#44 Battling Burnout: Why High Achievers Struggle & How to Heal

Feeling drained by pageant prep? Been there. If you're finding yourself pushing harder but enjoying it less, you're not alone. Burnout shows up in sneaky ways - not just physical exhaustion, but emotional depletion, constant comparison, and that awful loop of "I'm doing all the things… so why does it feel like it's never enough?"

In pageantry, burnout can be especially tough because it chips away at the very things that matter most: your presence, your passion, your authenticity. You could have the most polished performance on stage, but if the joy is gone, the judges will feel that disconnect. And chances are… so will you.

What I've learned, both for myself and through coaching, is that burnout doesn’t mean you're broken. It's just a signal. A little red flag from your mind and body saying, "Hey, I need a breather." Rest isn't weakness. Stepping back doesn't mean you're giving up. It means you're smart enough to protect the parts of you that matter most.

Tune in now to learn more!

Chapters

• 0:57 Welcome and Easter Reflections
• 3:51 Understanding Burnout in Pageantry
• 6:41 Key Signs of Mental and Physical Exhaustion
• 12:42 Why High Achievers Burn Out
• 16:36 The Cost of Pushing Through
• 22:12 Resetting Gently After Burnout
• 27:08 Rest Is Part of Prep
• 30:52 Next Episode Preview: Crowned and Candid

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:29

Hello, welcome back to Sash and Soul. Happy Easter weekend to those of you that will be celebrating. I always love this time of year because it's just all about new beginnings and opportunity to check in with ourselves on where we're at and where we're going and just kind of breathing new life and new energy into our personal experiences. I just got back from Virginia Beach with my husband. We were there visiting my mom and my stepdad for a long weekend and came back to a lot of stuff to do, but it was a really nice time away, much needed family time and beach time, and it was a little chilly, but the sun was really nice and just a good change of pace, change of scenery for a little bit. When I got back, though, it was a lot of like I really had to focus on resetting, and I honestly this morning so it was a few days ago that we got back in the. This morning I finally unpacked my suitcase. It had been like spilled out, exploded all over my floor, and it was the only thing that I could see. But I was also like I have to focus on getting these things done, and that can wait and it will get done eventually getting these things done and that can wait and it will get done eventually. But look, that's real life and sometimes we just can't get to everything. Which actually leads me into the topic that I want to talk about today.

Speaker 1: 2:02

It was requested by one of you. I had posted on Instagram just kind of a poll of like what do you want to hear about, what would be pertinent to you and where you're at right now? And the topic of burnout and how to overcome burnout, especially in pageantry. And honestly, it couldn't be more timely, because right now it is the season of throwing everything. We've got into preparation for MAO state competitions, we've got USA state competitions. Spring just seems to be a really busy time for pageantry in general, and so I know from experience and from the women that I work with every week that we push and we push and we push, and oftentimes we get to this space of burnout, of exhaustion, of like wondering if we're doing all the right things, if we're doing enough, and sometimes that can lead into just like a depletion of energy and lack of joy in what we're doing. So if you've ever felt like you are doing all the things and all the right things but it just doesn't feel good anymore. This one is definitely a good episode for you and I also. You know I talked about in episode 30, new Year, new Vision of my experience of burnout last year too, and a lot of that started around this time of year when I started burning out last year. So this is a really good timing episode for all of us to just kind of take a step back, reassess, like I said, that Easter, spring time, to look at new beginnings and new opportunities and kind of assess where we've come from and where we're going here for the rest of the year and into this pageant season. So let's dive in.

Speaker 1: 3:53

What is burnout? Because we hear about it a lot. I feel like it's become a bit of a cliche or a buzzword. But burnout is this state of emotional, mental and even physical exhaustion that happens when you are putting out, exhaustion that happens when you are putting out consistently more than you're taking in, when your output outweighs your input oftentimes. So that comes in the idea of pouring from an empty cup. And it happens when you've been pushing yourself so hard whether in pageant prep or work or school or honestly, just trying to hold it all together that your mind, your body and your heart start waving this white flag of like I give up, I can't take much more.

Speaker 1: 4:38

So there are some pretty key characteristics of burnout to keep in mind. The first is this emotional depletion. It can feel like numbness, it can also come across as irritability Oftentimes, and for me it's just a lack of motivation or even overwhelm by things that used to energize me. And that's really frustrating because you want to do the things that are fun, and it's confusing and disheartening when the things that used to be fun to you are just like bleh now and you start to wonder, like what is wrong with me which we're going to get into? It's not a you problem, it's burnout, is not because you've done something wrong.

Speaker 1: 5:23

But the next characteristic of burnout is physical fatigue. Even when you have taken time to rest, you still somehow feel drained or sluggish or tense, and that's when you know that you need to be giving yourself even more opportunities to rest and relax your mind and be very mindful during that time of rest. You know I get really frustrated when I give myself a day of rest and yet the next day I still feel exhausted. And that can happen from various different things. Maybe you're just run down, not feeling well. There may be illness, but with burnout it's especially frustrating because you may be physically feeling well but mentally, like you, just you can't get there.

Speaker 1: 6:11

There the next characteristic would be like a detachment or cynicism, like you start asking yourself, like what is the point of all of this? Or even like distancing yourself from the things that you usually would care about. In this case, like this burnout of pageantry. Like you used to love competing, used to love the glam of it, used to love the appearances, love the sisterhood, all these the glam of it. Used to love the appearances, love the sisterhood, all these other things.

Speaker 1: 6:35

But you're getting to a point where it's like this is just feeling like work, it's feeling draining. I'm just constantly like pushing myself and not enjoying it anymore. So you become a little bit detached from the reason why you started doing it in the first place, which would then lead into like a decrease in your performance. So you might feel like you're working twice as hard but you're producing half as much, which can also be really frustrating because we just don't have that much time in the day to be wasting our time without as much production as we want to be experiencing. And then, finally, I mentioned a little bit already, but that disconnect from your why, like you're checking all of these boxes but maybe it feels like you're just going through the motions, and that in and of itself is exhausting, because the reason that we started competing in pageantry in the first place was passion passion for performance, passion for service, passion for community, passion for the glitz and the glam, passion for the self-development piece, and so when we're doing all the things that we're supposed to be doing quote unquote but you just don't feel the feels anymore. That's really frustrating. It is a very key sign of burnout. So in the context of pageantry, it's going to look like dreading your mock interviews or even rehearsals that maybe you used to love, comparing yourself more than usual, or feeling like maybe you're not doing enough this one's a big one feeling guilty for resting, but yet you're constantly exhausting, sorry, exhausted, but yet you're constantly exhausting, sorry, exhausted. Losing sight of your platform's purpose or your personal mission, struggling to celebrate small wins because they never feel big enough.

Speaker 1: 8:25

When I've experienced burnout in the past, I noticed it started with a lot of internal pressure, kind of this fear that other people were watching me and thinking that I wasn't doing enough. No one ever said that or gave me any reason to believe that, but this was the pressure that I was feeling internally. I had a lot of negative self-talk, the stuff that sounds like you're lazy, you're not doing enough, you're not good enough. And my favorite slash the worst is get over it, pick yourself up, move forward. You just have to do the things. And all that rhetoric in my head was really painful and I couldn't seem to shake this negative energy, which then only made me feel more tired. Of course, right, it was just like this revolving door, this cycle that I was trapped in, and so I wasn't enjoying what I was doing anymore and it just felt like I was going through the motions, very like comatose-esque. I couldn't shift my perspective back to why I was doing it in the first place or reconnect to the parts that I enjoyed and I talked about this specifically in the episode on building a platform, developing your service initiative. When I needed to give up my platform, when I was talking about my brother so much losing him to suicide, and it was just so emotionally draining that I couldn't feel the passion behind it anymore. I didn't have the drive. It wasn't fulfilling me anymore. I was burnt out on that initiative. I needed to take a break from it.

Speaker 1: 10:06

Burnout can often feel a little bit like a depressive episode, where it's not full depression, because for me, it wasn't about everything in my life. There were things that were bringing me joy and that I found enjoyable, but there was this real heaviness in that specific area where burnout had set in. So, for example, before I started coaching, I burnt out at my job. My career at the time was in business development for mental health and addiction treatment programs and no matter how much I tried to reshift my perspective on what I was doing and why I was doing it, and trying to find the passion behind it again, I just couldn't. I reached a point where my mental health, the burnout, had started affecting other areas of my life and my mental health was so bad, so low, that I ended up quitting my job without a backup plan and I needed to take some time off and I ended up. That was a time in my life where I ended up hospitalized for my depression.

Speaker 1: 11:19

So this I guess all to say that catching burnout early on and empowering yourself to do something about it is really, really important so that you can continue living a healthy, productive, happy life and doing the things that you enjoy. My burnout at work took so much more mental energy just to do the smallest thing because I wasn't fully there in my heart. But the thing we all need to remember about burnout is that it's not a personal flaw, and oftentimes we do that to ourselves, where we blame ourselves and we think it's some kind of a character trait or we're being lazy. That's where all this negative internal rhetoric comes from. But burnout isn't a flaw. It's just your mind and your body saying I need a break. So let's talk about why high achievers like you and me burn out.

Speaker 1: 12:15

When it comes to pageant women and, honestly, most people, I think the reason that we get burnt out is often because of perfectionism. In this industry and pageantry. We are often taught or we internalize that in order to succeed in competition, our performance needs to be perfect. In order to get the top scores, performance needs to be perfect. In order to get the top scores, we need to be performing at this level and if we don't win the crown, at least we can look back and say that we did everything that we possibly could, and so that mindset easily turns into this cycle of perfectionism. I also think it shows up when we compare ourselves to other title holders or women that we admire. And what ends up happening when we do that and I'm hearing that a lot recently in conversations is that we put them on this pedestal, as if they've reached this untouchable level of excellence. And so then we feel like we haven't gotten there yet, and when they're on that pedestal, it makes us feel like we have to reach some level of excellence, so we push even harder to live up to the standard that we are creating in our head. That is not even real. And there's all of this pressure then to prove ourselves Like if we've succeeded before. We think we have to keep achieving in order to maintain this image that we've built or that people we think expect from us. And so for high achievers, especially those who've been celebrated for their drive, it's really hard to stop pushing. We start to believe that if we've had any kind of setback, then we are completely failing.

Speaker 1: 13:57

For me, burnout also happens when I've been in a really high productive, high energy season and I'm feeling really good. I want to get things done. I push hard, and then something circumstantial happens and then I get tired and then life shifts and suddenly I can't keep up that same level of performance. So that frustration with myself for not keeping up becomes a really huge trigger which reinforces my practice and ongoing practice of needing to keep myself balanced, and that's something that we're going to dive into today.

Speaker 1: 14:35

The way to combat or prevent burnout is regularly assessing your balance, your life balance. Are you balancing pageant prep with work, with school, with social time, with self-care, with just being who you are, outside of all of the other things and the responsibilities that you have going on? And if that balances off kilter and you're pushing yourself too hard, that is where you need to kind of reassess and take a step back. There are certain times in our lives when we need to push harder than others, and I completely understand that we can't always be like perfectly balanced. That's not a thing, that's not life. There's no perfection in this. But if we can practice assessing and keeping this at top of mind for ourselves, like at the end of the day, how was my day today? How am I feeling? What can I do tomorrow to make sure that I'm maintaining that balance? Do I need a little bit more rest tomorrow? Am I feeling a little sluggish? It's just something that we have to be mindful of.

Speaker 1: 15:41

So practicing that mindfulness is key to preventing and overcoming burnout, because if we don't do that, there is a really hefty cost of pushing through, because burnout is going to disconnect you from your joy, from your purpose, from your passion and ultimately, when that happens, you're not going to succeed, especially in pageantry. We know this, that you could present yourself as perfectly as possible, but if you're burnt out, your real joy, your real passion, that comes from the authenticity behind who you are you're not going to win, because the judges are not going to feel connected to perfectionism. They're going to feel connected to vulnerability and transparency. They're going to feel connected to vulnerability and transparency, and when you're burnt out and when you're exhausted, it's truly impossible to be at that level of authenticity. It really really is, and so that's where overcoming burnout and taking care of yourself is truly essential to succeeding in competition and succeeding in all areas of your life and succeeding as a title holder.

Speaker 1: 16:50

What's your big picture? Do your life, and succeeding as a title holder. What's your big picture? Do you want the job of the title holder? Do you just want to win a crown? If you just want to win a crown. You're missing the mark and you're going to burn yourself out. If you want the title, you want the job, then you've got to practice taking care of yourself and showing up every single day exactly how you would as a title holder, every single day, exactly how you would as a title holder.

Speaker 1: 17:18

I don't think that burnout itself causes the disconnect from your purpose. I really think it's the other way around. I think burnout creates the exhaustion that leads to the disconnect. You cannot feel the joy or remember your why because you are way too depleted to access it. So the more you push, the harder it becomes to remember your why, to remember the big picture of why you're there in the first place. Burnout is going to make you feel like you're failing even when you're not.

Speaker 1: 17:48

And I had a conversation with a client this week about failure, and I'm like with a client this week about failure and I'm like is there really failure in life? Is it truly possible to fail in life? And the reason that I'm saying this is I equate failure to an exam in school. You can fail an exam because you can get the questions wrong and you wouldn't get a passing grade, but in life there's no end point. I mean there's no finish line really. Like I understand, like someday we will no longer be here and that is the end point, I suppose, but like there's no finish line in the things that we are doing while we're here on this earth. It's all just about growth and it's about contribution, and it's about figuring things out as we go, and it's about the relationships and the connections that we have.

Speaker 1: 18:34

I think, in pageantry, we often, often get to the space of like I'm going to reach this finish line, which is winning this thing, but we forget that there's so much more after that, and so we're pushing and we're pushing, and we're pushing to get to this finish line that we burn ourselves out before we get there and then have nothing left to give afterward. I don't think that there's really failure. I think that there's lessons learned and I think that there may be some difficult things that we experience, but this fear of failure is it's a false fear, because there is no failure. It's a construct that we make up in our mind. We get to decide if we've failed or not because we tell ourselves if we failed or not. We've failed or not because we tell ourselves if we failed or not. And so if you can just look at setbacks or stressors as opportunities for growth and improvement, then you'll never feel like a failure in that way.

Speaker 1: 19:27

And I'm going to say let me pause and say that's so much easier said than done, because I can't tell you how many times I have said and probably will say to the people that are closest to me I just feel like I'm failing. I feel like I'm failing as a coach. I feel like I'm failing as an entrepreneur. I feel like I'm failing as a wife, as a grownup, like that feeling that it's there and like we all feel it, but is it real? It's a word that we're using to describe this feeling of not getting to where we want to be, but it doesn't mean that we have failed in the sense of this black and white concept.

Speaker 1: 20:05

All right off of that soapbox, back to burnout. Burnout stems from not prioritizing ourselves. We start to believe that success is tied only in action, so we always have to be doing, doing, doing, producing and achieving, and that drains us because we're not taking time to refuel or re-energize ourselves with things that we love. And I've been reminding my clients lately that, yeah, pageant prep is important. You have big goals, but you also need to be yourself, outside of prep, outside of your pageant persona, outside of your professional life, outside of classes and the program that you're in for school. You need to find activities that have nothing to do with improvement or productivity. Find the things that are just fun, purely for the joy of it, and that is going to help you with that balance that we've been talking about and it's going to offset this fear of failure, because there's no failure in doing things that you love just for the joy of it. There's no feeling of failure there. So offset that, that perspective, that drive, that constant need for self-improvement because that's what we hear all the time in pageantry Like we do it because we want to grow, we want to gain skills, we want to improve ourselves, we want to build a network, we want to be successful later on because of all these things that we're doing now. Yeah, all of that is lovely and wonderful, but if that's the only thing that you're focusing on, and you're not focusing on living life for the purpose of living, then you are going to burn out of living. Then you are going to burn out.

Speaker 1: 21:57

So let's talk about, if you are feeling burnt out, how to reset, but doing so in a very gentle way. It's going to come from a mindset shift, but a mindset shift is not drastic, it's a pivot. A mindset shift can help in many ways, but it really has to be gentle. So this is not about throwing some big affirmation at yourself to snap out of it. We're not going for toxic positivity here. There's not a real that's not a real mindset shift. When you just are like I'm going to be really positive now, I'm just going to decide to snap out of this. I'm going to say good things to myself in the mirror.

Speaker 1: 22:40

Shifting means pivoting, slowly climbing out of where you're at. It's subtle, it's not dramatic. It's a matter of going easy on yourself and being gentle with yourself. It's like if someone is really dizzy and they're, you know, maybe they just fainted and you're not going to tell them to just hop back up and keep moving, like come on, let's finish the race. No, you're going to have them lay down for a little while and take a break, slowly, ease into sitting up and then maybe standing up after that, maybe walking a little bit. We're going to ease into it. And so it's the same thing that we have to do with our mentality.

Speaker 1: 23:26

Knowing that rest when you need it is not quitting. I think sometimes we feel like if we pause to take a break, somehow we're giving up or we're being lazy. It's not quitting, it's not being lazy. The number one thing that helps reset burnout is taking a break. I've done it. I've taken a break from coaching. I've taken a break from working out. I've taken a break from my. We take vacations because we need to prevent burnout and we need to take care of ourselves. When we're doing that, taking a break is essential. There's a reason why we do it in other areas of our life, so you should also be doing it in pageantry as well.

Speaker 1: 24:06

It can be really hard when you've built your identity around being productive or performing at a really high level, and so sometimes it takes someone else giving you permission or someone saying like you need to rest, and resting is going to elevate you, not slow you down. And that's something I actually assigned to clients. If I see that they're over-practicing or stuck in a cycle of perfectionism, I have said you're not allowed to do any prep this week. Your assignment is to be a normal human no self-development, no goal setting, just be. Go live your life. Go be your 20-some-year-old self, because burnout is like an injury. If you've been working out consistently at the gym without rest days, or you're working out in a way that's harmful, you'll end up hurt, and then you can't grow or build strength because you can't keep working out. When you're hurt, you have to pause and recover. Burnout is the mental and emotional version of that.

Speaker 1: 25:08

Sometimes you're forced to take a break, but your own habits won't let you, and that's when you need to either give yourself permission, take permission from someone else or have someone assign it to you, and it's something that I have to do for myself all the time. So yesterday, for example, I had mentioned like we had gotten back from the trip. I was tired and I was jet lagged. My suitcase was still wide open on the floor, clothes spilling out. I had to give myself permission wide open on the floor, clothes spilling out. I had to give myself permission to do nothing about it and I had to be okay with the fact that it would get done later. And that's part of being kind to yourself. And look, I did it this morning. I had some time this morning that I didn't need to be doing anything else and I got it done and I feel so much better. But I would have felt worse if I had kept kicking myself in the butt for not doing all the things.

Speaker 1: 26:01

And I tell my husband the same thing. It's not going to help you to beat yourself up for not having the energy. Give yourself a break. You'll feel better tomorrow and you'll get back to it then, Okay. So assign yourself a nothing day every once in a while, unplug from pageant content. Give your brain a break to recoup and recover, to process all the things that you've been taking in recently. Do something joyful and unproductive, but at the end of the day, here's the truth that you always need to come back to. If you take nothing else away from this episode, take this.

Speaker 1: 26:45

Burnout does not mean that you're not cut out for this. Burnout is not a reflection of your ability. It has nothing to do with your value, your intelligence or your strength. It is simply your brain and your body saying I need rest. Burnout is not failure, it's feedback. You're not lazy, you are tired. You are a human being. You are not a machine, and your worth was never and never will be tied to your productivity.

Speaker 1: 27:20

So remember there's no finish line. You're not running out of time. The whole point of being alive is to achieve endlessly. It's to grow, to experience life, to be a part of the world by showing up as you. You bring value simply by existing. There's no catastrophe waiting for you. If you take a break from prep, you'll still get where you're going, and when you do, you'll bring a healthier, more present version of yourself with you. Rest is part of the prep, not a pause from it. It is necessary in order for you to achieve success. You're going to return to your goals, and you will return stronger, clearer and lighter, or you'll uncover that your goals have changed, and that's okay too. You do not have to prove your worth by pushing through the pain. You are already valuable before the crown, before the checklist and before the win. That should be your affirmation. So take that with you.

Speaker 1: 28:25

All right, if this resonated with you, I invite you to share this message with anybody else that might be feeling the burnout. Share this message with anybody else that might be feeling the burnout, and if you are feeling this, reach out to me, because I'd love to hold space for you. You know what it feels like to get to that space, and I know that it's frustrating when your dream is to win this title, but it just feels like there's nothing you can do to get out of this rut. It is real, it is valid, but there are things that you can do for yourself so that you walk into competition feeling the most alive and the most rejuvenated, the most like yourself, because, truly, that is what is going to lead to you succeeding. Because think about who you will be as a title holder. It's going to be fun. You're going to be going to appearances, you're going to be putting yourself out there on social media, you're going to be going to the next level of competition, which is also fun. And if you want to show up the way that you would every single day as that title holder during competition, then you have to get to that headspace for competition as well. So reach out to me if you are feeling this burnout. I get it. I will absolutely hold that space for you. You can also sign up for a coaching consultation. So if you're tired of really pushing and you want to prep from a place of balance and clarity, of course I would love to be part of that shift with you. So click the link in the episode description or reach out to me on social media and we will get you set up so that we can sit down and chat about where you're at, where you want to be and how I can help you get there Right.

Speaker 1: 30:11

And next, I'm really excited. I was inspired by many of your messages and by my clients as they're preparing to start a new series in Sash and Soul. I'm really excited. This is going to start next week already and it's perfect timing for competition season. It will be called Crowned and Candid. I am bringing on current title holders at the state level that will be bringing giving up their title to talk about what is life really like with that crown on your head, so that you have a realistic job preview going into competition, going into interviews, so that you can set yourself up for success, set your game plan for the year of everything that you want to achieve. So that's going to be kicking off next week with brand new series, crowned and Candid, on Sash and Soul.

Speaker 1: 31:02

So stay tuned. Be sure to subscribe to Sash and Soul so you get notified when these new episodes drop, and I will talk to you next week Friday. So thank you for showing up. Continue showing up exactly who you are. Give yourself a break. Give yourself love. I believe in you. Believe in yourself. All right, we'll talk to you later. Bye.