If you've experienced burnout more than once in your working life, whether as an employee, a business owner, or both, you may have started to wonder if there's something about the way you work that needs to change.
Maybe you've taken time off, changed jobs, started a business, or promised yourself that this time you'll set better boundaries. And yet, somehow, you find yourself right back in a familiar place: exhausted, overwhelmed, and feeling like you have very little left to give.
I want to suggest a different approach to breaking that cycle. Instead of simply getting better at recovering from burnout, what if you changed the way you approach work in the first place?
In this blog, I’m going to guide you through a new way of looking at your work day and choices, flipping how you currently do things on it’s head. Keep reading…
What's Actually Leading Your Workday?
If I asked you what dictates the way you move through your workday, what would your answer be?
For many women, it might be:
Their to-do list
What their boss needs from them
What their clients are expecting
The next meeting, the upcoming deadline, the administrative tasks waiting to be completed, or the projects that need their attention.
If you're self-employed, your day might revolve around client sessions, deliverables, emails, appointments, and everything else required to keep your business running.
In other words, your workday is largely being led by external demands. You're responding to what other people need from you, what your job requires, and what you've committed to getting done.
And where does that leave your own needs? Often, they're somewhere at the bottom of the list. You'll eat when there's time, take a break when everything is finished, and rest when the work is finally done. The problem is that there's almost always more work to do. There will always be another email, another client request, another project, or another thing that could use your attention.
If you continue allowing those external demands to lead your days, your own energy and capacity will consistently take a back seat and this leads to burnout.
If you've already experienced burnout multiple times in this cycle, this blog invites you into a new paradigm of operating in your work life.
The Paradigm Shift: Let Your Body Lead
I believe one of the keys to breaking the burnout cycle is changing what leads your workday. Instead of allowing external factors always dictate how you move through your day, start allowing your body to lead and watch what changes.
I'm not suggesting that you take a two-hour nap every afternoon simply because you feel like it, or that you abandon all your responsibilities whenever you're having an off day. I'm talking about becoming more aware of your body's actual needs, energy, capacity, and limitations, and allowing those things to influence your daily and weekly decisions.
There are a few areas I think are particularly important to consider:
1. Your Menstrual Cycle and Changing Energy Levels
For women who menstruate, our energy levels and physical needs can fluctuate throughout the month. We aren't necessarily going to have the same energy, focus, or capacity every single day. And yet, many of us expect ourselves to operate at the same level regardless of where we are in our cycle.
What if you started paying more attention to those fluctuations?
Perhaps you notice that certain weeks are better for demanding projects, while other weeks you need a little more space, rest, or flexibility. When I’m in the first days of my cycle, my expectations of myself and what I can do drop significantly. I do what’s essential, keep the bar low and work less time generally.
You may not be able to rearrange every aspect of your work around your cycle, but simply becoming aware of these patterns can help you make more informed decisions about how you use your energy.
2. Your Neurodivergence and Individual Needs
Whether you're highly sensitive, ADHD, autistic, or identify with another form of neurodivergence, the way your nervous system processes the world can have a significant impact on your capacity for work. Maybe constant meetings and social interaction leave you depleted. Maybe you need a quieter workspace, more transition time between tasks, or fewer interruptions throughout the day. Perhaps you thrive on interaction and feel energized by working around other people.
The point is that your needs are individual - know them and start arranging your work life to support them.
As a self-employed highly sensitive person, I get to work from home in a quiet house everyday and I love that. I cannot work around noise or other people - it’s too distracting for me. So, know what you need as a ND individual and begin supporting yourself!
3. Your Burnout Trauma
If you've experienced burnout multiple times, particularly in demanding or toxic work environments, you may have developed work trauma and burnout trauma that still live in your body and part of changing how you work is awareness around this topic and eventually working through it. You may get triggered by work, authority, or responsibility. Maybe you experienced panic attacks, fear, crying or other emotional reactions to going into work over time - these all may still live in your body and be affecting your experience of work.
Repeated burnout can also result in a loss of capacity. Your body may have essentially shut down around work-related demands as a way of protecting you, so you feel no desire or motivation to work at all.
This is something I experienced myself. After leaving the convent, I carried a lot of fear and aversion around work and responsibility. I eventually spent a year working one-on-one with a somatic practitioner, and a significant part of that work involved healing experiences related to the convent and other work-related burnout. It helped me work through some of those protective responses and regain capacity.
If you recognize this in yourself, somatic therapy or other therapeutic support may be worth exploring. Sometimes breaking the burnout cycle means not only changing how you work, but also tending to the work trauma and burnout trauma your body may still be carrying so that you can regain some of that animo and capacity to move forward.
If You're an Employee:
Start Making Body-Led Choices Within Your Job
I recognize that employees generally have less autonomy over their schedules and work environments than people who are self-employed. You may not be able to choose your working hours, move meetings around, or decide how much work comes across your desk. But there are still ways to start allowing your needs to influence how you approach your job.
1. Start with the basics: Are you eating enough during the day? Are you drinking water? Are you taking your full lunch break and using the restroom when you need to?
These things might sound simple, but how often do we override our most basic needs because we're busy working? Too often.
2. Practice better boundaries: Are you routinely working overtime? Volunteering for additional responsibilities when you're already at capacity? Taking on work that isn't actually part of your role because you don't want to disappoint someone?
You may need to become more comfortable saying no, communicating your workload, and advocating for what you can realistically manage. Learn to say, “I’d be happy to take that on. What would you like me to take off my plate in order to do that?”
3. Explore workplace accommodations that would make your environment more supportive: Perhaps you need a quieter office, the ability to work from home, fewer interruptions, or a different arrangement for meetings and communication.
You may not have complete control over your job, but you can start recognizing where your needs are being overlooked and where you have room to make different choices.
If You're Self-Employed:
Build Your Workday Around Your Body
One of the biggest advantages of being self-employed is that you have considerably more autonomy over how you structure your work life. You get to make decisions about your schedule, your clients, your workload, and even where you work. This flexibility can be especially supportive for people who are neurodivergent or who have particular needs around their energy, capacity and work environment.
For example, I'm a morning person. I know that my brain is at its best for more demanding work during the first half of the day, so I tend to do my more involved VA projects in the morning and leave lighter tasks for later. I also work from home, in silence and have very few meetings - all because this is what best supports me and my nervous system in a work situation. I tend to run out of steam around 3 p.m., so I try to finish my VA work by then. I also love the freedom self employment gives me to go to the grocery or appointments at my preferred times (aka the least crowded, low traffic times) - that freedom feels expansive to me.
Your preferences might be completely different -maybe you feel energized by interacting with people so you like working in coffee shops or cowork spaces, maybe you prefer starting your workday later or working well into the evenings. The advantage is you basically get to craft a schedule that supports your body, instead of one that your body has to fall in line with due to external demands.
As a self employed person, you get more flexibility around breaks, meals, and working hours. You can eat when you're hungry, take a break when you need one, and adjust your schedule from day to day.
The larger point is that you don't have to structure your work days and weeks around reacting to external demands all the time. When you put your body first, you get to create an environment and schedule that supports you first, and then you can sustainably support the people you serve.
Making Bigger Work Decisions:
Give Your Body a Seat at the Table
So far, we've talked about the day-to-day experience of working: your schedule, your energy, your breaks, and your work environment. But allowing your body to lead also needs to extend to the bigger decisions you make about your career or business. Your body needs a seat at the table when you're considering a new job, negotiating your salary, taking on a client, changing your services, or making other professional decisions.
For example, if you're looking to leave your current W-2 job and move into another position, the questions you ask shouldn't be limited to:
Will I make more money? Will this be a good career move? Will I be professionally challenged?
Those are all valid considerations, but they aren't the only ones.
If you were to give your body a seat at the table, you’d also consider:
What's the commute like, is it draining?
What's the workplace culture around boundaries and time off?
What are the expectations around availability and overtime?
Will you have access to the accommodations you need in the office?
A higher salary or more impressive job title isn't necessarily a better opportunity if the demands of the role are going to put you right back into the same burnout cycle.
The same principle applies when you're self-employed: When you're considering taking on a new client, introducing another service, hiring a contractor, or raising your rates, give yourself permission to consider how those decisions actually feel in your body.
Maybe you want to raise your hourly rate by $10, but you notice that you feel incredibly uncomfortable when you imagine quoting that new price to potential clients. That is helpful data to consider because it’s unlikely you’ll land clients at that rate if you can’t even get the words out easefully.
Or perhaps you've found a highly skilled videographer or accountant who could help with your business, but every interaction with them leaves you feeling confused and overstimulated. Their skills might look great on paper, but the working relationship may not be the right fit for your system.
I'm not suggesting that every uncomfortable feeling means you should immediately say no. Sometimes doing something new or stepping into a different level of responsibility comes with some discomfort, but your body's response is invaluable intel that should be considered when weighting these larger decisions.
Instead of making professional decisions exclusively based on money, career ladders, or even what looks like the next logical step, consider what the actual experience of living with that decision will FEEL LIKE IN YOUR BODY.
Your body needs a seat at the table.
You Don't Have to Keep Working the Same Way
If you've experienced burnout multiple times, the answer is not getting better at recovering. The answer is flipping your current paradigm of work on it’s head and, instead of putting your body LAST, begin putting her FIRST and see how that changes the decisions you make.
For some women, that might mean establishing stronger boundaries in their current job. For others, it might mean changing careers, working fewer hours, moving into self-employment, or creating a business that allows for more flexibility. It might mean taking on fewer clients, changing your pricing, declining opportunities that don't feel right, or simply giving yourself permission to stop working at a time that supports your body.
There isn't one right answer. And I recognize that not everyone has the financial flexibility or professional circumstances to make major changes immediately.
But wherever you are right now, you can start by asking yourself a different question.
Instead of asking, "How can I make myself fit into the demands of my work?"
What if you asked, "How can I make my work situation more supportive to my body’s needs right now?”
Your body has been part of your working life all along. It's time to let it have a say in how that working life looks and feels.
If you're rethinking the way you work and want a space to explore what a more easeful, supportive work life could look like, I'd love to invite you to a Business Chat. We can talk through your ideas, your options, and what might feel like the right next step for you.
Work With Me: Book a Chat
If you're rethinking the way you work and want a space to explore what a more easeful, supportive work life could look like - whether you’re an employee, self-employed or somewhere in the middle - I'd love to invite you to a Business Chat. We can talk through your ideas, your options, and what might feel like the right next step for you (You don’t need to have a business or even want one to book a chat!)
Book a Chat here.
