.png)
Life demands a lot from you. With endless to-dos for our work and personal lives, we often wonder how we can still accomplish our goals while juggling work, family, friends, and taking care of ourselves.
Did you know that by addressing your hormones and making some tweaks, you can also avoid burnout?
Here is your 2022 ultimate anti-burnout guide:
1.Live in Alignment with your Natural Rhythms
Cycle syncing is more than just avoiding PMS and period problems. It's also about aligning your energy to your body's natural rhythm. This alignment puts you in a flow state and you'll easily know when you can handle more on your plate and when you need to scale back for rest.
This type of push/pull energy is built into your cycle to give you motivation to accomplish your goals, while also providing space for reflection and relaxation.
If you aren't cycle syncing yet and want to align your life to your body's natural rhythm, take my free Cycle Syncing Made Easy course. This partners beautifully with my free 30-day Smoothie Challenge to get started balancing your cycle if you're experiencing hormone symptoms.
2. Heal Your Adrenal Glands
Your adrenal glands are responsible for helping you feel calm or putting your body in a state of fight or flight. These glands help regulate cortisol (one of your stress hormones) and when left fatigued leads to exhaustion and burnout. You can then feel lack of focus, have a bloated midsection and feel more stressed than you actually are.
By focusing on your adrenal glands, you build up your internal defense against stress. You'll feel more emotionally and physically equipped to handle whatever life throws your way.
The best way to focus on your adrenal glands are to check your workouts (you may need to scale back cardio and the intensity if you've been feeling more stressed), focus on sleeping better, and eating more complex carbs at night. Eating carbs at night can help lower cortisol and increase melatonin (your sleepy hormone) so you sleep better and wake up more energized.
3. Identify What Causes You Stress
When you're feeling stressed or near burnout, this is a sign that you've been going at an unrealistic pace for awhile and it's time to reassess your habits.
Take time to observe your energy and stress levels on the different elements of your day.
Do you notice after working all day you're exhausted and have nothing else to give?
How can you lighten your load during the day, set more boundaries on your time, and take more breaks?
Do you notice you're completely exhausted after a workout?
Look at what phase you're in with your cycle - your body can handle more strenuous workouts during your follicular and ovulation phases, while you should scale back the intensity during your menstrual and luteal phases. When we push ourselves too much with our workouts, it can actually cause your body to be too stressed and can lead to burnout.
Do you jampack your day and overschedule every minute?
Sometimes when we don't want to focus on ourselves or certain issues in our life that needs to be addressed, we can avoid tuning into our bodies by overscheduling our lives. If you have no wiggle room during the day and barely take a minute for rest, this type of schedule will always lead you to burnout. There are times of the month you can handle a busier schedule, while before and during your period, you're meant to do less and reflect on yourself and life.
Don't be afraid of getting to know your stress patterns and tune into the areas that need you to make some changes.
4. Feel Joy Daily
2020 and 2021 have been hard years for everyone. We're left in a world of uncertainty and have been forced to rethink how we do spend our leisure time. We've often felt isolated and alone, which can make us blind to the joy we do have in our lives.
Write a list of activities, people and experiences that truly light you up and bring you joy. The more you can spark happiness in your life, the more feel good hormones your body produces. Feel good hormones help lower stress levels and can protect you from burnout.
You are meant to live a happy life, and even when we walk through darker, more challenging times, we must still feel joy daily.
Joy is good for your soul and is crucial for your health.
5. Let go of Resistance
It's easy to fee buried under our responsibilities and forget we have the choice on what stays in our life and what goes.
By actively living a life that is true to you, it will help manage your stress levels and avoid burnout because every situation and person is one that you have welcomed into your life because it makes you happier than you can ever be on your own.
With that said, it's hard to let go of people and situations that are holding you back. Maybe you need to work on things with your partner. Maybe you need to get involved in something with like-minded people that are not your children or usual social circle. Maybe it's time to find a new job that challenges you more and is a better fit for who you are now.
Life is constantly changing and you're always evolving. When you notice you no longer feel as happy doing what you're doing, then it's time to challenge yourself to make changes. This can include improving upon current situations or finding new outlets that bring you joy.
Don't be afraid to let go of resistance because it's causing you more stress. The path of least resistance is the one that will make you feel lighter and most like yourself.