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The great little nap

October 16, 2014

The need to catch up on sleep is on every woman’s lips these days. Between juggling kids, aging parents, home, chores, work, and who knows what else, the last thing we experience is proper sleep.

We hear many women laughingly talk about being forgetful, misplacing the keys, forgetting their own heads if it wasn’t screwed on straight! All signs of little sleep and one of the symptoms of burnout.

So bring on the power nap!? I read this little article in RealAge the other day and thought I’d pass it on. Give the advice a try—I know one of my clients swears by napping!

Improve Memory with a Power Nap*

You could improve memory skills with this brilliant little habit: power napping.

In a study, people who took a power nap after learning a new task performed 50% better than the non-nappers when they were later given a test on the task.

Power Nap, Total Recall

The process of making memories is complicated. And new memories are the most fragile. But in the study, researchers discovered that nappers who got quality deep sleep (slow-wave sleep) during their naps learned new material much better compared with the sleep-deprived participants. Scientists think something about deep sleep helps new memories encode into higher brain regions where memories become more permanent.

Something About Sleep

Getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night is a good health goal. It boosts your immune system, helps control stress levels, and may even be essential in keeping your heart and other body parts healthy. And a power nap every now and then can be a good way to catch up on lost ZZZs — not only to improve memory and keep your mind sharp, but also to help you reach your immune-system-supporting, stress-reducing [optimum].

*(from Improve Memory with a Power Nap – RealAge.com)

Ps: at the end, not included here, it said proper sleep can trim 1.5 years off your real age! I’m in, night-night ladies

The Burnout Queensxx

Just let me nod off for a second

October 14, 2014

I feel there would be nothing better than a moment to put my head down on a pillow and slip fast asleep for more than half an hour at a time. Sleep for women seems a very fleeting and often elusive pleasure. I know most of you can relate!

I just read this article (so had to share) in the Huffington Post that talks about why sleep is SO very important for our brain. Ladies, when we work hard, and juggle all that we do, our brains need all the help we can give them. Right?

Have a read and then put your head down! Click through to the article here: “Why Your Brain Needs Rest”

The Burnout Queens xx

Viagra Day at the Gym!

October 11, 2014

Saturday is the day I meet up with my personal trainer at the gym. Sadly Saturday at the gym is full of sweaty ‘old’ men with baggy shorts, white hair, and paunches, not exactly what I expected at the gym! It makes me believe that it is true, for women 60 is the new 40 ‘cause my gorgeous women friends in their 60s would look like they were dating their Dad with one of these not-so-buff guys.

When I get to the gym I say a silent, divine ‘thank you’ that I am not on the dating market! I’m also grateful that I am vain enough to still want to look good! (Now I’m supposedly at the gym for rehab, but at this age it’s secretly all about the arms!)

So what’s this got to do with burnout you ask? Pressure! It never goes away. Each decade brings pressures for women!

From our arms to our bankbooks it just never lets up!

When in your 30s you tell yourself that you will make that change! You believe you still have plenty of time to do it all: find your life partner, have kids and establish the career you dream of.

Then suddenly you are in your 40s and wondering what happened to all that time. This decade seems to be the tipping point for burnout. You had planned to get out, change jobs, go back to school, start your own business, be settled with the perfect partner, and have had 2.5 children (ideally a boy and a girl, but we’re not too sure what the .5 is). You had planned to, but suddenly it feels too late.

In your 40s it all just takes on a desperate and serious tone. It is no longer ‘out there in the future’, you are living it. Career, marriage, fertility, the issues are huge. If it hasn’t happened for you by now the panic can start setting in. Life becomes coloured by disappointment and fear. You know what we often hear? “I failed. I didn’t get any of it right!”

40 and failing;
now this IS a slippery slope aimed right toward burnout.

So you survived your 40s and are in your Nifty Fifties. OMG how did this happen? We think of it as ‘50 and freaking’. Time’s running out! It’s almost too late!

Burnout in your 50s? Oh it’s very real. Life can have you feeling both fearful and disappointed. It was supposed to be different by now, I was supposed to be different. You can almost hear Peggy Lee singing “Is that all there is?”

It is a decade of feeling squeezed. The changes you so desperately want had better happen fast but…

your parents are aging and need more attention from you
your children are having children and need your help
you want to change jobs but who would hire you in your 50s?
your marriage feels over but it’s too scary to think of being on your own
You want to buy a van and drive across Europe but your family tells you you are too old for an ‘identity crisis’!

The dangerous part of being 50 is believing it’s ‘too late’.

Burnout in your 60s? Sure, we call it Boomer Burnout!

(Just in case you aren’t familiar with the term, those of us born roughly between the years of 1946 and 1964 are known as the Baby Boomers. For Generation Xers, this is Boomer not Beamer!)

Burnout in your 60s is definitely fueled by some rather new pressures these days. The first one I’ve already mentioned, we are supposed to look and act 40! (Personally I can do without the pressure of low-rise jeans or 4-inch heels as that would most certainly mean more via’gra days at the gym, shoot me!)

It doesn’t matter which way we come at it the goal post has been moved. We were supposed to be playing golf or bingo, wearing t-shirts with rhinestone kitty-cats and taking bus-tours. It’s simply not happening.

For most of our 60+ clients retirement has become a distant concept due to financial reasons or wanting to keep on working or for some even changing careers. Predictable retirement is a thing of the past.

Right up there with the ongoing responsibility of work you can add looking after aging or sick parents, adult children returning home due to economic difficulties, and many Boomer grandparents actively participating in the raising of grandchildren.

Many have been through relationships that ended for one reason or another. Being single in your 60s brings lots of fear and pressure; financial, being alone, and don’t forget dating again (now that’s a whole new adventure if you are starting these days!)

Boomer burnout is about disillusionment and confusion. We were looking forward to more freedom, more flexibility and sure less responsibility and pressure.

Simply put…it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

So there you have it, the 3 decades of burnout. Sure the focus of our worries and pressures change with age, but really when you look at it, women are always challenged with pretty well the same things, trying to be all and do all for everybody else, and, as the saying goes…doing it all in 4-inch heels while going backwards!

Here’s one great tip!

Each decade brings its own changes and challenges, so what’s a Burnout Queen to do?

In your 40s…Embrace it!
In your 50s…Embrace it!
In your 60s…Embrace it!

What’s your alternative? xx

Until next time…Grab Life by the Crown!

Have to love myself…blah blah blah

September 28, 2014

Forget self-help’s ‘Have to love yourself’ message. (Groan) We all know it’s true but frankly we’ve heard it so often we tend to go, “Yeah, yeah, have to love myself, yada yada!” That is not what we are talking about here. No, no no…we are pointedly asking;

Do you approve of yourself?

Some of you will pretend that you don’t understand this question, but we know you are wise and sensitive and you ‘get’ it. Why? Well, sadly we all have experience and practice ‘disapproving’ of others so we know in our gut what it means to approve or disapprove of someone. So, no more hiding from the question!

Do you approve of yourself? Do you approve of the way you live your life, your choices, how you treat others, conduct your relationships, how you take care of yourself, your level of honesty, your career choice, or your values? If you don’t, hello disillusionment…hello Burnout!

I met-up with one of my absolutely gorgeous VIP clients last week and it was so clear to me that in less than a year she has gone from Phase 4 burnout to totally approving of how she is living her life. Now I see a woman who is comfortable in her own skin, likes herself, owns her decisions, trusts her judgement, shares her opinions, has way more confidence and has embraced her personal power. Wow, stark contrast to a couple of decades in and out of burnout, doubting who she was and everything she was doing. She soooo approves of herself now it is an absolute delight!

Each and every week we encounter women who believe nothing they do is good enough.

Do you relate?

You want to be less judgemental of others, but it’s not possible when you judge yourself harshly.
You want to be more successful, but that’s difficult when you don’t trust your ideas, abilities, choices and achievements.
You wish you were more loving, but cannot, or refuse to, practice unconditional love for yourself.
You feel bad because you aren’t more tolerant and yet you barely tolerate your own humanness.

When you don’t approve of or trust your choices and when you doubt your ability to perform, you give others the power to control you with their opinions. When you don’t respect yourself, your relationships will lack strong, clear boundaries and repeat unhealthy patterns. When you actively disapprove of yourself you always fear failing or worse yet, ‘being a failure’. When we fall from the grace of self-approval all we experience can be summed up in one word: doubt, doubt, and more doubt.

No self-approval means no inner-peace.

It is simply that powerful. With the power of self-approval comes the right to self-determination, self-expression, self-respect and ultimately self-love. No more waiting for others to give you their stamp of approval and no more having to prove yourself till you are ready to drop. Until we reach that moment of knowing that we, not can, but will give ourselves complete approval we block our ability to flourish and thrive, we block our path towards bliss and keep on determinedly, and exhaustingly, trudging towards burnout.

So what is stopping you from self-approval? If you say “nothing” then you get it! Nothing is stopping you from accepting that you have the power of self-approval. (Relax, there is no small print that suggests that from this point on you have to be perfect and never experience another moment of doubt.) The decision to approve of yourself is instantaneous. The process of self-approval, living its truth daily, takes commitment, courage and faith.

So, if you do not approve of yourself, for whatever reason, stop and ask yourself, “Why?” You were created perfectly. You were born perfect in being who you are. All those points of ‘disapproval’ on your list are not a reflection of the true you.

Self-approval means accepting who and where
you are now AS perfect. (tweet this)

The Burnout Queens declare, it is time to stop fearing the power of self-approval. Only when you approve of yourself can you truly delight in sharing who you are with the world. You are a Burnout Queen. The power of self approval is your birthright!

Here’s one great tip!

List all of the reasons you can come up with to not approve of yourself from too fat or too thin to not successful enough. Then crumple up the paper and throw it away. That’s right, throw it away!

Do it again: new paper, crumple, throw it away.

Do it again…and again…and again.

Every single time you feel self-disapproval, name it, write down why, then (you know it) crumple it up and throw it away. You will no longer hang on to self-disapproval.

Until next time…Grab Life by the Crown!

I Don’t Do Perfect When It Comes To Hoovering

September 12, 2014

There I was hurriedly hoovering yesterday when I ran out of cord. Do I run up the stairs and move it down or….hmm, I thought, “Do I really have to reach every nook and corner down here?” To which my inner voice yelled a resounding “No!” Then I heard a surprisingly funny thought, “I don’t do perfect when it comes to hoovering!”

Next thoughts? “What can I do ‘perfect’ on then? When is ‘perfect’ allowable? Can I be a selective perfectionist?” (Yes, if you are wondering, I do often have conversations with my Self like this! It’s an HSP thing!)

This is what I came up with. I go for ‘perfect’ when I am editing or following a recipe, stuff like that. Of course it doesn’t necessarily mean it comes out perfectly. Ideas, for instance, are never perfect and the best of recipes can certainly fail.

I gave up perfectionism decades ago! What a relief. However, I will unapologetically try for ‘perfect’ on some things, like making sure there are no typos in this article. (Now I know for sure some perfectionist out there is going to search for one…should I give them one?)

Now I decide pro-actively what I choose to be ‘perfect’ about. This is vastly different than believing from the bottom of my soul that I am not good enough unless I am ‘perfect’. Perfect at what? Perfect how? Perfect when? I never could answer these questions.

Now I am a selective perfectionist. I put it down to having a good sense of ‘meaningful control’ in my life. This is one of our most helpful concepts when working with women, especially HSPs, who are burned out. This concept evolved from my own struggles with burnout and perfectionism in the past. Having embraced it also means I’m pretty ok with goofing-up because if you want to get something ‘perfect’, say choosing a paint colour for a room, then if you are anything like me, it might take a few tries! In the past, not finding the perfect colour on the first go would have been a personal failure. Now, I’m more likely to laugh or cringe. Hey…it’s just paint.

So, there is an upside to boring hoovering, it’s good for thinking about stuff… even unperfect ideas like this.

Here’s one great tip!

Our challenge for you is to be a selective perfectionist. Start by loving your ‘perfect’ side. Know what it’s great for!

Then make a list of no more than 5 things that you are happy to be ‘perfect’ about, even if it means doing it over and over again. Of course you will make mistakes, you can’t be perfect without them. Next list a few things off the top of your head that you vow you will never try to be perfect about again! There. that’s meaningful control.

Next time someone says “You shouldn’t try to do something perfectly”, just smile knowingly. Carry on and be perfect!

Until next time…Grab Life by the Crown!

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