From Burnout to Belonging with Rachel Druckenmiller

BlogPodcast

Jan 21

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This week’s guest is Rachel Druckenmiller, speaker and founder of Unmuted. Host Kevin Monroe promises that their conversation will be inspiring and enjoyable, but also a bit challenging and controversial.

Rachel says that she has always been an overachiever. Once she realized that she could be successful at school, she decided to keep at it and carried the same attitude into her career. Kevin reflects that the hustle for approval started very early for him as well. Approval is dangled in front of us as a carrot, he says, and it’s the reward that keeps us performing.
We have this idea that if it's worthwhile, it's going to be hard; and if it's not hard enough, we're going to make it harder.
Rachel says that she had to be the best, and that meant constantly looking for ways to prove herself to people. When we're insecure, she says, we have this tendency to oversell ourselves instead of just letting our work speak for us. Kevin posits that more money is traded on the Insecurity Exchange than the Securities Exchange. We do all these things to prove that we’re good enough.
Tying your identity, self-worth and sense of belonging to your achievements is a very dangerous place to be, Rachel warns. Kevin calls this the “will be when ____” phenomenon, because we think we will belong or will be good enough when we achieve something or check some box. He argues that there’s never an end to the boxes we need to check because once we’ve checked one box, we replace it with another. As such, we never feel like we belong or that we are good enough. Rachel agrees; she says that she always felt that love and acceptance were on the other side of achievement.
Rachel relates that she burned out three years ago, and how that experience led her to realize her value as a person.
Kevin talks about Dr. Emil Brunner’s Cycle of Grace. Flip the cycle and start with acceptance, he says.
We punish ourselves mercilessly to get acceptance, which is really a free gift, Kevin says.
None of us can make any impact on anybody else in isolation, Kevin points out. Even if you work by yourself, he advises you to find a way to connect with other people.
Start with what brings you joy, Rachel says, and invite others into that joy. Reach out and have a conversation. Take the initiative to join or create the kinds of communities that you want to be a part of.
Rachel lives by these principles now:
- What is meant for you will not pass by you. If you're meant to do something in the course of your life, everything will conspire to make it happen despite how you might try to prevent it.
- No amount of achievements and accomplishment will ever fill the hole left by a lack of connection and belonging.
- You were born to belong. The fact that you exist means that you’re wanted in the world.
Kevin asks Rachel how she experiences life differently now. She says she now makes it a priority to make time for the people who mean the most to her. She quotes a poem by Bruce Wilmer, Be Yourself.