Shelly – 00:00
I was building the pattern early on to be a high achiever and that’s just part of it.
High achievement comes with really low lows.

Avery – 00:11
Absolutely, yeah and I don’t think we talk about that enough because it’s when you have really big goals that means that you are not going to hit them all the time and that’s going to land very heavy on you.
Hi, I’m Avery Thatcher, a former ICU nurse, and this is not your standard stress management podcast where we just focus on those band-aid solutions like the benefits of meditation, mindfulness, and self-care.
You already know that you need some kind of recovery strategy to deal with your stressful life.
But what you may not know are all of the sneaky ways that society, our upbringing and our high achieving nature, and so many other factors contribute to our risk of burnout.
That, my friend, is what we talk about here on this podcast because you can’t do something about a situation that you’re not aware of, right?
So if you’re ready to get out of the pattern of burning out, feeling better, only to burn out again, it’s time for us to shut the light on the truth about burnout.
All right, welcome back.

Avery – 01:12
I am super excited to chat with today’s guest because again, it’s another story of burnout that I feel like some of us can relate to, if not to all of the details, at least to some of the experiences.
So welcome, Shelley.
I’m so grateful to have you here.
Thank you, Avery.
I’m so excited to be here.
And it’s so funny because so many people say they’re so excited and it’s like such a powerful thing to share your story and your experience and it can be scary but also exciting at the same time so I’m really glad that part of you at least is excited for this so thank you.

Shelly – 01:46
You’re welcome.
I think for me it’s You know, when you’re in the thing, you’re in that, you know, burnout space, you can’t think of anything else.
And when you come out of it and you realize there are other people that have similar experiences or are feeling that, there’s a part of you that wants to help push them out of that.
You know what I mean?
Like that’s the part that’s exciting to me is that I had a couple of people in my space that helped me do that.
And some videos that I watched and some other things that just helped give one more layer to help, you know, help me crawl out of the hole.

Avery – 02:22
Yes.
And I, on a podcast that I was interviewed on ages ago, they said this phrase and I loved it.
It was that our story could become somebody else’s survival guide.
And really that’s what I hope these can be for someone.

Multiple speakers – 02:36
So yeah.

Shelly – 02:38
Love that.
And I love that you’re leading the charter, that really says a lot about you and What you want to do and help people.

Avery – 02:45
Thank you for that.
I appreciate it.
So before we inflate my eco-bunny more and my head gets too big to fill out all these screens, let’s move forward into chatting a bit about your story.
Let’s hear about when you first identified as a high achiever and what that looked like for you.

Shelly – 03:02
think that happened really, really early on, like as a kid.
And one of the factors probably has to do with being a firstborn child.
And all firstborns will know exactly what I mean by that.
You didn’t get the mama’s baby treatment.
You literally got the exact opposite because they were learning on you.
And so everything was it’s not as bad as you think it is you’ve got this just get dust yourself off get keep going you know that was the messaging that came and both of my parents are our high achievers or my dad was and my mom is a high achiever as well and so i feel like it kind of just Youknow it kind of naturally was placed on me on top of my birth order and very early on I found myself trying to be that people pleaser and but also trying to get recognition because my motivation and I’m not ever Scared to tell about it.

Shelly – 04:05
My behavioral style, my motivation a lot of times is that recognition.
It’s not even money.
It’s not even like, you know, a status.
It’s more getting recognized for, you know, what I’ve achieved.
And when you’re young, the only people you have to recognize that is your parents.

Avery – 04:25
Yeah, definitely.
So tell me how this kind of has evolved over time and like how it contributed to the part of your journey that you want to talk about today.

Shelly – 04:37
Well, I think part of going through that high achievement piece, you know, you choose things like sports.
You know, I did a lot in music, so I was very competitive in music.
I played the alto saxophone.
We went to state and nationals a couple different times.
We were known for having bands that even went to huge parades.
Everything around me I think kind of pushed me towards that but I liked the feeling of you know achieving something that somebody else hadn’t achieved like that was kind of a mental high for me too like oh okay if I do it better than or if I get that before they do then of course I’m going to get
that recognition you know so I feel like that became the pattern I have a friend that does a lot of psychology coaching and that kind of thing and what she says is that you get in this cycle.

Shelly – 05:44
Get in these cycles and sometimes those cycles, even my friend that deals with trauma, he says those cycles when there’s an interruption in there with some kind of trauma in the actual cycle itself, you keep looping in that cycle but you keep feeling the trauma because you haven’t healed the trauma
wound, right?
So I feel like it was this story that was gonna play out in my life no matter what.
It was going to happen because I was building the pattern early on to be a high achiever and that’s just part of it.
High achievement comes with really low lows.
Absolutely.

Avery – 06:22
Yeah.
And I don’t think we talk about that enough.
Because it’s when you have really big goals, that means that you are not going to hit them all the time.
And that’s going to land very heavy on you.
Especially if you’re a perfectionist, either overt or covert, or you’re a people pleaser.
And again, if you’re seeking the validation and the recognition, a lot of times we only recognize the outcome, not so much the effort.

Shelly – 06:48
So Yeah, absolutely and as a society we only celebrate the outcome.
I was just doing some reels with this one of my companies that I work with and we talked about this yesterday.
We were talking about we don’t celebrate wins like small wins in the process of getting to the big win, right?
All we do is focus on the big win because that’s the one, that’s the high achievement side that everybody pays attention to.
But I find, especially when I was a sales leader, I had to get my sales team to celebrate those small wins, getting to the big one, because the big one didn’t happen that often, right?
It wasn’t.
And the mental things that you put yourself through when you don’t achieve those benchmarks that, especially if you’re a high achiever, the mental process you put yourself through is torturous.

Shelly – 07:43
Like it literally is torturing, you know?

Avery – 07:49
Yeah, so bring me back to those times, like tell me a bit about when you were in sales, when you were in your sort of more corporate career, what did that look like for you?

Shelly – 08:01
Well, I was, it’s interesting, I moved towards the enterprise sales space Like really early on so small and mid-sized sales was just not really the thing that excited me and it was probably because I was looking for the bigger wins right the whales and all the big achievements and getting the
recognition for the big ones that nobody else could get and so my career kind of took that path.
And I stayed there and coming in and out of corporate.
This is my third consulting business that I have started over the years.
And so being in corporate, you don’t get recognition until you actually meet your number.
It doesn’t matter if you sold something and it was a great something.
If you don’t meet the number, you still didn’t win, right?

Shelly – 08:42
And even if you got paid, you still didn’t win.
So having the Super big whale, you know, enterprise space only perpetuated what I was putting myself in from the time I was little, right?
And I noticed really early on I was spending whatever hours it took.
I was giving the absolute best that I could possibly give, even if it meant I was not giving my best to my family.
And which I feel guilty about, you know, I really, I really do.
I mean, I look back on that, especially when my daughter was little, you know, but I felt that pull and that need to like be that high achiever.
It was like, I couldn’t get away from that.

Shelly – 09:31
And it really caused a lot of kind of like, Some resentment for the career I had chosen.
Number one, it caused me to have some almost, and this sounds terrible, some resentment to my family for someone getting in the way.
Mm-hmm.
And that’s not an easy thing to say out loud.
Of course, yeah.
But I had such a high achievement, you know, thing that was driving me that it felt like if I didn’t have that, you know, I’d be lying to you if I sat here and said that never was a factor.
Like, if I didn’t have a child, I could do more travel, right?

Shelly – 10:10
I could be on the road more, I could sell more, I could, you know, that kind of thing.
And also I feel like high achievers end up being hunters, like in a kind of a weird way.
We’re the hunters, right?
Not the gatherers, we’re the hunters.
And the hunting part, while it’s exhausting, is kind of a high.

Avery – 10:31
Definitely, definitely.
And when you were saying that you had times where you resented your family, I can relate to that.
There’s definitely times where I resented my partner, when I resented family events and things and I was like, I could be using this time to move forward on my goals.
So it is hard to say out loud, but it’s not uncommon.
And I guess that helps ease the blow a little bit.

Shelly – 10:56
I feel like at this point in my life, probably it has to do with a certain age group, right?
You get to a point where you’re just kind of like, I don’t have the same people pleasing mentality, but also I want to be authentic because when I am not authentic, my message doesn’t help people.
Even if the words are the same.
If I’m not coming from a true vulnerable place, you do have to be a vulnerable person in order to be authentic, you know?
And I was not that vulnerable person before my life took a whole other, you know, jot on the journey.
And I, although people felt like I was authentic because I’m very much a people pleaser, so they felt like I was pleasing them, right?
It was not coming from an authentic place.

Multiple speakers – 11:48
Yeah, absolutely.

Avery – 11:51
So you hinted a little bit about how your life kind of took a hard left turn.
Tell us about that.

Shelly – 11:58
So years ago when I was in my 20s I had breast cancer and that’s important to this part of the story because it impacted what happened in October of 2022. I had to have a radical hysterectomy And I had to have everything completely removed, so therefore the moment I woke up, I was in
full-blown menopause.
And because I had breast cancer, we could not start hormone replacement therapy.
You couldn’t do that until you did the genetic propensity testing, right?
And that propensity testing takes four months.
It’s a really long process and I appreciate it being a long process, but not whenever I am in an absolute dark hole and cannot even hardly get out of bed, right?
Much less work and do this thing I do called high achieving.

Shelly – 12:57
You know what I mean?
It was the worst place for me mentally, especially because I was just thinking, I’m wasting all this time, you know?
Here I am, it’s October, it’s Q4, okay?
Q4 in the world I came from was a big quarter.
That was the big selling quarter, right?
And here I was in the beginning of Q4, not able to sell.
So I’m looking at not meeting my number for the year, not just a quarter.

Shelly – 13:27
I feel 30 years older in every part of my body because of my hormones.
Those hormones help you lubricate your joints and all that other stuff.
I normally had migraines but this turned into a whole other flurry of migraines and vertigo that I didn’t even know was coming.
I literally had, you know, the hot flashes were like the least thing on the list.
Like they would happen 30 times a day and all night long I’d wake up in a puddle.
I would have handled that without having all this other stuff.
I’d be on a conference call with executives in Atlanta And I have to turn my camera off because I just started crying for nothing, for no reason.

Shelly – 14:05
Like it was just not, nevermind the fact that I just didn’t, I felt like my insides were turning out, inside out.
Like I didn’t feel like me.
I didn’t feel like I, my brain was foggy.
I mean, it goes on and on and on and nobody prepared me for that transition.
And for you it happened so quickly.
For it to not be a gradual thing, for most women it’s a gradual thing.
So you’re kind of, Working Through It

Shelly – 14:47
You know, being your own advocate for your healthcare, especially during going through menopause.
And so once that happened, everything, Avery, was like so uncomfortable.
Just, I mean, sitting at my computer just to sit there hurt, you know?
And so, and I wasn’t sleeping.
So when you don’t sleep, you literally are in a horrible mental place.
So I would find myself going out and doing small little things like sitting in the yard with my feet in the grass, On my laptop, going down to the beach and just sitting there, not thinking about it, not walking, not doing anything productive, because that’s what I normally would do is multitask and
be productive while I’m exercising.

Shelly – 15:28
I’m also grounding.
I’m also mentally flaring.
I’m doing all the things, right?
Meditating.
And I find myself just sitting there.
I don’t want anybody to look at me.
I don’t want anybody to see me.

Shelly – 15:40
I don’t want to have to interact with anybody.
I just did not want to be here.
Just bottom line, right?
And so I started, it started challenging my belief system, like my belief system of what do I really believe?
Do I like my job?
No, I don’t like my job.
Do I want to do that forever and feel like this?

Shelly – 16:00
Absolutely not.
So on the road out of that, right, as we’re working towards the hormone replacement therapy stuff, I called a girlfriend who has a career coaching program and said, I want to go through your career coaching program.
She’s like, Shelly, you’ve reinvented yourself a hundred times.
You don’t need this.
And I said, well, I need a soft place to fall and I trust you.
And this could be a really, you could regret doing this because of where I am emotionally, but I feel like all of the things have been stripped away.
This is the moment.

Shelly – 16:33
Because before, I’ve got all those things bolted on me, that high achievement thing bolted on me that I need to keep going.
I never was going to do this on my own without something interceding for me to do it, right?
And as hard as I think back to what happened with that, this set me on a path to get me where I am today.
I ended that program, I was going to launch another business, my third one.
I know exactly what I wanted to do to help people.
I knew that I wanted to be authentic.
We talked about that a minute ago.

Shelly – 17:06
I was tired of pretending to be everything is perfect, right?
I’m tired of that because everything’s not perfect.
And if I had gone through, hadn’t gone through what I had gone through, I would have been so worried about the people pleasing side, you know, and getting to the recognition side of what I needed to achieve that I would have missed it.
And so now I look at that as this is a huge gift to me.
You know, this is a gift.
It took a while for me to dig out of that hole.
And when we went back for the, the hormone replacement genetic propensity discussion, I said, she said, here’s your percentages, they’re higher.

Shelly – 17:44
And I said, I don’t care because if I have to live like this, I don’t want to be here.
So it didn’t matter, right?
So as part of that, I started like realizing, okay, I’m realizing that I’m full burned out with everything that my life was, you know, my He’s my boyfriend, but we’ve been together nine years.
So almost like, you know, like husband.
He says, he’s like, you’re not, you’re not getting rid of me, are you?
You’re changing all these things.
Hopefully I’m not one of them.

Shelly – 18:18
And so, and he wasn’t, but literally, literally I just was like, I need to look at my entire life.
Like I need to look at everything and figure out I’m at this place where I can’t survive anymore at this rate.
I’m so burned out and I just happen to be really lucky that and I say lucky because I don’t know Avery that I would have stopped myself.
So when I do these kind of podcasts I’m like if there’s somebody out there that is resonating with this you know don’t try not to wait till you’re forced into something.
Because it’s way harder, you’re in the middle of whatever it is, physical up something, you know, financial something, whatever it is, and having to dig yourself out of the hole.
If you’re in that cycle, a vicious cycle of, you know, and you know you’re burned out, reach out to somebody.
Like, there are ways to get yourself out of that.

Avery – 19:20
Yeah, so true.
And I feel like there’s part of the high achiever mentality that’s like, oh, but I could figure this out.
Oh, absolutely!
Yeah, right?
But there always is a point where it’s like the final edge of the cliff, where you can’t figure it out anymore.
You need that extra support.
And I think a lot of people do reach out to me after they’re already over the edge of the cliff.

Avery – 19:46
they’re like, I need help.
I can’t, I don’t even know who I am anymore.
And it’s okay to find help in that space.
But like Shelley said, if you could catch some of those warning signs early, so that hindsight is not an asshole for you, then it’s definitely worth it.
Can you tell us what some of those warning signs would have been for you?

Multiple speakers – 20:05
Looking back?

Shelly – 20:06
I don’t know that I would have, I would have really paid attention to them.
Like, as openly, right?
I don’t think I would have, what’s the right word?
I don’t think I would have been as honest with myself about them.
Because I realized after going through this, number one, I didn’t even recognize that person once I got through this.
How did she become that person?
And I think it’s because it started out with that high achieving piece and it just snowballed.

Shelly – 20:46
It just got bigger and bigger and the expectations from jobs and from family and from all the things.
And I think social media has hurt us in this way because we look at All these perfect lives or this perfect, this achievement, we don’t talk about how they got there.
Right?
And especially as an entrepreneur, we don’t talk, I mean, it’s lonely by yourself as an entrepreneur, you know, because you got to do all, you got to feel all the things, right?
All the things.
You don’t get to have a staff to help you with that.
And I think some of the signs would have been that I was prioritizing work over family.

Shelly – 21:29
Which is not authentically me because my family is very important to me.
That’s a huge sign.
Another one is that I was never ever reaching the carrot.
Like, I was chasing the carrot but I never seemed to ever catch the carrot and I was making excuses that it was the corporate office that was changing the rules that made the carrot further away every time, right?
But that’s not really it.
It’s really more that I was putting the carrot in front of myself.
You know, I was setting myself up for that.

Shelly – 22:05
I was making promises and making, you know, giving guarantees like when you’re, you know, I’m a salesperson so I can sell, I should be able to sell to people hiring me.
Right?
On me.
Well, I would do crazy things like Pass the job description so that I would be recognized as this overachiever.
I would say things in an interview that I knew would be interesting to them that would make me stand out as a candidate.
Well, guess what?
Then I had to fulfill that.

Shelly – 22:38
I just put that on myself.
That wasn’t their expectation.

Avery – 22:44
Yeah, so how has your relationship with that high achieving part of you changed now that you’ve been through this experience?
Like would you still say you’re the high achiever that needs to be validated and recognized or do you see it differently now or is it the same?

Shelly – 23:02
It’s not the same.
I think the things that I want to achieve now have become more of a focus of This, once I do achieve this, I need to make sure that I’m, I’m giving myself the, you know, the downtime of it almost like a reward system, right?
Like I’ll achieve this and then I’ll do this.
And it also is helpful in our, in our home life, because then your family knows that there’s going to be a stopping point, right?
It’s just never, it’s not a never ending thing.
And then we’re going to, and I try to, I want to try to make it to where it’s like, we do things like, Once this happens, we are going to do this, right?
It’s not just going to be a me thing.

Shelly – 23:47
But I do write out on paper now, like, for things that I do achieve, I try to like, you know, as soon as I close this opportunity over here, that’s a residual income thing, I’m going to schedule my massages every, you know, twice a month.
Lovely.
I love having a massage.
Do I make time for that?
Not always.
But that’s a good thing for me to remind, like in those moments where I’m like feeling like I’m not going to make the goal, you know, like it’s a good thing to remember this, you know.
And I also have gotten to an age where I don’t feel like I need that validation from other people now.

Shelly – 24:25
And I think part of it came from, do you remember the moment?
So I’ve always had mentors.
And I’ve always looked at looked up and wanted you know that to learn from the people that were other high achievers you know I was always or even just really good leaders I wanted to learn to mimic that you know and I remember the day when I became the mentor mm-hmm it was this really big aha
moment I was like my gosh I’m the mentor, you know?
And now people are coming to me.
And so there comes with that an awesome responsibility to make sure that you are sharing your wisdom.
With other people.

Shelly – 25:10
So I don’t think we were intended to go through all of this pain or all of this struggle and all of this stuff for us to suffer through it without helping someone else not suffer through it.
I just don’t think that’s what we were meant to do.
And so with that, that means I’ve got to be honest and vulnerable and be able to be authentic and share where the hard parts were, you know, because there were a lot of them.

Avery – 25:36
Absolutely, absolutely.
So that transitions beautifully now into what you’re doing now.
How things change, you’re no longer working corporate, not that way anyway, consulting, but yeah.
So where is all of this leading?
Where are your mentoring abilities now being applied?

Shelly – 25:59
So I have launched a company called Inline Consulting Services and for 20 years I have been behavioral analysis certified.
So I do communications coaching.
I’ve done a lot of other types of coaching and I’ve discovered after going through this process that I don’t need to do all the things.
I can.
But do I really like it?
No.
I don’t like all the things.

Shelly – 26:22
I want to do these very specific things.
And one of them is helping people learn, helping businesses learn to understand their people.
What, you know, their behavioral style is how they communicate, how they problem solve, how they make decisions.
All three of those things impact your business pretty significantly when they are there.
More with you than they are at home and so if you can figure out how to tap into their you know the amazing things that they can bring to the table instead of just getting the basics from them and it’s not hard it’s a very simple program if you can tap into that why wouldn’t you?
You know, they’re going to bring the best version of themselves and that only helps your company.
If they’re in a fight or flight mode when you act like literally put them there every day because they’re burned out or they’re overwhelmed.

Shelly – 27:13
I mean, this is part of it.
I do a burnout assessment with every client that I take on.
And I use extended disk and I use the extended side.
Extended means you’re getting messages from somewhere, whether it’s home, work, wherever, that you need to be another style in order to be more most effective.
Well, guess what?
That puts you in an extended stage because that’s not authentic.
That’s not you.

Shelly – 27:37
And you’re not used to living there.
So it wears on you.
On top of the weight of the job, And when an employer can’t talk to Avery in the style that Avery can receive it and her defensive gates go down, you’re losing the best part of that employee, right?
She’s going to fight or flight and so she’s only going to do the task.
But what if we switched it and you made her feel like she’s heard and understood and now it switches to her frontal lobe which is a reasoning part of her brain which is where she can be creative and where she’ll do more for you because she feels heard and understood.
So I like coming in and helping organizations see the value in their people but I also put some of the responsibility Of communication on the employee.
It needs to be from both sides for sure.

Shelly – 28:35
Absolutely.
This is not a relationship if it’s not from both sides.
If you’re only learning how to be the best leader but you’re not holding them accountable for communicating with you, Then you’re going to miss 50% of the equation.

Avery – 28:49
Absolutely.
I completely agree.
And we structure our programs that way too for corporations to address it with the leadership team, but also talk to your frontline staff and figure out how to help each other because you’re so true, so true.
So if people wanted to learn more about your offers, about you and what you do, where would you want them to go?

Shelly – 29:09
www.shelleystarks.com That’s easy.
Yeah, you can find it.
You can find me under anything Shelly Starks on any social media platform, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook.
And I do offer a, you know, free assessment, like an assessment of like do an intake of what’s going on with their organization so that we can see if it’s a good fit.
I mean, to some degree, certain things are not a good fit.
You know, if you want me to just come in and fix your people, That’s not about just fixing your people.
This is about, this is a team effort, you know, but if, if you’re looking for a fairly reasonable investment to find out how you can capture ROI with your people, that’s what this can do.

Shelly – 29:52
And not only that, but it extends to their entire life.
So you’re giving them a tool that they get to take with them and use even with their family.

Avery – 30:03
Yeah.
Absolutely.
So we’re going to link to all of those things in the show notes.
And if you’re listening right now and you connect to Shelley’s story, I would highly recommend you just connect with her on social media.
She is just such a light and I feel like, yeah, if you’re connected to her at all, you should definitely reach out.
So Shelley, one more thing before we let you go.
If there is one final message you could leave for the person listening to this that connected to you, your story, what would you want it to be?

Shelly – 30:35
Bet on you.
Because no matter what you are achieving, no matter how hard charging you are or what you’re trying to get to, everybody else, their priority is number one.
And if you’re always people pleasing, you’re number two.
And I feel like when you put you number one and it’s not being selfish, everybody gets a better version of you.
In the end.

Avery – 31:05
So well said and what a beautiful way to wrap it up.
Thank you so much, Shelley.
I’m so grateful for your time and your vulnerability.

Multiple speakers – 31:11
Thank you.

Shelly – 31:13
Thank you.
I am just so happy and I’m excited to connect with your listeners and I’m excited to continue to see you, you know, take messages like this to people because you may not ever know what it does for them, but I promise you it impacts them.

Avery – 31:30
Hey hey, do not press that skip button yet.
Yes, this is the end of the episode, but I still have something else I think you’re really gonna   like.
I know, you’re already an expert at setting goals that push you out of your comfort zone.
Let’s be real, you’re a high achiever after all.
But how often do you sabotage yourself on the way to achieving those goals?
Perfectionism, procrasti-planning, over-committing, holding yourself to a double standard.
All of these things can sabotage our progress by either slowing it down or making it impossible for us to achieve our goals.

Avery – 32:03
Like we talk about so often on this podcast, awareness of what’s causing the issue is the first step.
So take that first step by going to thetruthaboutburnout.com slash quiz to take our free quiz to discover your self-sabotage style.
And of course, I won’t leave you stuck.
Once you complete the quiz and discover your primary self-sabotage style, I’ll follow up with an email giving you ideas about what to do about it so that it stops holding you back.
Go to thetruthaboutburnout.com slash quiz to get started.
That’s it for now, until next week.