Quick and Easy Ways To Beat Burnout
My conversation with Caitlin Donovan was simply AMAZING! And before you say it, I KNOW I say this every single time, but IT REALLY WAS! Mainly because this is something I have experienced before for years and something I know my magic makers and my clients are facing now or have in the past. This my friends is called BURNOUT! . And I have burnt myself to the ground on multiple occasions.
If you currently feel or have ever felt like your life is a house fire and you have just been burnt to a freaking crisp and still smoking, you are going to want to read on… Because my girl Caitlin has some great advice to help you fix your burnouts, even if you aren’t recognizing that it is happening.
Rona times have given us this gianntttt pause and it has given us the chance to look at our lives PRE-RONA and POST-RONA. Was your life before a house fire and are you still lit’ Or has Rona ignited this fire and turned it into a full-blown blaze’ How are you going to recognize this’ And how are you going to heal from it’
Caitlin Donovan has experienced her fair share of burnouts, one so long that it occurred over and over again for 7 years. When burnouts become a constant cycle they are typically HARD TO RECOGNIZE. If you do recognize it, at some point you are going to think that it has gotten better and you are in the clear, but in reality, it hasn’t gotten better at all. You have just got better at ignoring the signs and pushing them away.
As an acupuncturist, Caitlin has worked with clients for years helping them with their own burnouts and it wasn’t until an injury on her Achilles tendon, resulting in not being able to walk for months, she was FORCED take a physical break and realize that she did not ever stop doing and going.. She was always a doer, also on the go traveling, cross country skiing, hiking and always being on the go, this injury forced her to slow down and realize that she herself was in the middle of a burnout!
She did not know what the hell she was going to be able to do not being able to basically move for the next 4 months and got into this space where she had to figure out what she was going to do. While in that space, Caitlin turned to her spirituality to help her figure out what in the actual fuck to do with her time now. And one morning she woke up seeing BURNOUT PODCAST over and over again and at that moment she realized that she was going to continue to help others through that burnout like she has been doing with acupuncture, but through the power of podcast AND take care of her own burnout at the same time!
When you go through burnout and you are experiencing constant stress, there are actual physiological changes that happen to your brain. The actual grey matter in your brain will start to diminish and disappear with long term stress. And if you have been in this constant cycle for a long period of time, you don’t actually see the effect that it is having on your body.If stress was physical and say you were losing our eyebrows or fingernails, we’d lookkk in the mirror and wonder what the hell is going on!’ But because it is hidden, we are so adaptable and we become very good at saying, oh it will be better next week!
[Tweet “Stress is like water; it is going to find the weakest link and it’ going to find its way to you.”] Stress is what is feeding this burnout and is the number one cause of it.
How do you even know if you are burnt out’
There are 2 very big things that are going to happen when you are burnt out. You are going to have A LOT of resentment accompanied by a ton of righteousness. You will be stuck in this constant loop of resentment, hating everyone around you and not understanding why NO ONE even understands how hard it is for you, no one can see how hard it is for you and no one appreciates you. This was EYE OPENING for me!
Most of my burnout was due to resentment. Basically, doing shit that I didn’t want to do, because I thought it was expected of me or it was what I had to do to get what I wanted. Does this sound familiar to anyone’
On top of this, those coping mechanisms you have used for a while to help with the stress is no longer working. Come home from work, have a cocktail, fall asleep you are fine the next day. BUT NOW, you do the same thing, but you CAN’T fall asleep and you wake up in the morning feeling hungover from that ONE glass of wine. Your brain doesn’t want to shut off at night so that you can sleep, and you find yourself more exhausted than normal. Even exercise, if you work out to relieve stress or clear your head, now you cannot even do that because you are physically too exhausted to even get that work out in.
When things stop working that help you get through difficult times, then you are burnt out.
Listen, It’s ok to feel resentful sometimes, it is a normal feeling, but you have to raise your hand and start talking about what it is that you want, what it is that you feel as a way to set boundaries and not let it boil and blow up until you want to tell everyone to go FUCK themselves.
So, let’s say you did blow up on someone, or you did explode in flames and finally come to a realization that are burnt the fuck out, you are exhausted, not yourself and you resent and are annoyed with every person you look. What in the hell do you do now’ Where do you go, where do you turn to and where do you even start’ Well, magic makers, you have to figure out where that resentment is coming from, what it is and start setting boundaries.
Caitlin has the tool for just this too. She has created this amazing Journal called the Resentment Journal that helps you to tackle resentment to figure out what is taking up the most of your energy and to stop hating everyone around you. This journal helps you to figure out what you are resentful for, why you are resentful, it helps you to ask yourself better questions, it allows you to feel emotion without judgement, and it helps you to really look into yourself and figure out what it is that you can change to help you feel less annoyed and getting that energy back.
My boyfriend Tony Robbins said it best, “When you ask better questions you get better answers. Take a pause, what you are resentful for in your life. Start asking yourself that questions. So, let’s start with the lowest hanging fruit. What’s the smallest and easiest thing that you can do today to inject more ease and flow into your life right now’ EASE AND FLOW people is what you want!!
And girl, STOPPP putting so much pressure on yourself!
If you were to break this down, a lot of the pressure that we put on ourselves is 1) self-inflicted and 2) fear of external judgement. We live in this social media society that it is SOOO easy to put a ton of freaking pressure on yourself and compare to yourself to every other person on Instagram. It is so very easy to see all of these people that are doing things that you are not or doing something you think is better, thus it becomes very easy for you to start taking all of that in and start feeling like shit. You have to stop comparing yourself to others on social media!! LIKE STOP TODAYYYY!! And let go of feeling like everyone is judging you because most likely they are not and if they area WHO THE HELL CARES!
In order to be able to live through things with resilience, you have to take care of yourself enough on the day today to have the spare battery to deal with that that comes up when you are burnt out. You have to know that you cannot control everything that is happening around us or what happens to us, BUT you CAN control how you are going to deal with it when it comes at you. Life is always going to throw you a curveball and it may not be this week, and it may not be this big as the shit we have going on right now with RONA, but you will be thrown a curveball.
Ultimately, this is really ALL ABOUT sitting down, getting real with yourself and OWNING YOUR SHIT. Own your piece of the pie! And handle it like a boss. You can get through the burnout; you can overcome it turn yourself around. You can start learning ways to heal from the burnout and move on afterwards. And you CAN start watching for those signs of exhaustion and resentment creeping up to tell yourself that you are getting close to that flame and you are about to get crispy!
And this brings me full circle back to that resentment journal that Caitlin has. Journaling is really, truly an amazing thing. I love to do it and it helps me tremendously with my day to day life. I LOVE to write, and it really helps me dig down deep. Now, I know that it can be tough to sit with a blank sheet of paper and wonder WTF am I going to write, but once you do it, you will realize how powerful of an exercise it really is. Journal allows you to be honest with yourself, it allows you to create a space for you to do things without treating yourself poorly. This journal that Caitlin has to offer is great because there are clear questions that she is asking you. You can stop the judgment, stop trying to control the situation, increase the curiosity and give yourself the distance between yourself and the situation.
Ladies, we are coming off of this pause and for the next 18 months to 2 years, we have the time to figure things out, so take the time to decide how you want your life to look like. Check out this Resentment Journal and all of the tools that Caitlin Donovan has to offer!! And I cannot wait to hear from you about this.
Are you burnt out’ Do you feel it right now as we speak’ Reach out if you are or head over to Caitlin’s Website to learn even more about who she is, what she does and how she can help!
What makes you feel magical’
There is something about the way I was created that makes it very easy for me to see the connections between how somebody feels, the symptoms in their body, the symptoms in their life. I am able to make connections other people can’t see. I don’t claim I am better than other people, I don’t even try to do it, it is just so natural to me that it has to be magic. There is no other answer for it. My magic is connecting the dots in your life and reflecting those dots back to you that it allow you to understand why the headache is related to the in your kitchen.
LINKS:
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/FabFitSquad
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/fitgirlmagic/
Website: https://kimbarnesjefferson.com/
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fit-girl-magic-healthy-living-for-women-over-40/id1476883661
Links:
www.instagram.com/cait_donovan
www.facebook.com/caitdonovanburnoutcoach
www.linkedin.com/in/caitdonovan
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August 26, 2020
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