When I accepted the fact that I was burned out, all I really did was give myself permission to look at my own mess.

I woke up on my 35th birthday and said to myself in the mirror, “Hey Carrie, you’re a burnout and that’s okay.” That was just the start of it. Major healing had to happen after that.

Looking at how and why I got to burnout took some time. It wasn’t like I woke up the next day ready to dive in and dig up a bunch of roots around overworking, overgiving, and being unbalanced in my own feminine and masculine energy.

I wasn’t able to start to heal my own patterns until I redefined what success meant to me.

Before burning out, success meant I received praise, accolades, more money, new followers, or new opportunities. And with every like, share, check, media opportunity, speaking gig, or writing gig I got, the harder I worked. The more I worked. The longer I worked. And the deeper into my burnout I became.

When I started to reshape what success meant to me, I was able to see that I no longer wanted to associate it with things. I wanted to associate success with feelings.

Burnout was an awful, toxic, suffocating experience. The feelings I had while in burnout weren’t at all good ones! I looked successful on the outside. But inside I was dying. I was crying. I was silently screaming and felt alone.

As I reshaped my success, I could see new ways to live, new ways to work, and new ways to share myself with the world.

I share all of this and so much more in my upcoming book release, Unapologetically Enough: Reshaping Success & Self-Love. It’s due out May 24th and being called a mental health must-have and essential self-love tool.

Grab yourself a copy as you start to reshape what success means to you!