Fact...

Severe burnout can take years to recover... 

In fact,  according to the International Classification of Diseases 11, ( World Health Organization), burnout is now a legitimate medical diagnosis.

And everybody knows...

You can also get burned out in a job you love if you refuse to rest and balance your life.

The truth...

The less resilient you are,  the more burnout, overwhelm, anxiety and depression you are likely to experience in life.

This isn't because you are not good enough...

Nor is it because you are somehow lesser than others who seem able to cope...

When you are resilient, It is because you are doing something that ensures you've always got reserved energy... That is why you don't get overwhelmed too easily.

Essentially,

If you don't know how to systemically have a reservoir of energy regardless of your situation...

You won't be able to cope.

You won't feel able to de-escalate your emotions when they are high, both at work and at home. This means your efficiency and peace will drop as your stress and irritability rises. Putting you in the worst possible condition to get the best out of life.

That is why in the next 10 seconds as you read through this training...

• You'll discover how to finally put an end to the never-ending cycle of burnout, so you can keep your work/life balance in check -- even when things get really busy!
  
  
• You'll become the boss of your emotions. You can't control the world around you, but you can control how you react to it. Take charge of your feelings.
  
  
• And you will beat the fatigue and exhaustion caused by working too hard, too often, too long and too much, and how to finally turn things around in your life to get more done and yet have more fun while you do it!

Sounds good?

Ok, Let's go...

The truth about being resilient in our crazy world... It’s not what you think. 

Did you know that when your resilience breaks down...

It breaks down because of the presence of your strengths?

Sounds MAD doesn't it?

Your strengths are at the root of your burnout! That is why you always have no reserved energy.

Understanding this fact is the key to unlocking all the resilience you need for living a fulfilling life.

But before you brush me off, saying this is not relevant for you because you don't think you have any strengths...

Let's consider this question...

What's the difference between a skill and a strength?

You might think that your skills are things you learn and your strengths are things that you have naturally.

WRONG!

Why is that wrong?

It is wrong because "A strength is a skill that has become stronger."

The truth is that we all have a genetic propensity to certain skills and strengths. For example, if your mom was a natural problem solver. She may pass that tendency down to you as her child. However, you could also just learn problem-solving skills and become so good at it that it becomes a strength.

You could have good listening skills... And that could be your strength.

You could have good analysis skills... And that could be your strength.

You could also have good "kindness" skills...  And that could be your strength as well.

Anything you learn to do very well can become a strength.

But then...

Why would I say your strengths are totally responsible for your lack of resilience?

To answer that, let's dig deeper into the definition of resilience.

Here's why your strengths stop you from coping (And how you can avoid this trap)

Think about it...

If you have really good listening skills, how could this lead to problems with energy drain, burn out or lack of resilience?

If you relied too much on your listening skills, you'll be more likely to attract people who talk a lot. You will also become prone to bottling your own thoughts and feelings, whilst taking on everybody's problems.

Can you see how that could lead to burnout?

Or...

If you have good analysis skills, can you see how this could also make you more prone to overthinking everything to death...So you end up with problems with anxiety, depression or stress.

But this trap gets a lot worse...

You see, a quick search on Google turns up this definition...

Resilience is the ability to bounce back after stress trauma, or difficult experiences.

Resilience allows us to live a healthy and productive life despite the pressures we face.

But what does the term "bounce back" really mean?

What are we bouncing from? And what are we bouncing back to?

A good way to think about this is to think of the person who is trying to be resilient as having two stories.

One story is the story of their trauma. And the other story is the story of living life.

So, take an example of a mother who had a traumatic upbringing. Part of living life would be getting married, having a degree, having children, and helping her children to grow up to succeed.

That is the experience of living life.

But quite often, what happens is that this mother's trauma would influence her ability to live life.

That's why so many people find that as they are trying to live life normally, something happens that causes their trauma to trigger them and stop them from coping.

So in this case, bouncing back will be bouncing back to the life where they're coping.

They're not bouncing back to a life of trauma... They're bouncing back to being able to function better as a person.

I hope that makes sense.

But then here's another question about the bounce-back ability.

How much strength does it take for someone to be able to bounce back?

Does it depend on the degree of the trauma? For example, someone who loses their job compared to someone who loses their partner in war, or is caught in a hurricane.

Does culture condition some people to be soft or weak, affecting a person's ability to bounce back?

The truth is all these things could be influential in affecting a person's ability to bounce back.

But there is one thing that crushes people's ability to bounce back that trumps everything else.

And that one thing is the strengths you develop whilst coping with life. Lean too much on your strengths and you will eventually stop coping.

It is a natural fact of life...

Here is another analogy to help elaborate on what I mean here.

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 Why balance is more important than doing the right thing when learning to cope

Imagine you had a mom who likes to complain. She complains so much that you are often ashamed of people associating her with you when you are both out.

As a result of this, You grow up to hate complaining. You don't want to be associated with that. But then if you grow up to be that person who doesn't like complaining, you become one of these people who doesn't complain at all, who just take everything.

That actually becomes a weakness. It's a strength as well because you're not complaining so much, but it's also a weakness at the same time because people will just walk all over you. They take advantage of you.

And what we are not aware of is how all of these types of strengths are impacting us and writing our stories. In other words, the very things you are doing to cope is now creating an environment where you are unable to cope.

And this is the reason why resilience skills are important.

But as you can now see, resilience is not just about building on your strengths and your capabilities.

True resilience is achieved by balancing your strengths and capabilities.

This is the way I think about resilience when working with people in my practice.

Here's how balance can restore your mental health & stability

Clients come to me believing that their weaknesses are holding them back. They believe that their weaknesses are the root causes of their mental health problems.

But then, what I do is to look for the strengths they have created those weaknesses.

Once I pinpoint the responsible strengths, I get them to reduce reliance on those strengths. Doing this results in balancing things out and naturally, they start to cope better. Coping becomes so much easier to achieve and maintain.

And that's exactly what happened to Jene, a former client...

Jene had become heavily anxious about getting things done properly and perfectly. But the more she tried at making things perfect,  the more she felt like a failure. Everything took longer to do and she would still see so many mistakes.

In responce to this anxiety-provoking problem, I got Jene to invest her time in becoming imperfect and allow imperfection in certain situations.

And the more Jene did this, She started to notice she felt loads more relaxed. Her head felt clearer, which meant she could think better and make fewer mistakes.

And that was all from allowing more imperfection.

In this case, Imperfection allowed Jene to balance her strengths out resulting in better resilience.

And that's why we really we need to be aware of our skills, talents, and abilities and know how to use them in a way that creates equilibrium.

So as you're caring for your loved ones... As you're acting in your role as a parent... As you are acting in your role as an employee, or as a student... What strength have you developed?

What strengths are you using?

How much are you ensuring there's balance in the way you're using these things?

How is the lack of balance skewing you to one side and actually making you struggle to be resilient?

If you can relate, then it is time to learn how to...

Have more energy, have more focus, achieve balance in your life and feel good about yourself.

Now I will reveal the fastest way to infuse balance into your life so you can become resilient. This way you have a better chance of avoiding emotional health problems.

How to use the CCC plan to achieve balance and protect yourself from burnout, exhaustion, and mental illness!

I like to think of resilience as working in three spheres.

Sphere one is creating balance in how we manage our emotions.

Sphere two is creating balance in how we manage life's problems and challenges.

And sphere three is creating balance in how we manage the body's stress to pain brain barrier.

I call this the CCC plan.

Okay, let's break this plan down.

Sphere 1: Creating balance in how we manage our emotions.

April (Not her real name) assumed that the reason she struggled to function was because her emotions always got in the way.

She would often say things like...

"If I didn't get so depressed all the time I would be able to function and get more done with my life."

The problem though was that, whilst it was true that difficult emotions contributed to her problems with functioning... The reality was that persistent difficult emotions are really only the side effects of the systems which she developed to cope with their life's problems.

You see, we all have to deal with emotions, but your relationship with your emotions can be the difference between coping effectively or living every moment of life just surviving.

Do you manage your emotions only by avoiding them?  Because you have anxiety, panic attacks or depression and you don't like the way those emotions make you feel. So you keep busy and block the thoughts and emotions away.  Blocking helps you to function and cope with your daily responsibilities.

But the more you become very good at avoiding those emotions, the more this will become a weakness. Negative emotions will overwhelm you at the least expected moment... You start crying for seemingly no reason or you roll into a panic attack for no reason. 

And because all you have done is avoid, you won't have the skill to cope when anxiety or depression hits you like this.

If this is your experience with emotions, then you need to work on exposing yourself more to emotions.

What if you're prone to getting too involved in your emotions?

Now your relationship with emotions may be that you get overinvolved in your thoughts and emotions. Perhaps because you are trying to work out where you got things so wrong or you are trying to predict the worst-case scenario so you can avoid problems.

The ability to predict and catch risks is a very useful skill. But the better you get doing this, the more anxiety or depression will become a  lifestyle problem.

In this case,  it is essential to develop the skill of avoidance in order to achieve emotional balance. Again check out my healthy coping habit PDF book to get step-by-step directions on how to do this safely.

Moving on to the second sphere...

Sphere 2: Creating balance in how we manage life's problems and challenges. 

Recognizing that any coping strategy you learn can still bite you in the back in future is crucial. Balancing reliance on your coping strategies gives you the best chance of becoming resilient.

To elaborate...

Pete (a former client) was a manager who had been off work for 2 years, because of stress and depression. He tried his best to get back to work but kept getting knocked down. It was distressing to think that he used to manage managers in his previous role. Now he could barely manage himself.

You see Pete had a lot of negative childhood experiences. His dad was a soldier, and his mum was a gambler... So, Pete grew up into a highly responsible, hard-working, empathetic and resourceful boy. He had to become both dad and mum for his younger brothers.

Sadly, Pete's positive traits, which caused him to be successful, also caused him to

be less resilient.

So for example, whilst being empathetic and resourceful helped him to gain a lot of popularity and respect of members of his organization, this also caused him to become overloaded because everybody came to him to have their problems solved.

And whilst being highly responsible helped Pete climb the ropes of his organization it also caused him to develop a lot of enemies amongst his superiors who constantly ganged up against him.

Essentially the same strategies that enabled Pete to go through his difficult childhood, were now the strategies that were causing him to overwork himself and getting him entangled in power battles with his bosses...  Thereby leading to depression, stress and anxiety-related problems.

As such, Pete needed to balance out heavy-handed reliance on his strengths and coping strategies in order to overcome his mental health problems. He stopped relying so much on responsibility, empathy, hard-working and other positive traits.

As soon as Peter began to implement this new strategy consistently, he soon began to feel less stressed, his ability to maintain happiness returned, he felt able to stay sharper for longer with increased energy and vitality. His self-confidence returned. And he was able to go back to work confidently and happily.

Relating this back to you.

The truth is that if you are struggling to be resilient, It is 99% likely because you have developed coping strategies that are working against you.

Maybe you are too invested in undermining yourself...

Because you believe the only way to move forward in life is to be hard on yourself.
Here's the problem.

The problem with being hard on yourself is that it makes you feel bad about the things you've done well. As a natural result, your self-esteem is constantly low.
So…
to achieve more balance in your life, you have to recognise the advantages inherent in your both your strengths and your weaknesses. (Yes your weaknesses have advantages too).

You can find a free self-assessment tool here that will help you discover, with pinpoint accuracy, which coping strategies you have that are breaking you emotionally and stopping you from functioning effectively as an adult.

Once you know what strengths and coping strategies are sabotaging you, just follow the steps in this free PDF guide to help you balance them out to help bring you back to full resilience.

 And lastly...

Sphere 3: Creating balance in how we manage our body's stress to pain brain barrier.

Stress is an odd thing.

The truth is that we all require a degree of stress to live a fulfilling life.

But it is also true that anything to do with stress is painful.

And if you over involve in stress or get over-involved in anything that is emotionally demanding on your body, you can cause the body to break down.

As such it is crucial to learn about your body so that you can know how much you should push yourself in life.

In other words...

You've got to know how much you can push yourself before you experience a mental break.

You see, according to  Dr Paul Gilbert, The founder of Compassionate focused Cognitive behavioural therapy, our body has a three-part system that helps us with the process of regulating stress.

This three-part system consists of...

1. The drive system.

2. The fear system.

3. The safety-soothing system.

These three systems relate to three hormonal pathways in our body and they work together to help us feel stable.

They all influence each other.

For instance, The fear system was constantly activating the drive system for one of my clients, Ben.

Ben knew that he needed his salary to pay the bills. As such felt driven to go to work even though he hated his job.  But then after work, ben could never switch off from all the things he was doing during the day.

You see after work your safety-soothing system is responsible for helping you to switch off and wind down properly. It achieves this by enabling you to feel safe, secure, soothed and warm. And this naturally switches off the drive and the fear systems. This way you can get fully recharged to face the next day effectively.

But because Ben spent almost all his life living purely in the drive and fear system, he constantly felt wired or switched on. He experienced a constant level of background anxiety even when there is nothing to feel anxious about.

Relating this back to you...

Perhaps the reason you live purely in the fear and drive system is that, you got bullied as a child and now you don't want anyone to see any weakness in you, so you are constantly driven to hide away anything that could be perceived as a weakness.

Or perhaps your Mum criticized you heavily in your childhood that never feel good enough, so you now live constantly feel driven to do your utmost best all the time for fear that people will find out that you are not really who you pretend to be.

Or perhaps you live constantly in the fear and drive system because you are always feeling guilty that you don't do enough for people around you and as such become overwhelmed with what is on your plate.

They all bring us to the same conclusion. If you spend all your life living in the fear and drive system like this. You'll lose yourself in the process.

Essentially you got to balance the fear and drive using self-compassionate and self-soothing activities.

And the more you do this, The stronger you will begin to feel emotionally.

Bottom line...

Your mental health struggles do not have to mean a failed  life.

One of the most challenging parts of living with mental health struggles is learning how to overcome setbacks and learning how to maintain consistent energy while engaging in life.

With mental health challenges, it is easy to fall back on self-criticism and the feeling that you are “failing”. You may also feel isolated and even ashamed.

Take this valuable information and apply it to your own life. Learn how to get through difficult times and keep going no matter what comes up.

As you grow stronger and more resilient, you can face life's challenges more confidently. As you develop new coping strategies, you can be more confident and empowered. You can live with strength, dignity and purpose.

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