Struggling With Burnout? Here’s 5 Things You Need to Know

Burnout is honestly one of my favourite topics to write about, because finding balance in my life has always been a real struggle!

We all have challenges in our lives, and some feel harder than others. I call this the ‘achilles heel’ of our experiences. For some people, it’s confidence, for others it may be weight, but for me, it’s about keeping my energy balanced and stable so I can keep doing what I love.

10 years ago I burnt out really badly, to the point where I didn’t know what was wrong with me or what to do. Luckily, since then, I’m a little more understanding of what drove me there, and I love to help other people recognise the signs too.

I recently wrote an article about three hidden energetic causes of burnout, that I don’t think many of us are really aware of.

Because that’s the thing - we think burnout happens when we do too much physically, yet overexerting ourselves physically is one of the smallest contributors to burnout.

There are far more reasons, hiding just out of sight, that are the biggest drivers of our exhaustion, but we’re often not aware of them.

I certainly wasn’t aware of them 10 years ago when I had to sign myself off work and go stay with my parents to recover, but now that I’m older, and slightly wiser, I feel that I’m a little more clued in to the truth behind my burnout then, and also when I slide into it now.

So, for all you burnout babies, let’s get straight into it.

Burnout in the Soul Contract energies

As always, I love to start by examining the Soul Contract energies that contribute to burnout, exhaustion and stress (and if you don’t know your numbers, use your birth certificate name to check them out here).

The first energy that’s plays a strong role is the 6. Whether you have a 6-6 or a 15-6 in your chart, these energies are always wanting to create, yet they can become really scattered and unfocused when they try to do too much. So much so, that they can easily lose focus, procrastinate and fail to finish their projects.

Another energy that’s really strong with burnout is the 9, or 18-9, which is when the soul is a really strong force that can often drive the body harder than it’s capable of going. 9s love to stretch themselves, but this is often due to a soul urge, and we always have to make sure we aren’t pushing ourselves beyond our physical capabilities.

That being said, most people I know with 9s are really strong, physically, emotionally and mentally!

One of the most important Soul Contract energies around burnout are the sensitive 8 frequencies, 8-8 or 17-8, which can often have a poor sense of boundaries and so take on everyone else’s stuff.

As someone with those 8s I really do believe that because the 8s feel so deeply, they inadvertently take on other people’s emotional stress, wanting to try and support them and completely draining their battery in their pursuit to help others.

So, 8s need to be incredibly discerning where they spend their energy and learn to let go of needing to support everyone around them.

More Soul Contract energies of burnout

Another energy that really hits hard when it comes to burnout is the 12-3. I have two sets of these beauties in my chart and so I know these ones well. The 12-3 always wants to expand, learn and grow. To the extent where they completely lose all sense of balance in their lives.

And this is the perpetual challenge of the 12-3 energy - they are here to expand but at a balanced pace - which is the biggest struggle because the soul is always wanting more. It’s like a continual thirst for more, more, more, which can sometimes feel so hard to manage!

Ok the last one I have to sneak in here is the 14-5.

This is an intense frequency in the Soul Contract that is often connected to our relationships with others. In particular, the intensity of those relationships that can really wear us down. The 14-5s are here to earth to discover who they are, and that means through the mirror of the people around them.

Like all the other energies, the 14-5 just needs to slow down and take a break from people. Just like the 12-3 needs to learn how to rest, the 8s need to learn boundaries, the 9s need to learn to take it easy and the 6s need to learn to just do one thing at a time.

So, asides from the Soul Contract energies, what are the five things that we need to know when we’re susceptible to burnout, exhaustion and running ourselves into the ground?

Well, let me tell you. From my own experience, these are the deal-breakers, and when we manage to get a handle on them, we never need to reach that point again.

No. 1 Learning the balance between expansion versus contraction

The first thing we need to recognise is when we have the energy to expand and when we need the energy to contract.

Life is made up of waves. Waves of energy, waves of breath rising and falling in our body, and waves of emotions, to name a few.

One of those waves is the rise and fall of our creative output and productivity. As much as society wants us to believe that we can do it all and have it all, all at the same time, it’s just not true. Like nature, which has the seasons of bloom in spring, intensity in summer, retraction in autumn and hibernation in winter, we too need to flow with our cycles.

Everyone’s cycle is different. For me, I tend to have a day when I feel really expansive and can get loads done, and then the next day I can barely do anything at all. And when I try to force myself to do more on those days of contraction, nothing ever really works.

The interesting thing is, when we’re feeling expansive, things tend to go a lot smoother, and it almost feels like the universe is supporting us. But when we push ourselves, in times when we really need to lean back, rest and reflect, nothing ever flows quite so smoothly.

I have a million examples of when I pushed myself on days when I just wasn’t naturally in that expansive, flow state, where equipment broke, the internet dropped, emails didn’t send, my car stopped working, and so many other little things that caused me to pause and think about stopping instead of trying to push forwards.

It’s taken me a long time to get the message, but the universe always places obstacles in our path to help us wake up to the truth.

No. 2 Focusing your attention on what really matters

The second all-important thing to remember when we’re stuck in cycles of burnout, is to focus our energy and channel it into our priorities.

When we’re feeling tired, exhausted and burnt out, we cannot hold space for all the things we have going on in our lives, that we’re normally so capable of handling, so we really have to focus on our priorities.

It may feel like we’re letting people down, or letting ourselves down, but we are not superhuman, and sometimes something’s gotta give. This may be turning down an opportunity, saying no to a friend, limiting our work schedule or booking some time off for ourselves.

Whatever we need to do in order to regain our balance and wellbeing, it needs to be done.

For the really busy bees amongst us, this may look like dropping some of those spinning plates in order to bring back the focus to just the one thing that matters the most.

When I feel on the edge of burnout I always need to reprioritise my projects and gently let go of the ones that just feel too heavy to carry in that moment, knowing that I can always pick them up again at another time.

Sometimes it’s ok to say no, and even though we’re conditioned to ‘always make the most of every opportunity’, it’s important to make our choices from a state of trust, knowing that whatever choice we make, we’ll be supported.

No. 3 Remembering that quality always trumps quantity

A third thing to remember (and this is really one for the creatives amongst us) is about quality not quantity. This is one of my all-time favourite things to remind myself of on an almost daily basis!

More does not equal more, but one of the traps that we all fall into is thinking that the more we do, the better we are. This includes more productivity, more output, more late hours, more giving, more sacrifice and all the other things that we push ourselves to do.

In the age of content creation, digital marketing and people telling us that we all need to be ‘grinding, boss babes with no excuses’ it’s easy to believe that we have to do more in order to succeed.

But what about doing less, and making what we do in the time we have, really count.

There’s so much rubbish out there filling the spaces in our minds, and I’m sure I’ve contributed to a whole load of verbal rubbish with some of my older blog posts that I used to spurn out back when I believed I should be writing all the time. The thing is, the world doesn’t need more, it actually needs better.

If we are here to contribute creatively to the world, with our art, our music, our words, our voices and our unique gifts and talents, why not slow down and bring our focus back to creating with intention, so the end result, and you, can be truly appreciated, with no burnout required.

No. 4 Letting go of the need to prove yourself

One of the biggest drivers of our burnout is also about proving our worth.

Every human being on earth struggles with their confidence. Even the most confident people around us, fake it till they make it. We all have a hidden need, deeply buried within, to prove our worth, our goodness, our importance and our relevancy.

And when we aren’t conscious of it, it can have a really strong effect on our lives - often causing us to take on too much, all in an effort to prove our skill, value or worth to someone outside of us, which is mainly our parents, our bosses, or God / the Universe.

This is one of the reasons why we get stuck in perfectionism, over-working, over-giving and over-committing, which are all things that can seriously frazzle and burn us out.

While we may think that our need to do it perfectly, and do it all, is driven from inside of us, it’s actually our subconscious mind, made up of all our programming, cultural conditioning, ancestral and parental imprints, past lives and other experiences, that is in the driving seat.

When we begin to notice who we are proving ourselves to, we can start to counter the voice within us that is pushing us too hard, and start speaking to ourselves with more gentleness and compassion, instead of using shame, blame and judgment.

Like using the carrot, instead of the stick.

No. 5 Rebalancing the flow of giving and receiving

The last, and my personal favourite, thing to know about burnout is to recognise where we’re over-giving.

Some of us are deeply empathetic, and as a result we want to make everyone around us feel better. We also want to give our time, energy and love to those who need it, not remembering that we also need to receive it ourselves too.

When we burn out, the delicate balance of giving and receiving is often out of sync, and this is something I’ve seen time and time again, not just in myself but in so many of my clients I work with.

We are not endlessly capable of giving, because at some point, our cup becomes empty. While we are not biological batteries, we can easily run out of energy, whether it’s physical from lack of food, water or sleep, or emotional from chronic stress and trauma.

We are energetic beings first and foremost, but because we can’t see our energy bodies and energy centers, we forget that they exist.

When we overgive we inadvertently drain our battery, whilst also signalling to the universe that we don’t deserve to receive. So, there has to be a balance between the two. In order to receive, we have to give, but in order to give to others, we also need to open ourselves up to receive, otherwise we won’t have anything left to offer.

Are we emotionally overgiving to friends when we play the role of agony aunt? Are we mentally over-giving to our jobs by working crazy long hours? Are we physically over-giving to our families, to the point where we’re constantly rushing around organising everything?

The more we understand where we may be over-giving, the more we can start to rebalance it.

Taking the all-important next steps

Ultimately, being stuck in cycles of burnout, or even just struggling in a one-time state of exhaustion, is enough to prompt us to start being honest with ourselves and see what may be contributing to us feeling this way.

Sometimes, it’s the pressure and demands of other people, and the world, that become the biggest drivers of our burnout. But ultimately, we also need to take responsibility for some of our conscious and unconscious decisions and choices that have led us to this point.

Knowledge is power, which is why having a deeper understanding of what burnout is really about, can be the first step into taking back command of our lives, and saying bye-bye to burnout once and for all.

If you’d like support and guidance on your spiritual and emotional healing journey, you may like to book a Soul Contract Reading, book a Divine Healing session, or sign up to my newsletter to stay in touch for more similar posts.

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Carry on exploring