Intro:
Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hairstylist, like you got into this industry to make big things happen? Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability. Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you aren’t seeing any results. Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success but are craving more. Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer. Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy. When you’re ready to quit just working in your business and start working on it, join us here where we share real success stories from real stylists. I’m Britt Seva, social media and marketing strategist just for hairstylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist podcast.
Britt:
What is up? And welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, and I’m nervously excited to share a more vulnerable podcast episode about how I personally overcame burnout. I spent the vast majority of 2023 quite extremely burnt out for a myriad of reasons. And burnout is so funny, because when I was in it, I felt like there’s no way out.
This just is my reality. You got to push through it, which was so naive. As I look back, I’m like, man, you could have handled that so differently. But when you’re in the thick of burnout, it feels like you just have to power through, and working harder and just getting to the other side is how you’ll survive it. That’s definitely what I did, and I got through it that way.
But man, if it wasn’t brutal and if I didn’t pay the price in the process. And that is not the first time I have felt burnt out. But for me, it was like markedly the biggest time I was burnt out. And I want to share a little bit of why and then also go into how I got to where I am today, which is not even the littlest bit burnt out. And I have definitely in my life been in seasons where I’m like, things feel great.
This feels tangibly different. And the reason I want to share it is because what I want to share with you today is not based on theory, it’s based on reality. I’ve also done some really recent research on burnout, and I think that I’ve really gotten on the pulse of why our industry specifically feels more burnt out. I think that in any profession and in any job, stress is just something we’re going to have to navigate.
This is not like how to make your life stress-free. I don’t know that anybody has a stress-free life. It’s not about how to make your everyday perfect. Not all of my days are perfect, but I’m also not burnt out. And I want to talk about the significant changes I had to make in my life and in my business. I want to talk about the very clear changes I think our industry needs to make to avoid burnout and talk about how we got here.
So first of all, I felt like this topic was important because of the massive amount of comments I’ve seen from stylists about burnout recently. I want to read some of those with you today. So Mary says, “I’ve experienced a high level of burnout. I’m looking through the reflect portion of my Wealthiest Year Yet planner, and I’m sad to say that I’ve literally stopped doing everything in my business. It’s time for me to regroup and refocus.”
Has anybody else felt like Mary, where you’re feeling burnt out and reflect on all the things you had hoped you would accomplish and you realize you’re not accomplishing any of them, you’re not making progress on any of them, and then a shame cycle starts? Very typical, very common.
Diane commented back to Mary and said, “You’re not alone. I have completely checked out this year too. So much has been going on that something had to give. For me it was my business. My books are pretty empty right now. I really need another push to go forward. We’ve got this.” And that’s what’s tough is that for most of us when we hit seasons of burnout, what do we do? You take your foot off the gas because you’re like, I just can’t push any harder.
I am tired. I am done. Hands go up in the air and you’re like, I’m over it. And that gives this temporary, euphoric false relief until the repercussion of that, I call it the B word, the break hits when you’re like, well damn, but now I’m further back than I was when I started feeling the burnt out, and now I’ve got to get back on the wagon in order for me to make the progress that I’m looking to make. And so it begins.
And that’s why burnout is so often a cycle is because we feel the overwhelm, we take the foot off the gas, it’s a temporary relief, only to realize we’ve dug the hole deeper and now we have to start over. I want to stop that continual cycle. Nikki says, “I need help and guidance with creating more time in my schedule. I’m feeling the familiar feeling of burnout. I’m booked out two months and I feel bad to reschedule my days so I can give more time to have an office day to work on my business.”
So Nikki is feeling that like that schedule pressure. Erin says, “I’m a salon owner and stylist in the San Francisco Bay Area. My salon and team are both small, but I have dreams of growing into something bigger. We are slowly growing. I’m finding it difficult to do all of the things that I need to do to be successful. I see burnout right on the horizon.” Again, Erin knows what needs to be done.
So Erin hops on the treadmill and runs as many miles as she can and until the wheels fall off, which is what most of us do in our business. So I took a step back and I wanted to do a little bit of research before I share just what worked for me personally. And whenever I go to research, I try and look at very legitimate studies as much as I can, not just random blogs.
And what I found is as I was sourcing material, many, many, many, many, many different organizations come back to this Harvard Business Review who found that there are three major symptoms of burnout, exhaustion, which is a chronic state of fatigue, cynicism or depersonalization. That to me was fascinating and that was described as a psychological disengagement and detachment from work.
I would best describe that as the F it mentality, where you’re just trying to get through your days, it’s something you have to do, but you are trying to emotionally detach as much as you can. And then number three, inefficiency, a sense of incompetency and lack of productivity. So again, you feel like you’re working, you’re doing the best that you can, which is such a common phrase, I’m doing the best I can.
Yet at the end of the night when you lay down, you’re like, gosh, that shame cycle starts, and you’re like, I’m so disappointed in myself. I feel like I’m not enough. I’m not doing enough. All of those thoughts start to creep in, and that’s often described as burnout. So let’s dig deeper in all of those for just a moment. Exhaustion is a central system of burnout.
It comprises profound physical, cognitive, and emotional fatigue that undermines people’s ability to work effectively and feel positive about what they’re doing. Can anybody relate to that? I certainly can. Working moms experience high burnout because they’re juggling too many things and feel like they are always on. That really resonated with me.
I saw a really great it might’ve been a TikTok or an Instagram reel recently, and it was talking about the mental load that often working moms, I’m going to say working parents because I think working dads can feel this too, but often it does fall to working moms where it’s like this intangible mental load that we carry all the time as well. So it’s, yeah, I got to get through my work day.
I got to go home. I got to make dinner, got to pick up the kids from school, bedtime, so-and-so has a project due tomorrow. Soccer game is on Saturday. Totally. Those are the logistical things. But then there’s also the Timmy hasn’t been to the dentist in six months. I promised Sally that I was going to do mani-pedis with her for her birthday, and I still haven’t scheduled that yet. Did anybody buy a gift for grandma? Her 90th birthday is coming up.
Did we RSVP to that wedding yet? Did anybody pay the water bill this month? For somebody in every family, there’s this additional invisible mental load that gets carried. And often that really leads to the exhaustion. And what’s tricky about it is it is intangible. It’s not like saying, I’m so tired of driving the kids around, which often as a working parent we do. We’re like, I’m an unpaid Uber driver.
I’m shuttling kids everywhere. That’s a thing. But for most of us, we’re like, yeah, but I wouldn’t change it. This is part of parenting and this is what I chose. Often what we do is we blame things like, my commute is really heavy, or I’m sick of packing lunches. But the reality is you wouldn’t mind packing the lunch if the mental load of did somebody pay the water bill this month wasn’t living there.
And when I learned that because I hadn’t even marked that as a tangible for myself, when I realized for me that mental load is really heavy, that was incredibly freeing. So that leads into the exhaustion as well. Then there’s the cynicism, also called depersonalization, represents an erosion of engagement. It’s essentially a way of distancing yourself psychologically from your work.
Instead of feeling invested in assignments, projects, colleagues, customers, and other collaborators, you choose to be detached, negative, or even callous. Cynicism can be the result of work overload, but it’s also likely to occur in the presence of high conflict, perceived unfairness, I love that it’s perceived unfairness because the word fair is really kind of an impossible goal to have, and lack of participation in decision-making.
So feeling like you’re never in the driver’s seat. Your opinion doesn’t matter. There’s too much turmoil. You’re feeling frustrated. So instead of changing things, you just distance yourself. It’s the F it mentality again. Then there’s inefficiency, refers to feelings of incompetence and lack of achievement and productivity. People with this symptom of burnout feel their skills slipping and worry they won’t be able to succeed in certain situations or accomplish certain tasks.
When people say imposter syndrome, that’s this. And imposter syndrome is deeply misunderstood. Imposter syndrome is not, I’m not good enough. You can look up the research studies on imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is actually, I don’t deserve the success I have. But often when we feel not good enough, we’re like I’m an imposter. Imposter syndrome technically is when you’ve already achieved massive success and you feel like you’re not deserving of it for one reason or another.
This is you feel like your business, your industry, the trends, the skills are passing you by and the work having to be done to keep up feels insurmountable. Can you see the difference in that? And I think that’s actually markedly more of what’s happening here. It often develops in tandem with exhaustion and cynicism because people can’t perform at their peak when they’re out of fuel, have lost their connection to work, or feel uneducated.
Uh, so good. So all of that was very relatable to me. And what I decided to do was to get clear for myself on what was making me feel exhausted, cynical, and inefficient, because I absolutely felt all three of those things. And as I was reading this, it really became clear to me of like, oh my gosh, this is what’s actually going on. So when I looked at the behaviors, I can reflect back now.
At the time I called it survival, or I would say, this is just how I get through my day, or this is what I like to do, or this is how I manage my stress. And what I found myself doing that was deeply unsuccessful to me is leaning into the very, I don’t know how to explain it, like oversimplified, ineffective ways to overcome burnout. So if you Google search how to overcome burnout, almost always the first thing that comes up is prioritize self-care.
Almost always. But what I found was I would cope with self-care and it would make me feel better for a blip, but it didn’t actually solve the issue. And sometimes the self-care, I’d actually have guilt around. So for me, if you’ve ever seen me, I’ve been getting my nails done since I was, I don’t know, 15 years old or something like that. So I could say, when I go out and get my nails done, maybe get a pedicure, it’s a form of self-care.
I would feel so guilty taking the time out to do that and would notice that my to-do list got long, or it wasn’t actually a break in my day, it delayed my progress or delayed my accomplishments and it didn’t feel good. Or it was like self-care. Go out and take a walk. Well, I’d go take a walk, but I’d listen to a business podcast. Or I wouldn’t listen to a business podcast, but my mind would spiral with that intangible workload that I had to be doing.
And it was like I was almost going through the motions instead of taking care of myself. And that’s where I think the self-care market gets twisted is it’s like, go get a massage, go take a walk, go take a bath, meditate. And it’s like that’s supposed to solve your burnout. And I tried all those things for many years and then didn’t understand why I couldn’t find relief, so I kind of scrapped that.
One of the things that I chalked up to self-care was, my family will tell you this, I had a routine for many years where after dinner, mom would have to escape for an hour or 90 minutes, a really long time, and I would take a bath or go in our hot tub or go and read and nobody was allowed to talk to me. And I was like, this is how I recharge my battery, and I had rationalized that to myself as a normal behavior. This is just what I do. That’s my me… I called it my me time.
It was like a survival strategy. And it wasn’t until I looked back and I was like, wow, is that really… First of all, it wasn’t making me feel any better. It definitely got me through the days, but I was like, is that how I want my kids to remember me is every night I was totally unavailable for them and needed to escape my family every day because they were just too much for me, which was exactly how it was perceived to them? But to me, man, I was just trying to survive.
And I had this clarity on I was creating all these weird coping mechanism crutches instead of dealing with the actual problems. I became extremely irritable when anybody needed anything. So I still practice something called all-in. You may have heard me talk about this before, especially if you’re a longtime thriver, if you’ve ever worked with me. So if I’m working, I am working. I’m not available to my family. If I’m with my family, I’m not available to my colleagues.
I’m just not. I’m all in on whatever it is I’m doing. However, my approach has massively changed. So before, my daughter… If you ever run into my daughter, ask her about my all-in policy. My daughter would call me at work and I would be so mean and critical to her on the phone. I mean awful to her. I would say, “Is this really life or death?” I mean just mean, and that’s my child. Versus my approach is very different and I was able to create very different approach.
And I’ll tell you how in just a moment. It doesn’t mean that I now just have no boundaries and let people do whatever. In fact, it’s the opposite. But my approach to a lot of these things has changed and that’s what allowed me to finally for the first time in my life not experience burnout. So what I did is when I realized I had all these weird coping mechanisms and crutches that weren’t actually giving me relief, I sat down and got really clear on what I personally and professionally wanted in all areas of wealth.
So if you’re in Thrivers or you’ve coached with me, I talk about being wealthy, and wealthy is four areas: time, love, money, and health. So I didn’t even write it down. I just sat down and reflected on my thoughts. If I was the healthiest I could be, what would that look like? If I felt financially confident, what would that look and feel like? If I felt like all my relationships that mattered most to me were at a premium, what would that look and feel like?
If my time was being optimized in a way that I could feel good about it at the end of every day, what would that look like? I just got an idealistic clarity. And with all of those categories or criteria, I didn’t create a fantasy life for myself. I created a right now reality. So not like, well, in five years I want to have a house in Paris. It wasn’t like fantasy world. It was like, no, what do I want in 30 days?
It was very short term. And I ask myself, how much money do I really need to make to be stable? Not, it would be amazing to make this much money this year. But if my family had this much, we would be financially at peace. What does that number look like? And the reason why that was important to me is I’m a high achiever. Many of you listening to this podcast are too.
And what I realized is sometimes we create these really big goals because we want to do more or provide more or grow our team or give back more. But in doing all of that, you create these massive goals that end up creating a lot of stress. So I know that the revenue for the business has to increase by 15% a year for us as a business to stay ahead of the economy.
That is enough. For many years, our revenue at Thrivers Society doubled every single year. But imagine the pressure that put on the team. Versus if we’re outpacing the economy, that is good. That will work. And having those reality, like the reality check of what will work, not what would blow people’s minds, was really a good recentering for me. How much time do I need available every single day to feel like a great mom and wife?
One of the things you’ve probably heard me mention on the podcast many times is I don’t consider myself I called it a mommy mom. And again, that was a crutch coping mechanism for me because I knew I wasn’t a very present mother. So I would say that’s just not my bag. I do the most I can and I’m present when I can be, and that’s the best I can do. And I had written it off as that’s the best I do.
And I really thought about how do I want my kids to reflect back and see me? And that was a really good reclassifier for me. If I was giving my marriage my all, what would that look like? My husband and I have been together for… We were just doing math this weekend. We were talking to some people about it. We just had our wedding anniversary. We celebrated 16 years married, and we’ve been together I think for 23 years, something like that.
And our relationship is great. I’m so fortunate. I’m the person who married their best friend. And we are partners in this damn thing together, and we’re going to continue to work together to make it happen. But definitely there’s been times where I’m like, he’s good. He’s stable. He’s not going anywhere. We’re good. And what were the things that I would need to do to be like, man, I am giving it my all.
Because if I give it my all, he’s going to give it his all too. If I was treating my body right, what would that look like? We’re an industry particularly where there’s lots of jokes about who needs lunch when you have coffee. I just did that ThrivingStylist60 challenge, which I’m going to recap on Instagram as well, and one of the things that we did was drinking three giant Stanley Cups of water every single day.
And the amount of people who were like, the water is the hardest thing for me. It’s amazing how health goes on the back burner. And so I just asked myself, okay, with all of those goals, what would need to change in my life? I came down to habitual changes, health changes, familial changes, professional changes, and social changes. Some of these are going to be hard, but let me tell you, these things reduced my burnout to practically nothing in less than a month.
No time at all. So let’s go through them. First is the habitual changes. A lot of these have to do with my phone. I’m going to be totally honest with you. And when you see people say, “I deleted Instagram from my phone for a month. It was really freeing,” I never deleted Instagram from my phone. It’s a huge marketing component for my business. I can’t do that, but it doesn’t mean I can’t create habitual changes around it.
So here’s what I did. No social media after 6:00 PM. No phone in bed. So if I’m laying down in bed, I’m not somebody who leaves my phone downstairs or something like that. It’s still on my nightstand, but I’m not picking it up and scrolling things. It’s there. It’s there. If I want to use my phone, I need to stand up to use it, which my motivation to stand up once I’m cozy in my very cozy bed is limited.
So I’m just not doing it. No phone walking around the house. This is one that’s been hard for my family to adopt as well, but it’s been really good for me. My friends will tell you, I never answer my phone. I’m really bad at responding to texts. However, if I’m with you in person, you have 100% of my attention. I’m not distracted. I’m extremely present. So when I’m home with my family, they’ll be like, “Oh, I just sent you a funny video. Did you see it?”
And I’m like, “Oh, no, I don’t even know where my phone is right now.” I’m not attached to it. I’m not on it. If somebody calls me, it will ring and I will hear it, but I don’t need to be distracted by a funny GIF at the middle of my day. And some people might say, “Oh, those lighten my day.” Can I tell you? When I stopped being so attached to my phone, my burnout reduced significantly.
Because for me, it felt like when I had my phone all the time, it was like everybody always wants my attention. And by everybody, I mean Instagram wants my attention. TikTok wants my attention. My emails want my attention. My bill pay wants my attention. My banking wants my attention. My husband wants my attention. My kids want my attention. My coworkers want my attention.
Everybody wants my attention. When I don’t have my phone, I don’t feel like that. I’m just extremely present. So that was a habitual change that was massive for me. This was a hard one. And to my OGs, this is going to sound heavy. No true crime podcasts. That was a big one. At some point I might pick them back up. I’m a huge true crime junkie. And by the way, it doesn’t mean I don’t still keep up with the stories.
I watched the Scott Peterson documentaries on Netflix and Peacock. Who could miss those? If you’re a true crime junkie, you know what I’m talking about. But what I found was there’s a lot of studies that show people who are drawn to true crime are overcoming trauma. I did have a lot of childhood trauma. Maybe that’s why I like it. Maybe it’s not. I like the storytelling. Who knows?
But what I found was it was putting me in this cycle of it could be worse, it could be worse, it could be worse. It wasn’t doing good things for my mindset. So I took a little break and it’s been really good for me. Another little habitual change is my daughter and I talk on the phone every single night when she drives home. So every night, as soon as she’s walking out to her car, she calls me.
And nine times out of 10 I answer, unless I’m on a call or in the middle of something, and we talk on the phone for like 45 minutes. By the way, she lives with me. So it’s not like that’s our only time to connect, but I’ve really enjoyed the habit of it. So when you look at love languages, she is a quality time. Quality time is something I’ve always really struggled with because I am so driven. And so that is our little date with each other. And it’s unspoken. It’s just she calls me.
We talk for 45 minutes. We totally decompress. And she gets home and we talk some more. But that little habit has made us feel connected in a way that’s been really good for both of us. And I love it because it’s something that has added to my life, not taken away from it. And I can be cooking while I’m doing that or still feeling like I am productive. But it’s a wonderful way to connect versus disconnect, which is often when we’re feeling burnout, we choose disconnection, right?
I’m leaning into healthy connection versus going the other direction. Then we have health changes. I massively changed my sleep routine. So trigger warning on this one, but I used to be a fan of a CBD gummy at the end of the night because I haven’t slept well. So first of all, I’ve never slept alone. So when I was a kid, I shared a room with siblings. And then my husband and I have been together since I was 17. I got my first apartment the day after my 18th birthday.
I’ve literally never slept alone, and I’ve always had sleeping issues. And so a CBD gummy was how I would try and wind down and clear my mind at the end of the day. However, the problem is sometimes it makes your mind race. It wasn’t always good for me. So I completely changed my sleep routine. I found something called Beam. And by the way, I don’t have a discount code or anything like that. It’s B-E-A-M. Actually, an amazing Thriver named Jory turned me onto it.
This was one of the blessings that came out of ThrivingStylist60 for me. It is a natural sleep aid that has magnesium in it, alpha-ionine think it’s called, melatonin, and I have a little bit of that every night. Massively changed the way I sleep. I got a Hatch alarm, which if you don’t know what that is, it wakes you up naturally with light instead of a blinking blaring cell phone ring. I asked for that for Christmas last year, and that’s been really huge for me. I had the thermostat lower.
I just really paid attention to my sleep routine, and that was really huge for me. Something that my team has probably noticed is every single day I drink a protein drink for breakfast. It’s a coconut water protein drink. And having a really predictable, easy, high protein breakfast has really changed things for me. I used to love a Starbucks spinach egg white wrap in the morning. Can’t do it anymore. I stick with something that’s healthy, predictable, and grab and go.
I do drink 120 ounces of water every day. I’m a water hater. I don’t love it, but I have noticed such a difference in my skin, hair, health, sleep, everything. So I drink a ton of water, lots of healthy, easy snacks available and daily vitamins. I still have not worked out a great workout routine for myself, but just these little things have really helped with my burnout. I feel more in control, which has been huge for me. Then familial changes. So the first one was we did a big huge house clean out.
So I’m pretty good at throwing stuff away, but I did sit down with my family and I was like, “I’m burning out. I’m not okay, and I need some things done.” And one of them is we’re going to spend a whole weekend. We threw away a lot of stuff. If it hadn’t been used in three years, it got tossed. If we need it again, we’ll buy it again. Decluttering my house, I cannot even tell you how powerful that’s been in reducing my burnout. It sounds like such a silly little thing.
For a couple months now, I’m like, wow, that dramatically reduced my workload because there’s not piles everywhere. It doesn’t give me anxiety. I’m not worried about losing things. So I can’t even tell you how much the big house clean out really, really helped with my burnout. I set terms with my family on what I was willing to do and not willing to do, which was challenging because I also had to release the fact that just because I’m not willing to do it doesn’t mean somebody else is.
So some things just aren’t going to get done. And that was hard for me, but I had to be okay with being like, okay, and then it won’t. It won’t. That’s fine, but I don’t want to carry more of the burden than I feel like I can. And so having those very clear conversations with my family. And by the way, they weren’t like, “Yay! Good for you!” They were like, “Well, that sucks.” It does suck, but also it’s what I need. And over time, we’ve all adapted and it’s been a really, really good thing for us.
My husband takes care of dinner several nights a week. This sounds like a silly thing. But if you’re somebody who has dinner anxiety like I did, this will make a lot of sense. A very triggering question for me for the past 15 years has been, what’s for dinner? I hate that question. There’s very few questions I hate. It really irritates me when somebody says, “What’s for dinner?” It makes me want to tell them to F off. I really hate it. And I told my husband that.
I was like, please don’t ever ask me what’s for dinner again. I’ll let you know when I have a dinner plan, but I’m also going to let you know in the mornings when I need you to take it on. We had to work through our challenges with that, but that’s been huge. I’ll be like, hey, Thursday night, can you take on dinner? Yep, I can. He knows the expectation. He knows asking me what’s for dinner is triggering. I still cook most nights of the week, but I love it.
And what we found in having that communication is he was like, “I know you like cooking, so I never thought it was a problem.” He wasn’t trying to be irritating. We weren’t speaking the same language. And again, in having those conversations about when you asked me what’s for dinner, it makes me overwhelmed, that was huge for us. I’m fully present with my family every night from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM. I no longer escape after dinner. We play a lot of games as a family.
We sit around and talk a lot. It doesn’t mean we sit on our phones and watch TV together. We’re extremely present during that time. Sometimes it’s homework. Sometimes it’s baking. Sometimes it’s working on a craft. Sometimes we’re working on dinner together. Sometimes we’re just sitting around playing cards, but we’re very present during that time. It’s been huge. And that way when I’m busy outside of those hours, I don’t feel guilty anymore. It doesn’t bother me.
But lastly, I explained how I was feeling to my family and what my triggers were. That was really huge. My professional changes, in my company, we have way less meetings. We probably eliminated 75% of meetings. I realized that meetings were giving me anxiety. I just want to get stuff done and be done with it. We also have a much smaller team. So we reduced our staff by about 30%. We still have a pretty big team, but we reduced our staff by 30%.
And what’s amazing is we’re getting just as much done and nobody is any more burnt out. There’s just a little bit less chaos and a lot less miscommunication. When we made the professional changes, I looked at what around here is not feeling smooth and streamlined? When things weren’t feeling smooth and streamlined, I felt like there was tension. It was causing me burnout, and probably burnout for the other people too.
So we just looked at how to make things better for everybody involved. That was extremely huge in reducing the burnout I don’t think just for me, but for everybody. Created a strong strategic plan to achieve our annual goals. This was a huge part of our professional changes. So I have taught annual planning and goal setting for years. I think my team will tell you this is the first year we set professional goals in a way where every single month we know exactly what to do and there’s no question.
It’s mathematical. It’s not a question of, how are we going to achieve… By the way, we have a financial goal for every single month. Every single month has a financial goal. And they vary. They’re not the same month to month. They vary based on what actions we’re taking, the trends we know about our business. And every single month, my team knows exactly what to do to make that happen. We’re celebrating when we achieve things. We’re renegotiating when we don’t.
And this is the first year we’ve not felt like we were flying by the seat of our pants because our annual plan was not just good, it was strategic, it was detailed, it was outlined, and the numbers made sense. And that’s been really, really huge for us. Talking about reducing burnout, there’s probably no singular decision that I made to reduce professional burnout than annual planning in a way that made every single month’s tasks ultra strategic.
Then I got clear on what I was best at and what others could do just fine. So even if they couldn’t do it as perfectly as I could, if they could do it just fine, I delegated and let it go. Then there was the social changes, and these are probably the biggest things. I completely released shame and guilt. If somebody doesn’t like me, that’s fine. If somebody doesn’t like how I act, that’s totally okay.
If somebody doesn’t agree with what I said, not a problem. I’m not going to try and please everybody anymore. And I used to feel a lot of shame and guilt around, what if I offended somebody? What if I said no to something and I hurt their feelings? What if somebody felt like I wasn’t pouring into them enough? Okay! Okay! I can’t control everybody else’s feelings. And the anxiety that I had of trying to please everyone was burning me out.
And yeah, everyone around me was super happy, but I was not. And I had to say, it’s okay for other people to feel a type of way about me. No problem. That was hard, but it was huge. I distanced myself from people and situations that make me feel badly about myself. There was this very specific personal group in my personal life that I had this like, whoa, reality check of all of the drama in my personal life revolves around this one very specific thing.
If I just eliminate that one very specific thing, my life will be so much lighter and easier. And by the way, I’m going to some people off by doing it, so be it. And I did. And guess what? Instant burnout relief. And people are pissed off. And you know what? That’s fine. Because in five years, I’m not going to regret it. I’m going to feel better about it. And I personally am a better mother, a better wife, a better person to myself, all the things.
So sometimes you have to make those kind of decisions. I say no a lot. If something doesn’t light me up, I just don’t do it. And then I prioritize my deep friendships. Rather than having lots and lots of friends, I’m going to have a few friends who really treat me right. And I’m finding that instead of being in the exhaustion of trying to keep up with everyone, I’m going to keep up with the ones that fuel me that I know I fuel.
And in doing that, I reduce my burnout as well. So I hope those are helpful. So habitual, health, familial, professional, and social changes you can make. But when I looked at applying this to your business as a stylist or a salon owner, I thought of seven things that I thought could really help you specifically. So one, removing policies and structures that put you at conflict.
So I know without a doubt, over the last four years, stylists and salons have done a lot of different policies, rules, restrictions, cancellation policies, fees, all these processes. If those are causing you conflict, drama, challenges, hours every single month working through issues with all of those things, is it worth it to you? Maybe it’s saving you $500, but is it causing you massive burnout?
Just something to think about. Ensure you’re in an environment that’s values aligned. If you’re finding yourself in constant conflict, it’s probably not the place and space for you. Just something to consider. Plot out your dream schedule and give yourself a one-year goal to make it happen. That was really huge for me as well. When I did that reflection, it wasn’t like, where do I want to be in a few years? I was like, no, where do I want to be at the end of this month?
That was very freeing for me. Educate yourself in the areas that are causing you frustration. I’m very much in an education place and space right now, especially as the economy changes. I’m paying a lot for education in this moment, because I want to not feel the FOMO of what if I’m left behind? What if I’m not doing the right thing? I don’t want to have that cynicism. And I know that the way to counterbalance the cynicism is education, so I’m really pouring in there.
It’s also making me feel less overwhelmed because I’m like, no, I know I’m on the pulse. I’m not worried about it. Number five, have hard conversations with those who cause you grief or release those people completely. I can’t tell you how much burnout I released when I just started having harder conversations, because a lot of my burnout was based on feelings or vibes or fake stories or drama.
When you cut all of that out, it melts away so fast. Number six, balance your home life. So again, not that fake idea of self-care, but really thinking about what does my best life look like? And number seven, getting clear on your wealth and just focusing on that, not getting caught up in the rest. So I hope this has been one that’s very actionable for you.
I truly feel like I am still achieving everything that I want to achieve, but I’m doing it in a way for the first time ever, I’m as close to balanced in this lifetime as I possibly could be. I hope this has been massively helpful for you. I know it was a long one. Thanks for tuning in. As I always like to say, so much love. Happy business building. I’ll see you on the next one.
