As entrepreneurs, often with a team of one or a few, burnout is real.
And that’s exactly what happened with today’s guest. Linda had overloaded her plate and was working on getting her MBA, was newly married and was serving on the board of a nonprofit organization. All of this let to exhaustion, lack of energy and the feeling of not be as committed to her goals as she had been. And that’s when she knew that she had to make a change.
Today’s collaborator, Linda Zelnik is the founder of ALTA Coaching, and is a leadership coach and coach educator on a mission to cultivate effective and compassionate leadership. She specializes in leadership development to help high achieving, purpose-driven leaders, entrepreneurs, and coaches gain more focus, energy, and freedom to ignite their goals and thrive personally and professionally. Lina is the author the book Burnout to Boom: Strategies for more energy and less stress.
The definition of burnout
Linda notes that there’s a lot of different definitions and the one that she shares is that if something doesn’t give, you feel like everything will.
When you know you’re at the point where you can’t just keep hoping something will change. You have to make some shifts and have some ownership over the future.
Symptoms of burnout
A, lot of people feel like it’s that physical energy that’s waning, but it is also your mental energy, your creative energy, your emotional energy, and even your spiritual energy that really is zapped or could be zapped.
It might be 1 to 4 of those or it could be all 4.
So, it’s it’s not just fatigue, though that that is a big sign.
Another sign is apathy, where you’re you kind of start to feel like you don’t care if something changes or you can’t make any changes, and so, you kind of start to distance yourself from things.
Cynicism is a sign of burnout. That’s a cousin to apathy.
And other more serious ones are mental fog is the beginning of some major decline that can happen from burnout.
Linda notes she knows leaders who have had to completely shut down their business and take a big sabbatical, not because they were proactive about it, but because they were just physically exhausted and mentally exhausted and couldn’t keep making decisions.
Burnout can also lead to depression.
And this is where the cycle gets tricky because when you are tapped out at all of your energy levels, you start conserving energy because you have to, and the things that you let go of first typically are the things that bring you joy, and a lot of times that’s social life.
So, you feel isolated and it really starts to pull at you from more and more directions because you’re not with the people who build you up. You’re not getting some of those things that you need like exercise because you’re trying to conserve your energy.
But our natural inclination at that point is not to choose well-being, and so it’s a downward spiral from there, and it can lead to depression and anxiety too.
And then extreme cases are even more physical where you might have diabetes or a heart attack.
How to maintain balance and reduce stress
The first way is a concept called the joy list;. Taking 5 minutes to write down a handful of things that bring you joy.
If you’re a high achiever and you’re a helper, 1 or the other or both, you are thinking about external demands most of the time and not what brings you joy.
And achievement brings joy to high achievers for a certain period of time. As does helping others for helpers, but we can’t give what we don’t have.
So, taking a moment to listen to your intuition.
What does bring me joy, and trying to vary that by the time and resources that are needed so that you can have something accessible on any given day. Whether that’s a 15-minute walk in the sunshine or going outside and drinking your morning beverage without the phone in your hand.
Having that joy list there and making it visible so that you can see that nudge to invest in yourself. As well and to take a moment to take a break.
Sometimes the best thing you can do is to stop working.
Linda notes when we are stressed out our go-to is to keep working until it gets done.
Most people, it’s that fight or flight that gets into rhythm there and kind of starts driving the ship because you’re afraid that you won’t get it done.
But the longer you work, the slower you’re going to be at what you’re doing.
You become less efficient, you can’t solve problems as well, and your creativity goes down.
So, these are other signs of burnout, like decreased productivity, decreased decision making, and decreased creativity.
When you actually stop and give yourself a break then your body can restore and rest in some ways.
If you’re stuck, one of the best things you can do is get up and go side on a walk. Then your brain can expand again and you’re probably going to solve whatever problem you were just stuck on.
So, oftentimes, what we need to do is the opposite of what we are inclined to do.
What we think we don’t have time to do is going to be the best thing for you.
How to set healthy boundaries
- knowing that you don’t have the capacity is the first step. The mindfulness or the awareness of that is really important.
- No can be a complete sentence. But if you want to be polite, you can say, no, thank you. Or, I can’t do that this week, but what does and then give 2 to 3 weeks in the future, look like for you?
- Lengthen the amount of time between them asking and your response because you do not need to answer right away.
Resources for managing burnout and stress
- Brendon Burchard is a great resource for high performance. He has some good videos and just quick snippets that are accessible to everybody.
- Another concept that Linda has learned is from Kate Northrop. She wrote a book called Do Less. She gives 3 questions even that you can ask yourself that I think are really valuable to consider.
- How can I say no more or do less so that I can have better well-being?
- Does it have to be done now?
- Does it have to be done by me?
So, if you are ready to avoid burnout as you strive to build a thriving business while maintaining a healthy, balanced life then Linda’s insights will be invaluable! You can listen to our full conversation here.
Resources and connect with Linda Zelnik
Website – https://www.altacoaching.com/
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/linda-zelnik-mba-pcc-11787111/
Burnout to Boom: Strategies for More Energy and Less Stress – https://amzn.to/3Om6AxL
Free Burnout self-assessment – https://bit.ly/BtoBSelf-Assessment
