Listen If You're Struggling With Burnout or Thoughts of Failure

[00:00:00] Happy Monday, bloggers. Today, I want to talk to you about failure, burnout, and suffering. It doesn't sound very exciting, does it? But hopefully you'll find some value in this. Last week, I think it was Friday I had an opportunity to attend a conference. This this man named Kute Blackson was speaking.

And he's. best selling author about, of a book that's kind of about finding purpose and then this conference was really supporting his newest book, which is on surrender. But and he's a spiritual teacher. So I, you know, I'm not here to proselytize my beliefs in any way, but attending that conference really made me start thinking about [00:01:00] my perspectives of failure and burnout, and how many of us are feeling maybe Fear of failure because we don't, or we're, we're scared of trying something new, right?

If it's moving to products or if it's starting an email list, we just have that fear of like, Is this really going to work? Am I going to screw this up? And then the other side of the coin is burnout. Many of us are feeling burnout, especially now. And so I thought I would share some thoughts with you along those lines.

So, first let's talk about feel, failure. And I think, like I said, this is the fear of failure is what stops a lot of us from moving forward with our ideas. Sometimes. We like to say it's because we don't have time to to work on this particular project, or we don't know if it's the right [00:02:00] thing for our audience.

But really a lot of times, if we're honest with ourselves, it just boils down to fear of failure. I'll tell you. One area where I felt like a failure for a long time. Now, I have the benefit right now of hindsight. So I don't, I see it as is really just a good move for my blog. That took a long time for me to recognize.

But at the time and for, for a while after I felt Like a failure I think I've shared this with some of you before, but when I first started the Atlanta blog, I named it 365 Atlanta family because the intention was to be a blog about family travel and it family travel was a kind of relatively new concept at the time, not traveling with your family, but articles about family travel and I really wanted to focus on that [00:03:00] aspect of what we were doing, but the brands and PR companies that we were trying to work with from a travel perspective really didn't want to have anything to do with us.

And Most people were reaching out to us as a parenting blog. And while I think that's great, I don't, I think parenting blogs are great. That just wasn't what we were after. So I realize it's the family. I think after like my fifth pitch to sell diapers, it was, I realize it was the family aspect of the name that was confusing people, even though we, You know, it wasn't the tagline.

It wasn't the about, it wasn't the content. Anyway, so I said, you know what? We need to change our name to 365 Atlanta traveler and it will make a big difference. So I did the research from an SEO perspective and I was reading everywhere. I was reading was like, okay, [00:04:00] you know, you do the redirect and it'll be fine.

And so. Made the decision, pulled the trigger. I think we did like a little thing where we told people for a while that it was coming, the name change. And the colors were the same and logos the same and all of that. So it should have, you know, felt the same to our readers. We pulled the trigger and did the redirect and our traffic fell by half.

So. Half the content, or half the traffic, half the affiliates, half the everything, right? And at the time I just started partnering with Sue, and part of that relationship was that she got a portion of ad revenue, so I was like, come on board, this is about what we're making, and then boom, half. And I just, I just, cried.

I, you know, I, I waited like three [00:05:00] months. It still didn't really seem like it was coming back. I spent thousands of dollars hiring this top notch SEO guy who, you know, I had to actually get Brian Dean to introduce me to him before he would even consider doing the consulting for me. And I paid him, he came in, he was like, the thing is like everything looks right.

Oh my gosh, I'm dying. And it took about a year. For Google to recognize that we were the same blog and got us back up to where we were. And so we missed out, I guess, on that year of growth. Well, looking back, it was the right thing to do, but I can't begin to tell you what a big failure that I felt like.

It was humiliating and it was disappointing, but anyway, that's, so that's my biggest Story about failure and I think [00:06:00] when we when we experience that it's really important to start by analyzing the root of the problem and it's not always what we think. So the obvious answer to my issue was the problem was that I changed the domain for all of those URLs and, you know, Google didn't like it.

But. The real root of the problem was probably not doing the right amount of market research on the name that I selected, not understanding how it would be accepted by the community. And So that's the lesson I learned. So starting any new businesses and since then we've started three new businesses we were very careful to choose the name correctly, something that, you know, we ask people in the industry, what they thought about [00:07:00] those names did some market research and.

Also made sure that they were names that would outlast the initial, um, let's see, that the initial idea of the business that they could grow, that could grow the business as well. And so, you know, then you refine your strategies. And while I wasn't about to refine the strategy of that name again, I could use that as a lesson for going forward.

The other thing you want to make sure you do is. Not dwell on the past. So I had these moments. I did. I think it's important to allow yourself to grieve whenever something yucky is happening. And so, you know, I did have a lot of crying and apologizing and feeling bad and feeling guilty. But every time it would kind of creep into my psyche as I was getting ready to do the next thing and take another risk I [00:08:00] just pushed it down and I said, you know what, I'm not going to let the past, my past failure direct where I'm going in the future.

I'm just going to make sure that I'm, I'm taking on those lessons. So I think it's, it's really, it's one of those things we hear a lot, but I think it's so important to internalize friend that failure is a natural part of success. Failure is feedback. Success. And great things do not come to people who do not fail, failing so important, so critical, nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be embarrassed about something to be embraced.

Now I do think there's another side of the coin where sometimes some of you call failure too soon. Email marketing. I've had people. call and say, well, I've been doing, I've had my lead magnet up for three months and I don't have, you know, [00:09:00] 3000 people yet. Yeah, you're right. You don't. It's some, sometimes it just takes time, you know, to to win the battle.

So I don't want you to call failure too soon, which quite frankly is what I did. But, If you're not failing, then you're not trying. And again, I know those sound like cliches, but it's so true. It's so true. So whatever you're considering embracing at this moment, because of this Google gate situation that you're afraid of, that you're afraid to fail, I want you to maybe reconsider that, reframe it.

And think about it as you know, maybe you'll succeed, but it's, even if you don't, it's just a step toward where you're evolving your business. And that's something to be celebrated. The next thing I want to talk about is [00:10:00] burnout. But this This idea of just, I just can't, you know, physical, mental, emotional exhaustion.

And while most of my career, I really try to think of some specific examples of burnout that I could share with you. And, and honestly, for most of my career, I've not experienced burnout, but I did. You know, recently with the Google gate, it was just, I had this period of time where I was literally just laying on the couch, staring into space, like, I can't do this anymore.

And I had things to do on my to do list and I would, you know, make, I would do the things that I need to do. For me personally to make things good, like I would, I cleaned my office up and I put my candle on and I burned my incense and I opened my window so I could hear the birds and got myself, you know, tea or coffee and still couldn't do it.

So it does happen [00:11:00] and I'm not I'm not suggesting that you ignore it when it happens, but I do want to talk about some reasons why I think it Maybe it does happen. I think one of those reasons is because we forget our why. So my why for my blog is helping people understand that there is travel and adventure and cultural opportunities within reach of where they live that they don't have to, You know, have gone, you know, I've lived four years in Japan and three years in Germany like, like I have, you know, traveling the world.

You don't have to be a digital nomad in order to experience the benefits of travel. So I have to go back to that and remember that and remember that that message is so important to me to relay to my audience and and that's why I do this. The other reason I think that [00:12:00] we face burnout a lot of times is because We focus on other people, we compare ourselves to other people and the reason I think that that Promotes burnout is because when you do that, you're really focusing on all the areas that you fall short instead of where you've grown, how far you've come, how you've improved, and you know, There's so much value in recognizing that about yourself because I can guarantee you that you'll always find somebody who's doing it better than you, who's making more money than you, who's doing better on search than you, who has better brand contracts than you.

And you know what? They might look better than you too and their car might be newer than yours and their kids are more well behaved than yours and they went [00:13:00] to a better car. I mean, they're, it's. Everywhere, if you look for somebody who's doing better than you, you will find them. But if you choose, and it has to be a conscious choice, if you choose to embrace this idea that you are your own competitor, that that is really going to help with your burnout.

So even when you're not moving forward as fast as you want, or as fast as your colleague is, please. Document, I always say this, don't just think about it, write it down, read it to yourself when you feel burnout approaching. What did you learn? Have you grown? How have you challenged yourself? Have you pressed forward when it was difficult?

It's so important to be your own hero and to stop thinking of yourself as a victim. [00:14:00] You cannot move forward if you continue as feeling like a victim, even if you are a victim. You're going to have to be your own hero. So again, I'm not saying that your mental and emotional exhaustion is not valid, and that it's not real, and it's not happening.

I mean, it's happened to me. But what I would encourage you to do in those moments, After you have your 24 hours of feeling sorry for yourself is just get back to your why. Document your wins, your wins. So sometimes we want to document, even in our own journals, at least this is the case for me, want to document those kinds of wins that you would put up on social media that I would want to hold up, you know, on a big page.

Post it board, you know, in front of an audience. I Had a million page views this month. I sold 5, 000 copies of [00:15:00] my book this month I'm not talking about those wins friend. I'm talking about when you got out of bed trudge to The bathroom got dressed and went on a walk when you didn't feel like it. When you put out your newsletter, even if it was a crappy newsletter, you did it because you decided that being consistent was important.

When you updated a post that used to be number one and is now number 41, but it's time to update it and you want Those few people who are still seeing it to have accurate information to help them in a honest and accurate up to date way. Those are important wins. Even if they're Maybe small in the, in comparing them to other people, at least small in the [00:16:00] way that we as society, like degrade things.

But they're big for you. So if any of this resonates with you check out the book, the Gap in The Gain by Dan Sullivan. It's it's a studious read, but and they, and he has a podcast and if you get into the book, there's a workbook. But I. Like it because it's an encouraging and there's scientific data to back this up, but it's encouraging about why.

if you focus on your own personal gains instead of the gaps between you and your competitors that you're even more likely to succeed in the long run. So those are my thoughts on failure and burnout. And listen I'm not Buddhist, but I will say that we all know that The Buddha says that life is suffering.

So in our moments [00:17:00] of burnout, in our fears of failure, or actualization of failure, or when devastating things happen that are completely out of our control, like Googlegate, I think. It's important for us to remember life is suffering. So stop trying to build a business without any of it. Do you hear that?

Like, it's gonna happen. Failure's gonna happen, burnout's gonna happen, crap's gonna happen outside of your control. So stop trying to build a business that doesn't have any of that in it because that's not realistic. I really believe that life, living, is about evolution. So we see it in nature, we see it in the universe, we see it with, you know, insects.

And I think it's [00:18:00] important to embrace that in our own selves. So your job is to manage the burnout, to embrace any learning opportunities that come with failure, and to Adjust with grace to any uncontrollable situations and to really focus on the evolution of you and your business and stop trying to stop the inevitable from happening.

Just learn to embrace it and move forward.