Healing from Burnout as an Ambitious Empath

Catherine A. Wood  00:01

Hello, friends, and thank you for tuning in to another episode of the prosperous Empath podcast. I’m your host, Katherine wood. If you’re new here, welcome, if you’ve been here before, welcome back. I’m so happy to have you here today. Today, we’re gonna have another solo episode, and we’re going to talk about a topic that is one that is deeply personal. To me, it was a huge part of my earlier career and something I struggled with a lot at the beginning of entrepreneurship. And it’s a topic that I noticed across the board that we ambitious empaths tend to struggle with. And it’s the experience of being burned out. And I don’t know about you, but I hear so many people talking about feeling burned out right now. And I think it makes a lot of sense. So I’m recording today’s episode, at the beginning of April, it’s the beginning of the second quarter of the year, which is wild to think about. And last month, three years ago, marks the beginning of the pandemic. So we are literally three years out of the start of the global pandemic. And if you think about the the fear and the economic struggles, and the emotional struggles and the challenges on our family life and work life balance, that the pandemic created, just across the board, I think makes a lot of sense that so many people are feeling burnt out right now, when you combine that with the fears of an impending recession, and the great resignation, and just all of these themes that we’ve been noticing in our workforce, it makes a lot of sense. So in today’s episode, I want to provide a little bit more of a historical framing, for why you or someone you know, may be experiencing burnout right now. And what can you do about it? What are some other options, or some other choices that you have to take care of yourself in the face of feeling burnt out. I also want to provide a little context for today’s conversation. Today’s episode was actually inspired by a chat that I had earlier this week, with a colleague who’s in the management consulting space. And she was sharing with me that so many of her colleagues right now are not only burned out, but they’re also really fearful for their jobs. Given all of the mass layoffs in the tech sector and kind of these talks of an impending recession. There’s just a lot of fear in the consulting space. And that fear is being misconstrued into kind of that recommitment into grind culture like into this need to make yourself useful to make a reputation for yourself and to achieve the next goal and meet the next target and really demonstrate that you’re worthy of keeping. And I think that that mass fear is really contributing to this burnout culture that so many of us are up against right now, whether you’re in the corporate space, or in the entrepreneurship space. So a lot of our conversations are geared towards entrepreneurs. But honestly, I think that there’s just a lot of crossover between being an ambitious Empath and how to prosper, whether you’re in corporate America or in incorporated corporate world, or whether you’re an entrepreneur. So with that, let’s jump in with a bit of a historical framing for how we got to be here. 

 So, March 2020, was the beginning of COVID. Right? And I don’t know about you, but I remember that Friday, when I was still living in Washington, DC, and my husband and I, he was just getting out of the office, and I was on the phone with my mom. And she said that we needed to go to the grocery store that she wanted us to stock up a toilet paper and groceries and she shared just a lot of what was happening in the news that I wasn’t privy to, to be honest. And I if I recall, it wasn’t until the weekend that the federal government officially shut down and let employees know that they wouldn’t be going back into the office the following week. So we were at the grocery store and we just stocked up on all the groceries and household goods that we could imagine needing for a couple of weeks and then nation literally seemed to shut down overnight. I don’t know if you remember, but I mean, I’m sure you do if you’ve experienced layoffs in your family, but in March and April of 2020, when COVID first hit here in the US, there was a massive forced quitting event in just those two months between March and April 20 million people lost their jobs. At one point, it was at a rate of 1 million per day. So really, the theme of the pandemic started with these involuntary quits, right, where people are involuntarily fired or let go from their jobs. I don’t know if you you personally or know someone who is in the retail, the leisure or the food and accommodations industries. But those jobs literally dried up overnight, because there was literally no demand for them. Living in Washington, DC at the time, where the majority of the local economy is employed by the federal government, all of the downtown local food chains and you know, office restaurants, they just dried up, they just shut doors overnight, because there was literally no demand the same with the retail industry. So that was the start of what was called kind of the involuntary quitting trend. Now, that was followed a year later in 2021, which by what was by what was. So that was followed a year later in 2021, by this second wave of mass quitting. But this map, second wave was a little different, because this time, it was actually voluntary. So there were all of these voluntary quits that ensued in 2021. And this was the start of what came to be known as the Great resignation. Now, a lot of this data that I’m pulling from is from the book quit the power of knowing when to walk away by Annie Duke. I think this is a fascinating book. She is a a world champion poker player, and she talks about how most of us quit too late. So I think that this is a fascinating read. And it kind of stems a lot of inspiration for this part of today’s episode. And I also think that it provides a little framing for what we’re talking about here. So one of the quotes that I really love from the book is that she says, When your identity is what you do, then what you do becomes hard to abandon, because it means quitting who you are. Now, I think this is really powerful. And I think it also explains a lot of these trends from 2020 onward that when we’re trying to quit something being forced to quit, is often the easier choice because it doesn’t require us making a choice. But once you have access to quitting and leaving, then it also makes voluntarily quitting that much more accessible. And in 2021 I don’t know about you but. In 2021, there was this huge wave of voluntarily. A year after the start of the pandemic starting in April 2021 There was this second wave of mass quitting only this time it was voluntary. And this is what came to be known as the Great resignation in April of that year, there were nearly 4 million people who voluntarily quit their jobs. That was the highest number of voluntarily voluntary quits on record. Since 2001, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started counting that measure. And spoiler alert, I used to work for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, so it’s fun kind of bringing in data from the BLS.

10:54

I’m gonna back up

Catherine A. Wood  10:55

here, Haley. You could imagine that after that many, many involuntary quits, and fires in 2020, that people would be eager to get back to the workforce. But 2021 actually saw an entirely different trend. In April of 2021, there was the second wave of mass quitting. Only this time, it was completely voluntary. And this is what came to be known as the Great resignation. So voluntary quits, are essentially when people voluntarily choose to quit their jobs. And in April of that year, in April 2021, nearly 4 million people voluntarily walked away from their jobs here in the United States, which was the highest number since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started counting that metric in 2001. And spoiler alert, I used to work for the BLS. So it’s pretty cool to be bringing in that data here. So this was the highest numbers, highest metrics of voluntary quits on file. And those numbers were preceded or followed by records in June, July, and August, oh, and May of that year. After so many people were fired or let go from their jobs in 2020, you might think that people would be eager to return to the workforce. But what we saw in 2021, was actually completely different than what economists could have forecasted. So in April 2021, was the start of this second wave of mass quitting. But the only difference is that this time, it was completely voluntary, starting in 2021, people voluntarily walked away from or quit their jobs. And this was the start of what has become to be known as the Great resignation. In April of that year, nearly 4 million people voluntarily quit or walked away from their jobs here in the United States. And that was the highest number highest metric. At that time, since the Bureau of Labor Statistics had started counting that metric in 2001. And spoiler alert, I used to work at the BLS, so it’s fun getting to bring in data. Now that number was followed and bested by new highs in May, June, July, and August of that year. So you might wonder, like, after so many people were let go from their jobs and were clearly struggling financially. Why would so many more people continue to quit. And what Annie Duke discusses in her book is that the people who lost their jobs at the start of the pandemic, we’re forced to explore other options that might be available to them to earn a living, something that we don’t generally do for ourselves unless we’re forced to do so. Now that gave them a better sense of the landscape. And it allowed them to see opportunities that they might have been neglecting. Now, I think that metaphorically, how I think about this is like when you rip off the band aid of something that you’re fraid of you realize that change isn’t quite as uncomfortable. So this era of involuntary quits, it really made space for more voluntary quitting, which I think is to be honest, a good thing. And I may be one of the few to say that. Now, this trend was later followed by what has come to be known as quiet quitting. Now, quiet quitting, I think is interesting because it is talked about in a mixed manner in media. But quiet quitting is essentially the idea of doing the bare minimum, and walking away. Now, I this is actually something that I support a lot of my budding entrepreneurs in creating that shift in their nine to five and really doing what is enough what’s required and allowing that to be enough so that they can prioritize their energy and efforts towards what they’re actually passionate about. Now, I think this is something that ambitious empaths that we really struggle with, because we’re so practiced, and doing our best all the time everywhere, that when we’re trying to make that shift from corporate to entrepreneurship, or in my case, from the government to entrepreneurship, we have to create that mindset shift where doing enough is enough, where we don’t have to over perform, and get it perfect, because we need to be able to conserve our energy in order to really be able to put our energy where our passion lies. Now, if we bring that historical reference to the present, where we find ourselves now is that there’s a lot of talk about an impending recession, there’s a lot of layoffs in the tech space, and there’s just a lot of fear. Now, spoiler alert, we’re not in a recession, the National Bureau of Economic Research, which is the governing body that designates recessions, hasn’t officially declared that we’re in a recession. And then to boot, the last, the third and second, or sorry, the third and fourth quarters of 2022, we had a positive GDP. So we’re not necessarily on the cusp of a recession, although many economists forecast that we will be later this year, but really like who the hell knows. So I don’t think that fear is doing any of us good. But I think it does provide some framing for why we may be experiencing burnout. Because the fear really contributes to this need to overperform to do our best to excel to make a name and a reputation for ourselves. It all contributes to burnout. That provides a little bit of framing for how we got to be here. Now on a more being based level on a more emotional level. I want to provide a couple more places to normalize why ambitious empaths in particular struggle or tend to struggle with burnout. So for one, we’re typically super heart centered in business. And we care deeply right? We often go into business, or go into service based industries because of how much we care, because of how much we want to make a difference of how much we want to help of how much we want to contribute. And there’s a real threat for heart centered entrepreneurs to experience burnout, because we often don’t have a good inner gauge of what’s enough of our internal boundaries of when to leave, work and disconnect or unplug. And I think that that can oftentimes create this real threat of falling out of love with our dreams of falling out of love with our businesses of thinking that there’s no sustainable way for us to keep going. I just want to normalize that that is a pattern I noticed and witnessed a lot. Secondly, we often go into business because we’re so driven by I our mission, our vision, and our values. And I think that when we are so blindly driven by that, higher what for that higher why we can often lose sight of some of our other commitments, and our commitments to ourselves to our families. Ambitious empaths often go into business being driven by our mission, our vision and our values. Like, I think that ambitious empaths in particular, are really driven by a commitment to be of service and contribute and make a difference. And I think that sometimes we can blindly be led by that mission and vision and we can lose sight of some of our other competing commitments like our relationships and our well being and our families and ourselves and what brings us joy. So we really need to be to have an eye on all of our commitments, rather than the one that is most connected, most directly connected with our capacity to be of service or contribute, because they’re all important, and our willingness to maintain and have an eye on all of our commitments. It allows us to be committed to all of them and maintain that commitment to all of them. All right, the next step, the next reason that I think so many ambitious, empaths experience burnout is that spoiler alert, we’re givers. Oh, my gosh, this is such a theme for me personally, we give and give and give in life and business. And we often give with this blind idea that others will innately respond or reciprocate in the same manner. But the reality is actually the inverse. Because the reality is that opposites attract, right. We typically know this in our marital in our romantic relationships. But it’s true in business partnerships, and in life that if we have a yin energy, we look for the Yang, if we lead with the masculine energy, we often look for the feminine if we’re a giver, we often attract takers. Now, there is nothing innately wrong with that, I think that there is deep value in creating that balance and alignment of energies and ways of being. But ambitious empaths, who haven’t done their internal work will often give at the expense of receiving. And we typically will also blame the part of us that doesn’t receive on our partners, whether it’s romantic or business, we think it’s their fault. We think that they’re being selfish, or just taking and taking and taking, but in reality, the work is for us the work that is. But in reality, that work is for us to do for really to have an inner gauge, an inner idea of how much we can give of ourselves from a generous but boundaried place. When we start to give with an expectation of receiving in kind or in exchange, then we’ve created this transactional dynamic, which is a sign of just more work for us to do as empaths. Think the last theme that we really need to mention here when we talk about why ambitious empaths struggle with burnout is we often struggle with charging our worth, because we go into business and we go into these service based industries and roles because of how deeply we care. And that’s often at the expense of caring for ourselves and honoring our contribution, our expertise and our experience. So there is often this work for ambitious and has to do around charging competitive rates for our work, because we love what we do. And because we love ourselves and want to honor the value add and the years of experience that we bring to the table. Alright, so now that we’ve provided just this historical framing for why so many of us are experiencing burnout right now, why we as ambitious empaths, in particular might be struggling with burnout, whether it’s resulting from the pandemic, or just this this trend for you, I want to provide you some options, some other ways to interrupt this unhealthy dynamic and pattern and some practices to, to try on for size instead. So I work with a lot of entrepreneurs in my private practice and in my business, and something we talk a lot about. And I find that it’s a theme that is really across the board really inspiring for people to think about is that we need to build our business and our careers around our ideal lifestyles. So when you build your business around your ideal lifestyle, that means that you’re really clear about what you’re building the business in service of what you do, what you’re excited to do, when you close your laptop, at the end of the day, what you’re earning that income and taking on that risk and service of when we’re really clear about what our ideal lifestyle looks like how we enjoy our weekends, how we prioritize family and our partners and friends outside of work, it becomes that much easier to not lose ourselves inside of our careers and our ambitions. And I also want to read presents us to that quote that I read earlier, by Annie Duke, she says that, when your identity is what you do, then what you do becomes hard to abandon because it means quitting who you are. Now, I would expand upon that to say that when your identity is what you do, it also becomes hard to not do it perfectly, it becomes hard to not be obsessed with it, it becomes hard to not be addicted to it. Because then doing less than perfect or doing less than your best would mean potentially that you’re a failure. So when we build our business around our lifestyle, when we are inserting joy and connection and fulfillment into our ideal schedule, then we create that many more opportunities to find fulfillment and contentment and joy outside of our work. And not surprisingly, when we also have that embodied experience of being happy and content, in our in our nervous systems in our bodies, we naturally become more effective in business and in leadership and in our careers. So really, it’s it requires just having a willingness to rewrite the script to find fulfillment outside of just your career. And not surprisingly, it allows you to excel more at your career. The second opportunity that I see for us as ambitious empaths, to really quit burnout culture is reconnecting with that larger what for or purpose, that larger reason that we went into business or that we went into corporate America in the first place, or even becoming an attorney because I’ve worked with lots of recovering attorneys over the years. And I think that we we so often go into these type a highly competitive, highly ambitious careers. super clear of the reason we’re doing it for whether it’s to whether it’s to create more income now, in order to retire early. Whether it’s to stockpile investments in order to to increase our charitable givings later in, in retirement, or whether we have this vision of working longer hours now in service of having more time with our children as an older parent, like there are reasons that we go into business or we take on these highly driven and ambitious careers. Now, I think that when we’re naturally ambitious, we can become clouded by our ambition, we can become addicted to that hustle culture and that grind mindset. But when we can reconnect with that larger what for, we can create more opportunity to allow us to have more of that experience in the present. What I mean by that is, in my experience, most people go into entrepreneurship for time freedom, it’s one of the themes I noticed across the board is specifically in entrepreneurship, that we want more autonomy over our schedules, we want more autonomy, when we get to take our families on vacation, we want more autonomy over when we work, where we work, how we work. And that is a mindset. It is a mindset to get to a place where you actually work by your ideal schedule, and then separate yourself from work. And when we can reconnect with that larger commitment, or reason why we’re taking on X, Y or Z goal now, it can provide us more perspective to disengage, to disconnect, and to opt out of hustle culture. Alright, the next place is a little bit lighter. And I think that as we as ambitious and that’s that we often struggle with being highly perfectionistic. Or often pleasers, we often have this tendency to just give give, give until we’re like completely embittered and explode. And these are patterns that I see across the board like these are just typical dynamics that I see for us as givers. And when we can gain a healthy sense of humor around our giver mindsets, when we can have an eye on our resentment and start to laugh about these tendencies with our partners and our family and friends, then we just have that much more facility to opt out. Because naturally, as empaths we’re super committed, we’re super high achieving, and those of us who identify as high achievers or recover recovering perfectionist does is like to call myself something I noticed around about us is that we typically take ourselves way too seriously. So when we start to gain a healthy sense of humor around some of our patterns that are more egoic based or more fear based, we can start to disentangle and to disengage from those unhealthy ways of being from those internalized capitalistic dynamics. Okay, the next one is more about getting feedback and affirmation. If you read my book belonging, I talk about some some themes that I noticed about impostor syndrome. And I think that many of us who experience of burnout, it can oftentimes be driven by this fear of being an imposter. Now, more of us experience impostor syndrome than not, some of the research I’ve found is that 70% of us typically experience impostor syndrome, and I would hazard to guess that it’s actually a lot higher. But what I appreciated about some of the research that I’ve that I read is that extra extroverts and introverts alike experience impostor syndrome across the board, we we both experience it. One of the differences is that, and the way I like to define just to provide some context, the way I like to define introverts, is that those of us who identify as introvert, myself included, we typically regain our energy through being by ourselves. Whereas extroverts regain their energy from being with others. So that’s one of the biggest difference Aren’t cheaters between the two? Now, I think this is really useful when we think about imposter syndrome because extroverts who experience impostor syndrome are much quicker to solicit the acknowledgement, encourage encouragement, reinforcement, or positive feedback that they need in order to regain their sense of self regain their self confidence. Whereas introverts often struggle with impostor syndrome for a longer duration of time, because we’re in our processors. So I know many of my listeners here are introverts, and some of our work is to start to externally request and ask for the acknowledgement and the encouragement, and the positive reinforcement and validation that we need to help us overcome our feelings of impostor, but also to break free from the burnout culture, and kind of this grind mentality that can so often be driven by fear. So the next theme is something that I talk about a lot. And I’m actually really excited to be recording just a full episode about rituals in an upcoming episode, because it’s one of the topics that I get the most feedback from my audience about across the board. But I think that prioritizing rituals is a way is an incredibly powerful way that we in particular, as ambitious empaths, can start to disentangle ourselves from hustle culture and burnout. Because, as natural givers, we oftentimes don’t have an inner sense of when we are giving at the expense of ourselves, and our own internal needs. So when we start to prioritize rituals, whether it’s with a morning routine, or a wind down routine, at the end of the day, or midday meditation practice, or one of my clients takes a walk every day, during the middle of the day, however, we can start to ritualize our life and our routines. Those rituals provide us a sacred opportunity to start connecting with our bodies, with our nervous systems, starting to connect with our internal worlds and our internal needs, so that we are taking care of our internal needs, so that we’re showing up fully resourced in our external worlds. And when we are showing up fully resourced in our external worlds, we are that much more capable and practiced in being able to give from a well resourced place and be generous, but boundaries around how much we give around how driven we are by our ambitions. We just have that much more of an internal thermometer about what’s enough. And I think that is just so important, because when we have an internal thermometer measure about just how much we can give, and then you know when’s enough when we need to take a break, when we need to say no, when we need to close or end work for the end of the day, then that is really such a key to interrupting, has the hustle, hustle culture and grind culture. This is something that, gosh, I just believe in. It’s so ardently one of the mantras of our unbounded mastermind is that self care is what makes your business sustainable and scalable. And I just I can’t really emphasize that enough. I truly believe that our willingness to take care of ourselves as CEOs to honor our internal world, our honor, our internal needs, will allow us to grow a business that is sustainable and scalable without burning it to the ground. So the next thing all right, we’re wrapping up here. I have three more practices that I or invitations that I want to leave you with today. All right, we’re wrapping up here, there are three more practices and invitations that I want to leave you with today. So the first one is having a willingness to embrace the seasonality of your life and your business. Now, I am not a mom yet, but something I appreciate about all of my mompreneurs. And colleagues who are moms and clients who are moms is that mompreneurs just have a natural sense of when they need to lessen their work schedule in order to manage around their kids, spring breaks, and summer breaks and holiday schedules. And there’s a seasonality of that. Now, regardless of whether you have children or not, you can embrace that seasonality in your life and your business, whether it’s on the external seasons of the climate that you live in. It’s one of the reasons I love living in New England, because I totally embrace the seasons of fall and winter and spring and summer. But there’s so many people in my world that also embrace the seasons of their natural there are so many female identifying entrepreneurs in my world who follow and respect the seasons of their menstrual menstrual cycle. Now, this is not something I have particularly attuned myself to yet, but I really respect it. And I think that there is so much value in acknowledging that there is a seasonality of business, that there is a seasonality of life, and that we cannot go go go and think that we can sustain that pattern, what goes up, must come down. Every wave has a peak and a crest. And the same is true in all aspects of our business and our life. When I think when we can start to trust that seasonality, we can start to enjoy it more. Something I’ve been appreciating seeing in social media recently is that there’s just been a lot of I’ve seen a lot of posts about people not launching anything the first quarter of the year, just kind of taking a slower start to the year. And I have a lot of appreciation for that. Because I think interesting that they were they’re meant to take q1 off, it allows them to show up with a lot more enjoyment and excitement, and self enrollment for their launches and their business visions and ideas for q2. Then, the next theme is around support. So we as ambitious empaths are so practiced in doing things on our own as natural givers, it’s often at the expense of being willing to learn how to and welcome and receive support. So a lot of our work around. A lot of our work around stepping outside of grind culture is doing the inner work of learning how to be supported. And that could look like learning how to be supported exquisitely by your team, by your partner, by your friends and colleagues, and really just starting to have an eye on where are you giving, that there also exists an opportunity to be poured into more to receive more. Something I really appreciate about us ambitious empaths is we often hire people to support us, and then we do more work supporting them than allowing ourselves to be supported. So that is something to have an eye on. And last but not least, I don’t think we could talk about burnout for empaths without also talking about embracing boundaries. And this is something I have noticed a real shift in in my world people seem to be celebrating boundaries these days. I hear so many people talking about this idea of wanting to partner and wanting to work with people who were boundary, there is some thing about meeting a fellow entrepreneur has who’s done their own internal work, so much so that you can notice it that you can witness it. And they are able to communicate their boundaries in a loving and self honoring way. I don’t know about you, but those are the people that I want to be around. So I think that that’s just a really lovely theme and trend that I’ve just been appreciating lately, that there feels like there’s just a lot more celebrating and welcoming in of other people’s boundaries. And I think for so many of us, who struggle with boundaries, we think that when we are saying no to others, that we’re being selfish, or we’re hurting other people when we enforce boundaries. But I think that there’s just this real cultural shift in the world of entrepreneurship. And in corporate America, that people are really celebrating boundaries and talking about it in a really positive and affirming way. So I, I will, I will link to all of the related episodes where we talk about some of these themes. We have other episodes on rituals, and we have a whole episode on embracing business boundaries. I hope that you’ve found today’s episode useful. If you have I would love to hear from you. I would love to hear what tip or what practice that you see, accessible for you in stepping outside of burnout. Thank you so much for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time.