How High Achievers Burn Out (And the Small Shift That Changes Everything) with Erin Treacy | Becoming Series

Burnout doesn’t happen all at once.

It builds quietly, through patterns we don’t question, signals we ignore, and moments we move through too quickly.

In this episode, Pam Dwyer talks with leadership coach Erin Treacy about what really drives burnout in high performers, and why the most important moment isn’t the burnout itself, but the moment right before the automatic response.

Erin shares her personal experience managing multiple businesses, raising a blended family, and pushing through physical warning signs her body used to force her to stop.

Together, they explore how small, intentional pauses create clarity, shift behavior patterns, and lead to sustainable success.

🔗 Connect with Erin Treacy:

Website: https://coacherintreacy.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-treacy/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coacherintreacy

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

This is Delay the Binge™

Delay the Binge™ explores burnout, emotional patterns, Quiet Depletion, and the pause between impulse and action where real behavior change begins.

Through emotionally honest conversations and practical insight from experts in neuroscience, psychology, resilience, wellness, and human behavior, you’ll learn how to recognize patterns, reconnect with yourself, and build momentum one intentional choice at a time.

Because it’s not about willpower…it’s about what you do in the moment the urge hits.

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Transcript

When Life Feels Off

SPEAKER_02 0:00

What if your life looks right, but feels completely wrong? You're doing everything you're supposed to do, showing up, producing, holding meat, holding it all together, and still something feels off. What if the problem isn't your life, but your connection to yourself? This is the Delay the Bench podcast, where we learn how to pause in the moments that matter most. So we can choose differently, build momentum, and finish stronger. I'm your host, Pam Dwyer, and today's conversation is part of the Becoming series, where we explore what it really looks like to come back to yourself. Not who you think you should be, but who you actually are underneath it all. And today's guest is someone whose work really lives in that space. Erin Tracy is the leadership coach and founder of Erin Tracy Coaching, where she helps high-achieving women and teams recognize the patterns they're stuck in. Pause before reacting, and make small intentional shifts that create clarity, energy, and sustainable success. Erin, I'm really glad you're here. Welcome, welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Hello, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited. We have such good conversations. This is gonna be fun.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

It is gonna be fun. Thank you.

Coaching For Real Life Pressure

SPEAKER_02 1:26

So before we go anywhere else, though, I I love to ask my guests about how their life's going. You know, if you could share a little bit about what you're doing right now and what your work looks like today and what you're most excited about.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

So I I I work as a coach both in personal growth, professional growth, and business growth and leadership that is all of those roles. And I I talk with a lot of women who are juggling the busy calendar that's their calendar, the kids' calendar, the spouse's calendar, the work calendar, all of the teams at work's calendar. Uh, and we're juggling all of these things and we're wearing all of these hats, and we're in this constant trying to have it all or keep up or you know, look like we think we're supposed to be. And what I learned through my own life and through my own experiences and an experience through burnout is a none of those things are ever going to truly make you actually happy. And you actually can't appreciate any of the moments that you're in because you're too busy worrying about the next moments. And so really being able to help not just women, but anybody who's in those moments to strengthen themselves, their teams, their businesses in ways that really impact them on a personal level, on a professional level. And it's so satisfying when you see light bulbs and you have a conversation with uh somebody and they come back and go, Aaron, I so used this on me and it worked. So I used it with my team, and oh my gosh, this happened. And you're like, not only did you learn to apply it to yourself, but you learned how to, you know, spread that to be able to impact other people in such positive ways. And it's not a giving up or giving up things, it's learning how to reassess where you show up.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

I can already hear how grounded um your work is in real life, not just theory, right? There's a lot of talk about a lot of these theories and uh frameworks that we're talking about today. But what I find that is missing is solutions. Like what are the what are you going to do about it?

SPEAKER_00 3:43

Yeah. Have your pie in the sky, your vision boards. I mean, we talk about it in all these, you know, whatever you want to label, how you set your goals or how you envision your life, or now the new word I think that's trending is manifesting, and you know, all of those things. And that's great. You know, you should have those things. But the difference is, you know, everybody wants, you hear everybody has said at one point in their life, I'm gonna make a million dollars when I make my first million dollars. And it it doesn't matter what walk of life that you're from, everyone has said it at some point. And then it's oh, but I didn't know how to get from here to there. I didn't know what the first step was. I didn't have support. I didn't know who to ask. And so that's where I want to talk to people is here's the first step. Here's today's step. Have you ever thought about, you know, okay, great, how are we gonna make the million? Let's actually come up with the plan, but we have to figure out where to start. It doesn't just show up and you walk in and say, hey, investor person, I have this imaginary thing that I want to do create B. You should just give me the money. Like it doesn't, it doesn't work that way in business and it doesn't work that way in life.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

No, it doesn't. And I love this analogy you're giving because um I always say people are sitting back waiting for motivation, right? They wait to be motivated to act, you know, or to do what they need to do to make a change or be better. And I think if you wait on motivation, it you're never gonna do it. It happens after you act.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Yeah. Well, we wait for the perfect time. But well, I need to have this much money in the bank. Well, the kids need to be this old. Well, we I need this or we need that, and we and we make all of these why we can't or shouldn't. Right now, it's like there's never a perfect scenario for anything that you want in life. There it's just it there's never the perfect time for and then fill in your blank. It just we can't wait. That's we have to figure out how to reimanage those things to get to the next thing we want.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

Exactly. I

The Burnout That Stopped Everything

SPEAKER_02 5:59

want to go back for a minute before we move forward. You shared that there was a point where in your life where everything looked right on paper, you were leading, producing, showing up, but underneath all that, you were running on empty. Can you take us into that version of you? What did that actually feel like day-to-day?

SPEAKER_00 6:21

Uh so at the time, uh, I was I've been in a few different family businesses, but at the time we owned a few different restaurants, um, owned restaurants, managed restaurants, and worked as a trainer as well for like the corporate office for that brand. Um, so you know, you're managing a lot, and then COVID hits. So you're managing restaurants in different states with different rules and different things and different, you know, and some days, some days you had 10 different rules in a single day. And what do you do with that? And when you have multiple states that that's happening in, and then uh in that pro in those years too, I had gotten remarried. We had a blended house of five kids. So you're managing a lot of schedules and blending houses and managing people at work and the business, and it's a family business. So my parents are in the family business, my kids work in the restaurant. So, I mean, and you're constantly kind of in that circle. And small business ownership is hard already.

unknown 7:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

In general, you wear all of the hats, now do it for multiple locations and have five kids and you know, your divorced house, so you've got other sides of the family schedules to manage and some of those things. So there's a lot going on, and it's like, oh no. And and you keep moving the goal feed, the goal, the touchdown. You know, if I get to X, if we get to this, if I had to get to next Thursday, I'll have so-and-so trained and I cannot do this and have time for family. I need to make time for family, so I can't train so-and-so, I'll do it after. And so you're constantly moving and shuffling the deck of people, whether that's family, business, employees, all of those things. And so you're in a constant rush. It was, I was constantly in motion. The calendar is full. I'm responding to emails, I'm checking off to-do lists, all of those things that we're taught to manage our life, the calendar, all of those things, but you never actually got to the end zone, right? You never got to the crescendo of the song because you just kept moving it. Well, we need to make the song longer. We need to move the field to whatever we're moving it to. And in that, the burnout started, and I was so blinded. And you know, and you're in your tunnel vision. If I do all of these things and check all of this list, I'll eventually get to. And what I really learned is I was in motion, but there was nothing productive about it. And in the long run, I was hurting myself by ignoring the massive headaches because everybody gets headaches. Everybody gets migraines. That's normal. I ignored back pain. Everybody has back pain. Women who have had children and epidurals, we have back pain. That's normal. And we excuse a lot of these things. I would go to the doctor for different things that were going on, and they'd, you know, run test after test after test. And they're like, we have no idea what the problem is. What do you mean you have no idea what the problem is? And I mean, thousands of dollars have been spent on what the problem is, and we could never figure it out, and then it would just disappear, just magically go away. And then, you know, that happened for a little bit and a new thing would pop up. And so you in this constant cycle, and what happened is the mental part of the of the brain, of the nervous system couldn't handle the stress any longer. And I'm a pretty, we've learned I am a very high stress tolerant human, which I kind of knew before this, but I am a very high, I can take it. It's fine. It doesn't, and then you know, you excuse it away. But ultimately, uh my body figured out how to literally stop me in my tracks, uh, compressed discs in my lower back, L4, L5, and S1, and it cut off the nerve conversation to my right leg. And when you're standing on a cook line trying to train a cook and your right leg stops working, I literally, you know, I I a lot of times, even with my like the computer or the phone, I'm like, Go-go gadget arms work. And you know, you just send it magical powered. I I learned it from GoGo Gadget Arms, and I would like I'm standing there on the cook line going, move to my right leg and like telling them like I'm literally looking at my leg saying, move, and I can't make it move, like it will not budge. I can feel it, like I can touch it. It's not numb to touch, but I couldn't make my leg move. Obviously, I didn't know it was compressed discs at the time. Again, back to the doctor, we went. And it was even after we had figured that part out that I was at a conference and a woman was on stage and started talking about her own burnouts and and the signs and the the headaches and the nausea and the the different pains and all of these things. I'm like, oh, check that box, check that box. I know that, I know that. I I and I recognized all of those points to the point where I literally left that conversation, that session, and I texted my husband and was like, I think I have burnout, and I just learned it at this conference. And I never would have imagined the mental health part of what that was. I would not have called it burnout, I would not have researched burnout. I just thought that was another one of those pretty words that we like to use and label on things. And then I went, okay, it is the physical body, it's the mental health part triggering the body to say, we can't do anymore. And it's protecting itself. If you won't stop and take care of the body, we're gonna make sure we find ways. And it was in that very long pause because I can't go to work and be on concrete floors and stand for 10, 12 hours a day. I can't do the physical things that I had done, so I had to stop. I had to reassess, I had to figure out how to fix the problem in the long term. And for us, it was it's time to close restaurants and do something different and take care of myself and do that, and in all of that process. So when there's a message in a conversation that we need to be talking about more. And one of the reasons I I even speak to my personal story was it took someone else's personal story for me to see it in myself. So I need to do the same to be able to help somebody else see it in themselves and start. You know, you don't have to go to a coach like me. You can, however, your system or your need is, but you need to hear the message and understand it to know, do something to help yourself.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

Yes, yes. And sharing that story, a lot of people don't realize that they think either A, they don't have a story, or B, who's gonna listen. But it even if it's just one person, it impacts, you know, because then they're like, oh, they see themselves in that story. And then that that causes them to think, well, maybe I could do something about it. So it does your story makes a huge difference in people's lives. And I just want I had a funny thought when you were saying you were going to all these doctors and they weren't finding anything wrong, but you knew something was off. And I have done that so many times. And it's so crazy how isn't it that we get disappointed that nothing's wrong? It's like I spent all this.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

I know the answer is gonna be we have no idea. And like the doctors believe me, right? Like I had horrible stomach issues, I wouldn't be able to eat. But it's like, you know, you take a zofran for nausea that didn't help, and an acid didn't like nothing would help. But it's like this horrible, and I can't eat food, and I can't, and you're just like, there's something wrong. And they're looking at it going, we know something's wrong. We just don't even know where else to look to look because there's nothing that sends us down any path in any direction.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

Exactly. And they just want to troubleshoot, and if they can't, I wish they would just say, I don't know, instead of trying this medicine, trying that medicine. Let's try this. Just say, I don't know, let's send you to another specialist. That's what I would love, love, love if a doctor did that.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

We got to a point where it was like insurance isn't gonna pay for another specialist because there's nothing that indicates. Right. And they're like, We don't know, but we also don't know where else to send you to try to find out, you know, see what happens, and you know, six weeks, eight weeks later, that thing would be gone and something else would come around. You're like, oh, okay. The body's just constantly, well, you you didn't stop here, so let's give you another red flag. Let's give you another signal, let's give you another signal.

SPEAKER_02 15:25

And it just keep pushing through, right? Because you think, oh, I'm because I one doctor one time told me to go get counseling. Because they couldn't find what was wrong, and I just kept telling them something's wrong, something's off.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

I well, it's probably stress. Like if you can't fit it when all default answers are, it's stress. That's just the default, right? If anything is wrong with you, we can't figure it out. Well, it's stress, and you're just sitting there going, I mean, I didn't need $10,000 of medical bills to tell me that it's stress. But how would you like me as a small business owner to not be stressed? Tell me how I should do that. Who do I go see for that?

SPEAKER_02 16:07

That's the mindset, right? That we are taught that we we are supposed to worry. We are supposed to be stressed if we really care, right? That's what we have been taught, and it's ingrained deeply. And that's why, especially as women, we're busy trying to do check all the boxes, right? We're trying to do everything perfectly so that everyone else is happy. And we just shut it, shut down what our body is trying to tell us. We just keep ignoring it. Yeah.

Why We Ignore The Signals

SPEAKER_02 16:37

It's crazy, right? So why is it so easy to ignore? What are your thoughts on that? It's it's so easy to do it.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

In some cases, we're taught that's what we're supposed to do, or it's how we justify it to ourselves. It's how we make the excuse. We just don't want to call it the excuse. And, you know, when you're growing up, you're kind of taught, you know, you're supposed to have it all. As women, we're supposed to have it all. You're supposed to want a career and the kids and the husband and the house and the big house and and the cars and the vacations. And we want all these things. And these are things that as Gen Xers, we learned long before there was social media to keep up with those Joneses. Right. Like we didn't necessarily we didn't have any of that that taught us that it was just kind of that natural. You need the biggest house in town, and you need the the designer purses, and you need all these things. So even if you can't afford it, even if you can't handle the stress of it, you're supposed to want all of these things. And you constantly get, and I got this like when I left kind of a job that I had, it was what do you mean you're gonna go like coach people and work from home? And you know, and people like that's crazy. Why would you give up a job that you can make X at to start? And because it's the balance of my life that I want. But I think I through a divorce and kind of balancing all of those different things and making, you know, a life pivot, because another one of those words we like that life pivot, you know, life changed. I was a divorce and I was a single mom and I couldn't necessarily do some of the things I wanted to do, but it's how do I reimagine my life and figure out what I want to do? And you kind of went, you know, I I can do these things. And it's there are times when yes, you have to make decisions as I'm the mom and I have to make decisions that are the best thing for my kid. And that means I maybe can't do this thing for myself right now, but it doesn't mean that that's always where the choice is. And so I'm at a point now in my life where I'm like, you know what? My kids are older. I'm allowed to make a choice based on what I want for my life and where I want to go and where I want to be. And it's not, if you had told me this when I was 18, I would have been like, you're telling me, A, you would tell me I'm gonna own and manage restaurants with my family. No, like absolutely crazy. You're telling me I'm gonna coach people in small business burnout leadership capacity, building systems that for people that actually function. That's crazy. You never would have imagined it.

SPEAKER_02 19:18

Mm-hmm. And it really is. That's what this series is all about, is about becoming, right? Evolving and just getting a momentum towards something. And if you don't know what it is, that's where you know you have to take a moment to really look inward and and figure out what is it you want. You know what you don't want, but you don't know what you do want.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Sometimes we get to make decisions on what's gonna make me happy. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

Yes. And and sometimes people just don't know. I mean, I was following your work and I just love it all, by the

The Two-Minute Choice Point

SPEAKER_02 19:54

way. But you said something really powerful in there that the most important moment isn't the burnout. It's the it's the moment right before the automatic response. Can you walk me through that and what it's actually what's happening in that moment?

SPEAKER_00 20:11

That's that moment where you have that second of choice. Like I I was actually just working on a new blog that I was working on because I try to work ahead and talk, you know, in kind of that moment, it's that two-minute pause that you need to take. And somebody's just, you know, just just take two minutes, just take a moment. And you're like, no, no, no, no, no, I'm too busy, I'm too busy, I'm too busy. And we automatically default to I can't stop because I'm too busy, but I can take on five more tasks that I have no time for. And and where we got the alignment of saying no is is bad, or not even no, but just let me think about it for a moment. Let me have two minutes of thought to even process how I would fit new task, new thing into my day. Like why is one better? And then you go, wait, the wrong one is the accepted one. And you know, being able to put something down for two minutes is a actually practical. You could do that today. You could find two minutes, not two hours, but two minutes somewhere in your day to take your own moment to kind of disconnect, take a few breaths, listen to just a song on the radio and not, you know, all of the people in the in your world, because there's all these people in your world that need you. Um, I had somebody that's able to, Aaron, you have five minutes in the bathroom. No, no, I have even at twenty year old and a twenty two year old that live at home. Even in the bathroom, you're not safe. They're still like, are you in there? What are you doing? When are you coming out? It doesn't Happen, but in my car, I am by myself more days than I've, you know, that's that's probably the space I'm alone the most. And I think that's true for most of us. We're probably in our car at some point. There's two minutes, not on the phone, not like put the car in park, stop for a minute, take a breath. What do I want to do walking into this meeting? Or what do I need to rethink and take a note about walking out of this meeting? Or what do I need to while I'm sitting in the car pickup line? You know, don't not sending 50 text messages to everybody that you're not sitting with at the office, right? We're not doing what we're taking two minutes, and it's like, oh, I I can't find that. Yeah, you know, it doesn't make sense to do that thing over there. It doesn't, I I told them this morning at work to do X. And now that I have two minutes to think, that's probably not the best way to do that. This probably isn't the best thing on my schedule tomorrow. I need to move that to somebody. You have those minutes to kind of reassess and help yourself. It's two minutes and tomorrow's two minutes, but by next week you might be able to get to three minutes. And that's how we get kind of out of those cycles. But we will excuse away why we can't take it's uncomfortable. You actually have to sit in your thoughts, not other people's thoughts, not in the interruptions, but in you it's an uncomfortable space. And in the thought process of a pause isn't productive, is kind of how we piece those two things together because there's not motion, right? There's no movement in a pause. It's still, it's quiet. And so we assess that as nothing is happening in pause. And really, that's where you know, you think about when you've like watched a video or maybe the like I have a streaming service, and sometimes the signal's not coming through. So you pause it for a second and you see the little band on the bottom and you see like the thing fill up as it's finishing to download. That's what it's doing. Like a ton of work is happening in the background of pausing your streaming, whatever it is, or pausing your music for the download to catch up. There's a lot of things that are happening so that you can move forward on time, on schedule, in the right way without a glitch. Like, think about if we switch the mindset of that pause is the same thing as that download band. And I think about it, like it'd be running right here down at the bottom of the screen, right? That kind of pauses, and then you see it fill all the way back up, and you're like, oh, look, now I can go forward without interruption. So it's changing that mind shift. You need that pause so that all of that internal work that's going on back here in the subconscious part of your brain catches up so that you move forward with all of the purpose and the intention without those interruptions, those glitches that we get in those videos.

Boundaries Without Saying No

SPEAKER_00 25:14

If we're looking at the taking on more, it's feeling confident enough in yourself to even say, let me think about how I would do that. Instead of saying no, because I think that's the bigger problem in that, oh yeah, we don't want to say no. Again, it's part of that. We have been taught we're supposed to have it all. And to have it all, you say yes. And saying yes is a great thing in a lot of situations. But saying no is just as much of a great thing as saying yes. We need to say no. Our children need to hear us say no. Sometimes our boss needs to hear us say no, but in different ways because they need to understand our capacity. Our boss doesn't know I'm at full capacity. And we assume the boss knows. And that's part of the problem, too, or we assume the team or whoever is asking for the thing, we assume they know where we are, what we're doing, all the things on our planner. And they they wouldn't have asked if it wasn't really important. Well, no, they just don't remember who's doing what necessarily, or they sort of remember, or they don't know you're on full.

unknown 26:24

Right.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

So they make the ask. So saying, let me take a few minutes or or 24 hours. Can I let you know tomorrow? That way I have a second to look at how I would balance that in my schedule. And then you take that minute somewhere in your day to assess, okay, they want me to take on project alpha, but I still have one, two, three, and four over here. And so there really isn't enough time to do one, two, three, four, and alpha. So then you can come back to that person and say, so I have several things on my plate. I might be able to take on some of alpha or this particular part of alpha project. But let's assess one, two, three, and four. What's the priority in all of these things on my plate? And a lot of times you'll even get, oh, I forgot you had that one on your plate. I forgot, I didn't realize, yeah, we are in the phase of whatever that project is, or whatever that thing at work, or that committee that's asking you, that's right, you're in the main part of this thing that you do, which would really make it not possible to do this. Or, yeah, things have shifted on the priority at work. Like this has to get done. We have to fix this, you know, we have to fix this thing in alpha. Let's put that down, or I'll go ask so and so. They they may be who needs to take on that so that you can do this because it's better fit to you. And so they even start to assess where is everybody on the bus in the team that you're working on. So you're not going to your boss and saying, no, but you're really asking for real valued information that is which plate would you like me to drop? Because at six plates, we are at my maximum ability to juggle.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

And to be honest, it's human nature, Erin, for us to keep asking more of people when they keep saying yes.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Yes. Well, and and they do know that. It's like, oh, well, she's capable. She takes on all this stuff and she's still doing it, and she meets deadlines and she does the thing. And it's a real issue with like high achievers. Yes. Like people, uh one of one of my children is a people pleaser and she's a high achiever. And like those are two different things. Being a people pleaser and being a high achiever are not the same things. I am a very high achiever. I figure out how to get things done, but I'm a person who's gonna say, I'm gonna take two minutes to figure out the system on how to get from here to there, and how to get from here to there, and how to get from here to there. And I'm also somebody who's gonna say, I need you to take responsibility for this and you to take responsibility for this. Let's go over here and have this conversation on this day time to assess how that's gonna work. You know, uh it's just in my brain, I was built with it. I also grew up in a family business, so I saw that in an everyday, you know, assigning task or asking for input is a lot less of a problem for me. I don't have to do it all myself to a certain degree. You get to a certain point where you do have those moments where, like, well, if I just do it, it'll be so much faster. It's like that's that's not helping in the long run. But yeah, high achievers are going to keep taking on, and people pleasers are going to say yes even when they shouldn't. And between the two of those, you have picked up a massive majority of people. And then I think too, a lot of our younger generation, our millennials and our Gen Z are terrified to say no.

unknown 30:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

And they won't have the conversation with a boss or a committee they're on. They they'll just run away. Um, because we've taught them that skill. We don't deal with it, just uncomfortable so bad, just leave uncomfortable and find something else. It's like, no, that that's probably more detrimental than kind of working through the moment.

Momentum That Hides The Potholes

SPEAKER_02 30:36

I I want to talk a little bit more about momentum because you've worked in high performance environments, and there's a lot of talk about momentum there. So do you see momentum showing up in behavior patterns too?

SPEAKER_00 30:54

Absolutely. And that's also how you kind of sometimes you're in the momentum. I'm running, I'm I'm making my way and the and the track that I'm running on and the marathon of work life, whatever. And you you're like, but I I just accomplished ABC D and E. And all I gotta do is, you know, the momentum's with me. Let's get to F or whatever that thing is. And that it's it is a lot of times the momentum that shadows us. You know, think about when you're driving down a road and the car's going 70 miles an hour, everything along the side of the road is kind of a blur. You can't catch all of the video, this the scenery, the mountains, the cornfields, you know, wherever you are. You can't see it all. It's moving too fast if you're driving the car. But if you're in the passenger seat, you have plenty of time to kind of look around, but you still can't see it as if you were standing at it, you know, looking around or hiking through it, because the momentum is the 70 mile an hour car. So you don't even necessarily see the red flags. You don't see the flares on the side of the road. You can't see the giant hole that's coming up in the road ahead. You can't, yeah, it's it's pothole season where I am. So that's what makes me think that it's pothole season. Do you know? Do you have pothole season in Texas? We have pothole season. We have it year-round. We it's uh pothole season is uh very it it's very spring specific, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

I guess when the earth is moving and I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

You move all that salt on the road and it's finally washed off, and it's it's it literally burns into the sum of the co yeah. So we're in pothole season here. Uh, but you know, you can't see the pothole coming, which is how you hit the pothole and bend the axle and you know, bend the wheel in the car and end up on the side of the road. Hopefully that's as bad as it is because it's just the car and not some major accident because there's 50 other cars going 70 miles an hour down the road, too. Right? Like you are momentum's the same thing, and momentum can be a great thing, but it can also be the thing that hurts you. And so you have to that's where having those even two-minute check-ins with yourself helps you assess the momentum. Am I still in the momentum? Is it moving forward? Does the momentum still need to be 70 miles an hour? Do we need to, are we in a speed zone that, you know, speed trap, let's take it down to 55? And and it lets you assess those things so that you can better see the potholes that maybe out there.

SPEAKER_02 33:38

The difference between pushing through and then building real momentum, right? There's people probably, I mean, I've I've noticed people they build momentum in the wrong direction without realizing it.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

And and in an unpurposeful. It's back to that you are in motion, but nothing productive is happening in the motion. It's you're standing there, you're burning energy, right? Like you're I I we we had a somebody who I worked with in one of our restaurants, and he was an older gentleman and would and stand kind of in the middle of the store, and he would constantly, can I help? Can I help? Can I help? And he really wouldn't move off a pivot point, right? But he so nothing really productive happened, but he was constantly like and so he had burned energy, he had worked, movement happened, cows were burned, but there was nothing at the end of that window of time that got done in a really kind of helpful way. He stopped momentum. Well, and he was he was constantly, can I help you? Can I help you? Can I help you? And it's like, no, you're you're actually standing in the way of the milkshake bar so that they can make the milkshakes. You're actually in the way of getting to the cook line or getting to the dish sink. Like you're in the way more than you're helping. And in his mind, it was, I'm helping, I'm doing the things, the little tasks that need done. But in reality, it was he he was the roadblock for other people that were trying to work because he didn't know how the people worked together. And in the trying to help them all, it's like, no, no, I I can do this way faster than I can explain it to you. Yes, right.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

And he had those blinders on that you were talking about.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

And he had those blinders on, he's helping. I'm the helper. And in reality, if you can take in from the rest of us, if you stood back and you watched, you're like, look, every person who's trying to work and is working at productivity, they're having to step around him. They're taking three extra steps because he's in the way. And momentum is much like that. You have these roadblocks. And so we're going way out of our way. Instead of going, wait, what is the line to being productive? Not just, I bur, I mean, what good does it do you to burn a thousand calories and go home and eat three milkshakes and a cheeseburger? And and you know, and so this you wouldn't do that on a person, right? So why do you do it on the other side? You can make those two comparisons, they are very equivalent. I mean, I guess unless you're really high-end athlete, like you hear Michael Phelps was eating like 60,000 calories a day. I mean, I guess he's allowed to do that. But for the rest of us, that's not normal.

SPEAKER_02 36:47

But if someone, a good leader on a team would take that that energy he had to help, right? You could redirect it. And and that's the key is to not, you know, like a one small pause really does change the direction someone is headed. But sometimes they need a little help.

SPEAKER_00 37:08

Sometimes they need a little, and that's part of leadership is knowing how to approach that conversation. What is that person's particular skill? And that's something that we had to figure out how to do with him is there is a lot of things he is good at being in that space. So we need to set him up in a space that he can be really successful and highlight his skills. Because it's, I mean, we wouldn't have kept him around if he didn't have any skills, right? He got a lot of things. It's like, I need to just make sure he's in a space that that's not where he has the opportunity to be. And so it's even reass making those reassessments. And he's like, but but I really like, I understand you really like, but I really need you taking care of this. I I can't be worried about that, and that's what you're great at. And to when he hears that, like, oh, she sees me, she values me, she trusts me, she's she knows I can take care of. And I was like, if you're in charge of that, I don't, I don't even have to think about it. It's not even on my list of things I have to at all. And now we've given him that confidence to go, oh, I, you know what, I'm gonna go over there and I'm gonna do that thing that Erin needs me to do and be in charge of and nail it every time because she trusts me to do it. And so we've both empowered him and we've helped the flow of the system on the other side at the same time. And I've taken something off my personal plate of things to deal with. And of course, you check in with them on occasion, but it's not the same kind of conversation. I'm not having to do it myself, and he's great at it. So why do I need to be doing it?

SPEAKER_02 38:56

And doing it all at once, right? It's just recognizing that moment and choosing something different before his pattern runs again. Yeah. You know, just in small steps so it doesn't burden you. It doesn't over overrun your plate.

SPEAKER_00 39:12

Yeah. Yeah, you helped all of those scenarios, and that helps you with your burnout, right? I know somebody amazing, competent, talented, skilled, is taken care of. That's not on my plate. It's still part of my business, but it's not mine to do. Is it gonna do it as well as I do? I mean, maybe, maybe not. That's a whole other what we get into the I can do it better than, you know, whoever you wanna. But the problem is, is it really better? And if yours is a hundred and theirs is ninety-eight, is that enough of a difference to not take it off my plate? Yes, I can do it a hundred percent right. He's gonna do it 98% right. I would venture to say he's probably gonna do it 105, but let's let my little bias of I do it all right, and that's part of that problem too, is but I do it right. And we use that excuse. If I do it, it'll be done better, faster, right. And it's relative what right or wrong it is.

SPEAKER_02 40:24

Right. Right. And and you know, uh we could do a whole another episode on the hundred percent or nothing people.

SPEAKER_00 40:32

Yeah. Well, and there's a difference too. But if if you're if I'm a hundred and you're ninety-eight, am I really losing at his ninety-eight percent? I mean, that's still an A plus, right? Yes. I mean, that's still an A plus, but I didn't have to do it. I didn't spend the time, I didn't spend the energy, I didn't spend the thought. So let his 98 take care of it.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

And my hundred percent can be in the space that he can't do or she can't do, or this one. That's where you need to kind of figure out where those balances come. But that's the problem. We don't want to relinquish, we want to hold on. And we we think that by controlling more and holding on tighter, and uh, you know, it's like a marathon baton. You don't want to let go of the baton because I can run the marathon the fastest with my baton, because I'm the amazing one, and that's why I'm the boss, and that's why I've moved up. And so all of those things we start to control harder when we feel the spin out, thinking that because we held it harder, we can pull it back in and fix it. And it's again, just like in driving, you you don't break harder when you're in the spin. You have to let go of the brake and stay calm. And it's that same thing in life. When we're spinning, we have to not hit the brake and turn the wheel as sharp as we can. We have to stay calm and straight to figure out how to get out of this.

SPEAKER_02 42:02

And you have to really focus because the brain's wanting to protect you and it's wanting to react. You know, and that will just make it worse. If, you know, but so if someone listening right now is thinking, hey man, I can relate to that. This is me. What's how do they get

Start With What You Avoid

SPEAKER_02 42:19

started? What's one thing they they should start noticing today? And what's a signal people tend to ignore? I mean, help them get started.

SPEAKER_00 42:29

I think one of the biggest signals when we're talking in kind of a leadership, and this is personal at home in your momdom, in your workdom, the things that you are avoiding are the things you know that you need to pay attention to. But we avoid them because they're hard, because they're uncomfortable, because we may not know how to solve them, or maybe that person in that department is just you're like, uh, I going to that department to see Sally. Sally just drains me. And I don't have the energy for Sally today. That's where we have to work to show up. Now we don't have to spend 10 hours with Sally, but we need to start making an effort to show up in Sally's area if that's where it is. But it's it's I think I use the analogy, that thing that you've kind of stuffed in the corner. We all have that drawer where all the stuff is that we're like, I don't know what to do with this. We just threw it in the drawer. But we do that in life too. There's a corner of your office that's got a pile of stuff in it that we have ignored. You could, I you can't tell me what's in that pile. Tell me what's on the bottom of that pile in the corner of your bookshelf in your office. Tell me what's in the pile in the corner of your closet. Tell me what's in that pile. Because and then we just it becomes the place we stack, right? There's a place in your office somewhere, there's a place in your house, in your room, in somewhere. There's an apartment of people and you that you don't. You avoid it and you pile and stick the stuff and just walk past it. And it just starts to become the noise, right? You just walk past it and you don't even see it anymore. Start there, go through that pile of stuff. I bet you can throw most of it away. You can donate those clothes that are in that corner. You can, and when you start there, you start to find just the fog lift in your own brain. Look, you can now sit in that chair in the corner. Or I can put a nice picture or a vase with a flower that makes me happy instead of a big old stack of papers and that really aren't things that we need. They aren't doing anything. And so it's it's finding what am I avoiding and find a way for yourself. I think those are the spaces where we start to go, wow, I spent a lot of time wasting time over here. You know what? And and we see it because you have that couple of minutes. Go through some of those.

SPEAKER_02 45:04

You know, it's it reminds me, I have such a great visual for that. Uh there was a period in our lives where my husband and I were moving like almost every year. We moved like three or four different times. And his dad, my my father-in-law, would help us move. And finally, like the third move, I think, he's like, you know, I've moved these boxes in the last three years, and I don't think they've ever been opened. My rule is if you haven't opened it in a year, it it goes in the trash.

SPEAKER_00 45:32

Yeah. But there's you it's it's not serving you. There's nothing, but we hold on to it. Because and that is the answer. When I, you know, as as a parent, we hear, well, why did you do that? Because, like, no. My and my kids will tell you that answer will absolutely no, that is not an answer. It like absolutely will get my goat of no, because is never an answer. So if you're if that's the answer to a question, but but why is that pile over there? Because yeah, that's the thing we're gonna go tackle. Why is your calendar full like this? Because no, no, we're not gonna do it. No, I'm gonna go figure out how to completely disarray that so that you have to address it, because that's it's that's where our blinders are. We we put those blinders up to avoid uncomfortable. And honestly, the best growth and the best movement forward is when you get through the bottom of that pile and you go, wow, I have whatever clarity you learned from the pile, or the release of the, you know, the clothes in the corner, and you you took it to the local women's shelter or to a nonprofit of some kind. We donate, there's a pantry at the local middle school that we take a lot of clothes to, and so we take them there. And it's like, look, that felt so much better. A, it's not in my house, and I've dealt with it. And B, I was able to help somebody else. Like, those are ways that we can do multiple things at once and we can help and ourselves and somebody else in a really kind of help positive way, and and start to, okay, now that there's this open shelf, what do I want to put on that shelf? What do I want to put in that corner? And that becomes a plan of purpose. I'm not gonna go back to that. What am I gonna put in there? And then we start that brain, because we've cleared out that space in our brain too, we start to really make a plan for again whatever that avoidance was before. And those are moving forwards. And so it's the small steps, it's little stepping stones. We aren't trying to recreate life today because it's not gonna happen. There's a reason like New Year's resolutions don't last more than like 10 days, I think the study says because they're crazy. It's like I'm gonna lose 20 pounds. Who loses 20 pounds in a week and a half? Like that just no, that's crazy. But it's making those small steps are what actually moves us forward. It's not these big, gigantic, you know, gestures and Facebook Instagram moments. Those are where growth happens. That's not where becoming happens. We're just constantly evolving. And that's what we have to remember. That's what becoming is. It's that evolvement of who you are, and how you do it isn't how I do it. And neither one is wrong, and neither one is right. It's we came from different spaces. Yes, and we need different things at different moments and different times in our life. And that's what becoming is. There isn't a right or wrong, there isn't a my way and your way, it's how you get there, and it's taking all of this information from all of these conversations and going, okay, I can use some of that and some of that and some of this, and that's how I make my potion of my evolution.

Becoming Calmer Over Time

SPEAKER_02 49:06

I love that. If you think about the version of you back then and the version of you now, who have you become?

SPEAKER_00 49:16

I I my I am much calmer. Uh I am I don't react because when you're in that constant, that constant motion, that's all you're doing. You're reacting in an everyday kind of way, in an every minute almost kind of way. And life in reaction, it it gets to your gut, it gets to your physically. So you're like, I never I didn't accomplish. So you you leave the day going, I had all of these things, I accomplished nothing, I finished nothing. And so it's turning that around and saying, wait, I I planned out my day. I don't have a calendar where every minute is accounted for. I have some of the things I want to get done today, but I have space that if a client calls and needs to have a conversation or just have a coffee, great. If one of the kids has calls with a question, I can spend five, 10, 15 minutes, depending on the kid, depends on the length of conversation. Mine are 20 to 27. So it all depends on, you know, kid in which position of their life. And so I you can do those things, but you can also have time to think, well, what is it I want this to be? What is it I want that to look like? And so you have those minutes to actually think a process through and really be able to take the steps and go, okay, this is where I want to go and this is what I want to go. I know I want to be over here. I know I want to create a business that's successful, but I'm not trying to run every day. It's how do I take each step that makes sense to build where I want to get to, which then gives us all of the foundation. You know, you don't, you don't build a house and just throw it up. You know, you think about it. You have what's the soil look like? What's the foundation going to be? How big is it gonna be? What's the long-term plan? And so you think through all of those things, but by giving yourself space and by giving yourself the moments to kind of take a breath, you have those stepping stones and you are now calm. And so it's decisions that I make, and the decisions make sense in the long run instead of a reaction.

SPEAKER_02 51:40

So

Where To Find Erin Tracy

SPEAKER_02 51:41

perfect. So per before we start to wrap up today, I want to make sure people know where to find you because the way you approach this is so real and usable. Where's the best place for them to connect with you and find your work?

SPEAKER_00 51:56

So I'm on social media, it's super easy. Facebook, Instagram, even on TikTok, you have some stuff over there to keep that a little bit fun and sometimes a little whimsy over there. Um, but all are Coach Aaron Tracy and it's uh Tracy T-R-E-A-C-Y. Um, so that's trade the the last name is sometimes the spelling, it throws some folks off. And then just to keep it simple, the website's the same, Coach Aaron Tracy. I respond to all of the messages on all of those sites, um, and my email and all of that kind of contact information is on the website as well. So it is me that you're talking to, which also I think is helpful to a lot of people when they know, oh, that's it's not a bot, it's not somebody in an office. I sit and look at all of those to make sure I'm responding.

SPEAKER_02 52:44

Yeah, and someone that genuinely cares in a real humanistic way. Yeah. So I love that. And we'll make sure those links, everybody, don't freak out. We're not writing it down, but those links will be in the show notes. So when you um I lost my question. Okay, so anyway, let's close with this. Um, this was this this was such a powerful conversation, and what stood out to me is this idea that the moment before the reaction, that's that's where everything shifts, not all at once, but in small intentional choices that change the direction over time. Thank you for sharing that so openly with us today.

SPEAKER_00 53:31

Those moments are show up a lot. And it's even if you only see it once today to make a different choice, that's one more than you did yesterday. And you are human. So you aren't gonna get it a hundred percent right. And we sit and talk about this. I don't get it a hundred percent right. Uh, and you have to be able to go, you know what? I'm still gonna try again tomorrow.

SPEAKER_02 53:57

Yes. So remember, everybody, you don't have to fix everything. You just have to catch the moment, pause, choose, and build momentum from there, one moment at a time. Thanks, Sarah.

SPEAKER_01 54:12

Thank you.