Silverton McLagan Coaching

The Burnout Personality Factor

DO YOU HAVE A BURNOUT PERSONALITY? (aka your BOP FACTOR)

Are you ready to discover if you have a Burnout Personality?  Also known as the BOP Factor as we like to call it.  Read on…

We all have certain characteristics we were born with that form a significant part of our temperament and personality.  Taken one at a time these characteristics are amazingly wonderful.  In fact, they are like a gift and can give you tremendous resilience and strength.   However, if you don’t pay attention to what you need, want, desire or dream of these same characteristics can wear you down and wear you out.  So now, The Bop Factor.  Let’s get into it.

You are not out of energy, exhausted and stressed because you:

  • are weak,
  • can’t cope,
  • can’t handle stress,
  • are a loser,
  • or a failure.

You do, however, have a ‘Be All and Do All Personality’ that can put you on the direct route to Burnout.

You try to BE everything to everybody and DO everything for everybody and do it all yourself!

Simply knowing about your BOP Factor can change how you feel about yourself and how you approach your life.  We are quite serious about this.  Knowing how your BOP characteristics are inter-woven with each other, how you inherited some of them and learned others, how they work for you and against you can absolutely change your life.

Without further adieu, here is the foundation of your Burnout Personality, your BOP factor:

You are reliable, dependable, conscientious, responsible & trustworthy.

You pride yourself on endurance, persistence, drive, tenacity and strength.  You have stick-to-it-ness!

You are more comfortable giving than receiving.

You always want to do the ‘right’ thing.

You are passionate, compassionate, empathic & sympathetic.

You are highly sensitive, creative, perceptive and have great intuition (when you listen to it!)

You are a caring, helpful, supportive, cooperative, loyal and a dedicated nurturer.

Now there are a few qualities that are cringe worthy.  No doubt you will recognise some of them but no judgements allowed!

You are a people pleaser.

You rarely feel ‘good enough’ .

You have really high standards for yourself and keep raising the bar higher and higher.

You work like a maniac.

You are a perfectionist!

You feel the need to prove yourself.

You are a perfectionist!

And, last but not least…

You have a YES habit.

That my lovelies is the BOP Factor.   When they work against you they put you at risk for burning out.  We certainly don’t want this for you because burnout robs you of energy, happiness, and your zest for living.  Burnout affects your relationships, your health, your career and your success. Ultimately you lose your drive, motivation, belief in yourself, passion and your spirit.

But, big but, when your BOP characteristics work for you we are talking peak performance.  They make you a passionate doer and truthfully the planet needs more of those.  The key is knowing how to embrace them, express them and direct the energy and intensity that comes with having such a strong personality.  That’s the power that comes with being a Burnout Queen.

 P.S. To put it into a context, here are 4 examples of how your BOP Factor can get in the way:

#1:  Being a perfectionist means you live in the future. You are always looking ahead to what you can do better, differently, or tweak a bit.

Result:  You never find peace, contentment, satisfaction or success NOW.

#2:  You live in a land of ‘shoulds, ought to’s, and musts.  You do what everyone else thinks is the ‘right’ thing for you to do.

Result: You end up living a compromise, instead of doing what you want, living your dreams.You end up always feeling guilty about something.

#3: Bell rings, you jump.  Others expect a lot from you and you always try to meet those expectations.  If you don’t, you berate yourself for not being helpful enough, understanding enough or just plain old good enough.

Result:  You end up pulled in too many directions.  Over-being and over-doing everything for everybody.

#4:   You end up silenced by your own strengths.  Your need to prove yourself, to do everything well, coupled with the fact that you are so good at what you do.

Result:  Other people simply expect your success.  They assume nothing is too much for you and you can handle anything and everything whether you want to or not.

With love,  Dr Toby & Dr Bev (aka The Burnout Queens) xx

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

 

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!

Crack open the books

What better time than summer to crack open the books you’ve longed to read all year long.  The days are long, the pace is summer-slow, and the time is yours to catch up on yourself.  

The Burnout Queens believe in the power of knowledge.  With our psychology degrees, our coaching expertise, and a specialty in womens’ issues, we wanted to share just a few books that will help you jump any life hurdles and open you up to even more personal growth. 

Here are a few of our ‘must reads’ to get you started.

  1. Excuses Begone! (Dr. Wayne W. Dyer)
  2. Be Happy.  (Robert Holden, Ph.D.)
  3. Quiet.   (Susan Cain)

 

Happy Reading darling. 

Dr Toby Silverton & Dr Bev McLagan  aka…The Burnout Queens xx

 

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