Burnout

The experience of living with burnout and exhaustion for professional, creative and highly sensitive women

Getting Beyond The Paycheck | Value-Based Work for HSPs

Getting Beyond The Paycheck | Value-Based Work for HSPs | The Burnout Queens

Last month in our BOQ article, Living Your Values – Simplify Life and Avoid Burnout, we explored the importance of living your Values in everyday life.  So, what happens when you spend every working day in an environment that is out-of-sync with your deepest values?

It can get serious, you could find yourself asking ‘why’ you get up in the morning. You may eventually reach the point of having to leave a job or a career because you can no longer tolerate the mismatch between your values and your work.

Working in accordance with the values you hold most deeply is absolutely essential to the health, happiness, and inner-harmony of anyone who is Highly Sensitive.  Not doing so most often leads to stress, anxiety, illness, burnout and a multitude of emotions ranging from frustration to sadness and regret.

Work that denies your values eventually empties your soul.

It’s not always easy working and building a career that remains truthful to your values.  Being value-driven requires difficult and at times unpopular choices, decisions, and directions.  The corporate world is often at odds with the values of HSPs.

Business models are usually one of two types: values or bottom-line.  These days bottom line thinking is by far the more popular approach.  For HSPs, who are mainly value-driven, a corporate environment based solely on economics where even employees are treated like inventory feels bereft of value.

I did one of numerous ‘residencies’ in a psychiatric programme whose values (or lack of them) were completely at odds with my own.  (Before you ask, I needed the hours!)  Even though it was a hospital, bottom-line economics ruled.  Waiting lists were ‘padded’ so funding remained intact.  As for philosophy, I believe people can and will change and ‘they’ believed they would ‘always’ be sick to some degree.  Let’s just say square peg-round hole!

I put in my 1,500+ hours, and ran for my life and reputation.  I paid the price, my health failed, my spirit felt bruised and broken and my knees buckled under the weight of burnout.  I did learn to never compromise my values in my career again.  It’s actually hard to put a price on that lesson!

How do you get beyond the paycheck to value-based work?

Workplace values exist on more than one level.  Value-able work isn’t only about the nature of the work.  Although we all know that you can’t just ‘go shopping’ for values, when it comes to your career and work, it doesn’t hurt  to have a ‘shopping list’ of absolute essentials that you can measure a company or a job against.  And remember, don’t limit your list to values only related to product or service.

Ask those tough questions about equality, diversity and morality.

A company’s philosophy or mission says a lot, but values can also be expressed in how employees and customers are treated, the commitment of the company to mentoring and fostering leadership, their belief in being a good corporate citizen of the community, environment and the planet.  Finding value in other aspects of your work is important since not everyone is free to up and quit a job.  A value based environment can help to fill this gap.

To feel satisfied and successful in work, you have to honour the truth of your values.

It takes courage and conviction to live and work by your values.  You may have to make some unpopular choices or take a less than favoured stance against the establishment.  In our experience HSPs can often be the target of bullying for this very reason.  They are often the ones willing to be the lone voice standing up for what is ‘right’ or legal or moral.  HSPs are often the one to stand up for others who they see being treated poorly.  Their willingness to take a stand can result in a bullseye on their back: being regarded as a trouble-maker, difficult to get along with, negative, argumentative, not a team-player or (love this one) a ‘drama queen’!

You know your deepest self.
You know what values are sacred to you.

As Highly Sensitive women we need to consciously make the big choice to live and work in deep connection with our values.  Living in accordance with these values creates calm, stability and strength in your life, as well as helping you navigate the inevitable challenges along the way.

There will always be difficult and stressful times at work, times when you really have to dig deep.  If you are clear about the values that guide your work, you will make choices from a position of integrity, truth, confidence and strength.  You will make those choices without apology because you are working from a place of personal power.

Until Next Time…Grab Life by the Crown!

P.S.  The BOQs would love to hear from you!  Leave your wisdom and comments in the box below. 

P.S.S. We’re now on Instagram! Our handle is THEBURNOUTQUEENS, of course!

Embracing a summer-pace lifestyle

Always striving for balance we’ve taken impromptu moments away from work to de-stress and play… after all darling, we’re all about putting our burnout-balance-bliss system to the test. 

We’re calling this our summer-pace lifestyle.  It takes skill, boundaries, and plenty of curiosity.

Relaxing days strolling through newly discovered neighbourhoods, poking around interesting shops, checking out the art open houses and plenty of room for afternoon tea…cake and all.  It’s what we both love and do best.  

The benefit of all this summer fun?   We return to work refreshed, rested and creative.

(Of course you can always catch our latest edition of ‘Hello from London & Lewes’ to see the photos that prove we are living what we suggest!)

Here’s to embracing your own summer-pace lifestyle. 

The Burnout Queens xx

 

Hello from Lewes & London! 6 July 2019

Hello from London & Lewes

It’s time for fashion, tea, and a crown (we are the Burnout Queens after all).

Our day trip to London’s Victoria & Albert Museum was first class all the way…from first-class train tickets, to a classy tea in the member’s room of the V&A (ah the perks of membership: private, good food, and immaculate table service). 

Who doesn’t love fashion of some kind?  Well, Dr T & Dr B took a whimsical trip down memory lane when we visited the Mary Quant exhibition. You weren’t a woman of the 60’s without owning something that showed that iconic little black and white logo.

Oh look, her makeup, oh look her fab jumper dresses, oh look the leggings and stockings!!!

 

 

Oh goodness we used to look and dress like this!  It’s a little disconcerting when you recognise your old wardrobe on display for a vintage exhibition!

 

We had hoped to take in the Dior Exhibit but the lineup was so long and the wait so hot that we decided to visit the newly refurbished Jewellery Gallery instead.  In this instance Plan B did not disappoint because there is bling, bling and more bling from Byzantian jewels to Cartier crowns all in the same room!  Everything is stunning and the older the piece, the more decorative and gorgeous.  This broach is a ‘chest plate’ for a woman’s bodice (can you imagine the dress),  but the special glory of the gallery was Queen Victoria’s sapphire and diamond coronet, commissioned and designed by Prince Albert (there really aren’t adequate words).

 

Even the entrance to the V&A Museum is grand indeed.  We always stop to marvel at the sight of Chihuly’s blown-glass chandelier cascading into a rotunda of marble sculptures.  It never gets old, even when everything ‘is’ old.

Sometimes you just have to take a day to wander the museum and discover things you didn’t know existed…like the displays of the little biscuit tins that are precious and adorable.  We’ve lost count of our visits to the V&A and we still haven’t seen all the floors and displays!  You could get gloriously lost for weeks.

Before we go, we just had to share the full, behind-the-scenes story of Queen Victoria’s tiara.  The video is so delightful you will think you had been exploring with us.

Then it was back on the train, happily rolling home and very grateful for those first-class seats!  Here’s to first-class delight and enjoyment!

Until our next adventure….

The Big Leap’s initial excitement

Our first morning in our new country happened to be JULY 4th!  How symbolic for two Canadians to be celebrating our own Independance Day in a country we had held as a dream destination since we were both teenagers.  We sat in the local cafe (we had to have the English breakfast) and just watched and took in the vibe of our new neighbourhood.  It felt great and we had given ourselves a month to settle into the flow of London while we waited for our container of furniture to arrive.

Arrival date, first rental flat and lucky us it was a dreamy, quirky little up-down with a garden in North London.  Welcome home!

It was fun to start decorating and fitting our belongings into a smaller space, making it work, making it feel like home, yet seeing it all in a new way.

We were settling into our adventure with enthusiasm.  And of course we found a real passion for ‘taking tea’ wherever we explored.  So many options and all the time in the world we kept saying.  We’re not on holiday, this is where we live now.  Yet it felt like the best holiday ever!

 

Embracing our new routine and lifestyle. Sunday morning reads & tea

New routines, new locals, new neighbours, new everything.  And even though we were in England, everything had different labels, brands and names.  Tiring work, so relaxing for tea and a read became our new norm!

 

 

 

Good start at living a Burnout-Free Lifestyle don’t you think?

Love, The Burnout Queens xx

 

 

 

 

The Big Leap times 10 years!

From Here to There!

From Here

We just cannot believe it has been a full decade that we left our home and country.  Last evening we were sitting in the Vancouver International Airport saying ‘shouldn’t we be nervous, or sad, or something?’  We weren’t, we were just quietly waiting for our one-way ticket to our new destination in life.

Brave or stupid?  Just feels right.  We had sold our condo, money in the bank, said good-bye to family, friends, neighbours and clients (although some would stay with us over skype), all our belongings except our luggage was packed into a container enroute across Canada to board a boat heading east!

A big leap of faith was starting to really happen.

I vividly remember looking out the window of the plane as we took off, looking back at my neighbourhood (we climbed right over it) and thought…’I don’t know what will happen or how it will turn out, but I’m open to whatever transpires’.

A long sleep, a beautifully calm flight and we landed in our new homeland.  The customs woman looked at our passports and VISAs and said, ‘welcome home‘.  Just such a deeply happy moment we had both waited for for the last 4 decades.  You couldn’t wipe the smiles off our faces, even after the 10 hour flight and time-change.

To There

 

 

 

 

 

So it’s official.  We live in England and over the next 10 or so days in honour of these 10 years,  we’ll give you a peek at the life we set up and are living from then until now (warts, pups and all)!

In the meantime…..

HAPPY 10th ANNIVERSARY TO THE BOTH OF US!

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Photography: Caroline True Photography | Illustration by Veronica Miller | Site Design: Kim McDaniels | Disclaimer