What’s Your Plan for Burnout Recovery and Leadership Growth? | #127

In this episode of the 'Milk and Honey with Lemon' podcast, host Lemon Price delves into the topic of burnout, especially from the perspective of wives, mothers, business owners, and community leaders.

Lemon shares her personal experiences with burnout from her early entrepreneurial days and highlights the importance of managing stress and recovery. The episode provides insights into how burnout, while often seen as negative, can be a pathway to expanding personal capacity if managed correctly.

Lemon discusses the World Health Organization's definition of burnout, the necessity of recovery plans, and practical steps to maintain energy levels through hobbies and focused downtime.

Listeners are encouraged to audit their daily activities and replace non-fulfilling tasks with those that rejuvenate them.

Stay tuned for next week's episode featuring guest Twila, who will discuss reliance on God and leadership.

00:00 Welcome to Milk and Honey with Lemon
01:05 Introduction to Burnout
01:44 Personal Burnout Experiences
05:53 Understanding Burnout and Capacity
11:12 Managing Burnout and Recovery
15:40 Practical Tips for Avoiding Burnout
20:48 Conclusion and Next Episode Preview
21:18 Final Thoughts and Farewell

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Chapters

• 0:18 Avoiding Burnout in Entrepreneurship and Life
• 3:48 Navigating Burnout and Capacity Expansion
• 14:38 Balancing Work and Self-Care
• 21:10 Empowering Leadership and Purpose Journey

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:18

Hey, I'm Lemon. I am just like you, sister friend. Talk about stepping into that overflow that God has for us by becoming those ultimate Proverbs 31 women. Hey, I'm Lemon. I am just like you, sister friend. I knew God had something more in store for me, but I couldn't see a way out of the laundry piles and, frankly, I resented that Proverbs 31 woman. How was I going to live up to the hype? That is until I found out how to really step into becoming this Proverbs 31 woman through leadership development. In this podcast, you're going to find financial freedom, leadership, growth and motivation so you'll be able to do all the things God has called you to do with ease and really step into that land of milk and honey.

Speaker 1: 0:58

Welcome back to the Milk and Honey podcast. I'm your host, lemon Price, and I am very excited today because I want to talk about burnout. And if you have been an entrepreneur, if you are a millennial, gen Z, gen Alpha I don't know, are they old enough to talk about burnout yet? Burnout is a really hot topic and I can completely understand why. Especially as wives, as mothers, as business owners, as community partners, ministry leaders, burnout is a very real thing and I remember being in my early 20s, almost my mid-20s, I guess I was like 25. And it feels so long ago. That was almost 10 years ago y'all.

Speaker 1: 1:44

But I remember when I first got started as an entrepreneur, I had taken, I had gotten rid of the first blog which was such a fun time and I had moved into a space where I was consulting and doing all the fun things. It was the beginning stages of my marketing agency and I remember affirmations were huge. It was so huge to have these really good affirmations and so I had such toxic what would you, what would I call them Like role models in the business space. I was listening to, like Gary Vaynerchuk and stuff, and there's nothing wrong with what he does, but his style and my style are not the same, and so I remember my affirmations were like almost quotes of his talking about how my competition is working while I'm sleeping, and those are the kind of phrases I would say over and over again to myself, over again to myself, and I lived that way and it was so intense and I remember getting to a point where I was working like that. I was still working in an actual marketing agency and I was coaching gymnastics and I was dealing with some things in my first marriage, while simultaneously starting a business, and I kept telling myself that everybody's outpacing me and I needed to hustle my buns, and so, of course, what happened is I burnt out.

Speaker 1: 3:17

I pushed myself to a point where I end up with severe migraine, and from those severe migraines, my vision starts to get blurry. This has happened to me in high school. I was in the hospital for six weeks in high school. I missed six weeks of my junior year of high school due to my stress level and burnout. This time around, I ended up with another migraine 10 years later, and so, because of that, I drove myself to the hospital and I have had these migraines so often.

Speaker 1: 3:48

I know the protocol. I know exactly what I need in order for it to subside a little bit. And this doctor gave me a vision test because I was like listen, my vision's like a little blurry in my eye, but it's going to be fine, I promise. I just need like a shot of Toradol and a little bit of oxygen so I can drive myself home. And I was frustrated because I'm like listen, my competition is outworking me right now. I just need you to give me the shot of Toradol and I can be on my way within the hour. I will be fine. And so he runs these tests and he's okay. Your stress level is way too high, he's. I actually don't even know how you drove yourself here. To be completely honest, I have no clue actually how you got in your car and drove 15 minutes to this hospital because you just failed a vision test and he's. But I know you're not like going suddenly blind. You don't have a tumor, like none of those things are happening. I'm like, okay, great, again, I could just use like a shadow tour doll and be on my way.

Speaker 1: 4:44

And this man put me on bed rest for three weeks, which, for a person like me who was type A, I wanted to rip my skin off. I hated it with every fiber of my being. I hated being on bed rest. It didn't feel productive. It was so counterintuitive to who I am as a person that it made me feel awful, and this was my problem in high school too. So I ended up with a migraine from stress and everybody couldn't figure it out. We did the spinal taps, we did the MRIs, they brought in specialists from other hospitals to try to figure out what's wrong. And then finally somebody did a stress test. My stress level was like over 300. I don't know what the baseline is, but mine was like way off the charts of where it should have been for this test. And they were like you need to relax and then this will go away. So then I got stressed out about trying to relax because I was like, okay, I have to relax and if I don't relax then I'm not going to get better. And so I worked myself up into this like tizzy, trying to force myself to relax, which is counterintuitive to my personality. And so I'm very familiar with burnout. I've hit it, I've been there, I've done that, I have a little bit of experience in this area, and so when I think about burnout, I think about the fact that we are pushing ourselves to capacity.

Speaker 1: 6:02

According to the World Health Organization, they have a good definition of burnout. It says burnout is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, and I personally think you could expand this. Especially as moms, as ministry leaders, as leaders in your community. I think you could burn out, but I think what's important about this is that it has not been successfully managed. But I think what's important about this is that it has not been successfully managed. Burnout is actually good, because the only way to expand your capacity is to push yourself past your capacity and my husband and I we talk about this all the time and I don't know if you'll listen to this, but our capacity is a little bit different and there's nothing wrong with either one of our capacity, but we function differently.

Speaker 1: 6:45

The work I do is different than him. We could have the same, like we could work the same amount of hours and be or I could work less hours actually than him. There's been plenty of days where I have worked three or four hours but I was on meetings all day and I or I was recording podcasts or speaking or doing something like very high level that requires a lot of brainpower from me where he might have spent 10 hours at work doing something a little physical, but it was mindless For him. We could be equally as exhausted, even though we didn't necessarily work the same. Does that make sense? I hope this is making sense. Doesn't necessarily work the same. Does that make sense? I hope this is making sense. Our output is different and so our input has to be different the only way to push past your capacity. The only way to push past is to do more than you are actually capable of doing. So, for instance, last year, when I went to Activate, which is an annual conference that we attend for Christian in business. So if you're a Christian in business which you probably are if you listen to this podcast you should come to Activate. And so with that conference, we had paired the Kingdom Impact message in 10 minutes, like the Kim 10 certification, up against that event, and so I spoke.

Speaker 1: 8:11

So let me I'll paint this picture for you I am such an introvert, first and foremost, hardcore introvert, so, first and foremost. So, first and foremost, I got on a plane from Savannah to San Diego and my layover was in Nashville, and if you have lived in the South at all, you've never met a stranger, and I personally have never met a stranger either. But I spent time in the airport talking to sweet people in Nashville and it was wonderful and it was great and it made beautiful connections with some amazing people. But I then got on that plane from Nashville, flew to San Diego. The minute I got off the plane in San Diego, I basically dropped my stuff, spoke on stage Great Love that Everybody knows me at Kingdom Alliance.

Speaker 1: 9:00

I've been here since the very beginning. I speak regularly at events, I host training corporately on a regular basis. There is not a week that goes by that I am not doing something that is very front-facing for the company, and so everybody knows me and so I come in and there was a lot of people. I know that you guys probably listen to this podcast and I love it. Do not get me, please hear my heart when I say I love being able to connect with you, but I am also an introvert. And so I speak at this event and we do the rehearsal and then we all go to dinner Great, I love that. We then all spoke again the next day to actually record our talk, our signature talk. From there we had a reception and more people had flown in for the event because our actual conference was starting the next day, and so people were flying in that night and so there was a lot more people there, all who knew me. Wonderful, I am so grateful for the opportunity and the place that God has put me, but I am now interacting with a ton of people.

Speaker 1: 9:59

And then, thursday night, I had a speaker dinner to welcome us to the event, which was again amazing, filled with people that I love and that bring me legitimate joy to be around. And then I spoke Friday, but it was a lot, it was a whole lot. We had a team night, there was baptisms. I was with people continuously from Tuesday morning people continuously from Tuesday morning yeah, tuesday morning until Sunday, and even on my flight home there were people from the event on my flight and so, to like, for an introvert, that is a lot of output, that is a ton of output for me and it was all very high level of output for me and it was all very high level strategic thinking and it required a lot of me. I spoke four times and I had a bunch of events and things were happening, and so there was a lot of output from me, which is great, and again I'm so grateful for that opportunity. And I pushed myself way past my capacity. I've never done something like that where I've spoken that much and traveled across the country. This was almost a full week of output for me, so I pushed myself past capacity.

Speaker 1: 11:12

The problem is that I didn't set myself up for a great recovery. I'd done a lot of output and I scheduled no input for myself, and so I crashed. And I crashed hard because I was still maintaining the meetings that I had on the books. I was maintaining everything around me as if I did not put out this kind of energy, and so I was burnt out and it led to me to. I slept for almost three weeks. I purposefully moved my calendar to not take meetings till 10 o'clock and so I would get the kids off to school and then go take a nap from 6.30 in the morning until 9 in the morning and then maybe get down a meeting at 11 and go take another two-hour nap. And I did that for three straight weeks because I didn't have good input for the output that I gave, and so that to me, that's where burnout becomes a problem. That is where you lose joy and fulfillment and excitement in the things that you're doing. Because I love speaking at events, I love connecting with people. I think people are amazing, I love hearing their stories, I love that interaction. But it is a lot of output from me, because I am an introvert, for me to do that. It creates a burnout, and I want to push myself, I want to continuously grow, and I hope you do too.

Speaker 1: 12:33

The problem is when we don't have a plan to pour back into ourselves or give ourselves the space and be okay with the fact that we need some space sometimes after that level of output. And so for a lot of people, like my husband, the weekend is usually enough time for him to recover from a Monday to Friday situation. It isn't necessarily like that for me because of how much I put out Monday to Thursday and so I typically don't work past one o'clock in the afternoon on Fridays. Usually. I don't really take any Friday morning meeting and then I really only go to a financial freedom call. I might meet like a podcast coaching client, but I'm not really putting out like Glenn and I will go camping and I've talked about this before we will intentionally go camping and I will go to a place where I have no service. I go to my in-laws to a place where I have no service, so I have to force myself to unplug. But also and I said this when I was talking about this situation I had in high school I struggled to relax because I'm such a productive person and I had a really hard time with being on bedrest because I'm such a productive person and I had a really hard time with being on bedrest because I'm such a productive person, and so for me, I had to find things that did not require a lot of energy for me, especially mental energy, because that, for me, is where the burnout comes from, is it is in the mental energy that I am putting out, is in the emotional labor that I'm doing.

Speaker 1: 13:59

That's where the burnout comes from for me, and so I had to find things that I could do to refill my cup, to like wind down but also feel like I've accomplished something. So this is why I love gardening, this is why I love baking and this is why I love to cook for my family. Like this is why I like to do those things. Yes, I love having our medicine made from scratch. I just made dinner, and the vegetables that Glenn and I had with dinner tonight came from the garden, and so that felt fantastic. I love to do that. That is rewarding to me, but it's a slower reward.

Speaker 1: 14:38

I like to do art. I like to do embroidery and needlepoint and things like that. Like I'm such a nerd Like cross-stitching sign your girl up. I love doing things like that. I used to paint, I used to draw. I actually minored in art in college. I know that would like shock some people, but I did when I was at Coastal and so I like putting, like doing things like that where there's not necessarily an expectation on me either. I think that's. The other thing is they're still productive, require output from me, but it's a different type of output. That it's yes, I'm doing something, but it fills me up more than I'm putting out and gives me the space to go and enjoy. I like to just hang out with my dogs and read a book, like I like those things and, yes, it's something I have to. It's not like typical self-care. You know, it's not me sitting in my bathtub or whatever, and maybe that is it for you. And so that's really what I wanted.

Speaker 1: 15:38

To wrap this whole thing up is make sure that you are baking in time to recover, and not just on the weekends, not just on your weekends, but make sure that you're taking time to recover throughout your day. So I just reworked my whole schedule. I was like, hey, listen, here's how I'm feeling. I'm feeling like my schedule is like a little overbooked. Here's what's most important. Here's freestanding meetings I have that I will not be moving. Here's my expectation for my calendar. Here's things I want to get done. I want to walk Oakley in the morning. I want to start my day and end my day at this time frame. I want to take a class at the gym and it starts at this time and it's going to take me at least 15, 20 minutes to get there.

Speaker 1: 16:17

So bake that into my calendar, and so I did. I told it everything I wanted and needed and it spit out an hour by hour day-to-day list for me. Mondays you're going to work on your podcast. Tuesday you're going to work on the blog. Wednesday you're going to work on your book. So I'm recording this on a Monday. I will not touch podcast stuff again for another week, but I already have so much done. I'm recording this on June the 17th, and I have already uploaded and scheduled every single episode until August, because I went ahead and changed my schedule and so I'm doing really intentional, focused work.

Speaker 1: 16:55

But then I also baked in a ton of downtime for myself, and so I'm doing really intentional, focused work, but then I also baked in a ton of downtime for myself. So like I gave myself a full hour for lunch and blocked it in my calendar so nobody can book anything with me. I put in reflection at the end of the like my quote unquote work day what went well, what didn't go well, what could I do better. Like I baked all of those things into my calendar. Okay, I just got a notification. Hey, it's time to unwind. Beautiful, thank you for that.

Speaker 1: 17:24

And so I actually have gotten more done even just today than I probably have in the last month, because my work was focused, but I also baked in time to go and enjoy my life. I literally put in my calendar like you could scroll TikTok for 10 minutes Great, thank you so much. And even when it came time to do that, I was like I don't really feel like doing that right now. Maybe I'll do that during like my unmind time. I'll scroll and see if there's anything funny or whatever I want to watch. I feel like I always learn something. Very. My TikTok feed is very weird. My For you page is a weird place. I get like cooking stuff, like cult stuff and like home and gardening stuff, and then Jesus, like I get like those four things.

Speaker 1: 18:08

All that to say is you do not have to wait for the weekend to fill your cup, you do not have to wait for a certain vacation or whatever it is, to fill your cup, like right now my husband's at band practice. That fills his cup. He's putting out energy and he works so hard for our family and I'm super proud of him but it also fills his cup to go to band practice. It was the same way when he was woodworking. It was a side hustle for him because it was an escape. So, yes, he was physically working. It was a side hustle for him because it was an escape. So, yes, he was physically working, he was doing business stuff, he was talking to people. Like that fills his cup up and he may push himself past his capacity, but then he filled himself back up with things he loves to do and he's recharging. And so that's what I want to say.

Speaker 1: 18:52

The burnout is okay, it is okay to push yourself past capacity, as long as you have a plan for recovery. How are you going to refill your energy levels? And it can't be a pot of coffee. I'm sorry, it just can't be. We cannot operate from a place of stress and being in this place where our energy is depleted Like Proverbs 31 woman, she was not energy depleted, she had help. You have to have things in place to fill your cup up continuously and to make sure that you are putting yourself and what you need first. That is not to say, ignore your children, ignore your spouse, ignore, like commands of God. I'm not saying those things but you can't take care of your husband or your children, or your job or your business or your calling or any of those things if your energy level is so depleted, because, frankly, that's where the enemy wants you to be. He wants you to be low on energy, he wants you to be stressed, he wants you to be fatigued, because then you're not going to have the energy to go do the thing God's actually called you to do and to be the person God has called you to be.

Speaker 1: 19:59

So I could do a full, deep dive on this topic. I feel like, if I keep talking, we're going to be here for 13 hours because I love talking about burnout. So I want to encourage you go, create a schedule, and what I actually want you to do is, for the next week, I want you to write down what you do every day. I know this is going to not be beforehand. Let's say you just listen to this podcast and it is 8.30 in the morning. Write that down from 8 am to 8.30. I listen to Lemon's podcast, and then from 8.30 to 9.15, I actually was scrolling TikTok. I want you to actually write all those things down. What does your day actually look like? And then figure out where it is. You're doing things that maybe aren't filling your energy reserves and replace it with things that are going to fill you up. I want you to do that. That is your homework this week. I will see you next week.

Speaker 1: 20:50

We have a fun episode. My friend Twyla is going to be here. I love her. She's amazing. She's going to talk to you all about how God really ripped everything away from her and she had to rely on him for her daily bread, literally. So it's going to be a great conversation. I think you're going to love it.

Speaker 1: 21:10

We talked a lot about purpose and leadership, so I hope you have such a blessed week and I will see you on Monday. Bye, friends. Hey friend, what a joy it has been to share today's journey with you. If you found a spark of inspiration or a nugget of wisdom that resonated, would you bless someone else by sharing this episode with them? It could be the encouragement they need to step into their purpose and calling. Also, if you could spare a moment to leave a review, it would mean the world to me. I really appreciate your feedback and it really helps our community grow. Remember the road to discovering God's call for you isn't one you have to walk alone. So join me again next Monday for another episode where we'll continue to explore the depths of leadership and the heights of our heavenly calling. Until then, keep seeking, keep growing and keep trusting in His plan. God bless you and I'll catch you on the flip side.