Welcome to another Ask Katrina. The question today is, hey, Katrina, I feel like I’m in burnout. How do I know for sure? Well, first, let me say that if you feel like you were in burnout, my heart goes out to you. Because I know what you’ve probably done to get there. I know how long you’ve been working, striving, pushing yourself. And I know how painful that is. And so let me just take just a second to appreciate you tell you how amazing you truly are, and that you will get through this. Okay, that’s the first thing you need to know. You are amazing. And you will get through this. Now, how do you know if you are in burnout? For sure? Well, interestingly, I’ve spent the entire month of September talking through burnout on the legendary leaders podcast. If you’ve been listening to it, then you’ve gotten some good insight. If you haven’t, definitely go check that out. Right? That podcast is going to be there. There’s a video podcast on YouTube, if you want to watch a video and not just listen to my voice, whatever works for you. The resources are there, okay. But go check it out. The short answer of how to identify and understand if you’re in burnout is, if you think you’re there, and you’re asking me that question. You probably are. And the reason why I say that is because you’re a high achieving high performing leader, you’re probably a woman, that’s who I’ll work with, usually the majority of the time. So you’re a high performing high achieving female leader. That’s who you are. And if you think you’re in burnout, it’s going to take a lot for you to actually acknowledge that you’re there, which means you probably were in burnout long ago. Now, you may not like that answer, but you know, me, I’m going to speak the truth. If you don’t want the truth, you gotta go find somebody else, because I’m here to help you. And the only way that I can help you is to be honest with you, right. And so if you think you’re there you probably are, burnout is this state, where you just feel like you cannot give anything else, you are completely exhausted. And that exhaustion can be mental. It can be emotional, it can be physical, it can be a combination of those, it can be all of those things. But it’s this level of exhaustion, that impacts the way that you view life around you. Right, like just cannot solve another problem. And it also affects the way you view yourself. Okay. And so if you’re finding it hard to just push through the day to day, because you’re just so exhausted, you probably are living in a state of burnout. And so if you’re there and you feel like that’s the place that you’re in, then how do you get out of it. And again, check out the podcast or the YouTube channel, that’s where the majority of this information is going to be in greater detail. But the way that you’re going to get yourself out of it, is really to center in and focus on ways to free your time to free yourself. And give yourself the balance of rest and mental mentally unplugging yourself from work, seriously turning it off, taking a break, so that you can ramp back up. Because if you never unplug, if you never take the break, then there’s no way that you’re going to be able to ramp back up again, you’ve got no energy, right? Think about it, you’ve got no energy, because there’s no way to ramp up because you’re already running at this pace. But you can’t keep running at this pace. So you follow this pace. And then you fall to the next pace. But you’re still running. The only way to get back up here and feel good and feel like you can do something and you’re not burnout you can contribute at your highest level is to unplug completely and stop running at any level. So that you’ve got enough energy to get back up here. No, that’s not what you want to hear. I know you probably feel like you cannot do that. But you must, you must. You cannot be the only solution for every problem that exists in your world, be it personally or professionally. You have to feel comfortable delegating you have to feel comfortable letting other people lead and solve problems. And you have to find the things that only you can do. And when you do that, you’re going to be able to breathe. So just take the first step. Give yourself some grace. And allow yourself to navigate this, you will come out of it. And you haven’t failed because you’ve gotten here. It’s because you work so hard and you push yourself so hard that that’s why you’re here. Anybody deserves a break and cheat. So give yourself that grace, take that break, and then come back to it. If you want to help with that, if you’d like for me to come and spend time talking to your team about burnout and the strategies on how to overcome it. I’d love to spend time with you and your overall team. Send me an email let me know information at legend. leaders.com is the email address.
