burnout

What is burnout; information and understanding of the experience of burning out

Spring Cleaning HSP-style

spring clean

When Spring arrived,  everyone was talking about spring-cleaning the house, the garden, washing the car, mending the curtains and fixing the fence!  All of that sounds lovely and inspiring and encouraging.  It will make us feel better to put the new paint on the walls, get the old out and make room for the new.

Of course, that got me thinking.  All those make-overs outside ourselves will make us happier and feel more organised, but dear one, what if we take that concept and apply it just to little-old-you!  Have you spring cleaned your life yet?

Yes, let’s spring clean you!  Whoosh that sounds kinda weird, but before you get offended, why not try freshening your ‘self’ up this spring.

Spring may be the perfect time to take stock of yourself and give a heave-hoe to the old stuff and a welcome mat to the new!

Here are 8 challenges that will give you and your life a fresh-air newness.

  1. Challenge your brain.  Make a new routine to your day.
  2. Challenge your emotions.  Create new rituals (not chores) that you enjoy.
  3. Challenge your spirit. Clear your energy by saying kinder things to you and others (get rid of the swearing and cursing, it doesn’t become a queen).
  4. Challenge your perspective. Look for positives in your life and bin the negatives.
  5. Challenge your heart.  Send your outworn styles to charity.  Give some other woman less fortunate the opportunity to feel beautiful.
  6. Challenge your creativity.  Make a beautiful space, even if it’s a little corner or small surface.  Air freshener that makes you smile, candle that calms, colours you love, most classy-comfy armchair to curl up in.
  7. Challenge your self.  Take pictures of yourself and see what others see.  If you don’t like what you see, change her!
  8. Challenge your desire.  Start a piggy-bank for anything you want it to be for.  Keep investing in your dream, who knows when that little piggy will crack!

Remember you need to put yourself on the spring clean list every year, along with all the household cleaning.    What better way to ensure you feel alive and invigorated again.  After all, isn’t that what Spring is all about?

Challenge You.  Clear the clutter and feel the freedom!

Love, The Burnout Queens xx

The Infamous HSP Tennis Game

Greer waiting patiently

Highly Sensitive Women are often inwardly analytic (we can’t help ourselves), but sometimes it doesn’t work in our favour.  In fact, it backfires on us and we are left wondering “how the heck does this keep happening?”

I’ll use this cute, manipulative little face from The Burnout Pup as a case in point (stick with me, my mind is strangely creative).  She’s waiting for her dinner and begging in her very cute way.  It’s hard to ignore, but I don’t want to give into her demands when it’s too early for her dinner  (guilty mummy moment).  How can I say ‘no’ to that face?  I feel like a meany and then I think (in HSP analysing mode now) why am I feeling like I should change the rules for her…perhaps I’m being too harsh… maybe she’s really hungry… why am I being so unreasonable… no really I should stay strong.   On and on the circle of reasoning and guilt goes, till I’m tired and confused from thinking.

Wait a minute now…this sound like many of my clients (HSP creative mind thinking in loop-de-loops)!  They want to stand firm in their opinion, the trouble is when they do, the other person blames or criticises, attacks their character!  So my clients end up taking on the responsibility and guilt that isn’t theirs to begin with.  They end up feeling so hurt, confused, guilty and lost. “Why is this always my fault” they ask.

Here are 6 accusations that signal it’s someone else’s issue, not yours!

  1. Why can’t you just go with the flow.
  2. Why do you always have to be unreasonable.
  3. Why can’t you be more flexible.
  4. What’s wrong with you that you can never let this go.
  5. You’re always such a control freak.
  6. This isn’t about you, you know.

These are the kind of accusations that send reasonable HSW’s into immediate turmoil upset and analysis.  We waffle back and forth, arguing silently with ourselves in an attempt to understand why a conversation and opinion went so sideways and how we ended up feeling guilty and responsible for it.

Stop analysing this.  It’s rarely something to feel guilty or responsible for.  It’s not yours after all.  It’s never been yours!  As one wise woman told me (that would be Dr T) “you aren’t even in it!”

Saying no, or contradicting somehow makes others point the finger in our direction, rather than admitting they just don’t like our answer. 

So here’s the advice I tell my HSW clients.  Think of a back and forth conversation as a back and forth tennis game.  If the other side hits the ball to your side of the court and somehow you know that ball has changed colour mid-return or it should have been a foul, then shoot it back across the net where it came from and where it belongs.   Don’t let it drop and remain on your side of the court.

If that tennis ball changed colour, you didn’t do it.

If that tennis ball went offside, you didn’t do it.

If you were accused of the sun being in your opponent’s eyes, you didn’t do it!

Do you get the picture?

Yes!  Then repeat after me…

this is ‘not’ my responsibility…

this is ‘not’ my problem…

this is ‘not’ about me. 

 

Long-winded story, but it occured to me while I was looking at cutesy pup trying her best to make me change my ways (and feel sorry for her in the mix).  I’m not the one trying to sneak dinner early!  Nope, this is ‘not’ about me!

Love, The Burnout Queens xx

Ditch the bucket list…get a jar

bucket

I am Fed Up with hearing everyone talk about their ‘bucket list’. This highly sensitive woman is asking you,  “can we have a nicer image than a bucket for our visions, hopes and dreams?”  As soon as I hear that word I have a fingers down a chalkboard moment!  Buckets do not inspire me, nor do they motivate me to make any sort of list.

If you have ‘things you want to do before you die’ then a bucket list is helpful. You can tick them off, say you did them, show the snapshots, hopefully have a good time while you’re doing them.   In my opinion these ‘things’ just add up as a fun to-do list that you can share or competitively compare with your family and friends.

Great for some, not for moi.  I’m looking for something more meaningful and purpose-driven. I’m looking to expand ‘who’ I am, not ‘what’ I can do before the end of my life.  And as a very visually inclined sensitive and creative woman I want it to ‘look beautiful in my mind’ so I get excited and inspired by the notion.

So what’s my alternative?

jar

A Jar.

I can’t take credit for this brilliance (it was suggested in one of my women’s group) but it certainly made more sense and spoke to me in a way a bucket list never has.

Here’s how it works.  As you experience things in your life that involve yourself, other people or occurences that enhanced you, changed you, made life happier, and you became wiser in the long term, then they get written on a piece of paper and put in your beautiful jar (vase, box, whatever place you wish to cherish your bliss).  At the end of the year you can sit down with eggnog, champagne, or cup of tea and remember that your year had times of great meaning, connection and personal enhancement.   You know, your accomplishments.  It’s that simple, and that deep!

To me, a jar of meaningful experiences does more than a list of ‘things’.  Don’t get me wrong, I know some of the papers will have ‘things’ I have done, but I will be remembering them as part of cultivating a well-lived life.  My inner evolution!

Embrace Life, with love The Burnout Queens xx

Abandoning Myself to Pleasure

theatre

When I go to the theatre, I go for the full entertainment value:  plot, costumes, songs, sets.  From moment I enter the lobby, it’s the mood, the architecture, the decor and drinks, that transport me out of my real world and into the world of fantasy.  It’s a lovely way to forget the biz, kids, worries and abandon myself to pleasure.

Sadly, others don’t share my experience and abandonment.  It makes me sad to see them ‘bring their world’ with them, seemingly unable to let it go, even for a moments pleasure.

When they take their seats they look at the tiny screen in their hand instead of the beautiful architecture, or speaking with their companion.  When the lights dim and the curtain starts to part, they are still sending their last minute text, email or photo instead of feeling the anticipation of what’s about to happen.  At intermission they whip out their screens to catch up, reply and browse the world, instead of watching the audience, sipping a drink or enjoying their strawberry and ice treat (this is something I truly cannot comprehend).

At the end of the performance, I walk away having enjoyed myself, having experienced something new, having lived in the moment, having forgotten the outside world.  Their experience is a very different story to mine.

I’ve learned to consciously embrace these moments.   It’s one of the ways I live a burnout-proof lifestyle.  I find it such a shame others cannot do the same…yet (I always hold out hope)!

Love, The Burnout Queens xx

 

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