Are you teetering on the line of burnout? As a business owner, it’s hard to not only admit that you’re in a phase of burnout, but it’s even harder to work through and overcome it. Join me in this episode, as I share about my own experience in burnout, why I took a hiatus from the podcast (and other things in my business) over the summer, and a few tips to avoiding burnout.
Today’s episode is brought to you by the Creative Educator Conference! This conference will be focusing on community, leadership, profitability, and hands on learning—it’s first of its kind in our industry! Come join us in Dallas, TX, this January!
If you’ve ever seen me speak at a conference, it’s likely that it was about burnout. That’s because I’ve lived to through enough seasons of burnout to never want it to happen for anyone else. These experiences of burnout have led me out of careers and allowed me to set better boundaries in my own life to avoid it.
If you’re beginning to feel burnout in your business, you are not alone. We’ve all been there and if I’m being completely honest, I’m in my own season of approaching burnout and having to adjust to avoid it.
As business owners, our lives and businesses coincide so deep. We often let the things that we’re responsible for weigh really heavy on us. This also forces us to ignore boundaries that we need to set for ourselves.
Recognizing Burnout
Sometimes we don’t realized we’re burning out in our business until we’re already there. To combat this, it’s important to recognize signs of burnout.
How are you feeling? You know how you’re feeling best, but when you start to feel tired and drained, look to the root cause of it. As you dive deeper into these feelings and the causes, take a specific look at the following signs of burnout.
Are you resenting inquiries? You’re tied emotionally to your work. When you’re not in a place of burnout, you get excited. When you feel resentment towards inquiries for taking up your time or you’re not excited for the work, that is a sign of burnout.
Is your calendar too full? You may be getting inquiries that you’re excited to serve, yet your calendar has no room to fit it in without taking time away from you.
Are there any extrinsic cues from others? Oftentimes, you don’t recognize that you’re burnt out, but the people around you do. Are your friends and family commenting on your work habits or lack of participation in events due to work?
Have you ever felt any of these things? There are tons of ways you can schedule yourself for success to avoid burnout, like setting boundaries, outsourcing, and time management.
How to Reset When You’re Burnt Out
Today, I want to share a few ways you can adjust your mindset around burnout to reset and serve you.
Work on a personal work project. A great way to reignite the spark in your business is to work on something new and exciting that will remind you of why you were passionate about your business. For me, this looked like creating The Creative Educator Conference.
Set strong boundaries. It’s very easy to lose control of your boundaries, even if you were very intentional when setting them. Take a look at your routines and boundaries to revisit what you need, if you need to adjust them, and how you’re protecting yourself in your business.
Let go of things that no longer serve you. As a business owner, you will need to look at things in your business and reevaluate if they’re still serving you. Sometimes this means you have to let them go when they don’t serve you.
Show up for yourself. We burnout because everything for everyone else takes precedence. Don’t allow that to overpower your own needs, boundaries, and more.
Rapid Fire Changes to Avoid Burnout Today
While the steps I’ve shared above can take a little time to incorporate, I want to leave you with a few changes you can make today to help you avoid burnout.
Add in some physical activity to your schedule to get your body moving.
Take actual breaks throughout your day to reset.
Unplug from your phone and content.
Create morning and end-of-day routines.
I hope all of these tips helped you to better understand what burnout looks like, why you should avoid it, and how to better prepare yourself so that you don’t have to deal with that overwhelmed feeling.
If you’re wanting to connect with other creative educators, we would love to see you in January at the Creative Educator Conference! Come join us by grabbing your tickets at the link below!
When you are a creative entrepreneur, time management is the number one key to preventing burnout! Click to join the list and download my free worksheet.