symptoms of burnout
Knee Socks At 40? Oh My!
Now if knee socks is your style, we just want to say Brava to you, work it all the way! On the other hand, if you have just gotten busy, distracted, or waylaid over the last few decades, knee socks at 40 could be a clue that it is time to update your self-identity! It might just be time to rethink the ‘Who Am I?’ question…as well as your wardrobe (“Just saying” as our lovely American assistant would chime in!)
When you think about who you are you give yourself permission to reflect on the Big Picture: Where am I headed? What’s important to me? What do I want for my life? What is my life work?
Now, that’s pretty heady stuff because your answers form the core, the foundation, of how you are in the world, your way of being. Your answers hint at how you face-up to the pressures, challenges, and demands in life. It would be sad if life was just about pressures and challenges, the Burnout Queens believe wholeheartedly that life is about adventure, discovery, and change. It goes without saying…
When you know who you are you can embrace the beauty, opportunities, and possibliities that arise in life to surprise and delight you.
If you have forgotten (or avoided) hitting the ‘refresh button’ on your self-definition chances are you’re not wearing matching socks. You see, when your outside doesn’t ‘match’ your inside it causes no end of confusion, for you and for others. You know where I’m going with this right, without consistency and congruency in your self-definition the ensuing confusion leads to mistakes about who you are, misunderstandings, and misjudgements! There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that those of us who are highly sensitive, quirky, creative (or just dancing to our own melody) hate more than being misunderstood or misjudged. It’s exhausting! We end up explaining ourselves till everyone glazes over, and that is…well boring! (If you get stuck in that ferris wheel of explaining yourself over and over, read our feature article ‘You Are the Jewel in Your Crown’ so you can get off that ride!)
My Darling, ‘boring’can never be included in the
‘Who Am I?’ of you!
Alright, so we have to talk knee highs again. You know you don’t only figure out the ‘Who am I?’ agenda one time when you’re 13 and that’s that! Even though I must say my 13 year old self had a pretty bold sense of style, it was the swinging 60s! (Do you know in recent years I have actually seen some of my very own teenage outfits in fashion retrospectives in museums! It certainly gives one pause…) Anyway I digressed, back to the plot…
It’s essential to keep uncovering, rediscovering, and recreating your knowledge and understanding of yourself.
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Every stage of life, each new decade, brings many many opportunities to update your self-definition. It doesn’t matter how ‘old’ you are! We need to embrace them all, good and bad, because the truth about who you are changes from decade to decade based on these life experiences, how you understand things differently, and from your ever expanding perspective of the world, hey the universe!
Now maybe your self-definition will only require a few tweaks, or maybe you will want to do a whole new re-do! Brand new answers to brand new questions! Marvellous! Fabulous! Now that is completely Burnout Queen style!
You know as you let go of the old, outworn bits of you, those beyond their ‘best by’ date, you open-up space in your life to create new aspects of yourself. You create room and energy for the new you to flourish.
If you want to stay inspired you need to stay fresh!
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It’s all you, my love, evolving, learning, changing, growing…you thriving and flourishing. Yes, it is of paramount importance to keep your self-identity up to date! If you don’t well, what can I say, that’s when you end up wearing knee socks at 40 (and, shhh, between you and me, not a good look!).
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 bel
Push yourself! Try one new thing
Send me a Perfectionist…please!
You know by now, that I don’t believe a person should strive to be perfect because it sets all of us up to fail miserably. BUT…
When you need a problem or job done and dusted once-and-for-all, then I say send me a perfectionist.
What’s the difference you ask? Here’s my take:
- If you need the job done properly send a perfectionist.
- If you need a problem solved once, send a perfectionist.
- If you need something fixed to stop the leak or bleed, send a perfectionist.
- If you want someone who has integrity and pride in his/her work, send me a perfectionist.
This is the difference to me. I don’t want the person to be perfect, but I want whatever that person does to be done to perfection! All else pales in comparison.
What do you think? (I am perfectly willing to hear your answer!)
The Burnout Queens xx
The storm, the bucket and a black and blue nose!
What a night and day we had last week!
4am and I awake to a wicked thunder and lightning storm, and the persistent drip drop of water coming down the bedroom wall, soaking and staining my nan’s antique chair. Jumped out of bed, rolled up the carpet, got out the towels and buckets (yes buckets as water found a seam and was travelling) and moved that beautiful chair to safety. 4am…please!
Obviously leak from the terrace roof is happening, but I’ll save that for daylight. Back to bed for the drip, drip, drip till 7am dogwalk time. Another downpour and the roof terrace is filling fast with water…it’s a workday…but plan B is now afoot. Spent the day phoning property manager to get someone out and cleared the terrace so drain could run more freely (I think we’ve found the problem). Ben, our great management guy pays us a visit, we all look down the drain hole and say…ah, of course, the pebbles are blocking the hole and it’s all going over the flashing down the walls….Sherlock has nothing on the 3 of us.
That’s the storm and bucket sorted. To the nose…cleaning the terrace and removing plants so the drainage engineer(?!) can do his thang! I was putting away gardening tools in the benchseat on the landing, started to stand up and the benchseat attacked my forehead, glasses and bridge of my nose. I saw stars (not the celebrity kind), felt dizzy and just wanted to lie down. My nose came up swollen, black and blue and I thought it was broken for sure. No it wasn’t luckily.
Of course, this Burnout Queen heard not broken, so didn’t stop trying to clean up and get some work done. (can someone say burnout approaching!). Just paced it slow and steady. Then the headache and swelling got worse so I gave in (this is definitely something I don’t do easily) and hit the sofa where I lay for the rest of the day with an ice pack over my face (looking fab with the black on the nose, under the eyes and all swollen!)
WHAT A DAY. Often we say expect the unexpected. (note to self: be careful what you say)
ps: terrace being fixed this week. True test comes with next downpour! Life by the seaside.
pps: so busy catching drips I didn’t look out the window to see mother nature’s event!