How to PREVENT BURNOUT and REFUEL your creative rocket

Burnout can undermine our work and our life. Exhaustion creeps in physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. When burnout happens we suffer, and that impacts our project and those around us. Burnout happens when we don’t care for ourself.?

When we creatives and innovators burn out, our self-confidence also withers, we get stressed, distracted, muddled, and we find it harder to refuel.?

So it’s essential to take care of ourselves when we’re on our creative journey. Otherwise, we risk becoming a one-hit wonder, a supernova who burns out, forgotten in the void.?

QUESTION: Please share your experience. How do you prevent burnout, or know when you have burned out? How do you care for yourself? How do you refuel your rocket?

Do you make empty promises to yourself?

Katie McDonald is a self-care strategist who reminds us that “taking care of you is taking care of business.” She paints a picture of pain that is a bit too familiar to me. Katie says, “At the end of a long day, our heads finally hit the pillow, we are depleted, reactive, and resentful.” She adds with wry chuckle, “We vow that tomorrow will be different.”?

Yes, I’ve been guilty of empty promises to myself. Perhaps you’ve also experienced your own empty promise to double-down, to make up for what’s lost today by working extra-hard tomorrow. The emptiness echoes, reverberates in our soul. The emptiness hurts.?

Burnout impacts ourselves

Katie warns, “When you burn out, you have nothing to give. You are off the game board. So how is that helpful? How is that noble? There's nothing noble about it. I think it's selfish, in all candor.” That’s a mic drop.?

Our burnout hurts others

Katie doesn’t blame us or shame us for making those empty promises to ourselves. She helps us understand that our empty promises are part of a “toxic dynamic that deprives you —and the world— of your best.” Katie shares her own challenges with debilitating burnout, the painful self-sacrifices she’s made in pursuit of societal images of success. She says that burnout happens when “we over-function for everyone else and underperform for ourselves. When I go down, everyone else goes down with me. My son struggles, my husband struggles. I have seen it in real time. I owe it to them. I owe it to myself to be the best version of me every time I make a healthy, informed choice, not an indulgent, narcissistic choice.”

“Martyrdom is so last century.” - Katie McDonald

Katie says, “We need to be models and mentors, not martyrs.” She invites us to invest in ourselves. Yes, self-care is an investment. She advises, “Replenish yourself, restore yourself, repair the relationship you have with yourself and with time.”?

The benefits of self-care are life-changing

Katie says that when we practice self-care, “Our bounty is that we go into the world serving with mental clarity, with our boundaries in place, with perfectionism where it belongs.”?

Refuel your rocket

Katie gives us a good analogy: launching a rocket. On the launchpad, 90% of a rocket’s total weight is fuel, and 80% of that fuel burns getting off the ground and up into orbit. Once the rocket is in orbit, we need to throttle down, because too much thrust takes the rocket out of orbit.?

If we’re that rocket, we need to develop and practice the skill of knowing where our orbit is, and then throttling down once we’re in orbit. Throttling down becomes the essential skill of replenishing ourselves. And here’s the kicker, especially for creatives and innovators: By nourishing ourselves, we can do better work over a longer span, and have greater impact with our work, a more positive impact on our team and company culture.?

Replenishing ourselves can be easier said that done

Katie warns us that “A lot of people define self-care as indulgence and luxury.” However, those definitions are mistaken and “irrelevant in foundational self-care.” She wants us to see that mistaken way of thinking has “manipulated this basic care and contorted it into greediness and selfishness, and narcissism. That’s not what we’re talking about here.”

Katie empathizes with the challenge of self-care. “I bow down to the altar of ‘doing’ all day long. I love to get things done. I have realized I don't have to come undone to get things done.”

The “Bad Cop” demands you take care of yourself

Katie challenges us. “I would even venture to say, How dare you deprive us of your best self. I think it's a moral, ethical obligation to tend to ourselves in a way that enables us to bring our full selves to the table. That is, I think, a solution to all the suffering in the world. In all candor, I think most of us are not parenting ourselves, and we're running around like toddlers who haven't had a nap and have a wet diaper, and we're wreaking havoc on the planet with each other to ourselves.”?

The “Good Cop” shows you the basics to self-care

Katie encourages us. “I can't think of a better spiritual expression than taking care of the gift of this lifetime that we've been given and that and we take care of ourselves so that we can continue to sustainably care for everyone else without burning out.”

Katie’s foundational habits are: “Am I getting the sleep I need? Am I feeding myself? Am I moving my body? Have I had some quiet, spiritual time and in nature, even a minute taking a breath?” The spirit of self-care is that we are much better versions of ourselves each time we make healthy, informed choices.

Focusing on three things for the day helps you set boundaries

“I need to be discerning about what I say yes to. If I say yes to something, I have to make sure that I haven't said no to the foundational habits that I have in place for me to be well.” The best way to know what to say yes to, Katie says, is to “Identify the three most important things that you’re going to accomplish for the day.”?

Celebration grows our self-care habit

Katie says, “When you’ve completed those (three most important things you commit to do today) then celebrate the heck out of what you just accomplished. That's how we create energy back. We need to create energy, and we do that through our habits. We create energy when we're in the right place with the right people, when we’re doing the right work in the right way for the right reasons.”

I've begun practicing Katie's advice since interviewing her less than a week ago. I'm already noticing that I'm more in focus on those three daily things that are important to me, and I'm more in the flow of accomplishing them. I feel more energy with the people I'm doing those important things with, which gives them more focus and drive. My focus is also starting to give me better boundaries around what I'm NOT doing. Thanks, Katie!

??Ｑ?? WILDLY CREATIVE is my weekly article/interview on innovation and creativity.

#wildlycreative?