“Life is full of surprises, but the biggest one of all is learning
what it takes to handle them.”

~ Deborah Wiles

I promised I’d tell you why I took the extended break from my weekly messages. I actually didn’t see it coming, and I surprised myself when I realized what had actually happened.

When life is busy, most of us are really good at just putting our heads down and getting the work done, but that often means we don’t listen closely enough to what our mind and body need in the moment. The thing is, even the most resilient people are fallible when it comes to self-care, and at the end of 2022 that was me. Watch the short video below to learn where I landed, or read the transcript that follows, and let me know if you can relate.

OH, and I’m very excited to share with you my new QUIZ to help you identify YOUR motivation type, and how to use it to set and GET those high-performance goals. Click the link to answer 5 quick questions, and the results will land in your inbox!

Let’s do this!

Hey, Michelle Cederberg here. I feel like it has been a long time since I have sent you a new video. Well, let me explain why. I think it’s been almost a year now since I’ve created anything new for you all in my weekly videos. And oftentimes I will take a break, and I’m usually okay with that because I know it’s not going to last more than few weeks before I jump back in.

Well, this time I just found myself putting off, and putting off, and putting off, and I couldn’t exactly figure out why. But then I thought, all right, well, I’ll just wait a while and see what happens.

Fast forward about a year. It’s very interesting because I’ve been very busy in my business, and I have been doing some board work that has been demanding of my time, and it’s only in the last few weeks that I realized that I have for the first time in my life, experienced burnout … which is very hard for this health and productivity expert to admit.

At the end of 2022, I had one of my busiest years of speaking ever. But I also was the National President for my speaking association, and I think I underestimated just how much of a draw on my energy all of that had.

When the New Year hit, I was rebranding in my business and doing all sorts of things to take it to the next level. And I really hadn’t had much of a chance to just decompress. I don’t know if you can relate, but the very interesting thing about the experience that I’ve had is that burnout crept in and I didn’t realize that that is what I was feeling.

I thought I was just fatigued because I’d been working too hard. But then I started to do some research as I was planning for some of these videos, and I realized, wow, burnout;

• To be disengaged and numb for the work that you’re doing
• To be apathetic and even cynical

This was me. For somebody who loves what they do, this was a really hard pill to swallow!

• To be discouraged and unmotivated
• To be physically and mentally exhausted
• Brain fog
• Decreased cognitive function
• Getting sleep but not feeling refreshed.

(Though I might blame part of that on menopause), but for the most part I realized, oh man, all of the work that I’ve been doing to drive things to the next higher level put me in a place where I overdid it.

Humbling, to say the least.

Now, I do want to highlight the fact that stress and burnout are very different. Take a look at a video that I’ve done previously, highlighting the difference between stress and burnout.

So, here I am now on the flip side of it. I am going to be reacquainting myself with all the stress and burnout information that I’ve been researching, and I’m going to be sharing with you because I think that we’re all in this strange state in the world where work is different, where our work situations have changed, where life is piling a lot onto us.

And through all of that, we’ve also got to process news and weather and all these crazy things that are happening in the world. It can sometimes feel like a lot.

For today, I want to say thank you for being patient with me and for hearing my admission of yes, burnout.

In the weeks to come, we’ll be talking about it and what I really think about resilience.

I don’t think that resilience is what we need more of, huh? It could actually be part of the problem. I’m going to tell you why next week. And in the meantime, I’ve got a great, interesting new quiz.

‘What’s your Motivation Type?’

Scan the QR code or click the link and answer 5 quick questions to identify your Motivation Type. I’m super excited about this because it’s going to give you daily doses of inspiration based on your category, to help you drive to the next level.

And it has certainly helped me get my mojo back. So until next time, I’m Michelle Cederberg, helping you Ignite High Performance, even when you might not feel like you have it in yet. Let’s do this.

Resources Galore!