EP#5: Ins and Outs of 2024 : Burn Out Edition Part 2

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Welcome to the Breaking Up with Burnout podcast. I am your host, Tiffany Leder, clinical social worker and burnout coach with 14 years of experience in the mental health field and life experience with burnout. I'd like to say I'm in burnout recovery. This podcast is for you who are ready to reclaim your life, cancel hustle culture and put your wellbeing first and discover a joy filled life. This is your moment to find support, be encouraged, laugh a little.

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and take a little nugget of wisdom that leads you out of burnout and into joy. I have chosen to not edit this podcast because I want to remove the barrier between you and I so that we can have an authentic connection. So you might hear me say ums, trip over my words, have awkward pauses, but it is for you to experience the real me and not an edited version so that we can authentically have a connection.

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Take a deep breath, lean in, and open your heart and your mind to what you may need.

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Welcome back. This is part two of the In-N-Out Burnout edition because I had so much to say about the outs and I feel like I'm gonna have so much to say about the ins that I decided to record this in two parts. I'm excited to have you here, so welcome and let's get started. Okay, so I jumped on this trend of the ins and outs on Burnout and I got a huge response on Instagram.

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ends, the burnout edition of: 2024

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as ambitious people going after our goals and dreams and pursuing all the things, but also pursuing a rhythm of taking care of ourselves and feeling supported and feeling resilient. Part one, I had eight outs. So here we go with part two with eight ins. The first one that's on the list is letting go of expectations of our own and others.

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So often we can live our lives based on what other people think we need to live, should live, all the things. Have you ever had somebody tell you, well you should do this? Well, some people have well-meaning advice, but what happens is if it doesn't align with who we are, how we were created, and how we show up in the world, then it's gonna lead us to burnout. And so we have to decide.

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if we're gonna hold onto that or not. This was pivotal for me last year in learning myself as an entrepreneur and learning what works for me and what doesn't because my natural instinct is to run fast and hard because I have all these ideas and it's so great and I'll just pile my calendar and I'll look at it and be like, oh, it'll be fine. And then I get there and I'm like.

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Why did I do that? And why did I do that at the week of my period? What am I thinking? Am I right? So we really want to learn to let go of expectations of others and ourselves because it brings freedom. It brings a sense of calm and it brings a sense of inspiration when we can show up in the way that feels good for ourselves.

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there's a connectedness with ourselves instead of the worry that we're going to meet expectations of other people. Also, we can also have expectations that are unrealistic for ourselves. This is something I work with my clients and it's the most fun thing I think. I say fun, fun for me, maybe not for them, but it's the thing that has the most breakthrough with my clients because when we find...

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those expectations that are unrealistic, that are keeping you on the hamster wheel, that is giving in to hustle culture, then we can bust those expectations, bust through those thoughts, so that you can live a life that feels peaceful and restful, that you feel calm and confident in showing up at your work every day.

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and you don't feel like you're hustling because you got to get all this stuff done in that like yeah rushy type of energy.

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Girl, I've been there. I've been there. I've done that. I actually was there recently because I realized as I'm learning who I am as an entrepreneur and how I wanna show up in the world, there are things that other entrepreneurs do that sound good, that seem great. It is not for me. And I found that out.

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I'd say in the hard way. Some things I feel like I have to learn the hard way. And that was one of the things. Like I had to find my own footing of how I was gonna run my business. Otherwise my business was gonna run me into the ground.

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Circling back to ourselves, we can hold ourselves to a standard in our thoughts. And the thoughts can come from, that's a whole nother episode of where our thoughts can come from, but we have these thoughts that are often named as inner critic that are accusing and pointing the finger and saying you gotta do this, you gotta do that, what are they gonna say, and reeling with guilt.

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and you feeling guilty that you don't do this or you don't do that or you do certain things and whatnot and so you try to live in this box to be the peacemaker or keep the peace. My friend Lauren actually just put out a rule today that talked about don't let your, don't let keeping the peace steal your peace and I was like yes 100% and as an Indian Gram 9, if you're an

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Pop in the DMs, I'd love to connect with you. Because we are peacemakers, but sometimes we try to keep the peace at the expense of ourselves and not standing up for ourselves. So we wanna let go of those things. And when we can let go of expectations of other people and expectations we put on ourselves, I have a client.

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I keep going back to these words because this is what she has said. She said she has felt calm and confident in how she shows up in her life. She's no longer overwhelmed and stressed out. She's no longer numbing out because she is not sure what to do and the overwhelm is so overwhelming to her that it puts her in a place of kind of paralysis and like procrastination.

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But since we busted these expectations and she did the mindset work that we did together, she is calm and confident.

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Number two, a pace in life that matches your capacity. The first time I heard the word capacity, I was in a group with other women and we were talking about how every woman has a different capacity. Whether it's a high capacity or a low capacity and whatever capacity you have is not wrong, but it's different. And women were sharing in this group.

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that they felt shame that they couldn't do enough. Those with lower capacity, that they weren't running as fast and hard. They couldn't do enough. They felt like something was wrong with them because they could not keep up with the ones that have high capacity. And then on the flip side, the high capacity people were saying, I feel shame or people shame me because they think I'm doing too much.

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And actually, I feel like I can actually handle this stuff. And I can run this fast and hard. And I can take action in this way. And it was like a no-win situation. So that group was about a lot of different things. But what it was about mostly was honoring the women that were around us so that we could have collective ambition and encourage each other on no matter what capacity we were at.

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And I think the way forward when it comes to burnout and relieving burnout, a lot of the times we are running at a capacity that is beyond the pace of life that we need to live at, that our brains and our bodies are designed to live at. For example, I am a lower capacity person. I need a good slow morning.

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I need to like roll into my day. I need to make sure I have a routine before I go to bed. I am just like a slow living type person. That's what makes me feel good. That's what fills me up. If I can take slow intentional time. Now I will say, and if you look at your cycle as for us as women, there are weeks.

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where I'm like, let's go, let's run fast and hard. I feel like I have the capacity for it. But what I'm also finding in those weeks, I still push myself, because I'm like, ooh, I feel all this energy, I'm feeling really good. Let's get all the things done. And I still overextend myself, because I still have a lower capacity than what I think, and I still need the rest, the breaks. If you've been around

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long enough you know that I love naps. Taking a good nap even if it's five minutes of resting. I was actually just talking to my interns so I do clinical supervision for post-master social workers and I was just talking to my interns about research I looked at long time ago that was about even if you are not sleeping but if you can get horizontal and

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whether it's resting your eyes or like reading a book or just you know noticing your breathing even if it's for five minutes it signals the parasympathetic system in your body to say oh it's time to rest and so your body is still resting even if your mind is not resting so for me like i need more laps and i need more rest time i need slow breaks in the day

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Now when I'm doing work, I'm focused and I'm working hard at it. I think sometimes, and this is kind of a sidebar, but sometimes those of us with lower capacity who need more rest, who need more breaks, who need that slow down time can be seen as lazy or apathetic or not efficient with their time. Um, what I've learned is that that's not the case is that I just need to be filled back up because I work hard.

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when I do it, when I'm doing work. And I can get a lot, quote, of things done, but it drains me. And so I have to, and certain things drain me more. So I have to be intentional, and I have to pay attention to how I'm feeling in order to take those breaks that I need in order to do the next thing that I'm doing. It's also looking at my schedule.

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and making sure I have time in between clients or if I have back-to-back clients to make sure I have time. I can do two clients in a row. I know some people can bang it out, and I used to when I was younger, but nowadays I cannot. So when I have two back-to-back clients, I have to have a break of some sort after it. It can be 30 minutes, as little as 30 minutes, but I need some kind of break.

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to unwind and decompress before I get into the next thing. By the way, if this is resonating with you, please, I would love to connect. Send me a note, I would love to further this conversation with you. Okay, number three, giving yourself permission to take care of yourself. Letting yourself off the hook of the grind, the hustle.

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that you're gonna miss out on something, FOMO, like if you don't jump on this opportunity, you're just not gonna be able to do it, blah, blah, blah, whatever words, insert right there. So often as women, we neglect taking care of ourselves because our kids, our spouse, our family, our work, whatever it is, takes more priority. But the reality is when we take care of ourselves,

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We can show up for all of those things better and our best selves and we can be more efficient, we can be more impactful, we can be all the things, whatever you wanna say about it. Because the reality is our health is our priority. It's the one thing that we have that, I say we have control over it, we don't necessarily have full control over it because there are...

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environmental factors and things that affect us that we can do the best that we can to eliminate but it's the one thing that we have that helps us do all the other things it helps us achieve the goals and run with ambition and pursue the dream and dream big and go after those things but if our health is not where it needs to be y'all know you

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we start slacking on things. We start procrastinating on things. We forget things. Brain fog is like real. Um, and I'm not gonna go down the vein of what we could do to take care of our health. There's so much and maybe that's an episode that I'm thinking about. Honestly, I'm thinking about asking my functional medicine doctor to come on an episode and talk about it because um, one, she's an expert when it comes to health and I'm not.

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I've done a lot on my health journey, but I think it's just so important to hear from somebody that's an expert when it comes to that. But in general, make that doctor's appointment. Give yourself permission to take that nap, to take your lunch break, to go to the dentist, to go to the eye doctor. That's one of the things I haven't done that I need to do. Not that my sight is going bad or anything, but my glasses are like janky.

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They might look nice when you see me on Instagram, but they are janky. And I need to take care of it. And I have just put it off. And we have insurance, so it's not like I'm saving up a ton of money for it or anything. Anyways, give yourself permission to take care of yourself. Number four. Exploring joy and peace. You guys.

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Just talking about this makes me happy. Because this morning, I'll be honest, I wasn't feeling it. I was tired of feeling tired of waking up and not feeling good. I'm in the middle of a whole thing with taking care of my gut. And I just don't feel good. And what I've learned is that my gut is trying to reset itself. And sometimes...

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when your body is working for your good, it just might not feel good. And so I was like, okay, how can I find some joy and some peace in this? And I just started writing glimmers. If you haven't heard of glimmers, they are opposite of triggers. They are small, beautiful things in your life that spark joy.

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that bring a sense of calm, that breaks the tension in your body and bubbles up some good emotions. And this morning, the joy that I had was just taking a moment, sitting with my husband, and tucking my feet under him, because he's warm and my feet were cold, and just hanging out before he had to start his day.

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and the cat. Y'all it's a miracle that I can hang around these cats and that's another story for another time. But Johnny is one of my mother-in-law's cats and he just came up and sat with me on the couch today and it was so sweet and that was a glimmer for me. So when we explore joy and peace when we try to find these glimmers

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and discover them, really not finding them, but really discovering them. It's like a treasure hunt. There's so much joy that comes from that. It can break the tension of stress. There's so much research out there that shows how it is helpful for your brain and for your body to find these glimmers and just take hold of them. I always tell my clients, take a mental snapshot.

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of what brings you joy, the feeling and what you're thinking when it comes to it. Because sometimes if there isn't things around us that we can find, we can go back to the memory. And that's one of the amazing things about our memories as human beings. We can drum up emotions that isn't currently present to help us, you know, overcome things.

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Number five, learning to say no. Boundaries. Ah, this is another thing that I talk with my clients all the time about and was such a game changer in my own life when I began to realize I needed to set boundaries. Learning to say no. Just learning to say no, period. End of story.

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and dealing with all the emotions, all the things that come up when you say no. A lot of people I talk to when they say no, they feel guilty. Well, why it goes back to number one, because there's expectations that we have for ourselves and other people or other people have placed on us in saying no. And so we got to kind of work through that. But when you can set boundaries, when you can say no,

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There is freedom, a freedom that lets your soul soar. There's a freedom that releases, that gives you space to do the things you want and what feels good to you. And you don't have to feel obligated. It lets go of the guilt and the obligation to other people.

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and don't hear what I'm not saying. It's okay to say yes to things. If it feels good to you, if it's within your capacity, and you want to do it, that's great. But so often the women that I talk to, they don't know how to say no because they do feel obligated, they feel guilty, they feel like they're not gonna be good enough as a person or they're not doing enough. And so they say yes to an overpacked schedule that stresses them out and leaves them.

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to burn out. Number six, self-awareness. Having regular check-ins with yourself. Like how are you doing? Like really, how are you doing? And being completely honest with yourself of like what's happening. We can do this in our brains, but I would encourage you to do it in a voice memo or journaling.

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If you're an iPhone user, the iPhone now has a journaling app that comes with the phone, and there's several different ways that you can journal on there. It's been a game changer. When I don't have my journal, I use that app, and it's really awesome, because sometimes I just need to check in with myself and see like, how am I really doing? And then another way to check in with yourself and have self-awareness is body awareness. What are you feeling?

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inside of your body? How is whatever situation you're in, how do you respond in your body? So often, I talked with this in an episode coming up with my friend Britt Britt, so often we cut ourselves off at the neck and we stay in our brains and we just think through and rationalize through things. But what we do is we cut off our entire body because our body's giving us signals

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Our body helps us know what feels good, and we're cutting off our hearts, what our hearts really saying, and so our minds can try to take control of things and think through all the things and rationalize all the things, but we miss out on what our heart is saying and what our body is saying too. Number 7. Seeking support. Let me just say this. There's no shame in the support game.

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that's a coach or a therapist or a pastor or a trusted friend or a mentor, whoever it is, there is no shame in the support game. We all need help. We all need to ask for help. I know. I think I could do it myself too. I get you and I hear what you're saying or hear what you're thinking really.

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But here's the deal. We have blind spots. And we can't see those blind spots unless we let other people in our lives. Unless we have somebody to be a truth teller in our lives with kindness and with love, of course. You want people to be truth tellers with kindness and love. You don't want them to shame you into whatever. Like I have a really good friend of mine. She's my bestie. And...

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We are truth-tellers with kindness and with love to each other. And I appreciate that relationship and friendship so much because she's, she often sees things I cannot see. I'm like, Oh my gosh, I didn't think about that. Oh my gosh. I had no idea. And the same thing she does the same thing with me or vice versa. Like I can see things in her life that she may not be thinking. Cause sometimes when we're in stressful,

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situations when we're feeling overwhelmed, we can't see outside of what's really going on. We just see what our brains are telling us and what our external situation and environment is telling us, but we can't really get perspective on it. And so we need people to be that truth teller, to be that perspective shifter in our lives.

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So this one ties back to number three of giving yourself permission to take care of yourself. Give yourself permission to get support, to hire a coach, to hire a therapist, to find a mentor, to develop a relationship with a friend that feels safe and trusted. I will tell you I never regret going deeper in my relationships with my friends.

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because of the support that I get from them and their truth telling that I get from them.

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Number eight, trusting yourself. You have everything that you need within you. We may not feel that way, we may not think that way, but when you can come to that understanding of trusting yourself, it changes the game. It changes the skin in the game because you are able to.

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Do all of the things. You can go back through one through seven and do all of those things because you can trust that you know yourself and you know what you need and you know what you don't need. You know what feels good. You know what doesn't feel good. I have often heard women say, Oh, I trust other people, but I don't trust myself. So often I'm like, why? Why don't you trust yourself, but you trust other people? That's not you.

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to know what you need to do, right? No, no, no. You do, you know everything. And if you don't know everything, it's learning yourself, it's seeking that support, it's learning to say no, exploring what feels good to you by exploring glimmers, giving yourself permission to see what is it like to take care of yourself, what is your capacity, and what is the expectations that you and other people place on you?

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that are unrealistic and some that are realistic. I'm cool with regular expectations like the ones in the healthiest place of like you know we have to overcome fear we have to step over things and do things that are uncomfortable so we see the joy on the other side we have to have hard conversations so we can grow in friendships and relationships with other people like there are expectations that are good but so often

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We run our lives by expectations that are not good and not healthy.

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ght, so these are the ends of: 2024

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feel good. We do things for people out of obligation and not out of joy. We don't take care of ourselves. We don't have community and friendships that are life giving to us. So friend.

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Would you consider implementing some of these ends for yourself and seeing what may work for you? What may work for you in busting the overwhelm and eliminating the stress and ultimately ending burnout forever? Thank you so much for listening in to this episode of Breaking Up With Burnout Podcast.

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his year. This is the ends of: 2024

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the ways you can work with me, the ways you can connect with me. Freebies are in there as well that you can have. I will also be connecting a freebie that has the list of all the ends that I just shared with you in this episode in the show notes. So you can have those and kind of reflect on what do I want to bring into my life from this list and how do I wanna make those changes.

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As always, I would appreciate if you leave a review, rate the podcast, subscribe to it on whatever listening platform that you're listening on. Also, I would love to continue this conversation with you. DM me, send me an email, all the things. I will talk to you soon and see you next time on the next episode.