#9 Is Burnout a business builders inevitable experience?

Welcome to another episode of the mastery method podcast. My name is Anna. I am your host today, your intuitive business coach, your guide on your business journey. As always, you know, I love to blend the spiritual with the business. And today I’m taking that to a whole new level and really bringing in your physical health with everything because one of.

The biggest destroyers of business and health. Is burnout. It is something that I have of course, absolutely experienced. It is something that no doubt you have at some point to, uh, if you haven’t already, then I sincerely hope that this podcast will assist you in preventing that because whilst you know.

Uh, when you’re first starting out and you’re bright eyed and bushy tailed, then bouncing back from small cases of burnout doesn’t necessarily need to be complicated, but absolutely as not only do you get older, but as you get more worn out with business, it can be a slower road to recovery, excuse me. So.

Let’s have a chat about what actually burnout is, because there is a lot of iterations of it. Obviously we’re all aware of a level of fatigue that can be experienced, just a bit of dread, uh, possibly a little bit of depression that can be thrown into the mix. It is a broad spectrum experience, and it is definitely something I’m going to be speaking more about as we go on, because it is so prevalent in business and it really doesn’t have to be.

You can absolutely pull yourself back. You can prioritize your own time, your own energy. And with that, you can not only pull yourself back from the brinks of burnout, but you can also prevent it. And ideally my goal is to ensure that you can prevent burnout. There’s nothing nice about it. It’s not nice for you.

It’s not nice for your clients. It’s not nice for your family. So burnout, a lot of the actual physical side of burnout has to do with adrenal fatigue. Now your adrenals govern a lot within the body. You can also have a really mild low level chronic adrenal fatigue. And I dare say that that is where the vast majority of people operate.

Where there is just this real sense of just mild fatigue, mild tiredness, which is just a little bit more than not having a great night’s sleep. And you just get up and you just keep going. Okay. From there, your adrenals will absolutely take a strain with stressful situations. With any type of big emotions, because obviously what the adrenals do is release adrenaline in your body.

So if you are existing in a chronically stressed state, or you’re finding yourself in a situation where you’re just constantly having loads of stressful things coming at you, then it stands to reason that. You’re gonna have a lot of cortisol, a lot of adrenaline, a high heart rate all pumping through your body.

That’s not a nice state for you to be in and exist in, okay? From there, overwhelm is very easy to happen. It’s hard to operate from a place of overwhelm. It’s nigh impossible to have any type of creative juices flowing when you’re in that state. Rain fog can easily kick in at this point in time. For anybody who’s ever experienced that before, Um, you know what I mean when I say that.

And for anybody who hasn’t experienced brain fog personally, as in you yourself, all I can say is trust me when I say that unless you truly experience that yourself, it is Very hard to conceptualize what it is like to exist with this, um, what it is like to get up every day and just not feel like you’re functioning.

I had a virus a couple of years ago, um, glandular fever to be specifically. And, um, burnout was a consequence of that. And it was really. Something that, sorry, not the burnout. The brain fog was really a consequence of that. And it was a big struggle to, to function was a very strange experience. And it really gave me a whole new level of understanding and compassion.

Towards all of the clients that I had worked with in the past, who lived with chronic health conditions like that with autoimmune conditions and those who survived with brain fog. And I say that because you’re definitely not thriving when you’re in that space. There really isn’t anything nice about it.

Okay. Now let’s get to sort of another stage of burnout, a slightly different version. And this one I want to just briefly touch on, because it comes with a spiritual twist. It is really easy to burn yourself out on what I’m going to say is a soul level. When you are constantly operating from a hustle head energy.

And also when you’re off the back of that, doing things you think you should versus what’s actually deeply in alignment with who you are and what you are here to do on this planet. Okay. There is a real big difference between Doing what you got to do to pay the bills, um, versus what lights your heart and soul on fire.

Now you can absolutely monetize what lights your soul on fire. Um, but if you’re not there yet, or you haven’t quite been able to, if you’re operating from a place where you don’t love what you do, You’re not thrilled by your work, your current family situation, where you live. I mean, right now on the planet is a fabulous example because there is a lot of stress, there is a lot of economic pressure, like, yes, not everybody’s affected, they never will be.

Yes. There’s still a lot of wealth going around. Yes. You don’t have to be struggling at this time, but if you are caught in that, I understand that there’s a need to pay the bills and that you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. And if you’re a little bit frightened to jump into what lights your soul on fire, I get it.

But if you stay in this space of holding yourself back, of crushing your soul, of crushing your, Um, creativity, your kind of intuitive flow. If you’re not letting that come through to you in whatever way that looks like and means to you, then. You’re operating very in the 3d and very in the physical, and you are actually going to be burning yourself out by simply not acknowledging a really big part of you that needs more and wants more and craves for more than what it is you’re doing.

And that type of spiritual burnout. You know, it’s kind of an invisible thing, right? Where it’s not always obvious that things aren’t okay. This is the thing with autoimmune conditions, isn’t it? You put a smile on your face and paint your makeup on or whatever. And, and you look fine and how you feel on the inside doesn’t often show up.

Okay. And if anything I’ve just said identifies with you makes sense to you about being spiritually aligned, then I want you to go and take a minute and think about that and really just see how you can start bridging the gap so that you can be acknowledging that part of you. Now, If you are simply quashing your spiritual tendencies, but you don’t necessarily have the desire to monetize them, you don’t have to.

I’m not saying everybody needs to go out in business, but if you’re listening here, then you probably have an inkling that that’s what you want to do. But if you’re happy in the job that you’re doing, if you’re secure, if it. You know, fills that cup for you and doesn’t burden you and doesn’t stress you out, then you can absolutely flourish on that spiritual level in other ways.

You don’t have to go out and monetize it if that’s not where you’re at right now. So find ways to fill your cup. Okay. Now I also really want to caution, when the two worlds collide, your physical burnout and a spiritual burnout, if you get to a stage where you’re potentially experiencing both, try not to get there.

It is a slow road to recovery and it requires a lot of discipline and a lot of patience and a lot of compassion in you to heal from that. Okay. Now I’ve got your hand if that’s where you’re at, but Let’s try to not get you there. The whole point of really what I want to talk about today is about you prioritizing yourself and your time and your energy and your creativity and your spiritual spark so that you can absolutely avoid getting yourself to a level of burnout.

I’ll Now, I also very quickly want to touch on the nutritional aspect. I am absolutely recovering from my world’s colliding and that level of burnout. Now for me, I had an incident that kind of triggered that where I was bitten by a spider that did set off. a really intense immune kind of response. Um, that hasn’t been fun to recover from, but boy, has it been a really powerful journey.

And now that I’m largely on the back of it, is it something I wish didn’t happen? I’m so much healthier for it. Like obviously if you weren’t getting To that stage where something really needed to kind of pull the rug out from under you so that you could like, yes, of course that’s better. But if you haven’t experienced, no matter how challenging it is in the moment, when you can get through it and get to the other side, you are always stronger for it.

You have learned more. Um, you are wiser in my case, so much healthier, not that I was unhealthy before, but you know, the level that I’ve needed to go to the level of health that I’ve needed to rebuild, like, I know that’s going to serve me for many years to come. Um, would I change that? No. Could I have gotten there without the spider bite?

I mean, yeah, but would I ever had the impetus to sort of go, right, I’m just going to deeply focus on it. Maybe not. Do you see what I mean? I’ve forgotten where I was going with that. I’ve gone on a bit of a tangent, so we’re going to keep it real and I’ll be honest and say, you know, these things happen.

This is life. So if you have an experience where you do have a collision of burnout. Stay with the compassion, find whatever works for you. And now I remember where I was going and that was to lightly touch on the nutrition side, because for me in going through this experience, I had to really drastically change, um, a lot of the food that I was consuming.

Now I can’t ever say that I was eating badly, but I’ve really had to go to a complete extreme, extreme. Um, and change things a lot. Now I’m not a nutritionist. I will not be giving anybody, um, any type of nutritional advice. Um, this probably isn’t the platform to share what, what I needed to do, what worked for me, what I’m going to really strongly suggest is keep an open mind towards.

You doing and changing whatever it, you need that will work for you, even if it doesn’t stick with the norms. If it doesn’t work for you, doesn’t it work for you? We’re all very chemically different. Okay. We all have a different biological composition. Yes. There are textbook guidelines for nutritionally, how we should eat.

That didn’t work for me. I had to really go down a different path and I have found a huge benefit in that. And with that, what I’m saying is be very mindful of the effect that food has on you. Now I’m sitting here with a cup of coffee because it’s early in the morning. And, but I know for me that caffeine really affects my system in a way that doesn’t actually really serve me right now.

And so you’re sitting there going, why the hell are you drinking coffee then? Uh, because I’m planning on stopping again at Christmas. We’re less than a month away. This is where like work is crazy. And I’ve just sort of gone. I can’t add more to my plate right now. I’ve spent months off coffee this year. I can absolutely do it again, which I will.

And that will kick off when I start my holidays, um, at Christmas time until then I’m allowing myself small amounts of caffeine, not enough to overload my system, but enough that I’m aware that it’s like, yep, it’s truly time for me to stop this luck once and for all. Uh, and so I feel like I need to enjoy sort of a little bit before we get there, but pay attention to The different types of food that you’re eating and how that may affect you.

Okay. So if you have a big heavy meal and you then have a, like a food coma type effect out of it, that’s definitely a warning signal to pay attention that either you’ve eaten too much or that the food that was there for you didn’t actually agree with you. And so maybe temporarily you need to press pause with that.

Okay. Obviously consult with a nutritionist or any type of guidance there as to the right things to do, but just be mindful that it’s absolutely going to be having an impact on your ability to heal from burnout. Think foods that are full of energy and full of life. It goes without saying you absolutely want to feel yourself full of fruit, full of vegetables, keep it light, keep it fresh.

Try to get good quality ingredients where you can, so that you’ve got that real positive, energetic, nutritional influence coming from the food that you eat. Okay, now, now that that side of stuff has been mentioned, let’s dive into how to prevent yourself getting into burnout. I would really encourage you if you feel like you’re teetering on the verge or you’re already on the verge, it’s a great time obviously to start pulling things back, shifting how you do things so that you never fall back into operating from this place again.

And my very first Tip is going to be, keep it simple, keep your recovery simple, keep your exercise simple, simplify your work as much as you possibly can. With exercise, bearing in mind that you are in adrenal fatigue and that there are, whilst I’m all for exercise. If you are burnt out, maybe going and doing high intensity stuff isn’t the right thing for you at this point in time.

It is going to be smashing your adrenals some more. However, going out for a walk is an excellent way of keeping you moving, balancing your whole nervous system, and not smashing your adrenals. Now, I can’t say that I’ve been guilty of this, but I’ve got way too many clients who are. Don’t go out and go for a three hour long walk when you’re smashed.

Okay. When I say walk, I mean, actually pay attention to your body and your signals. Start with 20 or 30 minutes walk. Just get out and move. Okay. Part of your getting healthy and staying fit is you getting yourself to a point where you can actually do the work that will get you healthy and fit. And right now in a burnt out state, what that means is stripping everything back.

And acknowledging first and foremost that this is where you’re at, and this is what you need in this moment, and that it will get better from here, because if you can’t make peace and have compassion with yourself for where you are at. Right now, how do you expect yourself to improve from there? How do you expect yourself to grow and get better?

Because you’re going to be constantly trying to do things that might be hindering your process. So keep it simple. Keep it simple with exercise. Keep it simple with your nutrition. Okay. Consider just limiting, you know, if you’re having a salad, do you need 20, 000 ingredients? Keep it simple. All right.

It’ll take some of the pressure off of your digestion. That’s going to help your recovery. All right. If you’re taking supplementation, start with one, like a vitamin C. Okay. Get a good quality one. Just keep it simple. One thing with your work, how much can you pare it back so that you are still doing everything that you need to do because bills got to get paid.

Like if you’re in a position where you can really just completely pull yourself back power to you. Do that. Okay. But I’m still going to encourage you to keep things simple because it’s going to be a habit. If you take like a month off and then you just go back to doing what you were doing, like, of course, you’re going to burn straight back out again.

All right. So it’s about really building solid, good foundations and having good locks. That you can build from so that it doesn’t happen again. All right. Now with pairing things back at work, if you are new to business and you are very much still in the building phase, I want you to do one project at a time.

Don’t go out and launch ads and then like kick off. Uh, all your email marketing, and then you’re going to learn the Google platform and you’re going to rebuild the website and show up to everybody at work. Like, okay, don’t do that. All right. Let’s assume you have a functioning website. Great. It works.

It’s not broken. It’ll do. Okay. Um, if your goal is to drive traffic and it’s to drive sort of building of audience, build one funnel, launch an ad, have the corresponding email sequence to it, that’s it. Build that bridge. Just put your attention on making sure that that works, that that’s optimized. And once you’ve got that running and generating you results, then build the next bridge.

Don’t build five bridges at once. Okay. Acknowledge that actually that’s a really good tip, whether you’re burnt out or not, but that you potentially don’t have the capacity to spread yourself more thin. And when you can pull yourself back and just do one thing really well, that’s worth everything. One of my mentors, um, many, many years ago, uh, and this is obviously in the health practitioner space, really drummed into us as practitioners.

One contact, one touch with impeccable specificity. is worth so much more than a thousand random contacts that don’t get to the heart of what you need. Carry that with you. One breach, get your ads working, get them converting, get your emails. There’s a series of steps in that anyway, right? But you’re focusing on one thing.

All right, nutritionally pair it back, focus on keeping it simple and just keeping it fresh and do that as often as you can. Come Sunday. If you want to deviate from, do it, that’s okay. That’s life. You’ve got to, but when 80 to 90 percent of what you’re doing to support yourself is good and is helping you to get better.

Great. Can you also stagger your workload as much as possible? With that, I mean, can you have support? Can you find somebody that can help you with whatever you’re doing. And if that looks like a VA for two hours a week, you know, and if that means that you do have to offshore that, because that will help you with the affordability there, do that.

Okay. Can you, if you’ve got a team, can you give them a little bit of extra responsibility? What can you take the pressure off? Okay. The next thing is if you can’t really take huge chunks of time off if your workload and situation just don’t allow it. I get it. Where can you take small breaks? Can you take an afternoon here and an afternoon there?

And I literally mean take it off. I don’t mean sitting in bed. Kind of half relaxed, half doing stuff, no, tools down, proper tools down. And if you can’t quite gift yourself a full afternoon, can you just put stricter boundaries in place? Monday, I finish at this time, full stop, Tuesday, tools down at this time.

And then you have a couple of hours here and a couple of hours there where you’re really in proper healing, relaxed mode. In that time, if you are at home, be aware that bright lights will be affecting your ability to then get to sleep. Can you have, um, dimmer lights? Can you use your lamps? If you’re watching TV, maybe don’t have the volume full home.

stop your caffeine intake at a certain time, you know, drink herbal teas that promote good quality sleep. Guys, there’s nothing I’m saying here that I’m sure you haven’t heard already. Okay. It’s just about you needing to hear it at the right time that you’re ready to receive it and then putting like implementing those things in place for you.

Okay. All right. Breathing deeply. This is really, really powerful. Not only do I highly recommend the use of deep, slow, methodical breathing, um, to anchor in your winds and to celebrate things, I also recommend it at the same time. This point in time, because it really helps regulate your whole central nervous system.

All right. And you don’t need to sit there for 60 minutes doing this, but just take a few minutes, close your eyes, sit up, have your eyes closed, be alert, deepest breath in, nice and slow, deepest breath out, nice and slow. Repeat that a few times. If you can do four or five breaths a couple times a day, a little bit longer in the evening before you go to bed, honestly, it will make the world of difference to your health and to your well being.

On the back of celebrating your wins, Use that technique to anchor that in as well. That is going to sort of anchor in, this is my new baseline. I celebrated this, I’ve worked for this. This is my new normal. It will be attracting back to you more of what you want. So then consider from the perspective of healing, you want to be bringing more healing in.

So if you’re taking a few minutes to sit and chill and breathe deeply will relax you. will regulate your nervous system. You want more of that. You want that recovery from burnout. Okay. All right. Now let’s have a look and see if there’s anything else that we need to touch on guys. This is a very brief entry into burnout.

It is something I will no doubt be speaking more on, but for today, Just take a moment to just press pause. I want you to prioritize your health and your well being above all else. Because if you can’t deliver, if you can’t show up to work and to your clients, how do you expect The universe to bring you anything back.

Okay. If you are operating from a half full battery from a law of attraction perspective, can you honestly expect anything other than half results back? Okay. Have a think about that. And even if your funnel is great and everything ticks all of the boxes, That’s how things manifest, isn’t it? It might not be working as well as perhaps you would like it to, unless you are really operating from a perspective of my battery is full.

I’m at full capacity and you’re operating from that, but you must come from a full energy perspective first. Take some time off. Full days, couple of hours, deep breathing, change your food where you need to, make some subtle changes, cut back on the caffeine, modify your exercise regime. Okay, to be supportive, see deep breathing, take some work off your plate and focus on building one business bridge at a time.

Get it right, master it, then build the next one. Not only is that a good practice, but it is you coming from a good healthy space. So until next time, I look forward to hearing about how you’re all focusing on ensuring we stay burnout free. Absolutely. Let me know what you think about this. If you’ve got any of your own suggestions, I want to hear it, message it, DM me, let’s connect.

And I look forward to seeing you again next week.