How I Overcame Burnout (Even with 2 Young Kids)

The thing about burn out is it can be kind of hidden. You don't always know that you're in it when you're in it. It could feel like your learners aren’t making the progress that they need to be making or maybe you just haven't figured out how to keep work at work and how to keep your personal life in your personal life, or how to leave work on time. Maybe burnout for some people looks like they're upset. But for many of us, it just looks like we're jaded. Like we're apathetic. Like we go with the flow because what else is there to do? I'm peeling back some layers today and opening up about how I was in burnout, how I overcame it, even with two young kids, especially with two young kids, because that situation will make you figure everything out. Come along for the ride today. I know that you'll live in a much better place. Once you see what's possible.

Transcript of the Episode:

Welcome back to the podcast, my friend. I'm so glad to be here with you today, we're just going to have a chat. It'll be like I'm having some decaf. You can have regular caffeinated coffee, or we're sitting down for a happy hour or tea or a sparkling water. Whatever beverage we choose. Or maybe we're just going on a walk together or sitting in the car on a drive wherever you are. I'm so glad to be there with you. You are such a dedicated teacher, O and M specialists, VI specialists, AT specialists, parent admin, whatever your role is. I can see how dedicated you are because you're listening to this in the summer, which is phenomenal.

And really, I think summer gets a bad rep because yes, it is the time where we are not working, and well, teachers are not working. Your girl has been working okay. But teachers are not working. And we want to have as much time off as possible. And that is 100% the truth, I want you to lead your very best balanced life and still be able to be excited for the new year. So I'm gonna just really share my story of how I overcame burnout. Even as a mom of two young kids, we're just… we're going back there, we're going back friend.

I also wanted to point out the difference in audio quality. Last week, we had an episode with Joan who is amazing, absolutely love her. I recorded that episode at my desk and so sometimes I could hear a little shuffling of things around either I was trying to mute myself. So I apologise about that. I typically record in my bedroom, and I just don't find this to be the most professional place to record. It sounds a little odd even telling you that right now. But if you noticed the difference in audio quality that is what was up.

So this week, I was looking at my notes app and deleting stuff that needed to be deleted a long time ago, so I can clear out space. I know I'm not the only one who does this, waits for the space to say, Oh, you have no more storage. And I'm like, Oh yeah, I do, buddy. Yeah, I just need to delete a bunch of stuff. And I came across this journal note that I had written. And in the journal note, it was so interesting, because I had written this, like I was so envious of this other teacher and the impact that they were making. And I compared myself to them and I compared how I was doing to them and what I saw them doing, and this was a few years ago. And so now I'm looking back at that and realising wow, A, I'm not in the same place now as I was then, like I make much more impact now than I did back then. Which is great. That's the way it's supposed to be right? You're supposed to keep going and learning and growing.

But really, the only thing that changed or the only thing that's different is consistency that I have showed up for this specific task that I wanted to be more impactful in every day, for the past. Now, five years, which let's not even get started on how crazy it is that it's been five years. It's wild. Either that we're going into our fifth year, I don't remember, I'm not going to look it up right now. Okay, we're going into our fourth year, I literally just had to count it on my fingers are in our fourth year.

Anyway, the biggest difference is that I was consistent. And that other person chose a different path. And they're consistent in other things. But the one area that I had been envious of them in, I kept going. And they chose different things. There's nothing stopping any of us from achieving our goals, besides our ability to be consistent and stay with it. Because I will tell you, things get hard. Life gets stressful. It doesn't matter what your job is, you could be living your dream life. And right now, I'll be honest, I'm living my dream life, I could have used a vacation. But that's besides the point. And things still get stressful. And I still have goals. And I still get frustrated. And sometimes I still fall into that comparison trap. And then envy the other people look like they have things better than me. Looking back at that journal prompt, I can't even remember feeling that way. Because my head has been down and I've been doing the work.

And so I hope that that story kind of gives you hope that no matter where we are, that's exactly where we're supposed to be. And it's always going to be 50 50, it's always going to be amazing. And it's always going to be a little tough. And that's okay, maybe that's what life is supposed to be about. Maybe life isn't about just closing our books, at the end of May and forgetting all about everything until we step back onto the school campus on our first day. Maybe it's about understanding that there's a little bit of both. We're excited about our students. We're excited about going back. And we don't want summer to end. And that's okay. We can still be impactful and amazing teachers.

So most of you guys, if you don't already know, know my story about how I started this symposium. And that story starts around the time of the first symposium, it really was not a long transition into that I had an idea. My friend told me she was going to go out of the country for a conference. I got, again, envious because I was stuck at home. I had two young kids at that time. And I Googled it. And then we created the symposium. There's a little bit more to it.

But let's go back, like, let's start just in my first year-ish teaching. I'm going to be 100% honest with you guys. Okay, like the person that you see right now. And you don't see most of my teaching, because I'm teaching, you see a lot of the ideas that come from teaching. But that person is different than who I was before. So I started teaching at 22. I only had my bachelor's and I was in my master's programme. So I worked 14 hour days that whole year, and then would go home and work on my master's paper, because the way it worked, you know, the masters paper’s hard enough, but I had to do my master's paper, the 20 page paper before I did the 10 page paper because I just jumped around in the programming and they made things work for me and yada yada here we are.

So I was building a 20 page paper from scratch while also teaching and not having any of the 10 page paper writing skills. It all worked out but it was a lot of work. By the time I was done with my Master's, I was just so ingrained in the system I had set up. And we don't really think about these small things like how am I doing this, we just consider it normal. We don't really take a second and pull ourselves out of our perspective, or put ourselves in someone else's shoes. We just say this is the way it is. They're just beliefs. They're just habits. They're so ingrained in us that we don't think about it. So I just adjusted to working 12-14 hour days, and then I kind of just would say, Oh, we work 14 hour days until October, and then it slows down, you know, after white cane day. And that became my reality. And slowing down was still 8 to 10 hours a day, for a long time.

And I'll be honest with you guys, a lot of that was because after my master's,I moved to a new city, a new town, I had some friends because I did my internship here. But I didn't know anybody. My family wasn't here. Like, people weren't calling me up all the time, asking me to hang out. So what did I turn to what needed me and what did I need? Work. And I was so determined to be the best the expert like, my first year, I felt like I was swimming in whitewater rapids. And I had a really hard time not being the perfect, great person at this job. Anybody else feel that way? We talked a few weeks ago about the different archetypes.

And in that time, I was definitely the Die-Hard Dean or I would say even Burnt-Out-Bailey because I'm not sure that my learner's are making as much progress. Because I didn't have the teaching skills that I needed. I didn't have the innovative teaching strategies that I needed. And if you're in your first year, like don't sweat that keep going right. But I just don't think that I was as impactful. But I wasn't upset about it. I was just working really hard. And not really getting anywhere. And then I transitioned into being the Die-Hard Dean archetype. And that one worked really well for me, because my learner's are making a lot of progress. And I'm not the type of person who gets a lot of accolades or recognised, recognised when I'm in big groups. So it wasn't like people were looking to me like, oh, wow, she's so great. It wasn't like that at all. It was that I worked really hard. And I got these results.

But what would happen if I slipped up, what would happen if I took my foot off the gas, then my learner's wouldn't make as much progress. And that was the fear. And I didn't know how to help my learners make progress, while also having any sort of personal life. So then at some point, I got so jaded, and things were so turned around for me that I remember having a conversation with somebody who shared an office with me. And she said, Hey, I've watched you teach, and you don't seem like you're fully there. And she was right. I was so exhausted. That when I was teaching, I wasn't fully paying attention.

What was happening at that time was that I was taking so much work home to do that at work. I wasn't performing at my best. And again, I didn't know how to get off this wheel like it works. I keep ending up here like I would try to, I would try to not take work home. But there was work to take home. And then I would try to stay super duper attentive to my learner. And I was so tired, because I take them back home and it was just this crazy cycle of burnout. Finally, I was able to get off of it.

But what really catapulted it besides me, like really trying to figure it out, was I had two kids in 19 months. And if anybody knows anything about having kids, something has to give. So throughout this whole process is a multi year process. I really started to dig deep and dive into what's working, what's not working, how do I do this? And I got my teaching skills up considerably. And that was phenomenal. But I didn't realise that my admin skills were lacking until after I had those two babies. I realised that I was super strapped for cash and needed to start my own business, or need to just start doing something that I could do at home with my kids around and still make money.

So I had started an online business, teaching yoga to busy moms, it was super fun. If you were in any of my programmes, like, you and I are OGs. We go back so much. You've seen me grow, and I've watched you grow, and I love it. But it really wasn't until then, till I started learning how to be a business owner, and a heart-centered business owner at that. But I learned these time management systematising skills, because they don't teach it to us in university. And there's nobody really around talking about it, because it's not a shiny penny. It's not CVI. It's not fancy new intersections where the bicycle lanes are painted, funky colours, and this or that it's not any of that. It's simply how to stop doing unnecessary work, so you can go home.

Once I started really assessing how I was working, and what I was doing and what I was doing, that wasn't working, that's when things all clicked for me. For me, personally, I had the ability to create impactful lessons. But it wasn't until I started actually figuring out what I needed to focus on, which one of the things that I needed to focus on, which many of us do is actually lesson planning. Because we know that if we don't create a lesson plan in advance, even if it's just a few words that we know exactly what we're teaching, our time with the learner is not nearly as productive. That would be like if an architect were to be building the plans out for a construction site, as the construction workers were trying to build it, it would just not end up well. And there would be a lot of mistakes, it would take a lot more time. And they wouldn't get the end result that they're really looking for.

Now in that metaphor, you can actually see when things don't go right. But in ours, we can't really see it, we don't really know. We don't really know when our learners are one degree off base from where they need to be until it's too late. lesson planning allowed me to be able to actually teach in a way that I felt extremely proud of, because it didn't matter who was coming to observe. It didn't matter what happened with the learner, I knew that I had a solid lesson plan. I knew before the week even started, what I was doing, what materials I needed to collect and where we were going. I knew all of that before we even started because I had it written down. That was one of the huge things that changed the game for me.

Now there were a few others. And I just alluded to them. But overall, it allowed me to go home, spend time with my kids, do other things that I needed to do, knowing that I could leave before the boss without guilt because my learner's were making exceptional progress. And not because I had written their goals in a way that it was easy to meet their goals. That wasn't it at all, I was still able to challenge my learners a lot, push us both out of our comfort zones, be impactful and have a personal life. And if I could give every single person that I am friends with the ability to stop doing unnecessary work so you can go home and rest and have a personal life and make it to dinner on time and all of that jazz, I 100% would. And because I'm so passionate about this and because I've seen how these systems help other O and M specialists.

And this year we're going into the wildest teacher shortage I have ever seen. And we're going to have a lot less time. We, I am teaching these systems to you. If you're catching this, as it comes out on Tuesday, August 2, we are having a live free training on August 4, and August 5 and August 8, there's different… there's a range of times, you can just choose which one works for you. And we will have a replay for a short amount of time. The replay’s available until August 11. And I'm not 100% sure exactly when the replay is going to be posted, but we'll email it to all the registrants. That's exactly what I want to give you is how to optimise your IEPs. So that every step along the way, not just your day to day, you can consistently teach creative lessons without having to stay late to plan. Because we know that consistently teaching creative lessons is the most effective way to increase our learners skills. And we can do that in a way where we are not burned out.

There are basically three pillars to this concept here, how to have creative lesson plans. And that starts all the way back up the at the assessment making sure that your assessment is done in a way that trickles down to create a domino effect not only for your learner's but for yourself. Progress reports how to write your goals so that you can complete progress reports in five minutes or less. Of course, you need to have innovative teaching strategies. And super paramount is having a positive mindset. When you combine those three pillars, You my friend are unstoppable.

And not only that, but you can leave work so that way you can recharge and then come back when you're ready. And be amazing because if you keep pouring from an empty cup. Your learner's are not going to get what they need. And you only have 1% of their waking lives to be with them, like directly with them, the other 99% of the time they are with other people relying on what you had taught them.

So yes, I know it is summertime. And I would not ever ask you to come out of your cave, your swimming pool, anything of that nature, if it weren't important, but I think that spending these 90 minutes with me is going to help you save at least at least I mean conservative at least 12 hours this year. And if you think about it that way, that's only 20 minutes a week, if you could save 20 minutes a week, this school year, that saves you 12 hours over the course of the year. Spend that 90 minutes with me and you'll make it back up in less than five weeks. And then you have the 31 weeks left of school to keep saving even more time.

Like I hope that you join us for the free live training, you can go to alliedindependenceonline.com/IEP and get that information. You got to register to grab the replay. But overall, I do hope to see you there live because that's really where the magic happens. I cannot wait to see what you do with this information, how much time you save how much more impactful your IEPs get and therefore how much more creative your lesson plans can get. Because we know that once you create structure, then you can be a lot more creative. So as our Back to School Bash together, we're gonna take a step forward.