If you are here listening to this podcast episode, my assumption is that you're listening to it because you are struggling with burnout. You're burnt out. You're overwhelmed. You're stressed. You're fed up. Let me first start out by saying I feel you. No matter how many times I tell myself that I have completely healed from burnout, somehow, someway, burnout always wants to circle back around into my life completely uninvited. I think that happens to us all. Especially when we're entering new seasons of our lives where we got a career change or a new client or started a new project or started chasing after another goal or we're healing from this, we're doing this, we're trying to get better at this. Any time something new enters our life, something that we're wanting to try, something that we feel called to, something that we're trying to do better at. It is a norm for burnout to want to come back into your life and honestly can feel incredibly difficult to rid of it for good. So, here's the thing, and if you are a frequent listener of these podcast episodes, you know that a lot of times we like to get to the root of things. Because I truly believe that in order for any solution to be implemented into our lives, we first need to understand the root. Get to the root. Target it. Pull it out, pull it up, and then implement a new seed for a new plant to grow in our lives. Wow, that was probably a really beautiful but yet extremely cheesy analogy of actual planting. But you know, that's just me. I'm a cheese ball. Okay, so let's talk about the different reasons why you are probably struggling with burnout. Because surface level, it is, there's too much going on. It's a heavy plate. There's a lot happening. However, deep down, there are different reasons as to why you're feeling that burnout. And I want to talk about those different reasons and then attach solutions to it so that you, my friend, are much more quicker to combat the burnout in your life, in your business, in your mind, in your day to day. All right, let's get into it. First things first. If you are struggling with burnout, one of the reasons could be that you are trying to force things to happen rather than letting them flow. This is something that I have been trying to teach my brain daily to stop trying to force and to be okay with flowing. When I say force, I'm talking about the fact that you're trying to make something happen. When I say flow, I am talking about you're allowing things to happen naturally without you making it, hustling through it, forcing it to happen. The reason why this is so unbelievably difficult is because a lot of us struggle with control issues. We want things to turn out our way. We want results to happen in the way that we see fit. So, because we struggle with control, it's really difficult to teach our minds to stop forcing things to happen the way that we want it to, and to instead allow things to naturally flow in the way that God wants it to. I believe that forcing things is all about you controlling. But flowing things, allowing things to flow, is when you finally allow God to control it. There is this unseen power dynamic between our control and God's control. Because God might be trying to control something or put his hands on something or open the door to something on his timing that might not align with ours. Or it might not be what we want it to be at all. So because of that, there's a power dynamic where our control comes in and we're like, Hey, I don't like the control that you got going over here, God, I want to do things my way. And when we start thinking like that, we start acting like that. And when we start acting like that, things start to feel forced. You are now forcing things to happen rather than letting them naturally flow, which leads to you burning out. When you force things, you get tired. When you force things, you get overwhelmed. When you force things, you are hustling. You are running. and not slowing down at all. So how do you stop this? What's the solution so that you can rip out your reason for burnout being the fact that you are forcing things rather than letting them flow? What exactly do you do? You have to let go of the results of the outcome. The results in the outcome is God's job. That is God's responsibility. If you let him. I say this a lot in my content because it is so essential to understand God's role versus your role in order for that partnership between you and him, that relationship between you and him in anything that you do. Your life, your business, your creative ventures, your career stuff, your family, yourself, all of that. In order for it to be successful, to be significant, to be okay, to feel contentment within those things rather than constant stress. Let God work out what the results and the outcome looks like. You, my friend, just try. Just put in the effort, put in the faith and walk while you do it. This is a visual that I always try to tell myself, and I love to talk about it to my students particularly because it's like, think about what a hustle mentality physically looks like. Because when I think about hustle mentality in the physical sense, I think about constant running, constant sweating, just constantly going at a fast pace. But when I think about that physical visualization of walking, I think about the fact that you are still getting up to move towards something. You are going, you are trying, you're putting in effort. You're just walking. You're not running, sweating, hustling, tiring yourself out. You are just walking. And I want that visual to sit with you when it comes to what you're chasing after, whatever goals that might be. Maybe it's money goals, business goals, health goals, family goals, whatever that is. What does it look like for you to put in genuine effort and faith within that journey? But to just walk through it and as you walk, allowing God to open up. those doors, the results, the outcome that is produced by you putting in the effort of walking, not running, not hustling, not stressing yourself out. And I'm trying to be very careful with my words here because I'm not saying you should be lazy. I'm not saying that you shouldn't try as hard. No, I'm saying that there's a difference in trying in hustling and trying in going at a steady pace. When you do, you start to feel less burnout and you start to learn how to trust God with the results that your steady pace produces. Stop forcing it. Let it flow. Let things happen naturally. Let God have control back when it comes to the timing over the things in your life, in your goals. Drop the power dynamic and let God have that control. You, my friend, just try, just put in the effort. Walk, have that steady pace. Keep going. Rest when you need to and trust God with everything else. When I finally started to learn to let things flow rather than force, to do a steady pace through my goals rather than hustling my way through them, I started to feel a lot more peace. Not only that, but opportunities just started to come naturally. Client, boom. An opportunity, boom. Uh, this speaking thing over here, boom. This blessing over here, boom. Finances over here, boom. It just started to happen naturally. And I believe that the same can happen for you too when you allow God to do what God does best. And you, my friend, just focus on your effort and your faith. That's it. All right. We got two more to go through. The second thing that I want to say as to why you could be struggling with burnout so much And how to fix it is you're bad at time management. For lack of better terms, I'm going to just say it, you are bad at time management. That's okay. I have found myself in that cycle of horrible time management time and time again. Why? Simply put, it's hard. It's hard to manage your time when there are so many things going on. Oh my goodness, it can feel impossible at times. To the point where you feel flustered, you can't get a hold of the time within your day, everything is literally everywhere, and it's just too much. And that's why you're burning out. You struggle in learning how to manage the time in your day that you do have because everything feels scattered and so flustered to the point where that leads you feeling burnt out. You feel like you don't have enough time in your day. You feel like you're missing out on certain time in your day. That leads to burnout. Too much going on in what feels like a short amount of time in your day. But, when you learn to build up the skill of managing and stewarding your time day by day, That can produce less burnout in your life. Learning time management, I truly believe, is a skill that just takes time to build. Surprise! Just like how everything takes time to build. But it is a skill that you can carry with you for years to come. That you can teach your audience that you serve, if any. That you could teach your family. that you can teach your kids. It is so valuable and it causes less stress when you simply learn to manage your time better. Now, there's a few different ways to do this, but what really helped me better manage my time was having a project management tool. That helped me to better understand my business tasks based off of the yearly goals that I had. And I would break those tasks down by month and then by week. And then I would look at those tasks, compare it to my monthly calendar, and I would think, how can I get these tasks done within this month that I had set for myself? And I realized that I needed to create a system within my actual calendar. I needed to create a great, solid, ongoing schedule. So with that in mind, I looked at my calendar and I was like, Okay, could it help to theme my days? Meaning, on these specific days of the week, my focus is going to be this. On these other days of the week, my focus is going to be on these things over here. Theming my days helped me to get structure and just to have a better schedule so that I can have good time management. Even things like being mindful of when I need breaks. There were certain days where I would block off my calendar so that I wouldn't have meetings, or I wouldn't have any tasks to do that day so that I would give myself breathing room to get any other pending tasks done that I didn't get done the days before, or to just rest, to allow my Self to catch up with my pace so that I could prepare myself for the following days ahead. Incorporating intentional rest in your schedule is also setting yourself up for really healthy time management. So I just want you to think about how can you get better at time management? Do you need a project management tool that you use on your computer? And by the way, you could just google project management tool and there are tons that can come up for you to help. Do you need to have a physical calendar where you theme your days, where you create time blocks, having a consistent schedule that you can stick to month after month? Do you need to wake up earlier so that you have more time in your day? And above all else, can you be intentional in giving every hour of your day to God? And this could be as simple as just whispering, God, I trust you with this hour. God, I'm in my car. I'm about to go grocery shopping and run this errand. Can you just be with me? Can you just come with me? God, I'm about to record this YouTube video for my business. Can you just speak through me? Saying little prayers like that in every task that you do kind of feels a little silly, you know what I mean? Because you're, you're busy. So you're, you're not really thinking about praying necessarily at that specific time because you're just thinking about getting the task done. But when you just take three seconds to verbally invite God into that task with you, you would be so surprised at how present he becomes. He's no longer kind of on the back burner while you finish this task. He's in the forefront with you. And when that happens more and more day by day, You start to supernaturally feel like you have more time in your day because you're inviting God on your journey of you getting better at managing your time. And supernaturally, I believe God can put his hand over that and make it seem like you have more time in your day because he's with you. He is helping you get better at time management. And when you do, less burnout. Man, so much less overwhelm in your life. All right. That was the second reason as to why you might be struggling with burnout. Let's talk about the third reason why you're struggling with burnout and how to fix it. Your overall burnout could be caused from mental burnout produced by uncontrollable thoughts. If your thoughts are everywhere, there's so much of them. They're coming at you left and right, and you can't control them. You can't contain them. They are loud. They are noisy in your mind. That causes anxiety. Anxiety causes us to feel breathless. It causes us to feel like we have to hustle. It causes us to feel scattered. So when you have uncontrollable thoughts that lead to anxiety, that lead to scattered brain, by the end of the day, you are mentally spent. You are so exhausted, you are mentally burnt out, and when you are mentally burnt out, your whole body feels that. And it's so interesting because by the end of the day, you feel really tired, like physically tired when you didn't really move your body that much that day, maybe. It's just your mind is so exhausted that it makes your whole body feel tired to the point where you just want to go to sleep. So the problem isn't your body is actually physically exhausted. And that your body needs rest. It's that your mind is mentally exhausted and your mind needs rest. And the best way to give your mind rest is to pray, is to meditate, to put yourself in moments of solitude throughout the day, to breathe, to close your eyes, to cut out all distractions, and to give that moment entirely to prayer and meditation. Easier said than done, okay? Because when we are in those moments of busyness or uncontrollable thoughts, the last thing that we want to do is sit down. That's the last thing we want to do. But, when you allow yourself to, you learn to better calm your mind down. And you allow God to help calm your mind down to the point where he becomes more present and those uncontrollable thoughts start to be more subsided. In moments of prayer and meditation, God can help you organize your thoughts. In moments of prayer and meditation, there's peace that's accessible there. And this has helped me so much because in my moments where my thoughts are just everywhere and I cannot for the life of me settle them down, when I take time to sit with God and to work through that for, you know, 10 minutes, I start to believe. Oh, that's actually not a big deal. Oh, this thought that I had. Oh, easy fix. Oh, this thing that I'm worried about over here. Okay. Well, it's going to take this solution, which, you know, I'm not going to be able to get to today, but over the next week I will be able to, and that's okay. Oh, this thing that was stressing me out or giving me anxiety? You know what? Let me go about it like this. And then it's all going to be like, I organize my thoughts. God helps me organize my thoughts so that I can go about the rest of my day and not feeling so scatterbrained to the point where I'm burnt out by the end of the day. Sometimes we just need to kick some sense into our mind because if we don't, we will allow our thoughts to run wild and to blow things out of proportion, to overly worry or overly concern ourselves with things. when in actuality it's like, all right, let's settle down. Is this really a big deal? Or what are the solutions that we can attach to this so that we're good? These thoughts are better organized. Now I will say there are going to be moments where getting control over those thoughts doesn't happen. And I say that because sometimes our emotions are just too high. Like if you are struggling with severe anxiety during your day or depression is hitting you. Those emotions can feel so intense sometimes that it literally feels impossible for our thoughts to be controlled. So in those moments, it's not going to take just a quick 10 minutes for you to gather your thoughts and to feel okay again so that you're not mentally burnt out by the end of the day. I would say that in those emotional moments where it is super heavy, It'll take the whole day, maybe even a couple, to feel like yourself again, so that you don't mentally burn yourself out. And I say that because sometimes we need more than 10 minutes of prayer and meditation, of going on peaceful walks. Sometimes we need more than that. To wake us up, to pull us out of that, to allow our spirit to be in the forefront over our emotions and allowing the peaceful spirit that God gives us to take lead over the emotions that we might be feeling. Regardless, if you're in those moments, you allow yourself to work through that. with the end goal of no longer allowing mental burnout frequently, mental exhaustion frequently, to be your constant reality. So, I just wanted to come on this week's podcast episode to encourage you with the very real fact that mitigating your burnout, better managing the burnout that comes back around into your life uninvited, it is possible. I know it doesn't feel like it, especially in today's world, today's economy, everything feels and honestly is a hot mess. I get it. But what isn't a hot mess? Jesus is Jesus, the only stable foundation that is accessible to us every second of every single day. And I believe that a part of learning to stand on Jesus's foundation is learning how to better control the burnout that we face. I know it's hard. I know, believe me. But remember, many things are not an overnight occurrence. It takes time. The question is, will you be patient enough with yourself to go through the time that it will take for you to learn how to better manage or mitigate or deal with the burnout that you're facing so that it does not control your everyday life? Alright, my friend. Thank you so much for tuning in with me this week. It's always a huge hope that these podcast episodes give you encouragement that you need just to get through the rest of the week, giving you something to think about, giving you something to work through so that ultimately at the end of the day, we grow closer to Jesus, we heal, we step deeper into our God given calling, and we amplify the creative ambitions that We have God's way on God's timing. And just to wrap this episode up, if you are interested in learning more about living a burnout free life, especially if you're wanting to learn how to run your own online business successfully as a creative, you can get seven days for free in my coaching and community hub called the burnout free biz. There's resources, courses, Q and A's, workshops, plenty of training materials in there to help you live a burnout free life and run a burnout free successful business that does not sacrifice your relationship with God or your mental health. I hope to see you inside. Thanks for tuning in this week, my friend, and I'm already looking forward to seeing you next week.