Time for a Courageous Recalibration: Taking You from the Verge of Burnout to Soul-Fueled in All Areas of Life

by Tamara Gold

Nearly every day, I get messages or e-mails from ambitious women who are diligently trying to pursue their dreams. Many are experiencing plateaus and are feeling extremely overworked, overwhelmed, under-appreciated, or simply burned out. Their drive for success comes at a high price and often at the expense of their own health, happiness, and relationships.

Many of the distressed messages I receive start like this:

“I feel like I’m working all the time and I don’t have fun anymore.”

“I feel like I’m just never going to make it.”

“How am I ever going to… “

“I’m overwhelmed, overworked.”

“I’m so burned out!!”

“My husband doesn’t do enough.”

“I’m sick and tired of… “

“They just don’t appreciate me.”

Incredibly talented women are feeling the shadow of drive and ambition.

I sense and work with the shadow side of drive and ambition every day. I know this feeling all too well because I’ve stared the shadow side of drive and ambition (burnout) right in the face.

It can feel like a downward spiral, one that makes you question everything.

Beneath the shadow lies misalignments that can rob you of your energy, life, courage, and passion. Women share with me that they feel a constant teeter-tottering between life areas but never balance.

A successful career may breed friction in marriage or relationships. An abundance of success or money may fuel jealously or guilt in spirit. Women are always grappling with the delicate line between drive and health, ambition and wholeness.

Sometimes when we feel far away from what we want, we can feel overworked and overwhelmed. In reality, what we desire is actually closer than we think and often on the other side of a courageous recalibration.

This was my experience many years ago. I walked away from my GM position, high-paying salary, the work that felt like play to me, and an industry I loved, (health and fitness) burned out from high-octane competitive environments and working 60-80 hour work weeks for years. My passion for my work, innate drive, and 3^rd pregnancy created the perfect hormonal storm for deep-seated physical burn out.

After almost 3 decades leading and working in corporate wellness and educational cultures, I was forced to make a #CourageousRecalibration and walk away from the environments that were very much a portion of the work I did that fed my health, my heart, my soul and created a significant platform for my gift expression.

However, they also fueled burnout in heart and soul. I was completely heartbroken and disgusted the day I walked away from my gig as an educator because of another greed-centric corporate takeover that stripped the quality and culture of the educational program that I loved; one that supported toxic behavior from leaders and created an environment that was so toxic that it literally affected my health!

I learned many valuable lessons along the way and I know now it was the wisdom of my soul forcing me to recalibrate to my core values and address the misalignments in my life that fed burn out.

What I learned along the way inspired me to do the transformational healing work I do today with women and is infused with powerful and courageous recalibration constructs to help the modern female entrepreneur create soul-fueled health, wellness, and success from the inside out.

If you feel discouraged on your path trying to achieve your goals and dreams and the quality of your life/lifestyle is disappearing or not what you pictured in your mind, then I want to say one very critical thing to you; Stop everything – There are major misalignments happening in multiple areas of life.

Now is the time to reassess, purge and recalibrate.

Here are a few simple action steps you can take to begin your #courageousevolution.

Know Thyself

As someone who is an ENTJ, communicator, coach, master practitioner, externally and connection driven; a teacher to the core… being part of conscious collaborative communities, social educational settings and movements that are really about that bigger impact are important aspects of what feeds my energy, my mind, and my soul. For me, Solo-entrepreneurship and being isolated is not sexy nor something I want 100% of the time.

It’s critical to understand how you learn, communicate, work, and connect to feel fueled on a soul level, to know more than just your values but to understand the dynamic character structure of your values at work and play.

What is a bold, dynamic value statement that embodies how you want to live, work, and show up in the world?

How do you prefer to communicate? What are your natural gift expressions? How do you feel fed on all levels of mind, body, and soul?

Focus on realigning to all of these values that truly fuel your soul.

True Health Starts Beneath the Surface

If you imagine an iceberg, the largest portion of the iceberg is not visible above the surface. This is the perfect model to represent the ratio and power of subconscious and conscious mind to our daily health and happiness. Health starts beneath the surface and with subconscious hygiene.

Your subconscious mind is like a huge memory bank. Its capacity is virtually unlimited. It permanently stores everything that ever happens to you.  The function of your subconscious mind is to store and retrieve data. The unconscious constantly communicates with the conscious mind via our subconscious, and is what provides us with the meaning to all our interactions with the world, as filtered through your beliefs and habits.

It communicates through feelings, emotions, imagination, sensations, and dreams. The thoughts that pass through your mind are responsible for everything that happens in your life.

Your predominant thoughts influence your behavior and attitude and control your actions and reactions. Your thoughts create your reality. Thoughts have energy. Negative thoughts create negative events.

Positive thoughts create positive results and the energy of thought is either stored in physical structures or is transmitted into the universe; it never dies.

Brain science has proven that thinking a positive thought neutralizes a negative thought, so that we can quiet the amygdala where our stress response is triggered. Negative thinking patterns imprinted in the subconscious mind can unknowingly drive stress and disease. Positive thinking and emotional clearing work can be a powerful stress-reducing tactic.

Here are 7 ways to clear your mind of negative thinking patterns:

1. Take a moment to observe and change your body language.
2. Practice mindfulness techniques. Verbalize and label your feelings.
3. Spend 1 minute thinking and feeling a positive emotion.
4. Change the tone of your thoughts.
5. Do something creative or crafty. The brain likes novelty.
6. Take a walk. This helps to redirect energy through the nervous system.
7. Write out a list of what you’re grateful for or shift your mind to a positive thought which deactivates the amygdala in the brain.

Find Your Voice to Connect and Embrace Your Spiral

What does it mean to “have a voice”? Having a voice means that you have a chance to make yourself heard and, through others hearing you, you have the power to affect an outcome or shift a perspective.

Having a voice means being able to speak our truth and feeling safe to assert our wants and needs. So many of us grow up in environments where we don’t feel this kind of safety. For some, self-expression is met with criticism, disapproval, abandonment, or even abuse.

Sometimes the scariest thing can be to truly and freely express yourself… letting people know who you really are, what you want, and what you need.

A lot of my work is listening to the impressions of the mind, body and soul. Our thoughts and emotions do leave lasting impressions and patterns.  When stress is excessive or a thought or emotion is un-directed or unresolved, it creates congestion, density, and a negative charge that creates a negative effect on your physiology, cell signaling, and function. Emotions are energy. They need motion and a voice.

The creative – rebellious path of energy moves and spirals. It is not linear. Sometimes in life, the way forward is to take clear steps from point A to Point B.

However, there is a genius to the pattern of a spiral vs. a linear progression.

A spiraling pattern of energy is upward-winding, powerful, and expansive. The spiral feeds your vital life force. Why not learn to embrace the power and force within the spiral?

Allow yourself and your energy to be guided through vibrational feedback, trust, and wisdom, rather than rigid adherence to what on the surface appears to be logical, linear, and a straight progression. Sometimes when we feel far away from what we desire, we are actually closer than we think.

Many times it’s just one revolution in an upward-building spiral that catapults all our efforts that will bring those dreams to life and take root in the world.

Vital life force is an energy FORCE that moves in an upward-expansive spiral of manifestation. As we feed and focus the energy of our creations, we rise up – building energy and feeding that force. Even if at some point we hit a plateau- we can assess and recalibrate our energy and then once again concentrate our thoughts, actions to fuel and create more expansion, more energy…. the manifestation of our heart’s desires.

Patience, consistency and persistence is what drives this formula.  Remember that life is unfolding at the rate and vibration equal to your own energy and vibrational resonance.

Your best life unfolds in ultimate vibrational harmony and alignment to your highest gift expressions, your cumulative emotional scale and energetic output.

In my work, we help our clients transform on a much deeper level when we create a positive channel for emotional clearing. I see how emotional misalignments feed energetic misalignments, disease, and burnout. I see what a muffled voice does to the psyche and the soul. I talk with the bodies of men and women everyday and witness the physical effects of stress and the aftermath created by unresolved negative emotions.

Find your VOICE!! It is probably one of the most healing and transformational pieces of work you could ever do to develop yourself and your spirit.

It is time for us all to take a look at our lives and our life work and create #courageousrecalibration through these powerful steps so we can realign to our souls work in a way that truly lights us up.

Courageous Action:

1. Take some time to journal on the questions above to truly get back in touch with who you are, what you value, and how you want to show up in the world.

2. Practice clearing your mind of negative thoughts using the 7 ways above and then take note of the difference it makes in your life.

3. Find your voice and as you take courageous action we invite you to share your Story of Courage, whatever that may be, using the hashtag #storiesofcourage.  This is a great way to start speaking up and sharing what matters most.

Want more support in getting your brave on and sharing your story? Check out The Courage Collective!

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Tamara Gold is the founder of The SoulFueled Academy™ | SoulFueled Mind Body Studio – YIN-ergize™ Yoga, Corrective Mind-BodyWork | SoulFueled Woman™ Life Purpose – Manifesting Mastery Coaching & SoulFueled CEO Neuro-Success Coaching Programs for women. She is a Courage Collective Leader for the Chicago Area and Online. For further information on Tamara’s work, you can find her at TamaraGold.co, Soulfueled_Woman, soulfueledwoman, and info@tamaragold.co.