WELLTHY Generation Podcast!

77. A New Perspective on Burnout

• Naihomy Jerez • Episode 77

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Burnout can happen from just living your regular life, even when you don't think you're doing "too much" - and our bodies will eventually force us to slow down if we don't recognize the signs. 

• Daily responsibilities like parenting, cooking, and running a business can lead to burnout without realizing it
• The mental and emotional load of life is often more exhausting than physical tasks
• Signs of burnout include losing interest in activities you normally enjoy
• Taking a real break means resting from your regular life, not planning stress-inducing vacations
• Learning to listen to your body's signals before reaching complete exhaustion
• Perfectionism keeps us trapped in unhealthy cycles of overworking
• We need to nurture each other and call out when we see others approaching burnout
• The mental load of parenting older children is often more exhausting than caring for babies

I'm transitioning my one-on-one program from six months to three months with the same personalized coaching, just condensed into 12 calls instead of 24, with continued WhatsApp access, food tracking app, and personalized lifestyle guidance. If you're interested, DM me on Instagram or book a free consultation through the links below ⬇️✨ 

Thank you so much for listening!


Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome back to Wealthy Generation Podcast. So it's becoming a thing when I'm recording solo episodes that I am not recording at my desk with my podcasting mic. I today am currently hence background noise and music sitting out on my balcony. I have a tiny balcony, which I appreciate, listening to the birds, getting some sunshine and talking to you. So if you hear cars, birds, music, people talking in the background, make pretend we're on a walk together and this is ambient noise in the back and there has been just a lot going on in April and I'm here to talk to you about it. It's the point of this episode.

Speaker 1:

I have been seeing this trend out in the social media streets of just burnout and not realizing it, and I'm in the same boat and I wanted to chat with you about it today because it, like it, just catches you off guard sometimes. And I have been working for a while, like almost a year now, with my ancestral healing coach, hassani, and she keeps telling me how I'm doing a lot, and I keep coming back to her and telling her that I don't see how I'm doing a lot. Welcome to coaching me, coaching me. And it's just been really hard for me to see it Because for me, I'm just doing my everyday responsibilities and it doesn't seem like a lot, and I'm sure that is similar for you, where you're like I'm not even doing extra, I'm just living my everyday life. And I wanted to talk about it because, just literally in full transparency of I'm a human and April has been rough for me. And two, what can we do about it? And the third, and the reason why I realized because I've been trying to work for a while on, like proactive rest and I, when people ask me what I do for myself, I always say, oh, I go to the gym, right, like that's kind of like my little alone break, but aside, it's still work in the sense that I need to plan to go there, I need to show up, I am putting my body under stress, right, those kinds of things, and actually just resting, like doing nothing, which includes not going to the gym and taking a break from my life, doesn't really happen and it's really hard for me to do that until I get knocked out on my ass, like what happened this month. And I'm trying to get better at that and I hope that me talking about this, hopefully you being seen, hopefully we can have a conversation like DM me, email me If you feel seen, send me a text on the show notes. You're able to do that, then let me know, because it's happening to so many of us right now and I'm literally recording this episode and uploading it right away, because I usually have my podcast episodes ready to go at 5 am, eastern Time, thursday mornings and I just didn't get to it on time this week.

Speaker 1:

Yesterday was my very first meeting with Sugar Mama and that went to me. It went so well. It was so tender, honest, loving. Everybody got a chance to talk, to feel heard, to share their experience, mixed in with coaching and learning and guidance, and it just felt really good to me and I felt that and I hope that that energy and the participants of the group also felt that way. So after that I also had to focus on making dinner and, you know, spending some time with my family. So I was like you know what? It's okay, I'm just going to. I have time tomorrow. So I'm just going Thursday morning, like right now, and I'm just going to record this now and get it out to my community.

Speaker 1:

And it's in line with something that I'm going to talk about in another episode which is trying to be perfect, and I'm trying to hold myself accountable. I have said multiple times this week that to my clients, to other people where I have this concept. I came up with that perfectionism is petty and I'm like and I've been sitting with the concept and with the idea because it's developing as time goes on in my mind to be more clear as to how I want to express it and what I want to say about it. But it's basically this idea that we focus on, like the short term, like the minimalistic parts of it, and we pressure ourselves and guilt ourselves so bad that we can't move on. So I'm going to use myself an example with this If I wanted to, like, push myself to be quote, unquote perfect, because it really doesn't fucking exist, which is the first problem in the first place and force myself to record this episode last night when I was exhausted and bypassed my family time, then it's to my detriment and yours, because I probably would not be able to express myself the same way, come with the same loving energy that I want to come at this with.

Speaker 1:

And then for what? When I could just do it now? So, yes, it's been a struggle for me to to be like this is how I do things and this is how I get things out, and it's broken. But the real thing is that the point is to get this to you right, to get this episode to you, to get this information to you, this insight I wanted to, and what quote unquote was perfect for me. Then I wouldn't be sitting here right now and having this energy of service for you at this moment. So one it would have come off like not in the in how I wanted to last night. It would have been added stress for me. So there's no recovery or rest time and you wouldn't be served in the same way, whereas it's going to come out at some point Thursday, right, and you'll still get it and it'll still be here. So that's the point to get this out at some capacity. The point is not how I got it done. Does that make sense? I hope it serves you.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to talk about it deeper in another episode because I really want to get back to burnout, because this whole back and forth that I would have occasionally with my ancestral coach, where I would be tired or there would be things happening and I'd be like I just don't see it and basically my life revolves around my kids and school. If you don't know, my kids commute to school is super long. Their school is an hour away from us and it's a two hour trip to take them to school, so it's not like the school is a few blocks away and it takes a total of 15 minutes to drop them off. It's literally two hours and sometimes more depending if the train wants to be all messed up. So there's a lot of rushing involved and getting ready early because I want to make sure that my kids are not getting to school late all the time, and then I have to run back to eat breakfast and to serve my clients and get my stuff done for the day.

Speaker 1:

I also am the main person for dinner, thinking about what we're going to eat and preparing food. So that mental load is on me, which is consistent when you have other loads, and some people actually think about laundry a lot, but I like to use it as an example where you're not necessarily doing laundry every single day or taking that action, or maybe you are, I don't know, but food is something that you have to think about multiple times a day. Not only do I make our dinners, but our kids also take lunch and snacks from home, so we prepare that in the morning. Then it's like what am I having for lunch and breakfast and then dinner for the family, right? So there's a lot of mental load when it comes to that. Then I also have my business. I'm a small business, so not only am I coaching my clients and am I making space for that, I also have my new small group program, which I am dedicating my time to, especially because it's the first time I'm running it and I am developing things at the same time as I'm executing them.

Speaker 1:

And then there's also the other parts of the entrepreneur, where there's marketing and you have to pay attention to your finances and back end stuff. That also falls on me, although I have a fabulous, amazing, super trustworthy OBM online business manager, alexa, who supports me. But a lot of the mental load is coming from me. Again, this mental load concept, right. And then there's my own wellness, where I take myself to the gym and I'm making sure I'm feeding myself appropriately, getting to bed at a decent time, um other things I might want to do, like get my nails done and go to therapy and go to see Hassani and get my hair done and just, and and the kids appointments right, like when is the dentist appointment, when is their physical appointment?

Speaker 1:

My older one is graduating elementary school, so there's a lot of activities going on with that my younger one. We have been having challenges in school, so I consistently have to go to school meetings. I consistently have to reply to teachers emails, which happens about once a week. I take him to therapy on a weekly basis and I'm in communication with the therapy team, right, and I'm the lead on all of these things. So, even talking about it, I'm exhausting myself and I'm sure that you're feeling exhausted from sharing the stuff I have to do in my life.

Speaker 1:

But because it kind of doesn't look like other people, I'm like I don't have a nine to five, you know, I don't have a commute necessarily to work, right, I don't have to be in an office. Then I invalidate my experiences. Office, then I invalidate my experiences. So it wasn't until I saw this post by a therapist on Instagram Nidra Tawab I hope I'm pronouncing her name correctly where she posted this post. That said, I'm not sure who needs to hear this, aka me, but burnout can also happen due to and then she says parenting check. Being a good listener check. Adulting check. Being a partner husband or wife check. Being a caregiver that's like midway right, always having it together. Check, oh my God, that's like my MO Always see me like I have it fucking together. Being emotionally mature when others aren't. Oh my God. Check. Repeating your needs to people, check, listen. There is one thing I hate more right now than people asking me questions for things that they can figure out themselves. In my personal life. I'm like, please just use your eyes, look one side relationship dynamics. I don't know if that's a check, but, as you can see, over 50% of this list is checks for me and I freaking crashed, I don't know. And so, okay, yes, I mentioned all the work stuff too, girl, I sprained my ankle in late March and that really pissed me off because it forced me to slow down right like I really had to take a break from exercising.

Speaker 1:

Um, I had to rest my ankle and then I got fucking COVID and it I was so sick. I was so sick. I took myself to urgent care, which is something I don't generally do. I usually, you know, make my home remedies, rest, take naps and I get better. But I wasn't feeling better. I was just feeling worse and worse and worse. Hence you still hear me nasally and like clearing out my throat, which I'm sorry if you're, if you're experiencing this with me, but I'm still not 100% back.

Speaker 1:

And I caught COVID like the first week of April or something like that, and it is April 24th at the moment. So it had to. I had to really stop, like one day my kids didn't even go to school because I just could not, right, I really couldn't, and I had to take a break from my entire life and literally sit on the couch and recover and take naps and do the bare minimum, and leading up to spraining my ankle and getting COVID and all that, I feel like I was already in a burnout state and I'll tell you how. Like now, looking back, I can see why um and I wasn't listening to my body. Another thing that I've been dealing with or not dealing with, but like in communication with with Hassani, is oh, I'm sorry, the back, the back end beeping is happening here because I'm all tight all time.

Speaker 1:

Um was or is um not not ignoring my body, because sometimes I do realize what's happening and I bypass it, because I can still keep pushing through, um, and I don't make any necessary changes to give myself a break, because I'm like I could just keep going. You know, some of us wear this like invisible badge of like you could just push through. That's work for me too. I need to like relax on that. So, yeah, I, I just had to take this break intensely.

Speaker 1:

I. I canceled all my calls for a week. For an entire week I literally couldn't show up. I didn't take my kids to school. I didn't really cook anything. Um, I was. We were all literally eating frozen food. I barely had an appetite, but you know, the family still had to eat and I still had to eat. So I ate like chicken, fucking tenders that I made in the toaster oven, uh, and and like bread. I really wanted bread and stuff. Just very simple things, very simple flavors, um. So I was like damn, my body really crashed out and I really had to take a break.

Speaker 1:

Now, the reason why I say I knew I was already in a burnout state before all of this happened was because I didn't enjoy. I wasn't enjoying doing, I had no interest in doing things that I normally do enjoy doing, mainly cooking. Like, I usually cook three meals and it's nothing fancy to let y'all know is like pasta with ground meat. Um, frozen raviolis for the kids that they take for lunch, a taco night, things like that. A taco night, things like that. And I had absolute zero interest. I actually had disgust in cooking. That is. That is exactly it. I did not want to cook, I did not want to turn on the stove I had, I wanted nothing to do with it, and I thought that was weird a little bit because I was like, damn, I'm like really avoiding this, I don't want to do this. And now that I've rested so much and I'm feeling more like myself, I have not minded cooking. This week I did make three meals for the family, and usually the three meals has some sort of leftovers. We have them, we use them for the rest of the days, or we we go back to frozen food.

Speaker 1:

Um, so this has been and you know my trainer and Hassani. They both remind me of the lessons that we need to and I know because I coach people on the same thing but when it comes to yourself, you never want to hear it. You never want to hear it. So they're like there's lessons here. What is the lesson? What do you, you know, and I think that one of the biggest lessons for me is really, I finally realized how my regular life really can lead me to burnout and I just and I need a break from my regular life, just the regular things I do.

Speaker 1:

Because in my book I was like I'm not going out every night, I'm not doing events, I'm not hanging out, like on the weekends, like that, I'm not doing extra. So to me I wasn't doing that much. But now between Hassani continuously telling me, hassani continuously telling me, and then this Instagram post that just like put it out there in my face because I was just in this kind of disbelief where the regular things I do could lead to burnout, um, so sorry, I got distracted because I hear somebody walking, um, so I was like, oh, the lesson, the lesson for me is how do I take a break from my regular life? And now that I've realized this, I've been getting coached on this since 2020. Because I distinctly remember my other coaches being like Naomi, you need to get away, naomi, you need a break. And I'd be like, yeah, I do take a break, I go to the gym.

Speaker 1:

And now I'm realizing, girl, five years later, of all of this adding up right, because the circumstances after covet has just been different. There was homeschooling and then there was like a bunch of stuff like on and off, but now we're like things are just rocking and rolling. The kids are older. If you have older kids, I didn't realize how much of a mental load that would be like, more than when they're babies. I'm like shit. I thought this was gonna get easier and I realized that it gets easier in like the physical stuff, meaning I don't have to shower them, I don't have to feed them, I don't have to do, I don't have to get them dressed. They do all those things for themselves now. But the freaking mental load, the emotional load, oh my God, that is more exhausting than the physical stuff.

Speaker 1:

Okay, um, so I need to figure out how to take a break from my life and just hibernate, and I don't know if, like once a quarter, I don't know. Actually I'm not going to put a timeline on it, Because the real thing that I should be doing is listening to my body and being able to better identify when I'm reaching burnout or when I'm tired, and then taking a rest. So I think that planning a time goes back to perfectionism is petty because I'm trying to be, I'm trying to demand from my body something that I don't know it will be able to handle. Do you know what I mean? Like I was about to say, once a quarter, I'll plan a week off and I'll take everything off. But, bitch, you don't know. You don't know, Like you don't know, if you're going to be so exhausted in two weeks from now and you'll need another break, right? So that's what I mean you don't know if you're going to need another break in a month.

Speaker 1:

So the real work here is being even more attuned with myself and not bypassing the signs of burnout. So if I am detesting, I'm disgusted by cooking again, then that's a sign. And there might be more signs, but that's the first one that comes to mind. Like I'm just not enjoying things I know I normally enjoy and taking a break from those things from my life. Oh, my god, because before and it's something that we're used to doing it's like, oh, I'm gonna take a break when I go on vacation. Like I'm going to plan a trip and all this. But guess what? That's fucking work. To plan a trip, it's work. To get to the trip is work. To come back from the trip. It's work.

Speaker 1:

So I'm trying to figure out how I can be boring as fuck and just literally sit around exactly how I'm doing right now. How can I simplify my life and still serve in a way that feels really good, in a way that I'm serving and also meeting my own needs, because I am having a really great time just being outside right here. Not outside, I need to take a flight and go to the beach in Las Terrenas, dr. Like no, I'm just sitting right here in the sunshine, I'm listening to the birds, I'm talking to you, and that is serving me instead of being in my office, which I love and appreciate, but it's not what I need right now. So I don't have any one, two, three tips for this or anything like that.

Speaker 1:

All I know is that I keep seeing posts pop up from entrepreneurs and people who I really admire on Instagram talking about how they've also felt burnt out, how they've also had to take a break, cancel things, really feeling it in their body. I'm in the same exact boat and I want I think that what I want for all of us is to the thought do better came, but I don't want to. I don't want it to be do better, because again, I think that goes back to perfectionism is petty. I want to go deeper. Let's say that I want to honor myself more and I want to understand that better, and that means going deeper and honoring that. So that's what I hope you get out of this. How can you make adjustments for this? You get out of this. How can you make adjustments for this? I know that.

Speaker 1:

One quick tip, though when I had a nine to five I would take if this is possible for you, because I had quote unquote unlimited days off or vacation days, whatever. I would schedule one day off a month and I would just do whatever I needed to do. One time I got got a tattoo. Other times I just did whatever I wanted, right. So you take a break in that way and I need to figure out how to do a better job of that in this season of my life as an entrepreneur, with long commutes and all that. So I'll leave you with that.

Speaker 1:

Let's be, let's go deeper, let's be more attuned. Try your best. Let's not continue to bypass what our body's telling us, right? And sometimes it's a process to get to know what it is that is telling us anyway. So let's just work on that together. All right, I want to see you well, I want to be well. We need to shorten these burnout cycles that happen in our community way too often. We need to nurture each other. We need to call each other out and be like hey, sis, I think, I think that you might need a break. Let's do that for each other. Okay, all right, with that said, I haven't I've made, I guess, a small announcement on this, but I am transitioning my one-on-one program from six months to three months and I'm really excited about that. You're getting the same thing, except that from 24 calls we're doing 12 calls, but you're still getting personal access to me through WhatsApp. You are receiving a food and lifestyle tracking app so that we can collect data and information and make informed modifications and choices. You are getting access to a portal and just very personalized information data to make changes to your lifestyle so that you can support your health, support your hormones and really live your best life. And yeah, that's a change I'm making.

Speaker 1:

A lot of people come work with me one on one when they have health concerns like PCOS, or they want to adjust their relationship with food. They have been struggling to find what works for them wellness wise. What has worked for them in the past is not necessarily working now. They want to lose weight in a way that's sustainable and a health first approach. They want to look better in their clothes, and that's a totally a valid goal, right? So we can work on all of those things.

Speaker 1:

If you're confused, if you don't know if I'm able to help you or not, if you don't know, most of the time almost pretty much all the time there is a solution that can be done, can be made when you're not feeling well. Oftentimes my clients have hopped from doctor to doctor to doctor trying to find answers, trying to feel better, and that has not happened, and I have been able to help them build the pieces, make the lifestyle changes that are needed to feel really, really great and actually improve their lab work. So those are a few of the scenarios and reasons why women have come to work with me. With that said, I want to invite you to come and explore this for yourself. With the time change also obviously comes a price or an investment change. So the investment for the three months of one-on-one food and hormone health coaching is $2,555 for the one-on-one private coaching.

Speaker 1:

I hope that this is something that serves you. If you want to chat more about it and see if you're a good fit or not, then send me a DM on Instagram or you can write on the show notes. There's a link to book a free consultation call, to a free consultation call to discuss this, where you'll share your challenges and I'll share how I can help you and we can move forward from there. So I hope you have an amazing day and we nurture each other and hold ourselves accountable to resting. I hope you have a great day. Bye.