Why does crushing a workout feel easier than taking a nap? Why does pushing through exhaustion feel more natural than slowing down? If you’re a high achiever who’s built an identity around being the one who can handle more than most people, you’ve probably made hard things your comfort zone. But what if the things you call hard are actually easy for you, and the things most people consider easy are the things that would actually change your life?
You think you’re doing hard things, but here’s the truth: hard things are your comfort zone. You don’t flinch at pressure. You don’t back down from a challenge. You’ve built an identity around being capable, productive, and able to endure more than most. But if running a marathon feels easier than resting, if crushing goals feels easier than sitting with yourself, if staying busy feels easier than slowing down, then hard has become your safe zone.
This episode is about why high achievers make rest hard and burnout easy, and what it actually costs you to keep running from the work that would truly transform you.
Why Do High Achievers Struggle With Rest?
Most high-performing professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs were conditioned early on that accomplishment equals safety. You learned that being capable, helpful, or self-sufficient kept life smoother. You got praised for good grades and achievements, not for playing or resting. Emotions weren’t celebrated. You were told to suck it up, stop being lazy, get off your ass and be productive.
So you learned that doing things got you the approval you were seeking. Slowing down got you nothing, or worse, criticism. You didn’t learn to value rest because there was no reward for it.
The result? Productivity became your nervous system’s way of regulating discomfort. Constant motion became the ultimate distraction. You learned to outrun your feelings, outrun the parts of yourself that felt “not enough,” and productivity became medicinal.
The Hidden Cost of Making Hard Things Easy
When you’re constantly in motion, you live from the neck up. You’re always thinking, planning, looking to the past or future, never present in your body. This is what’s called functional freeze, a high-functioning nervous system response where your body is constantly braced and on guard.
What this actually costs you:
- Chronic exhaustion you can’t shake
- Emotional disconnection from yourself and others
- Never feeling satisfied no matter what you achieve
- Resentment toward people who rely on you
- Relationships that feel unbalanced
- No space for your own wants or needs
- Shame when you can’t keep up
- Identity crisis when you slow down
- Feeling invisible except for what you do
You achieve at a high level but feel empty inside. You look successful on the outside while quietly crumbling on the inside. You wonder “is this all there is?” or “how much longer can I keep this up?”
This is the fulfillment paradox: you keep chasing but never arrive. You never get to feel proud. You never get to feel satisfied. You just keep going and going, always raising the bar on yourself.
What’s Actually Hard For High Achievers
Here’s what’s truly hard when you’ve made productivity your identity:
- Taking a nap. Most people think lying down and resting is easy. For high achievers, it’s torture. Rest feels unearned, irresponsible, like a waste of time. What’s the point if there’s no goal, metric, or outcome you’re working toward?
- Receiving help. Being the helper makes you feel strong. Allowing yourself to receive help feels weak, vulnerable, exposing.
- Saying no to yourself. You’re great at setting boundaries with others (maybe), but the boundaries you need to set with yourself? Those are the hardest ones to hold.
- Letting things be “good enough.” If it’s not excellent, it feels like failure. You refine instead of release. You delay finishing because it’s not quite right yet.
- Sitting with your emotions. When you slow down, you discover how much anxiety you’ve been outrunning. You realize how often you create problems where there are no problems just to stay in motion.
- Being seen without accomplishments to hide behind. Vulnerability without your titles, achievements, or labels to protect you feels like battery acid on your skin.
- Celebrating your wins. You accomplish incredible things but never let yourself feel pride. You immediately move to “what’s next” or “I could have done better.”
Process Addictions: When Productivity Becomes Destructive
Overworking, overachieving, over-producing—just because it looks productive and gets celebrated doesn’t mean it isn’t destructive. These are process addictions, behavioral addictions that are just as toxic as substance abuse in terms of what they rob from your life.
The difference? Society celebrates your addiction. You get high-fived for juggling all those balls, for being the strong one, for handling it all. But it comes at a massive cost: your health, your relationships, your connection to yourself, your ability to feel fulfilled.
Here’s the thing: you’ve been rewarded for this over and over. You love being the person who can handle more than most people. You’re proud of your capacity to push through, produce, achieve. Society celebrates your ability to juggle all those balls, to be the strong one, to handle it all. But the cost is what’s happening beneath the surface: your health, your relationships, your connection to yourself, your ability to actually feel the success you’ve built.
These patterns worked when you were younger. They kept you safe, helped you feel loved, earned you belonging. But what got you here won’t get you there. Now these coping mechanisms aren’t protecting you—they’re hurting you.
How to Stop Making Rest Hard and Burnout Easy
This isn’t about quitting your ambition. It’s about understanding that doing hard things all the time is probably moving you further away from the outcomes you want. It’s about redefining what “hard” actually means.
Start here:
Where are you making things harder than necessary? Be honest. Where are you creating problems where there are no problems?
What are you avoiding because it feels “too easy”? Rest, play, receiving help, delegating, letting things be good enough, asking directly for what you need, celebrating your wins.
What would happen if you leaned into those things? What if rest was your success strategy? What if slowing down made you stronger? What if vulnerability was the truly brave choice?
The real question isn’t how much more you can achieve. It’s how much of your life are you willing to miss while you’re constantly busy doing all the things? How many moments with your kids? How many conversations with your partner? How many experiences of actually feeling proud of what you’ve built?
Rest Is a Success Strategy
In the gym, rest is part of training. It’s not go-go-go-go-go all the time. When you’re overtrained, you stop seeing results. But when you properly rest, you come back stronger.
The same is true for your life. If you’re putting in too much effort with not enough recovery, you’re not going to get great results. Who wants to feel burnt out and flat?
This isn’t about doing less because you’re lazy. It’s about doing less from a grounded place so your ambition and drive come from health, not from trying to outrun the voice that says you’re not enough.
Life changes when you stop chasing significance and remember that who you are is already enough, even if you never accomplished another thing.
This Episode Is For You If You’ve Ever:
- Felt like pushing through is easier than slowing down
- Built your entire identity around being capable and productive
- Struggled to rest without feeling guilty or anxious
- Found it easier to lift heavy weights than to be vulnerable
- Created problems where there are no problems just to stay busy
- Felt exhausted but can’t stop moving because stillness feels like a waste of time
- Wondered “who am I if I’m not producing something?”
- Felt proud of handling more than most people but secretly resentful
- Accomplished incredible things but never let yourself feel satisfied
- Known you should take better care of yourself but productivity always wins
- Been praised for being strong while crumbling inside
- Realized that what got you here won’t get you there
Ready to go deeper?
If this episode is hitting home, I’ve created a free resource to help you identify where you’re making hard things easy and easy things hard in your own life.
Download: “Hard Things, Easy Things: Understanding Your Patterns”
This 2-page guide includes:
- Where this pattern actually comes from (childhood conditioning, nervous system responses, and identity formation)
- Self-discovery prompts to help you identify your specific patterns
- Three practical tools to start shifting, including the George Costanza Rule (do the opposite of what your instincts tell you)
Get your free download: lisacarpenter.ca/bonus
And if you’re ready to go deeper into this work specific to you and what it’s going to take for you to finally feel as good on the inside as you look on the outside, book a free Congruency Audit: lisacarpenter.ca/audit
The next time you tell yourself you’re doing hard work, pause and ask: Am I choosing what’s familiar and calling it hard, or am I choosing what will actually serve me?
Sometimes the bravest thing you can do—and the hardest thing—is to be in the discomfort of slowing down and allowing more downtime, rest, and presence.
Success that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.
00:00:06:29 - 00:00:33:12
Lisa
You built success that looks damn good on the outside, but inside it's costing you your health, your relationships, your energy. And no matter how much you do, it never feels like enough. Welcome to Congruent. I'm Lisa Carpenter, the coach. High performers call when they can afford to burn it all down, but they can't keep living like this either.
00:00:33:14 - 00:00:58:24
Lisa
Here we rip off the mask of success and expose what's real. The patterns that you keep running, the price that you've paid, and how to build success that fuels you instead of empties you. Real success is agency. It's powerful self leadership to run your life instead of being run by it. To let your drive and your well-being finally work together.
00:00:58:27 - 00:01:08:24
Lisa
Because the real win is success. That actually feels good.
00:01:08:27 - 00:01:29:20
Lisa
You think you're doing hard things. But the truth is, if you're like most of my clients, hard things are your comfort zone. Because I know you don't flinch at pressure, and I know you don't back down from a challenge, because I also know you've probably built an identity around being the one who can handle more than most people.
00:01:29:23 - 00:01:54:21
Lisa
But what if the things you call hard are actually the things that have become easy for you? And what if the things that most people consider easy are the things that would actually change you? Because here's what I know. If running a marathon feels easier for you than resting and crushing a goal feels easier for you than sitting with yourself.
00:01:54:24 - 00:02:20:13
Lisa
And staying busy feels easier than slowing down. Then hard has become your comfort zone. In my work, I call these people the machines, and I know them dearly because this was also the archetype that I primarily ran in my life. And it's the part of you that learned how to survive by producing, enduring and just plain staying in motion.
00:02:20:18 - 00:02:41:26
Lisa
You are my doers. And today we're going to talk about why the machine makes things feel y y. Things that typically would feel easy are also the things that feel kind of dangerous or unsafe. Maybe that's not the right way to put it. But we're going to dive into the episode and I'm going to share more about this.
00:02:41:26 - 00:03:08:17
Lisa
So for most of my machines, which I know a lot of you are listening. You know, hard things have really become your identity. And I know this was true for me. I really prided on I really prided myself on my ability to push through, produce, achieve things that nobody else was achieving. And, productivity kind of became my safe zone.
00:03:08:20 - 00:03:35:29
Lisa
And everything that I put effort into that I got an outcome from helped to establish my worthiness as a human. So to speak. So I really tied my the outcomes that I was creating with the effort that I was using as a way to define who I was. The pressure that I put on myself really became a lot of my purpose in my life.
00:03:36:00 - 00:04:00:21
Lisa
So if you've trained yourself to tolerate discomfort as long as it comes with a payoff, like a medal and metric or a milestone, this episode is going to be for you. And if you say you're always pushing yourself, but most of what you're pushing is just familiar. Because like I said it, for me, being able to push through was like breathing.
00:04:00:24 - 00:04:27:04
Lisa
And the thought of slowing down felt like being asked to breathe underwater. It was so foreign to me my entire identity was in being an achiever and being a doer and being a, approver. Somebody who could go out there and just get things done and be extraordinary. That was my identity. Well, the whole time I was really working from a place of never feeling quite good enough.
00:04:27:04 - 00:04:55:17
Lisa
And we're going to get into that. So you know what's actually hard. So for me, the gym, I could walk into the gym I could slam a bunch of plates on and crush workouts and that that's what most people would consider hard. And I think that most people would say, for the most part, that walking into a room and having to talk to other humans would be easy, right?
00:04:55:18 - 00:05:25:00
Lisa
Like, if we're thinking about moving heavy weights versus talking to other humans. But the easy thing to me was the gym. And the hard thing for me was the talking to other humans because I had so many stories about, you know, about myself and about putting myself out there. So lifting heavy was way easier for me than letting myself be seen.
00:05:25:03 - 00:05:46:27
Lisa
So I was always telling myself, like, look at you, Lisa. You're doing the hard things. You're doing the things that nobody else would do. Yet again, those things were really my comfort zone. They were easy for me because I knew how to navigate them, whereas the easy things were the hard things that I was avoiding. I'm hoping you're picking up what I'm putting down.
00:05:46:29 - 00:06:07:10
Lisa
So, for instance, taking a nap, I think everybody would say, yeah, that's pretty easy to lie down and take a nap. For me, taking a nap was like torture. I remember when I went through massive adrenal fatigue and burnout and, you know, really all I could do was rest. I would get dizzy if I rolled over in bed.
00:06:07:11 - 00:06:26:17
Lisa
So training hard was out the window. My entire identity as an athlete was in question. I still remember when my, gosh, what was she called? A kinesiology? She was working on me and she said, you know this. I know you've slowed down, but I think you need to slow down more. And she's like, I think you should take up swimming.
00:06:26:20 - 00:06:51:28
Lisa
I remember bursting into tears because I was like, it's not exercise. Like, that's not hard. And it really showed me how much my identity was tied up in being able to do what I considered hard things. And it was totally lost on me that the hard things that I needed to be doing were things like race, like what was causing me to believe that swimming wasn't hard enough.
00:06:52:01 - 00:07:18:10
Lisa
Like there wasn't enough value I was going to get out of that. So I was really programed, to produce and not just allow myself to receive love and care and attention. For me, loving myself was like pushing myself as hard as I could. So and I think for many of us, even the position of being a helper, where that makes you feel strong, right?
00:07:18:10 - 00:07:43:26
Lisa
Like you're in the leadership position. I am constantly in the leadership position because of what I do as a coach. But what felt super weak and vulnerable for me was allowing myself to receive help. So I even had to look at like, what are other areas of my life that I'm not viewing as hard? Because you would never think receiving is hard.
00:07:43:28 - 00:08:04:19
Lisa
Somebody buys you coffee, it's not hard to take it and say thank you. But for many of us, it is hard to receive. That feels wildly uncomfortable, like we have to. Somebody gives us a compliment. We have to immediately compliment them back. It was very hard for me to learn to receive. Asking for help felt vulnerable. It felt exposing.
00:08:04:19 - 00:08:29:26
Lisa
It made me feel weak and receiving really requires a level of vulnerability that I, I was unfamiliar with at the time, and I wanted no part of it. So I remember thinking about a friend. I'll never forget this. I don't know if she listens or not, but we were at, we were at an event, and I remember she was talking about she was doing 75 hard.
00:08:29:26 - 00:08:46:23
Lisa
I don't know if you've heard of that challenge. I think you need to do 12 things in a day. You need to do two workouts, and you need to drink a certain amount of water, and you need to read a chapter of a book like, it's pretty intense. And as a woman, when you're juggling a business and a family and lots of demands like 75, heart is really next level.
00:08:46:23 - 00:09:14:18
Lisa
And kudos to any of you who do it. But she was really struggling with this. And I remember I looked at her and I said, what would be harder for you? Would it be pushing through or would it be opting out before you end it? And you would have thought that I had asked her to sacrifice one of her children to the volcano gods or something, because the thought of not finishing was so disruptive to her.
00:09:14:21 - 00:09:36:02
Lisa
Because when we do hard things, we always follow through on hard things. But the irony is, for her, the harder thing would have been sitting with the discomfort, the feelings, the stories that came to the surface for her. Had she quit that challenge? Because if you're listening to me and you're cringing right now and you're thinking, oh my God, this I can't quit stuff, I get you, I hear you, I'm in your camp.
00:09:36:02 - 00:09:58:05
Lisa
I remember walking the Camino and it was pouring rain. And I kept seeing that. I kept seeing the signs for the cab. And I'm like, we're not taking a cab. We are going to we are going to walk through this. Lisa. And I've really had to be with the part of myself that has these stories around quitting. But sometimes quitting is the harder path that I need to take, because that's where the lessons are.
00:09:58:07 - 00:10:25:10
Lisa
So I want you to consider where is grinding through. Actually, the easy thing for you and letting stuff go, letting shit go. Quitting is actually very hard. So even finding compassion, you know, one of the biggest things I work with my clients on is allowing themselves to give themselves grace and compassion as they do this work, as they start to unravel who they think they are.
00:10:25:12 - 00:10:43:15
Lisa
And because so many of my clients have been programed that the way they move forward is to be hard on themselves, to beat themselves up, to be self-critical. And I mean, I get this too. I remember having a coach, I was sitting on stage with this coach and he said, Lisa, do you know how hard you are on yourself?
00:10:43:17 - 00:11:07:11
Lisa
And I remember thinking like one, I felt like I had been gut punched and to thinking like, I'm not hard on myself. Like, this is how we achieve things, this is how we move forward. This is how we get things done. And realizing, wow, that act, that voice that maybe helped me when I was younger was actually now hurting me because it's self abusive when we're constantly being critical and we would never treat our children like that.
00:11:07:18 - 00:11:34:10
Lisa
So learning to treat myself with kindness and compassion was way harder than being critical. So again, you see where we're looking at. How are we really defining hard versus how are we defining ease? What are the stories that we're wrapping around this? So when I talk about what's actually hard, I'm not talking about what looks impressive. I'm talking about what makes you uncomfortable in a way that you can't train for.
00:11:34:12 - 00:11:58:24
Lisa
Which brings me to the real question is why does ease? Why does it feel so hard for us? So most of us, at least the men and women that I work with, there was a lot of conditioning in childhood. There was a lot of getting praised for good grades and accomplishments. Emotions were not celebrated. It was like, suck it up, buttercup.
00:11:58:25 - 00:12:19:08
Lisa
You know, dust yourself off. I'll give you my favorite. I'll give you something to cry about. We were told to stop being lazy, to get off our asses, to go out and, you know, be productive. Like, we were sold these stories all the time. You know, we were very rarely celebrated for artwork, but we were certainly celebrated for our good grades.
00:12:19:11 - 00:12:40:04
Lisa
Now, I was never one in school who really got good grades. I did all right, but I was I was a performer. I was a dancer, I was an athlete. And sure, shit, I got praise in those areas of my life. So I really learned, like, if I excel, I'm going to receive the love that I want and the acceptance and the belonging from my parents.
00:12:40:07 - 00:13:03:03
Lisa
So we start to wrap up like I'm valuable in what I can accomplish and what I can produce in being that person that does the hard things. So I learned that doing things got me the approval that I was seeking and slowing down and, you know, making play important and rest that like, I what did I get from that?
00:13:03:03 - 00:13:26:17
Lisa
There was no reward from that. There was only criticism. So I didn't learn to value it. So slowing down, how do I want to put this when we're constantly in motion, when we're constantly chasing things and achieving things, we really, for the most part, live from the neck up, right? We're constantly in our head thinking, we're looking at the past, we're looking at the future.
00:13:26:17 - 00:13:50:04
Lisa
We're looking at where we're going. We're not at all in our bodies. And that constant in motion is like the ultimate way of staying distracted, right? Like I'm just going to outrun myself. I'm just going to outrun my car around my feelings. I'm going to outrun all the things that I don't want to look at in myself. And slowing down is really about getting out of your head and into your body, getting more present with yourself.
00:13:50:07 - 00:14:09:00
Lisa
And for me, when I learned down to when I was starting to learn how to slow down, that's when I discovered, ironically, how much anxiety I felt on a day to day basis because I started to to tune in, to like, what am I feeling in this moment if you're not moving at the speed of light? So what is actually going on in your body?
00:14:09:07 - 00:14:37:24
Lisa
And every single day there would be anxiety there. Like you need to go do something. Lisa and I remember talking myself off the ledge and saying, like, okay, I'm feeling anxiety, but there's there's actually nothing that I need to do right now. And that was that felt weird. And it made me realize how often I was creating problems where there were no problems, things that I needed to do to get done just because I was trying to get away from that anxiety.
00:14:37:24 - 00:15:08:26
Lisa
Because if the slowing down made me sit with the feelings of like, well, who am I if I'm slowing down, if I'm not producing something? And this is when I first discovered that, like, vulnerability was actually the thing that felt the most hard for me. I mean, I still remember walking into those early days of my counseling sessions when I was unraveling my codependency after my partner had gone to rehab, and it feeling so incredibly vulnerable to be sitting there with no title.
00:15:08:26 - 00:15:36:28
Lisa
Nobody knew who I was, what I did, what I accomplished. It wasn't about that. I just had to be me in a room with no labels, no mass. And it was awful. It was awful. It felt like people were throwing battery acid on me because it felt so vulnerable and so exposing. Like, what are people going to think of me if they if I don't have these accomplishments to hide behind?
00:15:37:00 - 00:16:06:01
Lisa
So that's, you know, it's really interesting how much of these patterns we create in order to protect ourselves from ourselves. We don't even realize that we're doing it. So rest. You know, when I thought about resting, it was like, well, what's the point? Like, what's the purpose if there's no goal or metric or anything that I'm trying to achieve is like, what is the point of this?
00:16:06:03 - 00:16:26:25
Lisa
And I had a really wise counselor say to me, you know, Lisa doing nothing is doing something. It is very important. Like you would never think with a with an infant child, for instance, for any of you have ever had parents, you would never tell your baby that Russ was not important. You know, as a mom how important rest is.
00:16:26:25 - 00:16:56:02
Lisa
Otherwise, you've got a really cranky child. It's somewhere along the line we let go as rest. We let go of rest and play as being important because we were taught that productivity mattered more. So, you know, this starts to set our nervous system in this place of of what is known as functional frees. So we're high functioning. But in this like nervous system, responsive frees.
00:16:56:04 - 00:17:14:15
Lisa
And it's really like your body is constantly braced and on guard because you're used to being reactive, because that's what you need to be if you're going to be productive. So slowing down really does create a lot of anxiety. And this is one of the things that I walk my clients into is what does it feel when we start to slow down.
00:17:14:15 - 00:17:40:00
Lisa
So the machine archetype that I work with, it doesn't fear effort. It really fears vulnerability. That is more scary to it then than bungee jumping, which is ironic, right? When you really think about it, the crazy stuff that we are willing to do as overachievers feels less scary than sitting with our emotions and and sharing how we're actually feeling.
00:17:40:00 - 00:18:03:28
Lisa
Vulnerability feels wildly uncomfortable, so what you call your personality like, oh, it's just it's just who I am. Lisa might actually just be coping mechanism survival mechanisms and slowing down asks you to separate who you are from how you've coped. So this isn't a mindset issue. This is an identity shift. And this is where this work goes deeper.
00:18:04:00 - 00:18:24:04
Lisa
So I want to talk about how we redefine hard. And this is stuff that I work with, you know, my clients on all the time within my practice and things that I give them to do. So I would love for you to consider asking yourself, where are you making things harder than necessary? I mean, be truthful with yourself.
00:18:24:07 - 00:18:42:26
Lisa
We create problems where there are no problems. And that's another great question like where am I creating a problem where there are no problems? I cannot even begin to tell you how many conversations I've had with people about this. I'm like, I'm not seeing a problem. So what's causing you to create a problem from this? And where can you start saying no to yourself?
00:18:42:29 - 00:18:59:17
Lisa
So I talk a lot about setting boundaries with other people, saying no to other people, but so often it's the boundaries that we need to set with ourselves that are the hardest ones to set and carry through. Because we have to say no to like, no, I'm not going to take on another activity. No, I don't have time for a project.
00:18:59:20 - 00:19:28:17
Lisa
You know, if you want to accomplish more, you will accomplish more when you commit to doing less. And that is a hard thing for this machine archetype to wrap the brain around, because of course, doing more is what gives them their entire identity. So some examples of this, you know, I've helped clients hire people to help them, whether it's a house cleaner or somebody to help them with their children or somebody to come over and prep their meals for them.
00:19:28:24 - 00:19:52:04
Lisa
My top achieving clients, it's about how I can clear things off their plate so they can stop telling themselves the story, that they have to do it all. It's no how can we support you in being your best self, in working in at your top level of performance, not because you're a superstar. Because look at you juggling all these balls.
00:19:52:06 - 00:20:12:26
Lisa
But how can we get you support in your life? So delegating things, allowing things to be easier, like do we need to get our panties in a twist over everything? Not really. Right. Can we. Can we ask the friends to carpool with our kids instead of believing that we have to drive them everywhere? Do we have to be at every game for our kids?
00:20:12:28 - 00:20:32:08
Lisa
I used to sit down when my son played rep hockey at the beginning of every season, and I would say to him, I need you to let me know which games you need me to be at. If you want me to be at all the games I will be at all the games. And if you don't need me to be at all the games, I want to be at the most important games.
00:20:32:08 - 00:20:54:04
Lisa
And you know what? He didn't care that I wasn't at all his games, but he cared that I was at the important ones. So just in giving myself some more freedom and flexibility with believing I had to be at every kid's game, practice all the things, just offloading that was was huge for me, right? How could I let things be easier with my schedule?
00:20:54:07 - 00:21:18:06
Lisa
So remember, for the machine, accepting help feels like weakness, but it's not. It's actually when you can learn to ask for help and receive help. That is the biggest flex. That is the biggest flex. That is really where strength is. Strength is not in holding everything for everyone. Strength is and isn't asking for and allowing yourself to receive help.
00:21:18:08 - 00:21:38:11
Lisa
And I know how wildly uncomfortable that can be because I've been there and this is what I mean around those are the hard things that we want to be leaning into, not doing more as a look like, look how awesome I am. I live like that for years because so much of my identity was wrapped up in that.
00:21:38:11 - 00:21:58:16
Lisa
And I can say that my life is filled with so much more peace and ease now, and I still love doing hard things, but I balance it out with also looking at like, but what is the harder thing here for you to do, Lisa? Maybe it's just like reaching out to somebody you've never talked to before and being brave in that way.
00:21:58:19 - 00:22:23:08
Lisa
So I'm very honest with myself about the hard things that are actually easy versus the easy things that I make hard. So one of the ways that I do this with my clients is if they're really juggling all the balls, I encourage them to take a staycation. And I did a masterclass about this. I'll have my team post the link in the comments about how you can plan your own solo retreat.
00:22:23:11 - 00:22:51:25
Lisa
But my goodness, when I first suggest this to people, they can literally like, oh, I couldn't possibly do that. Lisa because their only job is to check themself in for a couple nights and they can sleep in. They can order room service, they can go for a walk, they can read a book. But it's about them allowing themselves to indulge in just being present with themselves without having to do anything right.
00:22:51:25 - 00:23:10:18
Lisa
So it sounds like something everybody would want to do. Of course, I'd love a weekend on my own, but then when push comes to shove, when it's time to do this, it is often a very, very hard challenge for them to take on. Once they do it, then they realize like, oh my God, that was amazing. I need to do more of that.
00:23:10:21 - 00:23:26:14
Lisa
But the initial doing it, it's kind of like when Covid hit and everybody has everybody had said prior to Covid, you know, if I had all this time, I would clean my attic, I would wash my windows, I would do all these things. And then we had all the time in the world, and most people did nothing with that time.
00:23:26:16 - 00:23:52:23
Lisa
So this type of staycation really allows you to decompress, really start to feel like what, what am I feeling in my body? And what does rest feel like? And often we don't realize how tired and burnt out we are until we slow down. This is why so many people get sick when they go on vacation, because their body finally powers down and they can start to notice what's coming up.
00:23:52:27 - 00:24:19:26
Lisa
And often, yeah, they get sick. So. I want to talk about how I use this in the gym. And actually one of my business coaches has worked this into business strategy as well for the for the women she works with. And I thought it was brilliant because in the gym, rest is part of training. So it's not you go go go go go go go go go.
00:24:19:26 - 00:24:35:28
Lisa
I am one of the most committed people you will find when it comes to training. I've been training for most of my life, and there was a period of time when I was training so hard, I got really overtrained and I wasn't seeing results anymore. And a coach at the time said to me, you know, I need you to take a week off.
00:24:35:28 - 00:24:49:10
Lisa
And I was like, are you crazy? Again? My identity was really wrapped up in everything I was doing. Like, are you are you crazy? Take a week off. I don't want to take a week off. And he's like, I want you to take a week off. And he's like, in fact, I might make you take two weeks off.
00:24:49:13 - 00:25:17:09
Lisa
I was horrified, I was absolutely horrified. But what ended up happening is when I came back into the gym, I was so much stronger because my body was properly rested. So rest is a success strategy. The hard thing, which is the rest will actually create better results in your life. So again, how can we redefine what is hard for you?
00:25:17:11 - 00:25:49:12
Lisa
And if you leaned into doing those hard things, what type of results could you see? So if we're putting in too much effort with not enough recovery, we're not going to get great results in our life. Who wants to feel burnt out and who wants to feel flat? So this isn't about quitting your ambition. It's understanding that doing hard things or what you see is hard things all the time is actually probably going to move you further away from the outcomes that you want.
00:25:49:12 - 00:26:18:26
Lisa
Whereas if you allowed yourself to lean into the quote unquote easy things that are actually hard for you, like rest, what type of results could you produce? So I want your ambition and your drive to come from a grounded, healthy place in you, not you. Pushing and doing those hard things because that will make you feel like you're good enough because nothing, no amount of accomplishments will make you feel good enough.
00:26:18:29 - 00:26:41:00
Lisa
If you're trying to outrun that voice inside you that says you're not. It's only when we slow down and we get into our bodies that we can really find out, like the stories that we're telling ourselves. So life changes when you stop chasing significance and remember that who you are is already enough, even if you never accomplished another thing in your life.
00:26:41:02 - 00:27:01:16
Lisa
I can hear some of you gasping out there. So if you're exhausted and if your results are feeling flat, if you're working harder but feeling less than fulfilled, it might not be because you're doing too little. It might be because you're doing too much of the wrong kind of hard. You're doing too much of the wrong kind of hard.
00:27:01:18 - 00:27:22:28
Lisa
So there is a saying that what got you here won't get you there. And all of these coping patterns that the machine runs, they worked, they kept you saved. They helped you feel loved. They made you feel like you belonged. They were imperative for you to have this. Like it was imperative for you to have this armor to survive your younger years.
00:27:22:28 - 00:27:51:11
Lisa
But as you get older, they stop working. So now they're not protecting you, now they're hurting you. So these coping mechanisms, like constantly chasing achievement and looking to be liked by other people and, you know, always pushing, always driving. These can be process addictions. So you've heard me talk about addiction before, right? And some of the common ones, drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex.
00:27:51:11 - 00:28:18:20
Lisa
We even have like, you know, addiction. Now to social media. And then we have process addictions, which are behavior addictions. And they are just as toxic as being an alcoholic in terms of what they will rob from you in your life. So overworking, overachieving over producing just because it looks productive and because you get celebrated for it doesn't mean it isn't destructive.
00:28:18:22 - 00:28:40:00
Lisa
And this is a thing, right? So many of us get celebrated for all these balls that we're juggling. I know that again, my identity was so tied up in, you know, people thinking I was so amazing because I could do all these things and even me telling myself like, oh, you're so awesome. These are like, look at you doing all these things that all these lazy people would never do.
00:28:40:03 - 00:29:03:17
Lisa
But it came at such a cost. I mean, it literally cost me my health and well-being. And what I see in clients is it costs them, you know, sometimes it costs in their marriage, their relationship with their kids. There's an absolute disconnect from themselves. So this is that, you know, everything looks successful on the outside, but you feel less than successful on the inside.
00:29:03:20 - 00:29:28:20
Lisa
And in fact, I've worked with clients who are so incredibly successful and when I asked them to define that for themselves, they're like, I'm not successful. I'm like, compared to what? And who? Like, how are you even measuring this? Because they're always raising the bar on themselves, which then drives them to go do more hard things. Right. So this is the fulfillment paradox you keep chasing, but you never actually arrive.
00:29:28:22 - 00:29:56:28
Lisa
You never get to feel proud of yourself, and you never get to feel satisfied. You just keep going and going and going. So consider this. You know, if your child came home and had just, you know, done something awesome, maybe it's a drawing, maybe they got a good grade, maybe they made friends with somebody on the playground. You would you wouldn't go, well, that's nice, but you could have done better.
00:29:57:00 - 00:30:16:23
Lisa
Now, listen, I know many of us had our parents say that to us, but for most of us, we would never say that to our children. Yet how often are you doing that on a daily basis to yourself? So you accomplish all these really cool things that you worked really hard to do, but then you don't even allow yourself to feel a sense of pride in them.
00:30:16:23 - 00:30:36:12
Lisa
You don't celebrate them, and until you acknowledge your own wins, you're going to keep you're going to keep feeding that story that you're never enough, and you're going to stay trapped in that success paradox and trapped in that archetype of the machine who just keeps going and going and going, pushing harder and harder and harder without ever feeling fulfilled.
00:30:36:14 - 00:30:59:05
Lisa
So the question isn't, how much more can you achieve? It's how much more of your life are you willing to miss? So again, I'm here for doing the hard things. I love having big, audacious goals. I love having my drive. I love having my ambition. But it has to come from a healthy, grounded place in me. Not a hole that I'm trying to fill in myself.
00:30:59:07 - 00:31:29:09
Lisa
And when I started to allow the easy things to be the hard things that I looked at, like sitting with my emotions, exploring the stories and interpretations that I was living by, the beliefs and the values that were driving me right. Like that would be considered easy, but it was so hard for me when I allowed rest to be part of my success strategy and an invaluable part of how I lead a balanced life.
00:31:29:11 - 00:31:58:27
Lisa
Now there is no balance, but you know, rest and play are an important part of what creates a fulfilling life for me. It's not always about the high fives, and I get it like nobody's going to give me a high five for taking a nap in the afternoon. But I will feel better and overcoming that, right? So when I get to a place where I could have a bath in the middle of the day without feeling anxiety, I could go lie down and have a nap without judging myself.
00:31:59:00 - 00:32:24:17
Lisa
And then I could celebrate the fact that, wow, that was hard for me and I did it. I did it instead of looking for something that was hard, that was comfortable, I did the hard thing. That was kind of easy, but it was hard for me. That's what I would love for you to get curious about. So maybe your work isn't about pushing harder, or maybe it's just about getting curious about the things you're avoiding because they feel hard.
00:32:24:20 - 00:32:52:03
Lisa
Like an app, or reading a book for fun instead of personal development, even when your mind tells you that they should be easy. So again, like maybe, maybe one day you wake up and you feel like, wow, I'm like really fatigued today. And instead of going to the gym, you allow yourself to sleep in not all the time, but starting to tune into your body and go like, what is actually the harder thing here?
00:32:52:03 - 00:33:06:24
Lisa
For me, the harder thing might be to turn off my alarm and stand back and listen. That was a tough lesson for me too. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I will be up, dress my shoes on, standing in the kitchen. And then I would say to myself, Lisa, what are you doing? Like you feel like garbage.
00:33:06:24 - 00:33:23:09
Lisa
Go back to bed. Like the harder thing for me was to go back to bed than to go to the gym and push through. But if I'd gone to the gym and pushed through, it would have been to my detriment. And that's what I want you to consider with this episode is how many hard things are you doing that are to your detriment?
00:33:23:16 - 00:33:45:11
Lisa
So again, it's not either or. It's both. And we want to do hard things that are hard. We want to do hard things that are easy. It's about getting you to look at how you're framing this in your own mind. There is room for effort and ease. There's room for discipline, and there's also room for compassion. We haven't been taught this, but this is where we're coming back to.
00:33:45:13 - 00:34:15:10
Lisa
So the next time you tell yourself you're doing the hard work, I'm going to ask that you pause and ask yourself, am I choosing what is familiar and calling it hard, or am I choosing what will actually serve me now? Is the easy thing that I know I could do the hard thing, because sometimes the bravest thing you can do and the hardest thing you can do, is to stop running from yourself.
00:34:15:13 - 00:34:42:13
Lisa
So thank you for joining me on this episode. As always, we will have a PDF for you to go deeper on to some of these concepts and to explore with curiosity, more of what is making you tick. So again, I don't want to take those hard things away from you. You want to run your marathon or climb to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back up again, which I'll actually be doing this year.
00:34:42:16 - 00:35:05:10
Lisa
You want to do those things, go do those things, but also do the things that you've been avoiding doing because that's where your growth really lies. I know I can climb the Grand Canyon, but man, you know, going to lie down for a nap. That can still feel edgy for me. So until next time, take good care of you and I'll catch you on the next episode.
00:35:05:12 - 00:35:37:16
Lisa
If this episode resonated with you, I've created a free resource to help you go deeper. It's called hard things. Easy things. Understanding your patterns. And it's a two page guide that will help you identify where you're making hard things. Easy and easy things hard in your own life. You'll get self-discovery prompts to trace where this pattern started for you, and three practical tools to start shifting it, including the George Costanza rule, which is doing the opposite of what you would naturally do.
00:35:37:18 - 00:36:03:15
Lisa
So download it now at Lisa Carpenter, aka forward slash bonus. And if you're ready to identify the exact patterns keeping you stuck in constant motion and what it's going to take for you to finally feel as good on the inside as life looks on the outside. Book a free concurrency audit at Lisa Carpenter, aka Forward Slash Audit. Thanks again for listening and being here, and I will catch you on the next episode.
