I loved it. I was terrified, Natalie. I was terrified. My imposter syndrome was through the roof. I had actual friends and colleagues saying, This is never gonna work, Kate. Nobody's gonna want to do this festival. It ended up being a huge success. And then people and colleagues they started coming to me saying, Hey, could you help me set something else up?

unknown 11:49

Right.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

Because we had no income. And I had figured out a way to generate an income through this. And so I started coaching people, and I started really studying coaching skills, right? Because I realized, oh, I can teach them the marketing and the business side and how to set up a website, and I can teach them those practical things. But what they really need is the help getting over their imposter syndrome and moving through the that resistance and doing the things that they want to do. And so I started coaching. And here's where you you asked me what it felt in the moment when things felt off kilter. And the truth is that I can't really pinpoint what it felt like other than it just it felt a little fuzzy. Like I knew it, I knew that it what I was doing wasn't it, but I didn't yet know what it was.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Right.

SPEAKER_02 12:41

And when I started coaching, and I was with the coaching, I was writing more, I had a blog, I was writing articles, I was just writing a ton. I felt like my life was coming into focus for the first time.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

I see. And just going back to that moment it was fuzzy, and you were trying to describe it to people, and they were like, wait, no, you can't stop. You need to lean in harder. What do you wish someone would have named out loud for you at that moment?

SPEAKER_02 13:12

Yeah, it's very simple. That just because you are really good at something doesn't obligate you to do it. And I think that a lot of people, a lot of the people that I work with as clients, they're executives, they're high-functioning, high-achieving people who are just exceptionally good at what they do. And they don't want to do it anymore. They want to go do something different, and they feel like they're obligated to be doing this thing because everybody depends on them, whatever it is, and because that's what they've been rewarded for their entire life. And so, yeah, I wish that somebody had just said, you can do whatever you want, you can do whatever you want.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

I love that. And you know, uh, I have a daughter, and my dream for her is to get a degree in engineering and a degree in medical school. She had to break it to me. Medical school is not what she wanted. She wanted engineering, and she she loves to build things, and we adopted her from China, and she wanted to dig into her heritage. You know, for me, I remember being in college and saying, hey, because my mom also wanted me to be in med school like her, and I had to like give her her that space. And it's interesting that that space is needed not only during college when you're figuring out what your major is going to be, it's at any time within your life. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 14:44

I mean, here you might enjoy this story. I had a bit of um a strained relationship with my mother. I mean, she was wonderful, she did her best. You appreciate that, but we were not close, especially, you know, teenage years growing up. And she was by no means unsupportive of my going into music. She she thought it was great. She loved that she was very proud of my career as a cellist. She never tried to get in my way or convince me to do something else, but she always said, throughout my entire life, are you sure you don't want to be a writer? What are you talking about? Now, at the time, she could see that, you know, I had I started writing in a journal every day at a very young age. And I just thought that that's what everybody did. Like you'd go into any shop, and every shop sold little journals, right? Like in the 80s, they had the little lock and key. And I just wrote in journals every day of my life. I was a latchkey kid, I was by myself a lot, so I would just talk to myself through my journals. I didn't know that not everybody did that. And so as a mother, she would see that I I expressed myself through writing. And that my happy place was writing, whatever it was. I mean, it was usually just like, I have a crush on Joey today, and like Megan didn't invite me to her party. That cow. You know, it was stupid stuff. But um and then later in life, like, you know, I was going to music school and she's like, Are you sure you don't want to take some writing classes? She would always, I was like, What are you talking about? What what do you mean? I don't understand. It would come out of nowhere. And here I am, a writer. And you know, my my book was published about a year after she passed away, but she knew I was writing it, right? So I think she had the last laugh there.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Well, that's so funny.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

So, you know, maybe your daughter will end up in medical school. You never know. You never know.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

Yes, you never know. I mostly want her to uh be her best and to be happy. So and it seems that's that's the direction it's going.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

Yes, and I'm not saying that you know kids should listen to their parents, the parents know best, but I do think that we can sometimes see aspects of people from the outside, right? They said the phrase you can't read the label from the inside. I think she recognized something in me that I couldn't see. I was so focused on cello, which I did legitimately love that I wasn't seeing that, like I really come alive when I'm writing.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:12

And she could see that from afar. And I always say, you know, that there's a phrase success leaves clues. And of course, that means like if there's something you want to do, look at somebody who's been successful and see what they did. But I also think that that phrase can be looked at as we leave ourselves clues. There was part of me growing up that I was always really intrigued by the business world.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

Right? Like part of me, here I am, excited and thrilled to go be an artist and a professional musician. And I loved the idea of wearing like a power suit at heels, which of course you would never wear. You couldn't even play the cello in a power suit, right? But I was just really drawn to that whole aesthetic and that whole sort of like sitting at a desk and making it happen and creating a company, and I loved to write. And those were sort of my two side little like side fantasies, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

And here we are, I'm 50 years old, and those are the two things that I'm doing.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Pause here for a second. Because if you're listening to this and thinking, something feels off, but I can't quite name it. You're not alone. Most high-performing people aren't overwhelmed because they can't handle more. They're overwhelmed because responsibility has gotten a little blurry. And that's exactly why I created the responsibility reset notebook. It's not mindset work, it's not journaling to feel better. It's a structured way to separate what's actually yours from what isn't. You can stop caring the outcomes that you don't control, and most importantly, close the mental loops that keep your brain on all the time. Because when responsibility stays vague, your brain keeps scanning, and that's what creates a constant low-level exhaustion. This notebook gives your brain something it rarely gets: clarity, containment, and a place to put things down without dropping the ball. If this conversation is hitting for you, you'll want the tool in hand. You can grab it in the show notes. So let's pretend that COVID did not. Yeah. And you're in the middle of the hustle of the concerts, and how would you be able to have done your identity excavation and exploring that two the two sides with the power suit and the writing when your career is still running?

SPEAKER_02 19:47

Yeah, I think that's such a great question because you know, as you said, I had this thing placed upon me that gave me the perfect exit ramp. Not everybody has that.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Right.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

I believe very strongly in the in the pivot. In the slow pivot. Right. So I think that we can upgrade the things that we don't want to be doing anymore while we upgrade the things that we do want to be. And that might be on the weekends, it might be in the evenings. Sometimes that would look like um just exploring that identity within yourself. I think a lot of people, a lot of your listeners might have have read or worked through the the artist's way at some point. It's a very popular book by Julia Cameron that came out in the 90s. And she has an exercise of the artist's date. And sometimes you can, you know, like, okay, so I let's say that my secret identities, if you want to call them that, or a writer and a businesswoman. So I might go to a little shop on a Saturday and I might buy like a set of pens, gel pens to write with. I might get some something there that, you know, for my office at home. Just sort of spark that identity of if this is who I was, how would I spend my weekends? What would I wear? What would I be doing? Who would I be hanging out with? And developing that and exploring that side of yourself, I think is a great way to do it. And you'll you'll find yourself slowly shifting one decision after another. I can see it in my clients as I guide them through that of letting one aspect of their work life go, of delegating it to somebody else and taking on a different activity. And after a year or two, they're like, wait, I have a whole different life, and it's the life that I've always been dreaming of. How did that happen? Right. And they can see it. So I don't, I'm not somebody that advocates really for burning the burning the ships. I think that there are some occasions that call for it every once in a while, but usually I think people are much more comfortable, both financially. And emotionally, with just slowly moving from one identity to another.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

I love that. And so that pivot is can be very slow. That reinvention can be very slow. And one of the things that you talk about in your framework is you have three phases the reassess, redefine, reignite. And I want to talk specifically about the first one because I think that's where most people quietly fail.

SPEAKER_02 22:29

I think so too. I think so too. I think when people want to pivot, make a big change in their life, I think they go straight to the action steps. They go, they, you know, go straight to that. Maybe they redefine themselves, but often they even skip that and they go straight to the to the action, the reignite stage. The reassess is about taking a look at the stories that we've been living according to. And they could be stories that we made up for ourselves, just things that we decided at some point. They could be stories that other people told us. They could be stories that we just get from society about why we do and and how we fit into things. And that could be you're no good at math. That could be, oh, you're so good at math, right? You have to do this. You're such a great cellist, you have to do this. It could be people like us don't do things like that. It could be people like people that do that thing are this kind of people that we don't like, right? Anything. And so I think it's really important for us to say, okay, I mean, let's just take myself as an example, right? If I'm thinking, well, I can't quit cello, then I say, well, why not? Oh, well, because so many people invested in my career, it just wouldn't be the right thing to do. Okay, well, that's a story that I'm telling myself that people will be disappointed. People feel betrayed. And is that true? Like you can ask that question, like, hey, parents who spent a fortune on my cello and my music lessons. Like, would you be terribly upset if I went and did something else? And they said it's your life, go do what you want, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:03

Um, these are the stories that we have to ask ourselves. Otherwise, we're just gonna get stuck in the same loop, right? Whether it's a guilt loop or a limiting belief loop of like you had a gym teacher once who told you that you were you were slow. You were the slowest person in the class. And so you grew up thinking, I'll never be a runner. I'm too slow. And then you decide, you know what, I want to run a marathon. And so you go out for your first training run, right? You jump right into the action taking, you know, you buy your shoes, you get your gear, you go out for that first run, and you are slow because you've never run before. And you say, you know what? My teacher was right. I'm too slow for this. And until you've gone through that reassessment phase of like, well, what did what did she know? Like, yeah, maybe she had a bad day, and maybe I was the slowest person in the class that day, but that doesn't mean I couldn't become the fastest person in the class at some point. And, you know, until you rewrite that story and say, Well, I'm gonna try. I'm gonna see. And you can also rewrite the story of, well, so what if I'm slow? Slow people can run too, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:06

Yeah. So the story that relates to me in business is I had a friend who was working in a position. It was a high-level position. She had worked for the same people for years and years, and always from from the time she graduated till this moment, and now she wanted a role that was bigger. She wanted a bigger role. She knew she had talent. She was completely bored with her current position, and she had um an unfortunate conversation with someone else who told her the only place she would ever be able to work was the place that she was at. And it sort of stopped her, it made her feel so depressed and so sad. But she did exactly what you just said. She reassessed things and she was like, Is that really true? I don't think it is. And then she ended up putting herself out there and getting a really big role at international company.

SPEAKER_02 26:12

I love that story. It just goes to to show the importance of questioning, especially if it's feedback that's coming from another person. Now, of course, there is often some truth in it, right? If I give advice to a student of mine or, you know, on on their cello plane, I don't teach cello anymore, but you know, there there's gonna be truth. I have experience, I have wisdom, but it's still coming from me. And I um, you know, that there's a part of the coaching world, you know, that they talk about unhooking from praise and criticism. And it teaches you that what people are telling you says more about themselves than it does about you, often. Right? If I say, hey, I really loved that report that you wrote, yeah, maybe it was really just a really great report by a lot of aspects, but it also means that you wrote that report kind of in the way that I would have written it, in terms of style, in terms of format, in terms of structure, that it sort of aligned with what I like. Right? But like the person that you wrote the report for might have wanted it in a different way, so they would have felt differently. So we have to take that when people say things like that to us of like you're never gonna be promoted past where you are. That says more about them than it does about you. And we have to keep that in mind.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

This point is very important because what Kate just described is something I see all the time, and this is where I see people overown responsibility, they take in the feedback as truth instead of data, and that's where the trust tax really compounds. Very important to know that goes to every conversation about reinvention assumes there's already been a breaking point. And so she certainly had her breaking point. But what about the people who haven't broken yet? They're still performing, they're still reliable, and they're still the person everyone counts on, yet they're quietly wondering if there's a different way to carry all of the the weight that they possibly are carrying. Yeah. Is it possible to identify the work while you're still inside the career before the rupture or before there's some kind of breaking point?

SPEAKER_02 28:39

I think so. Martha Beck talks about this as the path of not here. And I think that there are ways to shift out of it. I mean, I think what you're describing is somebody who is still in it. It's like me without the pandemic happening, right? Like I don't have that breaking point. I kind of feel like maybe I want to do something else. But again, it doesn't feel a certain way because it's I had been a cellist my whole life, right? You feel it more in hindsight. So I would say just try something. Try anything. If you're like, I know I want to do something different, or I think I might want to do something different, but I have no idea what it is. Just try something. And you will either say, Oh, this is interesting. I like this, but I want to tweak it in this way. I want to do it in this way instead. Or you'll say, No, this is not it. This is terrible, which gives you valuable information.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

More data.

SPEAKER_02 29:38

Yeah, I have a client, I write this story in my book, and he worked at a very big well-known company and software. And he had this great job, took some time off to take care of his kids, and then he decided he he wanted to be an artist. So he came to me and he's like, I want to be an artist, I love art, but I don't know what kind of art I want to make. I don't know if I want to paint, I don't know if I want to do pencil, I don't know if I want to do still life. And so I said, Okay, well, what's something that's interesting to you? And he said, you know, hands are kind of interesting. I'm always drawn to like the human hand. And I said, Okay, draw a hand every day for the next two weeks until I see you again. And he comes back in two weeks. He's like, Kate, why did you make me draw hands? It was so stupid. I hated it. I didn't want to do it. Like after three days, I was like, this is dumb. And I'm like, Great, hands are not it. And we did that, you know, for another couple weeks, something else. And he was getting really mad at me. And he was like, No, Kate, no, no, no, no. I said, okay. Math. He's like, so maybe I should just go back to software. That's all I really love is math. And I said, Well, maybe try math through the lens of art. He's like, that doesn't make sense. He comes back two weeks later. He has done these pencil drawings, visual interpretations of mathematical formulae formula.

SPEAKER_00 30:58

Whoa.

SPEAKER_02 30:59

They were stunning. They were absolutely beautiful. He's done a whole show of them now. I mean, he they were gorgeous. And they were a hundred percent him. So it's twofold. Just by trying something. Like, what is it you want? What is it you want? You say you okay, well, I just wanna I know that I wanna be able to have brunch with my family on the weekend and not have to be stuck in the office. Okay. Start with that. That might mean shifting your hours at work. If you love your job and you really need to be working 70, 80 hours a week, maybe that just means you get there earlier and stay up, stay there later, and then you take Saturday or Sunday off. Maybe that means you get a completely different job that allows you to have your your weekends free. But start with one thing that you absolutely know you want, and or just try something, and if it's not it, it's not it. You know you can leave that path behind and go somewhere else.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

I love that.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

It takes some patience, it definitely takes some patience, but I think if you trust your gut and go along with what you're feeling, you can't go wrong. You can't go wrong.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

Yep. So if someone is driving home tonight and listening to this, or even driving to work and listening to this, what's the one thing they can actually do or not do someday tonight to start that reassessment before it becomes a crisis?

SPEAKER_02 32:33

Yeah, well, okay, so I would ask themselves this question, which is the basis for my book, Beyond Potential. And that if today were the end for you, sadly, and you met the last person you met was the version of yourself that did all of the things that you really wanted to do. This version of you that lived your ultimate dream life. How would you two be different? How would you be to be different? And then just list those things. Okay. They live by the sea, they hike more, right? They eat kale more, whatever it is, right? They go dancing more often. Make that list and then ask yourself why you don't already have those things. Why are you all not already doing those things? And just pay attention to what stories are popping up, right? I'm a serious lawyer. Serious lawyers don't go to rock concerts. Interesting. Why not? Right? Right? So that's what I that's where I would start. Just figure out where that gap is between the person you are today and the person you secretly want to be, and why aren't you that person? What are the stories that are stopping you?

SPEAKER_01 33:50

And here's what I and here's what I would like you to notice. The gap Kate described isn't about capability, it's about permission. And if you don't consciously close that gap, you'll unconsciously pay for it in burnout, in resentment, or missed opportunities. My pleasure. Thanks, Natalie. If there's one thing I want you to take away from this conversation, it's this. Just because you're good at something doesn't mean that you're meant to carry it forever. And more importantly, you don't have to wait for a breaking point to start asking better questions about your life, your work, or your identity. You can reassess while you're still succeeding. You can pivot without burning everything down. And you can start separating what's truly yours from what you've just gotten used to holding. And that's the real reset. Not doing less, not stepping back, but getting accurate about what you're caring. And if you want help doing that, the Responsibility Reset Notebook is designed exactly for this moment. To help you define what's yours, return what isn't, and finally give your brain permission to rest. If this episode resonated, start there. I'd also like, also love to hear what came up for you, what you're rethinking, what you're ready to shift. I'm Natalie Luke. This is Unsealing You. And I'll see you the next time.