I know what it feels like to burnout. I know the creeping level of exhaustion that sleep with no longer help. The negative thoughts that spiral and distract. The questioning oneself, the lack of ideas. creativity, trust.
I know I all to well because I chose a life of burnout. Now I say “chose” because it is only when we take rapid responsibility for ourselves, our actions, thoughts, and feelings that we truly take control.
Now after almost 2 years from the first breaking and 9 months from the true moment of change. I want to talk to you about the journey. About what it truly takes to life a balanced life. And I promise its not what you think.
I want to say now, I love you but this will be honest. And if you are not ready to take rapid responsibility for your life, your business and yourself… I might not be the right person to follow.
Balance requires
When aiming for balance we have to look at a few factors. The most common focus is work life balance… but what on earth does that mean. Technically if we balance the amount of time we work with the amount of time we live, we still might get the balance wrong. Because most of us have forgotten what living truly means.
When we look at balance we need to make sure we have a way to
- Make money
- Be truly happy
- Be truly ourselves
- Help others
- Help the planet
- Relax our nervous system
- Feel love
- Look after our body
- Continue to learn
Think about your life, what fits into which category? Which category is your most fulfilled and your least fulfilled? Asking this, and answering truthfully will get you moving in the right direction.
Most people try to create a balance life by starting at the point of “How do I make money?” and while this is super important. It is actually the wrong place to start. So I am going to work you through the list in the opposite order. This is how you can truly find happiness.
Continue to learn
When was the last time you truly learned something new? Something that made you deepen your knowledge, change your perspective, view the world a little differently? Most human stop learning once they leave education. They feel the only way to learn in formally. This is incorrect, whether you are doing a local class, online studying, reading a book, having conversations with new people. All of this can help you to continue to learn.
So how does this help balance living? Well it’s about perspective. It is easy to look at social media or TV and “wish” our lives where like the people we watch. Wish for big houses, expensive holidays, no responsibility, the ability to grab a van and just travel the world, having designers clothes, it is different for everyone. But people that buy into the rat race of social media as proven to be less fulfilled in their lives.
When we are learning, we are expanding our knowledge. We are engaging a different area in our brain, and this gives us less time to live in “comparison land”. While we are learning we are sparking the creativity to design our life in a new way. Learning unlocks so much.
Look after our body
Your body is VITAL, without a healthy body it is hard to live a fulfilled life. When I was on the path to burnout I was doing less activity each week, I told myself I didn’t have time. But in reality I wasn’t using my time very well. By the time I had burnout, I had picked up a hip injury and almost 10kg (1.5 stone). Which as someone that is 5ft1 is a lot of extra weight to carry. I was eating badly, snacking on the go, eating lots of petrol station snacks.
When we look after our body, not only is a good for us, but it makes us feel good. When you exercise, eat good food, drink enough water, get enough sleep – you body is able to process hormones and go into a healthy state of “rest and digest”. This is a powerful place where you body can truly rest.
Feel love
Love is such an underrated emotions, and I am not talking about love for someone else. This is about you loving yourself.
When I was moving closer to the burnout I found myself being extremely hard on myself. Feeling I was failing, I was not doing enough. Like rest was bad, my priorities were all wrong. I had started to not like my body, I was frustrated with how cluttered my mind felt, my much of my creativity was dimmed.
As I started to heal and gain balance in my life, I realised that I need to love myself no matter what. The results or outcome has no impact on how much I love myself. And once I shifted this mindset, everything else became easier.
Now I listen to my body and love myself no matter it says. An example this Saturday I got up early and went to a outdoor gym class (in the rain!), it was great. When I got home I ate breakfast, had a shower, dried my hair and then got back into bed and slept until after midday. This is an example of something I would never have let myself do before.
Relax our nervous system
I mentioned rest and digest earlier, while the opposite of that is “Fight and Flight”. And our system can be in one or the other. My system lived in fight or flight leading up the burnout.
Relaxing the nervous system is vital to good health. But how do we do it?
The ways I love are meditation, yoga Nidra, and constructive rest practices. This gives my brain and body the ability to rest and process. Doing 20 minutes of yoga Nidra is like getting half a night’s good sleep, so it is well worth it.
Help the planet
This is about not only you feeling good, but you being sustainable – if you don’t know, its one of my values! And in the world we live in there are SO many ways you can help and SO many reasons why you should.
This year we have swapped out our cleaning products to reduce the amount of plastic, started shopping at the local greengrocer and butcher, while cutting down the amount of meat we eat. Next on the list is moving over to plastic-free bathroom products!
This level of consciousness is really good for us, its taps us into the learning. And helps us feel good about ourselves.
Help others (with boundaries)
I love helping others, my clients love helping others and it feels really good to help others. But having boundaries is key to this process. Just saying yes all the time is pointless because you are risking your own business for the sake of everyone else.
When working with my clients I love to help them build ways that they can help multiple people at once. So group programs, memberships, self-paced courses, or subscription boxes. This way you can help multiple people without causing your own burnout along the way.
One of my key mistakes at the beginning of my business was building a strategy that replied completely on me being present to earn money. This was the first step to downfall. So now I help clients not make this mistake.
Be truly ourselves
This is something I am SO passionate about now. I drove a fancy car, carried a handbag, worn corporate dresses, even wore makeup sometimes….. None, I repeat NONE of this was me.
I created a business that I knew would be make me money. But didn’t realise it was cost me my soul. Dramatic I know, but no untrue. So I honestly want you to think about what in your life is NOT you. What do you do to keep up appearances, or live up to what other people expect?
And then stop doing all of those things. In my current business, most days I wear my PJ bottoms, I never wear make-up, I don’t own a single handbag. We are about to get rid of my car because I never really drive it anymore.
I have also started doing more hobbies (another thing I never had time for). For me I love yoga, walking, long baths, doing puzzles, baking.
Be truly happy
And hobbies leads into being truly happy. How often do you feel truly happy, like can’t wipe the smile off your face, love your life, those moments when you could explode from happiness. Honestly most people hardly ever have them. I went through a time of never feeling this myself, but being honest about that was really hard.
You see I was bought into this false sense of being, that I needed to have more to prove my worth. That I needed to master being busy to prove I was good enough. That I needed to hire a huge team before my business was truly successful. I was bought into the media of the world.
But none of it was making me happy. At the point of burnout I was taking £250,000 a year in the business, I was driving a big fancy car, we went on 3 holidays that year. But I was never home, never saw Jay, worked 17 hour days, traveled all over the place and ended up burnout, almost losing the business and putting myself in debt. Worth it?
Looking back the starting point was wrong, because I first asked – how can I make money. Instead of asking How can I be happy?
Make money
We all need money to survive, I get that. But where we get money is the bit that I feel should be more open ended. So many of my clients have left jobs they hated to create businesses they love. And then before long they have just built another job they hate. So when they start working with me, we reverse engineer the business. Thinking about how we want to life, then building a business that suits that.
So for instant, I love traveling, so a business that is completely remote works really well for me. One of my clients has a health issue that will deteriorate her movement over the coming years, for her the ability to earn money in a way that takes minimal time was vital. Another client has a son with lifelong developmental disability so for her it was important to create a business that she could run around him and his needs.
Every one of us has a unique talent, something that we can use to help others. We just need to create the right package, process and need for what we have to offer.
For some people making money is just that. For others (like me) it is so much more, it is my platform to change the world, my platform to help my clients be brave and reach for their dreams. It is my way of touching the lives of many, through each of my clients and the journey they then go on.
Making money is a process, but loving life the is goal.
So what now?
The key is to review, heighten your awareness and develop your perspective. Look at these 9 areas and think about how balanced is your life really? Do you have the balance and lifestyle that you want?
Is it important to be really honest with yourself at this point.
When I think of the journey from 2 years ago from the first breaking and then 9 months from the true moment of change. This shows you the journey of breaking to true change, it is not an immediate change. You have to unlearn the behaviours that got you to burnout. And I personally did this over about 15 months.
I focused on each of the 9 different sections and worked on increasing each one by a small percentage at a time. As humans we like small changes, rather than big shifts. So just think about what the first small step is that you need to take.
If you can find one habit in each section to focus on that will help you start to shift the balance. Like in learning you might say you want to read one book a week. Looking after your body, you might say you are going to go to bed 30 minutes earlier at night. And so on.
As always I would LOVE to hear the 9 focus areas, drop me an email – jacky@jackyclarke.co.uk