BSB Ep 91
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Bite-Sized Brilliance podcast. I'm your host, Dr. April Darley, and have you ever just woken up in the morning and said,_ "I want to blow up my entire life?"_ Well, if you have, then this episode is for you, my friend. Before you do that, I want you to think about a few things.
This scenario came up in one of my community groups, and a person was asking for advice. It's like they just woke up one day and said, "_You know what? I don't think I want to be in business anymore. I wanna close my business. It's successful. I have a team that work with me. There's nothing wrong with it, but I'm just not feeling it anymore."_
What could this be? Well, of course someone mentioned burnout and the poster was, "_wow, I didn't realize this could be a symptom of burnout"._ And yes it can. Waking up one day wanting to blow up your whole life or [00:01:00] feeling unfulfilled with your job, your relationship, your lifestyle. That's not uncommon in burnout, but how do you get there in the first place?
I'm gonna back us up a little bit, and one thing I do on my intake forms is I have this optional section that asks you your birth details. Why? Because I'm also a certified astrologer, and if my clients are open to it, I will add that into a personality profile for them. So I looked at this person's age and sure enough, they are in an age where they start questioning their entire existence, and there is a very volatile planetary alignment that's happening for them right now. And when I see that with one of my clients, that's one thing I will bring up to them that says, Don't light the match and blow up your whole life. This is what you can expect and this is what's going on.
And I bring that up because [00:02:00] if my clients are open to it, it's just one more level of a personality profile of a different type of information that can inform your belief system or decisions. And if my client's not open to it, but they filled out that section, I'll still print their chart and take a sneaky little glance at it, and I won't bring it up to them if they're not open to it.
But it helps me get more insight, more insider information about emotionally, what they could be going through at the moment. I had my own burnout moment as a physician. I was saying up to 50 ish patients per day, and my body was just like, _"Nope, can't do this_". So if that happens for you where you just wake up one day and your brain, your body is going, "Nope.
No more of this" then I want you to take a pause and consider. Could it be one of these three things? The first one [00:03:00] is, do you actually need to stop what you're doing? Meaning do you need to quit the job, close the business, end the relationship, stop talking to the family member, end the friendship. There might actually be a reason that you need to quit doing what you're doing, and it's generally because it's a bad match in some way, and we as loving humans have this tendency to hold onto things longer than we should. Especially if things aren't going great for us. Sometimes we stay in it because we spent a lot of time in it.
This is called _sunk cost fallacy_ is you spent a lot of time on this job, this relationship, this business, so it makes it harder to give it up because you think, _" What is my life going to be like then?"_ But it doesn't necessarily get better, and it might be something that you actually do need to leave behind.
That's a great question for you and [00:04:00] your coach or therapist to work through."_ Is it the best fit for me to let this go?"_ So that might be one possible scenario. The second possible scenario could be that you do need to make a change. You don't have to close the business or end the relationship, friendship, et cetera.
But something about that b usiness or that venture needs to change. Something about what you're doing or the routines of that business or relationship needs to change. This is where we start looking at creativity and problem solving. And look at what the system is now. Look at how things are playing out now, how much of that is in your control?
And is there something that you could do better? For example, if it's a business and you're feeling burnout or uninspired by this business, is it because you're doing too much in the business yourself and not delegating? Or could you improve your systems to automate some of the things that you're doing yourself?
[00:05:00] Where can you improve the functionality of that business or relationship? If it's a relationship, it might mean it's time for therapy. And if you and your partner need to have better communication, then you start investigating what needs to change with that.
The third possibility is that you're not getting enough rest, and there are many different types of rest. When we hear the word rest or relaxation, we tend to think physical relaxation or rest, like sleep, naps, downtime. But we have so many different areas of rest beyond physical, and here are just a few. Mental rest.
Are you scheduling white space into your calendar? Because the brain actually needs that. The brain is going all the time. It uses so much energy, and if you are leading a very stressful lifestyle where you're piling one thing on top of another, then you may not be [00:06:00] giving your brain enough quiet time or downtime to just reset and recalibrate before you assault it with some informational overwhelm or task overwhelm. E ven if it's just a couple of minutes, every hour. Close your eyes, breathe. Go to the bathroom, sit on the toilet, and just close your eyes without thinking about the next thing you have to do. Schedule time in your day that's dedicated to nothing.
Breathe, sit. And if you are telling me right now, or thinking to yourself right now, _"yeah, I'm too busy, I don't have time for that"._ This is where you especially need it because you're not getting enough of it. And when you don't take time to rest your logical brain, you're thinking capability, it slows down and gets a bit sluggish.
And if you've got all these things to do, you need that brain [00:07:00] capacity. It is about changing your mindset, about how you emotionally think and view rest. If you think rest is waste of time, that it's wasteful, then you, my friend, are headed for the burnout train. That is not a great mindset to have. You can be the most ambitious goal-oriented person ever, but nobody on this earth can go, go, go all the time.
We need reset time on purpose, and if you have a hard time with that, then this is maybe the one thing you need to change. It's to change your attitude and mindset and viewpoint of what rest is like. So there's mental rest, there's also emotional rest. What are you doing to self-regulate your emotions?
What are you doing to process stress out of your brain and body? Are you doing any somatic exercises? Are you doing any journaling, [00:08:00] any mindset exercises? Are you doing any meditation? Are you breathing? How are you handling stress? And if you're sitting there thinking or saying out loud,_ "I don't, I don't at all."_
Then again, you're not getting the rest that you need, and that might be something you need to change. Then we come to physical rest. Are you sleeping less than seven hours per night? Are you waking up around 2:00 to 3:00 AM Because if you are, then that is likely that your cortisol is too high, and that's because of constant go, go, go motion.
There are so many things that are interconnected, and when you find yourself or if you find yourself waking up one day and wanting to light a match and blow your whole life up, that didn't happen overnight. Your solution to back that off won't be immediate either. And if you are a high achiever or highly ambitious person, that may be a little difficult or frustrating for [00:09:00] you to build slow moments into your rest.
But this is how I want you to view that, is we wanna optimize. Your brain, your body, your performance, your function, and you don't do that by constantly wearing it out. You do that by having the awareness to self-regulate and that discernment of when to turn the volume up and when you need to turn it down. When you need to delegate, versus when you need to step in and handle it yourself.
This is a balancing act and there are so many factors that you could do to make your life better other than blowing it up or letting yourself get so burnout that basically. Your mind, body, spirit is in complete rebellion. And because you didn't listen to it or you don't know how to listen to your brain and body, it shut you down.
And think about how much time, money, [00:10:00] energy, think about all the negative consequences that might occur if you shut down. And it's not unreasonable to say you can't afford to shut down because life just keeps life-ing.. You gotta make that money. You've got family or pets that depend on you, So, it is your responsibility to be as healthy as you can in both brain and body, and if you need some help doing that, if you don't know where to start, and I get it, that can be a really overwhelming thing. Especially if you haven't been trained to look at the things in your life from a new perspective, and this is where I shine my friends. W e get into a one-to-one session where we talk about where the challenges are, and then we make all these connections about how to let go of the things that are slowing you down, how to build in the things that are gonna build you up so that you reach an optimum state of nervous system health, [00:11:00] of emotional self-regulation, and enjoying your life to its fullest.
Without crumbling or without sacrificing your health, wealth of freedom. And if that sounds pretty good to you, then you can schedule a consultation at aprildarley.com and we'll talk about how we can build in better systems for you and how you don't have to blow everything up. Or sometimes when you do wanna make changes or you do need to walk away because those are options too.
All right my friend. If this was a great episode for you, please like it, share it, leave me a review. I would be so thankful and I look forward to chatting with you again next week. Thanks. Bye-bye.
