High Achiever Burnout: Why Your Goals Feel Empty & How to Reset

Why do so many high achievers burn out? And even set goals they don't even want?

In this episode of The Underlayer, David Young and Katarina Kiseli break down the psychology of high achievers, burnout, and goal-setting mistakes that lead to exhaustion rather than fulfillment.


If you’ve ever felt:

- Driven but drained

- Successful but unsatisfied

- Productive but misaligned

- This conversation will help you understand why.

We unpack how social media comparison, the all-or-nothing mindset, and external validation quietly shape your goals, often without you realizing it.

And more importantly, we discuss how to reset.


What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

✔ Why high achievers often set goals based on external validation
✔ The psychology behind burnout and overachievement
✔ How social media impacts self-worth and ambition
✔ The dangers of the all-or-nothing mindset
✔ How to build self-awareness through the Wheel of Life
✔ What a consumption audit is (and why it matters)
✔ How to set sustainable goals that prevent burnout
✔ Why self-trust is essential for long-term success


Who This Episode Is For:

- High performers experiencing burnout

- Entrepreneurs and executives questioning their goals

- Professionals struggling with comparison on social media

- Anyone interested in personal growth and self-awareness

- Ambitious individuals seeking sustainable success


About Katarina:

A former FBI analyst, a psychologist, and a coach who works closely with high-performing professionals navigating burnout, self-doubt, and identity shifts in midlife.

If you’re serious about personal growth, sustainable goal setting, and breaking the burnout cycle, subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications.

Katarina's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katarinakiseli/

Katarina's Website: https://projectmetherapynj.com/

The Underlayer YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/@the_under_layer

The Underlayer Podcast Website: https://www.theunderlayerpodcast.com/

David's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-young-mba-indy/

Transcript

Why Goals We Don’t Want Persist

SPEAKER_00 0:02

If you ever set a goal you should want, worked relentlessly toward it, and still felt resistant, frustrated, or oddly disconnected, then this podcast episode is for you. Welcome to the underlayer, where the real story lives beneath the surface. This podcast is for midlife professionals who look successful on the outside, but feel misaligned, stuck, or disconnected on the inside. I'm your host, David Young, and today we're digging into one of the most quietly exhausting patterns among high achievers. Why on earth do we set goals that we don't actually want? And then we blame ourselves when we can't stick to it. I'm joined by Katerina Casselli, a former FBI analyst, a psychologist, and coach who works closely with high-performing professionals navigating burnout, self-doubt, and identity shifts in midlife. She's currently working closely with women navigating motherhood. Katerina recently wrote a terrific LinkedIn post on this topic, and it talks about the number one reason you're not meeting your goals is because you don't actually want them. And that really resonated with me. So today we're going to talk about why so many high achievers do this and we chase goals rooted in approval, comparison, or fear, how this all or nothing goal setting quietly erodes motivation and our own self-trust. Why discipline isn't usually the problem. It's honestly a matter of self-worth and what a healthier, more sustainable approach to goals actually looks like. This episode's not about lowering your standards or giving up ambition, but it is about stopping the cycle of chasing, forcing, and fixing and finally aiming at something that is yours. So if you've wondered why goals feel heavy instead of energizing, or why achievement hasn't delivered the fulfillment that you were expecting, then please keep listening or watching. Katerina, thanks for coming on the show today.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Yeah, it's great to meet you. It's our first time talking. We were catching up a little bit beforehand, and I said that you will probably be the only former FBI analyst that I will ever interview, no matter how much I do the show. And it is an honor to talk to you.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Well, it is an honor to be here, and I'm glad to represent uh the FBI. I'm unclear if that's good or a bad thing, but I will take the repr I'll take the mantle.

Meet Katerina And The High-Achiever Trap

SPEAKER_00 2:02

The feds, the feds are in the house, at least for one day only. Um Yeah, so when you when you wrote that post, it really it just really hit home. Um, you know, I'm a classic high achiever, always looking, always learning, always wanting to do new things. But I look back when I read your post, I started thinking back like across my life, especially as like a young adult through now. And it was alarming how many things that I've done where I'm like, I've never wanted to do that ever. Like I don't even know why I started doing that. And then I would just get into it and I like couldn't get I wouldn't get out. I would just keep doing it. I was like, well, I have to finish or I have to grind this out. It's a remarkable, there's remarkable psychology in that. Um but anyway, I just I know other people out there are probably saying the same thing, but like, why do we do why do we do it to ourselves? Why do we make it so hard on ourselves?

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Oh, yes, the magic question of why do high achievers make things harder than they need to be. Well, I wrote that post just a little backstory. I think it's important to say because I too am a high achiever. I wish to say I was a recovering one, but I still it's it's still here. And as we talked about even before recording, I mean, I just ran a half marathon and was like, I don't even think I wanted to do that, and I did it, and it's still happening.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

So just Well, and you just had a baby like three months prior.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Yeah, I just had a baby and ran a half marathon. So I'm still in the the muck of doing things and not sure why I even got there. And the big crux of it that I've deduced from my work with clients, and then even back at the FBI is that there is this almost this high, this addiction to the achieving and the seeking and the validation and trying to find, oh my gosh, like if I could just do this one other thing, I'm gonna get there. And we we we always are chasing and chasing, but we don't take the time, high achievers specifically, don't always take the time to slow down and go, why am I doing this? What is the purpose of this? That's I think at the core level, it's just this like our brain goes into I need to achieve X, Y, or Z. And our competitive edge comes in, I'm sure you're competitive too, and it it just like kicks in, and we're like, I'm gonna do this, and we don't pause to say, but why? Why?

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Yeah, the why is really important. And the other thing I've learned too is the more chasing you're talking about, like where you do something and you accomplish it, it just leads to more chasing and doing because there's never a feeling of like you might feel accomplishment, like you'll feel good in the moment or like right when you're done, like if you run a race or you complete a project or take a course, it doesn't matter. Like you'll feel good once you're done, and then you're instantly thinking about what's next. Like there is there is no like I'm all set, like I'm gonna take six months off or six years off. No, no, no. You're like, oh, well, I did that course. Let's take there's another course, there's an adjacent course. Or like for me, I ran a half marathon. I thought it was pretty easy. So what I do, sign up for a full marathon. I thought that was I thought that was awful. Like it didn't make like I didn't really want to do the half the full marathon, but the half was pretty easy for me. I trained for 12 weeks, I did it in a couple hours. I'm not really a runner. I mean, I do run, but I'm not fast. It didn't matter, but uh, but the training, like, it wasn't hard. So I was like, ah, well, I'll just double the training. I'll do the full marathon. Wrong. That was it didn't work at all. It was terrible, it was an awful experience. But like, yeah, I don't know. Um, so yeah, I think the why, I think the problem for me, and I think probably for others, I think the why question is really hard to answer. So we that's why we don't take the time to do it. Like the what is easy, like, oh, I want to run a race or I want to learn this, so I'll do it. But the why gets much more complex. It takes a lot more like introspective thinking and and really like questioning like why. And I don't for me, I'm like, oh, I don't like I don't really care to dive into that.

Addiction To Achievement And The Missing Why

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Yeah, and well, I'll take it. Uh you brought on a therapist, you brought on somebody with a psychology background, so I'm gonna go here. So high achievers specifically, not only do they have a trouble answering the why, sometimes they're afraid of the answer. Because my I in my post, I know I talked specifically about the number one reason you don't get your goals is because you don't want them. But my second reason was about all or nothing thinking.

SPEAKER_03 6:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

So I'm gonna touch a little bit on that too, because high achievers very much live in the in the black and white. They live in the extremes. They're not very gray thinkers. They're very when they commit to something, they do it and they just like commit. And then if they stop, they stop. There's and they struggle a lot with that gray area. Like I could do this for a little and then I could stop. Or I could try it. And stuff. So I say that because I also think high achievers at a deep level, I I mean, I don't even say I think, I know. They fear that sometimes if they ask themselves what they actually want, it might be something like, I just want to rest. I actually don't want to do anything right now. And if they say that, then their brain goes to, then I'm never gonna do anything again. Because they're all or nothing thinkers. So it's it it gets very, they get very caught up in the if I'm not doing, doing, doing, I'm doing nothing. And they struggle to see the nuance there, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Yeah, it does. And that really that's me too. Uh, I feel like you're just talking, you're just describing me like in my entirety. Um complete complete black and white, uh, no gray. I hate gray in any aspect of my life, especially work. And I learned that the hard way. Um I have a terrible time relaxing, resting. Uh many years ago, my wife's a teacher, and the way the winter break fell, um they almost always go back like right at the beginning of the year, like this year they're going back after like the fifth. But for whatever reason, the way the calendar fell this particular year is a long time ago. Uh they had the full week of the first full week of January off. So it was like the end of December and then whatever. So I was like, oh, I'll take that week off too. Like I'm never off at that time. Work was slow, uh, whatever. And literally the first morning, so like Monday morning, it's like 9 a.m. And the house we were in, I could I pace a lot. Like if I'm if I'm not doing anything, I have to move. So I'll like I'll pace the house. Well, the way this house was set up is I could walk circles, so I could go kitchen, living room, hallway, and I could do this. And I was I was already pacing. It's 9 a.m. on my first day off, and I was pacing. She's like watching TV. And she's like, What are you doing? You're you're off. Like you don't have anything to do. And I was like, I know, it's I I got I'm just bored. I I I need I gotta I need to do something. And she was like, That's the you're you took the time off to to rest, to do nothing. And I was like, oh no, no. And so she was like, honestly, if the if you're gonna do this, uh call your boss and just tell them that you want to work. Just go back, go to work. Like, I can't deal with you pacing for a week. And it's like, I just I can't, I can't, it's very hard for me to just like not do anything. It feels lazy, it feels uh wasteful.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

That's also another problem, the wasteful piece. Uh very efficient people, I feel like high achievers can be very what's the what's the most efficient, effective way to do these things? And then that feeds the cycle. Like, oh, if I'm resting, is that wasteful? But yeah, I mean, I'm giv I'm vil I'm I'm working with people on this and I'm guilty of it all the time. I live literally, it was it last week, I was reflecting, I'm like, oh my gosh, I haven't posted a podcast in in three weeks. I'm never doing it again. It's like the all or nothing mindset where it's like, no, no, no, you can just get back on the wagon, right? Like, but then on the flip side, when I'm in something, it's like I have to do this rigidly this way. And I don't ever do now, but I used to not pause and be like, what wh why am I doing this? What's the intent? What's the purpose? And I really think it like we you just said, there's the time waste feeling, like rest, it feels like waste. And then there's also this feeling like if I pause too long, I'm gonna think too hard about it, and I'm gonna maybe get an answer I don't really feel comfortable with. And that's where like the psychology comes in. Like, yeah, what is that answer? Maybe you need rest.

All-Or-Nothing Thinking And Rest Anxiety

SPEAKER_00 10:14

No, for sure. I've gotten a little bit better. Like I said, that was a long time ago. I'm a little better now. I I can relax in in small doses, um, but not for very long. Uh, I'm not great to take a vacation with unless the vacation is doing something. But if it's just sitting around for a week, I'm not your guy. Um because I just I just get bored. And I mean I can't read I can read books and stuff, but just limited. And then I gotta I want to do something. Like if I'm gonna go to a new city, I want to see it. I don't want to just lay on the beach or sit around the pool. Like that's if I can do that for a little bit by the like for a week, no way. Um yeah, I think I wonder for me, it was like I'm really trying to pay a lot more attention to my energy. I never paid any attention to my energy. Um, like it honestly, ne like at all. Never it was no can there was no consideration of how any decision I made, like how it made me feel. Like it was all logical. So it was like, this is a good idea because, or sometimes not a great idea, but I'm gonna do it anyway, because your your your brain overrides it. But it was always logical, and like how is the what's the logical impact or the intellectual impact? But I almost always ignored like my body signals to where like this doesn't feel good, this doesn't feel aligned, this is draining. Like I just completely ignored that. Um, and so I ended up doing a lot of things, and mostly work related, but work's a big part of our lives. Um and I look back on it and I was like, well, it was so obvious that that like was never gonna work because I felt off literally from the very beginning, but I just ignored all of that. Do you think that's just literally like our where our brain just comes in and we just outthink our we almost like outsmart ourselves where like your intuition says X, your brain says Y, and we just listen to the Y?

SPEAKER_01 11:57

Oh, you just brought up a really good topic. Yes. So I think um we're we're kind of pointing to a little bit of the risk in doing this, because I think sometimes high achievers might listen to something like this, and they might be like, okay, so I do a lot of stuff, but I get a lot of stuff done. So what does it matter if I'm doing a bunch of stuff that maybe I didn't want when I reflect back? Like, because I'm I know I thought this, like I'd be like, well, what is it? Well, what what's the problem with that? Well, truthfully, the there's I would say multiple problems, but the biggest ones are one of them you already touched upon in my intro, I do a lot with burnout. So what happens to a lot of high achievers, their brain is constantly overriding signals. They're almost like I they live from the head up. They're c disconnected from their lower body. Literally, if you were to ask my therapist, God bless her, um, if you were to ask her, she'd be like, Katarina didn't know what it was like. She couldn't feel the lower half of her body. Like it was just like I was so in my head. So your brain's overriding, overriding, overriding. And then you crash. Everybody has a story, at least ones I've spoken with, where there's a significant crash. If you've maybe not when you're 20, but by the time you get to 30, there's a story of something happening. And you can read endless books about it. There was the book Becoming Um Superwoman, where she talks about how she literally had a had to take a hiatus from um being in like on on TV. There's the book by, I'm forgetting his name, but he wrote about like the monkey mind in meditation, and he literally was on screen on ABC and just like stopped being able to like communicate words. Those are famous people. Now you got people like me, my FBI days, I tell the story all the time, or I just like all of a sudden had a break. So that's the risk, is like our brains get overrided and say, Yep, I'm just gonna do, I'm just gonna do, I'm just gonna do. And when you lose connectivity with the lower half of your body, what happens? Eventually your body catches up.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

Yeah. Yeah. At some point it's gonna, you're gonna have to pay the bill. Um, and yeah, usually it's gonna be something like pretty drastic or a blow up or an episode, or you you you quit suddenly you suddenly just quit, or like whatever. Um, yeah, I have several of those. Uh I won't get into details of them now, but I I totally, I totally relate. And that what's interesting is the pattern kept repeating, which which makes sense because what would happen is I would do something, usually it resulted in quitting a job, and then I would take a break, but I wouldn't do any I wouldn't address like the situation. I wouldn't I wouldn't resolve it, or I wouldn't try to analyze and figure out, okay, well, let's figure out why that happened so it doesn't happen again. I would just do kind of the same thing in a slightly different way. I wouldn't do the exact same thing, but I'd be like, okay, well, it's a little bit different, and I'll take a little bit different approach, and it would take some time, it was never immediate, and inevitably that would then it would all happen again. And then I that that cycle then just kept going and going and going. Um and it took me a long time to even like figure it out that it was a cycle, and then you're like, oh, and then you you try to do it. But I was I was probably 40, maybe even yeah, late, definitely late 30s or almost 40 before I really started to look at the bigger picture and be like, why does this why do I keep putting myself why do I keep getting in these situations that I don't want to be in? And you're like, oh, and then you know, whatever. Um one of the things you talked about was the whole comparison in the Substack article. You got into like comparison where you'll see someone else do something, whether it's running a race or buying a car or starting a job or whatever, and then you're like, oh, I want to do that, and you have no interest in doing that whatsoever. But you just see something, it could be social media, it could be a neighbor, it could be a friend, it doesn't matter, and then you just literally do it because someone else did it, and that's a terrible that's a terrible reason to do anything.

Head Over Body: Burnout’s Early Warnings

SPEAKER_01 15:57

This is my favorite one because it goes it goes way back to the uh um competitive thing with high achievers where there is a little bit of at a deeper level, again, you brought on the psychol uh uh psychology person, they uh at the deeper level, they there's this need for validation externally because that's what has motivated this high achiever for so long to go, go, go. So they're always sending signals out, like what are other people doing? And they seem happy, they seem successful. So let me see what everybody else is doing. And it leads to things like, oh, my neighbor looks really happy and they have a cool car. So maybe I need one of those. Like it leads to those things. And as you know, the other risk of all of this is that not only the burnout, but the other risk is just the, I think the more drastic risk for the high achiever, which is wasting time in your life doing things that don't actually make you happy. And what we really are trying to seek is like happiness, right? We want we set goals because we want to be a better, happier person. We don't set goals because we're miserable. Like we we are mis, maybe we are miserable, but we don't set them with the intention of making ourselves miserable. Like we want to be happier. So our brains are like scanning. We're like, all right, oh, they oh he he David just did a uh a beast. Was it sparing race, right? Oh, I'm gonna go do that now because he seemed like he was happy in that, you know, it's like that's what our brains do because that's the goal. As we want to be happy, but we're doing it completely the wrong way. Like that is not the way to be happy by doing what somebody else did just because they did it.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Yeah, for sure. And I uh well, and the other problem with that, um that's the main problem with social media, right? Is you're seeing such a small snippet. Uh, my oldest son is 16, and he's just on Instagram a little bit, and I keep trying to tell him, like, you're seeing this, like you're seeing like less than 1% of someone's lives. Like they are curating what you're seeing. You're seeing just the glamour shots, the highlights, whatever. That is not their entire life. And in fact, it's not even close to their entire life. There is so much going on behind the scenes that you will never see. No one will ever talk about it. They will never put a picture of themselves depressed, crying, upset, angry, throwing shit, like ready to quit. Like all that is happening. You're not seeing any of it. So it looks great and it looks like what you want. And I'm not saying that you don't, but just understand to get there. It's a you're gonna go through a lot. Like there is no magic flip a switch, like whatever, because he's big in sports and whatever. And I'm like, you can do whatever, but you're gonna have to put in a lot of work. Like, there is there you can't just watch a couple videos on YouTube and be like, all right, I'm all set. But that makes that's what it looks like because you're seeing them do it, they've been doing it for years and years and years, and they've put in all this time and effort so that that video looks great. That's not real life. And so I think a lot of people, whether it's a neighbor or an Instagram post or wherever you see it, you're like, Oh, yeah, they do look great in the moment, and they don't understand everything that went into like doing it. So it's yeah, I don't know, we get we can get very dis it gets very distorted, I think, like pretty quickly, and we don't understand that it's just not reflective of like real life at all.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Hitting on another topic I love, um, technology and social media, my goodness, yes, it's like the it is like I use this analogy in my other another post I did, and it was called like, Do you can do you control yourself or does social media, I believe, was what I what I wrote about. And um at a crux of the like out of the crux of it, we are watching all of these things constantly on social media, and we're seeing so much more input than we biologically are created to see. I mean, there's countless books on this, like Stolen Focus is one that I think about constantly, where it talks about how we're consuming like 174 newspapers worth of information in a day sometimes. Like it's it's our brains are just like not meant to be in that space. And because of that, social media is like it, I call it the like cigarette of today. Like back in the day, everybody smoked cigarettes because they were like, it's not a big deal. And then they realized there was the health link to cancer. I'm like, social media is gonna have some health link, and they're starting to do that because it is just not good for us to see all of that comparison. Way back when there were still high achievers and they still desired to do stuff, but they had like a healthy level of competition. They were like in their little hut and they were like, oh, Bob over there is uh his hut looks a little better, so I'm gonna fix my hut so it doesn't leak. But today it's like there's 80,000 Bobs and they have like 70,000 different things they're doing, and it gets so overstimulating, and it just feeds this feeling of like hopelessness, like unhappiness, unsettled, whatever you want to call it. So it's good on you, honestly. Therapist-wise, I would say it's it's good on you for your child, keeping them as much as you can away from the entanglement of social media.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

Yeah, we've we've tried. Uh we did he didn't get his first phone until he was 13. Um, this Instagram, it's like a kid's account, it's the first one that he's had. Um he mostly he mostly just watches YouTube golf videos, I think. Um but he is a little bit into Instagram. So we've tried. It's hard because you know, the social aspect and the kids aspect. He's a sophomore in high school and everybody's on it and everybody has it. But um, yeah, I don't know. I'm glad I didn't have that when I was a kid. Uh I had a hard enough time socially with the old school way uh picking up a phone and having to call people's parents to see if somebody was home. Um that that was hard enough to deal with, let alone remembering phone numbers.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Remember that?

Comparison, Validation, And Social Media Fog

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you we would come up with um I remember some one of the numbers. we had to dial the it spelled tire so you just had to remember like the first three numbers and then it was just tire so you would always try to figure out like does their number spell a word uh on the phone um yeah so that was that was hard enough for me to to deal with you know I was an only child I was shy uh shy and quiet um but I couldn't have I couldn't have imagined um like just and it isn't even you know it isn't even just one platform right there's so many platforms now and so many ways to send messages it's like how do you even keep up like how do you even remember who you sent what message to on which platform it's like anyway um yeah I'm glad I'm glad I am the age that I am I think um what so getting back to the so how do we identify then what we really want to do like do you have exercises that you do with clients do you have questions if we're if we're doing a lot of these things just because of all these external things or whatever um and we're really kind of ignoring well this is actually how I want to spend my time like I want to be happier I want to be more productive but I want to do it in this area or in this whatever um like how do we how do we cut cut through the noise and get down to alright if I'm gonna take on this project or if I'm gonna train for something or if I'm gonna learn something or if I'm gonna do this how about I do it because I really actually want to do it not because anybody else wants me to do it not because the neighbor does it not because my partner wants me to like none of that nonsense. Like I want to do X. Like how do we figure out what that is great question.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Yes I'm a very uh tactical therapist maybe that's because I'm an FBI person who became a therapist so probably I I usually do I I believe that they're connected. So I like to give people action items pretty much every Substack I write every podcast I do there's always going to be something like take this with you because I feel like the best way to learn something, even something as like seemingly intangible as like what do I want? There's ways to do it. We can take some actions that help us. So I will just say there's three, I would say three main things I will tell clients to do if they're kind of stuck in the they get to me and they're like I it usually comes in the form of I feel like I'm just unhappy. I'm 40 and I've been in the same job hustling. I got the pay raises and I'm just don't I'm not happy. Or it might come out like I just had a baby and I'm finally slowing down because I have a baby and I realize how disconnected I've been from myself and my body. Or it comes out and just like you have the break, the the burnout the mental break and they they're looking for it. So the three things I usually tell clients to do are one of them is this there's a tool called the wheel of life. Have you heard of the wheel of life?

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Ha that's funny that you bring that up I was just on a call uh with a coach it was an unofficial coaching session that she's generously giving me and about halfway through the call she was like are you familiar with the wheel of life and I had heard of it but I had never actually like looked at it and done the exercise. So literally within four days ago I would have said no. Now I would say yes.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

Well welcome it's it's meant to be there's a synchronicity um so wheel of life is a really great tool I have a version for clients that I use for my practice but you can Google it you can look up the wheel of life there's many versions. It comes from the life coaching school I believe but it is a tool it's literally a wheel and it has all the sectors of your life which you can always adjust based on your personal preferences but it's like physical health mental health spirituality environment relationships romance finances work you you you get the picture yeah kind of the full like all the aspects of of life and of existing yeah yeah and you go through and you rank from zero to ten with zero being completely unfulfilled and ten being fulfilled and then you look at it and you take the ones that are the highest like the two that are the highest and the two that are the lowest and you really reflect on them. Okay, what what makes these so high and what makes these so low and how could I move these up a notch and just get you thinking about specifically what sector of life you want to focus on.

SPEAKER_03 26:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

So that's kind of why I tell people do that first you don't even know maybe where the gaps are sometimes and it just helps you slow down. So that's a really great tool for listeners I would highly recommend. And then in conjunction with that this is like my other tool I give folks is like do some values assessments and I know that's really everybody throws it around like know your values but there's a there's tactical ways to do this. There's plenty of references you can find I have my own things I do with my clients but it's essentially just spend a second to think about what's important to you, jot it down, and then reflect okay I'm not I'm not really crushing it in the financial sphere, but I value abundance. And you and you can kind of start to at least with those two tools those are really good ones to start. Most clients I'll use that system to help them really dive in like what what do I want? That's a really good place to start.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

Yeah I like that a lot and it it means more because I just briefly did that the the wheel exercise the way she explained it and she kind of tried to have me do it it was hard over a zoom call but like the way you think of it as a wheel and then obviously you're not gonna have all zeros you're not gonna have all tens. That's not possible. But it's like jet the idea is to smooth it out. So like if it goes like you know two, five, two, three, eight, one and you're you're all over then like your wheel of life then it's it's very bumpy. So if you picture the wheel you know rolling or turning the higher you are you know let's say your average is a three you're kind of you're kind of always it's very bumpy. If your average is a seven it's smoother. So the idea is like you're talking about identify the highs and lows and then you're you're just trying to gradually increase them. So you get your overall like again not mathematical average but the average of your life to be a little bit more fulfilled so that as it's rolling it just not as bumpy. That's the way that she like explained it to me. So um but yeah I think I think that exercise is good. It was good for me to think about even briefly on that call just because I don't I wasn't any kind of practice of thinking like in holistically like that. Like I usually was just thinking about like one area like my work or my health or money. But I wasn't looking at like relationships and friends and there was I think she had one that was like fun and play which I thought was really interesting because as adults we get away from that like kids obviously play a lot then that slow that slowly goes away and then it's just kind of gone and then you have to work really hard I think as an adult to like cultivate like fun and activities. And then you know shifting um I wonder too when you're talking about like the people that you meet kind of around 40 seems to be kind of the if it doesn't happen prior to that some 40 seems to be a real sweet spot for like looking around and assessing your life and being like not exactly what I pictured. For me it was like I'm 50 now. So I really got sold on the go to school, get a degree get a job don't really pay too much attention to whatever that is and then that's it. And then you just grind that out for four and a half decades and you enjoy your nights and weekends try to save some money you retire at 65 or 68. Hopefully your health has held up and it's pretty good then you enjoy those last you know 10 or 12 years and then you die. That's what I was prescribed and I didn't even question it. And I'm I'm kind of a questioner. I'm kind of like I don't know if that makes a lot of sense but for that one I didn't because I think it was like the herd mentality it's like well that's what everybody was doing. So I guess I'll just do it. And then even once I got into it I was like this isn't this isn't really working out.

SPEAKER_03 30:21

This stinks.

Getting Unstuck: Wheel Of Life And Values

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Right yeah this this really sucks. But I don't know what else to do. I I I need money so I guess I'll just keep doing this forever. Um I don't know that's a weird thing. I'm I hope that that starts to shift with post-COVID and obviously there's more ways to make money now than there were when I got got out of college and all that kind of stuff. But I think part of it just comes from again it kind of goes back to the why like I just don't know if for me personally I I didn't really think about like what do I actually want to do with my time like I didn't want a degree in biology but I got one. I didn't really want to sell pharmaceuticals but I did and it's like why? It's like just because it looked good on a resume or just because somebody told me to like those are not great reasons.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Oh yeah you're you're bringing up a really this actually is a really good segue. I didn't even plan it um a really good segue into the third thing I tell people to do with when they don't know what they want. And it's actually called a consumption audit. So I will explain what this is but I tell people to do this because what you're pointing to is that when we're in the jar of our lives we can't read the label. When we're in the jar we can't read the label. And oftentimes people um they don't question things because they don't take the time way back in the beginning we talked about slowing down to slow down listen to their body connect with their cues pay attention to how things feel they kind of just like keep pushing hoping that there will be a magic elixir one day that makes them feel better. And then they wake up and they're like whoa why did I not notice this earlier so like the work you do the work I do is to try to get people to realize that without the crisis like to realize they have choice. That's what we do. That's why we're doing this podcast we're trying to get people to shake up and realize you have a choice. That's why like the wheel of life gets you to zoom out and be like I want to make this more smooth. Not perfect. Don't be a high achiever and try to get tens and everything. It's more to like zoom out and then be like all right you know what I'm not feeling so good in finances so I'm gonna focus on that and I'm gonna pay attention to those goals and I'm not gonna I'm gonna shut out the other noises for now. Values get you connected with yourself a little bit more but the consumption audit it it pays attention to like what information you're receiving. So so it like slows you down and it makes you go, okay, I kind of know where I what what I I want what sectors need work but like what am I taking in and what am I listening to? It gets you to question. So what I tell people to do with a consumption audit is everything you eat, see, read listen to absorb drink like everything you're consuming, think about it. So obviously drinking water is great. Maybe drinking fruit punch all the time isn't great. So if you're drinking fruit punch all the time you're not gonna feel good. Likewise if all you're doing is hearing messages that are negative on social media that are telling you that life is hard, you're gonna think life is hard. If all you're hearing is that you grind, you go to school, you don't but you're not gonna question it and you're just gonna feel miserable. So I encourage people to just take an assessment like what are you consuming? Because then it gets you to pause and it does exactly what you said. Like why did I not question this? It makes you question like what am I absorbing and do I buy into it? Like do I like what I'm listening to?

SPEAKER_00 33:48

Yeah that's a good one. I haven't heard that term or or that type of odd the consumption odd as good especially mixing in food and drink along with like you know social media news TV shows that kind of stuff I think that that combination is really good and unique. I thought I never thought it was me. That's the kicker. I thought it was all I thought I just needed to change the external so I needed a like when I was selling pharmaceuticals and didn't like it I thought I just needed to work for another pharmaceutical company. I was like oh well it's just this company. No that ended up not happening. But it wouldn't have mattered if I'd gone to another company it had been the same thing. So then I thought oh well I'll sell something else that you know that didn't do it. And I was like oh I need to work in an office that didn't do it. Oh I need to get another degree it's because I don't have an MBA so I'll get an MBA that didn't do it. Like I was always turning the dial I was flipping the channel on to something else thinking well it's just I just haven't found it yet. And then I got to 40 and then I was in a cubicle job that was awful and I was terrible at it. And I was like well now I've done all these things I have the MBA I have all these experience I have all this experience and now I'm in a cubicle punching numbers into a spreadsheet and I literally like like I don't have the will to live anymore. Like this it's so bad. Like this job is so bad. I'm so bad at it like how did I get this far? And I still haven't made like any progress. And then it still took me another like eight years to start getting closer but at least I started slowly like moving towards it but it still wasn't like this instant switch. Like it just took me forever for like the lights to come on because like you said like I had been I wasn't auditing I wasn't thinking about it and I just thought I just need to do it's just the next the next thing we'll do it. The next the next job the next manager the next whatever well that that will be the like you said the magic elixir. Like I'm just missing I'm missing the magic elixir but I will find it and once I find it I'll be all set and that was like that was never that was never coming.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

It was never gonna happen can I I can tell you I can tell you the secret sauce it's not really a secret. I feel a lot of people share this but this is really the crux of like I think everything we're talking about right now but also my own my practice I really believe the s the biggest key to unlocking a happy life is self-awareness like self-awareness. And I feel like too many of us are being like almost like we talk it almost sounds like a zombie. Like you are zombieing through life not living and that's terrifying. I know you probably felt like when you woke when you I call it waking up like when you woke up you were like whoa like why was I doing all of this? Why was I doing all these things I don't want and for me my I won't go into all the details I've told the story many times but like my aha moment was I was doing the chasing like if I just okay I'm at the FBI now. Okay now the next step is to get the raise then the raise okay now it's to be an agent. So then I started training and I started doing the training and I was like but I never paused and was like I don't want to shoot a gun like I was like I never took a step like I don't I don't want to you know I just was like that's what you do that's what you do that's and then I like got to this point. I remember it was like a like some kind of like a video they make you watch that's like are you ready for this? Like something inspirational and I just remember that was I was like no no I finally my body was like about to I was like anxious up to my throat I was like finally I listened but I remember thinking how did I get to that point like I spent four or five years training for this like why did it take me so long and then it clicked in I was like I wasn't self-aware. I wasn't listening to myself I wasn't so self-awareness self-trust pausing getting out of the jar these are things that coaches therapists the work that we're doing here are we're trying to get people to just be more aware and be and ask more questions and not just go with the motions because I did the same thing as you like I was like up I'm building up to this and I just have to do it and then the next thing will eventually make me happier and I didn't pause to go wait is this actually me like does this make sense? It's all about self-awareness.

The Consumption Audit: Curate Your Inputs

SPEAKER_00 37:53

I really believe that I totally agree and I think it's interesting like I don't think of the FBI as like a corp like a corporation or a business. I mean it's all related but it's the same when you get a job is it's the same. Like you you you get one role and that's your entry role but then like the next role and you're like you do your year in evaluation it's like what are you aiming for and it's more money and it's a bigger title. And you see a lot of this on LinkedIn where people did that and they get all the way up like they climb the ladder they get to like even VP level and and they're making a lot more money and whatever and then they're they're still not happy because it's never about the money. The money is that's one of the biggest myths ever is that you know more money will equate to more happiness. I think the self-awareness definitely and the self-trust I don't think is talked about as much I'm kind of going through that now because I really through through all this kind of whole experience um you know I really realized that like all I really want to do is talk and tell stories, podcast, speaking, you created it broadcasting like that's that's the that's the lane for me. It's the lane I should have been in like for a long time. But it that's whatever. It took me a while to get here. But I still am meeting a lot of resistance especially from people that are close to me because it's very different than anything that I've ever done. And they don't think I can make any money doing it. And so when I'm like I want to grow my podcast I want to do speaking I have something to say I've done some stand-up comedy not that I want to be a comedian but whatever it all it's all on stage telling stories and they're like yeah that's great. Those are all side projects those are all side hustles like there is no career for you. Like you cannot support your family you cannot pay your bills doing that. And I'm like but I actually think I can like I was struggling to pay my bills when I had the$75,000 a year job that I hated but nobody can no everybody thought that was great. But you know just because it was quote unquote normal like I was going to an office every day I was collecting the paycheck that's what everybody was doing. So nobody was nobody was bothered by that. Now I say I want to do this and they're like yeah that that's no see you're not that's not gonna work. Um and I and there's a version of me in the past that would have listened and be like they're right I'm not good enough I'm I can't do it like I'll just do I'll just do it whatever and now I'm like fuck everybody like I'm just gonna figure it out. I don't know how long it's gonna take me I'm not again like my kid he can I can't flip a switch. It's not gonna happen tomorrow. But it's compounding and I already have a head start in the compounding effort and then that'll just keep compounding and I'll get better and whatever. So like you it's hard especially when the people close to you are doing that it's it's very quickly even if you have a little bit of self-trust it can it can erode very quickly because the people around you won't support it if it's different because it will challenge the normal and people don't like that at all at all I love this analogy this is gonna be a this is going to be a little uh kudos to my husband for giving me this analogy but the crab have you heard about the crab trap analogy? Um well I I think like if you put I think if it's if you put crabs in a bucket and one tries to climb out the rest of the the crabs will like try to pull him down right like they won't they will not try to help him escape or want him to escape. They want they want to keep everything in.

SPEAKER_01 41:03

Ding ding ding so like they actually when you have a crab trap I never knew this but the the ones that you put in the water the big boxes if there's a bunch of crabs in it it's actually not that they can't get out it's that if they try to get out the other crabs rip their arms off and like try to keep them in. So I I I he told me that he's like you're you're like the crab that gets out of the trap and I was like oh I love that analogy so there's so much fear that people people are so fearful of going against the grain because they've been brainwashed I feel like by like mass marketing and media like you have to because you know that's how it goes. And then you suddenly flop out of the crab trap somehow and then you're like whoa I don't have to live like this so it's it's crazy. I I could get out of the crab get out of the crab trap. Why are you in you know and but they're all still pulling each other down. They're like you know and and I don't people don't do it intentionally. So that's why I think it's so important again back to your consumption audit back to being self-aware back to trusting yourself. You do have to sometimes look around and also think what are the top five people I'm interacting with and I know you do this but I make sure that I have you know my husband there I have my you know my kids but I also make sure that I have somebody there that challenges me in my top five. And that may look like on LinkedIn following people like you who inspire and give me thought and change my perspective because I can't just have five people who are in the crab trap.

SPEAKER_03 42:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:34

Like I gotta have somebody that's not in the crab trap that's inspiring me. And I feel like more people have to wake up to that. It's really about waking up.

Sustainable Goals And Weekly Reviews

SPEAKER_00 42:43

Yeah no that's a good point. I I'm reading this book called How to Manifest by Lacey Phillips and uh one of the things she talked about was part of the reason why the people closest to you have such a hard time when you're trying to do go against the grain is that their subconscious has not witnessed it or seen it. And so then they don't think it's possible. Not for you they don't think it's possible for anyone because they literally have never come across it. So when I start talk start talking about like taking making money as a speaker, a talker whatever like they don't really know people. I mean they know like famous people but that's different. That's too it's too far away. It's too disconnected. So they they know it happens like in the ether but it doesn't happen to anyone like to them. So then it's it's not possible. And it's not that it's not possible for me. It's not possible for anyone but it is possible to go back to a job and collect a paycheck because everyone has done that. So like their subconscious has seen that. So when I read that it kind of made me feel better that it wasn't personal like because it always it always feels so personal. It's like yeah you guys just have so much doubt in me like you really just have you just think I have no chance like it's just so like doomsday like you're gonna fail and go broke and like all this stuff. It's like God like just have a little faith. Anyway when I read that I'll give them a little bit of a break. True but I do think it's an important Point about uh whether it's social media or uh whatever, but it is good to have people. I think it's good to have people that challenge you. I also think it's good to have people who are doing something a little bit different that you aspire to do. Yeah, because that gives you a little bit of of faith in the journey, is like, all right, that person's not famous, it's they're not Kevin Hart or The Rock or whatever, but they're a little farther ahead than you, and then you kind of keep them close, whether it's LinkedIn or whatever, wherever you see them. And if you have a relationship with them, that's even better. But you can interact with them enough because that will keep you you see that it's possible for them, and then that can give you enough like confidence and faith to keep going. Um whereas if you don't, if all the people around you, like no one's doing it, then it's pretty it's you can pretty quickly be like, oh yeah, okay, well, like it's not yeah, it's not gonna happen, it's not for me, no one's doing it, so I can't do it. And then you'll quickly go back to the herd like mentality of whatever. Um so I think that is I think that's a good point to going back to the consumption, but adding in a little spice of if you want to do something and someone's doing it, and you're like, I like the way that looks. Again, not back to the comparison, like don't do it because they're doing it. It's something you really are aligned with, then they can give you, you know, some confidence or whatever. Um but I think we're quick to uh I think we're I was quick to give up. I was a former version of me would be pretty quick to be like, oh yeah, everybody else is right. Um I'll just go back here and I'll be quiet.

SPEAKER_01 45:27

Absolutely. And just to your point, that is absolutely part of the consumption audit. Like, are the people that are in my sphere inspiring me and encouraging me? So always asking yourself, like, oh, who am I following on social media? And are they are there people like yourself who are doing a podcast just like I am, that is, you know, not a you know, the podcaster that has billions and billions of follow followers, but there's somebody like me who just wants to talk more. Am I engaging? Are they a little ahead of me? Yes. Am I sitting with them? Yes, because I think that they encourage me. Am I not gonna spend as much time with the the naysayers? Yes, because they're not encouraging me. And we really, we really have an art to it. We get to choose. We have to be a little bit more careful in curating our sphere. And we should, absolutely should.

SPEAKER_00 46:14

Yeah, no, that's a good point. The coach that I was on the Wheel Life call with, I said something about I was doing something because I have to. She was like, You're doing it because you're choosing to. I was like, No, no, no, like I have to do it. She was like, No, choosing choosing to do it. You might feel like you have to do it, but at the end of the day, it's a choice. I was like, Yeah, that kind of stings, but it's true. Um it's not really what I wanted to hear, but uh, she was not wrong. Um, and that's another aspect is that you know like we do we and I look back on my you know, what I did, and like I I chose to do that. Like I no one no one was forcing me to to do all that work that I didn't want to do. I thought it was I had a reason, but I just kept making those choices. You live and learn. Um so what you talked about, you talked about in the SubTech article, um you you gave some tips when you're setting goals, because we're this is gonna come out, we're recording this uh a little bit before Christmas. Uh this will come out in kind of mid-January or so, so right around the new year, and obviously New Year's a lot of time when people are making big, grand, huge goals that they'll give up on in two weeks. Um what is a better way to think about? You know, we you go into 26 and you you have whatever goals, um, like what's a better, more sustainable way to like start making those shifts, uh, not going from two to ten, because that's too big of a too big of a leap. But how do we go from a two? If you're in a two in one of those areas of the wheel life, you say I want to get to a four or maybe a five in the next nine to twelve months. Um like what how can they set that up and set themselves up for more success than just some big, you know, huge sweeping goal that looks great on January 1st and you've totally forgotten about by mid-February?

Self-Awareness, Self-Trust, And Choice

SPEAKER_01 48:05

Great question. So a way, way better. Um this is a technique I recommend to everybody with goal setting. And it's very um, it embodies my brand. I think I don't know if I said this yet, but my brand is project B therapy. And it's the reason I call it Project B therapy is because I believe that we really need to get to know ourselves at a root and self-awareness. But then also it kind of nerds out on my project management background because I love seeing goals and how to assess them better and how to hit the mark and hit timelines. And what we do poorly with ourselves often is we don't do what project managers do with their lives and we don't do check-ins with ourselves. Whenever you have a project, that whether whatever it is at a corporate job or in your house or whatever, you will continually look at your plan and be like, all right, did I hit this? What's the budget? Am I here? What's the timeline? If you're good at it, right? And you'd be like, ah, moderate obstacles, got a steer. We don't do that with ourselves. So the best way to set goals, it comes from Atomic Habits by James Clear. He talks about this very often, is about monthly reviews. So he literally, he does monthly, I believe, or quarterly, might be quarterly. I tell people to do weekly, like every Sunday at like 7 p.m. when the kids go to sleep, whatever it is, just sit with yourself for 30 minutes and just do a little bit of an a little reflection. What went well, what didn't go well. What did I like? What did I not like? You need to be constantly reassessing the mark, because if you don't, you end up in the zombie, you end up in the crab trap, you end up in that era. We don't want that. So the best way to set you set the look at your wheel of life, pick up, pick a couple things, make it sustainable. We know that's a big one, because that's the other reason people don't meet goals, is they're too all or nothing. Find a sustainable way to try it, and then monitor yourself. Like give yourself some, huh? How did that feel this week? How did that if and if if a weekly is too much, at least do it monthly and be like, ah, I stopped by day 21. Why? What was hard about it? Why did it not feel good? How could I pivot to make it feel better? Because what you do most matters more than what you do occasionally, right? So, like if if you do it and it's unsustainable and you stop reflecting on it and you never try again, you're gonna you're not you're gonna fail because you stopped trying. So Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:40

Well, I think what's nice, I think what's good about the weekly or monthly check-in, and I think you should also give yourself permission, like it's okay to abandon something because you can start out thinking you want to do something, and then after sometimes it's very quick, like a couple weeks, and you start working on it, and you're like, Oh yeah, I don't I should really like this. But I committed to do this for the year, so I guess I'll grind this out for you know 50 more weeks. It's like, no, no, no, just scrap it. It's fine. Like that's knowing what you don't want to do is just as important as what you do, and you'll never know. This was my problem, is I would think about all these things, and I would read books and you know, consuming podcasts and and coaches and therapists, and it was that was fine. But I was just I was just a gathering information. I had all this data, but I wasn't trying anything, so I didn't really know. And well, that I mean, it can all look great on the outside, and then you start doing it. Like you could like there, I'm guarantee you there are people like, oh, I'd love to start a podcast, and then literally just trying to rec get one recorded is like the hardest thing ever. You don't enjoy it, it's not fun. You you do the interview, you're over, you're drained, you're exhausted, and you're like, I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to be a podcaster. Awesome, don't like, but at least you tried it. Like, but if you just think about it, you have no idea, right? So it's like sometimes that feedback is great. So you could set a goal for the year to be like, I want to release 40 podcast episodes, and then literally you record one, and you're like, I don't I I don't actually want to do two. Great, great point scrap it, find something else or or focus. Do you have other goals? So that's for me, that gets back into the black and white. It's like no no no, I committed to do whatever. And it's like you just have to release that. Like you don't because you don't know until you try. I know that's cliched, but like you really don't. Like things can look great on the outside. And then for you, it's like, oh no, like that's I don't want to do that. Like that's not fun. Or it gets back to the energy. Like I find it like it took so much energy for me to do that, and then I didn't bounce back. I was drained for three days. Well, that's you're probably not on the right, you're probably not on the right path. Um so you have Ooh, I love that.

SPEAKER_01 52:34

Let's add that as the that's a great like call to action for people. Like when you're not only do you make sure you take time to reflect, but maybe your reflection is like, what went well, do more of that. What went poorly, that I didn't not poorly because we'll reframe that. What didn't I not like, and let's do less of that.

unknown 52:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:56

Yeah. I remember reading the book, uh, Design Your Life. Uh it was like 2017, 2018. It was w when I was in that cubicle role when I was around uh 40, it was going really poorly. And I read that book, and in the book they had you do an energy audit, and it was it was about your job, but you could apply it to any aspect of life. And you had to go, I think it was like a week, um, and you literally wrote down everything you did in your job, no matter how uh small. And then literally you just said provides energy, takes energy, and then you and then you assess it. I love that. And mine was like 98% uh energy taking and 2% energy giving. And I was like, Yeah, huh? That's a real pick in the I already I already knew I was in the wrong spot, and this book just drove that point right right on home. Yep. Um, but again, it doesn't have to necessarily be your work, but anything. And so I've started it still again took me several years to apply that to other aspects of my life because I'm a little slow sometimes, but I do I have started to think about like how does this feel? Like this is like these podcast interviews, like they're so energizing for me. And when I get off these calls, like I'm it's like a buzz for like the rest of the day. Like I just I love it. I would do I would do an interview like every day. But I've had other people who are like, I started a show and like it was too, it was I didn't like it. Like I found it tiring. It was a grind. I didn't know what to say, I didn't know what questions to ask, like the guests didn't talk, or the guests talked too much, or whatever. And then it's like, yeah, it's not for you. It's so it's fine. Like it's cool. Stop it. Yeah, you don't there's because I and then somebody else was like, well, like I'm not sure if I want to do a podcast. I was like, record book two guests and record it, like officially, like you're gonna release it. I was like, guess what? You don't ever have to release it. No one except you and the two guests will ever know that you did it. And if you don't like it or it's too much work or whatever, don't. But you won't know. Like you could sit there and think about it forever. You don't know until you try. Like, you don't have to commit, it doesn't get released. It's not gonna be number one on Apple. No one will know. That's fine. Um, but your energy tells you way more, way more, I think, than we like give it credit for because it doesn't typically lie to you. Or it's hard to fake it for long. You can fake it for a little bit, but if you do it enough, the energy feedback will almost always like let you know if you're on the right track or not. And it just took me so long, so long to accept that and like agree to that.

SPEAKER_01 55:15

Back to self-trust, right? It's about trusting yourself and being aware of yourself. Absolutely. We just came full circle, I feel like.

SPEAKER_00 55:22

Yeah, no, a hundred percent. Um, so somebody out there listening, uh, this resonates. Um, they want to find out more about your work or how to get in touch, what would be uh how would they reach out, how would they find you? Um, what would be next steps?

SPEAKER_01 55:35

Great. Yes. If somebody's looking for Katarina Casselli, um, Project Me Therapy is the way to go. Um, I have a website, Project Me TherapyNJ.com. I also have my own podcast, Project Me Therapy, and I have a substack, Project Me Therapy. So it's pretty easy to find me. Um, and that would be the best way to connect, is to just interact with one of those forums or email me. Um be the best way. And that's Katarina at Project Me TherapyNj.com.

Community, Crab Traps, And Role Models

SPEAKER_00 56:05

I was gonna say, I was gonna say, I'm sure your email handle has Project Me Therapy in it. But I do think I do think that that's good. You know, I was telling somebody else, uh, so I watched a lot of wrestling as a kid, but when I watched it, it was like Saturday mornings. Um, and now it's you know it's totally different, and I got away from it. But I've been watching it, I spent a lot of time on YouTube, and so I've been watching like old clips of like Stone Cold, Steve Austin, and The Rock from like late 90s to like early 2000s, whatever. But I do have a point to this, I'm not just going totally off the tangent. If you ever watch one, like The Rock will say his name. I've counted, he'll say his name like 10 times in two and a half or three minutes. The rock says the rock, the rock, always third person, the rock, the rock, the rock. And I was like, I started watching, I started I was blown away. I was like, well, everybody knows who The Rock is. Why does he say his name ten times in three minutes? And so I started thinking about it. It's like it's all it's just brand awareness. Like, even though everyone knows who he is, he just says his name all the time, and it's just part of like his persona, and obviously it's a character. But I think with you, it makes sense. Like if everything is Project Me Therapy, then it that brand, you start that's the way you you invade the subconscious, right? Email, podcast, um, substack. Like, I think it's great. Um, and I don't think a lot of people like think about that, but I think it's actually brilliant because that's how I mean it takes forever to because we talked about with all the noise, it takes a while for people to like, oh, Katarina, project me therapy. You have to see that like a bunch of times before you just like automatically think about it. So I don't know if you did that on purpose, but it actually is great marketing.

SPEAKER_01 57:34

Well, thank you. It was actually a met a coach that I'm working with who says simplicity sells. Simplicity sells. So don't overcomplicate it. Simple. And I was like, okay, simplicity, everything the same, and say it the same.

SPEAKER_00 57:47

So brilliant. Um, well, really appreciate you coming on. Uh it was great uh meeting you officially and talking. Uh, really appreciate your insight. Uh, if this message resonated, please like the show, subscribe, rate it. Uh, video will be on YouTube, uh, the audio will be. I don't think anybody listens to this anywhere other than Spotify or Apple. But if there's another one out there that you consume it, uh, if you can like the show, rate the show. It helps other people find it uh and obviously forward it uh to all of your high achieving friends uh how to break the cycle and uh start to trust yourself and be a little bit more aware. Great insight. Thanks for coming on, really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 58:22

Thank you for having me.