Ep 132: 6 Energy Shifts to Help You Beat Burnout

Feeling drained, overwhelmed, or stuck in survival mode? You’re not alone, and you don’t have to stay there. In this episode, I’m sharing six powerful energy shifts that will help you beat burnout and feel more balanced, focused, and alive in your everyday life.

We’ll cover:

• How movement creates energy (without needing to spend hours at the gym)
• Simple nutrition and mindful eating practices that sustain you instead of depleting you
• Mindfulness techniques that calm stress and bring you back to the present
• Ways to clear mental and physical clutter so you can breathe easier
• How to reframe stressful thoughts and shift your perspective
• Practical self-care habits—like sleep, nature time, and play—that truly recharge your batteries

By the end of this episode, you’ll walk away with realistic, actionable strategies you can start today—no huge life overhaul required.

Resources & Links:

• Connect with me on Instagram: @kortney.a.rivard
• Connect with me on Facebook: @kortneyrivardwellnesscoaching
• Join my email community in one of 3 ways:
  • send me a message HERE
  • take the free quiz to get on the list HERE
  • download the free e-book, Creating a Life You Love HERE
• Follow my Freedom & Aliveness Project on my blog
• If you loved this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it helps more women like you find the show!

Transcript

Speaker: 0:51

Hello friends and welcome back to Real, Brave and Unstoppable. I'm so excited to have you here listening to the show today, and once again, I find myself Feeling guilty for not having more consistent episodes out. If you're a regular listener, I know that can sometimes be frustrating. I have a few podcasts that over the years have thought, oh, I really like this, and then the cadence slows down and I'm just waiting for another one. Not to say that you're all like just waiting for another one, but if you are, my apologies, we're working on that. But today, if you've been feeling burned out or exhausted, or just kinda stuck, this is the episode for you. So hopefully, hopefully you'll find some good nuggets in here. We're gonna talk about some energy shifts to help with that. The work I do is really all born out of my own personal experience, like the work I do in my private practice. I find that, you know, the people that I'm working with, the people that I'm helping oftentimes end up having similar struggles to what I've had in the past or, or maybe I still, you know, go, experiencing them. I just have different tools to navigate them. So it's fun to help people. It's really rewarding to help people with those sorts of things. But this time, you know, I'm, I'll just say it, I'm 52. Feels weird to say that, but you know, the forties and fifties, I mean, if you're there, you're gonna probably resonate a lot with this, but there are a lot of weird things that happen, right? Things are just changing so much. We have, you know, work changes. A lot of people I talk to are just like, I'm over this. I'm not at retirement yet. But I don't know, I don't know if I can hang in there for another 10 or 15 years or whatever it is. You know, there's retirement fears. I talk to people about that all the time. There's also the thought of like, who am I anymore? 'cause I'm, my kids are grown up. They're, you know, I, they don't need me as much. My, my marriage maybe isn't exactly what, you know, we're trying to kind of rebuild that after the kid years, that's not everyone, of course. And if that's not you, I just wanna make sure you know how lucky you are. There, you know, there's work pressures where some people are caring for elderly parents. Uh, you know, lots of different things. We've got menopause, perimenopause, hormonal shifts, just other, you know, issues that come up. We're not able to bounce back as quickly as we used to. So, just a lot of things kind of hit and that creates a couple of things. It creates physical fatigue and also mental fatigue. And also in today, you know, today in our society, like we also don't take good enough care of ourselves. And I've noticed that for myself recently, I've kind of been in a place where I feel a little stuck, you know, feel tired. And kind of like noticing that I had a lot of like, just stuff up in my brain that was also creating some, some fatigue, some extra load. And that, you know, that extra load, that fatigue, it can spiral into exhaustion and burnout if we're not careful. And I've seen this so many times in so many people. And I think that it's a great conversation to have, like, how can we be proactive about this and how can we prevent it? Also too, like if you're in it, like, I see you, I so see you. If you're in it, like, you know, let's get you out of it. Let's figure out what do you need to be able to start feeling a little more energetic? So today I wanna share six, pretty simple but really powerful energy shifts that can help you move from burnout towards some balance, some energy, some vitality. Feeling well really, like what, what I like to think about or what I like to aim towards is I really just wanna feel alive and like I'm living my life intentionally. It's not living me. And I think when we feel like life is living us, that's where we start to feel burned out and just kind of stuck. So I did a quick Google. I always like to look at statistics, and I didn't write them down. I don't have them with me, so I'm just gonna kind of share from my memory what I read. But, there are a lot of studies out there about burnout in the workplace. And pretty much every study I read, every article I read talks about how like two thirds of people are. Experiencing burnout or have experienced burnout, they say that 82% of workers are at risk. I don't know how they determine that, but the point is there are a lot of people out there that are, are experiencing burnout. They also talked a lot about corporate and how burned out employees actually cost a company a lot of money. So, you know, we, we also need to speak up and have a voice in our workplaces, which I understand can be hard, especially when you're working for someone. I talk to people all the time about work stress and how, you know, there's so much pressure and so many demands, and they don't feel like they can really set boundaries because they're worried about, especially today, the job market is very, you know, up and down. There's a lot of sense of job insecurity out there with the people that I talk to anyway. So setting those boundaries can be really hard, but we need to sort of figure out how to advocate for ourselves in a way that is effective. And I'm not sure what the answer to that is. But if you want an episode on it, I'm happy to do the research. So, you know, we really need to start caring about this. Like how do we start to take care of ourselves and shift that tendency to burnout? Because, you know, like as my friend Cathi would say, I don't know if Cathi listens to the podcast, but I forget exactly how she says it, but we only get one trip on this blue marble or something like that. And, you know, depending on what you believe, this life is, we got one, you know, I personally don't wanna live it, feeling tired and burned out all the time. So yeah, we need to start taking care of ourselves and figuring out how to, you know, how to actually manage this. So that's why you should care about this episode. So, one thing that I have noticed in a lot of reflection lately is, well, like I mentioned, aliveness, feeling alive. Intentionally living my life. Like that's my goal, right? That feeling of just like I feel, I feel a spark. You know? I feel like I'm connected to my life. And I talk about the three pillars, the three pillar framework, a lot, body, mind, and spirit and having energy is really the foundation of, I, I feel like a life well lived. If we don't have that energy and just. You know, these, that energy that sparked to really move through the world, the rest of it's hard to, hard to do well. When we're tired or hungry or, you know, run down, our mind isn't as sharp. You know, we experience brain fog. In fact, that's one of the symptoms of burnout is brain fog, having a hard time remembering things, feeling scattered. So we're not able to, you know, function cognitively as effectively. Getting back to the body pillar, oh my gosh, there are so many, correlations between burnout and stress and just like chronic health problems. Things like, gut issues, headaches, um, we already talked about fatigue, but it's linked to cardiovascular disease. It affects our relationships. Also, if we don't have energy, we're not able to really find that inspiration for things. And so that third pillar of spirit are really connecting to what brings meaning and purpose in life. Like it's hard to really live that out too. So I really have been connecting how important taking care of our energy levels and really promoting and nurturing that sense of vitality, how important that is in a life well lived. So I'm gonna go through six energy shifts to think about. The first one is move your body. Exercise is important, but we also don't need to think about doing exercise like that sucks. If you don't like to exercise, ask yourself why. Is it because I hate going to the gym? Well, don't go to the gym, then. Figure something out. Do something else. We wanna think about exercise and movement as a way to create energy, not just burn calories. I know for me, one shift that I'm really working on is that relationship with movement and food. The correlation of like, exercise is not a way for me to negate calories. I mean, it does that, but when I think about that, it just doesn't feel good to me. That in and of itself can create a sense of burnout, I feel like. So what, one thing that I'm really trying to shift to is it's not a, it's not about that. It's about, you know, moving, staying mobile. It's about enjoying the ability to move. Throughout the world. Some people don't have that luxury. You know, variety in exercise is important. There are a lot of studies, with women in their forties and fifties, like the perimenopause menopausal age ranges about walking. I'm somebody who has been very active with like endurance activities and all this stuff like that. And so walking has historically been, it's been a challenge for me to embrace that 'cause it doesn't feel like a workout. And again, like I'm trying to really change that relationship because there are studies that talk about how, what's called non-exercise energy expenditure or NEET. So like, you know, walking my dog around the block. I didn't really plan on that as a workout, you know, or cleaning the house or where you're just moving your body. You know, you're not necessarily getting your heart rate up super high. You're not paying as much attention to that. You're not necessarily even sweating, but you're moving your body. It's super important. You know, things like stretching. Things like, you know, yoga, mobility kind of exercises, especially at this time of our lives is really important. I will say in the I'm not great. I, I'm, you know, full disclosure, I'm not great about stretching and mo mobility specific type exercise. Doing that. I need to be better about it because. I've been really stiff lately. I need to do more yoga. I, or I should say, I'm always also getting in the habit of saying, I feel better when I do this instead of I should do this. So that's something that, it feels a lot better to say that, so just take that with you. But yeah, the studies out there that show that's really important along with strength training. The other thing too is, uh. The outdoors. I think that's a really great way also to kind of bring in a little different dimension into movement is just getting fresh air and sunshine, can be really helpful. Okay, the second thing I wanna talk about is food, nutrition, food as fuel, and mindful eating. It's helpful to think about food as like your, your gas for your car, right? You wanna keep your car running well, so ideally we don't neglect it. We get the oil changed and we, you know, we put gas in it so we don't run outta gas. I may or may not have had several times in my life where I've run outta gas actually in a car. But that's a story for another day. But yeah, we want eat to sustain our energy. We don't wanna be spiking and crashing. And, looking at like, what do I need? What does my body need the most, like for myself, I've noticed a huge difference when I get adequate levels of protein. It makes a huge difference in how my body feels from a stiffness level and just creakiness in my joints. And also with fatigue. It helps so much with that stuff. I just feel better when I'm getting a really good amount of protein. And also hydration. Same thing. So important. It, it's sometimes even if you notice you're snacky, ask yourself, am I thirsty? Drink some water. Along with this idea of making sure that my fuel is a good source of energy, is mindfulness with eating. When we have like a lot of food rules, it's really demotivating and it's not as nice. Rules suck, right? No, but if we can really focus on some mindfulness while we're eating, like tuning into hunger cues. Am I really hungry or am I just you know, bored? Or am I feeling an emotion that feels hard? When you're eating, tuning into like fullness cues. Am I satisfied? Where am I on that continuum? Am I still kind of hungry? Am I stuffed? Like, you know, noticing when you get to that satisfied level and just stopping, there's more food later tomorrow when you get hungry again, we don't need to stuff ourselves. Also avoid skipping meals. I think that this is, something I've, especially when we talk about burnout, people who skip their lunch breaks, I talk to a lot of people who don't take lunch breaks. Don't skip meals. It's not a great cycle to get in. So it's gonna affect your energy. If you can keep that fuel coming. You know, consistently, your body's gonna know what to expect. It's gonna, like, you're, you're gonna keep everything topped off. You're gonna have the energy to sustain you through the day. At the same time, I do wanna say like, caveat to this whole food is fuel thing, put good food in your body. Of course it's okay to enjoy food too. Right? There's a place here called Jimmy Cone that has fantastic soft serve ice cream. And my daughter and I, you know, sometimes on a Saturday afternoon we'll be like, let's go to Jimmy Cone. And the ice cream is so good. But it's more about the experience too. I mean, that's okay. Like the, the idea is moderation... there's no rules for food. There's no good and bad foods. It's just, you know, it's, you don't want to eat all ice cream all the time. You're gonna have a terrible energy level. Moving on. Mindfulness, that's another one. Mindfulness can help so much with stress. And studies have shown this too. Being present lowers stress and it saves mental energy. We're not thinking about the past, what we should have done. We're not worrying about the future when we're present. We're not focusing in on all the things we can't control. We're here now, we're taking our next right steps. When we're mindful, we're able to pause before we do things like sending a nasty email when we are mad or we're able to make choices that are, that are aligned with our values more easily. So, you know, things that you can do for mindfulness. Oh, there's just... the sky's the limit with mindfulness activities. You can take a minute to just, you know, focus on your breath and there are a ton of different breathing exercises out there if you, you know, wanna play around with that. Practice pausing, especially before you react, but sometimes that's hard to do without practicing first. One of the skills I work with people on a lot is just called the stop skill. It comes from dialectical behavior therapy is super easy skill. Stop stands for the S is stop. I think that's funny. The T is take a step back. The O is observe and the P is proceed mindfully. I have people that I work with just practice stopping at random times during the day, putting sticky notes up around the house to remind yourself that that's something you're working on. Or even printing out stop sign images. And that's just a reminder that I'm working on this. So, you know, before I eat lunch, I'm gonna just practice stop. And then when you get into a situation where you do need to really take a pause, you've already kinda started to build that muscle. Things also like short body scans. You know, how do I feel today? What is, am I tense? Am I relaxed? You know, where do I notice any tension? Things like that. Paying attention as you drive. How often have you gotten somewhere and been, I don't even remember driving here. Notice sounds, notice smells, when you're chewing your food. Like really taste it. Actively listening to people when they're talking. There's a ton of different mindfulness activities to help with that practice. I mean, the idea is that we're able to just kind of tune into the present when we need to, but we do need to work on building that muscle so that it becomes kind of second nature. Also, I just wanna share like, mindfulness really overlaps with mindset. Which, when it comes to burnout and stuff When we feel that way already, it's hard to really find different ways of looking at things 'cause we're just tired and our brain wants to pick the easiest thing, which is our kind of default way of thinking about things. But when we can really slow down and practice some self-awareness around what are these stories that my brain is giving me about what's happening right now? Is there a different way to look at it? Do I have a lot of negative thinking? Where can I work on this? What's not helping me right now? How could those things be more helpful? What could I do to make them more helpful? Which I'm gonna talk a little bit more about in a minute. The next thing is, around physical and mental clutter. So really looking at clearing that out. The weight of having unfinished business, you know, piles a messy desk, a to-do list that's endless can take a big toll. It's like constantly in your mind, the to-do list never ends. That's a really exhausting thing to think about. So, look at can I set a timer for 10 minutes and I'm just gonna clean up one thing for those 10 minutes to kind of tidy up? Or things like that, you know, looking at really doing an honest reflection on where your energy leaks are, so to speak. Like doing an energy audit, kind of, of like commitments, daily tasks. Where am I taking on too much? Where am I thinking that I have to get this done where maybe it's not something that I really have to get done. Maybe it's kind of like an nice to have instead of a must have. Or maybe it's just a someday task and it doesn't really matter exactly when it gets done. I just have a story about it. Being on my to-do list that creates stress. So those are some things to really look at too. Where can I streamline some of that stuff? I mentioned the 10 minute rule, but there's another one that I've really been working on practicing lately is the one minute rule, which is if there's something that will take less than a minute to do, I'm just doing it now. I've really been working on doing that and it's really kind of nice. It feels good. I mentioned must do tasks, nice to do, not necessary kind of concept of prioritization. I think that's really helpful too. I, you can also start asking yourself if a, a task or a commitment is like, you know, is it mandatory? Is it a energy sucker? Is it a energy giver? Like, sort of to start thinking about things that way a little bit. And then if you do have a lot of physical clutter, just start small. Clear one space. Say no to one thing, start working on those sorts of things. Okay. So the next shift is mindset. Looking at your mindset. I already started talking about this above, but, our perspectives shape our energy. When we have this attitude of like, all this stuff is happening to me, that feels heavy and just, ugh. Whereas if we're sort of looking at, okay, I'm just approaching things one step at a time, you know, here's my next right step, it doesn't, it doesn't feel as bad. It feels a little more empowering. And just positive. One thing too is related to that -is starting to look at is there some thinking here that I can really challenge, like all or nothing thinking, like my to-do list, for example, like if I don't get it all done, am I a failure? Am I looking at like, well, I got one big thing done today, and maybe not so many little things, but, that's a win. Like can we, can we find some gray area in there? Also just general self-critical thoughts. Like, oh, I can never stick with this, or, I'm so bad at this. Those judgments really don't create a lot of inspiration or motivation. So just watch them. They're sneaky. A couple other examples of a simple perspective shift or reframing a thought is if you think, oh, I have to go, I have to work out, I have to go to the gym. You know, you can try on a simple shift like, 'oh, I get to move my body today'. A lot of people can't do that. Instead of like, I mentioned this earlier, instead of, I shouldn't, I shouldn't do that. Or I shouldn't drink so much, or I shouldn't eat so much sugar. Instead, I feel better when I don't eat a lot of sugar, or I feel better when I don't drink so much. They're simple shifts, but they can really have an impact. I mentioned, judgment, like really watch that. And see where you can look for opportunities to kind of neutralize that judgment and it's just observing how you're showing up and then, you know, deciding is that helping me? And if not. Then, okay, what do I wanna do differently? What can I learn from that? The last thing, and this is so important and it kind of can encompass all the things I've talked about too, but is really about self-care. That is recharging, rejuvenating. And I know so many of us women have a hard time with self-care. I'm sure guys do too, but I'm not, I don't know guys as well, so I'm just, I know that a lot of women, a lot of moms, and maybe not moms too, but have a hard time putting ourselves first when they're kid things to be done. The way I like to think about self-care is it's energy renewal. It's like plugging in your phone and recharging the battery. If it dies, it's useless. Right. It's not indulgence. I mean it can be, but it doesn't have to be. And there's nothing wrong with indulging either. So, some areas of, some things that can be self-care. Making sure you don't skimp on your sleep. Going to bed so you get enough rest. Time in nature, making sure you have time to play. Have fun. Gratitude practices. Take some screen breaks. Watch that Instagram scrolling time. Unless you're looking at my stuff. Ha ha ha. You know, and self care, like I said, it does not have to be extravagant. And, you know, maybe you just decide on one thing. One thing, I'm, I'm really experiencing burnout lately. What's one thing I can do that would feel really good? You know, if that's taking five minutes in the bathroom to yourself, like that's that, do it, do it. You gotta have some form of self-care in your days. So you know, and experiment with what fills you up the most. So one thing before I wrap up is... I wanna tell you about a project I'm working on and I'm gonna try to give you the short version 'cause I don't wanna make this episode like super long and drawn out. But, I was recently reading the book, the Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin. The concept is she took a year and for every month of the year, she focused on a different kind of area of her life in which she wanted to sort of cultivate more happiness to see like what impact it had on her level of happiness. And as I was reading through it, I, I thought, this is really cool. This would be a fun thing to undertake. However, I wanted to put my own twist on it. Of course, happiness is something great to aspire to, but for me, I kind of wanted to do the same thing, but really look at a sense of freedom and aliveness. Her first category is actually energy, which makes so much sense. 'As I said it's like the foundation. How does having energy allow me to create freedom in my life? And that sense of aliveness and what things do I need to have in place to do that? And so I decided to do this project too, but with that, through that lens. And so for the next year, year, yes, a year. Every month I'm gonna take a different like category and set some intentions around it. Like, here are some things I'm really working on. I'm gonna also start my project with energy and like vitality. Health. The body pillar of wellness. With the idea that energy is what is foundational to me being able to do all the other things. So I'm gonna start this in this, the month of October will be the start of it. I'm gonna start off by really focusing in on these shifts that I shared with you today. Mindfulness and mindset, those will be different months specifically. But you know, I'm planning to really hone in on some of these things that I think will help me feel more energetic and kind of combat burnout. I'm planning to reflect on my experience and share and stuff like that. And I would really love it if you'd at least follow along. But, I'd love it if you participate. That'd be super cool if we could get a bunch of people doing this. I'll talk about it on the podcast, probably every time I do a podcast. And then my blog, I'm gonna start up again and have some consistent reflection there about it. I'm sure at some point I'll share tools that are helping me with some of this stuff. And I, I would love to start a conversation around it and have you participate. I just wanna share too, like why this resonated so much for me. So like a lot of people, I tend to bite off more than I probably can chew, and then I get frustrated and then I'm like, Ugh, I can't even do this. Or I tend to try to fix or work on too many things at one time, and then I feel scattered and I'm not consistent, and then I don't really see progress in any one thing. So the idea of having like one thing to work on at a time or focus in on a time, super appealing to me, it sort of helped me slow down a little bit. Yeah. So, you know, the, all of these shifts that we talked about today, it's not about doing more, it's about creating freedom and energy to live fully, right? So we don't wanna take on too much stuff. And focusing in on the one thing to see, like, okay, where can I create more freedom and energy and aliveness in this area? Okay. And then I'm gonna take what I learned, what was the most impactful, and then we carry through life with that. Or at least till we do the project again. 'cause things change as we know. So ways that you can follow this project. I mentioned my blog, so that's just go to my website, kortneyrivard.com and click on the blog. Thing in the menu bar. I'll be sharing about it on social media a little bit too. The podcast I mentioned, I'll talk about it here. But also if you're not a member of my email community, it's free... you know, go to my website and, fill out the form. Shoot me a message. There are a couple other avenues to get on the email list. One is a free quiz on my website. I just go to the website and it's right there. Or there's a Wheel of Life exercise. If you go to kortneyrivard.com/lovelife, there's a freebie there, you can download and it will automatically put you on the list too. So those are some ways to follow. Okay, so let's just recap. So we have, you know, energy foundational to, you know, living a life that you feel good about moving through the world in a way where you feel like you're living it, it's not in control of you. So some of those ener energy shifts we talked about. The six were moving your body. Second was good food, nutrition, mindful eating. The third one was mindfulness, really working on being present. Number four was clearing physical and mental clutter. Really looking at the to-do list, setting some boundaries, getting honest about what really needs to get done and doesn't. Number five was mindset. So looking at different perspectives, little reframes. And then number six was self care. So those are the six shifts. So yeah, you might want to, like during the month of October, if you wanna follow along with my project, maybe pick like one or two of these things and focus on it. But keep it simple. And then, your job, what I want you to do after listening to this episode is reach out to me, to share what shift you're trying. You can go on social media and DM me. You can email me, or you can put a comment on my blog too. So those are some ways to reach out and share. But yeah, I wanna know, I wanna know what you're working on, what shift resonated with you? And yeah, share a little bit with me about it. Okay, my friends, it was really good to connect today. I thank you again for tuning in and I will see you next time.