036 | From Burnout to Breakthrough: Claire Darr’s Secrets to Energized Success in High-Pressure Careers

Patrick Longergan [0:06 – 1:19]: Welcome back to the Vital Strategies podcast. I’m your host, Patrick Lonergan. And in today’s episode, we’re talking with Claire Darr. Claire is a transformation life coach to high income earners. Claire is a former corporate lawyer turned life and business coach. She’s dedicated to helping others discover their purpose in life and experience how it feels to live their lives to the fullest. Through practical real life solutions, Claire teaches others how to create massive transformation and impact. Together, we discuss how to get out of the state of overwhelm and how mental and physical health are tied together. Stay to the end, where I challenge the idea of balance with Claire and how to develop a career that ties in with your passions. Let’s dive into the conversation with Claire Darr. Claire, I am excited that you are here today. You are the founder of Claire Dar transformational living, and I’m excited to get into what transformational living really looks like because I think there’s maybe some misperceptions out there in the world as to what society tells us we should be doing and then what actually brings us to a fulfilled life. I’d really like to start with your background. Just give us a little bit of your history and then talk about maybe the evolution from where you started to where you’re at now. So can you fill in some of your backstory for us?

Claire Darr [1:20 – 2:58]: I’m happy to and I’m so happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me. Patrick. My journey started out very simply, and I’m from England, by the way, so you maybe can pick up a bit of an accent. I grew up in England and moved to the US 27 years ago. So I always, from an early age, wanted to be an attorney. I saw a tv show when I was a little kid and I wanted to be an attorney. I was laser focused on becoming an attorney and so much so that I actually have two law degrees, one on both sides of the Atlantic because I really, really wanted to be an attorney. And it’s the running joke with everyone who knows me now. What are you doing now? And I’m like, not using the law degree, but I really, from an early age, wanted to do something enriching, exciting that I learned that I added value. And I thought being an attorney was the answer to that. And it’s funny, when you say I’m an attorney or I want to be an attorney, you get oohs and ahs from the world. It’s still kind of a high profile, put you on a pedestal thing, and that begins to feed an ego. You think you’re doing something wonderful, you know, so I spent so much of my life laser focused on that. And truth be told, money was a great part of it, too. I wanted it all back then, and I still do. It seemed like the perfect thing, and I succeeded. And when I say succeeded, I was very successful. And I really want to air quote right now, I was that version of successful. I had the amazing job, the big office in the fancy building, and I had the title, and I had the money, and I had the clients. And about a year into it, I realized, is this it? This is not what I signed up for.

Patrick Longergan [2:58 – 3:52]: This is so interesting, so many parallels to, I’ll say, my story. I graduated undergrad with a political science degree. I don’t even know what you do with that other than go to law school. I was fortunate. I got accepted to the University of Iowa, applied to the University of Minnesota, hadn’t heard back from them, and got married in the meantime and moved to the Twin Cities. I figured, if I don’t get into Minnesota, well, I’ll just work for a year. And fortunately, I did. I worked for a year for a publicly traded company that was filing bankruptcy, and I was in charge of the data room. So I got to work with all of these corporate attorneys in some of the best law firms in the nation. We worked with two different law firms because there was a conflict of interest. And it was so interesting when that change happened. All these first year attorneys showed up from Stanford, Harvard, Yale. We were all riding up in the elevator to the 26th floor where all the data was, and they were like, we don’t care what you do. Don’t do this. And I’m like, wait a minute. You guys are the best law school students, graduated from the best schools.

Claire Darr [3:52 – 3:53]: You’re it.

Patrick Longergan [3:53 – 4:35]: You achieved working at the best firms, and you’re telling me not to do it? And they’re like, it’s just not worth it. We have to build two x. Our salary every hour is not a billable hour. It’s just a grind, and none of us like it. We’re in Minneapolis. We’re going to be in Minneapolis five or six days a week. Our families or people we care about are in cities. It’s spread across the United States. And I was like, oh, my gosh. So in the meantime, I get a full ride to law school, to a small school in twin cities, and I’m like, how do I do this? You know? What do I do? Long story short, I was late for my first class buying a piece of real estate. And my wife encouraged me to quit before midterms, and so I did. And now here we are. I think we both sort of were on that. And I saw some of these partners I was working with, their health. I could almost see them getting unhealthier.

Claire Darr [4:36 – 4:36]: Fully, of airy eyes.

Patrick Longergan [4:37 – 4:45]: The bags under their eyes, they’re adding weight. I’m just like, oh, my goodness. I don’t think this is what I want to do. Sounds like that realization kicked in for both of us.

Claire Darr [4:45 – 4:54]: People will say to me, oh, my son or daughter is thinking about law school. And I’ll say, do you want me to talk them into it or out of it? Because I can do both pretty easily if one easier than the other.

Patrick Longergan [4:55 – 5:05]: Yeah. And I tell people, I’m like, here’s my experience. But I’ve got some great relationships with people that enjoy the practice a lot. I can get you plugged into those folks, and you can get their perspective.

Claire Darr [5:05 – 5:07]: Absolutely. No, that’s true.

Patrick Longergan [5:07 – 5:18]: Okay. There was like, the light bulb went off. It looks like I’m having success from a worldly perspective, but internally, I’m maybe not as satisfied as I thought I was going to be. So can you talk a little bit about that shift and what happened next?

Claire Darr [5:18 – 8:29]: Well, what’s interesting is when you’ve worked so hard to get somewhere and you thought that was the dream, and it’s everyone else’s dream, and it’s an accepted and rewarded dream, it makes you think there’s something wrong with you at first, what is it about me? Can I not hack it? Am I not good enough? You go through all of that, and sometimes you’re told that maybe you don’t have what it takes. And then again, ego kicks in. So I did spend a period of time battling it, thinking, I can get through this, it will get better. And then I did what you did. I observed everyone around me, and I looked at who here is a role model, who is living a life that I want to have in the future? And I couldn’t find any women living the life. I remember going through hundreds of women at the law firm. There was one man. I was like, oh, I could see myself. And it turns out he was independently wealthy and really didn’t need the job, and he had a whole different reason for him being there. And so that set me on the path of, there’s got to be something else. I’m not willing to accept that. It’s either this and this is success or it’s nothing. I just give it up and become a surf bomb somewhere or, you know, whatever that is. There is something good in between. And it actually took me a long time because I’m quite methodical and I don’t want to enter into things lightly to work through that. I actually moved from a law firm to an in house position thinking that would give me more freedom. And it didn’t. It didn’t. I didn’t have to track every six minutes of my day, but I was on duty twenty four seven. And it was honestly having a family that shifted things for me. I think your priorities do shift when there are major things. It doesn’t have to be having children, but when major events happen in your life, I think it causes you to view the lens of what you’re doing. I started listening to a lot of personal development work, work that encouraged me to look to a life beyond a life that I could create. It didn’t have to be the set pattern that everyone else was on. And I just got curious. I trusted myself to be open to whatever might come my way. And I remember one day, sitting at the desk in the big office with the fancy glass and the title, just a piece of paper, saying, okay, if I could design my dream life, no one gets to see this. I can write whatever I want on this piece of paper. I don’t have to be embarrassed. What would it look like? And it was fantastical at the time. And I love to get people to do this because it’s really hard for people to just suspend reality, especially for grownups, right? To suspend reality. Like, we don’t do that. And I wrote down, I remember, work, lessen, make more money, enjoy beautiful things around me, enjoy time with people. Stop outsourcing my life to people. I was outsourcing my life to people so I could go make more money to pay the people to go live my life for me, right? And I ultimately, I wrote a bunch of stuff. And I wrote I want it all. And then I thought, oh, my goodness, how dare I ask for it all? And I thought, yes, I’m going to dare to ask for it all. And how do I do that? And then I became open and curious to opportunities that came my way.

Patrick Longergan [8:29 – 9:42]: I love it. There’s so many things that you touched on there. Like, first you created this new possibility. Then you became open to it. Then the door started opening and you’re like, okay, this can be real. Cause I think so often we get hung up in our limiting beliefs. Just sort of put us in this box. It often becomes an or scenario. I can have this or this. It’s not an and scenario. I can’t have it all. I can’t make good money and have a personal life and enjoy time with my family. I have to pick one. So good for you for sort of recognizing those beliefs and then going, all right, I’m going to accept this as a new reality for me and strive to get there. Now can I bring it to real practical for a second? Cause I think there’s this situation and I can look back at my life as an entrepreneur, and I’m sure you’ve been there. We’re in this place of overwhelm. You were talking about outsourcing your life to people, right. I don’t even have enough time to do the things that I want to do. So if we think about this idea of the pressures of life, from when I wake up to when I go to bed, I just feel like it’s on me. How do I create any margin to start creating some of these small little habits that will help get me out of this? I’ll call it cycle that I’m in that is just burning me up.

Claire Darr [9:43 – 13:06]: It starts with acknowledging and seeing and identifying that you have this burning need to make a change, that you’re potentially in a state of burnout. I think so many people are living in this state of accepting overwhelm or depletion or levels of unhappiness as just how it is. It’s kind of what you’re supposed to do. You stay that way until you retire, maybe, and then you get to go live a life. So it starts with making a decision that there is something more for you, that you get to have something more, that you deserve to have something more when you do that and you make that commitment, because the commitment has to be there first, the commitment to allotting the time. Because if we don’t think we’re worth the time, then we won’t find it, right? If we’re not valuable enough, we’re going to put everyone else ahead of us, work, family, whatever situation. So it’s making that commitment to ourself first. Then it really is about finding clarity around the areas that you need to make a change in and asking yourself the hard questions. And that’s not easy sometimes. So it’s looking at your life. I like to see our lives in buckets, four areas. And work, by the way, is not one of the buckets, because work is just work. Career is just career. It’s not one of our buckets. So physical health are emotional and mental health, our relationships and spirituality, whatever that means to you. Looking at those four areas and seeing where you’re depleted, where you’re less than, where you really could improve. It takes time. I don’t know when I work with a client, you don’t know when you work with people where they’re lacking. Right. They need to do that deep dive. I found people find it easy to look at physical. Oh, well, I should work out more. I need more sleep. That’s an easy one. Relationships are harder. I’m not showing up for my kids, I’m not spending time with my spouse. But being aware of these areas and asking yourself the hard questions. Then again, coming back to making the commitment to filling these buckets, doing things intentionally every day, that will help me in one of these areas feel better, show up better, and trusting that it will happen, then carving out the time. We all have time. Time expands. People don’t like to believe that, but time does expand. The busiest of people can make time. You can find time in your day. What people don’t like to do sometimes is make that commitment and carve out the time for themselves. It feels selfish. It feels like it’s a waste or you’re stuck in an old cycle of, but I get up and I immediately chug coffee and I get in the car because I’ve snoozed five times. So for me and for a lot of my clients, it starts with a really good morning routine. Not a morning person. I trained myself to become a morning person. Getting up before everyone else and having some practices that you do every day that become as simple as brushing your teeth. You don’t think about it anymore. And then you start to layer and layer. And I think the important thing is it’s not an all or nothing. It’s not okay. I have to start going to the gym. I have to spend time with my spouse. I have to journal. I have to meditate. I have to. You slowly start to implement these things every day so that it becomes second nature to you.

Patrick Longergan [13:06 – 15:46]: This is great. There’s so many things I want to touch on there. One of the things you acknowledged, and I think this is so good, is we can be aware of a problem, but oftentimes there’s not the willingness or the acceptance that I need to go take action on it. I think the easiest one to look at is my physical health. You mentioned that. Yes, I’ve got some issues with my physical health, but I’m not willing to take the time and energy to make that a priority. And that leads me to Stephen Covey’s seven habits of highly effective people and his rocks idea. If we put the big rocks in first, the most important things, and I’m going to argue the things that you outline, physical, emotional and mental health, relationships and spirituality, those are big rocks that need to be attention. Cubby says you put the big rocks in first and then the medium sized pebble. And then if you pour the sand in, it all sort of fits. If you put the sand in first and then the pebbles, then there’s no room for the big rocks. So like you mentioned, in that scenario, time expands to accommodate all of those things. Well, and I like the analogy of when you get on an airplane, they tell you to put your air mask on first in case of emergency before you help someone else. Cause it’s like if I’m passed out, I’m useless. I can’t help anybody if I’m incapacitated. So I think about that in these things, and it’s like, well, I will take care of myself after I do all these other things. No, you have to take care of yourself first, because when you’re showing up with your best self, you can be more effective in all these other areas. And you’re probably so much more efficient with better results. I just wanted to bring all those pieces into the mix because I think it’s so true. And with our clients, we have an acronym called Reach. So the r is for relationships. Agree with you there ease for experiences like hobbies. And I even put bad experiences in there. Things I’ve screwed up, I’ve learned so much from. And I wouldn’t give those things up, without doubt. So that’s a good one. A’s for advancement or growth, just continuing to make progress. C is for contribution. This fits into the spirituality thing. The scriptures tell us it’s better to give than receive. H is for our health, and we think there’s three components to that. Physical health. I can’t give me cancer for any amount of money. There’s my emotional, mental health. If I’m depressed, then I can’t get out of bed. I what good is it? And then there’s a spiritual health component as well. So I couldn’t agree more with you on those buckets. We think those all align perfectly with the way we think about these things. So I appreciate that process to getting out of overwhelm is like just take one small bite at a time, because I think social media can be problematic. It’s like if you look at all of the advice on what your morning routine should look like, I think a morning routine is great. I am an early riser and I check a lot of important boxes in the morning. But if you’re not careful, it can be a four hour morning routine. Between your journaling, working out cold, plunging sauna, meditation, you need the laminated sheba.

Claire Darr [15:46 – 16:07]: Check, check, check, check, check. And you know, one thing to expand on that just a little bit, the thing that I found through working with hundreds of people in this area of habit formation that a lot of people discount is make it fun too. Because if you’re not going to put a habit into place that you actually enjoy and will do, you’re a human. What’s going to happen?

Patrick Longergan [16:07 – 16:08]: Not going to do it.

Claire Darr [16:08 – 16:33]: You’re going to avoid it. You’re not going to do it. You might do it for a week or two weeks or whatever. You’ll never get to the 21 days or however many days they say. So find things that are fun and that you will look forward to doing that become sacred to you. Your morning routine is sacred to you now and play around with it. If it’s not working out for you, you get to decide that might work for Claire or Patrick. It doesn’t work for me. I’m going to find the thing that works for me.

Patrick Longergan [16:33 – 17:33]: We’re programmed to want a drive through breakthrough. We want it all better right now. And I think the thing that we discount is the impact of small incremental improvements like stacked on top of each other over a long period of time. You can get twelve months out and look back and be like, I don’t even recognize that person. That’s twelve months ago. Where if I take an extreme example, like, let’s say my fitness is out of whack and I go to the gym and work out for 24 hours straight, that’s actually going to be worse for me than not working out at all because I’m not going to be able to move for a week. So I just need to show up for probably 30 minutes every day for a couple months and I’m going to get way more impact out of that commitment than I am. Like this massive effort, I think this small incremental improvements. And also you touched on this too. I love building systems around things. I like to make it super easy for me to eat well, to move my body, have all these things sort of lined up and go, yes, it’s wonderful. Another thing you touched on is sleep. I like to beat the drum on how valuable sleep is. I wear this thing on my wrist called whoop. It tracks my recovery and myself right.

Claire Darr [17:33 – 17:35]: Now, yes, I love it.

Patrick Longergan [17:35 – 17:48]: So I love my whoop because it sort of gamifies my recovery and rest and all those other things, and I find out what things help me sleep better. So you touched on sleep. Can you just talk about how much sleep impacts our general well being?

Claire Darr [17:49 – 20:22]: Well, I’m not a statistician, and so I’m going to generalize here, but, you know, they do, like in lack of sleep the next day, such physical impairment where you get behind the wheel, and it’s as if you’ve had certain amount of alcohol, you are physically impaired. Our bodies and our brains need that time to recalibrate, to reset. And we live in a world. It’s just become normal for us to wear it as a badge of honor. I only got 4 hours sleep, and I’m still going, and I’ve got the caffeine or the energy drink. And we don’t realize the compounding effect that lack of sleep has on the health of our system in general. And one of the biggest discoveries I’ve made in recent years is nervous system regulation. That’s what the whoop helps you with. You really can learn what’s impacting your nervous system in a good way and a bad way. And it’s fun to see when you do all of the things that are right, moving your body, even just a little bit, getting consistent, because that’s the other thing that is consistent sleep. It’s not 8 hours one night and then three or four the next. It’s consistently so that your body has that ability, your brain has that ability to recharge and reset. We are not machines. And that is the time our bodies were designed to go to sleep when it got dark and wake up when it got light and then go to action throughout the day. So it makes me really just sad. And I’ve lived this life, by the way, where I did without sleep. And I kept going. I kept going. I kept going. Luckily, nothing terrible happened to me, but my health was compromised. I know my judgment was compromised. I know my ability to show up and do my best was compromised. Why not set yourself up for the best possible success? And what I found, most people, when they say, I don’t have time to get enough sleep, we can find that, oh, well, the Netflix show, you don’t have to. Well, but my husband. Okay, well, we can have a conversation. We can do so many things to have good sleep hygiene, but most people don’t give it a good enough shot, is what I found. And if you can gamify it the way you have. Better yet, because we all love a challenge. We all like to compete in some ways and win something. If we all want to see the green on our little thing, then we see a yellow. We’re like, oh, what can I do? So it is one of the simplest things that we all need, that we all will sacrifice simple other basic human needs like hydration and nutrition. We sacrifice it because we think there’s not enough time or someone else needs us.

Patrick Longergan [20:22 – 21:15]: That’s great. And there is a show on called mythbusters. It’s been off the air for a while, but they did a study where they took some of the Mythbuster staff. They made them sleep deprived. They gave him a driving test, and then they gave him alcohol. And it was amazing to see how many drinks it took to get to the sleep deprived state, like, how poor of a driver they would be. It was really interesting how it was the equivalent of, like, I don’t know, seven or eight drinks is what being sleep deprived was like. Oh, my goodness. It’s, uh, I it’s incredible. And your likelihood of injury goes up when you’re sleep deprived. Yeah. I just feel like it just gets into this bad cycle. Now you’re drinking caffeine throughout the afternoon. People are like, oh, I can drink a bunch of caffeine and go to sleep. You’re right. But your recovery is not going to be the same. Your quality of sleep is not going to be the same as if you start, like you mentioned, getting your sleep in order and doing some of those good things before you go to bed.

Claire Darr [21:15 – 21:35]: My clients are often somewhat disappointed at first, and then they see the magic of it when we start working together. And one of the first things I talk about is, what does your sleep look like? What does your hydration, your nutrition, these basic things. And they’re like, when are we going to get to the achieving? And I was like, we will get there, but we got to start with the foundation.

Patrick Longergan [21:35 – 21:49]: Good. Are there other physical things we should be doing? Obviously, hydration matters. I think nutrition probably matters. Is there some other physical things we should be paying attention to to lay a solid foundation before we start trying to life hack our way into balance?

Claire Darr [21:50 – 22:56]: We talked about exercise. It doesn’t have to be hitting a gym. It can just be getting outside and becoming aware of our surroundings. I think, again, we as a culture, as a nation have gotten used to being indoors, being behind a desk, being behind a device, and we just don’t get outside and experience. So I tell people, just even go for a walk, go stand outside. Just go experience being outside. So taking little breaks throughout the day to just go outside and breathe is huge breath work. I don’t know if you are a proponent of it, but it’s one of my favorite things. So many of us don’t breathe. And, you know, I say that people go, of course I’m breathing. I’m like, you’re kind of not. You know, we hold our breath a lot. Breath work is the simplest. It doesn’t cost you a thing. No one needs to know you’re doing it. You can sit behind your desk in a busy environment and do breath work, but taking in that oxygen and letting it do its work within your body, that is one of the best things I’ve found for nervous system regulation, for clarity, for mental focus.

Patrick Longergan [22:57 – 23:37]: Yeah, there’s a great book out there called Breathe by James Nestor, I believe it is. And it talks about how important it is in so many different domains and how even the shape of our face will change when we start breathing properly, like how it’s so good for us. And then I’ve also paid some attention to wim Hof. He’s almost a superhuman with what he can do with his breathing. So I have to admit I don’t have, like, a consistent breath work practice. I do some cold showers and plunges and that type of thing, and my breathing definitely comes into play during those things. But I’ve got some friends that the breath work component is very important. I appreciate you bringing that up, and that’s something I’m going to start paying a little more attention to in my life.

Claire Darr [23:37 – 24:46]: I highly encourage it. Then tell me the ideas that come, the clarity and the ideas. When you’re a creative, particularly an entrepreneur, and that’s part of your business world, is coming up with ideas and seeking solutions. It’s brilliant for that. One of the biggest things that I have found with my clients, with myself, that can really bring you back to a good present state and help regulate, call it whatever you will, meditation, prayer, reflection. We don’t, as a busy nation culture, spend enough time going within and really thinking. We don’t give ourselves the time to do that. It doesn’t need to be hours upon end. It can be a few minutes again. You can do it in the morning and do it in the evening, but spending time just reflecting, seeing what comes to you again, that could be in a prayerful way. For those who like to pray, it can be in a meditative way. It can just be playing music and just stopping. Because so much of our lives is going on to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, and who needs me and what’s pinging and what’s dinging. So taking that time, it’s, for me, sacred time is so valuable.

Patrick Longergan [24:46 – 25:25]: That’s fantastic. And I think you hit on a really valuable point having our phones close to us. It’s so reactive. Our brains will take just a moment to just be silent and we can’t handle it. We have to, like, pick up a phone and see what’s happening. So a practice that I’ve started is Andrew Huberman’s got my attention around sunlight. First thing in the morning, I will go outside and get my ten minutes of sunlight. After working out, I just don’t have my phone. I set a timer on my watch and I just am quiet. It’s amazing how the first few minutes I’m like anxious, trying to figure out what I can do to distract myself. And then I just sort of be present in nature and sort of hear the birds. And I do use it as a time to pray as well. And it’s just good.

Claire Darr [25:25 – 25:45]: And it doesn’t have to be long. Like you said, ten minutes, five minutes, whatever it is. I think if you just give it a shot, you would be amazed. I love the experiment when you’re in a room with other people and one person pulls out a phone, and then it’s everyone, and I’ll do my best. No, I’m just going to be here and be present and just notice.

Patrick Longergan [25:45 – 26:01]: Yeah. You brought this point up. With relationships. We as a family do a good job. I’m sure we could be better. But when we go out to dinner or we’re having dinner, the phones are somewhere else. And oftentimes we’ll go out and I’ll look over at the next table and everybody at the table’s like, got their face in their phone. I’m like, why don’t you just talk to each other?

Claire Darr [26:01 – 26:28]: I know you’re right there. And that’s something else that I love to talk to people about is connectedness. Be it your family, be it a person in line at the grocery store, seeing them and engaging with them, that connectedness is something else that we as people need. Again, it’s something that my clients think, okay, when are we going to get to the propelling my life part? This is all part of it. It is all part of you enriching your life.

Patrick Longergan [26:28 – 27:16]: That’s fantastic. Now I’d like to move on to talking a little bit about balance. I’m going to get nitpicky with my words here. Okay, so balance in my mind connotates, like, equal weights. I don’t feel like our lives are balanced. I like the word harmony better. Maybe I can hear some music and there’s just the right amount of violin in the mix and there might be more saxophone. And so I feel like our lives need to be in harmony. And I love the buckets. I guess one of the questions I have is, what is the process, for lack of a better term? If I’m at a seven in one category, going to an eight is okay, but if I’m at a two and I can go to a three or four, that’s better. How do you help? People sort of assessed where they’re at in the different buckets and then start to put a plan in place to bring some of those, I’ll call them lower numbers up a little.

Claire Darr [27:16 – 30:08]: I totally agree. I mean, balance requires me. I’m in the middle and I’m doing this somehow and something’s going to give. I visualize the buckets, the levels, and when you said play music and the harmony right there is. There’s a flow to it. And at certain points in a life or in a piece of music, some may be a little higher, some may be a little lower, and that’s okay. That’s part of what puts this kind of collective, holistic life together and creates the harmony. So again, back to my four buck is my four categories. I first have people assess kind of truthfully, where are you? Where are you feeling most depleted? Where are you at a two or a three? Where are you at a six or a seven? You could be at a nine. We’re still going to identify these simple, doable, fun things that you can start to implement in your life, to keep topping you up, to keep those levels adjusting. But that’s the key. On a daily basis, sometimes there needs to be a little bit of a rebalancing on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, there needs to be a truthful rebalancing of where you are. And there may be seasons in life or a particular day in life where one category is off a little and that’s okay. But my goal for people is to never completely run dry, to be completely depleted, where you have to build yourself up. So health, you get so depleted in your health that you’re knocked out for two weeks, you’re sick as a dog and you can’t get up. No one wants to have to come back from that. So to be able to keep just a little bit in there and top things up where you need it. That’s what the harmony is for me. It does require someone to pay attention to how they’re feeling physically, to looking at the relationships. Where have I been great with my relationships? Where have I been lacking? How would I rate myself? People find their cadence. It’s not a one size fits all. Which again, spoiler alert, we’re not all robots. You and I will have different levels. We’re not a one size fits all. What works for me might not work for you, but you find what works for you within it. So it may be a weekly, it may be a monthly rebalancing of your buckets and start to be really clear about, you know, what? I said I would do that, and I just haven’t been, or it’s no longer important to me. But you know what is? I’m going to put this in and try it out. We get to make these decisions every day in what is going to fill us up and build us up and replenish us and revitalize us. But you have to put it front and center. And I’ve found the best way people can do that is to really log it and be strategic about it, at first, at least, but then come back to it. And if you feel like you’re off a little, just adjust. You get to adjust this.

Patrick Longergan [30:08 – 31:13]: I love that I think about all of this work that you’re doing. The goal is to settle into our passions, like, let’s do the things that we’re passionate about now. I feel like this word gets tossed around a lot, and I think it gets confused at times. Hey, kids, go pursue your passions. And it’s like, I don’t even know what my passions are. I haven’t spent enough time doing anything to really develop this. And I could see bouncing around from one thing to the next. And if I confuse my passions with happiness, because sometimes pursuing my passions looks a lot like hard work, you know, to make something come to be. And I think there’s a lot of reward that comes from that hard work. But I’d like to just pause and talk about passions and maybe how to develop some of those, because I think you’ve talked about some things early on in our discussion around, almost like the deferred life plan, like, I will do that later. And we don’t even know what we enjoy doing anymore. So how do we go about figuring out what our passions are and sort of developing those? Because sometimes our lives between work and family and just the busyness we sort of forget all those things. Could you talk a little bit about our passion?

Claire Darr [31:13 – 33:37]: We do forget about it. And one of the best things when people start to reignite this is they remember when you were a kid, you remembered all the things you loved, all the things that lit you up, all of those things. And somewhere along the way we put them behind to be sensible and to go make the money and to take care of the family. And so passion to me, brings us to fulfillment, purpose. Why am I here? And you can ask, what am I passionate about? What is my why for being here? Why do I think I show up every day? So I ask simple questions and I actually have people get very, very honest and journal on this. And the simple questions are, what lights me up, what fires me up, what can I get behind? And I can just feel that energy. What feels right there may be the thing that I think I should do, or everyone else is doing it, or it seems like it’s the right thing to do, but it doesn’t feel right to me. So that feeling is important. What feels right and aligned to me? What am I good at? I’m good at a whole lot of things. And then there’s the other stuff, right? But what am I good at? And what makes me feel truly alive? And I think if we can be bold and claim the answers to those questions and we’re not committing ourselves to giving up work. And I always say, go live on a goat farm. I had a friend who had a gilt farm, and so that’s why I pictured this guilt farm. I’m not saying that, but I’m saying you really, again, getting clarity and asking yourself these questions, because you deserve to know the answers to these, you deserve to champion for the answers to these. And you can start looking for little ways, just like I said, once I became open and curious, doors started opening, ideas started coming to what you can do with the thing that lights you up, fires you, feels good, you’re good at and makes you feel alive. It may or may not be a money making thing. It may be, but it surely will be a fulfilling, aligned, value driven thing if you find that it can really propel you in so many other areas, is what I’ve seen with my clients. But the first step is to claim it, to know you deserve it. And we all get to do this. It doesn’t have to wait for a time, and it doesn’t have to only be with the child.

Patrick Longergan [33:37 – 35:28]: Yeah. So I’m going to make a couple of distinctions. My wife is excellent at running her business. She’s got 400 employees. She is so much better at running a business than I am. It’s amazing. It is not where her passion lies. She’s very skillful at it. If you ask her where her passion lies, she’s like, I want to be out in my bare feet in my garden growing some plants. Our yard looks like it fell out of better homes and gardens. Like, the plants are amazing. The flowers are gorgeous this time of year, so it’s a ton of fun. She’s an amazing cook. She loves to design. All of those things are where her passion lies. And she’s like, I’m sort of glad that it’s not my career because I can just go do it. I can do it the way I want. I don’t have to fit it into anybody else’s box, and I enjoy it. And she makes time to do those things. So when she shows up to work, she’s, like, ready to rock and roll for work, where I’m, like the opposite. I love my work. I love solving the problems that I get to solve. And my passion lies here again over my shoulder. It says, make life great. I want to help our clients make great lives. And if we can do that by sending less money to the IR’s, like, it’s a win all the way around. So we get really excited about solving those complex financial problems. That’s where I think my passion lies. There’s three circles, and when they all overlap, like, that’s a great career. It’s like, do you have the passion for it? Do you have the skillset to do it? Well, like, I might be really passionate about singing, but I’m terrible, right? And there’s going to be no market value for that, so that’s not going to be a great career. But it’s like, if I’m passionate, I’ve got the skillset and there’s market demand for it. It’s like, that’s the sweet spot. So I just appreciate looking at your journey. You went from, hey, I might be really skilled as a corporate attorney. There’s a market demand for this, but this is not where my passion lies. And so you went, well, where does my passion lie? And you’ve found a way to bring your skill, and there’s obviously demand for this. So you seem to found that sweet spot in that diagram as well.

Claire Darr [35:28 – 36:53]: Yes, and I never take that for granted. I value that. I did find that sweet spot. I didn’t know when I started on this journey that I would. I asked myself those questions, and I found the things that I enjoyed that lit me up and felt easy to me. This is easy and fun, but I love that you talked about your wife, because I want to give permission to the people who have a career, have a business, have a working life that they’re like, yeah, it’s great. I appreciate it and I value it. But my passion lies here. For them to see that showing up over here can fuel the passion over here. And living into the thing that they’re good at and that they’re passionate about, the gardening, the cooking, enriches them. Because, again, we’re all one person, right? We bring ourselves everywhere. We’re here and we’re here. Enriches you to show up over here and do the very best you can do over here. And sometimes I’m asked by clients, but if I’m just lacking in it over here, but I have to stay. There are so many things dependent on me. What do I do? I don’t think it’s realistic. It’s like, go be passionate about it if it’s just not there. But you can fall in love with little things about it. Again, you can appreciate and have gratitude for things about it. And that starts to help kind of fuel you in that area, even if you don’t have a driving passion for it. I hope that makes sense. But there’s always something you can be grateful for and fall in love with.

Patrick Longergan [36:53 – 38:56]: I guess it absolutely does. And one thing that I think that I’ve come to acknowledge is I never like to put myself in a position where I don’t feel like I have choices. For example, if I believe that I have to keep doing this job, it’s going to limit myself, like you talked about early on, to seeing what’s possible, what opportunities are out there, what doors could be open for me to go pursue something different. So I think we have to also maybe acknowledge that we always have options. Now, we might not like the consequence of those options. If I quit my job today, my family might rely on me to bring home an income. And so that could be a foolish decision, but it may not be a foolish decision to take a season in my life and commit to that side hustle. That might be the full time thing that I’m going to devote some time on. Some evenings and weekends. I’m going to cancel my Netflix subscription, delete my social media. Right. And the time I’m devoting to those things, I’m going to devote to my side hustle now, that can lead me to a new opportunity that I’m now in that sweet spot of passion, skill and market value. All right, Claire, this has been a fantastic conversation. I’d love to talk a little bit about how people can engage with you. I can go read a book, but when I go pursue things that I think are valuable in my life, I tend to go find, I’ll call it a coach to help me along the way. So I’m just going to start listing the coaches I have in my life. I have a concierge doctor that helps me make sure my health is at its sort of peak. I have a virtual coach on the fitness side of things. I’ve got a mental health coach I go to every week just to make sure that I’m well there. I’ve got a couple different business coaches that I’m tuned into. I’ve had relationship coaches in the past because my marriage is very important. So all of those pieces are super important. So I look at this concept of burnout and living a life where I’ve got full buckets of physical, emotional, mental health. My relationships are strong and I’m solid spiritually as being something that it’d be nice to have somebody guide me through the process on. You’ve got a number of different ways that people can engage with you. Can you just walk us through maybe what the easiest way is for somebody to sort of check you out all the way up to one on one coaching looks like?

Claire Darr [38:56 – 40:42]: Absolutely. I always invite a conversation. I’m not a scary person. I’m an open person and I love people and I love to talk. But I also like to meet people where they are so however people are comfortable, a lot of people find me via social media. I have a LinkedIn profile. Claire Hetherington Darr I have an Instagram profile iamclaredar. What they’ll find when they go there is I speak from the heart about what’s important in my life and what I know helps people. I have various free resources available that they can click on links. I have a website. The resources will help. There’s a variety of things for whatever you might need in life, from self care to audio affirmations to goal setting and productivity. I have various digital products for people to do in their own time. The filling the buckets is it’s standalone and it’s very fun and exciting. I have a transformational product and journey or people can work with me one to one in a private coaching session. I am a firm believer now that everyone will benefit from having a coach in some form in their life. It depends on where you are in your journey, what you’re ready for. So I think with the suite of offerings and way, you can work with me. Some are free, some are paid, that you will benefit in some way. My goal is to have an impact in someone’s life and start to make incremental change and feeling better every day. Having a coach is such a smart move for people. I have many coaches too, and I’ve had many relationships with coaches and they’ve had a season in my life, some of them. So I invite anyone to reach out to me, message me directly and I would love to help in any way I can and continue conversations.

Patrick Longergan [40:42 – 40:56]: I love it. And we will have links to all of those things in the show notes. And also this episode will be coming out on July 16. That’s going to be Tuesday. And you also have a three day free workshop that starts today. People are listening to this today.

Claire Darr [40:56 – 40:59]: It starts on the 16th, actually, right.

Patrick Longergan [40:59 – 41:08]: When this episode airs. You can go to the link in the show notes. We’ll have that for the three day free workshop that people can just tune in and start to figure out how to beat the burnout.

Claire Darr [41:08 – 41:25]: Yes, tune in. Listen, you’ll get some great tips. My goal is by the end of the three days, you feel different, you feel a shift. And when people register, I’ll give you the recordings as well so you can listen to them in your own time and have access to that. So I would love anyone to come along.

Patrick Longergan [41:26 – 41:34]: Yeah. Thank you, Claire. I’ve appreciated this conversation. Is there anything else that we need to touch on that we haven’t talked about so far about? I’ll say living our best lives.

Claire Darr [41:34 – 42:03]: If I could leave anyone with anything. It’s just hopefully the work you do and the conversation today and beyond just sparks that little bit of desire in someone to ask the question, what else? What else? Can I have to your point earlier? The yes and life we get to ask for that. I want everyone to know they can have it right now. You don’t have to put it off and it can be easier than you think. And fun, right? We’re making it fun.

Patrick Longergan [42:04 – 42:30]: Absolutely. Claire, this has been wonderful. It’s been really valuable for us and our listeners. We’ve had a number of clients that unfortunately have sort of tipped over into that burnout phase and they’re put out physically, emotionally, mentally for days or weeks. That’s not okay. I think we need to be proactive in these things and I think this conversation is fantastic. One to get our people just thinking about these things being well and it’s not all about the grind at the end of the day. So I appreciate you so much for joining us.

Claire Darr [42:30 – 42:34]: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me and I’m wishing everyone well.

Patrick Longergan [42:35 – 43:40]: Thank you for listening to the Vital Strategies podcast. We wanted to give you the first look at the tools we’re developing that will help you with the four cornerstones of wealth building. To be an insider to get access to the tools to help manage your cash flow, create a tax strategy, invest wisely and protect the wealth you’re building, go to vitalstrategies.com cornerstones. You’ll be first in line to get access. These tools are designed to help you pay less tax so you can build more wealth and live a great life again. The website is vitalstrategies.com cornerstones. I want to remind you to rate and review the Vital Strategies podcast on your favorite platform. Your feedback helps us towards our goal of saving our clients and listeners over $1 billion in taxes. Those dollars are better used in your hands versus the government bureaucracy. Thank you for listening and for being a vital entrepreneur. You’re vital because you’re the backbone of our economy, creating opportunities for your employees and driving growth. You’re vital to your family, fostering abundance not only financially, but in all areas of life that matter. Finally, you are vital to me because you strive to build wealth and make an impact through your business business and live a great life.