Have you ever battled burnout? Or find it hard to recognize burnout, knowing your triggers when it comes on and how to pull yourself out of it?  We’re going to cover how to stop letting burnout hold you back in your business and productivity with Krista Marie. 

About Krista Marie

Krista Marie is a photographer, business coach, and podcast host of the She Calls Her Shots podcast and she lives in Northern California with her two dogs and fiance. She started her photography business way back in 2010, in Florida, graduated from college and started doing it just on the side. 

She worked full-time for many years and then moved to California in 2014, where she continued to rebuild a new business from the ground up in a new market. Since then she has branched off from not only doing wedding and branding photography but also doing a podcast and coaching for other entrepreneurs.

What burnout can look like

Krista finds herself very passionate. She gets big business ideas all the time and loves that because that’s a fun way to keep her business innovative and going. On the other side of that, with those big new fun things that you want to do, comes this desire to burn the candle at both ends. Like you want to pour your heart and soul into the new project and see where it goes. 

The last couple of years, with the pandemic and being home you were maybe pivoting into new things and ideas. Sometimes your intentions are there and your heart is there. You want to do this, but you’re secretly overworking yourself and not realizing that you’re just creeping into burnout gradually.

Last fall, Krista went through a season of burnout and had to take six weeks where she rested, but still got some work done. It was like if she crossed one thing off her list every day, she was happy and okay. The interesting thing is sometimes burnout isn’t far off the corner. It’s always there but you don’t realize it until you slowly start feeling drained and all of a sudden you think, I can’t keep doing this anymore. 

Avoiding burnout triggers 

Comparison can be a causing factor in burnout. You’re already feeling burnout because the guilt and the shame start to kick in. You take a step back and then the comparison grabs a hold of you because you’re seeing everybody else showing up and doing all this stuff. That can be a part of a cause.

A lot of time it’s a mix of comparing yourself and your goals and your business. You have to get comfortable with looking inward and asking yourself, what are your goals right now? Are you completely trying to change your business? Is it overnight growth and does an exponential amount of clients meet this idea that you have in your head?

What is success to you? A lot of burnout begins from comparing, the only way out is to get honest with yourself, what are your goals and your intentions? And how are you showing up in your business? 

Because if you can get clear and honest with yourself, which is the hardest part,  you can kind of avoid that burnout before it fully kicks in. Because once it kicks in that guilt and shame and fear, all those other emotions kind of grab hold of us. And then you have to give yourself time and get back to a baseline. 

Steps to pull yourself out of burnout

The first step is always hard to hear because people just want to jump into taking action. But the first honestly is you have to accept that you’re in a season of burnout and that it’s going to take a little bit of time for you to be able to jump back in. Because sometimes, it depends on how bad the burnout got. 

It depends on how long you went with neglecting your values and priorities.  Sometimes it can take a couple of weeks. Sometimes it can be longer than that. It’s just releasing the pressure and accepting that you can recognize and see it. Not blaming yourself, letting go of that guilt and shame when it’s just self-acceptance. 

Do the things you know you love to do. It could be going for a walk, maybe playing with your dogs. Maybe taking a nap. It could be anything that you know just brings you joy. 

Understand your triggers

The second thing is understanding your triggers. For a lot of people, it’s often social media. It’s a pretty big one. Sometimes it’s Facebook groups, if you find yourself on Facebook, you’re scrolling through anything that you recognize that brings up that trigger of that feeling of you should be doing more. You should be better. You should know those triggers and cut those out. Sometimes it can be things you enjoy. 

The third step is finding things to help build you back up. For Krista, it’s podcasts. She listens to a lot of business-building podcasts and motivational talks like that. But sometimes even those things can be triggers for her. So getting honest and knowing where you are in that season of burnout and whether those things are helpful or if they’re still kind of like triggers for your help.  

The fourth is finding who to talk to. Someone who can understand what you’re going through because having someone that you can just be honest with and vulnerable with. A person who’s not going to blindly encourage you like “it’s okay, you’ll be fine”  because sometimes that’s not what you need in those moments, but just someone who can recognize what it’s like being there. Someone who’ll encourage you to take your time. Give yourself space and encourage yourself along the way. 

Releasing the pressure

The last thing is releasing the pressure and relieving yourself of all your current deadlines. So whatever it is that you had set in your business, whatever goals, projects, timelines, deadlines, all of that. Wipe it clean and recreate it again. Because chances are you created those deadlines when you were in that mindset that you needed to get all the things done. It’s going to be impractical to try and continue to do those. 

Finally when you feel like you’re in an OK spot and you feel like you’re able to start slowly building yourself back up, you can introduce those things like podcasts or books or anything that you feel will help build you back up. 

Try to avoid social media for a little while just because you want to make sure you’re back and fully aware of your priorities and goals. That way you don’t get sucked into that same cycle again trying to do what everybody else is doing. Things like podcasts and books or anything that’ll just help to slowly start to inspire you and build your inspiration.

Setting and maintaining intentional boundaries

Everything is aligned and some things could move well. For Krista, she’s been taking a lot of space for her business. She has big goals and has started to outsource which has been helpful.  You need to push some things off and try not to get stuck in this habit of trying to smash weekly goals, from monthly goals to the latter. 

These things are great! But sometimes we lose sight of checking in every day and just asking ourselves if we’re feeling this. Maybe you’re supposed to write a bunch of content but woke up not feeling creative. So it’s okay with letting yourself pull this off another day. 

Just trust there’ll be a day when you are going to wake up and feel more motivated and excited to work. Get intentional about checking in with yourself, seeing how you’re feeling and how you can tackle things.

Importance of taking a break 

What’s that one thing that you can do every day for yourself? Even if you want to work a lot and you kind of feel like you’re in the groove and doing what you love. You can take 20 minutes to go for a walk, unplug just get outside, take 20 minutes to read your favorite book, or take 20 minutes to watch a show on Netflix. These things are things you’re going to do because they bring you joy.  

If you find it hard to take a break right now, the question for you would be, what does your schedule look like? Take an honest look at your calendar and figure out where you’re spending your time. Be a little bit more intentional about finding time for yourself. 

You might feel like you don’t have time. But you might not be utilizing all of your time during the day. There might be things that are pulling your time, that you don’t even realize, so you might be resisting, taking time because you feel like you don’t have time. 

When realistically maybe you just aren’t aware of the time that you have in your business.  Just get honest with yourself and figure out where you are. Because sometimes you think you’re working all the time, but in reality, you’re not just optimizing your productivity.

Final advice for handling burn out

Give yourself space, where you take space from social media, podcasts, etc. When you can give yourself space to think and truly be creative and listen to your intuition. You will be surprised at the things that you can come up with because a lot of time, the cycle of burnout comes with this feeling of not enough. You should be doing more. 

One of the things that can sometimes happen with that is like buying more courses, investing in more things, you feel the need to learn more, which leads to more burnout. When it’s as if you just took a step back, gave yourself some space, and sat with yourself and asked questions, you’d be more successful.   

Think about this: the one thing that I want to do better in my business. When you can get rid of everything else, quiet everything else out and sit with yourself. Maybe it’s a bath, maybe it’s a walk outside. Maybe it’s just sitting in nature. And ask yourself okay, what can I do to improve this? How can I make this better? You don’t need a course.

You just need to start trusting yourselves and your intuition just a little bit more to grow a business that feels authentic to you. Instead of spending time looking outward and looking somewhere else for the answers.

Know your seasons between growth and also be content and just enjoy being with yourself. And know your seasons of needing growth and needing more knowledge and education growth in that way. 

Then knowing your seasons where you are good and you need to implement things more. Now, instead of taking the time to implement, you’re just going out and getting burned out.  Know when you need to implement and when you need growth and know the difference between the two.

Ideas for self-care

It changes for Krista all the time because some seasons she would tell you it’s bath nights, sometimes she just loves sitting and reading a book and lighting candles.

For now, because there’s so much going on, she enjoys home workouts but likes taking that time in that space where she feels she’s pushing back her physical limiting beliefs and her mental limiting beliefs. Taking that time for herself every day has felt rewarding.

Final thoughts

Krista Marie would love to have you in her free workshop called Planning for Profit and inside of it, they deep dive into a lot of these mindset strategies of ways to grow a thriving and profitable business. They also talk about the financial side and some business strategies as well to keep in mind if that is something you’re interested in. It’s free and she’d love to have you join her! 

You can find Krista on Instagram at @krista.marie.photography.