Create to Convert Podcast

018. Fighting Burnout: How to Identify, Prevent, and Recover with Maegan Megginson

• Yevgeniya Davarashvili • Episode 18

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Have you ever felt so overwhelmed by your work that you start losing passion for it? Perhaps the deadlines seem endless, the expectations unrealistic, and suddenly, you're running on empty, stuck in a loop of frustration and isolation. We've all been there, right?

Imagine stepping away from it all, not by quitting, but by intentionally incorporating rest and reflection into your daily grind. Sounds impossible? Trust me!

In this episode, we dive into the BIG topic of burnout – its telltale signs, the societal pressures exacerbating it, and the lifelong journey of recovery. And I couldn't think of a better guest to guide us through this tough topic than Maegan Megginson. Not only does she guide mission-driven entrepreneurs in their battle against burnout, but she's also walked the path herself, rediscovering joy and balance along the way.

**About Our Guest: Maegan Megginson**
Maegan is a licensed therapist and business mentor who serves mission-driven entrepreneurs online and in person in Portland, Oregon. Maegan helps business owners recover from burnout and reignite their vision for their work and their lives by blending the emotional, psychological, and spiritual elements we need to become deeply rested and wildly successful. 


Tune in and take the first step towards reclaiming your time, energy, and passion.

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Gigi: [00:00:00] Hey there, you're listening to the Create to Convert podcast. I'm your host, Yevgeniya Davarashvili, but most people call me Gigi, and so can you. I'm a designer, mama, tech lover, and business educator, and I'm here to help you skip the years of trial and error and share with you the ins and outs of running a profitable business that you love.

Alone or with guest experts, we cover all the good stuff here. Business, marketing, creativity, AI, life’s curveballs. And if you're a parent, even the secret recipe for juggling client deadlines with bedtime stories. So if you're up for a real talk, a good laugh and advice, so actionable, it should come with a warning label.

Then you're in the right place. My friend, no frills, no fluff, just real raw actionable advice and good conversations. I'm excited to have you here. So let's jump into today's episode. 

hello, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast today. I am joined by Maegan Megginson, who is a licensed therapist and business mentor serving mission driven entrepreneurs recover from burnout and reignite their vision.

[00:01:00] for their work and their lives by blending the emotional, psychological, and spiritual elements we need to become deeply rested and widely successful. Maegan, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so excited to finally have this session with you. I know we've been planning this for a while. We've chatted for years, what feels like for years now, 

and I'm so glad to finally connect with you.

Maegan Megginson: I am so excited to be here and I do think it's maybe been two years that we've been circling around and it feels great and super timely to be having this conversation now. 

Gigi: Absolutely. Just to give our listeners a little bit of context I worked with some of Maegan's client inside of my agency and then Maegan reached out to organize a little virtual coffee chat.

And I know we're rescheduled it so many times. Simply because our calendars just couldn't align. So yeah, it's been a couple of years [00:02:00] since we've been in each other's circles and this is way, way overdue. So Maegan, please introduce yourself to our listeners. Tell us a little bit more about you, your business and your journey.

Maegan Megginson: Thank you so much for asking. So yes I'm Maegan Maeganson and I'm constantly figuring out what it is I'm doing. So that, that changes every day, which is part of the work that I do too, of accepting that things are constantly an evolution and changing, and we have to learn to ride those waves, which I'm sure we'll talk more about later, but on paper, I am a licensed therapist.

therapist, and I'm a business mentor. I'm not actively working with therapy clients anymore, but what I've really started to do is transition my knowledge and skills about the therapeutic process to work with mission driven entrepreneurs who are here to do really big. Important work in the world, but losing themselves in the process.

So I'm very curious about [00:03:00] how we collectively can take really good care of ourselves while we take really good care of our missions. 

Gigi: I love that. And before we hit record where we're talking, catching up with Maegan a little bit, and you mentioned something where you said, I have nothing but time. And I want to dive straight into that because I think time is something that so many entrepreneurs struggle with being able to do everything with a limited amount of time we have.

So let's talk a little bit about that. 

Gigi: Why or how did you come to a point where you feel very comfortable with the fact that you have a lot of time, that you are in control of your time? 

Maegan Megginson: This is such a big, juicy question with a pretty philosophical answer with a scattering of So we're going to zoom out and go [00:04:00] really philosophical here for a minute.

What I've discovered about time is that we are time. We as people, we are time. Time only exists because we think about it in our minds. Time is a construct. It's something that we've created to make sense of how we move through the world. And when you take time as a construct and you mix it together with this colonized, capitalistic society that we live in, we construct lives where the expectations we have for ourselves actually don't align with the way time functions in the world and in our lives.

So at the core, when we're struggling with urgency. Or scarcity or feeling like there isn't enough time to do everything we need to do what we're really rubbing up against is living life with a set of expectations that are fundamentally unrealistic. 

Gigi: Oh, expectations. That is a [00:05:00] big topic. And, I recently started my therapy journey for the fifth time probably in my life.

But I am. I'm on a committed journey and expectations is a big topic that comes up in my conversations with my therapist and it's really interesting because expectations are, and of course, correct me if I'm wrong here, but expectations are, Very often self inflicted, right? These are expectations that a lot of the time we actually put on ourselves.

And especially I feel like entrepreneurs, we put a lot of weight on our shoulders. Thinking that we need to be everywhere. We need to do all the things because it feels like other people are. Doing all the things as well. So we deal with a lot of this comparison behavior is that ultimately, leads to imposter syndrome, leads to burnout.

Can we talk a little bit more about that in your experience working with, especially, passionate, passion driven entrepreneurs [00:06:00] who want to do more, who want to achieve more, who want to do more good work with more people. How do you navigate that managing? Their own expectations toward themselves 

Maegan Megginson: and 

Gigi: helping them realize that they can do more with less.

I guess that's what I'm going for. 

Maegan Megginson: There's so much wisdom in everything you just said. Let's pick out a couple of threads here. First of all, I think it's really important that we never blame ourselves for the struggles that we're facing. It is really easy as sensitive people who are reflective and going to therapy and like doing our work.

It's really easy to turn the blame onto ourselves. Oh, why have I accepted all of these expectations? Why am I working too hard? Why am I not taking good care of myself? Of course, we want to have those conversations, but at the core, we need to direct the blame. Where the blame really belongs, which is on to our broader society as a whole.

We [00:07:00] live in a toxic society. Capitalism at its core is toxic. And we internalize all of these beliefs about productivity and value and worthiness. And then we act we act in relation to how we think we're supposed to operate. in the world. So yes, a lot of the expectations that are burning us out. We have quote, brought onto ourselves, but we didn't bring them onto ourselves because we were just like gluttons for punishment.

We brought them onto ourselves because we've been taught. That's how we have to operate to be successful in the world. So this is what we call. externalizing. We want to externalize the cause of this problem to society at large so that we're not walking around feeling that not only am I burnt out, but I also feel shitty because I got myself here in the first place.

That's not helpful. It's not helpful at all. It's much more helpful to say, wow, I'm really burnt out. Look at this toxic culture that I'm participating in. Look at all of the ways [00:08:00] it's made me believe that I have to do X, Y, and Z in order to be successful. When we start with that externalization, it creates more room to breathe in our bodies, creates more space for us to go, okay, I'm actually up against some really massive forces here that are pushing against me being well, being grounded and rested.

How can I both continue to play on this playground? Because we have mortgages to pay, we have employees to pay, we have kids to feed, we need money. So how do I continue operating in this world while beginning to readjust the expectations around me so that I'm feeling better, so that I feel like I have more time, or I have more spaciousness?

And for that, I think the best place to start is to really slow down. Back up and ask yourself, what kind of life do you really want to live? What's most important [00:09:00] to you? When you're at the very end of your life and you're looking back on all of the days that you lived on this planet, what are you going to wish you would have done more of?

Who do you wish you would have spent more time with? When we start to get really honest about the answers to those questions, we begin to create our own internal compass that help guides the way when we feel like we're being pummeled with the expectations of society. 

Gigi: And you touched on burnout which I think is such a, for me, at least it's a very personal subject is something that I've experienced.

And one of the reasons why, I committed to finally starting my therapy journey A lot of people don't realize that they are in burnout mode. 

Maegan Megginson: A 

Gigi: lot of people don't realize the effect that it can have on their lifestyle. Can we talk a little bit about, the dangers of burnouts or even maybe the signs of burnout for those who are listening to actually understand, okay, this is actually.

[00:10:00] What is happening? I'm not just tired because my toddler is not sleeping. I'm not just, irritated all the time because of X, Y, Z. I am actually running on my remaining fumes and I need to pay attention to this. What are some burnout traits that people should pay attention to? 

Maegan Megginson: Yeah, it's such a good question because I think we can also think about burnout as.

Burnout is what happens to us when we have too many expectations on our plate, right? So it's like, what's the problem here? Oh, my expectations are unrealistic. I'm trying to achieve an unrealistic amount of tasks, or I'm trying to accomplish an unrealistic amount of progress, and I'm climbing a mountain that's like a mudslide.

There's no way I can get to the top. That's when burnout starts to creep into our bodies. It can be a little bit tricky because burnout manifests differently for everybody, right? So there's no 10 point checklist [00:11:00] to tell you if you're burnt out or not because it's different. I find that a lot of people who are experiencing burnout experience the commonality of losing passion.

their work. So maybe when you started your business, you were like totally jazzed about it, right? You self super passionate about it. You were excited about the people you wanted to serve doing the work itself felt rich and rewarding. And you would wake up at two o'clock in the morning, like just full of creative juice, and you're just like, Oh, I just have all these ideas. Like I can't wait to create. But when you start getting burnt out, that creative juice turns into resentment, frustration, irritation. You wake up at two o'clock in the morning now because you're stressed out, right? You can't sleep because you're thinking about this project that you have to finish, but you have no creative muse to finish the project.

So it's just there's this feeling Of you're just like moving through quicksand in your work and you don't want to do it and you're [00:12:00] procrastinating and you're avoiding and over time that starts to turn into, for many people, turns into anger, turns into resentment. Sometimes it can turn into depression, right?

You just feel so totally depleted. It feels impossible to get up and do the tasks that you need to do. You might start isolating yourself from your friends and family, so in many ways, burnout can look a lot like depression, but it's different from depression in that the root is really connected to all of these expectations.

The common denominator is this experience of losing the passion and the fire for the work that you know you're being called to do in the world. Does that make sense? 

Gigi: Absolutely. You're describing exactly how it felt at the end of 2023. 

Maegan Megginson: We've all been there. I've been there. I think like I first got really passionate talking about burnout on the other side of my own [00:13:00] experience with burnout.

I was so burnt out at the time I was running an agency, a therapy agency, and I got so burnt out. I had to take a sabbatical. I was like, if I don't step away and really figure out what is going on here, I'm going to burn it to the ground. That's another sign of burnout when you just want to burn everything to the ground.

And you're like, I'm going to be a barista at Starbucks. And that's what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. Like I just can't fucking do any of this anymore. That is the energy of burnout and it is destructive. It's destructive to our businesses, to our bodies, to our spiritual health. It's just, it just.

Oh, it's, I hate it so much that I've , made my life's mission about helping people work their way out of it because it is, it's no way to live. 

 

Gigi: Can you share a bit more about your personal experience with it and especially your healing process from it? So you mentioned that you took a sabbatical Which I think you know respectfully it's [00:14:00] a privilege to be able to do that Not everyone can take a sabbatical can take a step back can't slow down What was your healing?

Journey to recover from burnout because I read somewhere that it can take 6 to 12 months to recover from burnout or something like this so what was your healing journey like? 

Maegan Megginson: Yeah, and I would say too that I think like recovery from burnout is a lifelong process Because again burnout isn't something that happens because you did something wrong burnout happens because we live inside of an Extremely toxic Culture, right?

The container of capitalism is designed to treat us like machines, right? To extract our life force energy from us until we have nothing left to give. Think about garbage for a second. You go to the store and you buy, I don't know, I have a box of tissues here on my desk, okay?

So I go to the store and I buy this box of tissues and this box of tissues, according to capitalism, has one job. Help me blow my nose when I have a cold. When I finished this box of [00:15:00] tissues, and when I heal from my cold, what am I going to do with this box? Hopefully recycle it, but for the sake of the garbage analogy, let's just say, I'm going to throw it in the garbage.

I'm done with it. It serves no purpose for me anymore. It's going in the trash as hard as it is to believe. The culture that we live in treats me and my body the exact same way I treat this box of tissues. I am here to serve a purpose. I am here to be used. And when my purpose has been served, I'm as good as dead.

Okay. Might as well throw me in the trash. That's the reality that we are living in. And. We as business owners have a really unique opportunity to change the culture collectively of every single small business owner starts to take a stand against the way we treat people and bodies and businesses, we can create some pretty massive change.

My point is recovering from burnout as a business owner. It's going to be lifelong work for all of us because of the massive forces that we're up against. I think about it in my own [00:16:00] life now is like this dance between prevention and recovery. Right now I'm doing really great in my life and my business.

So I see myself as being in a place of prevention. What can I do to prevent myself from experiencing burnout? Experiencing burnout again. But listen, I'm no fool. Inevitably, I'm gonna burn out again. Something's gonna happen in my life. It's gonna be really hard. I'm gonna get way too invested in making progress in my business, and I'm going to get burned out again.

And at that point. The focus will turn back to recovery. Okay. Whoopsies here I am. I found myself in burnout again. No worries. I'm not going to judge myself. I'm not going to blame myself. I'm just going to do what I know I need to do to recover from this experience so I can get myself back to a healthy baseline.

So before we talk about how to recover from burnout, I just want to say, I just want to throw that out there, really normalize that this is a dance we're all going to be doing for as long as we are business owners. Inside of this culture. 

Gigi: It's [00:17:00] natural to experience it at different levels throughout your, your career not only as a freelancer or as a solopreneur, but in general, even, if you have a nine to five or if you a stay at home parent or whatever, life happens. Nobody's really protected against it.

I know that some people have a better way of protecting themselves, protecting their time, protecting or prioritizing themselves, prioritizing their self care. The difference is being aware of it and knowing what are the steps that you need to take to recover from it.


Maegan Megginson: How do we start with learning how to make more space and time for ourselves for quote self care? I'm using air quotes here because I feel like at this point, like Instagram have given self care a bit of a bad rap, we're like, Oh, self care. It's like for the privileged, oh, self care is getting a manicure and and a Frappuccino when you're feeling stressed.

I really need 

Gigi: one though. 

Meagan Megginson: And [00:18:00] listen I love a manicure. I love a good cup of coffee. But when we're surrounded by messages about self care that feels superfluous, it's really easy for us to. Reinforce that internal narrative that most of us as business owners have that's not really necessary for me So we have to really redefine what does it mean to have self care?

I love the way you were talking about it what does it mean to prioritize time? For myself, how do I put myself on the priority list in the same way I put my clients on the priority list? I put my kids on the priority list. I put fill in the blanks paying my bills on the priority list Like how do I get a spot on that list?

That's a great list. I want to be on that list Work that I do with my clients is really about fundamentally Restructuring the way I think about my business and the purpose that my business serves in my life. Because what I want is to run a [00:19:00] business that pays me to take really good care of myself.

I want my business to take care of me before it takes care of my clients, which is a very different way of thinking about the purpose of our business, right? Because we're taught that the purpose of my business is to make money. The way that I make money is to serve my clients. So we get trapped on this hamster wheel where all we're doing is pleasing other people, serving other people, making money, paying ourselves, serving other people, making more money.

And around we go, we're trapped on this hamster wheel. When you're on this hamster wheel, there is no time or space for you because you haven't created a business that is designed to take care of you and your family. So one of the I think revolutionary acts you can do as a business owner is to say, actually.

My business is designed for me. I chose to be a business [00:20:00] owner instead of working for someone else or a freelancer or a solopreneur or whatever you want to call yourself. I chose to do that instead of having a nine to five because I wanted freedom in my life. I've never met a business owner who didn't say they went into being a business owner because they wanted more freedom in their life.

And then they start their own business and they have less freedom than ever before, which is so dumb. It's so dumb that we make this huge sacrifice to be a business owner and then don't pay ourselves in rest. We don't pay ourselves in space to do therapy, to heal, to grow. I just believe that if every small business owner made space in their schedule to tend to their own needs in the same way they made space for client meetings, the whole world could be a different place.

Gigi: All that you're saying is absolutely correct, but I think a lot of people struggle even with that first step, understanding what my needs are. 

Maegan Megginson: When you're on that hamster [00:21:00] wheel you get really far away from your own body, right? So a lot of people who are in burnout or who are in productivity modes busy serving their clients, they'll often say gosh, I feel like I'm just this disembodied head that's like moving around from room to room.

Like I'm operating in my head, in my thinking brain all the time. I don't actually know what I feel in my body. I can't tell you the last time I felt pleasure. I don't know what it means to rest. Like, when we lose connection to the part of our body that exists below the neck, we lose access to all of the information that tells us how we're doing and what we need.

 So the first thing that we can do to reconnect to that is to rest. Well, Let's do a disclaimer first. The disclaimer is be kind to yourself. This is going to take time, right? I'm going to give you something to do and practice right now, and you might have to practice this for weeks or months before you get a new insight or a new piece of [00:22:00] information.

It took you a long time to get here. And your burnout took you a long time to get here. It's going to take you a long time to get out. That's just the reality of the situation. So buckle up, be patient, be kind to yourself. I feel that's really important across the board that you embody kindness and patience.

Okay. So once you embody kindness and patience, the next thing that you can do is start to build in a little bit of time during your week, just to sit with your body. Just to breathe. This is really hard, especially for people who go, go, go move, move, move. And I'm going to give you a couple different options to do this in case you are somebody who really struggles to be still, because really, there's a lot of different ways to be still emotionally that don't require physically being still.

So what you need is spaciousness. If you want to know how you're doing, if you want to know what you need to be well, you have to create space for your body to settle so that you can actually ask [00:23:00] yourself that question. Now here's what's really important. There are a thousand different ways to rest, right?

Rest does not only mean taking a nap or laying down or meditating silently or getting more sleep. Those things are important, but they're actually just one type of rest. Some people rest by exercising, by doing like intense cardio activity. Some people rest by making art. By painting, by expressing themselves through dance.

Some people rest through spiritual practice. Some people rest through pleasurable activities. There are so many different ways to rest. So I want you to ask yourself right now. What are some things that I used to do before I was burnt out? You can even go all the way back to childhood if you want to.

What are some things that I used to do that recharged my batteries, but also calmed down my nervous system? Activities that help me [00:24:00] recharge, but also settle me and bring me deeper into my body. That's so 

Gigi: interesting.

Cause when you were talking about, sitting still. Immediately, I had such a physical reaction to that because I really struggle. I was like, Ooh this is uncomfortable. I really struggle with sitting still. You'll probably see me even fidget a little bit, even dude, like now we're having this podcast interview.

I struggle. I need to move. I need to like touch things and take things and play with things. And my husband would often say you don't know how to switch off, just lay down and take a nap. And I can't, I wake up in panic from a nap. I wake up and I'm like, Oh, what is happening?

But when you were talking about that other kinds of rest, I had this vision or this memory of how I would do this paint by color paintings, you know what I'm talking about? And I love doing them as a kid. And , I would spend hours and hours just painting and doing little crafts and stuff.

 I haven't done [00:25:00] that in a very long time. And I started really missing that. So that's what that, that's what comes up for me. What about you? 

Maegan Megginson: I love that. First of all, I feel like half the ads on my Instagram are for different, like paint by numbers.

I'm sure I'm going to get those ads now. Yeah, you are. Definitely. It's listening. Algorithm is listening. But good. I don't hate that all the time, but anyways, that's another conversation. I love that. Like you, for you, rest comes when you're creating art. It's like you being still brings you discomfort.

No problem. You don't have to be still. You don't have to take a nap. And I learned this actually from a dear friend of mine. Her name is Annie Wright. She's a fellow business owner. And so I am someone who like, I'm a, I'm very still. And for me, as a child, my, my family often laughs and they're like, you were just like this little adult, you would take, you would get a blanket and a cup of tea and take yourself to the couch for quiet time.

I really like being still. I like submersing myself in hot water. So like [00:26:00] taking baths or soaking in hot tubs. I like reading books. I like being silent. I like listening to soft music. Like those are activities that are deeply restorative and calming for me. My friend Annie, she's more like you, Annie is she calls herself a Clydesdale workhorse.

Like he has an energy, a go go energy. And she gets really burnt out. And I was telling her years ago, like Annie, slow down, be still here I'll do it with you. And she got so mad at me one day and she was like, I wish you would stop telling me that because it makes me feel bad. It doesn't feel good to me.

It doesn't work for me. And when you tell me to do it, it just makes me feel bad about myself. And that was the first real aha for me that like, Oh, maybe. Being still isn't for everyone. Maybe the way that I rest isn't the way that Annie rests. So Annie and I started talking about this, and we figured out that her rest is writing her Peloton.

She wants [00:27:00] to write her Peloton, she wants to reorganize her kitchen cabinets. Those activities Are really restful for her in a way that they are really not restful for me, for you painting by numbers, doing something creative, something artistic rest can mean for you, whatever you want it to mean for you, so long as you're not doing it for anybody else and you're doing something that helps you calm down.

We need to calm down. We have to get our nervous systems in a calmer state because when we sink into that calmer state and we have this space and this time to explore our needs, I promise you, you will know the answer to the question. What do you need to be? You will know the answer to the question.

Nobody can tell you the answer to that question except for you. The only way you can find the answer to that question is if you create the space to rest. 


Gigi: I think that's the main takeaway or at least the main first step for our listeners after [00:28:00] this episode, I'm sure we're still gonna dive a little bit deeper into what follows that.

But if there is one thing that you take away from this episode is to take the time to figure that out. Even if that means experimenting, trying different things to figure out what is it that calms your nervous system that's the main takeaway I wish for our listeners. But once they do have that, once they found out, okay, I know what I need, I know what calls me down.

I know what I'm, loathing for. How do they then make space for that? I know it sounds almost obvious, like just make time, make space. If only it were 

Maegan Megginson: that easy. 

Gigi: Yeah, if only so what are some suggestions there for people to actually then make time for that? 

Maegan Megginson: There's overlap here. And I want to just circle back for a second to this first step.

And this is where the overlap comes in. Because It's really important to me that as you're doing this work, you are doing this work as part of the business that you're running. These activities that we're talking about, [00:29:00] these aren't like nice to have things that you do after work. If you have time, like you have to Rewire the way your brain thinks about business and you have to give yourself permission to make self care a part of what your business is paying you to do during the work day.

So a very simple, I'm like laughing simple it's complicated, but simple in theory, way to start is to schedule one hour a week during your normal day. Work hours to rest one hour. Again, challenging when push comes to shove and we feel behind and there's too much to do. But this is the revolutionary work that you can do to change the culture that you exist inside of.

You take one hour, let's say it's 10 a. m. on a Tuesday, 10 a. m. Every Tuesday, you're going to experiment with different types of rest. Maybe this Tuesday you go for a hike. Maybe next Tuesday you do paint by numbers. Maybe the [00:30:00] following Tuesday you take a nap. The only way you're going to discover what feels good for you is to practice.

It's to experiment. The only way you're going to have time to experiment is if you put it on your schedule in the same way you put everything else on your schedule. It's hard. This is the hardest step is getting it on the schedule and actually making the time for it. So I just want to pause there for a second and say, again, the hardest part is putting it on your schedule, but if you can put it on your schedule and honor that commitment to yourself with your life, things will start to turn around for you in a really powerful way.

So that's where we start. We have to put it on our schedule. We have to give ourselves space to experiment with different types of rest. Let me see, what is it that I need more of in my life? What is missing? And as that starts to clarify itself to you, it becomes a little bit easier to stretch that one hour window to two hours.

And then maybe it's one whole day a week eventually, right? There's going to be like an organic [00:31:00] extension because you're going to feel how good it is for your business and your clients as you start taking better care of yourself. So that's one thing. That we do is we commit to the time we grow that amount of time over time until we really feel like we have a healthier balance inside of our business of doing productive client basing work and tending to ourselves as the creative entrepreneurs that we are.

Gigi: . It seems so easy in theory and so hard in practice. 

 

Maegan Megginson: Let's talk about community, because I think that this is really easy to never do if you're trying to do it alone. The best thing that you can do is to find a buddy who wants to do this with you. I'm trying not to say accountability partners as much, because there's just something about that makes me, it makes it feel like, Homework, so I'm thinking more in terms of supportive partners. [00:32:00] Can you find a supportive partner who wants to do this with you so that you can work together to make sure that you're both holding yourselves personally accountable for the way you want to prioritize yourself and your business. So create community, find friends, find community who are having these types of conversations.

That is so important. Really crucial because again, if you're trying to do this totally alone, you're probably not going to be successful 

Gigi: because you having all then, at least for me when I'm trying to rest and it goes well for five minutes and then I'm like, what am I doing? Why am I resting? I should be doing this.

I need to send them an email. Man, I forgot to reply to that message and you start having all 25 I'm panicking. My heart is racing. I'm like. I should not be resting. I should be doing all of those things. So it does take a lot of. It does take a lot of mental power to switch off, but I would imagine that if you commit to this and you consistently show up for yourself, [00:33:00] make that time for yourself, it becomes easier until it becomes natural, until it becomes something indispensable in your life.

Routine and you start making that shift that I love what you said that we are not like our business Is not the priority we need to realize that we are working and earning money To create the life that we want and the thing is we all say that we went into this we quit our job We started our business because we want that freedom.

We want to create the life of our dreams We want more time with our families But instead, what is happening is that this work is consuming us and we start dreading it and we start, feeling miserable and it started taking all of our time to the point where we're working evenings, we're working weekends, we're working holidays instead of spending that time for ourselves or for our family.

Maegan Megginson: Yeah, exactly. This is the trap. This is the tissue box we throw into the garbage can, right? We treat our bodies. [00:34:00] Society treats our bodies. Like something to be extracted from. So all of our life force gets sucked right out of us until we have nothing left to give. But it is within our power and control to change the way we're tending to our bodies so that we can work more sustainably for as long as we want to work.

And I think that this is where we circle back to expectations. Because it's one thing to start making the space for yourself, to make the space to rest, to charge your batteries, to tend to your creative muse, but if you're not adjusting the expectations you have for yourself accordingly, you are going to get stuck, really.

Quickly, so it is impossible to talk about burnout recovery and prevention and working more sustainably and creating that freedom that we all go into our business to have for ourselves and our family without also talking [00:35:00] about. Changing the expectations that we have for ourselves and our businesses to this can be a really uncomfortable conversation, and it's a really complicated conversation, too, because we all have different needs.

We all work in slightly different markets. There's no one size fits all approach to readjusting your expectations, but it is an important part of the process. If you truly want to run a sustainable business. 

Gigi: And what are some steps that people can take that I know that we probably need to have a whole separate conversation just on that, on adjusting expectations and helping us deal with our with those expectations.

But let's do the quick start version of it. What are some first steps that people can take to rewrite those expectations they have towards themselves? 

Maegan Megginson: The way I think about so many of these conversations and so much of my work is we're scattering seeds into your psyche, into your mind right now.

We're just throwing out some seeds. [00:36:00] Your job as the listener of this conversation is to walk away and get curious about which of these seeds germinate. Which of these seeds sprout into something for you? So I think we're going to brainstorm some ideas right now. Don't feel like you have to do all of these things or try all of these things.

Trust yourself to feel what resonates for you right now. For me, A red flag that I need to readjust my expectations is when I find myself stuck in a cycle where I'm never finishing all of the tasks on my to do list. And I'm very familiar with this way of living. This is, this is my, uh, this is my growth edge.

I am so good. My eyes are bigger than my calendar. I heard somebody say once, and I love that. Like my eyes are bigger than my stomach, but no, my eyes are bigger than my calendar. I love saying yes to things. I love it because I love my work and I love the people [00:37:00] that I serve. And when opportunities come across my plate, I'm just like yes.

I want to do all of that. Before you know it, I look at my to do list and I'm like, Oh my God I'm never going to be able to finish this. And then I start quarter after quarter living in the frustration and the disappointment of feeling constantly behind. schedule. I hate that feeling. So many of us know that feeling.

It sucks. That feeling is a red flag that you need to readjust your expectations. That you are holding yourself to the caliber of a machine or a computer that can really crank out work at a non human speed. You are a human. I am a human. I have a body that has physical needs. I have a family who need me.

The reality is if I'm constantly behind, it's because I'm asking myself to do too much. So then it gets uncomfortable because when you get honest with yourself about okay, shit, this is true. [00:38:00] Like I'm doing too much. I, or maybe I'm not doing too much.

I'm expecting too much of myself. The next question is what tasks on this to do list need to go to the chopping block because the only way out of holding yourself to too many expectations is to get rid of expectations. How do I call this list so that I am only doing the most important tasks, the most important projects that helped me find that balance in my business between meeting my financial needs and serving.

My mission serving my, my, my greater mission for the work I'm here to do in the world. And also serving my mission for taking care of myself. So it's a, I think of it as a puzzle, right? We have all of these puzzle pieces on our desks and our task becomes to really pull out only the puzzle pieces that are going to create the picture of the life that we truly want to live.

 

Gigi: Maegan, I think we covered so [00:39:00] much in this episode and I know that we can continue talking about 

it probably for hours. There's so many depths to this conversation where it's about burnout, whereas it's about prioritizing yourself, expectations. But can we do a little wrap up to what we covered today to give people a actionable outcome from this episode, something that they can follow after we wrap up this conversation. . 

Maegan Megginson: Yes. I would love to wrap this up in a bow because again, these conversations are really big. They're big, they're overwhelming, and it is easy to just to shut it down because we're just like, I just don't even have the bandwidth to think about this or explore this.

So if we were to distill everything we talked about today into some of the simplest pieces, I think I would say, I'm going to make this up on the fly. I'm going to say step one, can you take a moment after you listen to this [00:40:00] episode to really think about The kind of life you want to live. Why did you go into business in the first place?

What's important to you? What are your core values as a person? You don't get fancy. You don't even need to write it down. Just think about it. What do I want my life to look like? Hold on to that. That's your compass. It's your North star. The second thing you can do is to Carve one hour per week out of your schedule to begin experimenting with different ways to rest.

And every week I want you to try something new. Try a new way to rest. Remembering that rest is anything you do that recharges your batteries and regulates your nervous system. The third thing you can do is to assess the expectations that you are operating with inside of your business. Are you asking too much of yourself?

Do you have too many things on your to do list? Do you need to cull some things? Do you need to dial things in? Look at it, get curious about it. The fourth thing I'm going to say, I just want to come back here at the end to community. Can [00:41:00] you, after this conversation, Share this conversation with a friend, a colleague, a client even, someone that you think will really resonate with this that you can maybe ask to be your supportive partner in integrating this work into your own business because, again, Community is crucial when we are trying to dismantle an entire way of understanding the world and understanding our business.

So create community so that you don't feel like you're doing this work alone, and if you do that, and you let it unfold organically, over time, I can almost guarantee that you will start feeling better, and your whole business will flourish as a result. 

Gigi: I love that. And I really hope that, what we discussed today will be helpful and will resonate with some people that they will find comfort in this conversation and realize that, they're not alone and it's okay to [00:42:00] feel the way that they feel and hopefully the tips and steps that we shared and we discussed today will serve us as a guide.

For people who are currently experiencing burnout or maybe, deep in it or just at the beginning of it, or maybe they're in the preventative state and they want to ensure that they're prioritizing themselves and taking care of themselves. So thank you so much for that. I know you have, you mentioned you have a resource.

To share with the audience as well. You want to talk a little bit more about that? 

Maegan Megginson: Yeah. I would love to invite people if this conversation resonates with you to join my email community. I think of my email list and my newsletters as. A form of the community that we were just talking about.

Can I put myself in groups and in places where people are talking about how to work more sustainably, how to fight against some of the expectations that are contributing to our [00:43:00] burnout. So that's what I do in my work. That's what I do with my email community. And I'm going to share a link to join my recover from burnout email series, which are 10 emails to help you recover from burnout without doing anything or buying anything.

It'll be an extension of everything we talked about here today. And we'll just give you a better sense of what it's like to get regular emails from me. 

Gigi: Amazing. Thank you so much, Maegan. This was an amazing conversation. Really appreciate your time and I will drop all the links in the show notes. Make sure to check out Maegan's website, give her a shout and thank you again for joining us today. I loved it. Thank you so much