3 Keys to Avoiding Entrepreneurial Burnout w/ Dr. Sandra Y Lewis Ep 81

Ever feel like you're on the brink of burnout, juggling your entrepreneurial dreams and personal well-being? Fear not, as Dr. Sandra Lewis joins us to deliver a lifeline for the hardworking entrepreneur. In our engaging conversation, we peel back the layers on the importance of self-care, discussing how our bodies are more than biological machines; they're barometers for our health and harbingers of burnout. Dr. Lewis, a clinical psychologist and personal energy strategist, shares her expertise on recognizing and responding to our body's signals to maintain sustainable success.

With the hustle culture permeating every corner of entrepreneurship, we often forget that productivity and well-being must dance together in harmony. Listen in as we reveal practical strategies that weave self-care into the very fabric of your work life. We chat about creating those much-needed pauses—yes, even a dance break counts!—to reignite creativity and sustain energy levels. These candid strategies and personal anecdotes serve as a reminder that taking care of business starts with taking care of you.

Wrapping up our conversation, we turn to the heart of what keeps us fueled—purpose and connection. We explore the transformative journey Sandra embarked on, from academia to entrepreneurship, and how understanding your 'why' can profoundly influence your work and voice. Beyond personal stories, we underscore the power of community and support networks, like Innovation Women, for entrepreneurs grappling with stress. So, give yourself the permission to pause, plug in, and be guided towards a more balanced, purposeful existence in the demanding world of entrepreneurship.

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Transcript

Brenda Meller: 1:00

Good morning and welcome. This is Brenda Meller. Today is Tuesday, November 14th. We're like halfway through the month, Sandra. I can't even believe it. I can't believe it either. It's flying by. I'm delighted because I have with me Dr Sandra Lewis and Sandra. You and I have met each other through innovation women, which is really wonderful, so I'm delighted to have the chance to get to know you a little bit better. How are you doing today?

Sandra Y Lewis: 1:25

I'm doing well, brenda. It's getting a little cooler in our area, but it's okay. I can still open a window and feel a little bit of cool air. So it's nice. I'm doing well, moving along to the end of the year, deciding not to be rushed but to go easy.

Brenda Meller: 1:40

Yeah, absolutely, and we're starting to get to that point of the year. I hear people talking about this. Let's circle back after the holidays. I did it myself once yesterday I was trying to get a session with my headshot photographer and I'm like I'm just too busy. I'm like let's do it after January. I use it for my first time.

Brenda Meller: 1:58

At any rate, I want to welcome our audience, and this is like the mic tap thing, where if we were in a real room with real people, sandra, I would say tap the mic and I would say can you hear me in the back? And the people in the back of the room would say yes or they would do the no, we can't hear you. So if you're watching us live on LinkedIn right now, could you do me a favor? Just drop a quick hi hello or say yes, we can hear you. We would appreciate that. That lets us know that the live stream is picking up and that you can hear us.

Brenda Meller: 2:25

And because we are in the virtual world, we don't know unless we have human beings telling us that the live stream is picking up. So please drop your comments below, don't be shy. And while we are waiting for those comments to start coming in. Sandra, I know a little bit about you from Innovation Women. I've read a little bit about you on your website as well, but why don't you take a few minutes, tell us about you, who you are, who you help and what do you help them with?

Sandra Y Lewis: 2:48

Yes, I am a clinical psychologist and personal energy strategist working with professionals and organizations to reduce burnout. I like connecting people with the resources they need to get out of burnout and into that place we call sustainable success sustainable impact so that they can create lives and businesses that they love.

Brenda Meller: 3:09

Wonderful. I think we're gonna have a great conversation today and you guys can see the topic above us. Here we're gonna be talking about three keys to avoiding entrepreneurial burnout, and it looks like my ask for comments helped, Sandra, because now we're getting comments coming in from folks in the audience here and I think there might be a few who are fellow Innovation Women who are joining us in the audience today too. So thank you to Dean, Carolyn, Lisa and Sama for dropping those comments to let us know the live stream is picking up, All right, Sandra. So when I booked you to come on this show and I called this show enthusiastically self-employed, because I bring on people who are gonna inspire and give advice to individuals who are self-employed and I said, what do you wanna talk about? And you said, hey, let's talk about the three keys to avoiding entrepreneurial burnout. And I said perfect, because I love to get bite-sized nuggets and I love to have things that are actionable takeaways. So what advice do you have for us on avoiding entrepreneurial burnout?

Sandra Y Lewis: 4:10

Yeah. So let's first, let's get us like, as we get into this, let's set our perspective right, Cause sometimes when we talk about avoiding something, people get to that place where I avoid it, avoid it, Let me run, let me run, and so your nervous system gets a little bit aroused. So here we're gonna think that we're avoiding something, but we're also going towards something. So if we go into that mindset like every don't has a do, then we might feel a little bit more ease as we jump into it. So the first key that I wanna share with you is don't try to hide from your body. Don't try to hide from your body. Burnout right.

Sandra Y Lewis: 4:47

One of the key symptoms of burnout is exhaustion, and our bodies are always speaking to us, telling us when we've done too much, telling us when we need something, telling us which way to go. So we wanna honor our body as our closest partner. That's the do Say don't try to hide from your body, but under your body, as your closest partner is gonna tell you every day as you're doing all the things as an entrepreneur. We know entrepreneurs often play multiple roles in their businesses. They are the big vision holders and they're also the detailed people, Rather than holding and you need to eat, you need to go to the bathroom, take breaks, listen, cause your body's gonna let you know that that's the first key and that helps us to resolve, that Helps us to get out of that exhaustion.

Sandra Y Lewis: 5:32

And remember that burnout exhaustion isn't just a physical exhaustion. It's literally also the emotional exhaustion. But your body will tell you about your feeling state. Your body will tell you about your mental state. If you listen to your body, you'll also say oh, I'm noticing these sensations in my body, I'm feeling a little tired or I'm feeling a little worried. I'm hearing these thoughts in my head. I'm feeling disconnected to what really makes my work meaningful to me. So your body will help you to monitor your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energy.

Brenda Meller: 6:03

Such a great point and I feel like sometimes, when we're self-employed, like you said, we're doing this small task, we're doing the big task and you always feel like you have your nose to the grindstone and you're just pushing things forward. And I wanna challenge our audience right now. If you're out there listening whether you're listening live or playback on the podcast that's a really great tip. Let's think about right now when Sandra says don't try to hide from your body. What are you feeling right now, and you don't need to say it in comments, but think about it out loud right now. Are you feeling tired? Are you feeling energized? Are you thirsty? Do you need to drink some water? For us? But I think giving ourselves permission is what I'm hearing you say to listen to our body. Is that right?

Sandra Y Lewis: 6:41

Yes, absolutely. And to really recognize that your body is the closest partner you have. Your body is gonna be with you through everything and it's gonna help you get through everything and do the things that really matter to you. So treat your body like a partner, recognize your body is a partner and work from there right and this internal partnership right, this physical partnership, this mental, emotional, spiritual partnership you have with your body to create what you wanna create.

Brenda Meller: 7:11

Such great advice and something so simple. It's like why don't we think about these things? But I think to your point, because we don't have a lot of us don't have a boss or a team even we might be self-employed, or if we're working with anybody, it's virtual, through email and Zoom calls and things like that, so we don't have people going. Gosh, brenda, you look a little tired today. Do you need to take a break? We don't have those people, so we need to self-regulate these things. Is that right?

Sandra Y Lewis: 7:38

Exactly and that's literally what your body will help you do. It is important to have people, so those people might be virtual people that you can talk to about what's happening. So for you and I, I met in Innovation Women and that's a place that I just like to go, because there's so much community and people experiencing the same thing. I'm experiencing that I say, oh, here's a place to connect with people who get me, who get where I am, so that actually that kind of connection, right that brings us to a place of regulation, helps our own self-regulation. So this co-regulation increases our ability to self-regulate.

Brenda Meller: 8:18

Yeah, awesome tips, awesome tips to start off, and we're here today talking about the three keys to avoiding entrepreneurial burnout, if you've just joined us and Andrew's giving us some really great advice, and the first tip she talked about was to listen to your body. Don't hide from your body. So such a great piece of advice there.

Sandra Y Lewis: 8:36

All right. So the second key I would say, brenda, is don't separate productivity from well-being. Often we think a productive person is a well person. I posted our event on LinkedIn and one of the comments below was so I schedule myself, I go and these entrepreneurs, right, I schedule myself and I know that I can get these things done in a day, and I just look and I say, okay, there's like 18 things on my list, I can do them all, and then it's. But something happens, one little thing, I misplaced my keys, right, and then I'm off, I'm out of rhythm. So we are thinking that our productivity means things are going well. We did 18 things today. Everything's going well. If a little thing happens, everything doesn't go so well. So a well person, right, a productive person, it's not always a well person.

Sandra Y Lewis: 9:30

So you wanna think how are you matching productivity with wellness in your day? That's one thing. This, I think, allows you to move out of that symptom that we see in burnout. That's called disconnection or depersonalization, like, literally, you become a person, you become almost robotic and you've now disconnected to what really is meaningful to you in your work. Instead, you wanna honor the leader that you really wanna be. You wanna be the leader that you wanna follow, and that actually requires you to honor your emotional state, to listen to what's happening, to listen to what you need and to remember what's guiding you, what's guiding the work you wanna do and how do you stay in touch with being the leader you would actually want to follow.

Brenda Meller: 10:20

That's great, and I typed the tip below. I was trying to pull up the live stream to make sure things were going in the background. I apologize if you heard the audio for a second there. But then I was trying to multitask and I'll be honest with you and then I realized I didn't quite get the tip, so I wanna make sure I got this correctly. It's key number two don't separate the wellness from productivity. Did I get the right words there, or?

Sandra Y Lewis: 10:40

separate I would have said the other way productivity from wellness, because we tend to do the productivity first. Right, because we put that first. And let me teach you, then, that these are partners. Right, I think of them as partners. And if we separate productivity from wellbeing, then we tend to lose sight of being the leader that we really wanna be. And we're a leader if we are solopreneur. We're leading an effort, we're leading an impact. So, even if you don't have a team, or you have a part-time VA, or you have a partial team, you are always leading. You're leading some impact that you want to have in the world. You're leading some difference you want to make.

Sandra Y Lewis: 11:20

In order to do that, yes, there are a number of tasks that have to get done, but keep those tasks attached to your wellbeing when you plan them out. Somewhere in that plan has to be breaks, there have to be transitions, and those transitions might be okay. I was working on the payroll. I'm gonna just take a step back before I shift into looking at how's my marketing going. Or I was working on a vision for this new course I wanna offer.

Sandra Y Lewis: 11:49

Let me take a moment and shift. To leave one thing and go to another allows you to feel who you are, because burnout happens when we disconnect from ourselves. So the second key is really about that burnout symptom, where we really start to disconnect, and then this is where we can see ourselves becoming more cynical and angry and we might fall into, as entrepreneurs, what we call the comparison trap why isn't my business going? And so then that disconnection from our wellbeing just to serve and service to productivity can leave us in that place of of I don't know what I'm doing, or I'm feeling angry, or I'm feeling upset that my business isn't going the way I want it to go.

Brenda Meller: 12:35

So important and I hear so many people. It's interesting to talk about this focus on productivity and wellbeing. I hear so many people out there talking about productivity, how to be more productive as an entrepreneur, how to get more work done as a solopreneur, how to compartmentalize and things like that. But you're actually talking about the balance right. You're talking about doing the work and then taking the break, and I think sometimes taking the break to support our own wellbeing it almost creates that white space. And I don't know about you, sandra, but I get my best ideas sometimes, whether it's taking a shower or taking a walk with the dog, getting fresh air and not listening to a podcast, just listening to sounds of nature, but that actually helps us to be more productive. Is that true for you as well?

Sandra Y Lewis: 13:20

For sure, and it's interesting because that was one of the ways I used to phrase it to like working with clients or people who were coming to a workshop or something. I say put some white space in your calendar. And I think what we also want to recognize is that when we put that space in between things, it also gives us the reminder to put some space inside of us, because if you're trying to do a lot of things, your body starts to get tight, whether it's in your shoulders or somewhere. So it reminds you to create some space in your. So sometimes you see I'm actually moving. Now, sometimes even just simple movements like that roll in your shoulders. I happen to keep a hula hoop around and I'll do a hula hoop. I'll get up and do a little hula hoop session. You love that? Right, like you, I love walking in nature. So in between those things, giving yourself five minutes to take that break to marry productivity to wellness, make them partners.

Brenda Meller: 14:22

I like that and there's so many ideas that now that you say that, like how could you incorporate movement as a part of your day? And we are both in the northern, northeastern part of the US, so we're moving into the winter months. In the pre-show we were talking about the weather and how is the weather? It's getting colder at night and we can still get outside, but it maybe is not as enjoyable because we have to really bundle up. But I've heard studies that say get outside once a day because it's good for your emotional wellbeing and helps to set your circadian rhythm. But I think to your point, you can do things inside. You can get out that hula hoop. I've got a yoga ball that I sit on sometimes at my desk because that causes me to be able to move around and balance and things like that. And I imagine there's other things that we could do to get some movement in and maybe a little bit of enjoyment in our working day too.

Sandra Y Lewis: 15:08

Yeah, and private dance parties also work you?

Brenda Meller: 15:12

just get out of the meeting. Yeah, dance parties. I love it.

Sandra Y Lewis: 15:14

You have your own little dance party and breath work is another really great way to replenish, because when you're feeling, if you have a lot on your plea, it's easy to start to feel pressured by some demand that either you've created or it is coming from the outside. I have to get this to this person by this time, and in those times what's happening often is we're getting into that place where we're feeling threatened and our nervous system is starting to try to manage that and maybe telling us to run away.

Brenda Meller: 15:45

Yeah, but fight or flight, right.

Sandra Y Lewis: 15:47

Yeah, so the breath work helps us to calm ourselves and even, like Brenda talked about loving walking and those sounds of nature even remembering just taking like three minutes to get into the memory of one of those times when you were walking and you heard the sound of an owl or you heard the sound of something rustling, the leaves rustling, and you just felt, wow, that's nature speaking. Whatever brings you some joy. It could be a memory of your child, your grandchild, giving you something that they made and they thought it was so special. So just give yourself some space to be in those moments that feel rested and calm and regulated, so that you can regulate your nervous system.

Brenda Meller: 16:39

I love it. And you just made me think of something too, sandra, when I go for walks. I go for walks mainly because I have a dog, and she's a newer dog, a rescue dog. We've had her for about two years now. Several times throughout the day she'll come in and be like okay, mom, time for a break, we're gonna go for a walk, we're gonna look at nature. She talks to me. I know in my head she talks to me, but when we go on walks we're really near to a park and there's a lot of nature, different animals and creatures, and every once in a while we see something different. So last week we saw a red fox.

Brenda Meller: 17:07

I've never seen a red fox before live, but I saw one in the park. It was about six months ago. I was out with a pepper and we saw skunks sometime. But have you ever seen a mama skunk with like baby skunks following it? It was the coolest thing and it was far enough away. I wasn't worried about what was gonna happen. And some days we see chipmunks and we come back for our walk and I always retell to my family this is what we saw on our walk today, but it's I love that you talk about those reflecting upon memories sometimes, and that helps to add a little bit of that white space in there too.

Sandra Y Lewis: 17:40

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely yeah. And I'd say, if you're ready, we can move to the third one. Sure, yeah. So the third one is the third key is don't lose touch with why you love your work. Don't lose touch with why you love your work. This is related to the burnout symptom, of losing your effectiveness and losing your sense of fulfillment because you're overdoing or you're over worrying or you're comparing whatever might be getting you there. This losing touch with our work means we've actually lost touch with the thing inside of us that made this work a place we wanted to go, this business we're building and when I've had entrepreneurial clients, they always have a mission for their businesses.

Sandra Y Lewis: 18:34

I want to end this kind of disparity. I want to make it possible to people, for people to have hope like they're, like they're seriously about they want to make world change, like even I think about you, brenda, and helping people like get their word out, getting get themselves noticed, help the world to see who they are. So that's like major. That's here, all these people in the world who have a thing that they want to do, and here's somebody who helps them elevate their voice, elevate their presence. That's major, right? That's that changes lives. That changes lives in so many ways.

Sandra Y Lewis: 19:11

So when you stay in touch with why you're loving this thing and see it as an extension of something deeper in you, then you can avoid that burnout symptom of I'm not effective, I'm not fulfilled, and you can stay in, you can be purpose driven and you can get to your deep or why. That probably guides everything you do. Even, I would think, because I think about some of the work you do, brenda, with people learning how to use LinkedIn and elevate who they are in the world. But, like, when I think about that kind of elevation, that kind of supporting people to be their whole self in the world, I could also see that in your commitment to rescuing a dog, here's a little being right, a living being that's been over here in this corner.

Sandra Y Lewis: 20:00

Nobody's noticing you. Some somebody may have even hurt you and now I'm going to take care of you and help you to experience a life that you enjoy. Like there's a thread. The business is like an expression of the thread that runs through everything you do, which I call purpose, a deeper purpose, a deeper why that guides everything you do. When you can stay in touch with why you love your business, then you can you're in touch with your deeper, why that guides everything there are your deeper, why your purpose is infinite. There is no end to it. So if you can just keep allowing your business to be also a pathway back to this, what some would call spiritual energy, that sense of fulfillment and meaning, then so it's like you are offering to the business but the business is also offering to you. Staying in that, again, it's a relationship between you and the business.

Brenda Meller: 20:58

Yeah, so important and it's such a great conversation we're having today and, by the way, for anyone joining us a little bit late we're here talking about the three keys to avoiding entrepreneurial burnout. We're talking with Dr Sandra Lewis, and what I love about the talk here today is we're not just focused on the productivity and the getting the results and being more successful, but we're talking about the self-care. I think that's an important theme that's run throughout here, but also in the last tip that you offered. You talked about don't lose touch with your why you love your work and for many of us, myself included, it's the what we can do is we are self-employed. That we couldn't do when we were employees of a company.

Brenda Meller: 21:38

But it's also some of the things like, some of the ways that we can help people and, to your point, I help people by bringing them in for these conversations, by leveraging my network, by bringing you in and giving you, sandra, exposure to the connections I have here on LinkedIn, my network, my podcast listeners. Why wouldn't I leverage that? Why wouldn't I? What's the value in having a large network if you're not able to bring other people in and to allow them to reach new people as well? And I get. That's part of my why. It's not just the work that I do, but it's the how can I help others, lift others up, shine the spotlight on them, and I imagine it has to be the same way with you. There's some things that you're doing that pay the bill, so to speak, and then there's some other things that pay pay you inside that for deciding, oh gosh for sure.

Sandra Y Lewis: 22:30

And speaking as a person who did burn out and had to come back right, what I recognize is that I lost touch with why I was even doing the work. Like that's my college professor side, and I wanted to be a college professor because I'm going to meet young people who want to build a difference in the world and I can be a part of helping them build that difference. And I lost touch with that. When I lost touch, I got oh, we got to do this. Okay, there's a committee, we got this project and all of those things just took me right away from what I meant to the work and what the work meant to me. So coming back to what that particular work meant to me helped me also get into my deeper why and to use that to guide my work and find my voice in there.

Brenda Meller: 23:24

And you're a college professor right now, are you? Now?

Sandra Y Lewis: 23:27

I am a college professor and an entrepreneur at the same time.

Brenda Meller: 23:30

That's wonderful. What are the subjects that you teach? What do you speak about?

Sandra Y Lewis: 23:34

I teach. I'm a psychologist. When you're a tenured professor, you tend to you teach in your discipline, and I also direct an African American Studies program. So I teach psychology courses. My one of them I teach right now is called psychology of adjustment, which is great for me because I love helping people figure out how to get past stress and to transition from one space into another, and I also teach intro. I've taught clinical, or what we call clinical psychology courses, so there's been a range of things. Community psychology is actually one of my favorite things to teach to.

Brenda Meller: 24:09

Yeah, it's got to be very fascinating. And connecting with the younger generation too has got to keep you just engaged. And I feel like sometimes when I do workshops and presentation, I learn from my students, from my audience. And I've thought about college teaching. I've been approached a few times for some community college and for some university positions and, timing wise, it hasn't always worked out. I'm like maybe it's a someday thing for me, but it sounds like you're getting a lot of joy and satisfaction into teaching.

Sandra Y Lewis: 24:36

Oh yeah, they keep you on your toes, they keep you thinking about how, because they keep changing, they stay up with the current trends.

Brenda Meller: 24:43

That's really good point. Speaking of questions, I want to change gears and bring our audience into the conversation. We may or may not have any college students watching today, but I know that we've got a really amazing LinkedIn network with people who are watching our conversation today. So if you have a question for Sandra, I want to invite you to go ahead and drop it in the comments below and we're speaking right now to those of you who are live but if you're listening to this in the playback later, please do drop your questions as well. And I want to just bring up a few comments that I have.

Brenda Meller: 25:15

We've seen up on screen one in particular from Michelle B Griffin, who's watching us. I think she's in Florida, I'm not mistaken, and, michelle, she's Sandra. You and I can talk about the fact that Florida's got it pretty good this time of year Because, you know, not too much of a dip in the temperature that we have. But also I've heard that Florida's summers are like Michigan and New Jersey winters, so I'm so excited about that. But Michelle is saying I hear you on the nature and rest to get clarity and redirect when we go off course. Talk to me a little bit about rest, sandra. I apologize. We did talk about reflecting, but let's talk about the rest element. What are your thoughts there?

Sandra Y Lewis: 25:56

I will tell you that I am a person who likes to blend my psychology clinical training with my wellness training, and I am a yoga nidra instructor, or guide, I would say. And yoga nidra is about rest. It's literally about taking us to those deep Delta ways that we know are the place where we heal. We reach those in sleep, when we get to deep sleep, but oftentimes we're going through our day and our body just doesn't know how to get back there. So rest is what, shall we say? It's literally like fuel. So when you rest, when you really rest, your body re, re, organizes, begins to reset, and then you can come back to something fresh.

Sandra Y Lewis: 26:40

Rest can happen in lots of ways. So rest can happen as a nap Right, there are cultures where people stop every day and everybody takes every afternoon. Right, you take a nap. That's that's how I grew up. Every day we took a nap.

Sandra Y Lewis: 26:54

So you can take naps. You can take walks in nature. You can take a moment and just sit quietly. If you just sat quietly and noticed your own breath for three minutes, right, literally, three minutes, 180 seconds, right, that's one way to rest. Another is to simply like sometimes people who work, say, in settings where they're going from one client to another. Yes, and they might be face, face to face. So you may say, if you were a clinic provider, right, you in this room with a person, and then when you open that door, you're leaving that behind and in between one door and the next, you're just saying I'm taking a breath, yes, taking two breaths, I'm taking three breaths. When you put your hand on the door and up, you're just present with it. So rest can happen in those small spaces between things, just by noticing we're shifting from one thing to another.

Brenda Meller: 27:56

Yeah, that's very true, and just making that space even if you don't have the time to take the brass. I love the thought here, Another comment joining us from.

Sandra Y Lewis: 28:06

Erin.

Brenda Meller: 28:06

Erin says this is your first LinkedIn Live, so welcome to the LinkedIn Live world. Erin, we're so delighted to be your first one you're listening to. And, erin, little pro tip for you anytime you see people going live, just go into the comments real quick and just do a quick comment, even if you say hello, hi, from Florida. It's a great way of building visibility for yourself, because not a lot of people are going in the comments on these lives or watching. They're passively watching, but getting into the comments is a real great way of building visibility. And Erin, sandra, is saying that she also lives in Florida and, yes, winter is the time to go outside. Now I'm curious for you, sandra do you try to get outside throughout the year? Is there a certain season of the year that you get outside more than?

Sandra Y Lewis: 28:45

others, I do. I try to get outside throughout the year. And, to your point earlier, there is some research that suggests if we can go outside, even for a short period, when in that early morning time it actually helps the body reset. But I try to go outside even if it's just for a short period, if I just walk a half a mile around my neighborhood, or a mile, and then I come back.

Brenda Meller: 29:07

Yeah, so the going outside is great for me, yeah, yeah it just helps to just recalibrate, like where's the weather at outside, because sometimes when you get inside you're either around the heat in the winter or the air conditioning in the summer and you don't your body doesn't really know what the real temperature is outside. Jelani says this is great, so to Jelani I'm really loving the camera.

Brenda Meller: 29:29

Thank you, and I see Andrew saying and this is a great point too, sandra he says he likes building rapport with people. It helps to avoid burnout, makes me feel I'm not alone on the journey. What are your thoughts on that?

Sandra Y Lewis: 29:43

Andrew, you are doing exactly what is called in polyvagal theory. They call it co-regulation. You are connecting with others who provide a sense of support. It's like that friend, when you sit down, no matter what state you're in, they're open and listening to hear and they only hold this peaceful space for you. So once someone is in that kind of peaceful, calm, loving state, even if you come to them feeling a little frazzled, as long as they can stay in that state, it's literally like your nervous system is talking to theirs and they start to notice. This is I talk about my grandmother a lot, my paternal grandmother. She was very good at that. That was one of the things she was best at. So an unsettled child could easily become settled because she could be so calm with them. I think that in psychology we might call it Carl Rogers might call it unconditional positive regard. Finding those people that you can connect with is absolutely a way to avoid burnout, because those people can help you, your nervous system keep resetting.

Brenda Meller: 30:54

Great point. Thank you for sharing that, andrew. We also have Lisa saying thank you, sandra, for validating self-care I've been doing. The dancing is especially helpful. I love that you called out on that, lisa, because I was thinking why don't I ever do dance parties? I want to see how Pepper reacts when I start to play with the music and start dancing. I'm going to try doing that, I think.

Sandra Y Lewis: 31:12

I'm going to start today.

Brenda Meller: 31:14

So thank you for that, Sandra.

Sandra Y Lewis: 31:16

in anything you wanted to add on Lisa's comment, oh, Lisa, look, let me just tell you about this recovery for burnout. It is a process, as you said. It's just almost feel as though there may be layers of it that you keep getting to. You may actually deal with, say, a habit that you notice led you down the right. Maybe you were just doing too much for other people and that sort of led you into burnout. There may be a few things that increased, that gave you a little bit of push into that burnout.

Sandra Y Lewis: 31:48

But recognize that you are taking all these steps to recover. The fact that you've taken a step to recover tells me that you got past any of those social stigmas that say, oh, how did you burn out? You got past all of that and you heard your body, you heard your mind, you heard your emotions. You heard your very spirit calling you to say, Lisa, there's a better way. And you took charge. So just be patient with yourself, because all of us who do burnout work will tell you it takes time. You may be ready to go back to a somewhat normal schedule after a while, but then you'll keep discovering oh OK, this is a part of the process and just allow yourself to keep moving through it. Make sure you have some support. Ray Burnal coach great groups you can be in that provide some support around staying on your path. Yeah, yeah, I love that, yeah.

Brenda Meller: 32:45

And sometimes we'll give folks that will be in comments here. Sandra and I just want to point out for Herman, for example hey, herman, thank you so much for watching from Silver Spring, maryland, but we'll see their gray avatar photo just to change gears. From a technical perspective, that's either because Herman doesn't have a photo on his account or because his third party settings are not shut up to show it. But I did want to take a second to pull that up on screen. A little LinkedIn tip in the middle there.

Brenda Meller: 33:08

And then we'll shift back to a few other comments, and one from Erin, and thank you for sharing this, erin. Erin says she's been an entrepreneur for years but her new business is online. She's finding the burnout of managing her business does impact the inertia of building the new one, but if I focus on the why instead of the finances, I have more endurance for managing both. So I think, spot on with what you're talking about here, sandra, would you agree?

Sandra Y Lewis: 33:34

Yeah, I agree, yeah, she, and also Erin, just recognizing that what you may be calling inertia may just be the seed. You plant a seed in the ground and it has to break open. Right, it's not whole, and then it has to be a sprout, it has to root, and then it pushes its way up through the ground. So what you're saying now, what you call inertia, can be just that, behind the same stuff that you're doing to make it flourish.

Brenda Meller: 34:01

Yeah, absolutely Great. And to round us off on our comments here, joey Himmle, for our episodes are positive person. Joey says positive beats negative every day. I completely agree with you and it actually you maybe think about this today, sandra. We both belong to innovation women. We're both members and we were talking in the beginning of the call how we both go on.

Brenda Meller: 34:20

The speaker friend Friday calls and I have to. Sarah, at the end of every call I have to jump off. Usually I'm jumping off at 9.45 because I run a weekly group coaching office hours call every Friday and I have to get off and get ready, but at the same time I'm jumping off. Bobby is moving us into breakout rooms for the networking and I'm at that point where I feel like I've met a lot of people and you just made me think about this today. So maybe the networking part isn't something that I need to seek out like those breakout rooms to meet more people, but maybe it's more meeting more people like me who can help to balance the burnout and some of those other issues and just to regulate.

Brenda Meller: 34:59

I think that's a really good point and I feel like sometimes I don't know about you, but I feel like sometimes I get that from innovation women, because when we come into the group, we ask questions, we share frustrations and we're like how do we deal with this? Is anybody else dealing with this? And I feel like we get a bit of that. Did you agree with that as well?

Sandra Y Lewis: 35:16

Absolutely. And then it's just it's amazing to watch how many people will just simply raise their hand and say here, I got this idea for you. How many people will write in the comments hey, here's a resource, they'll put a link there. So there's so much support that people start to feel that ability to slow it down, to find that place where they find their calm again.

Brenda Meller: 35:38

Yeah.

Sandra Y Lewis: 35:38

Yeah, absolutely, I agree, absolutely.

Brenda Meller: 35:41

Yeah, so I want to start to wrap up our conversation today. I want to share your website up on screen here first, and there might be folks that are interested in working with you or learning a little bit more about the services and the offerings that you have, sandra, so could you tell us about that?

Sandra Y Lewis: 35:58

Yeah, so actually, what you have up here on the page just shows my three things that I focus on. I focus it on providing and whose Goddess it is workshops, webinars, teaching to people. The first thing, you see, there is a great workshop I'm working on called Five More Ease and Stressful Times. Then, just resources that people can walk away with. I offer speaking training around reducing burnout, prevention and helping you build a workplace where people thrive. I also do one-one coaching. If you're interested in one-to-one coaching, I offer one-to-one coaching as a service. That course I'm working on is Five More Ease and Stressful Times. Those are the two main ways the working with me through speaking workshops and working with me through coaching.

Brenda Meller: 36:49

I think there's no shortness of work for you out there, because I think so many of us who are entrepreneurs we struggle with burnout. What I love is for the show. We're not just talking about the productive part of our business, but we're also talking about self-care the softer side of what we need to do to take care of ourselves. It sounds like you've got some really great offerings working one-on-one, speaking to groups, the online course as well. I'll make sure to drop that link into the comments here on LinkedIn. We'll also put that in the show notes. Again, the website is lifein4partharmoniecom. The four is just the number. Life in the number four, part harmonycom. I'm reading that off your podcast folks out there. Then also Sandra, if people are interested in connecting with you on LinkedIn, I'm going to show your LinkedIn URL off on screen as well. But are you open to connecting with?

Sandra Y Lewis: 37:45

folks. Yes, absolutely, please connect. I would love to connect with you. I do about twice a month on LinkedIn, I do a program called Burnout Hiding in Plain Sight so that we can actually begin to see how we might be sliding toward burnout. I'd love to have you come and join me on LinkedIn and connect with me so you can even share with me some of those live times that when I'm talking about burnout hiding in plain sight.

Brenda Meller: 38:14

Yeah, that's awesome. I see that. When I'm looking at your profile up on screen right now. I see that you have the hashtags at the top of your profile. It says talks about burnout, resilience, work life, harmony, etc. Because you have those, I know that you have creator mode turned on. I'm just going to remind our audience if you do visit Sandra's profile, from your view now I'm already connected with you.

Brenda Meller: 38:35

Sandra. It's this first next year name in my view, but for our audience purposes, if you visit Sandra's profile, the button you're going to see on her profile will say follow. If you want to connect with Sandra, you can, but you'll have to click on the More button and then, underneath the More button, you'll get a menu of options, one of which will either be Personalize, invite or Connect, and then, when you do invite her to connect, just mention that you saw her on the show with Brenda Meller. Just name drop me. We've only done one show together. Social know exactly how far you're coming from there, but it sounds like you're open to folks connecting with you if they reach out to the show.

Sandra Y Lewis: 39:08

Oh, absolutely, I love community.

Brenda Meller: 39:11

Wonderful. All right, as we wrap up our conversation here today, Sandra, any final comments for us. We were talking today about the three keys to avoiding entrepreneurial burnout.

Sandra Y Lewis: 39:21

Yes, I would say remember your body as your closest partner, stay connected to why you love what you're doing and honor your well-being every step of the way.

Brenda Meller: 39:34

Great, so wonderful advice. I'm so glad that we crossed paths through Innovation Women. I know I for one am going to look forward to listening to this again on my walks with the dog and maybe even in my downtime. So many great pieces of advice here, sandra. Thank you so much for sharing those with us today.

Sandra Y Lewis: 39:50

Thank you, brenda, thank you so much All right, awesome.

Brenda Meller: 39:53

So, as we wrap up, I want to remind everyone that if you enjoyed the show today, we would love if you could leave us a comment before you leave. Tell us what you enjoyed about it or, as soon as this is done, if you're watching this on LinkedIn, it'll a little share button will appear below the video. If you could click to share that on LinkedIn, as opposed, we would love it. Maybe tell people something that you learned or why they should watch this video. You never know who you're going to help when you share these videos out, and there might be some great advice that Sandra shared today that's going to help someone in your network. I love this technique because if you haven't yet posted on LinkedIn this week, this month, heck, maybe even this year, you don't have to think about it. Just click to share and it's a piece of content that you can share along and help someone with your network.

Brenda Meller: 40:39

With that said, I want to thank everyone for watching and for joining here today. We're here every Tuesday through the end of 2023 at 9.05 am Eastern time, and this will be later converted onto a podcast. So, sandra, thank you again for joining. Will I see you on the Friday? Speaker Friends this week.

Brenda Meller: 40:55

Oh yes, I will be there this week. Yeah, good, I will be there as well. We try to make it every week we were talking about that in the pre-show when we can. I always find it's a really beneficial experience, but a delight seeing you, and I'll make sure to share the YouTube playback with our group on Friday as well. Great, very wonderful. All right, everyone. Stay safe and stay healthy. I look forward to seeing all of you on LinkedIn and have a wonderful day.