The Burnout Pups here! We have a weekend suggestion for you:
CHILL at regular intervals. Put your feet up and rest easy!
The Burnout Pups Weekend Wisdom vault
Burnout
The experience of living with burnout and exhaustion for professional, creative and highly sensitive women
Tipping the scales on burnout
More often these days I am hearing from VIP clients how teetering on the edge of burnout is accompanied by problematic eating changes and the resultant weight gain.
One client identified eating changes as one of the first symptoms of burnout that emerges for her. She was able to identify this pattern while working through our programme Escape Your Burnout Trap. Each time she was heading into burnout her eating would get out of control and her weight would go up.
Other clients realise after the fact that the exhaustion and constant pressure of difficult work situations led to not taking care of themselves by not grocery shopping or preparing healthy food, not getting to the gym, or relying on take-away foods when leaving the office late at night.
We talk about ‘false cures’ associated with burnout, things we do to fool ourselves into thinking we are ‘feeling better’: drinking more, smoking more, using over-the-counter drugs to sleep amongst a few. I think we better put eating right up there in the top false cures that women use to soothe the tension, stress, and pressure that accompanies burning out.
PS: Can you relate? Leave your comment in the realm!
How to live a Balanced Life
If you’re looking for that thing called Balance, then our 1st video is perfect for you! “Decide What Balance Means to You” is your first step to living a more balance-friendly life and lifestyle. What burnout queen doesn’t want that!
Join Dr Toby (one of The Burnout Queens) in the kitchen garden adjacent to Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath, north London and get going! http://youtu.be/XOmOLYU9bA4
This is the first in our series of 10 videos “10 Key Ways to Make Your Life More Balance Friendly. Key #2 will be available next week. In the meantime…
Grab Life by the Crown!
Dr Toby & Dr Bev, The Burnout Queens
Do you have “The new all-about-me attitude?”
Just had a great call with a long-time VIP client who works internationally in the justice system. She is at the top of her game and has decided to go freelance so that she can free-up her highly pressured lifestyle…somewhat!
Here’s the glitch: making the transition from completely involved prized employee to being freelance is tricky. It means giving up oodles of control, having the pick of plum projects, and being out-of-the-loop for management decisions. This is a difficult mind-shift when you have been integral to the company as part of their executive team and in helping the company establish a strong footprint in an international market.
Being an HSP professional makes it even more challenging. Throw in a burnout personality and it’s dynamite! The biggest challenge? Easy! Learning to put yourself Front & Centre in your life, before company needs. Learning to say “YES” to your life first and then considering what that means to others involved. You have to learn to take a deep breath and set firm boundaries, new ones, otherwise it is so easy to keep getting drawn back in to corporate ‘stuff’. If you say “Yes I’ll help you with that one thing” the message is received as “Yeah! She’s back in!” It can be a slippery slope and given an HSPs usual caretaker/nurturer personality it is a slope you don’t even recognise being on!
Being tough doesn’t come easily to my HSP professional who has been raised and trained to be responsible, conscientious, and considerate. No, when she makes the shift to Front & Centre, this new “all about me” attitude and belief system feels selfish, self-centred, and a little like stamping her foot to get what she needs or wants.
The Burnout Queens ask, “And what’s wrong with that?” It is all about you when you put yourself Front & Centre in your life. That is how it ‘should’ be and that is exactly what makes you strong, powerful, confident, and able to do and be your absolute best for yourself and for others.
Like all transitions, going from employed to consultant or freelancer has a steep, but natural, learning curve. Our natural tendancy is to want to do it fast and do it right. Like any big transition or change it takes time and patience to navigate the shift, but the outcome is oh so worth it.
The Burnout Queens
The messy or pretty reward game
Were you rewarded for not being messy or for making your homework really pretty when you were a little girl?
Now that you are all grown up, what has this taught you about how you run your business or your life?
Are you in charge of the annual report and can’t help yourself but make it gorgeous looking? Are you waiting for praise for that fabulous neat and tidy household of yours?
If you don’t get the rewards (recognition) do you resent others, or think you didn’t do a good enough job to warrant praise?
Leave your thoughts in the realm.
The Burnout Queens