What if the life you’ve worked so hard to build doesn’t feel like yours?

In this episode, I sit down with Dr Wendy O’Connor - a Stanford-trained psychologist and positive psychology expert - to explore burnout, self-trust, and what it really means to live a fulfilling life.

We discuss why high achievers are especially vulnerable to burnout, how early praise for performance wires us to override our own needs, and the difference between achievement and alignment. Wendy explains the PERMA model from positive psychology and shares her “inner compass” framework - values, desires, and strengths - to help you reconnect with what you genuinely want.

This conversation explores identity, overperformance, experimentation, and the courage it takes to recalibrate your life without burning it all down.

If you feel outwardly successful but inwardly disconnected, this episode will help you understand why - and what to do next.

Connect with Dr Wendy O’Connor:

Website: https://www.drwendyoconnor.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drwendyoconnor/

What if the life you work so hard to build still doesn't feel like yours?

Hello and welcome to the Lonely Chapter, a podcast for people who are doing okay on the surface but quietly unsure how to live well.

Today's episode is with Dr. Wendy O', Connor, a Stanford trained psychologist, positive psychology expert, and creator of Know youw Know.

She works with high functioning women who have built full, impressive lives on paper, yet quietly feel disconnected from themselves.

In this conversation, we unpack what actually makes a life fulfilling.

From the perma model in positive psychology to Wendy's idea of an inner compass built on values, desires and strengths.

We talk about burnout, why high achievers often miss the warning signs, and how early praise for performance can slowly pull us out of alignment.

This is a conversation about self trust and about recognizing when you've overridden your own truth and about having the courage to recalibrate even when everything looks fine from the outside.

If you're new here, please do follow or subscribe wherever you're listening.

It really helps the show reach more people who might need to hear these conversations.

Let's get into it.

Wendy, what do you see as the ingredients to living a fulfilling life?

Oh, I love this question.

It's like we're gonna bake something delicious today.

Yes, ingredients there are.

From what we know from positive psychology, there are five elements that really lead us to the flourishing life, the good life, and it's it.

The word that we use is called perma.

And so I will chat a little bit about those five elements because that's like the root of what creates our flourishing, fulfilling life.

P stands for positive emotions.

So this is where a lot of people get mixed up because they think to live a good life or fulfilling life, happy life, that must mean they should be happy all the time.

That's not true.

But we do want to generate positive feelings more often than not.

Positive feelings can be hopeful, enthusiastic, curious, excited, content, all of those.

So that's number one.

Not surprising, but a lot of people take that one too far and, and think that if they're not happy all the time, they're not going to live the happiest life they can.

And that's not true.

It's just not a very typical or normal spectrum of emotions.

We can't expect to just exist on one side of it.

Yeah, E stands for engagement.

This is an area that for a lot of my clients, they realize they're not living in line with engagement.

Engagement is really loving what you're doing for the sake of doing it.

Losing track of time getting into flow state.

This can be professional or personal.

It can be something, a project you're working on at work and you love it, and you're so into it, you love it for the sake of doing it, not for the result.

This is a big piece of what leads us to have a fulfilling life.

And many of the women that I coach get to a season of life where they, they realize their lives are all about checking boxes and their lives are all about serving others and, and their lives are not about like, oh, well, I can't.

What I've heard people say is I can't afford to lose track of time.

What do you mean lose track of time and get into flow state?

That sounds like a luxury, but it's actually a really key element to flourishing.

R is relationship.

So positive relationships, reciprocal trusting, deep relationships.

Another area that a lot of us feel like we're missing.

We may have a lot of surface relationships or a lot of acquaintances, but we don't necessarily have a lot of the depth in our relationships that we really need to feel like they add to our fulfillment.

M stands for meaning doing things in your life that feel meaningful, that feel like they align with what you value, what matters most to you.

They're not just about getting obligations completed, getting tasks done.

They're about of yourself coming into the what you're doing, your work and how you spend your time.

And then A is for accomplishment, achievement.

Again, people get a little bit caught up in this one because they think they should have achieved more or should be accomplishing more.

But it does not have to be becoming a best selling author or having an incredible podcast, or you know, running a bit, becoming a CEO.

It doesn't have to be so grand.

It's just about the, about that perspective of, yeah, I'm accomplishing things on a regular basis or I'm setting out goals and achieving them for myself on a regular basis.

So that's like the groundwork that we talk about when it comes to living the good life.

The way that I have my own spin on it is that I take three elements and I say that this is your inner compass, your north star, your values, what matters most to you, your desires, which most people just end up leaving behind, and your strengths, your character strengths, like what you're naturally great at, who you are at your best.

When you combine those three things and make decisions from that place, you will not detour away from living a really good, fulfilling life.

So there's the pause, psych answer.

And then there's my variation that I coach my clients on.

Okay, so let's stick on your variation then.

So those three things, how do we start to work out what those things are for us or values and things like that?

So I'm a strategy girl, and I have my clients take a couple of assessments, and free, we can drop them in the show notes for your audience, if anyone's curious.

And they're like, I want to know what my values are.

I want to know what my strengths are.

There's links to both assessments.

The values takes a little bit longer because there's a lot of values that we have.

And so funneling down those values into a place where we get to our.

Our.

Our core values, which is like, we like to think about that as our top five.

That can take a little bit of time.

But we do an assessment, we get down to your top five core values.

So.

And then we talk about how in line is your life with these values.

Which of these values are really highlighted and which have you not been living in line with at all?

And same for strengths.

There's a pretty quick strengths assessment.

You do the strengths assessment.

It'll generate for you your.

Your character strengths.

We focus on your top five, which are your signature strengths.

Again, how much is your life reflective of those strengths, and how much of a detour is your life taking away from those strengths?

And so it's true that when.

When people think, okay, I'm going to live a life that I.

That matters to me, that that reflects my desires, reflects my strengths, that people ask that exact question, well, how do I know what they are?

How do I figure that out?

And for a lot of my clients, what we discover is that when you think desires should be easy to name, they're actually not.

We kind of lose ourselves over the life process.

We kind of become like sea glasses.

We kind of get worn down on some of the sides, and we lose touch with what we truly want and desire.

So that can be part of the journey, too, is figuring that out, reconnecting with what we want.

We may not know.

Yeah, there's an element of it that has to be action.

Right.

So we can't just sit still and think about these things all the time.

Sometimes people seem to wait and try and let these things just pop into their mind like a light bulb.

But you've got if.

Especially for desires, maybe.

So it's difficult to know without trying stuff.

So it is to try something, to learn from that and to go, yes or no.

And then that's right.

Absolutely.

And I will say That a lot of the women in particular that I work with are high achievers.

And so they really like there to be a right way to do things and a clean line to the finish.

And so when I introduce this idea of experimentation and curiosity, it can be a foreign topic because we just want answers and we don't want to waste time, but we don't.

What we don't realize is that we just don't know what we don't know.

And so we have to be open to experimenting and trying things out and seeing what works for us, seeing what fits for us.

We may have remembered a version of ourselves 10, 20, 30 years ago that loved to live life a particular way, but you try those things on for size now and they're not interesting to you at all.

Maybe you loved for fun to go clubbing until 4am and on the weekends, and now you, you, you couldn't be paid enough to go clubbing on the weekends for fun.

Our definitions change over time, and so it's important that we are evolving and reconnecting with what we want and we, we can experiment to find out what that is.

On the topic of high achievers, something that a lot of people listening, whether you classify yourself as a high achiever or not, will understand is burnout is something that people know about and they hear about.

But quite often we never learn until we've been through it about how to stop it and maybe when it's on the way.

Why is that?

Well, honestly, we're praised for performance.

So our performance, our hustle is reinforced.

And so we learn from a pretty young age that doing really well in school, getting a straight A's, having good report cards, achieving being the best at our sports and athletics and being extra is really what people will praise and celebrate.

So when we learn from an early age that performance results and hustle culture is what's going to be reinforced, we learn to, to turn off our burnout signals and to just keep pushing through because we believe what's on the other side is gonna be worth it.

And it's so true.

I, I burnt out as a psychologist years ago now and didn't really realize that it was creeping up.

It just suddenly felt like life had, had done a 180.

Now life did do a 180 because I, I suddenly had three daughters under two years old.

So there was a chapter of life where it creeps up on you because life, circumstances change and that happens quite abruptly.

But that's when I did notice, oh, this is burnout.

And I'm here already and I didn't see any early symptoms along the way.

But again, that's because we tell ourselves we just need to push harder, we just need to keep going.

We just need to suck it up.

We just need to be grateful for what we have and, and stretch our capacity and just do more, handle more, be more.

And then we realize it doesn't work that way.

We're going to crash.

Yeah.

I've never thought about that.

Going back in time to what you're taught at school and how that working hard and getting good grades is so important.

And it's all done with the right intentions, I suppose.

But the behaviors of that then instills going into adult life cause a lot of issues.

Right.

Especially if you think about not just in the school, but our parents.

Yeah.

And so we have a lot of fear aversion.

We're worried about getting in trouble.

We don't want to get punished, we don't want consequences.

And so if our parents are happen to be parents who praise high scores and, and results and performance and punish anything less than a particular standard, we are going to learn that very quickly and we're going to become very adept at doing our best to make sure that we avoid punishment and avoid consequences or feeling shame or guilt or badly about ourselves.

And that we learn works quite well and pleases the world.

And so we repeat it until we can't anymore.

Yeah.

Tell me a little bit about your story.

So your own transformation from a life of survival to a life where you are thriving.

What was that like for you?

I've had in my 46 years many seasons of life now.

And I went through a season of discovering myself during college years, excited about life.

Everything felt possible, Anything was possible.

And I had this clear image in my mind, not just from college, actually from seventh grade when I took my first psychology class that I wanted to be a psychologist.

And I pictured it a certain way.

I pictured myself having a small practice and making jam and having babies and having this idyllic life in my head.

And so I went out and I did just that.

And it was scripted exactly how I imagined.

And this is what catches people off guard a little bit, is that you script the life you think you want and you at the time do want that you create it.

And then you wake up and go, this is it.

This is, this is what I wanted.

I got all the things I, I achieved all the milestones, I checked the boxes, I reached this finish line and this is what it feels like.

And so that was my journey.

I had my first daughter and then six months later was pregnant with twins and had the three girls 15 months apart.

I had my first, and then twins 15 months later.

And it just put a different slant on the dream that I thought I wanted.

And it was that reawakening of, oh, my goodness, this reminder that I.

That I talk so much about and care so much about, that our decisions aren't meant to be life sentences and we can outgrow our dreams and they are things that we're so grateful for and we can be so proud of and we can really savor all the pieces of it for what they are.

And we can give ourselves permission to say, this isn't it, though.

This isn't quite right.

This doesn't feel the way I thought it would.

It doesn't feel the way I anticipated.

And then I said to myself, well, this isn't going to work.

Some things need to change.

But as soon as I said to myself, well, decisions aren't life sentences.

What do you want to change?

Then again, it reopened this idea of anything's possible, everything's possible.

What do I want?

Yeah.

And then I reconnected with, well, what do I desire?

At this chapter of life.

Now I'm a mother, now I'm a psychologist who has thriving practices and a mother.

But my energy feels very tapped and I come home exhausted and I'm missing dinner because I had patience and I'm, this is not the dream.

And so I started to chip away and revise the dream and created another one.

And that's where we are now.

It's a really difficult thing to do, isn't it?

Because it's the sunk cost fallacy, I think, where when you've put so much time and effort into getting something or to getting somewhere, to just change that trajectory is a really difficult thing to overcome.

And someone once explained it to me as if you're going down a road and obviously there's loads of forks in the road, there's no reason you can't turn back.

If you get to a point of that road that you realize this isn't quite right for you, you can't just go back to that last fork and go off a different.

Because there's unlimited forks in life, isn't there?

You can.

You can try so many things, and I'm a big advocate for trying things and learning from it.

And 99% of the time, you probably won't succeed or it won't be the rest of your life, but you now know one less thing that isn't the option.

You sort of narrow things down from a wider point of view.

Exactly.

And there's a lot.

And I think one of the reasons that takes us a long time to accept or learn is that there's so much pressure.

We feel pressure to go to college and to know what your major is and to know what you want to do, and then you need to know what job you want out of that.

And then that's the job you're supposed to be in and stay in and then retire.

And there's this sequence that we're expected to pursue, not realizing that for most people, why on earth would they know what they want to do for the rest of their lives at 18?

And even if they did, why does it have to be what they actually do for the rest of their lives?

It doesn't.

And so if you think about from my perspective, I went through four years of undergrad and then five years of graduate school to get my doctorate.

I wasn't going to leave that behind and I didn't want to, thankfully.

Thank.

I'm just thankful for it.

The desire for change did not mean that I was going to now become an astrophysicist or something else.

I still loved what I did, but I was doing too much of it.

And the stretch over here was costing me at home with the kids, with the family over here.

And that was not at all the.

The balance that I had looked for and desired.

So I felt grateful that at least I didn't have a 180 moment, which many people do.

And there's nothing wrong with it.

But it's frustrating because no one really wants to start from scratch.

But just because you don't want the discomfort of starting from scratch doesn't mean it's not worth it.

Yeah.

Because you only have this one life.

So we can't just stay doing something that doesn't make us happy or fulfill us forever just because we do it already or just because we know how to do it.

Yeah.

And even if you do have to start from scratch and do that for 180, that time wasn't wasted because you'd have.

You'll have learned so much in that time.

You'll have learned skills, you'll have learned stuff about yourself that you can then take into that new journey.

So I think people often think that they've lost everything from that time.

But yeah, it's often just the present with your work that you do currently.

What are some of the common things that people come to you to work on?

What I hear most often is, I have a good life.

I just feel like something's missing.

It's not.

People aren't coming saying, I'm miserable, I'm devastated, my life is awful, I need to completely overhaul it.

Where do I go?

I have no idea what to do.

They come to me and say, they.

And the way they phrase it is like, what's wrong with me?

I should be grateful for all I have.

But something's missing.

What is going on?

When they hear what I share, they realize the piece that's missing is actually the fulfillment piece.

So they have a successful job, they have the relationship, they may have kids, they have a home, they have.

They've checked the boxes that they were taught leads to the best life, success, happiness.

But they wake up feeling empty or hollow or disconnected, even though on the surface everything looks fantastic or good enough at least.

So that's most common.

Who will come to see me as the person that says, I'm successful?

Why don't I feel happy?

I'm doing the things that I told myself I wanted to.

Why doesn't it feel the way I thought it would?

And that's when we start a journey of reconnecting with self, to stop the self abandonment, to stop putting other people's wants, needs, expectations above your own.

Reconnecting with who you are and then designing not just surviving life, but to start actively through action, mindset, habit change, actually designing a life that they wake up to and go, this is what I wanted to feel.

This is how life should feel if you're pursuing happiness.

Yeah, it's a really common feeling.

And I've been recently trying to look over the podcast and work out who the podcast is for.

And the line that I've come up with is it's for the person that looks like they're doing okay on the surface but is quietly unsure how to live well.

Which is almost exactly what you're explaining there.

And I think it's really common, and I think a lot of people who maybe aren't ready to admit that yet, that they've got these milestones, as you say, they've worked towards what society has told them they need to be living a good life, but there's something not right, and they just can't put their finger on it.

That's right.

And it does feel like that.

It's like this unsettled, almost confusion, and they think that the answer is, just be more grateful for what you have and stop complaining in your mind.

Or they think, I just need to push harder or to force harder.

And it's both of those things are false.

When you were speaking about obviously people who want to people please.

They serve other people in their life without serving themselves.

How much of our time should be spent looking internally to try and find what drives us in here rather than I feel good because I helped this person do this thing.

Yeah, well, there's so many layers to this because service can feel so good and is rewarding and meaningful.

So we can get that meaning box checked intentionally.

We can also get engagement checked through service.

We can also get positive relationships checked through positive emotions.

So we.

So service isn't inherently a problem.

And, and it's not so much the way I would phrase it is that it's not about how much time we spend internal, external, it's more so the order.

And so one of the things that I help people with is shifting the order.

It starts with self, then it's others.

It's self first, then others.

Because when that self box is checked, what is my internal drive?

What do I desire?

What is a good life to me?

What's meaningful to me, not what's meaningful to them.

To my daughter, the good life is me going to get her chick fil a today.

That is not what's meaningful to me.

That is not what I would consider what I want to do today.

However, being of service does feel rewarding.

It brings connection and closeness between me and my daughter.

But so we want to think self first, then others.

Oxygen mask on like on the plane, oxygen mask on yourself first, then, then you help others.

Because when we think about time management or energy management, everyone else in this world, whether it's work related, co workers, bosses, managers, children, husbands, wives, friends, parents will take up all that time if it's available.

It very easily gets assigned to somebody else's want or need.

So when we first connect with ourselves and what we want or need, then at least we did that piece right.

Then it's other people.

So before I get on client calls, I get my tush to the gym, I take care of myself first, set my intentions for the day, map out me and then I get to serve as my best self.

But if I was pushing everything off until I just got to get through my calls first or I just got to pick up the girls from school and then I can, I just got to cook dinner and then I'll try to squeeze in a five minute breathwork session, it's not going to happen.

Something else will happen in my world to eat up that time.

So I just think about it more so in terms of the ordering, not necessarily the time spent.

Yeah, I like that.

We.

I had a conversation last week on the podcast with a lady called Mary Howe who was in the US Air Force for eight years and she served there.

Obviously she served then going into nursing beyond that.

And it was only after a lot of things happening that she realized she was serving other people but not serving herself.

So we had a big conversation about this exact thing is you've got to lead yourself in order to lead others or to serve others.

You've got to set the example within.

Yes, but again, it's also like what we said before, it's difficult to learn from just hearing someone talk about it.

It's almost like burnout.

Something you have to go through to get to that point where you've realized that you're spending too much time and energy on external people and not on yourself.

Okay, this is a really good point.

And so what.

What I think is worth noticing is that there are moments that you can start to pick up on now.

We don't.

And this is classic with change as well.

People typically don't change until we hit rock bottom or the.

Or the pain is so severe.

And that's not the way we want to live our lives.

We want more self awareness, to realize sooner, quicker, so that we can actually get to the happier existence faster.

And so some things to notice that can make a big difference in your decision making, which ultimately will be what you reflect on for your quality of life are things like, do you say yes?

And then instantly go, why did I just do that?

Why did I just say yes to that person?

Or that request or that.

And if there is that moment, that kind of reflexive, oh, I.

Why did I do that?

That wasn't because I truly wanted to say yes.

That was because I thought I should or because she's staring at me and there's an expectation.

I don't want to disappoint or let her down or get kicked out of the group or whatever it is.

Those yeses that actually feel like no and you're quieting your note and saying yes.

Perfect example of a micro moment that you're misaligned.

Perfect example where we're inauthentically showing up in our lives.

Inauthenticity backfires and burns us out.

Right.

So we want to think about that when we say yes, but then we regret it and we're like, why did I do that?

That was not what I truly wanted.

Perfect moment to.

To start rehearsing with Yourself, okay, how do I say no to her next time?

How do I say no to this situation next time?

And scripting your no.

Even having words written out of how you say no and how you set a boundary, because that's pretty scary.

For a lot of people who aren't accustomed to boundary setting, it feels very risky.

But that is a great place to get started.

Another place to get started, to notice it sooner is to ask yourself at two time points of the day, how am I feeling when you first wake up?

How am I feeling today?

Am I rested?

Am I excited for the day?

Am I snoozing and dreading what's ahead today?

Am I feeling behind the ball?

Am I feeling anxious already?

How am I feeling when I start my day?

That's an excellent cue into just how you're living your life.

Same thing with evenings.

When you're winding down the day, you get in bed or you're doing your evening ritual nighttime routine, ask yourself, how am I feeling about today?

How am I feeling like the today went?

How do I feel about this day?

Is that best done through, like, journaling or something like that?

Or is that just a thought exercise?

Either way.

Either way, I. I don't love journaling, so I recommend it for people who do enjoy it.

I do recommend everyone tries it because I've definitely met women who haven't experimented at all and they think, I'm not going to like that.

But then they try it a few times and they love it.

And the same the other way.

It's like, you may not like it.

You don't have to do it.

It's not a prerequisite for happy living.

So don't pressure yourself to.

I have to journal every night or every morning.

If you like it, do it.

Otherwise, it can just be simple questions in your mind.

How is today?

How do I feel tonight?

As I, like, wrap up a day?

As I close a day, how am I feeling?

And you might say exhausted.

You might say, I'm already dreading tomorrow.

You might say today was a good day.

And then if it is, you ask yourself, why.

Well, because I had so much fun doing this thing, or I really felt so accomplished or productive or whatever it is.

There's no right or wrong answer.

It's just information.

But most people aren't asking themselves the questions to get their own answers.

They're just surviving, checking boxes and then showing up tomorrow and doing the same thing again.

Yeah, why do you think that is?

Do you think people are scared of the answers?

I think that it's not trained.

I think it's not something we learn.

Again, we learn to just do what we need to do.

And so when our brains are conditioned to do what we need to do and that to do list is very long, our time gets eaten up and so does our energy.

And we have reduced capacity for energy.

And so we crash and go to bed, or we rebel against our bedtime and binge Netflix and have a bottle of wine and start again tomorrow and hope it's a better day.

So it's a lot of it's just this kind of conditioned repetition and habit of what we've been taught to prioritize.

And our feelings and our self awareness hasn't been at the top of the list.

Just going back to the people you work with, obviously high performers.

Another two words that are going to be familiar to those people and again to everyone else is imposter syndrome.

So imposter syndrome is often talked about as a negative thing, something that we want to avoid.

We don't want to feel that because it feels wrong.

It feels we're in that position we shouldn't be because we're not good enough.

But I heard Stephen Bartlett talk about it and he said to change the wording and to call it a growth opportunity because what you've done is you've stepped out of your comfort zone into a position that does feel scary.

Yeah.

But you will grow into that position as well.

So.

Yeah.

What are your thoughts on imposter syndrome?

Well, I really wanted to just draw you a little diagram here.

But I will just talk you through this little diagram because it'll help.

It'll help your audience hear and understand this process.

So I agree.

And to me, imposter syndrome is just unlearned mastery.

We just haven't gotten to the place where the evidence matches the perception.

Yeah, a lot of the time.

And so when we think about growth or we think about achievement, we think about success.

All everything that you want that you haven't yet accomplished is on the other side of your comfort zone.

Your comfort zone is what I call the place where dreams go to die.

It's your dream graveyard.

You live in your comfort zone.

It's like not miserable, but it's not awesome.

But you just do it because it's safe and your brain likes that.

But when we think about creating change and if we think about growth opportunity or a growth mindset, we have to get through different zones to get to growing, to get to the growth zone.

And guess which zone is immediately outside the comfort zone.

The fear Zone.

Yeah.

And so it's like, it's like that old, you know, saying about, like, if you're familiar with it, you know, we're.

I.

To get to grandmother's house, we have to go over the river and through the woods.

This old song we had.

Over the river and through the woods.

You have to go over the river and you have to go through the woods.

There is no other way to get to grandmother's house.

So if we desire something on the other side of our comfort zone, we have to go through the fear zone.

That's just a natural part of it.

Yeah, but imagine your comfort zone being your house and the fear zone being like right outside your home.

It's very easy for us to open the door.

And people will open the door, they'll consider it.

They might take one step, get scared, and then come back home and shut the door and say, forget it.

That's not worth it.

It's too scary, too uncomfortable.

Not giving themselves the opportunity to get through fear into learning.

Learning zone is after fear zone.

Growth zone is after learning zone.

Right.

Right over the river and through the woods.

This is how we need to do it.

So it's very easy for people to say, I don't.

I'm not good enough or I'm an imposter or they're going to find out I'm a fraud.

And.

And we just go back and retract our dreams or retract our goals and we just go back to our like, subpar existence and not realize that there is like the yellow brick road waiting for us on the other side of fear Zone.

We just need to get through it.

Yeah, it's taking those first steps and I guess understanding your why as well before you go into that zone.

And because it's going to look so appealing when you look behind you back of that comfort zone and everything's going to tell you just go back.

It was okay there, but you've got to know why you first stepped out of it and what you hope to achieve.

And the name of this podcast is the Lonely Chapter.

This is this idea by Chris Williamson, Alex Hormozi, who came up with this.

It's the moment when you start a new sort of self development journey, I suppose.

And it's where you start to grow and change and have new habits that mean that you don't really fit in with the people who you used to hang out with.

But you're not developed enough yet to be around the people that you want to be around.

So you're in that lonely chapter.

And it's all about that same thing, the growth zone and yeah, sticking with that journey.

And even if you step out and you try and do give it everything, as we said before, you will still learn something if you end up coming back and trying something else.

Right.

Right.

So it's not all lost.

The fear that we have is often just so distorted.

It's so disproportionate to the risk we're actually taking most often.

And so it's important.

And I think one of the most empowering pieces of learning those zones is understanding how natural the fear is.

Because what I see so often is that people will take the fear as a cue that they're not meant to do it.

Right.

It shouldn't feel scary.

It shouldn't.

I should feel like excited or I should feel like.

It feels right.

Well, it's not going to feel right until you have it lined up as so.

Right.

Like your house doesn't feel like a home until there's walls and there's insulation, there's a roof and a floor and all the pieces.

But we can't just walk into, you know, a foundation and say, I don't know, it doesn't feel right.

I don't think I'm meant to have this house.

Well, how.

You don't even know yet.

You haven't built it.

And so we do need to normalize fear as just part of the journey.

It's not something that we.

That that means you're on the wrong path.

It most often means you're onto something pretty exciting and amazing.

Hang in there.

It's just a little turbulence.

Like it will clear up.

So on that fear and anxiety, I suppose humans very often look forward and have the worst possible outcome in their mind and they overthink things and imagine it all going wrong.

Why is it that we do that?

Well, our brain's wired for safety.

So anything that's unfamiliar, uncertain to our brain is risky.

It threatens our survival.

It doesn't.

But to our brain it does.

And so what our brain wants to do is just throw, throw out to us the fears.

Whatever fear will stop us in our tracks so we don't do the thing that is a little scary or unfamiliar so that we don't do it.

So your brain wants to get you to this place of preparing you the worst case scenarios could happen.

You don't want to do that.

I saw or I thought of what the worst case could be.

So I'm not doing that.

That, that would be crazy.

I can't do that, that's way too risky.

Right.

Instead, what we want to think about is the difference between possibility and likelihood.

Your brain is going to want you to stay where you are.

That's comfortable, that's safe.

Our, our brain will spit out thoughts that are the what ifs.

These are very normal.

But what we want to do with the what ifs matters more than they.

Than their existence.

Again, people will take those what if questions that generate fear and use that fear as a reason to stop or to go back.

Instead, how you handle those what if questions makes a bigger difference.

So handling those questions by asking yourself, what's the likelihood?

So, yes, is this possible for this thing to happen?

Yeah, I guess so.

It's possible.

But how likely is that actually, what would have to happen for that worst case scenario to be the truth?

Well, this would have to happen and then this and then that.

And then as you map that out out loud or journal it out, you see just how many things would have to go so poorly for that to even exist.

Yeah.

Instead, ask yourself what's most likely?

So, yes, you'll hear the cliche saying around.

You know the cliche saying around, don't ask yourself like, what could go wrong?

Ask yourself, like, what if it goes right?

You know, and yes, of course there is that.

And I think that that can be power.

If that empowers you, amazing.

But for a lot of us, it's too far of a leap, and we want something in between the world of terrible to awesome to actually hook into so that we feel a little bit more comfortable taking risky action.

So we want to ask ourselves, what are the likelihoods, what's most likely to happen if I take this next step or if I take this particular risk, like, let's play the tape forward, and that way it becomes less scary and less threatening.

Your brain quiets down a little bit enough for you to get into action and see what happens and to learn as you go and to not just stop in your tracks because of fear.

Yeah.

So I suppose that would be sort of taking a bird's eye view of the situation and just taking that step back when you feel that overwhelming anxiety and thinking forward to the worst thing.

What would be the method for doing that again?

Would it be, you sort of mentioned journaling and thinking, is it speaking out loud?

Does that help getting it out of our mind and into the world so much?

Yeah.

And it's always funny because I'll be on a call and my client will speak it out loud and they'll start to Speak the sequence and then they'll laugh inevitably.

Because what is happening is everything in your brain sounds true, it sounds real, it sounds threat, it sounds legitimate.

Right.

It's not until we actually start to externalize that voice, take it out of our heads and speak it out loud.

And then they'll inevitably laugh because they're like, okay, yeah, this, this is not gonna happen.

But it feels so real when I just let it take up space in my head and kind of circle around and be the next thought after I say, let's do this thing.

And my brain goes, no, you don't want to do that thing.

Well, that sounds true and real.

So we just let it be at that.

So speaking it out loud is hugely helpful.

Journaling it is hugely helpful.

Again, it helps your brain process through feelings, process through emotions.

So journaling can be very helpful.

And it's almost like this, there is a zooming out to it.

Just enough though to play the tape forward, to really imagine what would need to exist step by step by step to get to that result.

But it's also the piece that most miss is that the what if questions come, what if this, I fail?

What if this blows up?

What if this is terrible?

What if this is the worst decision I made?

But they don't answer that question.

They don't look.

It's like you get yourself to the edge of a cliff of what ifs, but you don't look over the edge to see if it's an inch drop or if it's a hundred foot drop.

You just hang on the edge of the cliff of the what ifs, the suspense of this very threatening idea without answering the question.

So we want to answer the question, what if I fail?

What if it doesn't work?

Answer that.

Then what?

Then what would that would happen?

Or what would it look like?

And what would I do to handle it, to navigate it, to come back to a grounded place?

What would I do?

We, we cut it off before we get to hook into our very capable coping strategies to live a life.

We've survived this long.

We've gotten through every bad decision so far, but we don't ask ourselves what the answer is to that question.

We just get stuck and paralyzed in what if land.

Yeah, that's so interesting.

That's.

It's a pretty nice visualization, the cliff and not looking over and seeing how far the drop is.

And actually it's just a step down.

So what was I worried about?

Yes, I suppose another thing that sort of ties into the comfort zone, fear and Anxiety area that I've seen you speak about before is the status quo bias.

Can you explain what the status quo bias is?

It's basically the easy way to understand it.

It's just that we have a likelihood, a propensity, a conditioning to stay in status quo.

It has served us okay.

Things aren't terrible here.

Right.

Like you were mentioning before, it's just not that bad.

Like we could live there a couple more years or decades.

So we have this bias towards this keeps me safe.

This has worked for me.

This isn't that terrible.

The thing that I feel like I'm missing in my life, is it really so important that I risk all of this or really shake things up over here?

So we have this bias to keep our world intact, the way we know it, the way that's familiar, the way that's safe, the way that's comfortable, even if it's uncomfortable, it's more comfortable than change.

And so this is where a lot of the disconnect happens between what we actually desire and the way we currently live.

Our brain says, nope, this is how we do it.

This is what's okay.

Anything outside of that we don't need to do.

It's not that big of a deal.

It's not that important.

Which ends up being our self abandonment.

Right.

We end up saying, well, what's on the other side of those desires is actually me, what I want.

It's what actually would serve me and my fulfilling life.

But we dim that, we quiet that, we turn down the volume on that because our brains say this is good enough.

Yeah.

We lose the opportunity to become who we really want to be.

Because what we're told to do and what we're currently doing has been okay.

And it comes down to being comfortable again, doesn't it?

I suppose it's not that bad.

And not even it just not being not that bad.

There's also things that are working about it.

Typically, the life we're living today isn't all one way.

So there's things that we do value, there's things that we do appreciate, there's things that we're grateful for, there's positive experiences we're having.

It's not all one way.

Yeah.

And so our brains kind of take it as if you take this risk or you step outside, you're risking all of it.

It's like this all or nothing mindset that so many people get trapped in instead of realizing, okay, and this is the work that I do with people is really breaking it down.

There's this part of my life, there's this part, there's this section, there's this category.

How do I feel in each of those?

They're separate.

They overlap, but they're separate.

So this idea of like, all of life needs to change to be happy is again, another reason why people stay feeling stuck.

Because they think it's too grand of a journey or a process to change, because it feels like it's everything.

But really, if we go into the nuances of life, you quickly realize there's actually so much that you love, that you are grateful for that's actually working for you, that's serving you quite well.

There might just be a couple things that need some refinement or some tinkering with to get it to feel overall much better.

Yeah.

If there's someone listening right now who's listening to our conversation and recognizes some of this in themselves, they maybe want to try something, but they haven't taken that step yet because of the fear that we've been discussing.

What's one thing you'd say to them right now?

Remember that what you want is on the other side of the fear zone and that it's completely normal, natural, and expected that you're going to have some resistance to change, to adventure, to leaving comfort.

Because that's how your brain's wired.

So allow it to be in existence without judging it and without it being the reason you stop moving forward.

Realize that the more you put one foot in front of the other, the more that you connect with trusting yourself, the more that you allow yourself to believe in what you desire and dream.

All of those things are available to you, but we must keep moving through the fear into learning.

You build evidence as you go as well.

I always visualize it as everything you do is a piece of paper.

And as you stack those pieces of paper, each individual one is very thin.

But as you stack them up higher and higher, the stack becomes pretty thick.

And you can look back at that and go, I did all that stuff.

That's right.

That's a great example.

Yeah, exactly right.

It may not feel like you're.

And that's the thing, too.

People, when they want change, they want it now.

They want the result now.

Not realizing that all these little micro shifts that you can make over the course of the day do stack.

They do add up.

It may not feel like it yet.

The first time you walk into the gym and work out, you may not notice many changes in your clothes or the scale or whatever else, but it's really when you continuously and consistently do the things.

Then you're like, whoa, look at that.

I feel better.

Or I got stronger, or my pants button up, whatever it is.

We don't realize that those little micro shifts are actually what is compounding over time.

Yeah, having trust in the process.

Wendy the way I like to finish my episodes is to ask my guests to leave a question for the listener.

So I enjoyed going away and having conversations about podcasts that I've listened to with people in my life.

So if you could give someone a question to go away and start a conversation about something we've spoken about today, perhaps what question would that be?

The question would be, if you could change anything in your life, what would it be?

That would be, and now I want to go out and have coffee and start asking people these questions, this question.

Because this would be such a rich day of having a deep conversation around something that they don't let themselves think a lot about because they're so busy surviving and trying to keep up and keep their head above water.

But if you were to sit down with a friend and have a cup of tea and they said to you, if you could change anything about your life right now, what would it be?

All of a sudden these old cranky wheels start turning and all of a sudden new creative ideas come, and that's a really beautiful thing.

I love that question.

Wendy, thank you so much for your time today.

I've really enjoyed the conversation and hopefully everyone listening has taken away as much as I have.

If people want to keep up to date with what you're doing and find you online, where can they do that?

I've really enjoyed this conversation too, so thank you so much for having me.

I spend most of my time on Instagram Dr. Wendy O', Connor, but I'm on all platforms Dr. Wendy O'.

Connor.

You can find me just about anywhere these days.

Awesome.

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