#190: Get the Most Out of Your Energy and Emotions with Brittany Childley

Welcome back to another episode of the Course Creation Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina Onativia here to get you excited about your course creation, your marketing and helping you build the online based business of your dreams. And did you listen to last week’s where we talked about best and highest use of your time? Are you getting the best use?

Are you leveraging your resources around you to propel your course, your business forward? Make sure you listen to that last episode and then I want you to dive in to today’s because we have a really special guest. And I realized as I booked Dr. Brittany Childley on the podcast that I’ve been bringing on a lot of licensed therapists lately on the show, and I thought, Is it me?

But it’s for really great reasons and for different reasons. So I had Robyn Firtel on a couple of episodes ago. She was talking about her love addiction course and done for you and that entire process. And I wanted Britney on, who’s also a licensed psychologist and a marriage and family therapist here in San Diego, to talk about her mission and her new website called.

And we feel because she’s on a mission to talk through our emotions, to not hide our feelings, but bring them to the forefront in a really great way. And I’ve been partnering with Britney to help her find courses to curate for her website. And we feel dot com and Dr. Kim really Wagner, who is on the podcast. I’ll let her episode in the show notes.

She has our course on there. She’s got parenting courses on there and it’s just a wonderful platform, I think. And I love her mission to not be afraid to talk about where, how, how we’re feeling, to not be afraid to share different emotions. And she’s got a great Instagram as well, where she’s talking to you like a therapist, but she’s also polling us and just making us feel comfortable, especially in times where you might feel in turmoil, when you might feel a little in disarray.

And to me, she’s a very calming force. And I wanted her on here to talk about something very important burnout and how to prevent it before it happens, because we don’t want to get to burnout as entrepreneurs and as business owners and as course creators. We just don’t want to get there. And sometimes I feel like I’m on the verge of burnout and I wanted Britney on here to talk to us about what is it?

How do we know when we’re on the verge? What are solutions that we can implement right away? She even demos a little bit with me, which I loved. So I think this is a really valuable episode as I work to prioritize my health and my recovery after my eye surgery. So I think this is important to us as business owners to really focus on.

So let me shut up now. And I will bring Britney on to share a little bit about the symptoms of burnout, how to avoid them, and then, of course, give us some solutions. Britney, so excited to have you on the podcast. Welcome. Welcome. Thanks, Dina. Happy to be here. Okay. We’re talking burnout. And first question, let’s just tackle it right away.

Why do so many of us experience burnout? Great question, especially for those that are business owners and entrepreneurs. Burnout is almost inevitable. And before we jump into why, let’s define a little bit about what what is burnout. When we say burnout, we tend to say that as though it’s really nothing and when we throw around the term burnout, it’s comprised of a few different parts.

And the first is that burnout is really a specific to the system in which we work. And so if we’re a business owner, we may be working in our office with coworkers, We may be working from home. If we’re a parent, we may be working from home. And so the system is where the burnout is located. It doesn’t typically follow us to other areas unless it has a ripple effect leading to other things like anxiety or depression.

We can table that for another episode. So first is this The system is where we’re burnt out and then knowing the signs of burnout, we can kind of reference three E’s and one is exhaustion. And we have a high level of exhaustion. We just want to stay in bed, we just want to sleep. We have nothing left to give to.

We would say that there’s a lack of efficiency and maybe this comes from feedback. Maybe we notice we tend to be more efficient during other times that we’re really struggling with our efficiency and then the last part is this sense of exasperation. Maybe we’re more irritable, we’re more angry, we just are lacking in our patients. And so those are kind of the three specific signs with burnout.

And we seem so burnt out that we’re generally referring to is it all three or can I just experience one at a time? It’s generally all three, and that’s why we we, we might need to work on finding other feeling words to communicate what’s going on. But we hear burnout a lot. And in true burnout that’s comprised of those three.

Okay, I’ve never heard that definition before and I love that. And then I put a Post-it up on my desk. And what are the risks that come with feeling bad exhaustion, the lack of efficiency and the exasperation. But what are the risk averse us as a business owners? Sure. And risks are important. I don’t I don’t want to scare people, but the risks do occur on a continuum.

And so on. One end of the continuum, it may be a risk of falling behind on a project or not meeting a deadline. And then we kind of go from one end of the continuum to another and maybe we lose our job or it could also be a precursor to mental health disorders. And so we might fall into, you know, self-medicating through a substance abuse.

We might feel clinically depressed. And that impacts our relationships, our family, our life outside of that working system that has burnt us out. And, you know, it can have really, really severe risks associated with it. And then I see as business owners, we lose that appetite to run our businesses right? And maybe we start looking at full time roles or going back to corporate and just losing that interest in being entrepreneurs.

Do you find that also with your clients? Absolutely. And my private practice as a psychologist, they do see a bit of of CEOs, physicians or other therapists who are entrepreneurs. And it I mean, the risk of wanting to kind of throw in the towel or not keep going is absolutely I mean, it makes sense. If something’s bothering us, let it go.

But then also maybe there’s a family depending on you or that’s your dream and you don’t see yourself doing anything else. So can be a really hard decision to make. Yeah, definitely. Okay. We painted the kind of grim picture, right, that that brought out. You know, like, I always want to be honest and transparent on this podcast. Let’s talk about what we can do to alleviate our symptoms.

That’s really or the stress. Like, I know there’s not a cure all here, Brittany, but just talking through what are some things that we can do? Mm hmm. So on the bright side, noticing when you’re burnt out can be a really helpful piece of data. Because if we notice we’re burnt out, there are some things that we can start to do where, you know, if you’re on an airplane and the pilot doesn’t recognize that they’re tired and burnt out and they fall asleep, that has some dire consequences, right?

Yes. Though when we can recognize I’m really tired. Hey, copilot, take over or I am going to cancel my next flight. That’s important. And when business owners and entrepreneurs recognize this burnout, I’m not showing up the way I want to. My efficiency is going down and feeling really irritable with the investors or my coworkers out there. Really helpful sign that we can do some things about.

I love that. So is there a I love a good checklist, right? Or is there something that we can keep in mind? Or you mentioned a role play. Would this be a good time to maybe role play in terms of if I’m feeling burnt out? Okay. All right, hit me. So if you were to wake up in the morning and show up to do your the courses that you’re creating and working with other business owners, how are you feeling when you show up to work?

Well, I do try. I really pride myself on my energy and and the excitement that I bring to clients and students. So I make a make a real effort to to bring my energy up, especially when I’m in front of students and and, and, and my clients. Now, like yesterday it was dragging right. And I knew, okay, I need to do something about my energy and I needed to give myself some grace.

But that’s how I like to show up. Mm hmm. How did you recognize that change in your energy? Well, I was at my trainer and she was having me do core, and I’m very vocal with my trainer, and she’s great about it. And I was and I complained a lot, and I just. I feel like I’m dragging right now.

And she was asking me, Well, what did you eat? You know, how did you sleep? How did you wake up today and ask me all the right questions and and and she’s like, I just 30 minutes, you know, she’s great and she’s she’s totally dry and funny. Amber, you can get you can do anything for 30 minutes. And that’s why I just told myself.

And then I apologized for being a little like a pain in the butt. So so that’s kind of how it unfolded. But through it, I knew I was dragging. Uh huh. So you recognized it and then you put it out there to your trainer. And how how was that for you to put it out there? Well, good. It felt good for me.

Any time I can speak it out loud and just recognize it and put a name to it and just. Okay, yeah, this is happening right now, but I’m I am going to push through this session because I’m here and it paid money and I’m committed to my body. So it felt good to say it and to acknowledge it.

Right. So you did a handful of really important things. And one way that your workout could have gone is showing up. And then on one hand ignoring I’m dragging like trying to push it down and using energy. You’re saying I don’t even have this energy, but I’m going to try to muster up energy. I don’t have to push down the sense that I’m dragging, I’m feeling lethargic.

I’m not motivated today. So that sets you up for more burnout, right? You have the the lack of motivation. You try not to you push it down and now we’re depleting ourself even more. Oh, I could have buried an inside. You’re saying you could have tried. All right, got it. Maybe your instructor would have picked up on that and said, hey, you know, it’s what’s going on.

Or maybe they would have just kept pushing you and then maybe you would have started to feel annoyed with them because they’re asking you to do what you signed up to do, but they don’t really see what’s going on because you haven’t told them. Oh, I would never be annoyed with Amber like I’m I’m here, I’m showing up.

I pay her to push me. Right? So I it’s all I have to own that. And you did? Yeah. Hmm. So you put it out there and then the sense of putting it out there to somebody else, in this case, to your trainer who is able to contextualize. It’s not going to last for 30 days. We’re here for 30 minutes.

Let’s give it what we can. And you put it into context. Mm hmm. And sometimes doing things that we don’t want, we need to step away from and say, you know, I need to quit right now. Other times, what’s called behavior activation is doing something we don’t want can often motivate us. Afterward, we got through it. Maybe we feel better, more relieved, and then that motivates us.

And our lack of energy has shifted because you owned it. That’s what happened. I felt better like, no, I have never said I regretted that workout. I’ve never said I regretted that run. Right, because I know I get I get that hit afterwards and I felt better. I was like, okay, I was dragging, but now I feel a little more energy.

And at the end she goes, I feel a bit better now because she knew. Uh huh. So that’s great. Yeah. So this is awesome. I love how you’re breaking this down. Okay, keep going. Well. Well, I think with business owners, that’s hard, right? With entrepreneurs that maybe don’t have investing or maybe their investors are putting more pressure on them that it can be really hard to take that 30 minutes to yourself.

And whether it’s exercise or a five minute walk down the hall or refilling your water and saying hi to somebody, that can be really hard when you feel this extra pressure and crunch to just keep working harder. Yeah, no, I agree. Before this, before this podcast, I was thinking I don’t really have time to walk the dog, but I was like, You have to.

I have to make the time for that 30 minute outdoor hit right? And get and get moving. And like, I needed to make the time for that. And now I can show up for you that much better. I love it. All right. So I know I didn’t get to I didn’t get to one client work. Right. But. All right, I’ll make time for it later.

Yeah. So when when I do. When I get the opportunity to walk and see the fall leaves and things like that. So I’m curious, though, Brittany, because some like, how do we know the line of pushing through versus I need to take a break right now. I need to maybe cancel a meeting or call and, and use that time to to go lie down or take a walk.

Like, how do we know the balance there? Sure. Calibrating our expectations is one place to start because one many times the systems that lead to burnout are not. Systems are going to change overnight. And knowing yourself, this is something I can do for myself right now. I can go walk the dog, I can take 5 minutes and get it from my desk before the next meeting.

And knowing this is going to be my solution right now, it’s not going to be my solution for the whole system or for the burnout. And burnout has no time limit to it. And so like depression, we have at least a two week time frame or beyond. Okay. And that spills over to other areas of our life. And so as a psychologist, I am trying to assess the difference between burnout, depression and anxiety, But with burnout, as I mentioned, it’s specific to your system.

So you’re going to show up. You don’t want to do that email, you don’t want to go to any meeting, and then you’re going to come back to it the next day or the next day. And this can go on a really long time. Oof yeah, and we have to change how we show up. And you know, working with business owners, they say, I can’t like this is my livelihood, right?

This is what I do. Yeah, exactly. And many times business owners know at what charge their phone is before they know how much stress they’re under or how they’re feeling. Yeah. And just taking a moment, like you said, to check in with how am I feeling right now? Do I notice I am a bit more irritable or I don’t have as much patience.

I need to regroup and get up, go for that walk, or tomorrow I’m going to try and start my morning differently because I notice some mornings at work or when I am lacking the most and just trying those things and getting more data is the place I think we can start. And I think too, it’s it’s a release for me because I had a I had a tough call right before I went for that walk.

Right. And I was thinking, well, I get to talk to my husband, I get to talk to Alex, I’ll get to rant. Oh, but he’ll listen to me and it’ll be a great release. And and it was so just knowing what those kind of moments of relief are for you, maybe it’s something good, something valuable. Absolutely. But we have to know where we are to that know to use that, you know, release valve.

Yeah. Okay. What about rituals? I know I didn’t mention this where I’m kind of popping this on you right now. Are there certain rituals that you encourage business owners or entrepreneurs or, of course, creators to explore and embrace? I do. I’ve also worked with athletes in college counseling centers, and rituals tend to come up a lot with college athletes, business owners, entrepreneurs.

All of us in general tend to also experience grief and loss and rituals, help with managing grief and loss, too. So I encourage rituals quite a bit, and it’s finding something that works for you. And that might change with time or depending on what season you are in your life. But the ritual, if you got up and walked your dog in the morning and then you came back and you had that high energy, you might decide, I’m going to, I’m going to try that again before this type of meeting next time, or the ritual of I took 10 minutes before saying hi to my husband when I came home from work.

And that 10 minutes really allowed me to kind of, I don’t know, rejuvenate or settle what was on my mind at work and be present when I said Alex. So that might be rituals can be bigger things you use like twice a year, once a year, or they can be daily if they really help for you to get up and do that morning ritual that you find is working for you.

Okay, I love this. You just help me realize after I coach my my 11 year old soccer team, I’m assistant coach. And every time we come back from our practice, I take 10 minutes and I just go into the bedroom and I just kind of, like, sit and read or watch TV because I need 10 minutes to regroup because it’s it’s stressful.

All these 11 year old and 12 year old boys. Right. And a managing them. I just need that 10 minutes before I can, like, return to family life. Isn’t that funny? So much stimulation. It just need to ground myself again. Remember who I am because maybe I yelled a lot, so I just. You just help me realize I have that ritual.

I just need to ground myself. Mm hmm. Absolutely. Yes. Thank you. That was really helpful. One thing I wanted to cover before I let you go, you’re on a mission to help us talk about our feelings, Right? And we feel I’ve talked about the beginning. I’ll talk about at the end. Why is it so important that we talk about our emotions?

Like, I love talking about my feelings, right? Because I’m a big extrovert. I guess. But why is it so important? Why don’t we do it more? Great question. This is my mission. You know, as a therapist and working in the mental health field for over two decades now, some things are very unique and specific to each individual, and other things are pretty thematic.

And they tend to go they tend to pop up over and over. And our feelings are at the core of our humanity. And when we can identify how we feel, we then can give ourself options and how to respond. And if you’re feeling overstimulated and exhausted from coaching, you then have a few choices, right? Keep gauging with all 11 and 12 year olds and go do more activities or remove yourself from stimulation for a little bit.

And if we know that we are thriving and we’re energized, we might want to keep going and do another project or reach out to someone and keep that engagement going. If we know that we are, you know, overstimulated or overworked, we might need to decrease some of that. And knowing how we feel allows us to choose how to cope.

Or I like what you’re saying, though. If I had, this is the first time I’ve heard something like this, Right. But you’re like, right. Sometimes I’m on a like a high or I’m like, activated, right? Because I’ve just run around and maybe we scrimmaged a little bit and then I come home and I want to do a little bit of work, right, because I’m activated.

But I guess it never occurred to me before that period, right after is is might be a nice time to activate in terms of getting work done. Like how how can we how do I recognize that more listening to you Britney I guess right now, just your own internal check in, right? Like we check our phone so often.

And like I said, most of us know where our phone charges before we know our own personal emotional charge. And just checking in, how am I doing right now? Like what? Whatever My noticing about myself and that becoming just a we don’t want to get consumed by our emotions. And your other question was, you know, how come we don’t want to talk about our feelings?

And I think for two reasons. One, we don’t want to talk about our feelings because somehow we have married feelings with capability. And if someone says, you know, Jane, I’m really tired today, you might wonder, how capable is Brittany doing this podcast for me? And we often marry those two things, right? If someone says, Oh my gosh, I’m so angry with how this meeting went, oh, how capable are they to keep going when in actuality labeling your feeling then allows you to choose how to cope, which leaves you feeling more capable, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I think the second part to that is we often get scared of feelings turning into behaviors, and we might see that happen in our families growing up. We might see that with our boss supervisors. And if someone were to change their tone of voice or yell at you, you might assess like, Oh, maybe they’re irritable or angry.

And that’s all through nonverbals and behavior. And so we often feel that somehow by saying a feeling, it decreases our capability or that we’re going to have these behaviors that are attached to them. Yeah, I think people have a guard up, too. Right. So how are how are you doing? Is that right? Or is like, oh, good, good, good.

And then move on. It’s like, why gauge that? Oh, I’m so I’m I’m doing great, actually. I just heard Tristin got a hundred on a test and I couldn’t be more proud because there was an area he struggled. Not true. But you know something? Something like that. And it’s like. And then you feel more connected to me. I was able to share something, so I went to the dentist yesterday.

This is silly, but I have these pictures of sort of the Tristen as a zombie. And I showed five women this picture of him as a zombie because I like how you do it. I’m like, Great, Kristen’s a zombie, you know? And I was so proud. Like, why? Why can’t we do a little bit more of that? So by sharing, did you did you feel more connected?

I felt 100% more connected. And then my dentist, who as a three year old started telling me about she wants to be a princess and she’s got to be the queen, and then her husband’s going to be the king and they’re going to all dress up. And I was like, I love this. I love this. Right Then I feel a lot more connected to her.

I’m hoping she feels connected to me. I think she’s wonderful. It makes the dentist less awful. Sorry, because I hate the dentist, but. And I. And I came home and I said to Alex, my husband, you know, it makes an unpleasant experience for me. Less unpleasant. Yes. Because I feel connected. Absolutely. And by opening up and connecting, that’s I mean, that’s one way to help with burnout is through connection and if we want our burnout to worsen or any mental health concern for that matter, to worsen isolation, disconnection, those are those two things will worsen it.

Yeah, I love how you brought it back to burnout. And then about the connection, because sometimes we’re working from home. You know, we see people on Zoom. Is it? And how do you feel about like Zoom fatigue versus seeing people in person connecting? Like, can we still connect over Zoom and get that same kind of hit? Renee I think so.

There hasn’t been a lot of research that has shown, you know, difference and outcome with therapy, zoom versus actually, you know, three dimensional meetings. Two dimensional meetings, you know, can definitely come with some fatigue, but that can also be from, you know, confounding variables like sitting in front of your computer, not getting up to greet someone from the waiting room, moving, you know, doing certain things that can kind of wake us up.

But I think that Zoom can be very effective. But if, you know, for you, I cannot do eight Zoom meetings in a row. Yep. And that’s something for you to pay attention to. Yeah, I know. I can’t If I’m going to have one two ones I don’t want to have say back to back one, the ones, I don’t know how you manage your schedule, but I know I need that break because it is an energy hit for me.

Like I give I try to bring so much energy to to the room, to the virtual room that I know I need to like, recharge. That’s great, you know? Yeah. So I budget that into my schedule. Oh my gosh, this has been so cool. I feel. I feel like I went through like a little session with you. This is so great.

Where can we learn more? Tell us a little bit about and we feel or anything you want to share. Sure. So I tomorrow is my one year anniversary for being on Instagram and we feel I thank you. I am on a mission to get this norm out there to talk about our feelings just as a day to day conversation, rather than we have to have a mental health diagnosis to then use that as language, like I’m depressed or I’m anxious, we kind of throw around those diagnoses instead of sharing, you know, I’m really tired today, or this has been a really hard month for me in these reasons particular, we don’t really have much depth

to those conversations and this mission of and we feel when we recognize how we feel. I am building a platform that allows, of course, creators, therapists, wellness experts to add their courses, kind of like Netflix, but for emotional health to add their courses and whether that be a CEO in their office who wants to find a course on motivation or a college student or a parent that wants to find a course on whatever they might be feeling, that’s what I’m currently building and we feel like I love this and I love what you just said about it doesn’t you don’t have to book a call with a mental health professional, which is great to write,

but there are resources or resources out there where you can start and then, you know, you can begin your your journey to get more resources and answers. So I love that we’re going to we’ll link to and we feel and we’ll link to your Instagram in the show notes. And I’m excited about our partnership. So we’re going to hang up and talk more about that in a minute.

But thank you so much for coming on and talking about burnout, talking about our feelings. We just we just don’t talk about it enough. Thank you so much for having me, Gina. This is great. Okay. What did you think of Britney? I thought she had some really cool content and ideas and I just love her approach. And you heard me.

She made me think of things that I wasn’t even realizing in my everyday life. Rituals or how I was facing different challenges or different situations. So I thought it was really valuable. So make sure you go to Britney’s site and we feel. Com and you check out her Instagram, same name, so you can be in touch with your feelings and your emotions and we can all avoid burnout at all.

Right. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode until next time to go create be you and be brilliant and get it done.