Today I am going personal once more as I share about my burnout journey. I am sharing my story about burnout number two that is. If you can believe it, yes, I did it again, but it was completely different from burnout number one.

Last week I shared how I achieved burnout number one by over-exercising and under-eating. I don't know if I call it an achievement but that's what I did. But today I'm talking about burnout number two, and how that happened basically by filling my life with lots of good things. And you might be thinking, “How in the world did she burn out if everything was good?”. Well, sister, hang on! I'm about to share how I hit the wall AGAIN.

In order for me to coach and help high achieving women increase their net worth both financially and relationally, by beating burnout and revitalizing their health, I had to go through burnout. TWICE. Like you, I am also an over-achiever.

So, as a woman who is a wife, a mom, I was an employee, I had my business on the side and trying to be a good friend and have social connections, I was struggling to keep up. It was taking a toll on me. But all of it was really really good stuff. And when I work with women that's often what we find, there are a lot of good things in their life that are happening but sometimes it's just a little bit too much and sometimes, it’s a LOT TOO MUCH.

After I recovered from my first burnout, I did a revamp of my life. I got rid of relationships that no longer served me. I was basically realigning what my priorities were, WHO my priorities were and who I wanted to be, who I wanted to show up as to be the best version of me that I could for my family and those that I love the most.

I was doing that assessment of my life… but also, I am a pretty driven person. I have a lot of goals and a lot of dreams that I want to achieve in life. And sometimes as a high-achieving woman, it's really hard to prioritize because we look at all of these things and struggle to know what is most important.

We take a look at our jobs, our finances, and our relationships. If we have kids that's a pretty big priority alone; yet, we must also place a high priority on our marriages, other relationships, our careers, connections, obligations that we might have, and volunteer work.

Out of all of those things, does any of that sound bad? It doesn't sound bad, It's not bad. But what's not healthy is when we can't say no to certain things. And… that's basically what happened to me in this stage of my life.

And as I was taking things away, I was also adding more. You might remember I had mentioned that I started grad school …that was part of that first disaster, ahem burnout. While that recovery was taking place, for whatever reason, I just thought this is a great time for me to go back to school! What?

And it wasn't even that I was necessarily needing to do that for a particular position in my company or something within my own business that I was looking for. Yet, I was basically hearing that a successful woman will continue her education and will keep going forward with that to continue the corporate climb.

The problem for me in this situation was I trying to recover from Adrenal Fatigue (burnout) and I jumped right into any huge responsibility because I felt like that was expected in order to be successful. Boundaries aren’t my strong point and I've always had a hard time at placing boundaries in my life. And so that's become a lifelong work for me, to put those healthy boundaries in place and to know when enough is enough.

What women in society are facing right now is a superwoman complex where we are being told and believing that we can do all of the things; and we can do them really well. We can be that super mom. We can be that awesome wife. We can have that high powered job or that really successful business and we can be really involved in our community. And we should still have time for ourselves and also, by the way, we need to look perfect while we do all that, right? Our house needs to be Pinterest perfect and our kids need to look like they're straight out of a catalog. That's just not reality; at least for me it wasn't and isn’t.

So what did burn out number two look like specifically? I was focused on being a people pleaser and wanting to make sure everybody was happy all the time and I'm doing the things that I feel like I need to do to get ahead in life. I also had a demanding job and my responsibilities were increasing. I loved it, It was exactly what I wanted to do. I was really good at it but I was also wanting to be a really good wife and a really good mom. That weight on my shoulders was a lot and I wasn't stopped eating well. I was looking for quick, easy meals. Nutrients were not always at the forefront of my mind. I wasn’t asking myself how that food would make me feel. I was also probably eating just to numb the constant feeling of not being good enough. Eventually, I started feeling poorly again.

What I noticed was that fatigue, that never-ending tiredness had started to come back. And then weight gain was starting to come back. But that was coming at a rapid pace! That mental fogginess that I talked about in my other video was definitely back and this feeling of lethargy, and I didn't feel like I was being effective in any role that I had.

I was doing all of the things but I didn't feel like I was doing any of them well. I didn't feel like I was being a good mom, being a good wife, I didn't feel like I was being a good employee, and I was definitely not paying attention to my business the way that I wanted to be. And I wasn't getting out of life what I wanted to be getting. I was basically allowing life to happen to me because I was just letting the schedule dictate what I was going to be doing and when. But it wasn't feeling right to me.

The result of all that was I ended up developing hypothyroidism and I was diagnosed with PCOS, my hormones were completely out of whack.

Thankfully my sleep was still good but I was just feeling an insane amount of tiredness. I wanted to be exercising to gain energy but I was just so exhausted at the end of the day. This manifested in such a huge way where I was just kind of at that breaking point where I thought, “I can not do one more thing”, and that's probably resonating with some of you right now.

Once again, it took me stepping back and evaluating what in my life needs to go, what can stay, what can I delegate, what can I get rid of, what are the things that I enjoy.

So, I basically had to do complete 180 on my life and had to say no to some things and said “hold on” to a few other things for a later time. Some of them it was just time for me to let them go and then there were the things that I absolutely love, like coaching and helping women, that I really wanted to pour my heart and soul into.

I had to make some decisions to do that. But with that, I had to get back in line with practitioners and finding out what I could do to help myself thrive again in my health. I wanted to feel the best. I'm not just doing the best and not necessarily only “look” the best. But I wanted to feel the best. I wanted to have that energy back.

Changing that perspective was difficult. We are engrained to believe that our worth is tied to our appearance. It also took a lot of time for me to really be intentional in my diet, instead of processed foods, I started eating whole, organic and unprocessed foods as much as I could. I focused on making sure that I had a very balanced meal. I definitely now have the carbohydrates, the proteins, and the healthy fats. All of that is part of every single meal that I have. Making sure that I'm taking the steps that I need to take in order to feel well and so that has been truly the game changer for me.

Like I shared before, there is never a time where we just “arrive”. It's more of a continuous lesson and a continuous practice of what's working right now. It may not work tomorrow. It might not have worked yesterday but we're going to try something today.

Always listening to your body and knowing when the time is to rest; rest was definitely not a part of my life. It's OK. Now, I give myself the permission to take a day off or not be hyper-focused on what I am accomplishing.

The reality of life is nobody is going to die if I don't get something done today. It's really taken again a total different mindset shift and I think that's something that we're always working on and moving toward each day. As I share my story of burnout, know that you absolutely can achieve revitalized health! You just need the right guide; you need the right tools.

Revitalized Wellness will be starting again in January. It is a six-week group program that is going to be amazing because it's going to give you all of those tools and tips and resources. I'm going to coach you through of it so that you feel more in line with the person that you want to be.

We are imperfect people looking at other imperfect people but expecting perfection from ourselves. So… let's drop that baggage and instead let's vow to get the help that we need. Asking for help prevents burnout so that we can show up as the best us in all the areas of our lives and effectively creating more success in both work and relationships.

You can join the waitlist right now to be sure that you get first shot at joining Revitalized Wellness in January. Join HERE.

Did you miss the video about my burnout? Click HERE.