Tired of endless chaos? Stressed? Overwhelmed? Burnt out? Exhausted? If you’re nodding along, you’re likely feeling the effects of the hustle culture. The cure for healthy boundaries and mindful self-care is here! We often expect ourselves to be it all and do it all perfectly–and without complaint or sign of exhaustion. Yet the price we pay for a relentless, super-human pursuit to do it all and be it all is a pernicious imbalance that negatively impacts our mental, emotional, and physical well-being. When burnout sets in and we’re stuck in the depths of exhaustion, it’s hard to see a way forward. Yet the setback of burnout can be an opportunity to cultivate the balance and self-care that lead to a life filled with lasting joy and inner calm. Join Dr. Carla and executive leadership coach Chantay Golson, LPC for an empowering journey into the healing world of intentionality, self-care, and healthy boundaries. Now is the time to create the life YOU want and deserve–a life free of anxiety, chronic stress, and burnout. As Coach Chantay notes, “Self-care is soul care!”
Books by Dr. Carla Manly:
Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly
Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend
The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships
Connect with Dr. Carla Manly:
Website: https://www.drcarlamanly.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcarlamanly
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/drcarlamanly
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drcarlamanly
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-marie-manly-8682362b
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dr.carlamariemanly8543
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr_carla_manly
Books by Chantay Golson:
The #1 Stress Management: Self-Care Adult Journal for All Moods
Connect with Chantay Golson:
Website: https://www.thelevelingplace.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chantaygolson
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CoachChantay
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thelevelingplace
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjVoHIsD_Kuh7JzBFK3ZPBQ
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Watch the episode here
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Break Free of Stress and Burnout Using the Power of Mindful Intention with Expert Chantay Golson
Become Your Best Self by Using Boundaries and Self-Care to Heal From Anxiety, Burnout, and Negativity!
Stressed, overwhelmed, burnt out, exhausted? The cure is here. We often expect ourselves to be it all and do it all perfectly and without complaint or sign of exhaustion. Yet the price we pay for a relentless superhuman pursuit to do it all and be it all is a pernicious imbalance that negatively impacts our mental, emotional, and physical well-being. When burnout sets in and we’re stuck in the depths of exhaustion, it’s hard to see a way forward. Yet the setback of burnout can be an opportunity to cultivate the balance and self-care that leads to a life filled with lasting joy and inner calm.
In this episode, we’ll focus on this listener’s real-life question. “I’m nearing 40 and am completely exhausted. I can’t imagine how I can go about balancing my career, two kids, their growing extracurricular activities, marriage, friendships, and everything else. The list of what I am not accomplishing is endless, and I’m worn out. I can’t do anything well, let alone perfectly. The daily stress and anxiety is killing me. What’s your fix for situations like mine?” With that question as the focus of this episode, I’m Dr. Carla Marie Manly, and this is Imperfect Love.
In this episode, I am joined by a special guest, Chantay Golson, an Executive Leadership Coach who will share her expertise on creating balance and self-care. Chantay, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.
Thank you for the invitation. I can’t wait to dive into the conversation.
It’s such a joy to have you. Before we get to the listener’s question and the issue of exhaustion and burnout, coming out of that, and creating new ways of being, could you tell our audience a little bit about what makes you you?
What makes me me is the ability to be resilient beyond cost. I am an entrepreneur by trade. I scaled my mental health business to five clinics, and I burnt out. Going and going and going one day became a downfall. It hindered my ability to manage my practices, losing a quarter of a million here, $30,000 here, this month, and that month. I began to search myself because symptoms were persisting. As a result of those symptoms, I began to realize self-awareness that I needed to do something. That’s something I did. I chose me. I scaled down, laid off, and primarily focused on self-care, boundaries, and emotional intelligence until I could get myself back up.
That’s not all, as they say on game shows. At the same time, I was also experiencing a breakup from the final relationship that I thought would get a ring on my finger. As a result, something died in me. This was the grieving process, along with burnout. Most people try to move into the cycle of burnout by doing their day-to-day routine. I decided to step back so that I could heal. Now, I use that power of resilience to teach professionals, executives, and business owners how to prioritize self-care to live a balanced life. That’s how I present myself now.
That is wonderful and a great introduction. Your concepts are fabulous. As I’m listening, I’m wondering about moms, dads, and people who maybe aren’t in the executive realm. Do you think that they will benefit as much from your information? Maybe even people who are retired but still trying to do it all and be it all.
Absolutely. You can never hear information that’s pivotal to help you to move forward into your becoming self and not have any change. Whether you’re an executive, a business owner, or a dad sitting on the porch with your iced tea, there is something everyone can learn.
Becoming Self
You use a term that I like, “Your becoming self.” Could you tell us a little bit about what you mean when you say “Your becoming self?”
I teach from a three-tier structure. Be is your current existence. Do are those strategies that I teach you to move forward and build a bridge to walk over to become the person that you desire to be. I am a big proponent of learning to design your life and not live by default.
It is important to learn to design your life, rather than simply living by default. Click To TweetWe have be, and then we have the do. What’s the third component?
Become.
All of those are your becoming self when you’re going in that direction. Your becoming self is the culmination of those three. Did I get that right?
That’s correct.
I also like what you said, which is essentially if you want to create a life that feels good, successful, and rejuvenating rather than exhausting, you need to be a participant in making that happen. You can’t let life control you. You must become more in control of what you can in your own life to create that balance. Did I get that right?
You got that right. You’re talking about intentionality. That’s what I teach, preach, and yell from the rooftop.
Intentionality
Intentionality is one of my favorite words. For those who might be saying, “I hear a lot about intentionality and being intentional,” let’s dive into that a little bit. When you say let’s be intentional, what are you asking?
I’m asking people to learn the concept of being aware of themselves, their brain process, which is defaults, their feelings, and their behaviors. I’m asking them to recognize what is not working in this due season. Oftentimes, we take old seasonal things that we’ve either shut up, placed on the shelf, or traditional. This is the habitual pattern, and we bring it into the new season. If you could use an analogy, I would say a new year. We bring old things that are dragging us down, painting us, and not allowing our creativity to flow, and then we do our day-to-day. That’s the default that I’m talking about. I am raising a standard. I am saying no more tradition, less common to our life, untraditionally, so that we can know what works presently.
I love this because you’re making me think of another analogy that comes from the intergenerational transmission of violence and patterns in general. Often we take those old clothes out of the closet, meaning the old habits or the old whatever. We put it on and it’s not feeling good. It’s not fitting right, but we don’t realize what it is because we’re not pausing to say, “Wait a minute, these old clothes or these old habits are not serving me anymore.” It’s time to intentionally clear them out on purpose and do the reflection to find out what about it. What is it? Did I gain a few pounds? Maybe I needed a few pounds. Maybe it’s better for me. Maybe it’s time to retire those clothes. Maybe I feel more fit and the clothes no longer move in the way I want to move.
We want to toss them out, or maybe it’s simply that the clothes are outdated for the me I want to be now, and I no longer want to wear jeans. I want to wear miniskirts and go-go boots. That sounds fun, doesn’t it? Miniskirt and go-go boots. Let’s go with that. We then get to be intentional about our choices. We go out and select the miniskirt and the go-go boots.
I’m talking analogies here, but something that makes us feel like our best self and helps us become, which is your third stage, helps us move into that becoming stage of being out in the world, doing what makes us feel good, being that which makes us feel good. To do that, we must be willing to analyze the past, go through that closet, discard what doesn’t work, and do the work to embrace what does work. How did I do, putting that together?
You did well, and I’m going to add what I teach people, and that is to cultivate a life of self-care. We talk about self-care, and I think that the trend of discussion of self-care is very minimizing towards the way that I teach people to understand self-care. If we go back to my story, if I had put items in place that would cultivate and build a culture of self-care on a daily basis, which is intentional activities to help me reset, then burnout may not have been so large. Creating a culture of self-care is what I teach my particular clients.
If we learn how to put items in place that cultivate and build a culture of self-care daily, by engaging in intentional activities that help us to reset, then burnout might not have been so prevalent. Click To TweetI’m getting ready to do a digital membership, where you would have the ability to flow through all the content and learn. We’ll also be together once a month to learn how to cultivate our lives intentionally on purpose. One thing that you said that brought up that statement that I say all of the time is number one, self-care is soul-care. Number two, we get so comfortable with our discomfort. The go-go boots are so happy, but we won’t allow ourselves to put them on because they don’t idealize who we want people to see us as, and the list goes on and on. Creating a culture of self-care is the power of resilience that helps us to design the life that we want to identify with that feels good, that’s comfortable, that’s not tight anymore on us, and it reduces so many physical symptoms, so many mental symptoms. I can go on and on.
Self-Care
Beautifully put. Let’s dive for a moment into the concept of self-care, which you discussed very beautifully and presented very beautifully. We use the term self-care in so many ways. Some people think a manicure is self-care. Some people think self-care is selfish. What it boils down to is an intentional daily act that allows you to reset.
This would be perhaps pausing to do daily exercise, pausing to be quiet for a little time of the day every morning, maybe pausing to journal, maybe pausing to meditate, and doing your breathing exercises. It might be something as simple as going for a five-minute walk around the block. Whatever it is this individual pauses to discern that this is what I need, and as you said, this is what my soul needs.
I love that soul component because sometimes the brain and the soul are at cross purposes. The brain says self-care is doing more or buying more, whereas the soul doesn’t care what we’re buying. The soul cares what we’re doing to allow that rest, restoration, and connection to the inner self. What do you think of that?
Additionally, when we talk about the brain and its functions and we talk about the physicality or the aspect of our body function, there’s a distinct difference between how emotionally intelligent you are in regards to understanding your self-awareness. I teach individuals how to understand themselves and how to connect with the subconscious because we know that the answers are there if we can tap into that deep part of us. When we talk about the warring of the brain where it’s telling us something, but our body is telling us something else, we have to be aware. For example, if we’re sitting at our desk and we are pushing along, “I got to get this finished,” but we do not recognize how many sighs we have done at the last minute.
You’ve sighed about five times, but you did not recognize it. You start moving on and fidgeting in your chair, but you think it’s a part of your day. You start shifting your neck and trying to crack it back, but that’s just a part of your day. That’s the expectation you have for this culture called hustle. If you can actively identify that your mind is telling you to keep going, but your body is saying, “Hello, I’m tired.” If you can begin to cross-reference that and obey your soul, even if it’s for five minutes, these small compilations of resetting, then you’re finding yourself going further. If we look at productivity, sometimes less is more. We can get things done more quickly and efficiently if we understand how to take care of ourselves in the moment. There’s so much more to go with that, but I’ll leave it there.
I love what you’re saying. I have a funny example from the day before. I have had a little cold or a big cold, whatever it is, flu, something. Of course, me being me, I pushed through it. Yesterday morning, I went for my early morning walk, and everything in my body was saying, “Don’t. It’s raining. It’s cold. You need to have a break.” My brain was saying, “You have to get out there. It’s what you do. It’ll allow you to sit still for the day and tend to your clients.” My body was saying, “Please don’t.”
Of course, I get my stuff on. I go out for a walk. I’m out there. I’m soaking wet. I love the rain. I’m thinking, “I should be happy. I should be enjoying this walk.” I realized, “You’re being silly. Reset. Do what’s right for you.” I got my cell phone. I called my hubby. I said, “Honey, would you come and get me?” I’m already 3 miles out. He comes and finds me, and takes me home. That’s a big thing for me to ask someone for help and to not finish my restorative walk. Yet, in the end, we giggled. I thought it was pretty funny.
It was an act of self-care to allow myself to finally listen to what my body was asking and then to ask for help. That help came in the form of picking up my phone and then getting the help. Ideally, it wouldn’t take me going out on the walk and getting miserable to do that. We don’t want to shame or blame the self. We want to be able to say, “You did ultimately listen to yourself.” I used that time differently than I would have been on my walk, which is to have a little bit of morning quiet. For you, does that sound like a good example of diving inward, at least eventually, to listen to the self?
Yes. As a matter of fact, that goes into my three-tier formula, which is awareness, acknowledgment, and then strategize. What we have to understand is the mind and the body, especially if this is learned behavior. You’ve been pushing yourself for a very long time. We want to feel accomplished. Our to-do list has to be completed no matter what. As emotional intelligence is increased, you understand what you need. You are aware of what you need at the moment at the time.
You’re able to listen to yourself and your soul saying, “It’s raining. Is that the best alternative? Should I go to the family room or wherever to exercise? This is not what I prefer to do, but I know that the rain can make me sick if I’m walking for a long time.” Yes, in your particular scenario, while you did not start off with what I would call being aware, you eventually got there, and you began to listen intelligently, and deductive reasoning, and then strategize differently. I would say that is an example.
Awareness
With that awareness, when we turn to our listener’s question or series of issues, a mom who has an overextended career, she’s very tired, suffering from burnout, and has no end in sight. It sounds like she’s looking at these two kiddos and saying now their activities are increasing. She’s feeling stressed, burnt out, and exhausted. What would you suggest for her?
I would suggest for her to sit down in a quiet space. The dog is not barking. The TV is not on. The children are not running. If this takes her leaving the house, then it’s a must. She needs to sit down and reflect. What is she reflecting? She’s reflecting on what her day normally looks like. She is then reflecting on what her day she would like it to be. Most often, I’ve noticed that moms, especially, do not have an idea of what they would like to become. We have to go through that process for them to re-identify themselves because they have identified themselves, not by what they like but by being mom and wife. All of the hats they have, that is their identity at this point. They can’t see themselves beyond.
I would like for her to go out into a neutral zone. Go to the park or go sit in a parking lot with your burger with your favorite little meal to yourself. This is a part of self-care, reflecting. In addition to that, I would like for her to consider identifying what she would like life to look like. She can take it from a 24-hour period. Do I want to do this on a Thursday? Should this go on a Sunday? That’s a whole other system that I’m talking about. Lastly, I would share with her that it’s important for her now to establish boundaries with herself first. Let’s get that clear. Learn to obey her own boundaries, and then set boundaries with others to give expectations of what she needs because her tolerance level at this point is lower on the threshold than it was earlier.
Learn to enforce your own boundaries before setting boundaries with others. Click To TweetIf she is burnt out, that means she’s struggling with a lot of symptoms. She’s probably having poor eating habits. She’s probably having poor sleep habits. She may even start physically having gut problems. There’s so much that comes with this particular element. I know that she is irritable and frustrated because that is some aspect of burnout for sure. I know that she’s going through some grief. She may be some should haves, would haves, could haves, woe-is-me moments. There’s so much that she’s experiencing right now.
What I would recommend for her to do is also journal every single day. If she has to journal multiple times a day, then do this because what it is doing is releasing the nuggets of the day, and you are giving it to something who can listen without judging you, and it helps your day to be lighter. You can substantiate your day and look at the kids. You don’t want to deprive your kids of extracurricular activities, but you can teach them Mom’s capacity, “Okay, guys, three activities this quarter, this semester for school. I don’t know if Mommy can handle getting you there on time. Can you guys consider thinking about the two that you would like out of the three?” That’s incorporating boundaries, and the list goes on and on.
I love everything you said, but that last piece you said about talking to the kiddos and saying, “I see you have three activities you want to do. Let’s pick two of the three.” What does that do for the kiddos? It teaches the kids boundaries. It teaches the kids that they don’t have to do ballet, soccer, and swimming to be loved and to be successful. In fact, you don’t have to do any of them to be loved and be successful. If you want to, let’s pare it down so that we’re doing two of the three, or it might be one of the three.
I love how you’re setting that up for the audience so that they can see, especially if you have young kiddos or kiddos of any age. When you have good self-care and good boundaries, you are doing the very best thing you can do, which is to model what you’re talking about. You’re modeling healthy behavior. For our audience, I’m going to go back through the steps you gave. Make sure we heard them right. First, pause. Find a nice quiet space, whether it’s the library, the park, your car, the bathroom, or wherever it is. Find a place that will allow you to self-reflect in quiet.
Second, you outline what your current day looks like, the general pace of morning, noon, night, whatever that chaos or lack of chaos looks like. Three, what you would like your day to look like? Your ideal day. Create that in your mind. Put it into writing about what that ideal day would look like. Waking up, having a cup of tea by yourself, having your partner pitch in if there’s a partner, whatever it is. You get to create that. I love that space because it’s allowing us to go into the becoming state you were talking about.
The next item is to look at your boundaries for yourself. I’m such a big proponent of boundaries because if we don’t know what our boundaries are for ourselves, we can’t set them with other people, and we can’t enforce them. Know your boundaries for yourself. Being able to have boundaries with others. As you said in your example with your kiddos, “I can’t do everything. It’s not healthy for me, but we can pick two of these three activities.”
Maybe boundaries with a partner saying, “I’m doing breakfast, lunch, dinner. I need you to come in and help me with shopping, meal planning, or cutting vegetables. That will feel good to me if you participate in having boundaries around things like that.” I’m a big fan of journaling. The last thing that you brought up is to journal so that you have a safe nonjudgmental space to offload and reflect on someone that’s not judging you.
I agree with you. I think the psyche loves having a place to, as one of my clients called it once, vomit journal. She’d write in it and then tie it up and put it away. Next time, open up, write in it, not reread, not judge yourself, but make that a practice. These are excellent practices that I think can help all of us, but especially those who are suffering from burnout, exhaustion, and a lack of self-care. What would you say if our audience is saying, “I’ve tried this before. It sounds great. I’ve tried some of these strategies and I can’t make them stick. When I get into my day-to-day, it’s like a snowball and it’s rolling in its own direction and that direction is downhill.” What would you suggest?
A couple of things. Number one, learn to love yourself or curate a relationship with yourself better. Not only is self-awareness a reflective tool but it also helps you again to understand what you need from yourself and others. I would suggest completing a night routine. As that suggests, you are curating what your day will look like. The next day, you are doing it the night of in preparation for the next day. What does this do? Number one, it relieves the ability to flow in chaos. If you know what you are doing, what your to-do list is, and what your expectations are, then you’re able to obey that without having the chaos of the day.
Not only is self-awareness a reflective tool, but it also helps you understand what you need from yourself and from others. Click To TweetIf you like to stop for coffee, if you need to do this, then you can structure your time better. Time management is key here. Time management in itself is not the power core. The two cores that link together with time management are energy management. How can I manage my energy? I can manage my energy by preparing. This takes less energy from my brain and I have more energy for the psyche to think and move about.
I know what I’m doing most days because I’ve identified the time frames. I have a system called the order of organization. It teaches you how to structure your day. On top of that, it preserves my energy. A bonus tip in understanding if you prepare your day, not only are you ready for the day to conquer and not have so much of a chaotic rush, which can bring on anxiety. A lot of people face anxiety because their life is cluttered.
I love what you brought up and how you’re giving it to us in chunks. As I’m listening to you, I’m reminded of when kiddos were little, we could race with them in the morning to get everything packed, the lunch packed, the homework thrown in the backpacks, and all of that, or we can learn, “Wait a minute. If we slow it down, if we pack the backpack at night, if we make sure that the school assignments are done or the coloring assignments, whatever it is, the backpacks by the door, that we did our little double check, that the clothes for the morning are laid out. At least we have an idea of what it is and where things are.
Come morning, the rush is not there because then all we have to do is maybe double-check that everything is there. Triple-check if we need to, eat breakfast, and be on our way. When we do that, we often learn that with kiddos, because kiddos need some reining in. They need some scaffolding and some support. We may naturally do it for them, but we forget or think we no longer need that structure.
I agree with you. When I think of my structure as I finish my day and leave my office, I set out on what I need to do for the next day. Not always perfectly, mind you. It doesn’t mean that it flows perfectly. I know as I’m leaving my office, I’ve attended to all of the must things. I can close things up for the day, feel secure, and that I’m ready for tomorrow.
There are sometimes things that aren’t done. What we can do as imperfect human beings is to make sure that they aren’t the major things. They might be on our wish list of things, but there are things that, in a day or two, aren’t going to matter. That’s been a big piece in my letting go of perfection. Knowing that sometimes things on our wish list are more of what the brain wants us to accomplish rather than things that will make a difference.
Understanding Productivity
That’s the difference between understanding valuable money-making and targeted exercises in your business or your day versus busy work. Busy work is so easy to disguise from targeted work. If we understand productivity, we also understand that productivity comes with a cost, not monetary. If you understand how to incorporate these skills, you’ll be better off for it. I agree. I’m semi-retired now, but when I was in the office, I would ensure that I had a guide for the next morning. I would write down everything. As you say, close shop and go on my way.
That means I have dumped the things in my brain that could follow me home. What about this? Did I assign that? No. This is what I’m talking about self-care activities and incorporation that lets us have peace and lets us have rest. That’s important. These are things that you have to learn. One step and the consistency in your steps later on link up and become a part of you. Now, you have a routine, and you have discipline toward this routine. It’s overrated trying to be productive and get everything done. That’s not even realistic. You may be blessed enough to get three things done off of your list, but you have to make sure that those three things are the targeted things.
Trying to be productive and get everything done is overrated. That's not even realistic. Click To TweetI’m a big list keeper, and I laugh at how sometimes I have something on my list, and I carry it over to the next day. By the end of the week, it was one of my lower-value things, and it didn’t get done. It no longer matters. It truly never did. When you’re talking about these changes, and you said something to the effect of looking at something important to you or something that’s a moneymaker. I’m also a believer that sometimes we let those money-making opportunities go, depending on where we are financially. Sometimes, we need to do the money-making things. We can pay the rent or buy the food or whatever it is.
Sometimes, in that pursuit of perfection or that next deal or whatever it is, we think that that’s always the best move. Whereas sometimes, the wisest move for the self and the soul is saying, “I’m going to let that deal or that extra thing for business go. Instead, tonight, I want to make my family a home-cooked meal. I want to go on a walk with my kiddos or my partner or my dog.” Consciously, we have the right. We have the responsibility to sometimes say no to work and no to productivity. Yes to peace. Yes to the soul. Yes to that which will make us feel connected to the self and our loved ones.
A lot of times, I would say that those people who are productivity pushers have difficulties with relaxation. If they sit down for a while, their mind is racing, “What can I do?” They have unlearned how to relax. I was one of them. Every time I would sit down to relax, I thought, “I could be using this time to do A, B, C, or D.” I had to unlearn that pattern and reframe it for it to fit in my becoming.
One last point that I want to make in terms of helping with self-care and realizing what’s needed versus not needed is the power of automation. Automation can be fluid in business and professionalism, but it’s also fluid in the home. If you can put things on automation, then that can be a de-stressor because you don’t have to deal with it until checking in monthly.
I believe in automation and I have a lot of things automated that you probably wouldn’t believe. We know about automated bills. That’s one important point. We know about Instacart and the ability to pick up our groceries by texting the number, and they’ll bring it out. For me, what are those things that you do not like? For me, it’s taking out the trash. I hate it. I will pay somebody to come and walk into the house and take my garbage out if that is available. A lot of people know nothing about this service.
The first thing I’ll do is contact the trash service and see if they have a back door service. They will come into your yard, get your trash can, take it and dump it, and bring your can right back to your yard where it was. My life was set up in every piece of order like that, from food to my trash to my bills, the list goes on and on. Automation is very powerful. It gives you your time back. That’s the power.
I love the idea of making use of technology in ways that work for you. If you’re using technology in a way that doesn’t work for you, that you think, “I’m using tech, and it should work for me, but it doesn’t, feel free to back off or, as you were saying, lean into it. I’m laughing about the trash because I totally get it. Some people hate taking out their trash. For me, strangely enough, it is a highlight of the week. I love taking my big old recycling can and the yard waste can and the dogs bounding beside me, and we’re taking it out, and I make it fun.
That’s not for everyone. As you’re saying, for some people, that’s the worst. If you have a partner, then you can say, “Hon, I don’t like taking out the trash. Will you take out the trash, and I’ll do something that you don’t like to do?” We can also negotiate to remove ourselves from the things that we don’t like to do. That’s often an underemphasized part in our lives that when we have partners or even kids to say to them if they’re old enough to take the trash out or to do something, to have boundaries around that and say, “This is something you can do to contribute.”
Often, as parents, as moms, as dads, we are hesitant to ask for support. As you’re saying, when we do automation, we’re not asking any other human for support. That often feels better to us. It truly is okay for us to ask those. Sometimes, it is the best role modeling in the world when we ask someone else to do something to ease our load. It’s excellent self-care. Chantay, you are a wealth of information, and you have offered us so much with your coaching and leadership expertise. Could you tell us 1 or 2 more things that either will help the listener’s questions or our audience in general before we find out where our audience can find you?
You Have The Ability To Choose
There are a lot of things that I can tell you, but one thing I can tell you is about productivity. One thing that I read and or heard the other day is that the weekday of Monday is the highest day for heart attacks. Why? Because people are regretting. They are nail-biting because they have to go to work. The one thing that I want to admonish your audience is you have the ability to choose. Let go of the tradition and create your own life.
You have the ability to choose. If that job or career no longer serves you, while I understand it’s scary, you have the ability to put on your wings and fly to find what can work for you because life is short. You have to remove yourself from this breakout of hustle culture. As we get older, women and men over 40, those particular things no longer serve. In my opinion, they start de-serving us. They start bringing on physical ailments. Now, you’re taking blood pressure pills. You weren’t taking blood pressure pills before. Things are happening to our bodies.
The World Health Organization says that we wear burnout like a badge of honor, “Look at me. I’m doing everything. I’m wearing all the hats,” and broken and deplorable and so many deficits within. Their minds are racing. They have anxiety and depression. It’s not worth it. There are so many ways that we can make money now online. If you are looking to pivot, take your intellectual property and what you’ve been doing for years. Turn it into a service that people need. You want to make it a valuable service. If you were not out in the world providing your service, people would go down. That’s how valuable you want to present yourself and have value propositions. That will make your life awesome.
As I’m redesigning and reinventing my life presently, my plan is to create a lifestyle in which I can be at the Mediterranean Sea, making money, lying in the sun, and being happy. Happiness is important to me at this stage in my life. Let’s break free from the burnout, the chaos, the depression, and the anxiety. You are worth more, and you have a freedom of choice. Take it.
Thank you, Chantay. Beautifully put. Again, back to our audience to wrap it up, when you’re stressed, when you’re wearing burnout as a badge of what you are accomplishing or not accomplishing, we’re modeling that for the people in our lives. As you’re saying, we get to redefine productivity. We get to look at a productive life as being one that makes us feel with joy and satisfaction that we don’t need to be being, doing, trying to be perfect, and trying to do it all.
We get to reinvent ourselves as you are doing and say, “Wait a second. This is the life that I want to live. This is the place I want to live at and start taking baby steps in that direction.” It won’t change overnight. Been there, done that. It takes time. It takes years, but we can, individually and collectively, get there. Thank you, most wonderful Coach Chantay. Where can our audience find you?
You can find me giving out emotional intelligence information and live examples on Instagram @TheLevelingPlace. You can also find me on YouTube and my website, The Leveling Place. On YouTube, there is a plethora of videos, interviews, podcasts, and libraries where I’m talking to professional women and men about how to recover from burnout. That’s @ChantayGolson over at YouTube.
Thank you, Chantay Golson, L.P.C, Mental Wellness Executive Coach. Thank you for being with us in this episode. To our audience, thank you for being with us. This is Imperfect Love.
Important Links
- Chantay Golson– LinkedIn
- @TheLevelingPlace – Instagram
- The Leveling Place– Website
- @ChantayGolson– YouTube
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About Chantay Golson
A lifelong medical provider, Chantay founded a mental health firm in Georgia with several clinic locations. However, after ten years in the business, Chantay began facing burnout herself. Since then, she’s dedicated her work to sharing the education and expertise that helped her recover her sense of self—and her passion for business.
As a leadership coach specializing in emotional intelligence and burnout recovery, she combines her approaches to both mental health, corporate training and small business to guide others through the fatigue plaguing a quarter of entrepreneurs and executives in the United States. Chantay can be found on social media (Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Twitter) @thelevelingplace.
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