I’ve had a few moments in my life where the Universe has said, “oh hey, yeah you, it’s time to slow down.” Of course I ignored those messages until then I got slapped upside the head and I was kind of forced to stop.
I was working a job that was already stressful and then my employee left to follow their path (with my blessing). The powers that be decided to not refill that position. I had already been working extra hours with support, and without support, I was working almost every night until ten pm.
One day I got into two car accidents. Thankfully no one was hurt, but it was a pretty big wake up call.
I had a pretty severe case of burnout. For me the burnout felt a little bit like depression with a smidge of PTSD disassociation thrown in. I had been dealing with that for a huge chunk of my life and so I went off to my therapist to figure out what unresolved issue had reared its ugly head only to find out that my issue was burn out. All my stress hormones were over firing and my body was calling for a time out.
And then I got into two car accidents in one day and I realized that nothing about my situation was going to change unless I changed it.
So, I left and took a position at a much lower paying and part time job. I realize not everyone is going to be able to do this, but my health and ability to function were so far gone, that I couldn’t see a path forward.
I had to slow things way down in order to regain focus, clarity, energy, optimism, joy, laughter and so many other things.
Slowly I started to rebuild my life. I started coaching, which I love, I took a new job and set some boundaries around my time. Although, I’m still working on boundaries around my effort!
I hear from so many of the people I coach, and so many of my friends, how busy they are, how overwhelmed with life and work, how little time they have for themselves and I worry about their health and well-being.
What I wish I had done differently was pump the breaks sooner. I had been running on empty for a couple of years and then when more was expected of me, I had nothing to give and burnt myself out. I should have set boundaries with work. Do you know how many studies are out there that show if you are well rested your productivity increases? So many! Yet, we all believe that if we just put in more hours we’ll get it done. It doesn’t work that way because we are human beings with human bodies and not machines.
Here are a couple of blog posts, along this same theme that you may find helpful (the common theme seems to be pictures of Sweetie):
If you want to explore what Ease looks like for you then schedule a call with me.
