Burnout

Burnout is a state of exhaustion caused by our thinking. In short if you’re a bloody knackered and feeling like you have nothing left to give - you may be experiencing burnout. 

We become burned out because of our attitude and energy behind the work that we’re doing, not the work itself. 

Many people think Burnout is caused by overworking but this is not true. This is actually great news because this means we can do the mindset work to move out of burnout, we don't need to go changing our jobs or our circumstances, the issue we are having is created in our mind.

Burnout is caused by:
Stressful thinking 
Scarcity thinking
Poor planning 

When the emotional fuel that is driving your work is coming from a place of scarcity
This may look like thinking thoughts along the lines of:

‘There isn't enough time’

‘There isn’t enough work’

‘There isn’t enough clients’ 

‘This is going to go wrong’

When we are trying to create from a place of stress and scarcity this means we are just running on thoughts of general ‘not enoughness’ then we try to outrun these thoughts of not enoughness, by doing MORE.

We end up working harder and for longer and when we continue working from this place of lack you will eventually deplete yourself and end up burned out because you feel like you can never do enough.

I have experienced burnout in the past and I have a lot of coaching clients who work in the creative industry who have come to me, because they too have reached burnout.  

My experience of burnout started before I became a coach.I was running my design business full time. I was never in the present moment, I was always all up in my head and onto the next commission before I had completed the current one.  

My Experience of Burnout

I said yes to every commission that came my way because I was telling myself I had no choice, I had to do it, in case another project did not come in. I kept doing more and more, which is exhausting. I was running on fear. 

What I didn't know at the time was that Burnout is a choice, and everything that we do is a choice.

Often we feel overwhelmed by everything we think we have to do. The truth is, there is literally nothing we have to do. It is all optional.

It is usually the case that we wouldn’t like the outcome if we didn't do something, so this means we are actually making a choice, but often we lose sight of this.

To give you an example:

Let's say you think you have to go to work, 
You can just not turn up for work, but you probably won't get paid.
And if you don't get paid you can't pay your mortgage.
So in fact you are choosing to turn up for work so you can live in your lovely house. 

When we recognise that we are choosing all the things we are doing in our lives because we want the result, this gives us all our power back.

We realise we are choosing to do this for ourselves and this feels far more empowering than telling ourselves that we have to do something. This will change your energy into an energy of abundance rather than scarcity. 

These are my top tips for How to move out of burn out:

1)Identify the emotional fuel that drives your action to work? Do you feel energised or depleted?If you think your in burnout your emotional fuel is probably scarcity, it's great initially to just simply build some awareness around this

2)As I said earlier burnout starts with our thinking, and in order to change the way you think, you need to give yourself some space to think.
Plan more space and relaxation, initially this will feel hard, because your not used to doing this, this will allow for energised productivity so you can be more intentional and you can work smarter not harder.

3)What can you say no to? There's probably a lot of things on your list you don't want to do and you actually don't need to 

4)Identify What are you choosing to say yes to? SO Reframe the things that you’re telling yourself you have to do, remember it's all a choice  

5) Get back in touch with your why, tap back into your humanness and authenticity and remind yourself why you are doing this.

You do not have to work all the hours in order to be successful, it is how your thinking and the energy behind it which determines your success and whether you get burned out or not.

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