How I manage burnout as an entrepreneur

Let me tell you a little something about burnout. So I have been really honest about my story with hitting a massive burnout four years ago, ending up in the hospital because they thought I might be having a stroke at the age of 29. The thing I've never really shared and I don't see a lot of people talking about is burnout is not this one thing that happens. It never really goes away when you've been through it to that degree. If you've been paying close attention on my channel, you know that this has been a season over the last couple of months of a lot of things. A lot of things being thrown at me, good and bad. We moved into a house that's a super high high, and the excitement of that and all of the great things that come along with it and the overwhelm that comes along with it, on top of huge shifts in my team that were really a challenge to move through and also grieving the loss of someone who had a massive impact on me.

So it's been a lot, to say the least, and I know I'm not alone in that because we're all dealing with a lot right now. And we're in very unprecedented times. And so life goes on and I have a business to run. I have a personal life I want to be present for. And I have really had to do a lot of work since that hospital trip to figure out how to manage my energy so that I never ended up there again. The growth I've experienced since then is unbelievable. And my business has never done better, my personal life has never felt better, but it's taken a lot to get to a place where I could experience that growth without the burnout happening.

And right now, because there's been so much thrown at me in the last little while, I can feel the symptoms creeping again. My eyes are burning, I have a headache all the time. And the best way that I've ever heard burnout described is it's kind of being tired and wired at the same time. So I wanted to share how I have navigated it and how I am navigating it right now. And I know I'll come out of this feeling totally healthy and fine and okay. And I feel healthy and fine and okay right now, but I can feel those symptoms creeping in. And I thought I'd share in the moment how I moved through it, how I worked through it. And I hope this is helpful for you cause I know there are a lot of people dealing with this right now, especially entrepreneurs.

I hope this resonates. So let's get into it.

I think one of the biggest misconceptions when it comes to burnout is that it's all about just self care and taking a break. And while those are factors of how I manage my energy and navigate when I'm feeling exhausted, they're not the be all end all. And I remember having a therapy session when I was starting to work through my severe burnout and my therapist said,

"It doesn't matter realistically, how many green smoothies you drink or how often you're going to the gym. That's just high level coping."

Meaning, that basically I was just finding superficial ways to deal with a very deep rooted issue.

Okay. So, I am not going to dive into the full story right now because I have talked already about this in depth. But I went through some traumas in my late twenties that really were the catalyst for me to uncover the root cause of why I was prone to working myself into the ground and why I was prone to burnout. It had to do for me a lot with self-worth and a lack of self-worth. From a very early age, I had this sort of programming in my head that made me feel like the busier I was and the more perfect I was and the more I was the best, the more worthy I was of love, kindness, attention, and affection. That is a dangerous loop to have in your head. When things were going on in my life, when I was dealing with hard times, my default mode was I'm just going to keep myself so busy that I don't really have to deal with anything.

And I'm going to kind of numb myself out that way. That really is the first thing for me is being mindful and aware enough of knowing what the root causes of me being so prone to wanting to be busy. When I'm aware of that, it makes me really mindful of the work that I'm doing and if it's actually necessary, or if I'm just doing that work so I don't have to deal with what's really going on. And the last time I just kept myself busy and didn't actually deal with what was going on internally, that's when it ended in me being in the hospital. Hopefully, this lands for you because if that alone can save you from ending up in that same position, that's worth it. And that brings me to the next, really important factor of how I navigate this.

Every morning when I wake up, I remind myself of my four daily priorities and I made this to keep the main thing, the main thing, and to not just do work for the sake of doing work and fall into that default of just being busy all the time. Knowing those four daily priorities has changed my life to be totally honest. And I'm self-aware enough to know I need to see that every day to keep myself on track because as I said, otherwise, I'm just going to work myself into the ground. And that is really my autopilot mode, is just to work and it's my comfort zone, but it doesn't mean it's healthy. A big thing for me is to know what needs to be done and is necessary. And anything outside of that, when I'm in this phase of feeling tired and feeling burnt out, I'm not doing anything extra.

I'm saying no to the majority of the things that are not pushing the needle forward and aren't necessary to be doing on a daily basis. It also goes personally for me, I have three check-in questions. I shared this, few videos back when I was going through a really hard time in my business. And it's something that I started doing and it makes a big difference. So every morning and night, I check in and I ask myself:

"How do I feel really? Is this necessary? Am I staying true to my rituals?"

My daily rituals are very simple, three M's. I got to meditate in the morning, have my moment with my tea and pure silence and quiet and then, movement. So I move my body every day. The other thing is I don't manage my time anymore. I manage my energy and I talked about how, as somebody who gets a period, it's been life changing to understand my cycle because at different stages of your cycle, four phases, you're going to be more powerful in different areas.

In one phase of your cycle in particular, it's really meant for you to slow down, to go a little more introspective, to get a little more rest. I didn't know this until I was way too late in life. This book is called In The Flow by Alisa Vitti and I read it all the time. It's very well used and loved. And I have a friend who I follow online as well. And it's because I'm feeling this way right now, I wanted to have a conversation with her to just sort of check in and get her expertise on how to navigate this and how to navigate burnout specifically when it comes to your hormones and as somebody who does get a period and needs to be navigating their cycle.

So I thought I'd share that conversation with you and I'm actually going to go meet with her right now. So let's do it. About to hop on zoom with Berry, who I adore and I've been following for a really long time. She has a wealth of information when it comes to your health and your cycle and all that good stuff. She's the founder of optimizeyourflo and I'm so grateful that she's going to take the time to walk me through this whole exhaustion thing, your hormones. So I'm excited.

Tell me, where are you at in your cycle right now?

So I just finished my menstrual cycle so I'm in the follicular phase right now. But the funny thing for me is that how I know I'm on the verge of a burnout right now is that right now, I would generally be full of energy, full of life, ready to be external, all this stuff. And I'm not there right now. I'm like, "Give me another week of just resting."

Yeah, maybe that's what you need to do though. A lot of times we were conditioned to operate in a more of a linear manner. And I generally use really inclusive terms when I'm talking about periods, but I'm referencing a specific study that was done. So please forgive me, I'm not trying to offend anyone.

But what the research was literally saying is in our reproductive ear specifically, women are more apt to have HPA access dysregulation because we have a dip in the second half of our cycle. So about 40% of the energy from our immune system gets redirected to our reproductive system. And there's a direct correlation between burnout and stress as it relates to your immune system. And so I think what a lot of people just don't know and realize is, we don't reset every 24 hours. We reset every 21 to 35 days, depending on your actual menstrual cycle. Keeping that in mind, we could, if we wanted to, hopefully we don't want to anymore. We don't operate at the same level of performance as people who don't have periods that identify as met. They reset every 24 hours, must be nice, can't relate.

So that's the difference between the infradian rhythm and the circadian rhythm because they're more so circadian, which means you can do the same thing every day. Whereas infradian, it's cyclical and goes in the phases, sorry.

You know, we like to spice up life a little bit. We need something a little different, we don't want to stick to our routines. But I also think that having simple things in place to help you continue performing is essential. So I recommend during your PMS and menstrual phase, pick your top three things to do that you have to prioritize getting done.

Get them done and then be with yourself. And then if you're really daring, this is something I like to do, I love to do a mini vacation around my periods. So the day before my period, the first day of my period, second day of my period, don't talk to me.

Like the TikTok says, “Don't talk to me.”

I hear you.

It's not because I don't want to talk to people. It's just, I would rather sit with myself and not think about all the other problems that need to be solved.

That and also, I find for me, it just is a big energy expenditure when I have to talk to people. And I talk to people a lot, day-to-day online, it's a little bit different, but still, when I'm in that phase, I want to conserve every ounce of energy that I have. And when I do that, I always feel better coming out of it and into the follicular phase. And I feel like it sets me up for success moving forward. I've heard about stress cycles and that there are things that we need to be doing to close the loop. And I have no idea if this is actually valid. I'm not a doctor, I have no idea, but I'll ask you. I find that when I'm in that burnout place, my brain just goes on. It's like a constant loop and I'm scared I'm going to forget something. So it just can't stop processing the same thing over and over again. And I've read things about completing the stress cycle and all of that stuff. Am I on the right track at all?

Yeah. Let's put some context behind this. So you are on the right cycle, but you know, we have this continuous and negative feedback loop that generally, we want it to actually shut down. So basically what happens is once you emit enough cortisol, your body goes into this fight or flight state. But when you're in this burnout, it never comes out of that state. So that is a negative feedback loop. Generally, let's say friends sense for in nature, a threat is posed. We're running for our lives, we're running and then the moment, let's just say, the barrier is gone, the cortisol would actually decrease and shut off that feedback loop so that you're not continuously, "What's going on? What's going on? What's going on?" So that's the whole neuro-endocrine situation that we were talking about in the beginning, but I don't want to overwhelm people with all the big terminology. It's just to say that if you can slow down, literally slow your breath down, slow your nervous system, regulate yourself... you can begin to shut down or close off that feedback loop. You can close it.

That is very helpful. And I guess the thing that I'm trying to figure out is I have things that I do to slow myself down, but it's really interesting. It's a vicious cycle because when I get into the place that I'm in right now, which doesn't happen often, but where I am having that loop and I'm kind of constantly in fight or flight. It's like, I forget and I lose the fundamentals of how to slow down. Do you have anything that you can recommend I do to just take a minute to slow down or any sort of tactics?

Yes. So I'm going to share with you something called "The Learning State" and it's a simple practice. It's nothing crazy and wild. But what I find is it comes to the nervous system and it focuses you. So what you want to do, take your right hand, place over your heart, left hand over your tummy. Okay. And what we're going to do is take a deep breath in through the nose, out through the mouth, but we want the exhale to be longer than the inhale.

Oh my God, that already felt so much better.

Now, there's more.

I want you to actually look up at your ceiling, go ahead and open your eyes. Look up at your ceiling, do want to look up about 45 degrees. And I want you to begin to bring the awareness to everything happening around you. And the moment that you start, maybe noticing like anything else going on, you can bring your eyes back down, but you really just want to get aware of your surroundings in your body and just feeling how it slows you down.

Now, this is something that I do whenever I'm getting anxious and I can feel my... I do this for a living, but I still get anxious, I still get overwhelmed, and I need to calm myself down. And that will help regulate yourself. That is what we want to do because just the simple practice of slowing your breath begins to close that negative feedback. And the point of closing that feedback loop is to get us out of the sympathetic nervous system, which is fight, flight, freeze, or fawn and into the parasympathetic, which is all about relaxing and digesting and just glowing. Now that's what we want.

Slowing down is just not as complicated as we make it. That was so refreshing to hear and validating that self care and all the bells and whistles and all that stuff, it's great. And everybody's got to do what works best for them, but sometimes it's as simple as just taking a deep breath, checking in with yourself, being present that can biologically keep the stress at bay.

I hope this was helpful. And if you're going through something similar, let me know. I think a lot of people are, right now. I already feel better. And it was just a good reminder that unfortunately I need sometimes to just slow down. If you enjoyed this conversation, I have this secret group that I've talked about before. It's really just a family and a community of people who enjoy and watch my content so we can go deeper. If you liked this, share it with somebody who needs to hear this information and be sure to subscribe for new content every single week. And I dive even deeper into phases and cycles and all that stuff. And yeah, let's just be kind to ourselves. It's important. Are you with me?

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