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Business Trauma

Navigating Entrepreneurial Burnout: Recognizing Business Trauma and Cultivating Balance

Business Trauma
Written by: Sophie Kessner
The Sophie Kessner Podcast
The Sophie Kessner Podcast
Navigating Entrepreneurial Burnout: Recognizing Business Trauma and Cultivating Balance
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Alright, y’all. Welcome back to another episode of the Sophie Kessner podcast. I am very excited to have you on here. We’re trying a little bit of a new setup to see how this looks in the video format for repurposing content, which we’ll talk about in future episodes per use. But in today’s episode, what I really want to dive into and explore is a conversation around the epidemic we’re seeing for folks who have been going really, really hard in their business for a really long time and are experiencing either a bit of fatigue, burnout, emotional overwhelm, a sense of stagnancy where they’re not able to continue to move forward in the same way that they used to. Now I can speak about this both firsthand, having gone through my own experience with the burnout, and with a little bit of what I would call kind of like a midlife crisis in some ways, but also I see it a lot with many of the clients that I work with.
Now for a bit of context and background for the last three years or so, i have been training in trauma work, and the trauma work I’ve been training in is called somatic experiencing. Now, some of you might be familiar with that, some of you might not have any idea what that is, but essentially it is a type of modality that focuses on presenting enough space and opportunity and safety for the system And when I say system we’re talking about nervous system For the nervous system to be able to slowly, in a tight-traded way, meaning little by little, discharge the stuck and our stagnant energy that didn’t have the proper amount of time or space previously, and our safety previously, to fully discharge. So in the context of trauma and in the way that I like to look at it, i see it as two core categories that I currently study. I’m sure there are more, but these are the two that I study. There is what we would call shock trauma, and shock trauma is wonderful for SE work. Shock trauma is all around there being a specific event or experience that somebody goes through, and that specific experience is what creates a shock to the system. Now you can think of this as like a sudden loss, a car accident, somebody breaking up with you out of nowhere that you weren’t expecting, a surprise pregnancy things that often happened.Too much, too fast, too soon is the language double traditionally used inside of SE work. Now, with the too much too fast, too soon, this is a different category of trauma from something that is more chronic. Now, when we’re talking about chronic trauma and our trauma due to some sort of neglect, lack thereof, it can come in two different ways, right? One it can come from too much for too long or it can come from too little, too late. So there’s two ways that that can kind of show up, depending on the background and the history of the individual.
But I bring this up because oftentimes the way that the body experiences the trauma of business is less of the shock and it’s more of the chronic component, It’s more of the ongoing, consistently impeding stress that our systems are having to figure out how to cope with. How to deal with And the way that we learn to navigate, to cope, to deal with the stress is what we would then call or label coping strategies. Right, and depending on how much we identify with these strategies personalities, archetypes, defense systems, etc. And so then we develop this chronic sense of who we are, in the state of being, and a great example of this is really common in the entrepreneurial and just in general in the athletic world is we start to identify with this type of survival strategy, the coping strategy that we’ve developed as a way to navigate the intense stress that exists in our lives. So an example of this would be something like a business owner who is going into the online space having trained in whatever it is that they’re really great at and they’re needing to learn how to market, how to do sales, how to show up 24 seven, how to manage a team, how to manage clients, how to deliver to clients, and then how to do all of that at the same time, year round, nonstop. Now, as you can imagine, having to manage all of those different categories and labels and phases in the business can become extremely exhausting and extremely overwhelming. In fact, i would say this is why most folks don’t often stay in the entrepreneurial game very long, and if they do, they tend to develop other coping mechanisms, whether that’s through the need to constantly be achieving, always investing in new things, always looking for ways to enhance their creative and athletic ability through biohacking or other, whether it’s through less healthy mechanisms like smoking or drinking or drugs, but whatever it is, we develop a way to find some sort of release from the stress that the way we are living our lives is creating.
And the interesting thing about this that I personally find really curious in the online space is this idea that we are just supposed to build capacity to handle more, and it’s a narrative that I drastically bought into in the earlier years of my career until it proved to me that it just wasn’t actually true. Now, what I’m talking about when I say this is a few things. The first thing that I’m talking about is this idea that we always need to be going bigger, faster, as quickly as we possibly can. How much more can we do? How much more can we handle? How much more money can we make? How many more clients can we take on? How much bigger can we grow following and how fast can we do it?
And there’s no time to stop, to slow down, and it becomes what we would call a bit of an obsession. In some ways, there’s this tunnel vision that we develop around the need to achieve a certain goal, and in a lot of ways, that goal becomes a moving target. It’s not just this one thing that we’re doing. This one time it’s like, okay, we did that, now what’s the next thing? There becomes what I’ve referred to in previous episodes or previous content of mine as a bit of an achievement addiction.
We become addicted to the idea of achieving, and what’s confusing in this space is that this type of coping strategy to navigate life is rewarded and celebrated in the Western world especially. We look at that and we say, wow, look at how hard this person is working, look at how much they’ve sacrificed, look at how little they sleep or what, all of the things that come with it and we glorify it. And it’s not to say that these things are inherently bad or wrong, but it’s important to understand the holistic perspective in how operating in one Pacific way for an extended period of time then impacts the other aspects of our lives, and a conversation that I have with every client is redefining what success looks like and what it means to them. So the common idea of what we think success is is the money, is the fame, is the growth, is the success in the lens of being known, having social accolades, having a sense of being a space, who you are connected to in a certain environment, the way that you present yourself physically, but also socially, the assets that you accumulate. And we look at this and we say, ah, okay, they’ve got the card, they’ve got the house, they’ve got the bank account, they know the people, they’re in the places. That must be success, and what’s interesting about this is we are inundated with messages that continue to feed this idea to us from very early and young age, and it’s all throughout culture. So we never really question the values behind the definition, the values that go into creating this idea of what success is or what it looks like, And instead we oftentimes blindly buy into it, to no fault of our own or of anyone else’s. But what’s important to recognize and understand here is the reason why we’re buying into this is oftentimes because what we’re experiencing feels very less than the ideal, and so we create this idea or the story around.
One day, when I experience this have that ABC XYZ, i’ll no longer be dealing with these things, i’ll no longer feel this way, i’ll no longer look this way, i’ll no longer whatever it is, and I’ll finally be able to have whatever it is, whether that be the confidence, the self-assuredness, the access to resources, the elimination of fear, the elimination of self-doubt, the proving something to yourself or to others, all of which are incredibly common. And so we start to strive for this idea of success, believing so much of the messaging that we’ve grown up around in that this will solve the majority of our problems, that this will be the solution to the pain, to the sadness, to the guilt, the shame, whatever it is. If I could just do this thing And to a certain degree there might be truth behind this. It may ease the financial pressure, it may ease the struggle, it may ease the self-image, but what we have to be intentional about and conscientious of is unpacking and understanding. What are we compromising in the process of striving for this ideal of success?
We are so focused on what we’re gaining that we oftentimes don’t see what we’re losing or what we’re giving up in the process And, unfortunately for so much of the world, we don’t recognize it until it’s a little too late Now when we start to look at the achievement. That’s happening a lot of times. There’s a hyper-focus that gets built into it And that hyper-focus can feel like tunnel vision. I can’t stop, i can’t breathe, i can’t eat, i can’t do anything until this thing is done, until I get to this place, and I know this place very well. This is a total pattern of mine Which can be really, really great for getting through challenging things, for having a great sense of resilience and persistency.
And if we haven’t developed the capacity or the ability or the discipline. However, you want to look at this, to stop and pause and say I need to take a break, i need to tend to the other things in my life, then this strategy that was developed to support you in moving out of the pain in your life will quickly become something that perpetuates the problem. Because if we’re only always focused on one strategy, to achieving what it is that we think we want, we start to become blind to the impact of how that strategy is affecting other aspects of our life, which is why we have to start to look at how we’re defining what success is to us, what it means to us, what it looks like to us and how it feels for us. And the conversation that I have again and again and again with clients and we’re talking about folks who’ve built incredible success to what the general public would see is oftentimes they feel like they’ve lost themselves in it, like they have built something that they feel trapped in, like they have this massive thing that they’ve created but they don’t really have any freedom outside of it, because this thing is taking up their entire life And they feel a sense of obligation or responsibility to keep it going. They’ve got team members underneath them. They’ve got folks who are waiting on them, they’ve got clients who are painting them, and the thing that they’ve built to create a sense of freedom has then become the thing that they’ve built to trap themselves in, which is keeping them from what they’re really, really wanting.
And this tends to be the challenge in the entrepreneurial space specifically, but definitely in other areas as well. And so we have to begin to unpack where this need for achievement, for pushing for the extremism, has come from, and then we need to begin to understand what it is that we actually value, want and need, and the answer to these questions is going to be different for every single person. There may be crossover, but every person is going to have different things that they want to need, and that doesn’t mean that any are better or worse. It doesn’t mean that any are right or wrong, but it’s understanding what do you value. And what you value is going to be highly dependent on what you care about, the things that matter to you, the way that you want to experience your life, and a great example that I can give you in this is in the early years of my career, it was very much just about showing up and doing all of the things and growing and growing as quickly as possible, and I didn’t really have a whole lot of awareness about other things outside of myself, about other things outside of the immediate people in my life, which would be my partner and friends.
And the business is really the main thing. But when I had my son, i was abruptly forced to have to reevaluate all of it. What mattered, what I cared about, why I cared about those things, what I really wanted, how I wanted to experience myself, my life and decide how I wanted to move forward, how I wanted to shift things, because what I started to realize was in the way that my life was shifting in. Motherhood is an incredibly big transition. The way that I was operating previously was not sustainable for the life that I had now created And by that I mean what I valued and how I was living when I was a single woman in my early 20s was not going to be sustainable for me in a committed relationship with a newborn and toddler.
And one of the things that I found that was incredibly overwhelming but also healing in a lot of ways, was my ability to reconnect back to my roots. For a lot of my younger adult life, i spent a lot of time focused on feeling like I needed to do it all on my own and like I couldn’t depend on anybody. I had a lot of distrust with others, but luckily, in the process of transitioning into motherhood, i was forced to have to depend on others, to lean on family and community, and it made me feel a lot of things that I didn’t think I would feel. I started to feel so much more appreciation and gratitude, but also a lot of guilt and shame for not recognizing what was there in front of me. And through the years I’ve had to do a lot of the deep work to repair within myself the relationship that I have to these things, because what I’ve started to recognize is how much I actually value these things like family, like community, the relationships in my life. That is drastically different from what I had valued previously, and what I mean when I say this is in my early 20s I valued most the relationships with the people that I felt were going to be giving me a sense of positioning or authority in the way that I wanted to be perceived in the world, because I thought that was the thing that was going to get me to the thing And what I realized after having my son and after having going through an entire dark night of the soul and years of re-evaluation and re-deconstruction and reconstruction, was the things that I actually valued most were the relationships with the people that were always there, and for me personally, that was family.
It was family and my partner and the friends that never left. Now, that might not be true for everybody, that might not be the value for everybody, and that’s okay. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong. That doesn’t mean my values are wrong. It doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with you.
But this was my experience, my lived experience, and I share that because oftentimes in the path to developing businesses are achieving at a high level or growing things to exponential rates, it can be very easy to get stuck in the achievement. It can be very easy to get stuck in the doing of life that we forget to experience life itself. So what we want to get curious about and the question that I ask, both myself and with clients, is how do you actually want to experience your day-to-day, how do you actually want to feel in the process of growing and building this thing? It’s not to say that you can’t have both, because it’s true, you can, so long as the way in which you’re going about it is supportive of the way you want to be feeling and experiencing it. And this becomes the question, because so often we get so caught up in the speed at which we are going and constantly wanting to move faster, that we’re willing to compromise in the short term And I again have been notoriously guilty of this as well. So we are willing to compromise and to sacrifice intermittently to try to speed up the process, and I believe personally this is my, my own opinion that this sense of urgency is really built into the culture. It’s really built into the way that we experience life.
From the very beginning, there’s never, there’s never enough time. It never feels like there’s enough time to do it all, and we want to feel like we’re getting there faster. If you explore other cultures and other places in the world, it’s very much less so the fact They move a lot slower. And that slower pace to somebody who has always grown up in the Western world might feel incredibly confronting, because it begs us to question why and how we’re moving about things And it almost matches a point of superiority within ourselves. We feel like because we can go faster and do more, that we are better than. And the reality is it’s just different. It’s just different. It’s about what you value.
So, coming back to the conversation of deciding what you want and how you want to experience your life, this becomes an interesting one, because usually when we first start to do this work, it’s the conversation of the cars or the house or the debt or the travel or the whatever it is. But when we start to go a little bit deeper, underneath that, we start to get curious about what is the feeling underneath it A sense of financial security. I don’t want to have to worry, i want to feel safe, i want to feel taken care of. Okay, well, when you have that, then what? Why do you want that? So I can just be here and I can just be present and be happy and finally let go. Okay, let go of what? So I can let go of the stress and the fear and the anxiety. Okay, now we’re getting to the thing We want to create a life where we don’t have to be constantly living with the fear and the stress and the anxiety.
And if that’s the case, then what we want to look at is what is it in our life today. What is it about? how we’re living, about how we’re building, about how we’re doing life that is consistently creating this ongoing sense, or this chronic sense of anxiety and fear and our overwhelm, or whatever the things might be, and then when we look at that, we start to get insight into what those micro changes need to be in order for us to start to change the way that we experience the process of creating the thing. Now, a really beautiful example of this, in business especially, is a conversation that I have a lot, a lot with clients, and that is the conversation of reconciling with this idea that this business that I built isn’t actually the business that I want And it is such a catch 22.
Because so much of the time we build this thing and it’s successful and it works and it’s doing really well, but we feel trapped in it. We don’t actually feel like we have the freedom in the life. We feel like we are, in some ways, an employee to our business, to our clients, and that can feel incredibly stressful because we don’t feel like we can say no, we owe them something, they’re paying us this money, they’re affording us it, but we’re also responsible to the team members, depending on the size and the scope of the business. So we have to begin to wonder what else is possible. What do you really want to experience? Now?
a conversation that I’ve had with multiple friends and clients over the last few years, and myself included, is do I actually want to be constantly launching online and running giant high-tech agro programs? And when I saw it that the answer for me was no, and oftentimes for some of my clients the answer was similar. They didn’t want to actually be coaches. They didn’t actually want to be responsible for having to show up to calls and constantly be catering to try to help their clients get through and hold their hands in the process. Yet their entire business was built around that. That was the business. The business is to sit here and move people through this process and get them these goals and launch to the next level and grow the team and constantly hit new revenue income goals and grow as quickly as possible, as fast as possible, and constantly expand.
And in that process, it’s so easy to get caught up in the expansion that we lose ourselves and we lose what we really want and we are not able to take a second to take a pulse on how we actually feel in that process. And this is oftentimes where we see folks build something really really big, really really fast, but then a year or two later they’ve completely dismantled everything they’ve built to go on what would be a bit of a sabbatical a sole sabbatical, if you would to rediscover and reconnect with what really matters to them. Now. This does not have to be the path for everybody. This is not saying that every single person in this process has to go and burn down their entire business, but what it does mean is we can create the time and the space to allow ourselves to be able to consistently be checking in and attuning to how we feel and what we need, and making those micro adjustments in the process.
And oftentimes this does require a sense of being willing to slow down, to let go, to not have to be in that constant state of urgency. And this is where so much of the trauma work that we were talking about in the beginning becomes imperative for this process. Because if we are living in a way to which just myself here if we are living in a way in which we are operating in that core archetype or that core survival strategy or that core coping mechanism, which is tunnel vision, which is the go, which is the never stopping, the constantly going, the needing to go faster, bigger, more, all the time, always moving, never feeling like there’s enough time, never feeling like you can get it all done, always feeling like you should be doing more. Trying to change the behavior before working with where the behavior is coming from is only gonna create more resistance, more frustration, more pain, more anxiety. So what we want to actually be doing inside of these experiences is less so around trying to change the behavior itself, but more so around how do we actually create a felt sense, experience of safety in the body for this person to be able to start to come out of that space of hypervigilance? And how can we slowly, over time, expand that ability to stay in a more regulated space longer, while over time this starts to become more of the norm? Because what we see in the counter side of this is that it’s less of the slowly coming out and getting into more of a rhythm here, and it’s more of an oscillation between going, going, going in the state of hypervigilance until there’s literally nothing left and we collapse in our body. It forces us to shut down, it forces us to be quiet and to sit and to stay still until we can’t take it anymore, and then we develop the will to push again and we are just constantly oscillating between these two spaces.
Now, this is not what I would recommend, though. I have experienced this and I’ve witnessed and worked with clients who’ve been stuck in these places. What we’re talking about is slow. It is a slow process to rework, renegotiate and repattern chronic symptoms of living in a state of hypervigilance or a state of always needing to go faster and do more, be bigger. It needs to take time because the pattern happened over time And you can think of this pattern like a muscle.
If you’ve spent your whole life only lifting with your upper body but never learning how to use your legs, it’s gonna feel incredibly foreign and uncomfortable to have to learn how to use your legs and they’re gonna feel incredibly weak and fragile, and that’s okay. What we want to start to do is learn how to balance them so we can use the strength that we’ve built in our upper body to support building the strength in our lower body. Now, for those of you that are into fitness, this analogy might make a lot more sense For those of you who are less familiar with fitness, this might be a little more foreign, but essentially, what I’m trying to say is we want to balance. We want to learn how to start to balance the system, because oftentimes in these places and spaces and in folks who’ve lived and navigated life in this way, we are overdeveloped in one category and underdeveloped in another, and that’s not a bad thing, but it’s recognizing where is the over and under development and how do we start to actually support that process.
Now, we’ve gone into a lot in today’s episode, so I appreciate those of you who have stuck with me.
This is definitely a little bit of some different content, but I feel like it’s incredibly important in the conversation for a multitude of reasons, but the biggest one being that this is the internal work, that this is the real work when it comes to business, when it comes to life, is better understanding ourselves, better understanding who we are, why we are the way that we are and how we can start to make changes if we don’t want to actually stay where we are, and the byproduct of this work is the thing that we actually want. It’s just the strategy is a little different. So if you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, as always, please feel free to leave a review and rate on your favorite podcast platforms. It means the world to us. If there’s questions that you have, you can always email and reach out to hey@thesacred.ceo, or you could always reach out to me on Instagram, and I am Sophie Kessner. Otherwise, i will see you all on the next episode. Thank you so much.

Episode Summary:

Experiencing burnout and emotional overwhelm in your entrepreneurial journey? You’re not alone. In this eye-opening episode, we share personal stories and experiences while diving into the world of business-related trauma and burnout. Discover how my training in Somatic Experiencing has shed light on understanding different types of trauma we encounter in business, and learn how to recognize and address these issues.

We’ll also discuss the importance of aligning your life with your values and questioning the narratives we’ve been taught about success. Explore how the culture of urgency and the desire to constantly move faster can compromise our values, leading to anxiety and burnout. Find out how doing the internal work can help you better understand yourself, make necessary changes to reach your goals, and ultimately create a more balanced and fulfilling life. Don’t miss this essential episode for anyone navigating the challenging world of entrepreneurship and seeking a more enriching path.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

Managing Burnout and Trauma in Business (19 Minutes)

We explore the epidemic of fatigue, burnout, and emotional overwhelm that many entrepreneurs are experiencing after going hard in their businesses for an extended period of time. My own experience, as well as the experiences of the clients I work with, are discussed. The two core categories of trauma that I currently study are shock trauma and chronic trauma. We discuss how the body experiences business trauma, which is often chronic, compared to shock trauma and how this causes us to develop coping mechanisms to help us navigate the intense stress of our lives. We also discuss the narrative of always needing to go bigger, faster, and how that is not necessarily true for everyone.

Aligning Life With Your Values (11 Minutes)

We explore the importance of understanding our values and what we want to experience in life as entrepreneurs. We examine how the culture of urgency and the desire to move faster can lead us to compromise our values in the short term and how this can lead to feelings of burnout, anxiety, and overwhelm. We ask how we can shift our mindset to create a life that doesn’t require us to constantly live with fear and stress, and explore the idea of reconciling with the realization that our business may not be what we actually want.

The Importance of Internal Work (1 Minutes)

The importance of doing the internal work to understand ourselves and the changes we need to make to reach our goals is discussed. This internal work is the real work when it comes to life and business and the strategy for getting what we want is explored. We invite listeners to reach out with questions and provide contact information.

Coping Strategies and Entrepreneurial Stress

Navigating Entrepreneurial Stress: Coping Strategies and Developing Balance

Entrepreneurship is a journey that requires a great deal of hard work, dedication, and resilience. As entrepreneurs, we often find ourselves grappling with intense stress, pressure to achieve, and a constant barrage of responsibilities. Over time, these experiences can lead to burnout, emotional exhaustion, and even chronic trauma.

In this article, we’ll explore how we develop coping strategies to deal with the stress of entrepreneurship, and how these mechanisms can become ingrained in our personalities and affect our well-being. We’ll also offer tips for navigating entrepreneurial stress and finding balance.

The Development of Coping Strategies

The way we learn to cope with stress is what we call coping strategies. Depending on how much we identify with these strategies, they can become an integral part of our personalities, archetypes, or defense systems. Over time, we develop a chronic sense of who we are and how we navigate the world.

One example of this is common among entrepreneurs and athletes. We start to identify with survival strategies that we developed as a way to navigate the intense stress in our lives. For instance, a business owner going into the online space may need to manage multiple aspects of their business, including marketing, sales, team management, client delivery, and more. This can become extremely overwhelming, leading to the development of coping mechanisms such as constantly achieving, investing in new things, biohacking, or even unhealthy behaviors like smoking or drinking.

The Importance of Finding Balance

It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that we need to build capacity to handle more stress. However, this narrative can be detrimental to our well-being. In reality, developing coping mechanisms to deal with stress isn’t enough. To truly thrive as entrepreneurs, we need to find balance.

Finding balance involves prioritizing our well-being, relationships, and personal growth. It means taking breaks, setting boundaries, and doing the internal work necessary to understand ourselves and our values. By aligning our goals with our values and finding ways to cultivate balance in our lives, we can create sustainable and fulfilling entrepreneurship journeys.

The Perpetuation of Success Trap

Are You Building Success or Trapping Yourself in Your Business?

As an entrepreneur, it’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and grind of building a successful business. We often hear about the importance of working harder, faster, and smarter to achieve our goals. While this mindset can be useful, it can also lead to burnout, overwhelm, and even trap us in our own success.

The Danger of Only Focusing on One Strategy

Many entrepreneurs develop a strategy that helps them move out of pain and into success. However, if we only focus on one strategy without taking a step back to assess how it’s affecting our lives, we can quickly become blind to its impact. We must start by defining what success means to us, what it looks like, and how it feels.

The Trap of Success

We hear stories of successful entrepreneurs who have built incredible businesses, but many of them feel trapped by their own success. They’re bogged down by responsibilities, team members, clients, and obligations. The freedom they sought to create has turned into a trap, limiting their ability to live a fulfilling life. This challenge is especially prevalent in the entrepreneurial space, but it can occur in any area of our lives.

The Importance of Finding Balance

To avoid this trap, we must learn to define what success means to us and find balance in our lives. Creating a successful business is important, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of our happiness, health, and relationships. Taking breaks, tending to other areas of our lives, and doing internal work to understand ourselves can help us better align our goals with our values and create a more fulfilling life

Reevaluating Values and Relationships

The Power of Community: Learning to Value Relationships Over Positioning

For many of us, the path to self-discovery and growth is a winding one. We may start out with a set of values and beliefs that change over time as we experience new things, meet new people, and face new challenges. In this article, we’ll explore the journey of learning to value relationships over positioning and building community.

The Journey of Self-Discovery

In our early adult years, we may feel like we need to do everything on our own and can’t depend on anyone else. We may have a lot of distrust for others and feel like we have something to prove. However, life has a way of forcing us to lean on others and build community.

For me, the transition into motherhood was a turning point in my relationship with community. I realized how much I depended on family and friends to support me and how much I valued those relationships. Through the process of re-evaluation and reconstruction, I came to understand that the relationships with those who are always there for me were what truly mattered.

Valuing Relationships Over Positioning

In our early 20s, many of us may value relationships based on what we think they can do for us in terms of positioning or authority. We may prioritize impressing others and building a certain image. However, this narrative can be limiting and prevent us from establishing genuine connections with others.

As we grow and evolve, it’s essential to recognize and embrace our true values. For some, that may mean valuing independence and autonomy. However, for many of us, it means recognizing the power of community, family, and friendships. These relationships provide us with a sense of belonging, support, and love that can be transformative.

Embracing Our Values and Building Community

No matter what values we prioritize, it’s crucial to recognize that there’s no right or wrong answer. What matters is that we embrace our true selves and build connections based on authenticity and mutual respect.

To build community, we must be intentional about fostering relationships with those who align with our values. We must also be willing to give back and support others in their journeys. By doing so, we can create a network of people who lift us up and provide us with the love and support we need to thrive.

Defining Personal Values and Priorities

Understanding our values and what we want to experience in life as entrepreneurs is essential. The culture of urgency and the desire to move faster can lead us to compromise our values in the short term, leading to feelings of burnout, anxiety, and overwhelm. We must ask ourselves how we can shift our mindset to create a life that doesn’t require us to constantly live with fear and stress, and explore the idea of reconciling with the realization that our business may not be what we actually want.

In today’s fast-paced world, we’re constantly bombarded with messages that tell us we need to work harder, go faster, and do more. Over time, this can lead to chronic symptoms of living in a state of hypervigilance, always needing to be bigger and better. However, it’s essential to recognize that this pattern is not sustainable in the long run

The Slow Process of Re-Negotiation

It’s essential to recognize that changing deeply ingrained patterns takes time. If we’ve spent our whole lives living in a certain way, it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to change overnight. Instead, we need to take a slow and intentional approach to reworking these patterns.

Think of it like building a muscle. If you’ve only ever focused on building your upper body strength, it’s going to feel foreign and uncomfortable to start working on your lower body. However, over time, you’ll build the strength and balance necessary to support growth in all areas of your body.

Episode Keywords:

Burnout, Trauma, Somatic Experiencing, Business Trauma, Shock Trauma, Chronic Trauma, Coping Mechanisms, Urgency, Anxiety, Overwhelm, Values, Mindset, Internal Work, Reconciliation, Strategy, Life, Goals

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Meet The Host

Hey I’m Soph! I’m a mama and online digital marketer who’s been in the game since 2015. I LOVE building businesses that support creating real time freedom which is why I choose to specialize in email marketing, blogging and podcasting and teach others to do the same.

Mel and Soph B Roll laughing on couch

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I'm Sophie Kessner
Business Trauma

First generation Mexican American mama that’s gone from hood to strategic hustle. I’ve spent the last 10+ years inside the personal development space supporting 100’s of coaches in scaling 6 figure businesses online & supported 4 different companies in surpassing the 7 figure mark. Today, I focus on making scaling more sustainable by integrating the lenses of business, systems, automation and CEO Development through an Equity centered and Trauma informed lens.

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More About Soph

Sophie is the founder of The Sacred CEO™ Agency and has been in the service based coaching industry since 2015. She’s created and scaled 4 different multi 6 figure coaching programs including their latest course, The Online Business Automator.

Soph has also founded her SaaS business called ScaleUP where she work with her clients and building custom backend systems and a high quality template shop with Brand and Web Design expert, Mel Judson.

You can find Soph snuggling up with her son on the couch, spending weekends at Trauma retreats or dancing her heart out at the next EDM Festival.

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