Consuelo Are you feeling overwhelmed and on the edge of burnout from expectations from others? Family, work, responsibilities all pile up leaving little time for self care, especially when it comes to work. How do you keep the Sunday Scaries at bay? Add some empathy to your day, for yourself and from others.
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[Intro]
Hola chicas!
Welcome to the Life Lnxx podcast. I’m your host, Consuelo Crosby, coming across your airwaves on this first Autumn episode. Lady Fall, here in San Francisco, has made her presence known with these chilly mornings, but these gorgeous sunny days! This is the perfect time of year to come visit us.
Don’t come during the summer, you will freeze. You will have never prepare yourself well enough for the foggy summer days in San Francisco. But come now, we’d love to see. In the meantime, always grateful to have you join us each Wednesday to share in the thoughts and journeys of our Latina community and our allies who we embrace thoroughly.
Today’s episode 59 ‘Does Lack of Empathy Lead to Burnout?’ is what we consider our Pod Club episode , where we reflect on what we heard in the previous week from our guest and how it applies further in our current day.
Last week, we listened to Jordana Roman, founder of Libra Lifestyle, a modern wellness brand for men, women and the 99%. Jordana’s intimate story was one to really sit in and embrace with love. And, I hope you took the time over the weekend to follow her advice.
Her personal journey from academic perfectionist to overwhelmed young adult and back to insightful wellness leader was a lesson in a full range of empathy.She offered empowering perspective on how to restructure life to include more downtime, more free time and with that, the time and energy to develop more intimate relationships, especially with one’s self. I hope you took her advice over the weekend and made some space for yourself and your relationships.
Jordana literally cares how her brand and products impact others, both as employees and consumers. So, if you missed it, take a moment later on to listen to episode 58. I assure you, it is the comfort we have been missing to heal the harm done in a culture lacking in empathy.
And that’s what we’re talking about today on this Pod Club episode; how to shape a successful future avoiding burnout by adding empathy into your life.This is an important time to bring this given the ongoing resignations from old jobs and work habits, as well as the concept going viral right now of ‘quiet quitting’.
As we try to settle in again after the trauma of Covid, some realizations are lingering. If, and this is a very big, if you were able to put work on hold during Covid, meaning your workplace was on hiatus, or closed, or at least scaled back then, perhaps you had the downtime to realize just how much of your day was sucked away by work?
Yes, there was the nine to five, but we all know those emails did not stop at five.The expectations did not stop at five and neither did your worries and anxiety.
But if you were scaled back and had that extra time, did you realize how much more attention was brought to yourself? Maybe to heal or to start all those creative ideas and projects, or let those beautiful side gigs take priority, allowing that money to flow without that middleman involved.
All your talent and effort went directly back to you. Well, that surely highlights the issues related to professional anxiety and burnout. If left to our own devices, we are able to pace ourselves in a healthy, self caring way and still be successful. There are no Sunday scaries. Instead, Monday is a natural progression towards work again, because you have taken the time over the weekend to focus purely on what fuels you.
And, all of that benefits you completely financially, productively, purposefully. How’s that for a run of adverbs?
So really, and this is nothing astoundingly new, the Great Resignation that occurred in 2021 and today’s ‘quiet quitting‘ highlight the workplace problem. It’s management, or lack thereof, but you probably already know this. It can be too difficult to feel successful in a system or corporate setting unless you abide by their business style. And that business style is what is driving those late night emails and those early morning expectations. So what do you do?
This one can be tricky because it takes a little bit of time to evaluate where you really are in what you’re trying to achieve. For instance, right now you’re probably in the middle of a goal or multiple goals, because we have at least eight sections of happiness that define our life. So, it could be career. It could be family. It could be exercise. It could be spirituality. All of that, is part of it. But, we’re going to focus on career because it really takes so much of our daily life.
Let’s consider what Jordana taught us about coping mechanisms for the long haul. Jordana shared her personal struggles with burnout, followed by the healing of giving herself space to connect with her spirituality, whether it was ethereal or Nature.
She taught us how important it is to create time, especially a full day to step off our technology, to be free of expectations and commit to relishing relationship with others and ourselves.
So, how do you engage in work and really come to the success that you desire on your own terms? Something that you can be proud of without feeling pressured into it, without feeling that you have to abide by other people’s expectations because we know, that leads to burnout.
The key to this scenario is expectations. Not the business’ expectations, but rather your own expectations. The business’ expectations are what could be leading to burnout because most likely they are not structured with empathy; empathy for their employees, even empathy for their consumers. So instead, take some time to consider your own expectations of where you’re at.
Women in general are pressured by societal expectations in work performance. We know that. Add a Latina heritage and that pressure just got higher. Add a First Gen identity and those expectations go through the roof.
Take a moment to unwind some of those expectations to see which ones are your own and which ones were placed on you that you had no control over. Those last ones, were going to leave those behind. They’re not yours and they’re not your problem.
Now consider your own expectations of your workplace goals. How are they framing your workday? Are they adding pressure, causing anxiety or feeling desperate, or are they fueling you to succeed? Are they realistic for your current life situation?
This is where you assess how empathy gets added into your workday so that you can achieve your goals, even if those goals have to be readjusted. If a goal is too difficult or will take too much resource to achieve in your current situation, then reframe so it’s more accessible. Accept that you are doing the best you can with what you have. It’s better to feel good about your progress, even if it’s slower than you hoped, then burn out and stop altogether. Be empathetic on yourself. Value who you are and believe in your journey.
If you have the resources to keep moving towards your goal, you can see it, but you’re running low on fuel, then reach out to your network of empathetic friends and colleagues who understand what you need. They know who you are, they know what you’re trying to get. They will add that boost to get you forward.
Or, refuel on your own by stepping into something vastly greater than yourself, like nature or the divine. These actions help put struggles into perspective and remind you that you are not alone in your journey. It is empowering to ask for help in places of empathy, be it the universe or your friends. Places of empathy do not judge. They embrace and they encourage you to go forward. These scenarios offer safety and solace providing you that space to renew, refresh, and recharge.
Now if you miss last week’s episode with Jordana, you can find it still on your favorite podcast streaming platform and on our website at TheLnxx.com, that’s L N Double X. There you’ll find the transcripts and the articles and all the things to catch.
So what can you take away from today’s Pod Club episode? Trying to perform under the expectations of other people without the empathetic society or network of friends to support you? That is way too much pressure to perform without the fuel to finish.
There’s only so much we can humanly do alone. We’re not meant to be alone in this world. But with empathy, added in empathy for ourselves, empathy from others, we can do amazing things even if there’s an immense struggle.
It’s not about avoiding the struggle.It’s about enduring the struggle, feeling loved and understood and seen for what you’re going through.
I was going to share a story about when I was a teenager and what I was going through, where I can really use some understanding.
And how it all circled back around when I had my own daughter and she was in the exact same situation that I had been at her age. I was going to bring that all here, but I actually wrote an article because I wanted also to share the painting that is the core of this story.
So it’s on our website. It’s called ‘All I Needed Was a Little Empathy’. There you can read the story and see the painting that I was talking about. I was like 15 years old and boy, did we not all need a lot of empathy when we were that age? So take a look and I hope you enjoy it.
I’d love to hear some comments about your own experience in a similar situation and how you got through it. I don’t know how we got through all those years. Just needing someone to understand n that moment where you were just, “Ugh!”, under that pressure.
Oh, I can’t wait to hear what you went through, and I’m glad you’re here to tell us.
So, take the time to invest in yourself, in your own unedited self care and to invest in relationships with the people who empathize with you, who value you, who will be there for you in a heartbeat. Let them hear your voice. Let them see your face. They need to know where you are. And, the people who make space for you and leave an open door for you to walk through, are there to welcome you and give the resource you need and that you love that genuinely feeds you.
Make space for yourself to connect to something much deeper, more profound than the nuances of work. Balance your life so that you feel more complete and refueled, and that work just becomes part of who you are. It does not define you.
Thank you to all the listeners who subscribed last week and gave me such a boost of love and confidence. Subscribing is easy, but it’s a little different on each platform. So check it out on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, whatever your favorite is. And while you’re there, could you please leave a review so we can focus us in on what you’d like to hear when you’re listening to us.
You can find the links to everyone mentioned here today in the show notes of this episode, on your favorite streaming platform, as well as the transcripts and articles found on our website at TheLnxx.com, that’s L-N-Double X, for the ladies, las mujeres.
And, you can get a heads up and some snippets of the episodes on our Instagram profile at LifeLnxx.
Step into your truth, ladies. Ciao!
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