The Sneaky Side of Burnout You Won’t Hear About on Instagram

Most burnout advice tells female founders to “just rest more.” But what if that’s not the real problem?

In this unfiltered chat, we go way beyond surface-level self-care. Like why emotional burnout is the most overlooked (and most common) type of burnout among high-achieving women and how it sneaks up on people pleasers who love their work.

CJ chats with Ellyn, a Burnout Coach, who offers burnout-proof systems for solopreneurs spinning all the plates themselves.

Expect revelations that’ll leave you shook and takeaways you wish you’d learned sooner like:

• Why passion can make burnout worse, not better.
• The 4 distinct types of burnout (and how to spot them)
• How your to-do list and people-pleasing habits are secretly sabotaging your energy
• Why self-compassion is a non-negotiable for sustainable success

This one’s for the women who’ve been told they’re “too emotional” or “too much” — and are finally ready to reclaim rest, boundaries, and energy without guilt.

Where to find Ellyn - 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachellyn

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachellyn/ 

Website: https://www.coachellyn.com/ 

Where to find lil ol' me - 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/onherplate_/

Threads: https://www.threads.com/@onherplate_

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-robinson-1009005b/

Website: onherplate.com.

Transcript

Welcome to the Energized Entrepreneur podcast. I'm your host founder of On Her Plate Educating and
Empowering female entrepreneurs to repave the foundation of their business with a nourishing diet so
they can match their energy with their growth rate. I am genuinely honored to be inside of your ears right
now. If you're listening to this, you must be a female entrepreneur looking for your permission slip to
hustle in a way that puts your health first. Well, great news, you found it. Let's power up this episode.
Welcome, Ellen, to the Energized Entrepreneur podcast. How are you? I'm doing good this morning.
How are you? Yes, I am very well, thank you. Um, yeah. My evening, your morning. Um, we've
discussed time zones before. Full disclosure to the people listening. We just started recording, and
something went terribly wrong. Um, but we're here now, and we're going to redo the intro. We're gonna
attempt to redo it in the same organic fashion that we just did it a second ago. Yeah. It's, um, it's going to
be a test of our acting skills, but I'm sure. I'm sure we'll be fine. So you know what? You know what I'm
going to say next? We are going to do a few hotseat questions to kick things off, just to loosen everybody
up and, uh, let the listeners get to know you on a more personal level. So I'll kick straight off. What was
the latest podcast or TV series that you binged? The Vampire Diaries. I've been rewatching it. Um. Kind
of. It was on Sunday. It was funny. I alternated between watching The Vampire Diaries and then
realizing the new episode, House of the Dragon, came out. So I watched that, and then I went back to
The Vampire Diaries. I'm in season four right now. Oh, it's good. Going to be fair, I, uh, I'm rewatching
the Twilight films at the moment, so fun fact I actually didn't say this last time. Um, I live about a three
hour drive from forks. No way. Yeah, that's. Have you been to visit? I actually have not. Oh. That's
disappointing. It's not. It's not that much of a draw for me because I'm like. It looks exactly like a town
where I spent my entire childhood, so I'm kind of like, well, whereas to me from the UK, like, oh my
God, why have you not been to the Town of forks yet? Yeah, and that's mad. Oh well that's great. We're
both on the vampire hype. Love that. Um, if you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what
would it be? Okay, I feel like with this question, I have to default back to my favorite meal when I was a
child. Um, because I feel like it still really hasn't changed. And this might sound make me sound super
American, but my favorite meal is I love Caesar salad. Caesar salad never gets old for me. Apparently
my headphones are about to die. So that is also another wonderful issue that we're having today. Um,
okay. Cool. So, uh, question number three. Beach or mountain? Oh. Oh my God, I hate this question. I
don't feel like I can choose sea, but that's that's literally like, why I live where I live is because I don't
have to choose. Like, I can spend a day by the water, like, literally the the water's 100ft down the hill
from where I live, like, it's so close. But then I love to, like, I'm literally going to the mountains
tomorrow for a couple days. So, like, I'm living, I live in a place where I can have both. I think I would
have to choose beach because water is the ultimate like relaxation for me. Like whenever I want to relax,
I go down by the water like water is peaceful. For me, it's relaxing. For me, mountains are more like an
adventure and I love that. But it's a very, very different. Like I seek out the mountains for a very different
reason than I seek out water. So probably probably beach. Okay. I do respect, though, that you live in a
place that gives you both. I think that's that's still a great answer. Okay. Favorite work day beverage? Oh,
coffee. I'm gonna be really creative with that one 100%. I literally have a cup of coffee right next to me
right now, and I have my I put flavoring in my water, so I always have that right next to me. But yeah.
Coffee. Nice. Can't go wrong. Okay. Lastly, your go to hype song for when you want to pull yourself out
of a funk. Pulling myself out of a funk. Different from me than my go to hype song. Because I always
listen to when I before I go speak, or before I do presentations or like workshops. I always listen to Lose
Yourself by Eminem. Um, I always listen to that song, but like fully pulling myself out of a funk, the,
um, version of don't Don't You Worry About a Thing by Tori Kelly from Sing Nice. I love that song. I
absolutely love that song. That's like my happy song. Amazing, amazing. Great. Great answers, I love
that. Okay. Also very different answers as well. So. Yes. Yes. Uh, okay. Perfect. Thank you for that. So
listeners have got to know you a little bit better on a more personal level. So that's great. Now we can
jump into the official intro. So over to you. What do you do and why do you do it? Please give us an intro
in a nutshell. Oh gosh. The in a nutshell part of this is always hard. But what I do is I'm a burnout and
stress management coach for women in business, solopreneurs, um, consultants, coaches, is, um. And
why I do what I do. Um, the long and short of it is that when I was in graduate school, I burned out, and I
learned so much about burnout and stress and what it truly is and what it truly looks like during that time.
And in so many ways, I kind of felt like burnout and all of the things that I was doing wrong in my life
that ultimately led me to burnout were so much more than like to do lists and tiredness and, you know,
lack of self-care. Like there were emotional components to it. There were fulfillment components to it.
And that's kind of why I do the work that I do is I want us to almost like I want us to take back our lives
from burnout. I want us to take back our lives from, you know, the kind of skewed versions of success
we have in our brain. Like, if my mission is really to change the way we work and to make this the way
we make decisions about our careers and our lives, and because I feel like so many of us make decisions
about our careers and our lives from a place of external validation and seeking these external measures of
success that really don't jive with our values at all. Um, and so that's really the why behind the work that
I do, because I found that and as soon as I shifted that, like, everything transformed in my life. Yeah, I
love that. And it makes a lot of sense because I burnout is just a buzzword. It's been going around for
quite a few years now, and I feel like it's been warped into something that is actually not what it is. Um,
and actually, that brings me to my first kind of my first question to you, which is, as business owners,
why do we burn out so often and to such drastic measures, do you think? Because I feel like we know on
the surface or we think we know we have big workloads, we take on too many clients. We put too much
pressure on ourselves to create the perfect content. We lose our way in what we're doing in our business.
I could go on and on, but they're not necessarily the causes. They're things that we're feeling and
experiencing and doing. But what are the lesser known root causes of why female business owners are so
burnout? Yeah, yeah. No, I, I feel like the biggest reasons why we're all burned out, I personally say all
the time that burnout has vastly less to do with workload than we think, especially the, like, pervasive
burnout that an entrepreneur might my experience, the reason why, in my opinion, a lot of entrepreneurs
burn out is because of the fact that they only have. We've been sold this vision as entrepreneurs that if
you find your passion, everything else is going to fix itself. And even me was a proponent for a while,
less so now, but he used to be a big proponent of the notion that you only burn out if you don't love it.
Like I have a I remember I did a like a what's it called, like a stitch to something he did on TikTok where
that's what he said, like, oh no, I don't get burned out because you only burn out if you don't love it. He's
changed his language a lot, but I think a lot of entrepreneurs were sold that for a while, that if you love
what you do and if you're passionate about what you do, it doesn't matter how much you work, you'll
never burn out. And the fact of the matter is, the research shows the opposite. And if we are so passionate
about the work that we do, the fact of the matter is that we're more likely to burn out. And a lot of
entrepreneurs get into what they're doing because they're really, really passionate about the work that
they do. I personally have become a proponent that it's almost the. This sounds dramatic, but it's almost
the worst thing that you can do to have your sole source of fulfillment in your life or your business,
because then there's nothing to pull you away. There's nothing. You have no life outside of your business.
And that's a really dangerous path to trod, because it puts so much pressure on your business to be your
income, your stability, and the very thing you love the most. And if that's all those things are what your
business are to you, what happens then when you have a bad season in your business? What happens then
when things aren't going well in your business? If your business is your sole source of fulfillment, you
have nothing to pick you up then in those seasons. And that's, I think, what a lot of entrepreneurs wrong.
It's really the emotional side of burnout that a lot of entrepreneurs aren't thinking about, aren't addressing,
because we're so used to being sold. The idea that burnout is about exhaustion and overload, and it's
really so much more than that. Yeah, I love what you said, that the more passionate you are, the more
likely you are to get burnt out because. I still I do say to to my friends who aren't business owners, I say,
you know, I work. I worked until so and so last night. It was pretty busy at the moment. Um, and they
kind of go, oh my gosh, that's. You're working so late. Why? And I'm like, well, to be honest, it doesn't
feel like work. A lot of the time, um, I'm genuinely so passionate about it that I can't help myself. I
actually want to work on it. But on the other hand, that's just the parts that I like working on. There are so
many factors and multitudes, and that covers the whole landscape of what it is to be a business owner and
an entrepreneur and running your own business that a lot of people don't understand if they're not
business owners. Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of it that's to do with, I think, more of a mindset rather than
the tasks that you tick off day to day. Like you said, it's less about the workload. Uh, like for me, when
when I used to burn out in the corporate world, when I was in the corporate world, it was more to do with
the pressure and the need of having to be perfect all the time. The imposter syndrome. There was a lot at
play here and all of that still. I'm not saying it's disappeared now that I run this, but obviously being a
nutritionist, I am able to and more kind of health oriented. I do stay on top of it more, but those feelings
don't just go away. They're constantly there in the background, floating, sometimes a bit louder than
others, you know? And so that's more of a mindset that I feel burns me out rather than the actual I've
taken on too many clients or I've got so much work to do. Like, yes, that can feel overwhelming, but I
feel it's easier to manage, like it's just a case of structuring better and all of that. But in terms of the actual
mindset, I feel like that's what impacts the most 100%. And I think you're still hitting on mindsets that
impact a lot of entrepreneurs perfectionism, imposter syndrome. I mean, shoot, in a lot of ways. I don't do
anything that's related to my expertise and my education. I was a freaking biologist before I did the work
that I do now. So like there's some overlap for like, for example, like when I read journal articles, like I
have an understanding of what's going on perhaps better than a layperson might, but like. There's still a
lot of that there. I think the biggest thing that is a mindset that impacts entrepreneurs is the identity piece.
When you are an entrepreneur and you are building your business, your business is in so many respects
an extension of you. And when that business isn't succeeding, when you're getting a lot of nos, when
you're getting a lot of rejection, it feels in a lot of respects like you were being rejected. Yeah, that your
business is being rejected. And I think that is navigating that and learning how to find a separation. That's
again, why I think it's important to have multiple sources of fulfillment is you can find a separation
between where your business ends and you begin. And when I was very early in my entrepreneurial
journey, that is something that for like the identity question in and of itself was really hard to navigate
because, again, my past doesn't have a lot to do with what I do now. And so learning to step into and be
confident in the what I was pursuing was a whole identity crisis in and of itself. But then when I really
started to own what I was doing, the seasons where I'm struggling. There's really not a lot to blame like.
Or my business is struggling. Like, there's really not a lot of to blame outside of myself. Like I'm not
doing the work or I'm not messaging my offering in a way that people are going to resonate with. It's
really, really hard to navigate as an entrepreneur, especially when, again, so many of us go into this work
because we are passionate about the work we do. We love the topic, we love the thing that we're doing.
And it's hard to find that separation of where does my business end? And I begin? Yeah. So true. I really
I, I still struggle with validation as well. It's validation. Yeah. I think we all do 100%. Well I'm like I'm
an Enneagram three. And my primary love language is words of affirmation. So like I feel like I was
already highly externally validated. And then that's also like one of my primary love languages. So I am
constantly fighting a battle of stop doing this for external validation, like but I that's how I thrive, is by
people telling me I'm doing a good job. I'm going to move on to burnout being. Technically one thing as
as in, we categorize it as one condition. But you say that there are four types of burnout then that differ
from each other. So just so that we can understand them better. What are the four types of burnout that
you describe, and what are some of the symptoms that we can look out for? Yeah, yeah. So first and
foremost, before I ever talk about this, I will always put the like disclaimer, if you will, out there that
every person who does this work is going to think about this slightly differently. This is based on my
own experience in the ways in which I've seen burnout show up. What I will say is, though, that three of
these types of burnout fit very neatly into the World Health Organization's definition of what burnout is.
So they always say that burnout has three primary characteristics energy depletion, negativity, and
cynicism about your job and reduce professional efficacy. Those three things actually fit very neatly into
three of my four types of burnout. So the types of burnout as I see them are physical burnout. So that's
kind of the exhaustion energy depletion side. I think that's for the most part, that's what most of us think
of when we think of burnout is I'm exhausted. I'm depleted. I have nothing left to give. The next one is
overwhelm, burnout. And that's very much the reduced professional efficacy. You feel scattered analysis
paralysis. You feel super overwhelmed. Um, and then the third one is emotional burnout. Emotional
burnout is kind of what we just talked about. It's what I consider to be the fulfillment side of burnout. But
it's what the World Health Organization categorizes as emotional exhaustion. And then the fourth type of
burnout is, in my opinion, kind of a subset of emotional burnout. But the reason why I separated is
because the causality is different. And I'm going to kind of explain what I mean by that as I kind of go
through symptoms. So let's actually jump back to physical burnout for a second. What physical burnout
looks like. If we already said exhaustion, energy depletion. But it's like such a depth of exhaustion that it
feels like no amount of sleep or rest is going to rectify how tired you are. You could sleep for 12 hours
every night over the course of the weekend, and still wake up Monday morning and feel like that. That is
the extent to which you are exhausted when you are in physical burnout. But it doesn't just look like that.
It can also look like I'm getting sick more frequently, or having a lot of difficulty recovering from
sickness because stress does impact our immune system. When we are stressed out, we do not respond to,
you know, sickness as effectively as we normally would because our immune system is more rundown.
So those are like some of the two primary things I tell people to look for. And it can also be just general
shifts in your basic self-care patterns. Like maybe you used to be a really good sleeper and now you're
suddenly not. Or maybe you used to be a morning person and suddenly you're not waking up in the
morning like you used to. All of those could be signs of physical burnout, so that's kind of what to look
for there. The overwhelm burnout side of things is. Analysis paralysis is a big aspect of this. So like that
might look like maybe you're struggling to make decisions, or maybe you're struggling to get started on
projects, or maybe you're struggling to finish projects. Like analysis paralysis can show up in a lot of
different ways for a lot of different people. Um, so it can look like that, but what it can also look like. I
actually love this expression, um, having too many tabs open in your brain. I feel like we all know what
look what it looks like to have too many tabs open on your computer. Apparently, our podcasting
platform hated how many tabs I had open on my computer when I started. I've never had that happen
before, but like, I love that expression too, because that's kind of what overwhelmed burnout can feel like
when we have too many tabs open on our computer, our computer runs more slowly, and we have
difficulty finding the information we're looking for. Like, we might have one of our tabs playing sound,
and we have no idea where the sound is coming from. That's kind of what overwhelm burnout can feel
like in our brain. We're having difficulty accessing the information, and we have a sound coming and we
don't know where that sound is coming from. So that's really what overwhelm burnout can feel like. But
what it can also feel like is like absolute language. It's actually one of the signs that I look for in my in
my clients. And when I say absolute language, I'm talking about like a lot of always, never every
language when we're talking about like the state of our lives or the state of our business is like, I'm never
going to dig myself out of this hole. Why am I always this busy? Why does every day feel like this? That
kind of absolutely. That sort of defeatist language can be a really, really big sign of overwhelmed
burnout. So those are kind of some things to look out for for those too. Emotional burnout. It's the
fulfillment side, like I said before with emotional burnout. One of the biggest signs that I look for with
emotional burnout is emotional reactivity. So, for example, quick to tears. Quick to anger. Usually when
clients come to me, I would say probably about a third of the time when the client when clients come to
me, they're in deep emotional burnout. And I know because as they're explaining to me what's going on
in their life, they can't even get through their explanation before they break down in tears. Yeah, that is
not an uncommon experience for them. They're finding that they're just emotional all the time, or they're
snapping at loved ones all the time, or peers and coworkers all the time. That's a big sign of emotional
burnout. And it makes a lot of sense, because when we're in emotional burnout, usually we've ignored
our emotions for so long, we're basically like shoving them down. Think about like, your your garbage
can after Christmas where it's like overflowing with like the plastic the toys are wrapped in and then
paper and and bows and whatnot. And we just keep trying to shove it down. But it gets to the point where
you can't shove it down anymore. There's too much stuff in the bin and it starts to overflow. That's what
our emotions can feel like. And that's part of the reason why we're emotionally reactive is because they're
our emotions are just spilling out of us because they haven't an outlet previously. So that's one of the big
things to look for with emotional burnout. But it can also look like is apathy, disconnection,
disengagement a lack of motivation, especially among high achievers? I built my entire business around
working with high achievers, because high achievers are like ninjas at convincing themselves to ignore
their emotions, to just, yep, to just power through it. Absolutely. And we're so used to being very
motivated, very engaged, very like, if you need me to get something done, I am your girl. I can get stuff
done. But when we are in emotional burnout, that's gone. Yeah, let's do that. It's really. Oh my God. I
have to say, like that was me in the. I used to work in startups, and startups are horrendous places to work
it just in terms of, you know, your career is on the edge of a knife the entire time. So the pressure is just
outrageous. But I was I was like the go to person. If you wanted something done, even if it wasn't
necessarily within my remit, I'd be like, yeah, I'll do it. I was like a really valued team player, like really
valuable part of the team because of how much I got done, how quickly. And that was like a medal. I was
so smug and proud to have that. So I was a massive high achiever. And you're so right, though, because
literally and when you were saying, you know, we kind of pack our emotions down. It's not even when
somebody said to me once, you know, or do you bottle your emotions up? And I said, no, because I do
cry and I do get stressed, and I know that. So I'm aware I don't bottle my emotions down, but it's not
actually bottling your emotions up. It's not like you can. You never cry or you know, you never get
angry. It's not that. It's that you're ignoring the fact that you just got snappy with your partner for no real
reason and or, you know, somebody sent a passive aggressive email. And, you know, you maybe got a bit
more wound up than you should have done. And you blame them and you're like, this is unacceptable. I
can't deal with this when actually you can. And they're not actually asking that much, but really, you're
just quite overwhelmed internally. Yeah. And so it does a lot. So I feel like those signs that you're talking
about are actually quite subtle in a way at first, because it doesn't mean you're not emotional. It just
means that, you know, it will come out in a much bigger way if you keep ignoring those little ones. It's
like it leaks out at more inconvenient times when we're burned out. And how I would think about it,
particularly for women like, shoot, I just had my PMS week last week. I was in a pissed off mood all
week. When you're in emotional burnout, it's like that all the time. It's not just like the one week out of
the month where your PMS ING and you're a little bit more emotional than you would normally be. It's
it's more your kind of like permanent state of being where you're meeting with your boss and suddenly
you're tearing up for reasons that you don't understand. And typically, when you're in a healthy state of
mind, you would be able to take that and say, okay, I'm realizing I'm upset, but I have enough control of
my emotions that I'm not going to cry now. I'm going to cry in a more appropriate time to cry. Yeah.
Usually when we're in a healthy emotional state, we're not not crying, but we have more control of our
emotions that we're able to vent them in appropriate situations, like cry to our partner instead of cry to
our boss, or, you know, take out our frustrations in the gym instead of snap at people. Like we vent our
emotions at appropriate times. But when we're in emotional burnout, we don't have enough control over
our emotions. And they leak out. They leak out at really inconvenient times and times where we don't
intend to express the emotion that's being expressed and emotional burnout. It might be weird to say it's
my favorite one personally, because I feel like it's so sneaky and it's so pervasive, frankly, for a lot of
entrepreneurs and high achievers. It's also, on a personal level, the one that I was experiencing when I
was in graduate school. I had three of the four types of burnout when I was in graduate school. And what
I find I always get this question can you have more than one type of burnout at once? Yes you can. Um,
but what I usually find is there's usually one type of burnout that's driving the others. So like when I was
in grad school, I was emotionally burned out. Primarily. I was not in the right place. I was doing work
that wasn't fulfilling. I was chasing a definition of success that wasn't mine. I was really struggling with
my fulfillment when I was in graduate school. And so what I started doing as a result of that is, first and
foremost, I started just getting involved in a lot of different things. I started my like first ever side hustle
when I was in graduate school. I was doing a dual degree. I was getting a master's and a PhD.
Simultaneously, I joined a sketch comedy group. I was a, um, I was a science communication writer for I
was trying I was like, grasping at straws, trying to find something that felt fulfilling. And so as a result, I
got involved in like 80 bajillion things. I got overwhelmed because I was involved in 80 bajillion things,
but I didn't stop doing them. I just kept doing them. And as a result of that, I kind of ran myself into the
ground from a energetic perspective. And I got super, super exhausted. So like, that's how it played out
for me. But the driver of it was emotional burnout, and I find that that's usually the case for most people
is there's one type of burnout that is driving the rest of them. This leads me to ask, so I'm obsessed with
your content. That's like poking fun of the generic advice out there that's like, just sleep better, just work
less. Just set better boundaries to heal your burnout. Even after everything we've talked about, we know
that it's not as simple as that. No. Anytime something starts with, just do this. Like, oh, yeah, just do that.
Just so that's like magic word, right? Like, just do this. Um, if someone listening to this podcast is
resonating with many of the symptoms and the types of burnout that you've listed and is only coming up
with this sort of advice on Google, various other sources, what's a good starting point for them? What
what can they start doing immediately that's actually going to help them free themselves from the
burnout that they're suffering from? Okay. Two things in particular, which might be very counterintuitive
to what you would think they would be. I mean, and here's what I will say before I get into those two
things. Sleeping helps. Working less does help. Quitting your job might help. I am usually very averse to
the quit your job thing. There's a very few instances where I actually think quitting your job is the right
situation, and those instances usually boil down to you work in an industry that literally the whole
industry operates off of the back of people that it over extends startups, for example, startups operate off
of the premise that they are going to overextended, overwork their employees. Yes, for certain industries
that are like that. So I'm not saying those things don't help. Sleep is wonderful from a self-care
perspective, but the core things that I feel like a lot of high achievers need first and foremost, selfcompassion. I feel like high achievers. The reason why high achievers are so prone to burning out is they
have these all or nothing must be perfect at all times. Mindsets around everything in their life. Like if my
self-care doesn't include these 12 steps every single morning, then I suck at life and I'm not taking care of
myself. That tends to be the high achiever mentality. Whereas if we can bring self-compassion into that
equation and be like, look. You were really, really busy day today. Just get outside and go for a walk for
20 or 30 minutes and call it good. And if that's the only physical self-care you do today, that's fine. Or if
all you have the capacity to do is to feed yourself on some sort of a semi consistent schedule today, that's
fine. That's what self-compassion is. I think a lot of people build their I mean, using self-care as an
example because I feel like it's super relatable. But a lot of us build our self-care routines with from the
perspective of like a lower key, less busy day. Like we build our self-care routines around, oh yeah, I
don't have to start work until ten so I can do this elaborate self-care routine in the morning, and then I'm
not going to have a lot of client appointments, so I'm going to take a hour break in the afternoon to go for
a walk, and then I'm going to be able to end my day at six and do all of these self-care things in the
evening. We build our self-care routines around this like ideal, not busy day. And that's beautiful and
aspirational, but it's not practical for your day to day life, because none of us have every single day
looking like that. So instead, what we need to start doing is building our self-care around what our busiest
days are, and have compassion for the fact that we are not going to be able to have this perfect,
aspirational, ideal self-care routine every day I. I personally think that a lot of people approach their to do
lists incorrectly, like they approach their to do list, as these are all things that I must get done today. And
perhaps because I've been thinking from the lens of self-compassion for so long, that is not how I
approach my to do list anymore. My to do list is more like these are potential ways I could spend my day,
and if I don't get through all of them, oh well. Like, it's more like a convenient collection spot for things
that I could be spending my time doing. Not a these are my must do's, and that comes from a place of selfcompassion and understanding that my to do list is always going to be too long. Like there's no winning,
always more to do. Especially if you're a solopreneur too, because you have no help like it all falls on
your shoulders. So if we can even just shift our perspective around our to do list from to that more
compassionate outlook, the better. So self-compassion is crucial, and I find a lot of high achievers don't
want to be compassionate with themselves because they feel like they'll become complacent. They'll lose
their edge. I literally had a client start with me in January. Who? That was what she said to me in one of
our very first sessions is we talked about self-compassion, and she goes, I don't believe in selfcompassion. I feel I feel like self-compassion breeds complacency. And she's the first person who ever
outright said it to me. But I know she's not the only person that thinks that. A lot of people feel like if
they give themselves any sort of grace, any sort of compassion, they're going to lose their edge. They're
going to lose their competitive advantage. They're going to become complacent. But the fact of the
matter is, if you don't, you're going to burn yourself out, and then you sure as shit are going to lose your
edge, and you sure as shit are going to become unmotivated. Not necessarily complacent per se, but
you're going to become unmotivated because you're burned out. So it's like the very thing sometimes that
we're trying to prevent by not being compassionate toward ourselves is what ultimately happens through
the lens of burnout. Yeah, I say exactly the same with food, because a lot of people, you know, similar
clients that we work with, you know, a lot of them will say, well, whether they say it outright to me, but I
know that they're like, I'm too busy to to make that, though, or I'm too busy to take a lunch break. I'm too
busy to meal prep. I'm too busy to meal plan. I'm too busy to eat blah blah blah blah. Like I'm too busy. I
don't have time. Are the two biggest blockers that I hear when it comes to doing anything related to
nourishing eating habits and creating a nourishing for yourself. And I always throw back at them, okay.
Respect that. On the other hand, what happens now? Because right now you're getting sick. You're tired
all the fucking time. Um, you're not very motivated. You're procrastinating a lot. You're not very
productive. Not focused. You're feeling overwhelmed and burning out, and you're probably getting mad
at yourself. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You're frustrated because of all of that that's going on. You're not as as
focused as you want to be. So all of this, that is going to end up in a point where you're spending more
time trying to recover from all of that. So whether you have to take sick days out of your business,
whether you're time wasting now from being not as productive as you want to be, however, if you
actually just carve out a bit of time to build that nourishing foundation, then you will have consistent
energy. You will consistently be focused. You'll be less likely to burn out, less overwhelmed because
your immune system is healthy, your guts healthy, your brain is healthy, blah blah blah. I could go on.
But my point is, is that it's actually time saving in the long run because you're building in those habits and
those factors and that almost like a baseline. So you can work optimally that in the long run will save you
time. The compassion we give to ourselves is crucial because if you're not being compassionate with
your self, you're not going to be honest about what you need. You're not going to be honest about the
changes that you need to make. That is truly like to the core. Why we have to be self compassionate. If
we aren't coming from a lens of self-compassion, we are never going to realize, oh shoot, I have too
much on my plate from the lens of my to do list. We're never going to tell ourselves. You know what?
Maybe this self-care routine isn't practical on a day to day basis. We're never going to be able to look at
our eating habits and realize that those aren't being supported. If you can't come from a lens of
compassion, you're not being honest with yourself about what you need to change your life
circumstances and to change the lifestyle that is creating burnout. Because I am a firm believer that
burnout isn't an occupational phenomenon like the lovely World Health Organization says it is. I
personally think that's a cop out on their part. I think burnout is a lifestyle phenomenon, especially for
high achievers, because high achievers can burn themselves out doing anything. High achievers can burn
themselves out doing freakin volunteer work or or pouring into their families. So one for the people,
places and high achievers out there. We've spoken a little bit about high achievers, but people places as
well, because I know that you speak to these people. This is the part of this is, I guess, a part of their
personality to an extent right there. A higher risk of burnout purely due to the fact that they will bend
over backwards to do things for other people or for their own success in the nicest possible way. You
can't change who you are. So what practices or mindsets can these people make sure they have in place to
minimize their risk of burning out without kind of completely changing how they operate? Yeah,
absolutely. And I think I see I personally think the mindset that a lot of people pleasers need to step into
is I think people pleasing is is natural. It's a human instinct to want to fit in, to want to have connections
with people. It's a very natural thing to do. I think that people pleasing goes awry when people pleasing is
coming from a scarcity perspective. It is coming from a fear based perspective. I feel like that's the time
when people pleasing is a bad thing, is when we are saying yes to things and doing things that we that
create resentment, that we don't actually want to do for people, that we don't even actually care about
doing things for out of some fear of consequence. So the mindset shift I usually encourage people to step
into is to first and foremost ask yourself where the tendency to people pleaser is coming from. Um, I
don't like the word should. Should is one of my least favorite words in the English language. But I also
recognize that there are aspects and times where it's. Definitely something that you should do. Like you,
you should perhaps be there for your child or your family. So I think there's different kinds of shoulds.
There's disempowering shoulds and empowering shoulds. And I think we need to ask ourselves in the
situations where the people pleasing feels icky or the people pleasing doesn't feel good. Is this an
empowering should or a disempowering should? And if you realizing you are coming from a place where
you're, it's more disempowering than it is empowering. Then I would kind of dig into that a little bit and I
would ask yourself, okay, what? What is where is this coming from? Where what place is this coming
from? Is it coming from fear? Is it coming from guilt? Is it coming from scarcity? And then what I would
encourage people doing is to just start. I kind of feel like with people pleasing, it comes down to a
question of boundaries. And I feel like the reason a lot of people don't want to say no, they don't want to,
you know, put up those those hard walls and those hard boundaries is because they're trying to set the
hardest boundaries in their life first. Mhm. And I think of boundary setting. Like building a muscle.
Mhm. We've got to lift the £5 dumbbell. Yeah I think it's a really important analogy. We've got to lift the
£5 dumbbell before we can lift the £30 dumbbell. Yeah. And a lot of people are immediately trying to set
their hardest boundaries with the people that they are most inclined to. People please that they don't want
to be people pleasing with first. And that's a recipe for disaster. You are. And you're probably like, if we
think of that in the weightlifting context, you're lifting the £30 dumbbell and you're probably going to
hurt yourself. Mhm. And it's the same thing with boundaries and with people pleasing. So what I would I
always encourage people to do is once you know where the people pleasing tendencies are coming from,
if it's disempowering, if it's creating resentment, then what we need to start doing is build the small
boundaries first. Like it honestly might start with I'll use work as an example here, because I know that's
a part of this. For some people, it might come from a place of, you know, just setting an out of office
responder or putting a something below your email signature when you're responding to emails. That
kind of says, these are the days that I work, and these are the hours that I work, and I don't respond to
emails past this time. Those are passive boundaries. Like, we can create passive boundaries first and then
build up to the hardest boundaries. I usually recommend starting with the passive boundaries, then
moving up to the um, like the boundaries with people that are the easiest people for us to set boundaries
with. And then slowly but surely moving up to the difficulty, the difficult people and the higher difficulty
boundaries for setting those bigger boundaries for us to set, and those bigger boundaries that we're scared
to set. And it may even be like, maybe you don't outright set a boundary of I don't. I don't check my
email at all. I don't respond to clients on Saturdays. Maybe it's just like, all right, I'm going to test out two
hours on Saturday morning and see if I just give myself two hours on Saturday morning. How does that
feel? Are there any, like, fires that I don't put out? Maybe you just don't respond to text messages for a
couple hours on a Friday afternoon. How does that feel? Are there any fires that happened during that
time? Because I think the fear with people pleasers is that there's going to be some massive consequence
that's going to arise if they don't do the thing, if they aren't available, if they aren't answering the phone,
if they aren't responding to the text messages, that somehow things are just going to implode and we have
to train ourselves to realize, no, things aren't going to implode. Mm. So true. Yeah, I, I, I know for a fact
that I'm somebody who, I'm somebody who has no notifications on their phone like they have to be. I
don't want any red flags like in the corner of my apps thing. Um, I don't like unread WhatsApp messages
like I've turned off. I don't have email, slack or Instagram notifications on purely because I know that I
will read them when they come through. So yeah, so I think and I know that about myself. So I do also
think that understanding your tendencies can be so helpful for your triggers. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Because you know, I think boundaries are so individual to the person. So I think it really depends on.
Like you said, like where your energy is at certain times and really lean into what you know that your
tendencies are and try to identify, okay, where can I ease up a bit? Like my easing up is not having those
notifications turned on because I know that I like them, so and that's going to be a problem. Yeah. And I
think it's yeah, it's very much feeling out. There's a self-awareness component that has to come into this.
It's very much feeling out. How does doing this thing make me feel? If you're kind of like, I don't care,
like, I'll do it, you're not. There's no part of you that feels negativity about doing it. Then don't don't feel
like you have to set a boundary there. Like I think that's the other thing with boundaries, is realizing
boundaries don't need to become something else that we shame ourselves for. I think that sometimes the
fear with boundaries and the concern with boundaries is that it's going to become something that's just
another standard we have to uphold ourselves to. But the fact of the matter is we have to bring selfcompassion into it. We have to bring flexibility into it. Like your boundaries do not have to be these hard
cut and dry things. If you don't want them to be hard cut and dry. Things like, I'm a burnout coach and I
worked on Saturday this past week. I was out of town Wednesday to Friday, so I took some time off. But
typically my hard boundaries that I don't work on Saturdays. And yet it didn't feel negative. It didn't feel
bad to do some work this weekend, because I got all the rejuvenation and rest and self-care during the
week. That's that's an example of a situation where you can have a hard boundary of this is something
that I do not do, and there's still going to be situations and contexts that come up where you break that
boundary or you bend that boundary, and that's okay. Your boundary should adapt to the situations, the
circumstances, the seasons of your life. And so I think that's another reframe to have for somebody who's
a people pleaser and has fears around setting boundaries is your boundaries do not have to be cut and dry.
They can be situational. They can be there can be gray areas with their boundaries. That's okay. Like
you're not doing boundaries wrong if you're doing that. Yeah. So true are so important okay. So this has
been a great conversation. Um, full disclosure, if this feels like a bit of a quick jump, um, and a cut off,
it's because tech failed us again, so it hates us. We got such a good episode. So, we just wanted to wrap it
up and make sure that Ellen could tell you where you can find her, how you can work with her. So, Ellen,
please take it away. Yeah. So I'm Coach Ellen everywhere, and my first name is spelled e l l y n. So
coach l l y. And I'm Coach Ellen on Instagram. I'm Coach Ellen on threads. I am I'm on LinkedIn, I'm
Coach ellen.com. And I even have a free Facebook community. Now this is actually a new development
in the last like 45 days. That is a great place to get plugged in. So um, those are like honestly Coach Ellen
anywhere. Okay. So tech failed us again. So I'm just jumping in to say huge thanks to Ellen for joining us
and for giving us that amazing insight into burnout. I hope it was useful for you and you obviously know
where to find her. But sadly, tech failed us again so she couldn't say bye officially. So I just wanted to
say huge thanks to Ellen and thanks for listening to this episode