Start to Improve Your Burnout in 10 Minutes

Making recovery from burnout a reality through intentional practice

Welcome! I’m Dr. Jillian, a physician leader, mom, and coach who is on a mission to help other high achieving professionals and recovering perfectionists reduce overwhelm and learn to live the lives they truly want to be living. I’m still working on this in my own life, and I share what I’m learning along the way. Humans Leading is a way for you pause for reflection amidst the hustle of your life and an invitation for you to consider how you might change up what you’re doing in order to find more joy and ease. Subscribe here to get this newsletter straight in your inbox:

Photo by Eric Nopanen on Unsplash

Recently, someone asked me an important but difficult question during an interview:

“When life feels overwhelming and someone is experiencing burnout, how do they begin to move forward if they just feel completely exhausted?"

Fortunately, I’d known that they were going to ask me this so that I had a bit of time to truly think about what I wanted to say.

It’s not an easy question with a straightforward answer.

But it’s so important, especially as so many people are experiencing high levels of stress and burnout.

For me, beginning to get out of burnout comes down to two things:

1. Telling someone else that you’re struggling

2. Identifying something you can do for 10 minutes that will get you a bit of the feeling that you’re after (peace, ease, joy, rest, etc.)

Why tell someone else?

I can almost hear you saying, “But I can do it all myself!”

But, my dear person, I promise that you cannot.

I know this firsthand because I was you (multiple times). I was the helper, not the one who needed help. I was the strong one. I was… the one with burnout. I was the one needing help.

And, once I finally got over myself and my ego (not an easy feat it turns out), I was able to begin to move forward by telling a few trusted people what I was going through. These people included my partner, a coach, and a few friends. They were incredibly supportive in different ways, and their support allowed me to begin to navigate a path forward.

If you’re currently experiencing high levels of stress resulting in overwhelm and/or burnout, pause for a moment and think: “Who would have my back right now?”

This person (or people) doesn’t have to have the solutions for you. They just have to be the kind of person who will support you and cheer you on without judging you.

If you aren’t sure that you have this kind of person in your life, fear not. This is what coaches are made for. We are here to take you from where you are (burnout) to where you want to be (presumably… not burnout). If you’re in need of someone to partner with you in your journey via 1:1 coaching, let’s talk about how I can support you. Feel free to reach out via my website.

If you do have this kind of person in your life, congratulations! Whether you know it or not, you’re already on your way to getting out of burnout. It isn’t easy, but it’s possible. You just have to tell this person what you’re going through and accept help when they offer it.

Now, on to Step 2, which is something you can do right now. I know that you can because:

1. I believe in you.

2. If you’ve made it this far into the post, you have ten minutes to spend on yourself Right. Now.

Why ten minutes? Ten minutes = about 1% of your day. If you don’t have 10 minutes to spend on yourself, you won’t get from where you are to where you want to be.

Which brings us to the question:

What do you want your life to feel like?

Notice that I didn’t say look like. I didn’t say what to you want to be doing in your life.

For this part of your recovery, it’s important to think about how you want to FEEL (sorry in advance to all of you disembodied people out there living in your heads and avoiding your feelings).

This took some time for me to figure out because I absolutely was not a person who felt my feelings (more on that a different time). But, when I was burned out, I just wanted to feel less exhausted and less angry.

So, I did something that I knew would give me that feeling, even though I didn’t feel like I had the energy to do it: I walked.

Messages of hope in Spring 2020 thanks to the children in my neighborhood who didn’t know how much I needed these.

I walked all over my neighborhood listening to podcasts. Over time, I walked and listened my way back to my “normal” self. When I felt like I didn’t have the energy or the time, I told myself, “Just walk for 10 minutes,” and I always went longer than that.

You don’t have to make it complicated. You’re just looking for something that gets you closer to the feeling that you want to be having (e.g. peace, ease, joy, not rage-y, etc.).

One way to do this is to choose something that will activate your parasympathetic nervous system. You can think of this part of your nervous system like the down volume control on the radio of your nervous system. By activating it, your body metaphorically turns down the volume on the stress response you’re experiencing.

By doing this intentionally and regularly, your nervous system will come back to baseline. Walking is a great way to do this. There are many others that you can see in the graphic below. The key is making this a habit, not just something you do when you’re feeling bad.

These six categories of activities have been shown to be beneficial for activating the parasympathetic nervous system and “turning down the volume” on stress: Move your body, positive social interaction, laughter, breathing, creative expression, and affection

Something you always have on hand is your breath. Taking a few deep breaths where you breathe out for longer than usual can turn on your parasympathetic nervous system and get you closer to baseline. I wrote about this importance of this in a post last year.

Getting to 'ok'

Choosing to do one of these things for 10 minutes can get you closer to where you want to be. These practices can help you get some breathing space to allow you to begin to truly recover.

As always, none of the information in my posts is intended to be medical advice (even though I’m a physician). As such, it’s important to seek care from your own medical professional to be sure that you’re not experiencing other physical or mental health related concerns.

Also, as

Emma Gannon

says in her new book “A Year of Nothing,” please do remember that burnout recovery takes time. Mine took several months. Other people’s takes up to a year.

The key is to remember that you didn’t get to a place of burnout overnight, so you shouldn’t expect to get rid of it overnight. This is why having supportive people is so helpful.

Remember… recovery is possible. And it starts with creating a little breathing room.

After that, you’ll have a bit more space to examine what else needs to change in order to recover.

How will you spend your 10 minutes today?

Today’s (originally unplanned) bonus content:

Full disclosure, I drafted the above post last weekend when things were going really well in my life. Unfortunately, earlier this week, our family received unexpected news that our dog had a medical emergency while at the groomer, and she passed away. Our family is devastated.

The sweetest potato

After getting the news, I decided to take the following day off from work. There were logistical considerations and, more importantly, emotions to be navigated.

At first, I felt incapable of being able to do anything.

So, I asked myself the question I told you to ask yourselves above: “How do I want to feel?”

Answer: Less like a blob. Less sad.

There was only one thing that could help: Walk. Alone. In the rain. With a podcast.

Rainy day sad walk

This, as always, was the right choice.

Almost immediately after leaving my house, I was met by a father and his child also walking in the rain. We had a nice interaction full of tooth baby giggles. A delight as the poet Ross Gay would say.

As I walked, the voices of Matt Haig and Elizabeth Day filled my brain on this wonderful podcast from a few years ago. Delight.

I walked so slowly. I splashed in puddles. I got mildly soaked.

And I returned home a little lighter than before.

Do the things that will help you feel more like you want to feel, even when you don’t want to do them (see behavioral activation for more details).