Ever felt an overwhelming sense of exhaustion creeping in, making your day-to-day coaching job seem like an uphill battle? I know the name of that tune. In this episode I share my own experience with burnout, and outline three ways to change your coaching practice so it works for you and not the other way around.
But first Imma overshare about my personal life a little bit, for shits and giggles.
Don't go back to sleep.
xoRachel
Sign up here for monthly blasts and functional woo
Find me on Instagram
Support this podcast on Patreon
Ever felt an overwhelming sense of exhaustion creeping in, making your day-to-day coaching job seem like an uphill battle? I know the name of that tune. In this episode I share my own experience with burnout, and outline three ways to change your coaching practice so it works for you and not the other way around.
But first Imma overshare about my personal life a little bit, for shits and giggles.
Don't go back to sleep.
xoRachel
Sign up here for monthly blasts and functional woo
Find me on Instagram
Support this podcast on Patreon
Welcome to Audacity Works, a podcast inspired by and dedicated to the working artist, the creative, entrepreneur and generally doing the damn thing. This exists on the premise that the world belongs to those who have the audacity to believe that their lives have value. This is for you In two Audacity Works. I am your host, rachel Strickland, and this is episode number 56. And I want to address some things about burnout and coaching. So this is specifically for coaches. But first I wanted to give you all some life updates over here. So last week I talked about get into the room and if there isn't a room, then make a room, and I just wanted to tell you that I took my own advice in the easiest and most fun way that I could imagine doing so, which was to contact the Charleston chapter, the local chapter here of anyone who has been through the Audacity project with me. So the Charleston alumni we have gotten together before, but this one was even better because one of our alumni now lives in Denver, colorado, and they were home. So there's only four. There's only four plus me, so five people. I was like that sounds like a room I want to be in, so we just decided to gather downtown, we made a room and then we went and we got into the room.
Speaker 1:After that we walked around. We went to the Doc Street Theater, which is a very old theater in Charleston. You can just wander in. If there's not a play or a production on, you can go into the theater and just sit there and look at the stage. And we sat there and we watched them set up for some saccharine-looking production that was going on. It's very fun.
Speaker 1:And then we walked to another theater that's only a block away and peered in the windows until the executive director opened the door and said hey, can I help you? And we were like we're local performers, we just wanted to look inside. He said come on in. This man his name is Brian, brian is so cool. He not only let us come in, look at the theater, indulged us, let us look up at the ceiling. We had to check out if there was a rigging, you got to look up. And he also let us into the back where they make props and where they keep all the costuming. And it just went on and on and on. Just this ancient building with so many layers and hidden potholes, really just full of like old lumber and costumes and hoop skirts and skulls, what have you? Very, very cool of Brian, and as we were leaving he said keep art alive. And we were like we will Thank you, brian. So shout out to Brian Thanks for being a cool mo fo.
Speaker 1:This literally just happened to me a couple of hours ago, so I'm still buzzing from it, because we made a room, we went into the room and then magical shit happened, but none of us were expecting to happen, and now my brain is churning for for more ways that I can be more engaged with my local community, because that is that's an area that I would like to see improvement on in my own life or maybe not improvement so much as enrichment, and that will come from being in rooms not talking about being in rooms, but actually being in them, as I learned today More honesty from me to you All of the talks that we've had over active pleasure versus passive pleasure and regenerating act, restorative activities that didn't happen in a vacuum. You may have wondered why I was harping on that so much, and part of why I was harping on that was that I am in the midst of kicking an addiction that has kicked my ass for many years. That addiction is a jewel vape pen. I love it. It's been my constant companion for years. So if you didn't know that about me, now you do, and I just figured I want to be honest about that because people struggle silently with addictions all the time, and vaping in particular, because it's such an enabler. It has no smell, at least not the kind that I use. It has no smell. There's no THC in it, it's just nicotine. But nicotine is extremely addictive and it's just so readily available. And it doesn't set off fire alarms. Don't quote me on that, because I haven't tried all the fire alarms, but it was time for it to go and be out of my life and it's a big change to take something that you rely on many, many, many times throughout the day and something that you look forward to, and to delete. That thing leaves a void. So the big list of pleasures and the big list of restorative practices have been useful to me personally as I'm going through this. I'm currently one week without it. I got my patch on. I'm feeling pretty good.
Speaker 1:Yesterday I was hating the world, hating everything. I just want to validate this for you If you ever go through something similar, if you've gone through something similar and you're like why do I hate everything? I want to cry and burn the world down. It's not just you, it's just part of the process. I've raided it out and I'm glad that I have been waiting it out, because yesterday, in the midst of all of my hatred, I went to the gym. It was time to go to the gym and pick up heavy things and put them down again, get the endorphins going. That worked like a charm. It's irritating how consistently working out works to make me feel better, but it does, and I did.
Speaker 1:And by the time that I stopped that workout, the hatred had more or less dissolved and I started feeling pleasure, just from dumb stuff like oh, it's raining, that smells nice. So, and I know that what's happening is that I'm giving my brain a chance to experience neuroplasticity in how it experiences pleasure, particularly dopamine, because it's used to getting many, many Reliable sources of dopamine throughout the day from the vape pen, and now it's not getting that at all. So it took a few days to sort of make the switch, but if today is any Measure of what it's like without it, it's pretty good, because now I'm like my brain is caught on and I am able to see Pleasure and lots, lots, lots more aspects of life. They're just silly and dumb and I love them. It's good, it's all good. There could be more days of hatred in the future, I don't know. I'll let you know. I'll let you know how it goes. So there's my confession, for I don't know the month.
Speaker 1:Now onto the meat of today's episode. Now that we're almost halfway through with my personal updates, I I wanted to address coaching and how prevalent Burnout is in coaches, and I don't just mean aerial coaches, circus coaches, people who teach any physical discipline, but also just people who coach in general, and I know a great deal of coaches. I know business coaches, nutritional consultants, people who consult about pelvic floor health. It seems like for everything that people do, there are people available to coach. That and that's a beautiful thing. I do believe in coaching, but this is not an episode about whether or not you should get coaching. This is an episode for people who coach, particularly if you are subject to burnout in your coaching practice and I wouldn't bring it up if I didn't see it all the time.
Speaker 1:And there's one particular way that it's really insidiously consistent in people. God, that's a lot of S sounds insidiously consistent in people's lives and that is you have an artist. The artist wants to be a working artist. Being a working artist is not frequently a reliable source of income and we got to make a living and coaching goes really well with that. It helps you understand your discipline better, it's readily available and it's it's more dependable as a source of income for a lot of people. So you start coaching to help out. Your coaching becomes kind of popular. You get more popular with your students. Your students love you. You get lots of validation from your students. You end up teaching more and more. The studio becomes reliant on you and before you know it, you're a coach and not so much a working artist.
Speaker 1:This is a very painful place to be and it's sneaky. You don't really see it happening until it's already happened and for most people that I've spoken to, you don't realize it happens because you wake up one day and you're like wait a second, I wanted to be a working artist and a coach on the side and now I'm just a coach, like all the time. How did this become my full time job? That's not usually what happens. You don't notice it. You don't notice it until something starts being painful and the thing that starts being painful is almost always that you are burnt out and you pour all of your creative energy into planning materials for your students and you don't have any of that energy left for yourself. And it's painful because you want this other thing so bad and you know that you're capable of it. You know you have things to give in this way, but you're sort of locked into this cycle of needing to support yourself. Coaching is the most available thing to you, so you keep coaching and you don't have any juice left for your own work.
Speaker 1:I've learned this the hard way a couple of times. The first time it was around writing. That was the first thing I ever wanted to be. You know when Circus was just a twinkle in my eye. I wanted to be a writer and that was my skill set. So I found a job. I took a job as a writer. I was an SEO writer, I wrote newsletters. I wrote copy to sell propane and propane accessories if you can believe it, it's true, I did that and things like fireglass. I wrote copy to sell windshields and it wasn't difficult work and I was good at it. But do you think, after doing that for eight hours a day I wanted to go home and work on a novel. No, no, I didn't. All the writer juice had been used up, and that's when I made a decision I am never going to write for money again, unless I'm, you know, making money off of getting books published, which is not a thing that I'm super thinking about. But I know that for me, my writing practice needs to be my writing practice and not writing articles to sell, to sell windshields. But no, it's a hard no for me.
Speaker 1:So if what I've just described resonates with you and you're like, oh my God, that is me. I am coaching all the time and I'm not creating a lot of art, what do I do? And, quite honestly, I think that you're looking at some pretty significant life changes if you want to change this pattern. Now, there are some people who can create choreography for their students or just coach in general all the time and still have juice left over for themselves. But I am not one of these people and I am just a mere mortal and I have a limited amount of creative energy every day. If that is you, I respect that I do and congratulations, but you're not who I'm talking to. So a couple of things that that you can do if you are a coach of any kind and you find that you're getting burnt out. First step is knowing that you're burnt out. How do you know this?
Speaker 1:You feel resentful of your students. It is difficult to admit to this because it's not a pretty feeling. It's not something that we are proud of feeling, but it's definitely something that people feel and it makes sense, doesn't it? If someone is on the receiving end of all of your creative energy and you find that there's nothing left for you afterwards, it makes sense that you would be resentful of that recipient. However, the first thing and this is a hard, rude thing that I'm about to say, but it is absolutely true If you are feeling sucked dry by your students, if you are feeling sucked dry by your students, that is not their fault. They are taking what you give them. If you're feeling resentful of everything that your students get from you, that's on you, not them. Not saying there's not problematic students. There are, but that's not what I'm speaking about, and this might feel really rude to hear. It was definitely rude for me when I realized it the first time. I'm like God, damn it, damn it. But it's true, it's not on them, it's on you.
Speaker 1:If people are taking too much from you, you should be giving less. It is up to us, as coaches, to set healthier parameters for ourselves, and these parameters can be time, energy and money. Let's take them one at a time. Time let's take the parameter of time. Let's say you teach a class, but there's this super chatty student who always stays and just talks at you for 20 minutes after, which is the only 20 minutes you have to go pee, drink some water and eat a cracker before your next class. Stop giving that student 20 minutes. You can find a way to open your mouth and say the words I'm so sorry, I have to go. Thank you for being in class, see you next week.
Speaker 1:Another example of this is just being available too much to your people, particularly, let's say, if you're an online coach and you have, I hope that you have a scheduling software. If you don't, what are you doing? Get a scheduling software, it's gonna make your life so much easier. Let's assume you have a scheduling software and your students can go in, and there's all these times that they can book to have one-on-one sessions with you where they have access to you, and those sessions are available Monday through Friday from 8 am to 5 pm. That is way too much time. Like, how many students do you have? Do you need to be available all day, every working day? You probably don't.
Speaker 1:And where that becomes sneaky and and turns out being a bad thing is that you you want to schedule other things in your life. You want to go to the dentist, but you can't because there's three one-on-one scheduled throughout a day, which means you can't actually go anywhere or do anything else. So to nip that in the bud, pick two days a week, just two days a week, and batch your shit Three if you absolutely must, but for most people, two days a week is plenty, not to to have client interfacing one-on-ones as well. If you are a physical coach and you need to be in the studio, you do not need to be in the studio coaching every day, seven days a week. Pick your days, get your time back. It may mean you're teaching more classes on a single day or handling more people in a single day, but then you also have like four more days that you can just do other things with your life, like be an adult and go to the dentist or whatever.
Speaker 1:So number one drawing a parameter around your time. Number two drawing a parameter around your energy. This one is trickier. Energy isn't really quantifiable to us. We just know. We know it when we feel it. We're like I have energy or I have no energy. It takes a lot more discipline to have an energetic boundary than it does a boundary around time. But spoiler alert, if you have a boundary around time, a boundary around energy follows, and it follows quite naturally. A good axiom for this is Know Thyself, which is very old saying. You could say it in Latin, but I don't have that memorized. I would add to that axiom know thyself and act accordingly. Because if all you're doing is knowing yourself but not making, not taking any actions or drawing any boundaries around knowing yourself, then it's not really doing you any good. So what I would encourage you to do here is to lean into the boundary of time first and see how an energetic boundary can follow that.
Speaker 1:For example, I have drawn an invisible line around my evenings and my weekends. I breach that when I feel like it. If I don't have anything to do. I'll check messages if I just feel like it, but generally I don't, because I need that time to reset my brain. That's my time parameter and the magic of it is that that also protects my energy, because if I'm getting a notification and it's one of my students and they're having a crisis and I see that notification, it doesn't matter because my brain's going to hop into problem-solving mode. So it doesn't serve me at all to be checking my email at 8 pm. So I just don't. Very, very, very rarely will I will. I do this and over time that has given me an internal boundary. Thank you, janelle Peters, for that one.
Speaker 1:An internal boundary is where I will allow my energy to be directed at a certain time throughout the day. So 9 am to 12 pm, that's all work. And if I'm in an active cycle of the audacity project, I'm reading emails, I'm responding to things, I'm looking at work and I love it, and I have abundant energy to give during that time. If it's 9 pm, I'm on the couch, I'm watching Netflix, I'm petting Bernie she's something that Bernie's my cat, if you don't know me and man flesh are having cake. It is not the time for me to be working and I don't allow my energy to be distracted during that time because I'm busy doing nothing.
Speaker 1:Some people don't think that Netflix and chill and I am saying that literally. I'm saying that literally. Some people think that sitting on a couch and watching Netflix is time that you could be doing something productive. I say no, it's not. You are already busy. You're busy doing nothing. Box, at the end of the day you're like I'm gonna take a long leisurely walk or I'm gonna read a book for four hours. I could be being productive. No, you couldn't be. You already did that. You are busy, You're busy doing nothing, and that's good. So, number two energetic boundaries. Number three money, money boundaries. I have said this before, I'm gonna say it again.
Speaker 1:For the cheap seats in the back, if you are working all the time You're working all the time and you're still scrambling and struggling to make ends meet you need to raise your prices Again. If you're working all the time and you're still struggling to make ends meet, you need to charge more. The demand is there. People obviously want what it is that you have. You're working all the time and the time has come.
Speaker 1:Initial pushbacks that I get with this piece of advice are if I raise my prices, people won't be able to afford me. I won't be accessible anymore. First, an immediate response. You don't know that. You can take a guess and and if you know these people personally, every single one of them, I don't know you could be right, but like these are grown-ass people and they should get to make a decision for themselves. You don't need to make that decision for them whether or not they can afford you and you may want to start small 20%. How about 20%? It can make a big difference for you, might not make a big difference for them, and maybe you'll be working less.
Speaker 1:I mean, I hope that you will be working less, because now you can, because each time that you're working, you're earning more, and I know that there are feelings of guilt around raising your prices, because accessibility is important. So is your survival, and this isn't working like it's. It's just not working. If it were working, that would be fine. You know, like continue, do what you want, but it it's not working. If you're working all the time and you still can't make ends meet, that's not functional. It would be different if it were functional, but it's not. That means something has to change and I also want to assure you that this is pretty natural, and I also want to assure you that this is pretty natural and organic thing that happens throughout a coaching career as you get better at it, as you get more experience, more reps under your belt.
Speaker 1:Also, there's inflation. So, yeah, at some point you're gonna probably need to charge more than you were charging seven years ago. It is okay. And if there are some people who can't afford you anymore, there are people coming up on the scene who have less experience and maybe they can't demand as high a ticket price as you can that are able to fill that space and for that person, accessibility isn't going to be a big issue for them because that's appropriate for where they are. I'm not talking about performing, I'm talking about coaching. So thank you for wanting to be accessible. Thank you for having been accessible for the past five years. Also, there's no reason for you to suffer and not be able to care for yourself Well and to be burned out and sad and poor. That's you suffering. You don't need to suffer Like to make other people's lives better. It also they didn't ask you to do that.
Speaker 1:In a lot of ways, this is us realizing how many ways we have been making decisions for other people and robbing them of their own autonomy, of their own choice and essentially, of their own full humanity. Like let's flip this for a bit. How would you feel if you had been seeing a coach for three years? And then the coach comes to you one day and they're like by the way, I'm really sorry, but I'm gonna have to raise my prices, I just can't do this anymore? And they're like on the verge of tears and you can hear it in their voice. They're like why have you been seeing me for too low a price for three years when it was hurting you? Like I would be offended by that. Like what are you doing? You have made me an agent of your destruction and I did not consent to that. You could have just said something. So that's my take there. All right, to summarize, four coaches who are burnt out.
Speaker 1:We need to put some parameters in place because it's on us. It's on us to change things if we're getting burnt out by the people that we're serving. Those parameters can be time, energy and money. I would lean into time and money first, because those are easily quantifiable and the energetic boundary. It comes more naturally once those are in place. And it's just one more thing.
Speaker 1:I asked my dad about this a while back. My dad is a chiropractor kind of a witch doctor chiropractor. He only does soft tissue work. My dad is the chiropractor you go to because he's weird and he's who you go to when no one else can help you. They're like okay, all the other doctors, the PT, everyone's like we don't know what to do with you. Go see Dr Strickland and the man has worked 12 hour days as long as I have known him and I said to him like eight years ago or something like, dad, how do you do this and not get burnt out? You see so many people and they depend on you, like they need a lot from you, and we've been drinking. So we were both like in that buzzed, happy daddy daughter time where you're just like bonding and talking shit.
Speaker 1:And he got really quiet and really still and he got up in my face and he said listen here, rachel, this is how, when you're working with people and you're giving of yourself, it's on you Because through no fault of their own, they will suck you dry. They don't mean to. It's just that you haven't guarded your energy. So the thing to remember is you can have what I give, you can't have what I got. And then he took a swig of his beer and I immediately fun bolt for my phone so that I could write that down, because it was genius. You can have what I give. You can't have what I got. The source that's mine. And if you set up parameters that are healthy for you, that allow you to exist in fullness, then you can give abundantly, which is clearly what you want to do and something that you're good at. If you're burnout in the first place, it means that you're just giving too much. So set yourselves in parameters so that you can give generously and abundantly and beautifully and still be full for yourself.
Speaker 1:It is coming up on 30 minutes that I have been talking. I think I did that because my friend Alex was like I would like to request longer episodes, and I didn't even think about it. I just came home and recorded a really long episode. So that's for you, alex, as always. So grateful for all of you listening, thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for writing in. You can reach me always on Instagram at Rachel Strickland Creative, or on Patreon at Rachel Strickland Creative. And an extra special warm, gooey thank you to my patrons for making this in so much more possible. Thank you for standing with me. I wish you a holiday, a fullness in all the ways you can have what I give. You can't have what I got. I love it. Until next time, don't go back to sleep.