Christine: [00:00:00] Hey friends. Welcome back to another episode. The MilSpouse mastermind show. I’m so excited to be with you today. Can you believe it is less than two weeks until Christmas? I don’t know about you, but in many ways it just kind of feels like this year flew by and here we are. Staring at the end of the year in the face.

Well, last week on the show, we talked about dealing with stress strategies to help us more productively deal with stress. So we don’t let it build up. This is so important, especially at this crazy busy time of year. And today I want to take that a step further and talk about burnout. Do you feel yourself feeling frazzled or are you actually enjoying this time of year?

If you had to rate on a scale of one to 10, how much this time of year is actually filling you with joy and how much you are feeling [00:01:00] frazzled and overwhelmed, how would you rate December? Let’s talk about what burnout is, how to recognize the signs of burnout, and what to do about it if we feel like we’re headed there.

So what do you say let’s dive in to today’s show.

Are you tired of putting your own dreams and plans on hold? Do you feel stuck waiting for some future season to chase your dream? You and my friend were made for more, more than the managing of schedules, keeping up with kiddos and holding down the home front. Hi, I’m Christine, a military spouse of over 10 years, mom of littles and coffee connoisseur.

I’m here to help you navigate life as a military spouse, get unstuck and craft a life with purpose. You have something valuable to offer. And when you pursue the things that light. On fire, you trade frustration for [00:02:00] fulfillment and isolation for a life of impact. It’s time to discover who you are meant to be because together we can change the world.

Tell me, are you ready for Christmas yet? Hopefully you had a chance to listen to our episode a couple of weeks ago, about how we prepare in advance to make. the best holiday available to us. I know sometimes there’s just not a lot you can do once you’re in the middle of the chaos of a season, whether it’s preparing for the holidays or whether you are in the middle of a PCS or just a really busy season of life, you can just get stuck in the middle and not see a way out to.

Feel overwhelmed in the moment. So while we are talking about burnout, as it relates to the holidays, this is an episode that you will be able to go back to. If, and [00:03:00] when you face another season, because the truth is we’re all going to have seasons in our life. No matter how much we try to do the work ahead of time, no matter how much we try to prepare in advance, there are just seasons of life or things are outside of our control.

And there’s just too much on our plate. It’s just one of those seasons. We are feeling overwhelmed and there’s not a whole lot we can do about it. But what I want to do today is really to give you some strategies and tools so that you can recognize, this isn’t just I’m feeling stressed, but I’m headed towards this place of burnout.

So you can begin to recognize signs and do something about it, to not feel like everything is outside of your control. We can’t control our circumstances. We can’t control what happens to us, but we can control our response and it starts with being able to recognize, Hey, I am exhibiting signs. [00:04:00]This probably means I am headed towards burnout, or I’m already in this place of burnout. So what do I do about it? And that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Now, before we get into that, I just want to remind you that if you are still trying to figure out what to ask for for Christmas, your spouse is saying, Hey, what do I get you? Or your family wants to know what to get you? What if you took this opportunity to invest in yourself and in your future.

What if the gift you asked for this Christmas was to help you step into 2022 as the best version of yourself. What if it was time for you to get unstuck and start moving towards a life of purpose? What if you had the tools and resources to help you understand what it is that you have, who you are, what lights you up, and how you can begin pursuing purpose today while [00:05:00] prioritizing your own health and wellbeing.

What if this led to healthier relationships with your kids with your spouse? What if you stepped into your God-given calling and you lived 2022 in alignment with who you are. What if you became your most authentic self? Feeling overwhelmed and guilty from not showing up as the person you want to be.

If you are ready to step into a new story, if you are ready for change, if you are ready to get unstuck, then ask for MilSpouse purpose playbook as a gift. This is your step-by-step guide to find a purpose, reclaim your life and dreams and discover who you are meant to be so that you can start showing up as the person that you are meant to be and start aligning what you do in how you live with who you are meant to.

So [00:06:00] tell them, give you the gift of finding yourself again, of prioritizing your wellbeing and the gift of discovering your identity and living a life of impact that blesses you, that blesses your family, your friends, and ultimately impacts the world for good. I cannot think of a better gift to the world than an investment in your future because you, my friend are more than a milspouse. And the world is waiting for you to reclaim your life and dreams and step into your story.

Now let’s get into the nitty-gritty of dealing with what is burnout? How do we recognize the signs of burnout and what can we do about it? So first let’s talk about what burnout is. According to psychology today, burnout is a state [00:07:00] of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress.

So last week, we talked about how we deal with stress. But when we allow that stress to build up repeatedly or through a prolonged period of time, it can lead to burnout. Now, psychology today says though it’s most often caused by problems at work, it can also appear in other areas of our life, such as parenting caretaking, or in a romantic relationship.

Now earlier this year I read the book Can’t even: How millennials became the burnout generation by Anne Helen Peterson. She says exhaustion means going to the point where you can’t go any further and burnout means reaching that point and pushing yourself to keep going. Whether for days or weeks or years, [00:08:00] We all have the capacity for so much in our life.

But when we go beyond what we have the capacity to manage, well, that leads us to this place of burnout. She goes on in the book to talk about how we are this burnout generation and that there are so many factors that can change. To the sense of burnout that so many of us feel that so many of us just think is normal.

She goes on to point out several examples of this things that I think a lot of us can identify with. We like the idea of going and reading a book. And we’d rather do that and stare at our phones. But so many of us are at this place where we feel so tired and that all we have the mental energy to do is mindless scrolling on our phone or binge watching a TV show.

Right? That’s because we just feel like we have no [00:09:00] capacity to use our brain anymore. She talks about how there’s so many societal problems that contribute to us living in this constant state of burnout. There’s things like this, this idea, these cultural values we have, that our value is found in our. In what we do that more work is always better that we should not, we should always be doing something.

We prioritize busy-ness. We as a culture value achievement. We think that success is in achievement or accolades or how much stuff we have, how much of something we have. We value quantity over quality. And a big one that I think most of us can relate to is trying to do all the things with little support or safety net.

We as humans were created [00:10:00] to thrive in a village, in connection with others, but we don’t all have that village. We don’t have our tribe. We don’t all have a support and safety net to help us manage all of the things going on in our lives. So many of us have all of these societal factors. We have all of these general parts of being a military spouse and moving frequently, trying to find a new tribe, a new village every time we move, trying to find a new way to find purpose, to find a job that we don’t hate to make sure our kids are taking care of, to make sure everyone in our family is taken care of to make sure.

That the Christmas presents are bought and wrapped, and that we’ve gotten everything in the mail and we created the Christmas cards and the teachers need gifts. And there’s a class party over here. And your spouse’s squadron has a party over here and you are also volunteering for this thing and this thing, and we feel overwhelmed. And [00:11:00] so it’s so easy for us to move into a place of not just feeling stress, but being burned out. And so what is the difference between just being stressed and exhausted and actually moving into this place of burnout?

When we get to this place of exhaustion and we keep going, even though we don’t have anything left to give. What are some of the ways that we can recognize signs of burnout? It’s going to be a little different for each of us because there’s going to be signs that you just have to notice. Hey, when this happens, I am usually stressed and overwhelmed. I am headed towards this place of burnout.

And a lot of this just comes with starting to be more aware of our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions, and our response. So for me, some of the things that happen when I am headed towards burnout or reaching that place of burnout is that I no longer feel [00:12:00] creative.

I don’t have the ideas coming to mind. I don’t have things that I want to do. Things that I want to talk to you about things that I want ideas for my business, for my life, for my friends. I just don’t feel that creative energy, that creative spark. Yeah. I also recognize it when my brain begins to feel overwhelmed when I have not had the time.

To unpack all of the thoughts, all of the things going on around me and my brain begins to be this jumbled mess of ideas. And I can’t process a thought well, and so it’s kind of like when you’re. It gets really messy and it tends to affect all other areas of your life. If my house is disorganized, it usually means my life is disorganized, but my brain works the same way.

When my brain gets to this place where it’s just overwhelmed and disorganized, that begins to affect [00:13:00] all other areas of my life. I start like missing details and, you know, calendar dates and things that need to happen because. I feel this sense of brain Cass, my monkey brain. And I’ve gotten to the point now that I can recognize this is happening and I need to do something about it.

Another way that burnout presents itself in my life is that I don’t show up. For those that I care most deeply about. It’s easy when we’re just interacting with strangers sometimes, but I think it’s harder to show up as our best self for those that we are closest to for our spouse, for our kids, for our very, very closest friends, people we are in relationship with.

I think we get the sense that, well, they’ll love me regardless. And so when I find myself getting short tempered or starting to snap at my kids or snap at my [00:14:00] husband, then I’m like, okay, there, there is a problem here. What’s going on? And what do I need to do about it? So I don’t shop well for those. I care most deeply about.

And the last thing I would say is that for myself, I start to feel just frustrated in general. And I I’ve learned to recognize that that frustration comes from the fact that I’m not living in alignment. And when we talk about alignment, it’s really this alignment of. How I know I want to show up what I meant to do when I am not living in alignment with how I want to show up or who I went to be.

Are there things that I want to do if there’s, there’s something that’s misaligned, what I value and what is actually happening are not in alignment. And then. When that gets misaligned, I feel the sense of frustration. Well, at the me, this is where I also [00:15:00] began to struggle, especially with mom guilt. I’m just, there’s just something that’s off and.

A great status when, when we’re living out of alignment with who we are and who, or meant to be. So when we get to these, this place where we start to recognize these signs of brown, where I don’t have any of that creative energy, that I was feeling this in my own life and October, there was just a lot of things going on.

A lot of moving pieces that I couldn’t control. And when I looked at my schedule, I was like, there’s nothing I can do to change. The structure of things right now, I’m just going to have to make it through the month and then I can regain some equilibrium. I can change things around in my schedule.

There’s going to be more space to move once I get out of October, but October is just going to be a month where there’s just too much and too many things that I cannot. And what [00:16:00] happened at the end of that month is that I started to recognize these signs in my life. I didn’t have the energy, I wasn’t feeling motivated.

I wasn’t excited. I didn’t have all of these new ideas to share with you on the podcast. I knew it came from this place of, I am moving. Burnout. And I’ve got to do something about it. I’ve got to change something so that I can regain my creative spark, my creative energies, so that I can show up for those I care deeply about so that I can have the brain space to process what’s going on and to continue to live.

Filled fueled and full of joy and need to recalibrate my schedule my time, make sure that I am caring for myself, that I am caring for those. I am a relationship in relationship with, and that I can adequately have the time and space to pursue purpose. So what do we do when we recognize that we are nearing this place of [00:17:00] burnout or that we are already.

Number one is to recognize that you are feeling burnt out, looking for those signs that are true of your life when you are not where you need to be. When you were feeling stretched too thin, when you were feeling stressed out, when you’re feeling exhausted and you just have to keep going, and you’re not showing up as the version of yourself that you want to be recognized.

This is probably I’m headed towards burnout or I’m at this place of burnout. And then we’re going to make a plan when we get to this place where we have been stressed for too long, when we have this prolonged sense of stress and we’re not showing up, we’re not responding from a healthy place that is filled, fueled, and full of joy.

We have to make a plan. For recovery now, as I stated earlier, you know, if you are in a season where things are outside of your [00:18:00] control and you just have too much. Sometimes you just have to wait until that season is over, but you don’t want to stay there for too long. So you need to start making a plan for it.

Hey, is this a season of time? Is there a specific Indian point to when this many things are on my plate or is this just a normal state of affairs? Because if this is a normal state of affairs and it’s not sustainable, then something needs to shift. If it’s just a temporary timeframe. Then sometimes you just kind of have to ride the wave, but then be prepared to have a plan for how you’re going to recover.

After that season, when we move PCS, it’s going to be a season of time where I feel stretched too thin. I feel pulled in too many directions. I am not showing up as my best self, but I’m not going to live in a constant state of PCS. I’m going to have a plan for how I get back on my feet. The craziness and the chaos of everything dies.

If [00:19:00] it is the holidays and I am planning for Christmas and I have all of these parties and events and gifts and things to do, but I know this is for a finite period of time. And after the holidays, I’m going to shift my schedule. I’m going to have, I’m going to create intentional time and space to recover.

We have to have a plan for recovery time because when we have been under. All the stress. When we have been pulled in so many different directions, we need additional time and space more than just sustaining where we’re at. We need recovery. So when I recognize the signs of burnout in myself, then I make that plan for, I need some extra time.

I need extra time spent in rest because when we look at all the areas of our life, we have to start from a place of rest. We cannot hustle and grind our way to success. We have to start from a place of rest. And when we are [00:20:00] feeling. Stretched too thin and stressed out and overwhelmed and burned up. We need additional time to rest, to play, to do the things that restore our creative energy.

That fuel us, that fill us with life. That light us up. So for me, that’s saying, Hey, I am in the season. And that means I’m going to need some extra time in my schedule to go sit on the beach, to read a book, to do things that fuel me and fill me. I have to prioritize, I have to plan it out, put it on my schedule so that it actually happens.

I also am at this place. Now, when I realized that I am feeling this way, then I need to go set aside some time to journal. Specifically about what I’m feeling, what fears and doubts they may be struggling with all of the things that I am struggling with, how I’m not [00:21:00] showing up as the version of myself, that I want to be what I need to do to get myself out of this place and get back on track.

So there’s this piece that is spending time. Journaling about what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, how I’m reacting and how I can choose a better, more productive outcome to my circumstances. And then I need additional time to rest and play, to do the things that fuel me and fill me with life. The things that light me up.

And then number four, because I think some of us struggle with this it’s to give yourself permission to prioritize. We cannot keep telling ourselves that we have to put ourselves last, but after everyone else is taking care of, then we’ll take care of ourselves. We have to give ourselves permission to prioritize breast.

And as we talked about earlier in this episode, we are a culture that values work, that values busy-ness we sometimes [00:22:00] prioritize busy-ness even if we’re not actually being productive with our time. We like to say that we were doing something that. Busy that we were taking action on something that we were cleaning, something that we were working on, a project that we were going to somewhere, we have to be doing something we don’t do well with just doing nothing.

And sometimes we just need to give ourselves permission to do. So, if we find ourselves in this place of burnout, we need to take additional time and space to rest and play and to do the things that light us up and fuel us and fill us with life. Now, let’s say we’ve done that. How do we prevent ourselves from getting to this place of burnout?

Well, as we talked about last week, when we look at our lives, we need to incorporate healthy inputs so that we can maintain the balance of input output. This [00:23:00] leads us out of the cycle of overwhelm exhaustion and burnout, because when we keep going, we keep trying to do all the things. We do them all in our own strength and we burn ourselves out.

We want to get into the cycle of feeling. Fueled and full of joy. Now in episode 36, we talked about how we have these three fundamental needs, these three buckets. And if they’re not being filled, then no one gets the best version of her. That’s the self bucket, the relationship bucket and our purpose bucket.

So if we want to prevent burnout from happening in the future, if we want to get out of this cycle of exhaustion and burnout and overwhelm, if we want to live filled, fueled, and full of joy, then we have to practice healthy. Which lead to healthy outputs, and we have to fill our three buckets of care [00:24:00] connect and contribute our caring for ourselves, our relationship with others and how we pursue.

This doesn’t mean that circumstances aren’t going to arise that are outside of our control, that we feel stretched too thin and pulled in too many directions on occasion. But when we are maintaining these healthy balance, when we have healthy rhythms, when. Doing things that fuel us and sell us with life on a regular basis.

When we are having healthy ways of offsetting, of getting rid of processing the stress, then more, much less likely to end up in this place of burnout on our regular basis. So if you find yourself in this place of burnout, then make a plan. To recover, make this recovery plan and then establish these healthy rhythms, which make it much less likely that you’re going to live in [00:25:00] this place.

So the last thing I would say, as we wrap up our time together today, let’s make a plan to end 2021. Regardless of where you’re at today. Take, take a few minutes just to gauge how you’re doing, how you’re feeling are you feeling like you are nearing this place of burnout? Are you completely exhausted and dream and waiting for this season to be over?

Or are you walking enjoy? Are you living. In this healthy rhythm, a feeling filled, fueled, and full of joy wherever you are today, make a plan for how you can end this year. Well, and start 20, 22 us on their right foot. I know life can feel chaotic and it’s so easy to feel. Pulled in all directions right now.

And that’s why we’ve spent the last few weeks together, focusing on how we show up well for the rest of the [00:26:00] year. So ask yourself what is going on, right. Is there anything I can say no to? Is there anything I need to let go right now? Or is there something that I am keeping on my plate right now that I can push off until January, until February until some point next year?

Do I have to do all the things that I am doing right now? Or is there something I can push off my plate until the next. The second thing that you can do right now to in 2021, well is to not get caught up in the need to have a plan. I know it’s, especially in the personal development space, there is so much focus on.

Planning for the next year of doing a deep dive into examining how far you’ve come, whether you hit your goals for this year, and then setting goals, setting your new year’s resolutions for what you’re going to do next year. [00:27:00] What your word of the year is going to be? What kind of goals you’re going to set for yourself for your business.

If you have a business for your life, all of the things too. Spending a lot of time and energy on looking ahead. And if you have the margin in your calendar to do that, that is absolutely wonderful. And I, I am, I love everything about goal-setting and reflection, reflecting on the last year and planning for the future and creating visions and goals for the company.

Weeks and months and years ahead, those are all wonderful things. But if you do not have the time and space to do that, if you are just overwhelmed at the thought of somebody talking to you about your word of the year or your new year’s resolution, that is absolutely okay. I do not want you to feel pressured to do.

We’re going to spend some time together in January talking about setting our intention for the year ahead. And I just want to give you permission to not think about [00:28:00] that until January. It’s one of those things that if you have too much on your plate, that is something that you can put off until the next year.

One of the most productive years of my life, I didn’t examine what I wanted my goals to be what I wanted out of life. I didn’t have any vision tasks. For goal-setting whatsoever until the beginning of February. And that ended up being one of my best, most productive years because I took that time and I didn’t have the time and space in my calendar until the beginning of February.

But because I waited and I took some intentional time when I could set that aside. And then I was able to make progress for the rest of my year and to have a good year. So it doesn’t, don’t filter yourself to this fact of, if it’s not done by January 1st, it doesn’t matter. Or I’m behind the curve or I’m doing it too late because.

It will happen when it’s meant to happen. So what can you do? Don’t get caught up in [00:29:00] the need to have next year planned out. And then the third tip that I would give you is to find a way to power down before 2022 begins a couple of weeks ago, I talked about how last year we were able to get away as a family and just have a couple of down days in between Christmas and new year’s and how that helped our whole.

Start the year off from a much better, healthier note. So if there is a way that you can have an hour a day, something that you, as a family can power down, that will help you start 20, 22 off. I hope what we talked about today, you found helpful that you found encouraging if you are, are feeling stressed and pulled in too many directions, just take a few minutes to evaluate how you’re feeling.

What’s contributing to that. Whether that’s just a place of some temporary stress, or if you are getting closer to this place at burnout so that you can make a [00:30:00] plan for what to do about it. And ultimately. And 2021 off and start 2022 on the right foot. I hope you have a great week and that as we move closer to Christmas break that you find some time for yourself and to get to this place where you can live feeling filled, fueled and full of joy..

Hey friends before you go. The milspouse mastermind community is here to help you thrive as a military spouse. Figure out what lights your heart on fire and equip you to create a life of impact. You can have an incredible. Simply by heading over to iTunes to subscribe and leave a review. And if today’s episode was meaningful to you, I know it will be for others to spread the word by taking a screenshot of this episode and share it to your stories so we can continue to reach more people change more lives and shift the way that military spouses look at life [00:31:00] because we are better together and together we can change the world.

Let’s do it.