Rachael Casterlin is a facilitator and well-being practitioner who works with organizations to help people show up more fully, both at work and beyond. In this conversation, Rachael and I explore what it means to cultivate presence in environments that are structurally designed to pull us away from it. Rachael’s path into this work started with her own burnout, a period that taught her the difference between feeling stressed and being genuinely depleted, and how hard it is to recognize one from the other in the middle of it. We discuss how the habits that lead to burnout can masquerade as passion and drive, why intentional transitions between roles and spaces matter more than most people realize, and how something as simple as a 15-minute calendar block can become an act of genuine self-knowledge. At its core, this is a conversation about what it means to actually know yourself, and why that’s becoming one of the most important skills of our time.
Connect with Rachael: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachael-casterlin/
Takeaways:
Burnout and stress aren’t the same thing. Stress has a natural recovery arc; burnout doesn’t. Rachael’s own experience, and her work with others, shows that recognizing the difference is what finally lets you hear the “burnout bus” coming before you get on.
Presence is built in transitions, not retreats. A breath before your next meeting, five seconds before you walk out of your home office. These small pauses are where the practice actually lives.
Your calendar reflects your values, whether you intend it to or not. Rachael encourages listeners to find one 15-minute block and protect it for something that reflects who they really are.
