In this coaching video, Sean Buttner opens by describing the overwhelming anxiety and self‑worth erosion that stem from carrying heavy student debt (about $80,000). He explains how debt collectors, constant payment pressure, and the fear of losing a high‑paying corporate job can cripple decision‑making, health, and career ambition. To break the cycle, Buttner recounts how he chose to train for a marathon—a low‑cost, physically demanding activity that forced him to move his body, distract his mind, and regain confidence. The marathon training sparked a broader shift: he began reading personal‑finance material, seeking advice from friends and family, and ultimately performed better at work, earning promotions that improved his financial situation. He generalizes this experience, arguing that leveraging a strong area of one’s life (wellness, career, relationships) can alleviate stress in another domain. The video concludes with a call to action, inviting viewers to a free coaching hour via SeanButter.com, and asks for feedback on the new video format.
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Morning, everyone. Welcome to Start yout Day with a Coach, where we help you live your proudest, best day each day so that you can build a really great life. Now, today I want to talk about how being in debt is the absolute worst. I'm not sure if you've ever been in that situation, and if you haven't, this is also a discussion on how to handle stress. But, you know, have you ever thought about and imagined your life in the future where you didn't have to worry about money or finances? You just woke up, greeted your family, had a great breakfast, connected, started the day excited to do what you do. You know, the phone rings or you check your email. You don't have that sense of dread or foreboding or anxiety, you know, debt collectors or bills, it's just out of your mind. And then, you know, if you see a cool vacation you want to do, you see the cool thing you want to that you want to buy that new car or whatever, you can go ahead and do it, and you don't have to think about money at all. And I sometimes daydream about that situation, too, especially since I know what it's like to be in a ton of debt. You know, for me, I had a ton of student debt, you know, from an undergrad and graduate degree. It cost me about $80,000. I think when it's all said and done, being the first person to kind of go through the whole college system in my family, I didn't know a lot of the pitfalls. And so I took out a bunch of debt. My parents took out a bunch of debt, and I didn't realize exactly how damaging that would be to my future and my psyche and how I'd make some decisions earlier on in my career. And maybe you've run into that situation, too. So. And it's such, you know, the obstacles that have. When you have a lot of stress, and in particular with debt and student debt, that, you know, just doesn't go away. You know, being unable to pay the monthly payments with a corporate gig at a, you know, one of the greatest companies in the United States. And that kind of hurts how your sense of responsibility and your sense of self, and then to have people call you and just say, hey, you need to fork over money, kind of mafioso. And then when you're like, I don't have. Like, I could choose not to eat this month. And they're like, okay, you need to choose not to eat because you're a garbage human being. You shouldn't have done this if you couldn't be responsible, and on and on and on. So you get people calling you every day telling you this, and your mindset about yourself can change. You could really start to doubt yourself or feel worthless or feel like you really screwed up and it's going to define you for the whole rest of your life. And you start to internalize it. And that makes you play small in other areas of your life. Like at your job, you're so stressed out about money that you don't want to take risks that might be good for your career, might help out, or might rock the boat a little bit to make things better. Because they're so stressed out about losing that job or, you know, trying to make those decisions of do I fill my car up with gas, do I, you know, stop eating for a while, or do I pay, like, my loans, my student loans and stuff? It keeps you up at night, right? And so that intense stress level really has an impact on your health and your ability to just feel the day, feel the joy of the day. And so a lot of people deal with that when they're under a lot of stress, especially due to debt. That was me. And sometimes, you know, you don't. You feel so much shame or you feel so defective, you stop reaching out for help with your social group, you know, with friends, with family, just say, hey, I'm really stressed out about this. You kind of internalize it, bottle it in. Maybe as a good person of Irish descent, it's part of what my family does. Not sure about your family, but we just bottle in our feelings that are negative most of the time until it's a pressure cooker and you explode at some point. But, you know, so you have this bad sense of bad belief about yourself because of stuff that's happening personally. Like you want to be responsible and you felt like you failed somehow. And then you have somebody every day, a couple of times a day, screaming at you because you're worthless, because you can't come up with a payment because you don't have money in your bank account, which is terrible, very dehumanizing. And, you know, then, so you have this bad situation about yourself. You can't ask people for help, you can't ask people for ideas. And then you just get stuck. You don't have the skill to figure out how to get out of debt or how to generate value or how to start a business or how to, you know, find another job. You know, that this particular situation for me, I was already working 50 plus hours a week at the main gig, often on call, on nights and stuff. So there never was a option to get another gig because the whole thing was like, we'll fire you if you choose that other thing over what we have you do. And we have you basically on call all the time. So it was a really, really tough situation. So how do you get out of that feeling of extreme stress? If you have a lot of stress and anxiety about, you know, finances, about whatever is going on in your personal relationships or your health, like, how can you get out of it? For me, I was so stressed out, guys, let me tell you. I decided that training for a marathon would be cheap and was a great idea, right? Training for a marathon, that's how bad I was, how dark I was in my life where I'm like, I can't run for 15 minutes straight. I'm going to run a 26.2 mile race to just do something. Because I needed to do something to move my body. I knew that the stress was getting to me, and I figured that something that intense, not only to kind of shift my mind trying to figure that out, but that the actual training would help me reduce some of my stress. I can actually think about what the heck am I going to do? And that's what worked for me. You know, I started training and on the runs in order to distract myself from my, hey, your legs hurt, you can't breathe. It's really hot out. You know, I was out in Arkansas training during the summer, during the day, so It'd be like 90 degrees, tons of humidity, exactly the ideal type of weather you want to be training in. Running outside by yourself. Not really. Don't do that. If you're going to do a marathon, talk to your doctor before just to be sure you're healthy. Just want to throw that out there. But that act of getting the body moving and moving the stress out of my body helped me figure out that, hey, you know what? Like, it's just a numbers game, right? You can read, like, just read some personal finance books, go to the library, get some help that way, do what you can online. And at the end of the day, like, this doesn't define who you are as much as other people would like it, you know? So by handling the stress, I was able to ask family and friends for advice or for help as needed. I was able to not internalize those negative messages about myself, which helped me feel more confident at work. When I was more confident at work, I could speak up more. When I spoke up more. I got picked up for promotions, not skipped over, which helped the financial situation and so got the ball rolling in the right way. So the big lesson here, folks, is sometimes in order to deal with stress, in order to deal with a part of our life that maybe isn't going super well, we have to leverage another part of our life. Whether that's if your family life is kind of screwed up, maybe you leverage working out or maybe you leverage your career or maybe you leverage your wellness practices or maybe if you don't feel happy every day, it's really getting clear about your work, getting clear about your relationships and working on that area that can help you feel that sense of joy every day. It's all connected. And something that the high performance coaching that I do we talk about quite a bit. Like a lot of people be like, oh, I want to start a business. And it's like, okay, how's your home life? How's your wellness practices? Or like, hey, I really want to find the person of my dreams. It's like, well, where are you in your career? Where are you in how you feel every day? Those types of things. And so if you guys need some help with that or you're trying to deal with something super stressful and you can't see your way out of, maybe you need to talk to a coach. Maybe that's a great reason to talk to a coach. And you can grab an hour of my time if you go to SeanButter.com coaching so I hope you enjoyed this, guys. I'm trying a new format for the videos. Let me know in the comments below if you like it or not. I will definitely be listening for your feedback. And yeah, go to SeanButter.com and sign up for that free hour because it's such a powerful experience through the questionnaire and then through which that's how you qualify for the call and then the actual call itself. We give you a plan, we give you some direction, get you some clarity on how to move forward. So with that said, folks, I hope you enjoyed this. I'll see you tomorrow, same time, same place. Sean Butner signing off. Take care.
