4 Steps to Heal from Burnout and Prioritize Your Life

October 8, 2021

If you made it to this blog, you probably know a thing or two about burnout.

But you’re ready for that to change. You want to do less work and more living (and feel good about it!), but you need some guidance to truly make it happen.

This blog is here to support you as you take the necessary steps to heal from burnout and learn to prioritize your life. Let’s not waste anymore time and get into what burnout is and the early signs.

What is burnout?

Burnout is a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. The symptoms are similar to mental illnesses like depression and are often mistaken as general stress. This can make it hard to identify and treat unless you know the warning signs.

7 signs of burnout

I recently listened to an episode of the podcast “On Purpose with Jay Shetty.” In it, he goes over the 7 early signs of burnout:

1. Fatigue over the things you used to find easy

2. Poor sleeping habits

3. Brain fog

4. Low creativity

5. Being irritated by small things

6. Avoiding being around people

7. Indecisiveness

If you aren’t aware of the symptoms, you may attribute feeling emotionally drained or mentally exhausted to something else. That stops here.

How to recover from burnout

Now that you understand more about what burnout is and why it occurs, let’s get into 4 ways to recover from it that prioritizes you in the process.

1. Rest

The best thing you can do when your stress levels are high is regulate your nervous system.

I’m currently diving into what exactly that means with my creative psychologist Rita Tojal. Her advice produced this list of various ways to rest, recharge, and regulate yourself:

• Get out in nature

• Take a full day off work

• Turn off your phone

• Don’t check social media or email

• Take a vacation to shake up your day-to-day

• Star gaze

• Lie down on the Earth or walk barefoot outside to soak up Mother Nature’s energy

Healing from burnout requires you to pause long enough to reconnect with yourself. Only you know the best way to do that, but I hope some of these suggestions help you if you feel stuck.

2. Check in with yourself

During that time of rest is a great opportunity to observe what’s going on around (and inside of) you.

What do you need?

Are you overextending your energy?

Are you having fun and enjoying your work? 

Or are you feeling stretched too thin? 

Are you feeling overwhelmed?

Taking time to check in with yourself allows you to answer all these questions. When you do it frequently, you give yourself the time and space to determine how you really feel.

No one can give you the answers. However, you CAN ask for guidance to navigate this process.

3. Ask for support

Once you’re ready to ask for help, the hardest part is over! You can breathe a big sigh of relief now.

As a business owner, you have an ever-growing list of tasks to complete. This is a recipe for burnout if you’re not careful. To cut through the clutter and prioritize what matters most to you (like, your life!), try the 4 D’s of Time Management – do, delegate, delete, or defer.

Want a tool to help you tap into what you have to do, what you want to do, and what you can let go of? I created this fun (and well-rounded) Business Badass version of the 4 D’s, which includes impact and money, delegate, self-care, defer, delete, and impact.

Use this version or make your own!

The sense of overwhelm, having to do all the things, trying to balance work and life… it doesn’t have to be this way. You can ask for support.

Whether you get a therapist or coach, hire an assistant, or decide to outsource work to other experts, the point is… you don’t have to do it all.

4. Learn to balance your life and business

Which brings me to the last point. On the road to recovery from burnout, you learn to set your very own badass boundaries. This happens because you figure out the balance you need to function as a business owner and a person.

It can be challenging to rewire your brain to understand it’s safe to do less, so here are my favorite affirmations to help with this:

• Business can be easy.

• I can make a shit ton of money by only working half-days during the week.

• I still get my client work done when I take off on [*insert chosen day of the week here*]

You deserve to have a business that doesn’t lead to burnout. If you need guidance to help you get there, book a 45-minute session with me so we can talk about what’s really going on!

The end result? You prioritize your life again. How badass is that?!

Sharing to Pinterest? Here’s a few images: