The Mindset Shift That Changed My Life | First Step to Overcoming Burnout
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I wanted to give up.
I was exhausted. All the time. Every. Day.
I finally had had enough of feeling like all the effort I was putting in was only giving me a small percentage of the results I desired.
Something had to change.
But I didn’t have the slightest clue on where to even start.
When most people become burned out, they feel like they are so far deep in the weeds that no amount of work will ever get them ahead.
It’s the mental equivalent of climbing up a hill, only to realize that there is another hill to climb every time you think you’ve reached the top.
Eventually you will feel defeated.
That was 2020 for me.
How Did I Get Here?
Most people think of the pandemic and quarantine when we talk about two years ago. But that’s not the reason I felt defeated in 2020.
Waking up one day I realized I was in my third failed job. (And by failed, I mean another low paying, underappreciated, dead-end opportunity). I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t making a difference. Hell, at this point I wasn’t even performing.
For 7 years I chased many Millennials’ dreams in landing that career position that makes you feel like you’ve finally achieved success. Whether it’s a pay raise, or a job title, the work you do – I bought the fallacy that with hard work – the life I always wanted would come.
Except it never did.
At this point in time, I was in a role at a company I hated and lost all respect for. To add insult to injury, I had moved across the country to work at a shit-show. Nothing was organized. Everything was poorly explained. Support from leadership was nonexistent. And my confidence was at an all-time low because of just how frequently I was put into positions to fail.
2 years before that I landed my first management role.
This seemed promising on paper, but it soon became clear that my career was doomed - unless I played the game of office politics.
I forfeited – willingly.
Experience and qualifications didn’t matter in an environment that valued friendship over facts.
Prior to that role, I was able to work my way from a volunteer position to a full-time event professional. Too bad the experience was ultimately soured when I began dealing with ignorance, microaggressions, and poor accountability in the last few months of the job.
One of my first jobs went as far as to put me on the lead of various projects as they trusted my capability in the results I could get. Unfortunately, mid-twenties Monica hadn’t yet gotten the memo to not outperform or even appear to be better at your job than your boss – it will definitely cost you. My last year in that place was hell.
Literally, I had dealt with plagiarism at work, corporate mean girls, drunk and incapable bosses, and countless lies about the jobs, the companies – you name it, I’ve been told a lie about it.
I became cynical about working a 9 to 5. I no longer saw a point. I’m supposed to wake up, work for over 50 years, barely have enough to cover rent or bills, being passed up for promotions by less qualified and dedicated colleagues, all while being told that I need to “pay my dues” but yet, I’m “overqualified?”
It made no sense.
How Stress and Exhaustion Led to Entrepreneurship
In a world where pensions are non-existent, cost of living rises while salaries remain stagnant, and most companies offering benefits that are worth their own segment of a comedy show – working for someone else became less appealing with each passing year.
There had to be more to life than just working to make money, pay bills, wake up, and do it all over again – until retirement.
The more I thought about it, the angrier I became.
At most places, I wasn’t even appreciated. I constantly found myself in negative situations simply because of what I brought to the table. No matter how hard I worked, it was never enough. And after 20 years of playing this game, I was done participating.
Without an exact plan and stepping out on faith – I left the last toxic job I would ever hold in September 2020. I didn’t know what the path was that I needed to be on. I just knew it wasn’t this one.
Starting a business when you’re already burned out wasn’t my best idea – but it was the single best strategy that led me one step closer to living the life I’ve always wanted.
When it comes to burnout and your mental health, my career and employment history unfortunately was only half of the problem.
The other half was not understanding how unresolved trauma, depression, anxiety, and lack of clarity can have a significant impact on your well-being over time.
After what seemed like years of headaches, heartburn, fatigue, and a shaky immune system, the mental elements began to manifest into physical ailments. At this point, it seemed like I had more bad days than good.
With each passing day, I began to realize that hard work alone wasn’t going to get me the results – not to mention life – that I wanted. I actively made the choice to pursue entrepreneurship.
I knew it wasn’t going to be easy – but I figured if I had spent a decade trying a traditional job and I wasn’t happy, that trying a different path wouldn’t hurt.
Once I started being honest with myself, I began to realize that I had always dreamed of opening my own company. The only thing stopping me was thinking that I needed to have a certain level of “success” already in my current career.
Not only did that not make any sense – it wasn’t true.
In fact, I already had gained a small peek inside of what entrepreneurship would be like.
7 years ago when I willingly left toxic job number three (yes there’s a whole roster) – I was fortunate enough to be in the position that I could take the downtime to launch a small business. So, I filed a DBA and began my first side hustle, Perfect Package Events.
At the time, I was convinced that the only skillset I had was event planning and execution. By 2017, I had already planned, executed, or assisted other event coordinators and vendors with nearly 600 events. The types of events varied ranging from weddings and receptions, bridal and baby showers, anniversary parties, galas, proms, fundraisers, and corporate meetings.
For me, the easiest market to tap into was wedding planning so that became my focus. I already understood the demographic, who were the best players within the local industry, and the systems I needed to get started based on my previous years of experience.
I didn’t take my business too seriously as I ended up landing a full-time role. But I didn’t stop working on it. Surprised would be an understatement when I realized I made five figures in my first year with little to no effort in marketing and advertising.
My second year of business never came around as I moved to Austin, Texas. I decided to put my business on hold until I got more settled within a new state, new city, and new position. When I was ready to begin planning again the world changed with a global quarantine.
The Mindset Shift I Made to Overcome Burnout
It was during this time that things came full circle and I realized that I needed to view entrepreneurship as more of a lifestyle rather than an added revenue stream. The main thing stopping me from doing so was… myself.
There were so many conflicting thoughts about whether an event business during a pandemic was the right move. I had to make a decision on whether I was passionate enough to want to launch the same business in a brand-new city where I knew no one and would be starting over.
I also began to expand my limiting beliefs around what I was capable of and good at performing. Unfortunately, at this time I was at the lowest I had ever been when it came to feeling confident or even that I deserved to be in a position of leadership. After serving in three roles in four years I began to realize that these companies weren’t the problem – I was.
The problem wasn’t that I lacked the skills, professionalism, or team player abilities to be deemed valuable or successful.
The problem was that I lacked a clear focus of what it was I truly wanted – and this problem had been around since the very beginning of my career. The expectations of what I wanted in return didn’t match the roles I pursued, the projects I led, or the overall perspective and vision that I saw for myself long-term.
So in return, I began doing everything in search of what I really wanted from my life.
The longer I worked in Corporate America the more I realized that almost all of us have been conditioned to work tirelessly in hopes that the more work we put in the more likely we will get the “dream job” we’ve always wanted.
The kicker is that for most of us, that simply doesn’t work. Hard work does not equal success.
Seriously, it doesn’t.
Productivity Doesn’t Automatically Equal Progress
Many people within the professional development industry will tell you that if you aren’t seeing the results you want, that you should just work harder. However, the reality is that doing a lot of the wrong thing is not going to get you anywhere. And the only way to avoid doing the wrong activities is to actively focus on the right ones.
It’s impossible to do that with a lack of clarity and focus about what you want, where you are, and where you need to go to bridge the gap.
For ten years I questioned where my true expertise lied, what value I brought to any project, organization, or relationship, and how to find where I truly belonged.
When I inquired with other people about these struggles, I would receive the typical answers of needing to find what I was “passionate” about, to look at my past history for clues, or to dig back into my mental archives for what I enjoyed during my childhood.
Unfortunately, for someone with a multifaceted background and childhood in terms of experiences, all this did was confuse me more.
The more I did, the more confused I became.
Eventually, I grew tired of being all things to everyone all of the time.
This was a leading factor in how I ultimatley realized much of the problem with my mindset came down to Superwoman Syndrome - but that’s another story for another day.
Routinely, I would ask myself the question of how I was supposed to connect the dots between seemingly unrelated aspects:
Nonprofits versus corporate
Logistics or supply chain management versus event planning
Workforce development versus hospitality and retail
None of these made sense to connect to the other. Until I came to the conclusion of what ultimately, I launched my business on. Finally, I saw a common denominator, and connecting factor for every role and every project of interest I’ve ever had throughout my life.
That factor was my ability to develop strategies on how to streamline operations using simple systems and processes that helped my teams and clients alike reverse-engineer their concepts and ideas into actionable steps.
In simpler terms, I had a knack for transforming big picture thinking and concepts into specific, detail-oriented plans that were easier to execute and less likely to overwhelm those with enough tasks already on their plates.
An even bigger revelation? Finding the clarity I needed to finally accept that I really could do less and achieve more. I didn’t need to continue behaving as a superhero.
The biggest lesson I learned over the past decade in working with so many different types of people, industries, and roles, is that most of the time poor decisions, misguided strategies, unmanageable workloads, and high stress levels always came down to lack of focus on the end goal.
Regardless of the type of work and people involved, I began to notice at each stage of my career that this challenge always existed. No matter how educated, experienced, or valued employees, team members, and leadership alike were within their roles – none of that mattered. Many, if not all, of us suffered from this same thing. And that is because we’ve always been taught to work hard, not smart.
The result? Poor mental health that results from the constant need to push yourself beyond the limits to achieve a goal that always has a finish line that moves.
My blog, Painfully Employed is a space where I tell the truth of how I ended up where I am, the obstacles I experienced along the way, and why I am dedicating my business’ mission to helping other entrepreneurs not make the same mistakes.
Success isn’t just about how much you know and who – but also how you choose to operate in the long term.
It’s not always about the methods and strategies on how you become “successful.” It also takes a positive perspective and prioritization of your mental health.
And this blog, will talk about the balance of both performance and your mindset.