224. Are You Burned Out? Or Just Bored?

In this solo episode, Lucy discussed the concept of burnout, its symptoms, and the importance of distinguishing it from boredom. She shared her personal experiences with burnout and emphasized the need for individuals to take personal responsibility for their lives, reflecting on their habits, mindset, and lifestyle for areas of improvement.

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My mission for this podcast and life in general is to help you grow your business while having fun along the way and without burnout. So I felt it was important to put this episode out into the world so when you think you are burned out, you can evaluate and reflect if you are really burned out or simply getting bored in what you are doing.

Some of the things I’m about to say today might be hard to swallow for you if you are in the midst of feeling burnout, but I hope my tough love will give you a fresh perspective or help you make that final decision for next step actions. 

So let’s start with the definition of burnout.

Burnout is a state of mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion caused by prolonged stress. It can become hard to do things you used to find meaningful, and then you might start to feel hopeless or useless. Burnout usually also manifest as lack of motivation and decline in performance. Many people describe burnout as a sense of being all dried up and just not caring anymore.

So my question is why are you feeling this way?

Are you truly burned out or are you just bored?

And how would you know the difference?

I don’t know about you, but you know what when I was growing up, nobody taught me the term burnout, school definitely didn’t teach us about it. I didn’t know what it was, what it meant, how it felt, it was like a new syndrome, a newer disease in the world like Covid that we never heard of before. But then I was in my twenties and I felt it, felt it hard, had to learn about it, and definitely overcame it and pivoted in my life. I’ve interviewed many women on this show who also went on a similar path going from burnout to transforming their lives. Now I am a big advocate in life transformation work, especially taking women away from burnout, but I realized that there is another possibility called boredom that can feel very similar to burnout. And if boredom is your problem, you need to go towards what motivates you, not just away from what you think is giving you burnout. For example if you think you are burned out from your current job or business, are you really burned out? Or simply not having enough fun and not doing enough inner work? 

And so what I have seen before is, we’re tired and we blame it on that supposedly new syndrome and subsequently, it’s everybody else’s fault that we got this way.

Your boss your family your coworkers your employees, whoever is giving you xyz problems.

And we don’t take that ownership to maybe say, hey, you know what, maybe I need to change something in my life, change the way I do things, change my mindset to be more abundant, and change some of my habits to align with who I want to be, I don’t want to be the same person I was last year. Because it’s so much easier to say I got burned out and it’s someone else’s fault.

So before you run off to another job or start a new business or give up on your current life. Ask yourself these questions: 

• Are there any bad habits you need to break? 
• Are there any improvements you can make to your mindset?
• Is there any way for you to make your current life more fun? 

If your answers leads to that you think there is absolutely nothing to change on your side, you are on top of your mindset, you are your best self, you are attending to your non-negotiables already, and that you are already incorporating as much joyful activities in life as possible and that you will have zero regret leaving your old life behind, then by all means go for it, make that scary leap and start your transformation journey to a new chapter in life and take action to redesigning your life.

If you are looking to make a decision on your next steps, let this episode be your sign and be your deadline to make that decision. Always remember that success loves speedy action, imperfect action and even messy action. So the goal here is to not overthink about burn out or boredom but really to take action towards a life that you desire to live. Cheers to you having more fun designing your life and feel free to reach out to me if you need help making a decision. Until next week, believe that more blessings are coming your way.