Healing New Year Burnout with Mindfulness

The year has just begun but I am already feeling exhausted. How is that for a New Year's resolution. Anyway, Happy Monday of the First week of the new year in the new decade! Feeling somewhat accomplished as I finished a 10-session course on the Insight Timer meditation app with a free trial of their premium subscription.

I’ve been using a free version of this app since 2014 to mainly keep track of my yoga and meditation hours, consistency and progress. It comes with a few very useful features that help free one's mind from having to control the time in each yoga pose so you can focus more on just being in the moment without fiddling with the phone or having to count breaths.

How it works: the timer counts down for a set interval time giving an alert at each interval, the cue to transition to the next asana. You can choose from several polyphonic bells for meditative ambiance. My intervals are set to 2 minutes each with another alert 10 minutes before the end of the practice to give me a signal that it’s time to transition to Savasana.

The course I completed today is called Psychotherapy Toolkit: Move From Fear to Fearless by Charles Freligh, a trained psychotherapist who integrates mindfulness techniques into his professional experience with clients. The focus of the course was on the tools to face existential realities of life, accept reality as it is, and live with less fear, fewer regrets, and greater authenticity.

Glad I took it! The time commitment is about 20 minutes a day for each session. The result is some more quality “me” time I am learning to incorporate in my life, and a deeper sense of connection. I also enjoyed listening to Charles sharing about his experience dealing with areas of personal vulnerability and insecurity. Here’s a link to the course if you’d like to give it a try.

Here is a definition of the burnout I stumbled upon on the TODAY show, which really resonated: burnout is the feeling of being overwhelmed and exhausted by everything you have to do, but STILL worrying that you are not doing enough. Isn’t it the worst? It’s like knowing you’re slowly killing yourself and need to pause everything immediately, but unable to come to a stop because you are being too afraid.

That’s exactly what I’ve been experiencing for quite some time. Perhaps it’s not the coincidence that I tuned into the channel at that moment. Some of my best memories of the last year involve rare occasions when I gave myself a full permission to do nothing. But then could not escape feeling guilty about doing nothing in the aftermath.

Guilt could be one of the warning signs of burnout. You're constantly working, but can't seem to get all of your work done. Maybe because your workload is too heavy or you can't concentrate, and you eventually feel guilty for not completing all your tasks, which leads to working even more.

For when you want a simple, science-backed plan to help minimize stress and regulate your nervous system for more well-being: meet the Wellness Sisters on a mission to beat burnout. Their burnout book explains why women experience burnout differently than men and offers practical strategies to stop surviving and start living.

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

Some affirmations for burnout that help get through the day ♡

I give myself permission to just sit and breathe deeply
I give myself permission to relax and be worry free
I give myself permission to be at ease
Everything is going to be okay, dear one