[00:00:00] Vesna: Welcome to the Peak Revival podcast. My name is Vesna Hrsto. I'm your host and on this podcast I'm going to talk about how to go from burnt out to peak performance especially if you're a high performing woman. And today I'm going to talk about what is the five step plan to go from burnt out to feeling like your best self.
[00:00:20] So even if you're exhausted and overstretched and overwhelmed how to get back to feeling like your best.
[00:00:26] What is burnout? Burnout is a result of chronic stress that has not been successfully managed. And where, before they saw burnout just happening in the corporate business environment, and now they can see that burnout extends beyond that because you could be a burnt out mum.
[00:00:44] And there's a lot of, Drivers for this is a lot of psychological drivers that drivers towards burnout. Now, I understand burnout very well. I hit burnout when I started my first practice and I worked really hard and I put a lot of pressure on myself. I had a lot of expectations and eventually I started to feel exhausted and overstretched to the point where didn't love my work anymore.
[00:01:09] found everything a struggle. I didn't have the passion and joy in my life that I once did. And so it was a bit of a slow process. So no matter where you are kind of in that, right, if you're feeling the symptoms of burnout, so a lot of people say to me, well, I don't think I'm burnt out, but I'm really tired.
[00:01:28] And the end stage of burnout looks like. some people become bedridden, right? They're really, really exhausted that they can't get out of bed and they get very sick. They get a lot of colds and flus and so it keeps them bedridden. But there's a lot of stages before that happens and it's waking up tired all the time.
[00:01:46] It's feeling tired throughout the day and then you can't sleep at nighttime. Maybe it takes days for you to get through your emails or your text messages. You feel like you're behind on everything, even though it feels like you're, you know, burning the candle at [00:02:00] both ends. you're kind of antisocial.
[00:02:02] You prefer to stay in. You don't want to go out and socialize because you want to try and conserve your energy. And there's also a loss of passion in your work, in your business that really distinguishes burnout.
[00:02:15] Basically what happens, chronic stress that is not being managed means that stress hormones have been in the system or in a chronically high state for a long time and they create imbalances and deficiencies. And I like to explain it like this.
[00:02:32] Cortisol, which is your main stress hormone. has this way of kind of hijacking all the other responses in the body. So if you think about, you know, when you're driving on the road and like a fire truck comes or a police car, paramedic or ambulance, whatever it is, you have to move to the side, right? And give them way.
[00:02:50] And that's kind of the same effect of cortisol, right? Cortisol just pushes everything out of and it takes what it needs to get the job done. Because when you're in a chronic state of stress, your body thinks that you're in a life threatening situation, that you're in mortal danger. Right? And so it's not important for you to digest your food and absorb your nutrients, have proper sleep and regulate your reproductive system or detoxify or anything like that.
[00:03:16] Right? So those systems and those areas and those functions become compromised and our stress could be built up over time. So I look at chronic stress or anything over three months, and that can create too much of a disruption due to the cortisol and stress hormones on other hormones and systems in the body.
[00:03:39] And it could be that you're a perfectionist at your work, that you're trying to prove yourself you know, you're holding onto bad relationships. There are, there are a number of things that can create a lot of stress in our body, which then it causes us to feel burnt out.
[00:03:52] So there are lab tests that you can do to have, like, I always recommend to have a check up, to have a look at where your [00:04:00] hormones are at. We look at cortisol levels. We also look at thyroid levels. We look at nutrient levels to see where the imbalances are because they will need to be corrected. And there will be some there after a period of time of chronic stress.
[00:04:12] Okay, but let's get into the five step plan to go from burnt out to feeling like your best. Step one is to acknowledge that the symptoms that you're feeling are not normal and if you've been feeling them for over three months, then there's definitely an impact to the system, right? So one of the hardest things that I see, particularly for successful women is to acknowledge that what they're feeling is burnt out and they may not be at the end stage of burnout, but they're in that stage where.
[00:04:40] They're tired all the time, but they're pushing themselves to get stuff done. They're really anxious and things are setting them off. They're unable to switch their mind off after work and it's draining system even more. So acknowledging that your symptoms are a part of a bigger picture and acknowledging that you are heading into burnout.
[00:05:02] And the second thing is to ask yourself a bit of a tough question. So there are psychological triggers or psychological markers for predisposition for going into burnout. So one of my CEO clients, she said to me one day, she runs a very successful business. She has two children and she was always busy and she was burnt out and she had a lot of other complications from the burnout.
[00:05:26] And she said to me, what am I trying to prove? Am I trying to prove myself through my work? What am I doing? Because she felt like a workaholic, And one of the drivers for burnout is this motivation to prove ourselves, to prove our worth, whether it be in our business, whether it be in our career, but even in mothering.
[00:05:42] Okay. So it's not just within your work, right? Your work could be your mothering. Okay. So the tough question to ask yourself is what motivates your work? What motivates you to push so hard and ignore the cues that your body needs extra rest, right? What [00:06:00] motivates you to, ignore all of those cues?
[00:06:03] That's step one. Step two is a sleep overhaul. So I see a lot of women who, you know, don't like to go to bed on time or have late nights. They end up working late. So if they're, running a business, they end up, you know, working and then taking care of the kids and then staying up late at night to finish off work.
[00:06:23] The problem here is that you're not going to get that recovery time, the recovery time that your body needs in order for you to be performing at your best. So there's one thing about putting in the hours of work. It's the quality and the productivity. And again, I see women who are still quite productive.
[00:06:40] But it's taking a toll on their body, right? And the sleep time is when we get the recovery time. It's when our body goes into repair mode to correct the imbalances that perhaps were created during the day or during the month during the last six months or 12 months. So making sure that you don't sacrifice your sleep, making sure that you're having a sleep routine, you're in bed before 10 PM every night.
[00:07:04] winding down before bed and not having any late nights, not even on the weekend. Right? So I kind of look at this as a treatment plan, right? So instead of taking a supplement, you get yourself to bed. That is your supplement, right? That is what is actually going to kickstart healing in your body.
[00:07:20] Step number three is a nutrition do over. So stop as best you can eating out, getting Uber Eats. When we're stressed, we are definitely going to go for things that help us to, you know, give us more energy like coffee or sugar, alcohol when we want to kind of end the day, reward ourselves for the day, eating out because we're too busy to cook at home or socializing and catching up with friends, but doing Uber Eats or any of those things.
[00:07:46] When you're in burnout, there is such a need for nutrition to repair the imbalances that have been created from the burnout, which you're not going to get from poor quality food. And research has shown that just cooking at home, [00:08:00] just that alone has a protective effect against burnout. So we're not going to get the nutrition if we're not cooking at home.
[00:08:06] We're much better off, you know, making the time and making it as simple as possible for you to be able to cook at home. But that does have a protective effect. Step number four is to quieten the mind. when we look at chronic stress, the biggest part of it is this chronic mental chatter. So I speak to clients and CEO and business owners.
[00:08:26] They find that they catastrophize their problems, that they can't let it go, right? And they, they think about so many different things or overanalyzing situations and it creates an anxiety. It creates Chronic mental stress now that trips up our fight or flight response, part of our stress response system.
[00:08:46] So the very fact of what we feel like we're doing is You know, helping ourselves resolve situations by thinking about it, trying to find a solution, overthinking it. But that very act of overthinking is actually driving more stress hormones in the body. And it's moving you further away from where you actually want to get to.
[00:09:06] So the whole idea of this burnout recovery plan, this five step plan, is to reduce stress hormones in the body. So you can do that without you know, running away from your life or putting your life on hold or stopping anything, right? Because for most people, we can't just exit our businesses or our work, right?
[00:09:25] We have responsibilities. And so there is a way that you can get back to your best, but you need to reduce those stress hormones. So, you know, your sleep and nutrition and quieting the mind, all of these things are really important to bring that stress hormone back down the cortisol and allow the body to do what it does, which is recover.
[00:09:43] So if you find yourself during the day, like I normally would ask, how many hours of the day would you find that your mind is at a quiet peace or even in a flow, right? You're really, uh, can be engaged in your work without any distractions. You can work on one piece of [00:10:00] task without getting distracted by emails, phones, meetings, whatever it is, and you could work solidly without being distracted or do you find that your mind has a lot of mental chatter going on.
[00:10:12] And the difference is that the longer that mental chatter is there, the more it's going to kind of release and trigger this cortisol, which then has a downstream effect, right? Affecting our digestive system, our other hormones, our thyroid and more. So the best you can try to maintain or try to trust that when you have mental clarity, you will be able to.
[00:10:39] handle everything that your business and life throws at you. But in that place of mental chatter and chronic mental stress, we really don't think clearly we are not rational. Cortisol drops our IQ for one and makes us very kind of hyper vigilant and gives us like myopic or tunnel vision in a sense of we really zone in on a problem.
[00:10:59] So we're not really seeing a bigger picture. So it's from a clear state of mind that we do our best to make our best decisions. So if you can trust that, then you'll be able to let go a lot of that thinking. And step number five is a system reset. Because as I said, Burnout does break down key systems, our gut, our detox pathways.
[00:11:18] It affects our hormones, particularly our thyroid hormone for women. And that needs to be reset in order, you know, for you to feel your best. And one of the best places to start is gut health. Because we know that gut health affects our mental health. A lot of our serotonin is produced in our gut, which affects our mood, the quality of our sleep, and how well we can handle things.
[00:11:41] So just to rehash the five step plan from going from burnout to feeling like your best is number one, acknowledge that you are showing the symptoms of burnout and ask yourself what is motivating you? What motivates your work or what motivates you to push so hard? Number two is a sleep overhaul. Really [00:12:00] have sleep discipline.
[00:12:01] Get in bed by 10 p. m. Do not sacrifice that, even on the weekends. Step number three is a nutrition do over. If all you do right now to begin is cook your meals at home and don't have things in a packet, That will have a protective effect on your body. Step number four is to quiet the mind. The mind, the mental chatter drives so much of our stress.
[00:12:21] 80 percent of our stress is mental and emotional stress. Okay. If we can get a handle on this piece, we can feel a hell of a lot better. Okay. And step number five is a system reset. So start looking at repairing gut function, improving gut health in order for you to have better hormones for mental health.
[00:12:40] And those are the five steps. I think they're pretty easy to follow, and let me know how you go.
