Transforming Burnout into Balance + Resiliency with Annika Egglestone (part 1)

What if you could transform burnout into a journey of rediscovery and resilience? Tune in as we engage in a profound conversation with Annika Egglestone, a burnout prevention coach and international speaker, who turned her own experience of entrepreneurial burnout into a mission to help others. Anika's journey takes us from the brink of collapse to a life fueled by balance and joy, inspired by the liberating ideas in "The Four Hour Workweek." As she shares her transition to a digital nomad lifestyle and work in digital marketing, Anika emphasizes the pivotal role of human connection and the pursuit of a fulfilling life, guiding listeners towards escaping the clutches of overwhelm.

In a heartfelt exploration, we delve into the difficult terrain of recognizing the early warning signs of burnout, drawing from Annika's personal experiences in the high-pressure world of entrepreneurship. Discover how the relentless cycle of work can lead to physical and emotional collapse if left unchecked. We then explore the arduous yet rewarding path of recovery, learning to redefine productivity and embrace supportive relationships. Annika's insights shed light on the emotional and practical steps necessary to reignite the inner fire and create a balanced, joyful existence. Join us as we uncover actionable strategies to reclaim your well-being and lead a more fulfilling life.

About Annika Egglestone
Annika Egglestone is a burnout prevention coach and international speaker.

After being an entrepreneur for over 10 years, burnout forced Annika to walk away from her business in 2019.

After a 2 year recovery journey, she now teaches workshops around the world and helps busy leaders create time, energy and joy.

Life should be easier than we make it, so let's retrain our brains to move away from overwhelm and towards a more efficient and joyous life.

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Transcript

Pamela Cass 0:06

In the grand theater of life. We all seek a comeback, a resurgence, a rekindling of our inner fire. But how do we spark that flame? Welcome to Reignite Resilience. This is not just another podcast. This is a journey, a venture into the heart of human spirit, the power of resilience and the art of reigniting our passions.

Natalie Davis 0:31

Welcome back to another episode of Reignite Resilience. I am your co-host, Natalie Davis, and I am so excited to be back with you all today. Pam, how are you?

Pamela Cass 0:40

I am fabulous and I was just chuckling just now because I get listeners, do not know, but I was at home yesterday. I just got home from being outside running errands and I stuck my hair up in a big old clip. And I'm working at my island and I look up and Natalie and her daughter and her partner are all at my front door and I'm like what the heck?

Natalie Davis 1:05

It's awesome. It's like what's Pam doing? Let's go check out. Let's go check her out, let's see what's going on in Pam's world.

Pamela Cass 1:10

And I'm just working and of course you know when you're at home. You're kind of like your guard down. Luckily I was dressed, not in my pajamas, so I was really grateful for that, but Natalie was dropping off a baby gift for my daughter from the baby shower that was in.

Natalie Davis 1:25

February, exactly. Listen. I am so excited that I was able to get that to you, because it's been sitting in my coat closet for approximately five months, neither here nor there. What matters is that Walker now has it, so for all the listeners that have been, following along.

Pamela Cass 1:49

I finally made it to Pam's house. I had to. I had to just stick it in the back of my car and get it over there, and you did it. So, no, so it's fun to see you in person. Oh, my gosh, don't get to see each other in person. No, we don't. We don't all the time.

Natalie Davis 1:57

All the time we're we're on zoom, we meet in this virtual space, but yeah, now that we get the opportunity. Well, I was in the neighborhood. Listen, you guys, if I'm in your neighborhood, just know that I'm going to come ringing at your door. And I don't know if you know this, but I came by another day. I didn't have the package, so I'm glad you weren't home, but I came by another day and I just left you a nice video on your camera, which is not connected, so it was in vain.

Natalie Davis 2:23

Oh my gosh, exactly. Oh well, you would have been entertained. I think I did a little song and a dance. Yeah, I enjoy the ring cameras. I usually give a little bit of a show and I know the person. I wouldn't do it to a stranger, but if I know the person, I give a little bit of a show, perfect.

Natalie Davis 2:39

Well, dang it, okay, I know. Yeah, you missed out, but we have a special guest today and I'm so excited for us to dive into today's episode. Pam, why don't you start by telling our listeners who's joining us today?

Pamela Cass 2:53

Yeah, this one, I think, is so timely and I think it's going to resonate with a lot of our listeners. So today we have Anika. She is a burnout prevention coach and international speaker. After being an entrepreneur for over 10 years, burnout forced Anika to walk away from her business in 2019. After a two-year recovery journey, she now teaches workshops around the world and helps busy leaders create time, energy and joy. Life should be easier than we make it, so let's retain our brains to move away from overwhelm and towards a more efficient and joyful life. Who doesn't want that? So welcome Anika. We are so excited for you to be here today, and let's just I'd like to hand it over to you and just tell us your story. I'd love to know, and let's just.

Annika Egglestone 3:44

I'd like to hand it over to you and just tell us your story. I'd love to know, sure. Thank you for having me my story. So I suppose, like the intro said, my story is dictated by the burnout that I went through in 2019. So I've been a business owner for a very long time. I decided when I was 19,. I read a book called the Four Hour Workweek and realized there's more to life than just what I'd seen modeled for me in my parents, and I wanted to go and be a digital nomad. That was the big dream that I was chasing right from the start. Well, I'm currently chasing that dream.

Annika Egglestone 4:25

So I love it, so I, I can't wait to hear more, like we all are um, oh look, it took a little while to to get going on a lot of false stats, especially at 19, like I hadn't gone, I hadn't completed my college degree or anything like that. So it was just where can I find? Um, you know, where can I build up an expertise that is going to allow me to work remotely? And um tried a few different things and over time, I had settled on the digital marketing space because that was emerging at the time. Um, specializing in email marketing and marketing automation. Um, and I I was. It was really fun.

Annika Egglestone 5:09

Actually, I was doing a whole bunch of different odd jobs, um, just to, you know, pay the bills and and keep going and like hospitality. And I was teaching German. I'm from Germany, um, and then I said you know what? We need to draw a line in the sand, we need to just call it a day and just commit to making this happen. So I booked a trip around the world. So I was, I lived in New Zealand at the time and I said I'm going to book a trip around the world, I'm going to go to the US, go to this conference a it was. I can't even remember what it was, but there was an event happening in LA, I said I'm going to go there. It's a business event. I'm going to meet clients was what I said to myself.

Natalie Davis 5:56

It seemed simple goal One goal.

Annika Egglestone 5:57

We're going to go we're going to meet clients.

Natalie Davis 6:00

That's it. In a different country? Yes, Easy. Pretty much.

Annika Egglestone 6:07

The naivety of youth. But also you know what, sometimes you just got to try things. So I said I'm going to go there, I'm going to meet clients, then I'm going to go to Germany see my family for a couple of weeks, because it's been a while since I've seen them, and then on the way back I'm going to stop over in Thailand and by that point I'm going to like, try out working on the beach and just see, try out this digital nomad lifestyle and and um, make it happen effectively and I and then come back to New Zealand and by then I'll have enough money to, you know, pay the deposit on my next place that I'm going to rent and and be sorted, and from then on I'm never going to have an in-person job again. And I went to LA and I met people didn't meet clients, okay, but you know you probably met some amazing people, by the, the way.

Natalie Davis 7:03

Yes.

Annika Egglestone 7:04

I really did. It was a fantastic experience and I'm still in touch with some of the people from that time as well. So, you know, no regrets there at all. But of course, there's me sitting in Germany going okay. Well, I need to figure something out because I need to have clients by the time I land, and I honestly cannot tell you how it worked out, but it was by the time I got to Thailand and it's monsoon season. So it's like bucketing all around me in this space and I'm trying to be heard on my headset while I'm talking to this client, this potential client in the US. But by the time I left Thailand, I had a signed agreement with a client that allowed me to then pay my deposit and live when I landed in New Zealand, and I've never had an in-person job since- Wow, okay, how old were you?

Annika Egglestone 8:00

I would have been. I want to say 23.

Pamela Cass 8:02

Wow. Okay, so 23 years old, you just decide you're going to travel around the world digital nomad, and you just you made it happen, wow.

Annika Egglestone 8:13

Yeah, I feel like I willed it into being, if that makes sense.

Pamela Cass 8:17

Yeah, oh, it totally makes sense. Totally makes sense. It's so funny because when I was in would have been in college I remember I went to the beach, ocean City, maryland, and I was working at a bar overnight during the day. I sat on the beach and there was this gentleman there who's probably my age now. I thought he was really old at the time, but I'm pretty sure he was how old I am now and he was working on his computer and I'm like I want that job. I want to be able to do that here. I am at this age and I'm still seeking to get to that space. But so you said that you read that book. Was that the catalyst for you wanting to to do this job? Okay, and who gave the book? Was it just a book?

Annika Egglestone 8:58

that, um, it was a boyfriend at the time. He was really into personal development and so he had all these different books, seven habits of highly effective people for our work week, few other things. And yeah, I just picked it up one day and went oh, what's this about? And something clicked and and it's like this is what I've been seeking, because I so, um, my, I guess my childhood was spent traveling from country to country because of my, my father's, work, so I wanted that lifestyle of being able to go and experience different countries and cultures. But he came home and complained about his job every day, so I didn't want to do that job.

Natalie Davis 9:37

Yes, That'll influence it. Right, it's like not this Wow.

Annika Egglestone 9:46

Exactly. So yeah, that was the big commitment to make it happen. Interestingly, I didn't do a whole lot of then digital nomading. From that point I stayed mostly in New Zealand, but it was, it was all working from home, working remotely. All my clients, most of my clients, I'd never actually met in person and that was a strange concept at the time. I think you know, post COVID, working from home is a really normal thing, but at the time people would, I'd get, you know, a little bit of confused glances. What do you mean? You don't meet your clients in person? How does that work? Now? Of course, we all know that that works just fine.

Pamela Cass 10:22

Yeah, so you were doing this way before the rest of the world was doing this. Yes, I love it.

Annika Egglestone 10:30

I did it before. It was cool.

Pamela Cass 10:31

Yes, yeah, yes.

Annika Egglestone 10:34

I love it, I love it, I love it.

Recognizing Burnout Warning Signs

Annika Egglestone 10:35

But, yeah, so that was kind of my start into my marketing career. And then what happened in I want to say, 2016, 2017, is I was still very much hand to mouth, Like I hadn't quite figured out the profitability side of things and how do I actually make this something that is going to last me into the future? Um, and so at that point I met, um, met a couple of people, um, and we all decided to partner together and be a digital marketing agency. Um, so one had like a lot of experience in the business strategy, um, he used to be a CEO, and then one was in the web design space and sort of he balanced out the skill set that I didn't have in the digital marketing space. And so the three of us decided we're going to go into business together and make this happen. And that was two years of probably some of the toughest years of my life, because you're learning to work together, you're doing business in a different way, um, and I'd say I, I'd say, as far as you know, lessons learned from the podcast, one of my key lessons, I I say, is is be careful who you partner with when you go into business, be careful who you choose and vet them a lot more carefully, because it's a lot easier, it's a lot harder to to leave once you've made that commitment.

Annika Egglestone 12:09

Yeah, and unfortunately for me, I was sold on big dreams and big promises and it wasn't. It didn't come true or it wasn't actually ever going to happen. And yeah, I look, I was young and I partnered with someone who was older than me and thought, oh well, they must know what they're doing. But I got a lot of bad advice and we started running the business in a way that was very counter to who I was and who and how I thought life should be done. Um, I, I've always been a very sort of free spirited kind of person and I definitely decided the time, you know, let's, let's try something different, because this hasn't been working so well. Um, like, it's great, I love my life, but I want more. So let's try something new.

Annika Egglestone 13:04

But over that time, my world shrunk to the point where it was work and sleep, and so we were all living together in the same house and there was no time for hobbies. There was no time for really anything. Um, and this is sort of when the burnout starts to happen, and I always say burnout happens because you are not allowing space in your life for your soul, and that's very much. What happened to me was my soul just started to get crushed, um and go and, and there was no room for it to express itself, and that I could only stick that out for for two years. Uh, and then my, my body decided to give up. It said, nope, you can't, I cannot do this anymore, I am physically no longer capable.

Annika Egglestone 14:04

Um, and I ended up stuck in bed for two or three months, was pretty much bed bound, wow, and had to, had to shut down the company. We'd grown it to about eight staff at that point. We had offices in Sri Lanka, we had our like home office in New Zealand, clients in Australia, new Zealand, and I had to walk away. And I had to shut it down because my body just could not take that pressure and that crushing of not having room to be me effectively. Yeah and yeah, so I had to walk away and that was my sort of big burnout moment.

Pamela Cass 14:48

Yeah, so you were partnered up with these two other people. You were living together, basically living and working, not even living and working. You were working and co-habitating, but you had no opportunity for anything outside of that. And so very very limited, yeah, so what were, what were some of the things that you noticed in your body leading up to that point where you couldn't get out of bed for that period of time?

Annika Egglestone 16:15

well, the interesting thing with burnout, especially at that stage, is I didn't notice my body at all. There was no room to think about my body because there's too many things that need to get done. One of the things I see now a lot with clients is they enter into before the sort of the big collapse, if you will. They enter into what I call the hyperactive state, where the brain's running a million miles a minute. They're always going on about what they should do and what they should do next and they can't possibly stop and they're just kind of charging ahead and running on fumes. And one of the big indicators to me is if, if they can't sit down and keep still, because they know that if they do that, they'll realize how absolutely exhausted they are, and that's just not an option okay and that was the thing for me it was.

Annika Egglestone 17:14

It was not an option to feel how tired I was and how miserable I was. It just wasn't a choice.

Pamela Cass 17:21

Yeah, um, until until it went too far until it went too far, and then your body was like your body, overrode it and said well, you weren't listening, so now you're going to be forced to listen, and did you for those months that you were in bed? Was it sleep? Was it? What did that look like?

Annika Egglestone 17:41

um, a lot of sleep, a lot of just honestly just lying there, um, obviously, still having to, like, go through the process of trying to shut down the company, trying to extract. You know there's three people involved. So how do you manage all of that, the staff, all of these things that we had to deal with in that time? So I think, from what I remember it was, I was either sleeping, staring aimlessly into space, or trying to summon the energy to do something that needed doing in relation to shutting everything down.

Pamela Cass 18:18

Yeah, so you said that if you can't your clients, if they can't sit still, it's usually kind of an indication. So are there other signs that we can share with the listeners for them to be aware of?

Annika Egglestone 18:33

Yeah, absolutely so. Yeah, being unable to sit still is a is a big one of just. Can you just spend five minutes just doing nothing? And most often the answer is no, because I keep thinking of other things that I need to do and other things that I need to remember. It's that feeling of like you're running on fumes, like you, you've only got a certain amount of runway ahead of you and you just need to keep going, even though you can't quite see where you're headed.

Overcoming Burnout and Finding Balance

Annika Egglestone 19:03

Um, one of my favorite and surprising ones is if you're, if you find yourself dropping things a lot, or, like when cooking, I would burn myself on the stove because I wasn't paying full attention to my body and where I was in space because I was spending all this time in my head thinking of things. Um, struggling to fall asleep is another one, because your brain won't slow down. Um, a big, big one I think I'm going to come back to. If you're sitting down and you can't do anything, you just pick up your phone and you just do something on there instead Just being unable to be with yourself in the moment because of being afraid of how tired you will feel if you let yourself feel that feel, if you let yourself feel that.

Natalie Davis 19:57

Anika, I feel like it was such a young age for you to have experience with burnout like that. I think your introduction to burnout had you, had you heard of it, Was this something that you were familiar with, had other people around you experienced it. Sometimes we have examples that show us the way.

Annika Egglestone 20:18

Yeah, look, I really love that you brought up that question because I so. I had a lot of friends who were older than me growing up and one of the things that I remember seeing quite consistently, especially in the women that I was around, was that they would push themselves too far and they would end up, you know, skirting into that burnout space and I always remember saying to myself look, I don't want that like above all, I really don't want that. I I have had challenges with my energy levels since I was 18. I came down with glandular fever and effectively ever since then I've been in an up and down roller coaster with my energy and seeing my friends struggle with burnout. I was going I never want that. That sounds like the worst thing ever.

Annika Egglestone 21:14

Now, of course, course, I think the universe has a sense of humor of well, that's too bad always does, always does so so yes, to answer your question, I had seen it and I don't think I had seen how bad it could be. I think you know when you, when you hang out with friends, they don't necessarily let you see the worst side of things. And I remember, even for myself, you know I'd have friends over to come to to support, but they didn't see that I'd spent the rest of the morning in bed or that I'd go to bed straight after that. They came by um, so I hadn't seen how extreme it could get um, but I definitely knew that burnout existed and that I didn't want it um, and that's not. That wasn't meant to be um, and that's okay. I think it's. There's a lot of blessings that came from it. Um, that means I get to do the work that I do now. So I don't regret it. It's just, it's funny the way the path that life takes sometimes.

Pamela Cass 22:24

Yeah, Absolutely. So you get through that months in bed. And what happened One day? You just woke up and you're like I don't feel so burnt out anymore, Like what, what? What did that look like and how did? You just woke up and you're like I don't feel so burnt out anymore like what it would.

Natalie Davis 22:38

What did that look like and how did you oh, I wish like, okay, I'm done sprinkle of a little pixie dust and done good yeah that's it.

Annika Egglestone 22:46

You're cured.

Annika Egglestone 22:47

Yeah, that would have been, that would have been ideal, but no, so I ended up so a couple of months in bed and then ended up moving out of the city that I was living in, moving to the countryside and keeping things as low key as possible for as long as I needed to to recover, and a complete recovery journey took me about two years.

Annika Egglestone 23:14

And a complete recovery journey took me about two years and, on average, for most people who get into that form of burnout where they need hospitalization or psychiatric care or whatever it might be, it's 18 months to two years is the average recovery time once you get to that extreme form of burnout. So what it looked like for me was trying to reconnect with myself, trying to reconnect with what do I actually want out of life? You know that, that part of my soul that had gone so crushed, trying to give it the space to be itself again while trying to survive financially. I ended up having a couple of clients that I was able to take care of, and my husband was a big support at the time as well. He ended up stepping into, I guess, what is now our new business and helping with the clients that came with us from the business consulting side and I think the biggest thing was having to relearn that just because I have a to-do list doesn't mean I need to jump to it straight away.

Annika Egglestone 24:22

That was the thing that took the longest time to learn.

Annika Egglestone 24:25

Um, I remember we were looking after a friend's property, uh, in the countryside, and there was like three things I needed to do that day I needed to feed some ducks, I needed to do some laundry and water some plants. And I just remember shooting out of bed with this big panic because there's things that need to do and then just like sprinting through the tasks and like, okay, I fed the ducks, good, that's done, I'm gonna put the laundry on. And then I had no energy left to water the plants because it was so. I got so stressed out and so worked up about these to-do list items that I had all day to do. That made no difference how quickly I did them or anything like that, but that inbuilt. If there is a to-do list, I need to charge at it and I need to engage that adrenaline in order to get stuff done. That was the biggest thing that I had to relearn was doing things doesn't need to take adrenaline. I can do things from a more grounded place.

Natalie Davis 25:41

We hope that you have enjoyed part one of our two-part interview. Please make sure that you come back and join us for part two, where we will continue to dive into the stories, the tools, the modalities and the techniques that you can use to continue to ignite the fire within. We'll see you all soon.