Ep #52: How Clarity Helps You Safeguard Against Burnout
Episode Summary
Jenna shares why, when you're edging toward burnout, taking things away isn't always the answer. Finding clarity is.
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Show Notes
Burnout always stems from a deeper place that strict rules cannot solve. Your tactics of keeping burnout at bay by setting hard limits, holding back, and bringing more and more people on are not efficient or inspiring. They don't even guarantee less work!
In this episode, I reflect on a conversation I had with my client, Rachel Hale, in which we talked about burnout. I break down how I worked with Rachel to unveil the mechanics of finding clarity and, in the process, safeguard against burnout.
This week, I show you how to identify the root cause of your burnout. By building clarity within your business, you cultivate confidence and allow all that is unnecessary to fall away. When your boundaries are clear, you can stay in your flow state longer and become the calm, grounded entrepreneur you want to be.
What You’ll Learn From This Episode:
How to avoid burnout.
Why black and white thinking or endless rules won't help.
What burnout stems from.
How to get out of inner-critic habits.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
If you are overworking or have a tendency to overwork, you might think the answer is to remove something, to take something out of your business. But I've found that when that's happening, the truth is my clients are actually missing some key essential. And so, it's actually about putting something into your business. Because then, all of that unnecessary stuff starts to fall away naturally.
You're listening to The Uncommon Way Business and Life Coaching Podcast, the only podcast that helps you unlock your next level in business and life by prioritizing your clarity and your own Uncommon Way. You will learn to maximize your mindset, mission, messaging, and strategy in order to create a true legacy. Here's your host, top-ranked business coach, and reformed over-analyzer turned queen of clarity, Jenna Harrison.
Hey, friends, welcome back to The Uncommon Way. Though I am recording this episode before we leave for Spain, I just wanted to keep you updated that we will be having weekly episodes. I've prerecorded most of the content because while I'm there, I, of course, will be enjoying my time with family and friends in Spain.
But there's also very little that I have scheduled in terms of work. So, I'll be maintaining our mastermind calls, and I do have a few individual private client calls scheduled, but really my main focus is going to be Instagram. I really love the idea since I'm not usually on Instagram. Which, any of you that have already looked me up there probably know. But I really love the idea of doing so when I can make it very playful and fun, and I have nothing else on my plate.
Who knows what I'll actually be sharing, but I imagine it'll start off showing you all the clothes that I have ordered for this rebranding photoshoot that I'm going to be doing. I live in the middle of nowhere. Well, we definitely have Targets, and if I wanted to, I could get to a Macy's, and that’s about it. So, I've had to order everything in. Which means, I try it on, it doesn't work, I send it back. I think I have become every online retailer’s worst nightmare.
But it does make for a fun story. And who knows, maybe you all could help me pick out final decisions on outfits. I can be showing you the houses we're staying in, and what the lifestyle is like.
Listen, you all, if you have any suggestions for me or any pointers, please write. I will not be offended, at all. This is not my zone of genius. So, if you just want to drop in and be like, “Hey, you should put in a question box and ask people will blah blah blah. Or have them ask you questions. Or you should try doing this. Or I'd really like to see, show me when you guys do this thing you talk. Do a video of that or something.”
I don't know, I'm open to everything. Like I said, this is just going to be a time to play. I hope that you all come along with me on this fun trip for a little taste of ‘la buena vida’, which means ‘the good life’, right? The things that really count and make this life so magical and special.
I did an episode recently, with Rachael Hale. As we were recording it, my mind hadn't crystallized on what I now think is the biggest takeaway. By the way, that episode was called “Safeguarding Against Burnout with Rachael Hale”. You can find it at TheUncommonWay.com/47.
Now, it's a really great episode, I think a lot of us can relate to it. But I probably would have structured it a little differently if I were trying to help everyone see what I see about how this work does safeguard against burnout. So, I wanted to just come back in and give this short, quick episode where I kind of break it all down and dissect it.
Because I realized I was so clear about the mechanics of how this work really helps safeguard, but if you haven't been through it, you wouldn't know. You wouldn't see the connections, let alone see them glaring and obvious like I do.
So, I'm going to give you the behind the scenes of what created a such a different business for Rachel, and such a different experience of her business for her. It'll then, hopefully, make sense to you how those of us in this mastermind are able to do business so differently. How we're creating really unique, uncommon businesses and lives. It'll make sense why you hear them coming on the podcast to talk about how everything changed for them, you'll see those connections.
Overworking is such a problem in our society. And usually, when we try to solve for it, we think of taking things away from our business. So, I have clients that come to me who have a history of burnout, and they really, really want to make sure that they avoid it.
They're attracted to the language that I have on the website about really doing things their own way. They tell me, “Look, I just don't want to build a business if I could even get close to burnout again. So, I have made this decision, I will not let myself work past five. I'll make sure I don't push myself too much. I'll just hire someone to do that for me. I don't want to know anything about how to message to my audience, Jenna, because I just want to hire that out to a copywriter.”
I totally get this way of thinking. I'm an overachiever, myself. I have reached burnout several times in my life. I've tried all sorts of things to keep it from happening again, like the ones I just mentioned. But do you really want to live like that?
I was sharing this the other day with the people on my email list. I'm like, do you really want to be setting punch-in and punch-out times like you had in your corporate job? Because that's how you learn to fill the time, rather than working smarter.
Do you really want to be holding back, be hesitant and worried because of “what if?”. You may miss out on a lot of great opportunities when you're in that energy. Or do you want to be bringing on a bloated team and having to keep track of a bunch of contractors? You create more work and you lose profits. Especially when it comes to your messaging, you don't develop the muscle of really communicating effectively with your people.
So, no, of course not. You don't want those kind of hard and fast rules and black-and-white thinking. Above and beyond that, the sad truth is that those things don't even stop the burnout spiral. That comes from completely different things, like working within your zone of genius, and feeling confident that there are enough clients who value what you do so much that you can comfortably meet your income goals.
I get that all you ever really wanted is a business that runs so well that you don't have to feel like you're always stressed and striving or putting out brush fires. So, that your brain can go, okay, we've got this under control, we can relax. But that kind of business, it doesn't come from holding back, strict structure, or overspending.
Which is why safeguarding against burnout isn't necessarily what you take away from your business, although in some specific cases it is, but that's really a topic for another episode. But first and foremost, 90% of the time, it's about what you put into your business.
Like the time to sit back and look at the big picture. The work to deeply understand your people. The discomfort of identifying and then truly owning your secret sauce. The consistency of rewriting those brain and body patterns that got you to burn out in the first place.
That's what Rachel committed to putting into her business, temporarily. She said that it really wasn't as much work as she'd expected. She even went back and did a couple of the modules twice. But by doing that, afterwards, so much naturally just fell away, fell off of her plate.
Her business is cleaner. Her outreach and her sales are clearer. Her days are freer. Plus, the way she spends her free time now, I don't know about you, but I would definitely want to buy a plane ticket and just follow in her footsteps. Except, maybe, I'd be boating around Greece rather than the Bahamas, But, you know, twist my arm, I think I could handle it.
So, if you, my friend, are the kind of person who overworks or fears burnout so much that you keep yourself from working, I'm here to suggest that maybe what's going on is that you never got to the root issues of the problem. And that's why you keep repeating the patterns.
What's really going on is that you're lacking clarity and confidence in your secret sauce, your people, your offer, your messaging, or how to take leadership in your mind and body. Clarity is the answer to all of those.
You just realize, “All that extra hustle and bullshit and overdoing, I was compensating. I was compensating for insecurity and uncertainty. It made me feel better to be doing things, even if that made me depleted or annoyed. Even if those things weren't truly helping anyway, it felt better.”
I've been doing this interval training thing lately, and the instructor will always say, “Make sure you're not using these muscles, instead of this muscle. Make sure you're not just using momentum. That you're actually using that muscle to lift. Because if not, that muscle that we're targeting, isn't fully developed and you're compensating by using different muscles. But all that does is lead to overexertion and muscle strain.”
That alignment that you need when you're in that specific exercise or pose, and the mind-body connection, makes all the difference with how quickly you see the transformation. That's what happens. We have kind of a weak muscle in a certain area of our business and we don't want to exercise it. So, we overcompensate using a bunch of different muscles, a bunch of different skills that we have, but it doesn't really build that core competency.
Then, we're like, “Ow, why is my back always hurting? Why is my back always hurting?” Well, this is why. So, if you notice you feel like you need to be all the things, to all the people, that won't happen when you're clear on what you do and for whom. And you actually believe that that's enough.
If you're constantly proving that you're worth their investment, that won't happen when you understand just how valuable your services are, and you have actually talked to real people who say they'd give anything for help with that.
If you're constantly doing 10 times the sales calls and seeing so many rejections, that doesn't happen when you talk about what you're doing succinctly, you filter the people coming in to make sure they're fit, and you're confident in your delivery.
The same with promoting yourself, you'll be doing 10 times the work when you feel like you have to try all the things, rather than just getting very clear on what your people need and want to hear and focusing on that. I could drone on for an hour about how all the ways we overwork in our business comes down to some basic lack of clarity or confidence. But I don't want to do that to you.
I hope these examples lay out the argument in a way that hits home for you. By the way, the reason that I could give so many examples is because I know them well. Because I've been there. I'm always one step ahead of my clients, in terms of finding one more sneaky little way that my brain starts slipping something in.
Perfect example is this podcast. I realized I’d been spending quite a bit of time preparing. It finally occurred to me, I finally got outside of myself, to say, “This is interesting. This is a pattern that I recognize in myself. What's really going on here?” I started thinking, what would happen if I really believed that just me sitting down to talk to you all was enough?
That I have enough in my head to share that I could just sit down and talk or quickly bullet out some points, whatever, and that that would be highly valuable for you. It's interesting, because I've actually done that in the past. There were a couple of times where whatever had been going on in my life, I just had very limited time to create the episode. Those episodes have been really well received.
I remember when I was in Italy last year, I did one on the number one skill for entrepreneurship. It was on emotions; being able to tolerate and manage emotion. Yeah, that one was really well received. So, I have the evidence.
My brain just doesn't want to see the evidence because it really wants to stay in the energy of doing more. Spending more time helping my inner critic feel better that this will actually be a valuable episode for you. The way that I do that, is by spending hours and hours going back and adding more points or refining the language or just all sorts of things that really aren't what is actually helpful for you. I don't think.
I think that really, the clear message and a different way of thinking about things is helpful. Actually, even shorter episodes can be really helpful, right? It can be just enough for that to sink into your brain on that day, without too much extra stuff, to really make an impact.
So, I do have some prerecorded episodes that are still coming out. But you'll see, in a few episodes, I'm going to talk about how I'm changing that and doing some different things. You'll just have to let me know, right? You’ll just have to let me know what you think. It's all a learning pattern.
But I did notice myself going down kind of an old grooved pattern in my brain, and I caught it. Those are the kinds of things now, that when I see my clients starting to do it, I can say, “I'm just curious, if you believed that what you had to say was enough, just sitting down in front of the mic, how would things be different for you?”
So, if there's something else going on in your business, where you're thinking right now, “No, no, none of the examples you gave are me. I'm actually busy because of X,” feel free to write me, or DM me, about it. I do want to help you and I'll just tell you what I see. Maybe I'm completely wrong.
But I have been in this game for six years, seven years now, and I've worked with everyone, from people just starting out to seven-figure business owners. Usually, it’s something that's like a light bulb; when I just ask them one question. One question like, “What do you think you'd be doing differently if you really believed blah blah blah. If you really knew, blah blah blah?” Blah blah blah is the thing I've identified about the specific clarity gap that's getting in their way.
If you are asking what is a “clarity gap”, I have an episode for that. You can go to TheUncommonWay.com/1, because it was my very first episode. That's why it's #1.
Like I said in the intro to Rachel's episode, which was #47, again, if you want to go back and listen to that. By doing the work to understand her zone of genius and the value of what she's offering, she has set herself up for success both financially and when it comes to safeguarding against burnout.
Because it's hard to burn out when you're staying in your flow state, you aren't letting other people's desires infiltrate your boundary, and you're bringing in clients who value what you do so much that you can comfortably meet your income goals. But this is available to all of us.
We just need to stop spinning long enough to put in some high-level work, that will really make a difference. We need to think like CEOs rather than like little hamsters that are on the wheel. We need to shift into our calm, grounded, confident, kick-ass self so that our lives can start looking like the lives that belong to a calm, grounded, and confident woman.
Now listen, if you want to safeguard your business against burnout, like Rachel has, there is no better time than right now. I would love to help break that cycle for you. I would love to break it for every woman on the planet.
And if you're just starting out, let’s set your business up so you never even go there in the first place. You can join me and the other amazing women inside the Clarity Accelerator, who are rewriting how business and life is done by focusing on what matters; your clarity.
Because what you desire, that life, that business, those clients, they desire you too. They're just waiting for you to get clear, and your uncommon way is waiting for you.
All right, my friends. Remember, you know who you are, and each day you are stepping further into what you are here to create. See you next week.
Hey, if you want true clarity about your secret sauce, your people, your best way of doing business, and how you talk about your offer, then I invite you to join us in the Clarity Accelerator. I'll teach you to connect all the dots, the dots that have always been there for you, so that you can show up like you were born for exactly this.
Come join us and supercharge every other tool or tactic you'll ever learn, from Facebook ads to manifestation. Just go to TheUncommonWay.com/schedule and set up a time to talk. I can't wait to be your coach.
Thanks for joining us here at The Uncommon Way. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business and life, including the Clarity First Strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit TheUncommonWay.com. See you next time.
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