Small steps, BIG change: What Burnout Recovery Looks Like

Hello friends,

This is the final installment of our Burnout Recovery series. Although burnout is a long road to recovery, you don't have to do massive things to begin to climb out of it. Today, we will go through my five essential steps to burnout recovery, which are not revolutionary but ones you need to hear.

Start where you are.

Take a moment to assess your current situation. What are the things contributing most to your burnout? Write them down. Look at this list and identify the things with the most flexibility to shift gradually in your favor. Whom do you need to talk to about these things? Make it a point to connect with those people and communicate honestly about your feelings. Identifying the origin of your stress will help clear the air and allow you to evaluate if incremental changes in your behaviors or commitments affect your daily life. Remember: tiny steps toward reclaiming your daily life will have the best staying power, leading to sustainability and purposeful change.

Time is on your side.

The gentleness required for burnout recovery is understanding that time is on your side. Time will press on, but seeing our recovery as a release valve from that pressure will help calm our nervous systems, allowing our brains and bodies to exist in a state of acceptance and healing. I like to use my orchids as a metaphor for this step. They require a humid and light-filled room to thrive, and sometimes we wait many months or years (!) for them to bloom. This patience, this gentle care, and this cultivation of the ideal environment give the orchids a chance to bloom in their own time. And when those blooms do come, they are spectacular.

Set your daily intentions.

Intentionality and alignment play a large part in burnout recovery. Setting intentions for your day can provide the direction necessary for you to find comfort in knowing you are making progress. Referencing ikigai, or the Japanese concept of discovering purpose in life, we can connect our daily intentions to a greater purpose. A good example of this from my personal burnout recovery included this:

My mission in life is to help people.

My vision is to create a global community of support for neurodivergents.

To fulfill these, I must take extra care to create the time/space necessary to care for myself.

I cannot fulfill my mission and vision if I do not care for myself.

Be purposeful in your rest.

As we proceed through burnout recovery, rest remains an essential tenet. We must be creative when discovering the types of rest that will be the most restorative in our lives. Rest may look different from one person to the next. Here is a great rundown of different types of rest:

• Physical - body awareness & gentle movement

• Mental - mindfulness & guided journaling

• Social - reconnecting w/ a friend you trust

• Spiritual - prayer, being in nature, meditation

• Sensory - disconnecting from devices, being in darkness

• Emotional - naming & processing emotions

• Creative - art, music, poetry, appreciating the beauty all around you

Lean on your community.

If we've learned anything in our series, it is the power of community care.

The power of community care lies in the acknowledgment of privilege, the utilization of such privilege to transform our relationships with others, and the continual ebb and flow of restorative processes and momentum-building action. I like to imagine community care like crowd-surfing. We yearn for softness and lightness and feel free while our community carries us effortlessly to the next phase in our lives. We all take turns supporting each other and submitting to rest.

I hope this series has been a balm for you to understand burnout and begin the healing process toward a better and more sustainable life. Feel free to respond and let me know what you'll do to help recover from burnout. I'm more than happy to continue this conversation via email with you.

Our Accountable Otters Club (an excellent example of community care!) is OPEN for new members, and the Early Adopter Special expires in two days! Use code FLOATON for 20% off the first six months of membership.

The coupon expires on 4/1, so join NOW to take advantage of this special offer. The regular price kicks in starting 4/2, so securing that discount will be in your best interest.

Want to see what members are currently saying about the AOC? Look no further:

Is 1:1 accountability coaching in your burnout recovery plan? Our VIP members get my undivided attention as we work together to create sustainable systems in your day-to-day life and chip away at those behaviors that got you into burnout in the first place. Biweekly 45-minute coaching calls, ROMP/RAFT planning, a secret space in our AOC community, and unlimited email support, all for $299/month. Sign up below for VIP membership.

I was featured in HipLatina! Click here to read about me, my story, and how the Accountable Otters Club was created due to my burnout recovery.

Next week, we will begin discussing procrastination, how it shows up, and how to ensure it's not making a regular appearance in our day.

Until next week,

Izzie

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