Women of Worth

From Chaos To Cruise Control - The 3 A System That Completely Transformed My Clients Life

• Claire Fealy

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If your days run you rather than you running your day - this episode is for you!! In today's episode listen to this client story - from normalized chaos to calm, showing how self-trust—not time hacks—creates ease, presence, and sustainable success. 

Get the three A’s framework to replace adrenaline with alignment and build a life that feels good from the inside out.

• celebrating wins to rewire focus toward progress
• full calendar trap and the cost of living in flight
• symptoms versus root cause in stress and busyness
• the brain’s bias for safety and why calm feels unsafe
• busy as a drug and the chase for worth and safety
• the three A’s: align, automate, appreciate
• alignment over approval and values-led days
• automation via regulation rituals and simple systems
• appreciation to let wins land and break overdrive
• practical vision: success without sacrifice and joy as GPS

I would love if you could share this podcast even with one other woman and help me build a world where women rise in purpose, peace, and power. 

Ready to go from overwhelmed to on fire - just like my client? 

Make sure you're on my email list, click here, for my brand new 3 day challenge in January where I'll walk you through these steps and help you start 2026 off feeling aligned, alive and abundant!!

I'd also love to hear your takeaways. Email me claire.fealy@gmail.com or DM me on IG, linked here  

Don't forget to subscribe, share this episode with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway so more women can find their power.




SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Women of Worth podcast. On today's episode, I want to share with you a recent client win. Um, and I'm going to break down exactly the steps that we took and the process that you went through. And the point of doing this is to show you how possible it is and how much closer peace, happiness, and success actually is when you simplify it down. So this client came to the session and she was buzzing. She had taken a day off the week before, and she said that she had zero guilt. She completely enjoyed it. She prioritized herself, her family, and even on the day off, she was talking about how much more trust she has and how much more she is going with the flow and not forcing things, how much better she is at knowing her limits and actually listening to her body. And I want you to imagine, like I'm sharing this to show you that this is possible for you too. Um, I always start my coaching sessions off with what are we celebrating this week? What has gone well? Because we're so used to dismissing the progress and just getting stuck into problems. And it is one of the habits that completely rewires your brain is focusing on the progress, focusing on what's going well. And it's so funny because when clients first come to coaching, they really struggle with that, and they like they want to skip that part. They're like, Oh yeah, okay, um, I was journaling this week, and yeah, but this right, so it's so funny at the start, and by the end, they're so good at like we probably spent the first 10, 15, could have even been 20 minutes of the session just talking about how much easier her life is, how much more relaxed she feels, how much more she is getting done without like having to exhaust herself, like how much less effort she's putting in. And she shared this phrase, and I just thought it was so beautiful. She said that she felt like she is cruising into Christmas, and how much she's actually looking forward to it, and how different it was to this time last year. Like this time last year, she was just like, oh my god, just get me home. She was so exhausted, and the best part about it is this really, really stuck out to me, and I so relate to it because it's the same as my story, where she can't believe how much she had normalized the chaos and the stress and the constant anxiety and worry and overthinking and overworking. Like she did not realize how ridiculous it was to be living like that, to be living like a headless chicken, to be living like a robot, just going through the motions with no emotion, to just like living life like it's a to-do list, just ticking things off, check, check, check. Like she would even put in her calendar, like replying to people, you know, everything, like relationships was just a to-do list, health was just like everything was just a to-do list. And she was like, I don't know, Claire, how I sustained that. I don't know how I stayed that stressed for as long as I did. And she didn't realize that never switching off, like her mind always going a million miles an hour, like not being able to sleep, not feeling like really connected to the people around her. Like when she was out for lunch with a friend, say for example, she's checking the time because okay, what's the next thing? What's like always going to what's the next thing? What's the next thing? Her calendar, and this is so important. I really want you to realize this. Her calendar was full, but she was empty. So a full calendar does not mean a full life, and that's how I used to live life as well. I used to think that the fuller my day was, that the more fulfilled I would be. That like fill my days with work, with like meeting up with catch-ups. But when you learn the less is more mindset, and I actually did a podcast episode on this a while ago, it just changes everything. Um last year, when she was coming up to Christmas, her calendar was chaos. And I remember in one of her sessions, she actually showed me her diary from a few months back, and she was like, Claire, this is what my diary used to look like. And it was literally there wasn't a bit of space on the page, and now she like she showed me what her calendar this week looks like, and it's just clean, it's clear, it's oh the difference. And I want to explain to you like the the problem that we think we have, like the problem on the surface is never the real problem. Um, this is what I love helping my clients with. I love getting to the root and releasing it from the root, not just getting rid of symptoms like stress, not just getting rid of symptoms like busyness, like these are symptoms of something much deeper. And this is the fun part in coaching. Like, this is the part I love. If you think like a detective, I'm like, like I know I've talked about this before, something called the seven layers of fear. I love getting to like the deepest root cause of all of this stress and chaos and overwhelm. And when you release it, that's when everything changes. And this is like it's so powerful when you're able to actually name it and like own it. What you don't, what you don't own owns you. So when we dug really deep, my client didn't need more time in her day. She didn't need time management, she didn't need productivity strategies, she didn't even need stress management. Time was not her problem. She needed to learn how to trust herself. Because without trust, you can have the most like amazing productivity strategies. Nothing will stick without self-trust. And a self-trust is, and this is so important. I do this with all my clients. The solution is not outside of you, it's not in another self-help book. Like I was actually in a bookshop yesterday, and I was just looking for like hobby books, like things that looked fun and things that looked um like I was like, what's the next book I want to read? And I went over to the personal development section for the crack because I used to read books like they were going out of fashion. Like I would consume books like for breakfast, right? I remember a few years ago I set myself the challenge of reading a book a week. Oh my god. I was obsessed with self-help and I was looking outside of myself for the answers, but the problem is not outside of you. The problem is inside of you, and the solution is inside of you, and this is good news because it's in your power. So if you can get this mindset shift, you can get everything. Busy is not a lack of time, it's a lack of trust and it's a lack of safety. So I'm sure you've heard me talk before about when you're in survival mode: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. It's when the present moment doesn't feel safe. So you need to fight somebody, you need to flee, you need to freeze, or you need to fawn, which is people please and appease. Those are all signs that you don't feel safe in your body. My clients and my own default survival response and stress response is fleeing, flight, right? And I don't think people talk about this enough. Flight is constantly fleeing the present moment, so it's constantly escaping and avoiding, and we do that through overworking or chasing success. And when you do this, when you get so stuck in that stress response of flight, like I'll tell you how much I was in my flight stress response. I've been to over 50 countries, and sometimes when I'm looking at the photos, like I love looking back at some of the photos and the travels and all of that, and I did have an absolute ball, but I wish I was more present. I like there's some countries I'm like, I want to go back to because I know I wasn't fully there, um, but it's when slowing down feels like danger. So if I just helped my clients create space in their day, and I do this with my clients, I help them create space in their week and space in their day. If I haven't helped them resource, if I haven't helped them create safety, what happens is, and I've had clients do this before, where they start to create space in their day and space in their week, and they think of how I can fill it. They're like, okay, I have the whole evening off, like maybe I should clear out my wardrobe. Actually, I need to get my hair done. I'm gonna book a hair appointment, right? And we go into that fear, we go into that, like, what would happen if you just did nothing for the evening, right? So when you realize that you're not actually chasing success, you're chasing safety, and you believe that success will make you feel safe, you're not chasing wealth, you're chasing worth. And this was something my client realized as well was how much she was chasing worth in wealth. Um she wasn't chasing the fame and fortune, but the freedom, and it is that you have to realize busy is a drug and burnout is a come down. Busy is the flight stress response. It's the need to avoid escape and stay distracted. So if you imagine like alcohol, or you imagine like smoking, it's suppressing, it's numbing, it's avoiding. And I saw something this week that was like scrolling is the new smoking, and it's so flipping through. Like, busy is the need to constantly escape yourself and stay distracted. So you stay busy to feel safe because stress and overwhelm and chaos, and I see this with all my clients when they start to come out of that stress and chaos and overwhelm, it feels so unfamiliar. And our brain doesn't care about success and happiness, all our brain cares about is safety and like survival. That's your brain's job. So just like it's your heart's job to pump blood around your body and carry oxygen around your body, just the same as your lungs' function is to exchange gases, to bring in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, right? Your brain's function is survival and keeping you safe. That's why we have a brain. We don't have a brain to be happy and successful, we have a brain to be safe. And safety to your brain is familiar, and it doesn't matter if familiar to you is chaos, overwhelm, stress. All your brain cares about is the feelings that feel familiar. Because if I survived yesterday, if I'm still here today and I survived yesterday by hypervigilance and by stressing and forcing and fixing, then that means that will work to help me survive today. So slowing down, relaxing, taking the evening off, taking a day off with zero guilt, that doesn't feel safe for your nervous system. It doesn't feel safe even for your brain. Your brain doesn't care what you want. If you want the success, the happiness, the freedom, your brain doesn't care what you want. All it cares about is your safety. And when you stay busy to stay safe, you stay stuck in survival mode. You can't think your way to peace. You have to show your body a new experience. And when you're constantly busy, you're always running on empty, and that's sending signals of danger to your body. My client, her nervous system only knew stress and pressure and force. And it was really interesting when we dug deep into this that she believed that if she didn't make things happen, that they wouldn't happen. So if she wasn't always forcing that it wouldn't happen, so it's like she was white knuckling her way, like just get things done, just make this happen. She always needed to micromanage things, and it was so exhausting. And this is when adrenaline becomes your fuel. And adrenaline, like survival mode, fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. This is so important for you to get. They're only ever meant to be short term, so we're meant to flee the danger or fight the danger or freeze until the danger goes away, or fawn until the danger stops attacking us, right? We're not meant to live in fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. I would say 80, if not 90% of the world lives in constant survival mode. And it's not personal failure, it's not something that you are doing wrong. It's the systems that are set up that way. I even believe the school systems are set up for us to compete and compare. That's survival mode rather than connect, contribute, and collaborate. And I know that things are changing and they are getting better. I even believe before we go to school, the what makes us feel safest, like I'm sure you've heard of secure attachment, the first five years of your life wires your nervous system. If you don't get enough nourishment and attunement, like an adult that is fully attuned to your nervous system. Um, and I don't believe that we had bad parents, I believe that we had busy parents. Um, I believe the way that society is set up, it wires us for survival mode, but you have to understand that this is not sustainable. You can't keep living like this. And this is when clients come to me. They're like, Yeah, this isn't working anymore. It's like any addiction. It works until it doesn't, and it feels good until it doesn't. Like my client said, I used to feel amazing taking all the things off my to-do list. Like I like that was a dopamine hit for me. And that dopamine, like it's a drug, but it works until it doesn't. It's pleasure until it turns to pain. And that's then when you're like, Do you know what? I can't keep living like this. So these are the three A's that took my client from busy to happy, from chaos to cruise control, and exhausted to energized. So step one is align. You have to stop living for the validation of others and start living by the vision and values that come from deep within your soul. And the best part is my client didn't actually realize how much she was living for approval, how much she was always chasing the next win and the next like until we explored it in the session. And this is because 5% of your mind is the conscious mind, what you're actually aware of, and 95% is the subconscious. And most of the time, your subconscious suppresses these things, it keeps it out of your awareness until. We bring it into the awareness. So she realized how much her identity was attached to her achievements and how much she didn't know who she was when she wasn't achieving, and when she wasn't living for external validation, and how much she was living by the like expectations of others. So she had become known for her big achievements, and people were actually asking her, What's the next, like, what do you do next? What's the next big thing? And she thought she always had to have a next big thing to keep her life exciting, to keep her motivated, to keep the people. And actually, when we went even deeper on it, she believed that she needed to live a really exciting, interesting life. Like I think our deepest desire, everything always comes back to connection. We want to connect with others, right? And she believed that she believed that in order to connect with others, she needed to be living this exciting, interesting life. That that's what kept people connected to her. It's so fascinating when you go into like the depths of the subconscious and what actually drives these behavior patterns. That's why trying to change your behavior without changing your beliefs, I promise you, you're having one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brakes. If you take, for example, like probably one of the most common goals when people try to lose weight and they try to change their behavior, eat less, move more, without changing their beliefs, that's why diets don't work. Because you're trying to change your behavior. It's the same as if my client came to me and I showed her how to manage her time, her tasks, her priorities, but I didn't actually do the beliefs work with her. She might get temporary results, but they wouldn't, like they wouldn't last because the the breaks are on, the beliefs are still in the background, running the show. Um so what we did was we focused on if you were to stop proving yourself for connection, if you were to stop believing that you needed to live this really exciting, adventurous, you know, interesting life in order to be connected to others. If you stopped proving yourself and you started prioritizing yourself, what would that look like? And we got really clear on what her definition of success was and what actually really mattered to her. So if she had all of the love and approval in her life that she ever needed, what would she prioritize? What would she build her life around? And what actually, and this is so important because this is how your soul speaks to you, and you can answer these questions for yourself. What makes you feel most alive? What makes you forget to check your phone? What makes you feel most grounded and most in the present moment? And not just building a life that looks good on Instagram, but a life that feels good on the inside. Imagine, like that is oh, it's the freedom, it's the best feeling. You don't, and this was one of her biggest takeaways, you don't need to do more to be more successful. You need to do more of the right things with clarity, with confidence, and with support. It's less about, and this is when everything changed for me. It's not about perfection, it's about intention, it's about living intentionally, it's about deciding yes, this is what I want my life not just to look like, but to feel like, and then designing your day around that. The second one is automate. And this is like automation, it is everything. It's having systems that support your nervous system because predictability equals safety. So this is where you replace rushing and racing with regulation rituals. Oh my god, these are such a game changer. This is where you replace stress and overwhelm with success systems, and this is where you replace hyper-vigilance, always needing to know what's going to happen and plan the future and predict. This is where you replace hyper-vigilance with happiness habits, because that's when your nervous system finally gets consistent signals of peace and ease, that it's safe to slow down. And you don't need to build motivation, you need automation. Motivation is a myth, it's like it's a feeling, and feelings are not predict, like feelings are like the weather. You can't rely on them, you can't predict. So when you stop relying on motivation and you start creating this automation, you get into this upward spiral. And the last A is appreciation. This is the step most people skip. All achieving and no appreciating is the fastest way to burn out. So you jump from goal to goal and win to win and task to task, and your nervous system and your body never gets to feel the peace of I'm safe now, I'm proud of myself, I'm allowed to just enjoy today. I'm allowed to enjoy all of the progress I've already made. And this is how, like, I actually think this ritual is one of the most powerful ones for my clients. They learn to give themselves the validation that they're constantly chasing on the outside. This is how you break your addiction to external validation. This is how you break your addiction to busy, how you break your addiction to pressure and urgency and overworking to prove your worth. It trains your nervous system to associate progress with pleasure. Like, oh, it's the savoring, it is life. This is the three-step system that I use with all of my clients that takes their life from chaos to cruise control. So I'm gonna give you the easiest analogy that I've come up with for this. I want you to imagine that alignment is the destination. So my dream holiday is Fiji. I cannot wait to go to Fiji. And if you picture Fiji, Fiji is your personal paradise. That's what your vision and values is, your personal paradise. So this is you programming the destination. I want you to imagine that the automation is the airplane, that's the vehicle that gets you there, that's the engine, that's the systems, that's the wings, that's the vehicle, right? And I want you to imagine that the appreciation is the fuel, this is the juice that keeps you going, this is the joy, this is the like finding joy in the journey and actually enjoying your success and not just exhausting yourself. This is success without the sacrifice, this is abundance without abandoning yourself, and this is building a life that feels like freedom. This is possible for you. I want you to imagine waking up calm. So I now consistently wake up before my like I didn't even set an alarm last night because I knew my body would wake up, and my body wakes up calm, and it actually wakes up excited for the day because I've designed a day where every part of it is worth getting up for. Um, your phone isn't the first thing that you go to in the morning, you're not just reaching out and scrolling. Imagine a life where your day has space and not just endless to-do lists. Imagine working with focus and not just working in a frenzy and panic and pressure. Imagine finishing work and you actually have energy to enjoy your evening. And I'm painting this picture for you because I want to show you how possible it is. If I can do this, if my clients can do this, there is nothing special about us. We just did the align, automate, appreciate system. Imagine enjoying your evenings with zero guilt and sleeping deeply and living in a body that feels so safe, and that you grow and build your success from alignment and not adrenaline. You trust yourself, you back yourself. Like that was something my client kept saying. She's like, Claire, I just back myself now. Like that's what self-trust is. But trust is earned, and it's earned through showing up for yourself daily, keeping these small promises to yourself. This is when you go from forcing to flowing, this is when you go from chaos to control, and this is when you go from burnout to bliss. I'm going to wrap this up by saying no amount of motivation or fancy planners or productivity hacks is ever going to get you out of survival mode. What actually changes living in survival mode, fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, is learning how to live and lead from alignment, from automation, and from appreciation. I'm doing a masterclass in January where I'm going to show you how to align because that first step just changes everything. Um, if you want to be on the wait list, I haven't even actually started a wait list. I just know in my head this is what I'm doing in January, and I'm just talking about it now to get the ball rolling. But if you want to start 2026 feeling so aligned, alive, excited about 2026, get on my email list. So I leave the link in the show notes. And if you're feeling called to be my next success story, to be the next client that I come on the podcast and talk about the difference is night and day. And actually, my client said to me, she emailed me the day after our session, and she was like, I feel like a completely different human and I love it. And she said, I'm so excited for where we're going because we're not even finished working together, like we're just getting started, right? So if you want to be my next success story, drop me a DM on Instagram. Um, and I would love if you could share this podcast even with one other woman and help me build a world where women rise in purpose, peace, and power. Um share this bonus if you share to your stories. Don't forget to tag me so I can thank you. And as always, I love hearing your takeaways. Love, love, love. Let me know on Instagram and all the links are in the show notes what your biggest takeaway was, your biggest aha moment, because I'm recording these podcasts into my laptop. It's just me. I am speaking to you, but it's always lovely to get the feedback. So let me know what landed for you. Share the episode and remember that your only goal in life is to enjoy it. Joy is the juice that makes life worth it. Joy is life, and life is joy. When you get that and when you build your life around joy, like joy is your GPS. That's that's your soul speaking to you and telling you yes, this is the life you're meant to be living. Um keep focusing on joy and finding joy and creating joy, and I will chat to you in the next episode.

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Claire Fealy

Host