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The crazy thing about burnout is, you don’t see it coming. Suddenly you don’t just feel creatively empty, disinterested in the work you do, and sometimes even a little angry or resentful without really knowing why, but you also feel like the bottom dropped out. You feel caught totally off guard, leaving you thinking: What just happened? We were cruising along! We were firing on all cylinders! We were having the season of our lives! 

In truth, burnout is kind of a titration process. Do you remember the lab experiment in high school chemistry class where you had two glass beakers of clear chemical solutions, and you had to mix one into the other, only one drip by one drip at a time, until suddenly, with that last particular drip, the whole flask of clear liquid turned bright magenta? That’s titration, and burnout is quite a lot like that. Little by little it starts to build imperceptibly while you are busy doing your best, stepping up to new challenges, producing your most creative work yet, or stepping into a big project or role or next level.

Everything seemed fine, and then WHAM! You feel exhausted, angry, inexplicably moody, completely drained creatively, and like everything everyone wants from you is either infuriating or completely overwhelming. Making decisions you know are not that big of a deal become agonizing dilemmas, and worst of all, your efforts to just GET THROUGH IT seem to only make things worse.

Burnout is a very real and very challenging state for creatives and entrepreneurs, and I think that we need to talk about it — to bring awareness to the fact that it happens, and to why it happens, and to share remedies as well as prevention plans so that we can return to a healthy and harmonious creative flow in our work and services.

Today’s episode is devoted to acknowledging, understanding, and recovering from burnout, and also implementing preventative practices to avoid burnout in the future. We will be diving into what burnout is and how to spot it coming, understanding why burnout makes us feel stuck, what to actually do (or not do) to effectively recover from burnout, what you can do to help yourself return to your creative flow, and how to mitigate or avoid burnout in the future.

If you’ve been through it, and are excited to learn some new and nourishing tools to support your recovery and return to feeling inspired, or if you’re in the thick of it, either feeling those early hints that your creative energy is maybe a bit depleted or fully knowing that you are running on fumes, I’ve got your back. This episode is full of real tools, perspectives, and practices to help you through it with grace and big relief.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Understanding Burnout— The episode delves into what burnout is, how it sneaks up on creatives and entrepreneurs, and the subtle signs to watch out for before it becomes overwhelming.
  
  
• Recovery Strategies — Jen shares essential tools and shifts for recovering from burnout, including the importance of creating space, managing time effectively, and setting healthy boundaries.
  
  
• Preventative Practices — The discussion includes strategies to prevent burnout, such as maintaining a balanced schedule, recognizing the difference between focus and obsession, and adjusting timelines to avoid stress.
  
  
• Advice From Experience — Jen shares her personal journey with burnout, including how she transformed her business model to make it more sustainable and fulfilling.
  
  
• Support and Self-Care — Emphasizing the importance of self-care and community support, the episode offers insights into building a care team and integrating self-care practices into daily life.

Mentioned in this Episode: 

• National Institutes for Health
  
  
• Psychologist Herbert Freudenberger who coined the term “burnout”
  
  
• Adrenal fatigue
  
  
• Ina Garten’s memoir Be Ready When the Luck Happens
  
  
• Called to Bloom Episode 03 “How I Transformed My Floral Business to Align with My True Calling”
  

 

Resources:

• Join the Poetry of Flowers — holistic floral artistry online courses to empower your creative practice from anywhere in the world
  
  
• Explore Workshops & Mentorships — deepen your floral artistry practice in-person
  
  
• Discover Tarot of Flowers — a gift of abundant floral wisdom for any flower-lover or seeker
  
  
• Use code CALLEDTOBLOOM for 10% off your first Poetry of Flowers purchase or your first Tarot of Flowers order

 

Details from Our Sponsors:

This episode of the Called to Bloom podcast is brought to you by the Poetry of Flowers  holistic online floral education. Use code CALLEDTOBLOOM for 10% off at checkout.

Keep in Touch:

Thank you so much for being here, and for being part of this radiant community as we step into these creative callings together. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love to hear from you! Connect with me on Instagram: @nectar_and_bloom and @calledtobloompodcast, and please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify to help other creatives and seekers like you to find their way here too.

 

Full Transcript:

The crazy thing about burnout is you don't see it coming. Suddenly you don't just feel creatively empty, disinterested in the work you do, and sometimes even a little angry or resentful without really knowing why. But you also feel like the bottom dropped out. You feel caught totally off guard, leaving you thinking, what just happened? We were just cruising along. We were firing on all cylinders. We were having the season of our lives.

In truth, burnout is a kind of titration process. Do you remember the lab experiment in high school chemistry class where you had two glass beakers of clear chemical solutions and you had to mix one into the other, only one drip by one drip at a time, until suddenly, with that last particular drip, the whole flask of clear liquid turned bright magenta? That's titration. And burnout is quite a lot like that.

Little by little, it starts to build imperceptibly while you are busy doing your best, stepping up to new challenges, producing your most creative work yet, or stepping into a big project or role or next level.

Everything seemed fine and then wham, you feel inexplicably moody, completely drained creatively, and like everything everyone wants from you is either infuriating or completely overwhelming. Worst of all, your efforts to just get through it seem to only make things worse.

Burnout is a very real and very challenging state for creatives and entrepreneurs. And I think that we need to talk about it to bring awareness to the fact that it happens and to why it happens and to share remedies as well as prevention plans so that we can return to a healthy and harmonious creative flow in our work and services.

The human body is an incredible workhorse and also a healing machine. But as time goes on, it can feel harder and harder to course if you don't have some tools and frameworks in place to support and pace your creative output.

Today's episode is devoted to acknowledging, understanding, and recovering from burnout, and also implementing preventable practices to avoid burnout in the future. We will be diving into what burnout is and how to spot it coming, understanding why burnout makes us feel stuck, what to actually do or not do to effectively recover from burnout, what you can do to help yourself return to your creative flow, and how to mitigate or avoid burnout in the future.

If you've been through it and are excited to learn some new and nourishing tools to support your recovery and return to feeling inspired, or if you're in the thick of it, either feeling those early hints that your creative energy is maybe a bit depleted or fully knowing that you are running on fumes, I've got your back.

This episode is full of real tools, perspectives, and practices to help you through it with grace and big relief.

*

Welcome to the Called to Bloom podcast. I'm Jen Cavender, founder of Nectar & Bloom and your host as we explore tools and holistic methods that empower you to craft an inspired career and a fulfilling creative life. I am a floral artist and educator who left an academic career to build my dream floral design studio.

Now I empower flower lovers, florists, and creative entrepreneurs like you to find your aligned path and to build your dream. Together we go deep into topics covering creative entrepreneurship, health and wellbeing, sustainability, personal transformation, the art and business of working with flowers, and practices for manifesting a life you love.

If you are ready to feel inspired and empowered as you build your next Aligned Creative Chapter, you are in the right place. Now, let's bloom.

*

This episode was brought to you by The Poetry of Flowers. I have a story about burnout for you. At one point in my floristry career, I was teaching so many group workshops and one-on-one mentorships, plus doing weddings, that I was starting to feel like I was about to ruin this for myself.

Like all burnout, it hit me like an invisible wall that I sprinted into. And it really rocked me because I had chosen this profession from a big career pivot into my dream to build my own business, to be my own boss, and to create immersive experiences in the language of flowers for my clients.

This wasn't a job working for a bad boss or a job in the wrong industry for me. I had created all of it and I was burning myself out.

Out of that concern, and because often an ambitious creative's response to a problem is to do more or create something new, decided it would serve my audience well if I created an online education experience where people could learn floral artistry with me from wherever they were in the world and at their own pace.

I started the Poetry of Flowers as a monthly membership, offering new online floristry classes and live sessions every month for as long as you subscribed. What I didn't think about, which I feel many of us do with our well-intended big ideas,

was how this would play out for me, the creator. At first, it was thrilling, and the ability to reach and teach more people was so fulfilling, it lifted me right out of burnout and into a kind of creative discovery mission that worked. It carried me, and it empowered me to serve more people with the holistic perspectives and techniques I teach in my workshops and mentorships.

The problem was it was not at all sustainable in that format. I went on like this for nearly three years. My early members will remember this. And in some ways I loved what I was creating. It was thrilling and challenging for me. And my student designers got to look forward to new floral education experiences each month.

However, it's easy to look back on that time now and think everything was fine, that was cool.

But I also remember vividly the lesson I learned, that trying to get away from the brink of burnout by doubling down to demand more of myself and with no break or end in sight

was actually a recipe for real full-on burnout.

I had set up a system in which I needed to generate a new full-length online course every single month. And while I had a plethora of ideas, techniques, and types of designs to teach written

The burnout made me feel like I was dead inside, like I couldn't focus and like even the easiest things were suddenly really, really hard.

Thankfully, through the use of some wonderful perspectives and practices that I'm going to share with you in this episode, I was able to navigate through this behind the scenes burnout and emerge with a much better plan.

In a nutshell, I made the Poetry of Flowers a broad but also finite collection floristry classes, which I think makes it more accessible and completable for my student designers

And you can either purchase it a la carte in an individual course bundle on a specific design topic of your choice, like for instance, the Ultimate Bouquet Designs course bundle, which includes six classes on different styles of hand-gathered bouquet designs, plus a styling and posing

Or you can access Poetry of Flowers as a membership that just gives unlimited access to the entire Poetry of Flowers suite of course bundles and resources with a one-time payment for a full year or lifetime access depending what suits you best.

This plan allows creative souls and floral artists from anywhere in the world to access holistic online floral education with me through the Poetry of Flowers, and it is sustainable and supportive for me as the creator and guide as well.

In short, I had a good idea and I'm so glad I went for it, but it needed to be reshaped in order to make it sustainable for me and more accessible and effective for my members and student designers. And this happens to work and feel so much better for everyone.

If you are curious, Poetry of Flowers encapsulates all of the techniques and guidance that I teach in my workshops and mentorships. It gives you access to a holistic set of floral artistry courses that nourish your creativity, meet you where you are, equip you with accessible tools and techniques.

and set you up with a holistic approach to this creative endeavor. Whether you are starting a business, growing an existing floristry practice, or just diving in for your own creative nourishment. Best of all, you can attend the prerecorded courses at your own

and from wherever you are in the world.

To explore a la carte courses and the All Access membership, head to nectarandbloomfloral.com and head to the Courses tab to learn more. That's nectarandbloomfloral.com and head to Courses.

And as a Called to Bloom listener, can get 10 % off your Poetry of Flowers online course or membership with code CALLEDTOBLOOM, C-A-L-L-E-D-T-O-B-L-O-O-M, one word at checkout.

And now back to our episode.

WHAT IS BURNOUT AND HOW TO SPOT IT COMING

Okay, let's dive in here starting with an exploration of what burnout is exactly and how to spot it coming.

As I mentioned at the top of this episode, burnout is sneaky. It typically comes on bit by bit, almost imperceptibly, until it crashes over you like a ton of bricks.

Suddenly you are creatively sapped, everything feels hard, and nothing you try to do to get past it or plow through it seems to be working.

What we do know is how awful it feels. Burnout often feels like frustration, irritability, agitation, exhaustion, difficulty focusing, and like your creative wellspring has just suddenly dried up.

The good news is that your creative wellspring can't dry up. To be human is to be creative. But it can certainly feel that way, and when other conditions in your body and mind are overly taxed, It can be harder to connect with that creative wellspring temporarily.

For me, burnout feels like I suddenly can't stand what I'm doing, like I'm in agony, like I'm inexplicably overwhelmed, or like trying to do what I normally love to do is suddenly out of alignment, which is very disorienting, especially when you aren't sure if you are suddenly out of alignment, actually, or whether you are just hitting a lovely wall of burnout.

According to the National Institutes of Health and the National Library of Medicine, the term burnout was coined by the American psychologist Herbert Frudenberger in the 1970s to describe the exhaustion, listlessness, and overwhelm experienced by caregiving professionals under severe stress and the high ideals of their work demands.

Since then, it has become apparent that this condition can actually affect anyone dealing with ongoing stress, high demands, or overworking, all of which creative entrepreneurs are susceptible to.

The NIH describes the causes of burnout as feeling either constantly overworked or under challenged, being under time pressure all the time, and extreme commitment that results in people neglecting their own needs. It also delineates the signs of burnout as being exhaustion, feeling drained, alienation from work-related activities, finding a job increasingly stressful or frustrating, and reduced performance due to that listlessness or inability to concentrate.

Now, please note that I'm only here as an artist-entrepreneur and educator to share my experience and tools and perspectives that I've gained on my journey that I hope will be helpful to you. If you're experiencing any severe exhaustion, guilt, or feelings of hopelessness, please reach out to a mental health care professional to get support.

In fact, as your friend and guide here, I encourage you at any stage of life or place in your evolution to seek support from a counselor or therapist to help you move through life's inherent challenges. As we explore further into burnout and the tools and perspectives that have helped me, please keep this always in mind.

In the simplest terms, burnout is a mental and emotional state that can also express physically in your body too, caused by ongoing stress, insurmountable demands,

overworking and holding yourself to unreasonable standards and ideals. I have done and experienced all of these and more. And the first tool I want to offer you is to not be hard on yourself for one second.

If your ambition or love of serving others has gotten the better of you, don't be angry with yourself. Be compassionate and understanding. What you need is care and support to start to turn things around, and that starts from within.

It's tricky to see burnout coming because, like the chemistry lab experiment of titration that I mentioned, burnout doesn't really reveal itself until it's too late. The small signs along the way are like those clear drips of solution, one clear fluid dripping into another clear fluid in the science lab, and while the chemical composition is slowly starting to change, it isn't visibly apparent until just enough of one solution suddenly changes the entire mixture.

Now, while the small signs that lead up to experiencing burnout are subtle, here are a few to watch out for:

One, you're really revved up. It's hard to wind down after a big project or event.

Two, you're having trouble sleeping or staying asleep, like you wake up in the middle of the night or early in the morning and you can't fall back to sleep.

Three, you can't get your mind off work even when you know it's time to be with family or friends and off the clock.

Four, you feel tired even after rest.

Five, you start to feel emotionally flat like you're drained or there's just no juice left.

Six, you're getting headaches, stomach aches or back aches. The body always tells us when something is up.

Seven, you notice yourself procrastinating or just having a hard time completing tasks.

And eight, you feel a loss of interest in activities that you normally love.

There are more. Just type "early stages of burnout" into your search engine and have a peek. I wish I would have a few years ago when I didn't really know what to look for. And again, the point of noticing isn't to get hard on yourself. The point of noticing is to become more aware of what's going on inside you while you, like everyone, have been on autopilot making it all happen. With awareness comes opportunity to shift.

Now let's look at why burnout makes us feel stuck. Put simply, we don't feel like we have anything left. When burnt out, everything feels hard and overwhelming.

Often we are experiencing something called "adrenal fatigue", which I learned about from an acupuncturist that I've worked with. Essentially, adrenal fatigue happens when your adrenal glands have been overworked, producing stress response hormones to deal with chronic stresses, rendering them temporarily unable to produce a normal amount of hormones.

Fortunately, simple shifts to get enough rest, to eat well, reduce stress, and taking natural herbal supplements can support your body's return to balance. I fully recommend working with an acupuncturist or naturopath to learn more about this.

When we feel stuck, sometimes we can panic or get hard on ourselves because when we are stressed, it feels like there's too much to do anyway. So if we feel stuck, we're making it worse. can be a rough spiral.

You may try to do more or to double down as I have done in the past to get out of the burnout, but that actually makes it worse. The more exhausted and irritable and sometimes even resentful you feel, the more you need to actually slow down, step back and make a change from a calmer and more grounded place.

In the state of burnout, we just feel used up and that's kind of scary because it feels really inconvenient as it usually happens when things are the busiest and it can feel unnerving because you might feel like you're

You might think things like, is this how I am now? Or what went wrong? What do I need to do? The good news is that you are not broken and this state is not your new reality. But you do need to stop trying to get away from it by doing things or trying to get back into your normal routine or productivity level in order to get through it.

HOW TO RECOVER FROM BURNOUT 

So how do we get unstuck and start to recover from burnout?

Here are the essential tools and shifts that I have found to be the most helpful when recovering from burnout:

1. Space. If you're like me, your first reaction is probably to reject this, but the first thing you need when you feel burnt out is space.

You need time off or at least time to yourself to be free of your normal level of creative and work demands. I know, who doesn't like or want space or time off? But you know when you're in that mode of wanting to get things done, you feel like the only answer is to get it done. But when you are burnt out, everything about getting it done feels frustrating, elusive, and difficult.

One of my favorite parts of Ina Garden's memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, which was a Nectar & Bloom book club selection earlier this year, was when Ina describes her own experience with burnout. She had made Barefoot Contessa a sensational success, but one day she realized she could not do it any longer. She knew it and she was devastated and disoriented, but she had to reckon with her burnout to return to creativity.

In seeking support herself during that time, she shares how she had to stop doing everything in order to get clarity and move forward again.

"Type A people," she writes, "can't begin to think about what to do next until they stop what they are doing. They need space and time to allow the universe to reveal what's next." When I read that, I felt really seen. It's not what an ambitious creative entrepreneur wants to hear, but it is deeply true. And after a moment's reflection, it's also relieving. We have to pause and to create space in order to open up to the next creative calling, or to return to our natural creative flow.

Even just a little while ago, I had a really busy, heavily booked month. And while I was loving my work and managing production and teaching as well as I can, alongside learning about and producing this new podcast, while also teaching my weekly yoga class and other normal life things, I could sense that I was operating at an unsustainable

I started to feel that overly revved up feeling. My sleep started to get weird and I found myself getting incrementally more irritable, even though everything was going great and turning out beautifully. I realized because I've been through this before now and as the cowboys say, it ain't my first rodeo, I knew that all I needed to do was have one full day with zero obligations. It didn't mean I didn't want to work on the podcast or planning marketing content or different tasks I need to do, but it did mean I needed to not be on anyone's time schedule for 24 hours.

As soon as I could plan a slower day, I moved things around, I skipped a yoga class I normally go to on that day, I made sure that there were no calls or appointments on my calendar, so that I could do things in my own time, and I felt my anxiety and irritation physically start to unwind and dissolve just from giving myself that day of space. If we catch ourselves in time, we can make a very small shift to that and don't ask yourself to be in high production mode for longer than you can withstand it healthily.

2. Time Management. When it comes to recovering from burnout, managing your time more consciously and intentionally will help you notice when you are doing what you need to do, when you are overwhelmed and maybe procrastinating and needing to just take a little walk outside to reset for 20 minutes, for example, or when you are overstuffing your calendar.

Often we talk about time management as being more efficient with time or staying on task, but I want you to try managing your time in a new way, with balance as the goal. Make sure there is a good balance between your booked time and your protected time off.

This time off might sometimes still be open for work sessions, but you need space to be on your own time. And you also need space to just relax and enjoy yourself and really be off. It's not indulgent. It is part of being a healthy, whole human being and a successful creative entrepreneur.

3. Look at Obsession. I will be the first to admit I get obsessed. There is a very fine line between ambitious focus and obsession. But as with many things, it comes down to your gut feeling.

In order to have an honest look at whether obsession is taking over, all you need to do is notice how you are feeling. Are you feeling like time has fallen away and you are in your wild creative zone, lost in the creative process as you bring together a new design with stems and colors that thrill you and progress your creative work? Or are you feeling like time is running out? You are behind. You cannot possibly stop for dinner because this thing has to get done before you could take a break.

If you're feeling anywhere in the range of the former, you are just focused and in flow. It's okay. If you're feeling anywhere in the latter sensations, urgency, panic, tightness, et cetera, you are getting obsessed.

Obsession is thrilling, but it is also kind of where passion verges on madness. And while madness is sometimes embraced as part of creativity, it is an imbalanced state and therefore not sustainable.

When we are obsessed, we make risky decisions for our overall mental, emotional, and physical health that start to compound. We forget to eat or drink water or hold off on going to the bathroom. So many times I've been designing and said to myself, just one more stem, just one more thing after I finished this, can you relate?

We stay up too late answering emails or skip time that we meant to go for a walk or stretch...And all of that adds up. All we need to do is become more aware of how that feels in order to catch it early. Be conscious of when your passion slips into obsession, and take a break on purpose. Get back into balance and intentionality before you return.

4. Adjusted Timelines. You may have in mind how long something you need to do will take. And then you may learn in the process that it actually takes a lot longer, especially when you are building something new or pioneering a new skill or operation in your business or creative practice.

In order to come back from burnout, adjust your timeline. Decide with confidence that it is more worth it to you to let this just take a little bit longer than it is to be stuck in that drained, listless, and frustrated prison of burnout.

While we are talking about timelines too, it always helps to zoom out and think of your life on a larger scale. I talk about this in the Called to Bloom episode three, "How I Transformed My Floral Business to Align with my True Calling": How do you want to feel when you are aged and gray and near the end of your life? I know I want to look back and be so glad that I did what I decided to do. And when you think about it, that is more often than not taking care of yourself, which is a good investment for a happier, healthier life down the road too. And also stepping away from work or an unreasonable timeline in order to rebalance and get into a healthier, more grounded state.

Is pushing through this week or this month as burnout starts to grow inside you more worth it than stepping back and deciding that you could expand this timeline to make things easier and more harmonious for you?

Think about it and be honest with yourself.

5. Boundaries In order to recover from burnout, we really need good boundaries. Maybe you know this already, that your love for helping and serving others makes it challenging to have good boundaries.

In that case, remember that if you are not healthy, well and supported, you cannot do or serve your best work to others. In that state, you are also kind of a ticking time bomb for a big burnout because you are giving too much of yourself at the sacrifice of your own well-being. Healthy boundaries with others and their expectations help you to be healthier, happier, and of better service in the long run to everyone around you.

On the other hand, maybe you're thinking: that's not me. I'm great with boundaries and with saying no to others or opportunities that are not aligned. And if so, that's great. But do you have good boundaries with yourself? When you say you're going to be finished with your work at 6 p.m. so you can make dinner and be with your family, can you keep to that?

When you promise yourself you're going to sleep at 10 p.m. so you can get eight hours of rest, can you stay off your email or social channels to keep that promise even when it feels like it's all up to you to make anything happen and to keep this business going?

This is hard, but it is just as important as having good boundaries with others and with opportunities.Practice having radically self-loving, self-respecting boundaries with your passion and ambition and your body, mind and creativity will thrive. 

Take it from me personally, this is a practice that a conscious effort and is so worth it. This is also a better investment in your business's success than grinding away and putting in the late night hours by a long shot.I am still working on this and the more I do, the better I feel. So let's work on it together.

6. Delegation. If you don't have to do it yourself specifically, delegate. Let a task or a duty go to someone else who is happy to do it, who wants to support you, who is glad to make a little cash to do what they love to do.

To recover from burnout, you'll need to let a few things go. So look for ways to delegate in a healthy, harmonious way that supports you.

7. Regular Breaks and Rest. The antidote to burnout is rest. Build into your workflows time to get up and stretch. I set a timer for about 20 minutes when I have a lot of writing or computer work to do and I get up to stretch when it goes off.

After three or four of these, I take a short walk outside, visit the garden, or walk around the block. It helps your brain to stay fresh and to return to creative brain waves to get outside and walk. It's also wonderful for your circulation and your body overall too.

When you have a busy week, make sure to observe a weekend of your choice to give yourself time off to be free and do whatever feels good that day. When you have a busy month or season, make sure to plan little breaks between big pushes, and maybe give yourself a little retreat somewhere that you find inspiring and relaxing. My husband and I prioritize a few trips to peaceful islands or shorelines where we just practice yoga, journal, and play outside.

This is a huge part of how I stay grounded and nourished with the level of productivity and creative output that my being likes to generate.

8. Support and Self-Care. As a huge support for recovery from burnout, assemble your care team and implement your favorite self-care practices. You don't have to do everything that you've heard is healthy for you. Just start with what feels good, grounding, nourishing, or energizing, or fun to you.

A care team can include an acupuncturist, a massage therapist, a physical therapist, a naturopath, a Reiki practitioner, a cognitive behavioral therapist, a yoga studio, an Ayurvedic practitioner, or really any other nurturing, healing profession or experience that calls to you.

Having a handful of people who provide these healing experiences identified and saved as contacts in your phone means you have a care team at your fingertips to support your health and wellbeing.

Remember that community is a huge part of that too, so make space to see friends and just laugh and relax with people who delight you and inspire you and lift you up. And again, when it comes to personal self-care practices, maybe just introduce one new thing at a time until it becomes second nature.

Then maybe add another one. Don't start out with a list of nine things you have to do in the morning before 7 a.m. to start practicing self-care. That's just stressful. Instead, maybe decide on an early bedtime that you keep for several weeks or a few months, just getting good at it and enjoying it.

Then maybe you add a yoga class or a peaceful mindfulness practice or a monthly massage, anything based on what feels the best to you.

If you're noticing a theme, you're right. So much of success and wellbeing, both, is based on knowing yourself and tuning into how you actually feel. And what a beautiful reality to discover.

We are here to learn about ourselves so that we can be good stewards of the gift of this vital creative body and this life that we are here to live.

HOW TO GET REINSPIRED

Alright, so now that we have made some adjustments and put some healthy changes into place to recover from burnout, let's look at a few practices for how to get back to feeling creative and inspired.

First, you'll want to implement improved systems for your work. Don't go back to the old way you were doing things. This takes diligence, but you can approach your work differently. Be patient with yourself, maybe have an accountability buddy, and just practice noticing when you get revved up or want to take on more, or are just starting to feel those little tired, irritable, agitated symptoms in your mind or body.

Make sure you say no to work that doesn't thrill you or doesn't really move the needle for your business.

Set clear boundaries with yourself about when you are on the clock and when you are off. Protect your weekends, no matter which days of the week you take them. Many event floral designers take Sunday and Monday off or Monday and Tuesday when they have an event week that culminates in a Saturday wedding, for example.

Secondly, connect with nature. Get outside. Nature will soothe you, ground you, regulate you, and heal you. Nature will also inspire you.

Every time I spend time in nature, find myself saying, nature is the ultimate and original floral artist, the ultimate and original installation artist, and really our ultimate inspiration.

Thirdly, make space for novelty and exploration. New fodder, new experiences, and space to learn about new things that intrigue you are all refreshing and energizing.

Once you've had the chance to recover from burnout, as you come back into inspiration and creativity, looking to other art forms, having an adventure or taking in new and inspiring material can be deeply creatively nourishing.

The novel experience or exploration can be as simple as a new book, a podcast, a movie, or a show. It can be as nurturing as a manicure, a pedicure, a spa day, or a massage.

It can be as expansive as a trip somewhere new, a solo retreat, or enrollment in a course that thrills you. It can also be as accessible as lying on the floor for 10 minutes a day with your legs up the wall, listening to music that relaxes you and delights you.

A few other ideas for novelty and exploration include making space for creative play sessions, creating with flowers or any other art medium just for fun, making space to daydream or journal, taking solo time to be free and flow on your own,

or enjoying friends and community time through a picnic in the park or a hike or a group class that makes you feel connected.

TIPS FOR AVOIDING BURNOUT IN THE FUTURE

With this nourishment in place, let's bring it all together into a few pointers and reminders that will help you avoid or at least mitigate burnout in the future. Here are some of my best points of advice and a few reminders to support you.

First, remember to practice noticing the situations and subtle signs that burnout is brewing. Catch it early and make a change.

Two: Plan a break or recovery time after big seasons or big pushes in work, and find manageable ways to delegate when you have to charge on until you get through a busy time.

Three: Assemble your support and self-care team so that you have nourishment coming in while you are in high production mode.

Four: Make activities or non-activities part of your booking process and part of your regular weekly schedule.

Five: Strengthen your boundaries with others, with opportunities that are not aligned, and especially with yourself and your beautiful passion and ambition. Go for harmony rather than three sheets to the wind or an internal struggle trying to control your drive to achieve.

Six: Have support in place through friends, community, therapy, a walk you love to go on with your dog, journaling, or being in nature.

And lastly, focus on what actually moves the needle in your business and what actually is fulfilling to you in the process.

Busy seasons, big projects, and periods of unsustainable output and effort may not be entirely avoidable. But having these tools in place will definitely help mitigate and ideally avoid burnout in the first place, or just help you get back into balance and feeling re-inspired with more ease.

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As we close for today, remember these two takeaways:

One, you can mitigate situations that cause burnout by having good boundaries, saying no when work is not aligned, focusing on the work that actually moves the needle in your business and that you find fulfilling, and making non-activities or unavailable time part of your booking and scheduling process.

And two, you can also recover from potential burnout sooner, before it gets to that shocking moment that feels like you hit a wall or the floor just dropped out, if you notice the subtle signs and recognize the situations that typically cause it for you by taking a look at past experiences.

Anytime we take a moment to look back and to reflect on our past experiences, either recent or more distant, we are given a chance to learn from and observe patterns that will help us do better and make different decisions in the future.

And when it comes to getting unstuck and re-inspired or getting back to feeling creatively excited and back in touch with your inherent and effortless creative energy, think of shifting away from asking yourself to produce and instead toward asking yourself what would feel nourishing to you? What feels exciting or inspiring to your mind, to your body, to your emotions or to your spirit? What are you drawn to? Is it just space to rest?

Is it an instrument you like to play for your own joy and love of music? Is it a class you've been wanting to take or just a whole day where you have nothing scheduled and nowhere to be at any specific time? Is it getting to create just for yourself, just for the exploration and fun of it again?

You are your own most accurate barometer and weathervane. Your body tells you in many ways when it is under pressure and overloaded mentally or physically.

Your gut intuition and instincts give you an energetic pulse or nudge when you are near something toxic or overwhelming and a totally different pulse or nudge when you are near something exciting and enriching.

One of our greatest skills is just being able to tap in and listen, to notice and to hear the indicators our bodies are giving us. This will go a long way too with avoiding burnout in the first place.

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That definitely feels better, right? It is so helpful to know what's going on, why it's going on, and what we can do about it, especially when dealing with something very tricky like burnout that creatives and entrepreneurs face that can make us think we need to do more of the opposite of what we actually need.

Save this episode as a reminder when you need it and maybe share it with a friend who you know could benefit from it too. I would not be surprised if just about every creative entrepreneur and floral artist out there were to raise a hand and say that yes indeed they too have found themselves at some point totally taken by surprise when they hit the invisible wall and had to deal with burnout in order to get back into their creative flow.

Let's change that together.

I hope that this episode helps you if you are going through burnout currently and helps you to avoid it more effectively moving forward too. Let's bring more awareness, compassion, and conscious support into the work we do and into the lives we are here to live and enjoy together.

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Beautifully done. You just completed another episode of the Called to Bloom podcast. And I don't know about you, but I always think that finishing a resource that nourishes my being and makes me feel more connected feels so good.

 

Now to expand your experience, hit follow so you never miss an episode and also head over to calledtobloompodcast.com to find show notes, discount codes and details from our sponsors.

 

If you're ready to deepen your practice with classes and immersive experiences in flowers and wellbeing, head over to nectarandbloomfloral.com and explore my workshops, one-on-one mentorships, Poetry of Flowers online education courses, wellbeing experiences, and my original Tarot of Flowers deck. You can also find me on Instagram, at Nectar and Bloom, for more inspiration, tools, and like-minded community.

 

For now, keep blooming. The world needs what you are here to create.

 

[Cover Image captured by Ariel Min Photography.]