Hey You!
Are you gearing up for 2025 with a big bag of new years resolutions? Or are you worried that you haven’t really had time to create a plan for 2025? Have you failed to uphold last years' resolutions? Today’s blog is about how 2024's resolutions went for me (not that well), and what I have learned along the way.
In Case You Are New to My Blog
Hey, I am Inge!
Psychological Science
I started my ‘career’ with studying psychology. Although I once started my psychology studies with the intention to understand, and help people, I found myself way to emotionally sensitive to be a therapist, and chose to focus on my other passion: figuring out how things work. I started a PhD in psychology and a career in science. Curiosity was the driver behind my science career, until perfectionism and ambition overshadowed it and I burned out.
My Transition to Yoga and Coaching
Fast forward: I found yoga, learned to feel again, healed my trauma, became much better at dealing with emotions, and rediscovered my passion for helping others. I became a yoga teacher, started coaching people individually, and became a meditation and psychology teacher on Insight Timer, for which I created several courses on the intersection between science, psychology, and yoga.
Focusing on Burnout
Becuase of my own burnout, I decided that I wanted to focus my work on helping others prevent and recover from burnout. I have been doing this for a while now, but only last year started writing blogs and meditations on the topic, as well as engineer a course that helps people through the recovery process step by step. And then, OOOOOOOO the irony, I almost burn out again.
Ups and Downs Are Normal
I thought that my ironic almost burnout might be an insightful story to share for those of you who are experiencing those ups and downs too, and sometimes wonder if they are ever just going to feel peaceful and be done with it. The answer is, no. Probably not. But I think the morale of my story, is not that you will never NOT be stressed again, and sometimes life hits you on the head, HOWEVER, you can learn to get better at reading the signs of burnout, learn to intervene faster, be honest with yourself and others, and come out back on top.
A Reality Check
Ok. So here is what happened: Last year, I had one new years’ resolution:
“Have Fewer Goals.”
I even posted it on Instagram. Apparently, nearing the end of 2023, being a new mom, trying to get back into my old yoga shape, training for my handstands, trying to uplevel my coaching business, opening up a new coaching space, I realized… well, that perhaps, perhaps, I needed to reassess my goals and prioritize. For instance, was this REALLY the time to nail handstand?
The Missing Plan
I think past-me hit the nail on the head. So, kudos there. Unfortunately, past-me didn’t really create a plan on how to do the having fewer goals (also ironic, because I created a course on behavior change and how important it is to create a plan). It sounded so simple I thought I didn’t need to plan for it. Well... Naïve as I was, I just wrote down that from now on, I was going to have fewer goals. I would focus on one thing: namely, bringing the content I already had (On Habit Formation and Breathwork) to a wider audience. Intend on sticking with that one goal, I signed up for a marketing course for yoga teachers to market my work.
Creating a new Course on Burnout
While I was doing this marketing course, I hit a few walls. First, I realized that I hadn’t specifically defined my target audience. I was trying to create an integrated health program ‘for everyone’, but the problem is, people only start looking for help when they have ‘a problem’. In order to have people even listen to me, I thus had to speak to solving that problem. I felt quite stupid coming to this realization.
Second, I realized that I was already solving a problem (dealing with chronic stress and burnout), but I wasn't explicit about it. I realized that I had created a bunch of content that helped to deal with stress, but I never really created content specifically ON the topic of burnout, and therefore, I had to make new stuff. I had to create a course on burnout.
More Goals
So here I was. With my goal to have fewer goals. Coming to the realization that I had a new goal: to build new content from scratch. And while the marketing course made it sound like an easy peasy process, burnout is a very complex phenomenon, and my style of writing and teaching is in depth, analytic, and precise. So, this was going to be hard work, and it would take much more than the few weeks these marketing people had in mind. Nevertheless, I created the insane expectation of having to finish it all before the end of the year. Why? Because setting unrealistic expectations is my worst habit, and I guess it dies hard.
O by the way, did I mention I also ‘For fun’, signed up for 3 yoga teacher training weeks, then decided I wanted to get my advanced teacher training certificate, and started training for that? There is a funny little process in my mind that always starts with fun, learning, and exploration, and then outside my awareness, changes into challenge, performance, and more goals.
Doing All the Things
In summary: I started my year with the goal of having fewer goals. And within a few months, I was doing advanced yoga training, creating 2 new burnout courses from scratch, redesigning my website, creating weekly meditations and monthly blogs, next to teaching yoga, running my coaching practice, and raising my daughter. When I write it all down like this, it sounds exhausting.
In comes the irony: On my way to creating a course on burnout, I was quite close to actually burning out again.
A Creative Yet Exhausting Process
The courses I make are like writing a book. It usually takes me about a year, and it’s a process fraught with deep analysis, creativity, but also struggle and discomfort. Creative pursuits often are. In parallel with the challenge of writing any book, this one made me go analytic on a topic that is super close to home, painfully showing me my own weaknesses, while forgetting that I also mothered a child, giving me way less flexibility, sleep, and Mindspace than I used to have when I endeavored the writing a of a new book or course.
Ignoring My Own Advice
So, as I was going on and on (in my course) on the importance of lowering expectations, reducing pressure, taking time for recovery, prioritizing sleep, giving yourself permission to pause and rest, doing breathwork, prioritizing social connections, being honest and open and vulnerable, I wasn’t really doing any of that myself.
Trying to Do It All
I was trying to do it all. I was setting unrealistic goals, I was trying to be the best mum and the best coach and the best yoga teacher and the best marketing director and the best content producer and the best audio editor, and the best course creator, and I was starting to sleep less, and feel more miserable, and feel more imposter syndrome with every week.
Feeling Like a Fraud
I could be compassionate with yoga students, with clients, with the students in my courses, but I was having a really hard time being compassionate with myself. I got angry with myself for being a yoga teacher who could not even relax, and a burn-out coach who wasn’t able to sleep. Why would anyone listen to me? I wasn’t even able to cope!
The Turning Point
And then one day, I was sitting down with a friend who is helping me redesign my website, and I tried to explain to him what people need to feel before they actually get help and stop trying to solve the issue of chronic stress by working more, and suffering through it all alone. I said: well, there needs to be something inside you screaming,
"No-More!!! No matter what the outcome is, it is not worth it to feel like this every day. I don’t want this."
And then it hit me. This was exactly how I was feeling. Shit.
Choosing to Listen This Time
I have had that feeling before. Two years before my previous burnout, I had feelings like that quite often, but I ignored them, resulting in a huge crisis. The thing is, I think many people hear that voice. But we silence it. We tell oursleves we just NEED to get this thing done. I silenced it often back then. But this time, I listened. Because I went through the intense experience of a full-blown burnout and recovery process, lasting 2 years in total, I know the consequences if I do not listen to that “No More” shout out.
Disconnecting From the Moment
No amount of whatever (money, status, helping others, creative results, security, pursuing your dream) is worth sacrificing your sanity, health, and happiness for. Even if I were to actualize my dream (a yoga/coaching retreat center for burnout), if for the next 5 years, I hardly ever sleep while building it and I feel miserable, what is it all for? The relentless pursuit of a dream makes you live in the future instead of the moment. If I learned anything from my yoga practice, it’s that all we have, is this moment. That the goal is to be one with the moment, one with everything around us, and everything within us. And here I was, completely disconnected from that, constantly striving for some ideal future state. Double shit.
The Pressure We Put on Ourselves
I realized I was putting an enormous amount of pressure on myself to get to that dream as fast as possible. My expectations were simply insane, and even though I wasn’t working crazy hours, the mental stress I was putting on myself was causing severe sleeping issues.
We kid ourselves that only people who work 80-hour weeks burnout. But the data don’t show this. Hours worked contribute way less to chronic stress and burnout than the emotional load we feel from the insane expectations we have to meet within that worked time (and the time we spend in the gym, at home, traveling the world, etcetera).
Hard work isn’t the problem. The idea that if we work less hours, we ‘should be able to handle it' actually contributes to the problem because it makes us ignore our body when it tells us it’s too much. I was working 4 days a week, so, I told myself “I should be able to handle it.” The fact that my body was telling me that my goals were unrealistic by making it impossible to sleep, wasn’t enough for me to double down on my planning.
I thought I had recovered from that 'mind-over-matter' mindset, I wrote about it frequently, and here I was, creating a course on burnout, and using the exact same strategy to pressure myself to get it done as soon as possible. I discovered I was doing the exact thing I was warning people about. Triple shit.
The Power of Honesty
This story isn’t really about me. I don’t care that much if you know about my life. I am open for the sake of honesty and connection. In all honesty, I hate marketing and selling my stuff and making what I do about me. But I also think that making things personal helps me to be honest, and makes me relatable. The one thing that helps others, and myself in the process, is complete transparency and honesty. If you are struggling with stress as well, it helps to know that people who are psychologists, yoga teachers, meditation teachers, coaches, and the like, don’t have it all figured out either. I think it helps to know that most of us don’t have it figured out, and that if you struggle, you are not alone. I know a lot about stress, AND sometimes I am in need to reassess my own balance and get my shit together.
The Solution: Connection
Writing this down and sharing my story is one of my key recovery tools: pure honesty and connection with others. When I notice I am shaming myself into doing more, I know I have but one way to deal with that: open up and be honest. The moment I push myself beyond what I can reasonably expect, and try to sell myself as better than reality, is the moment I lose it. So about 3 months ago I started sharing my insecurities and failures with my partner, then my friends, and now I am sharing it with you. Honest and open connection is the one thing that keeps me sane and grounded. And if you are currently feeling this “No more” thing and you want to love 2025 in a more authentic way, I can wholeheartedly recommend you to resolve your inner conflict by connecting to others and sharing your fears and insecurities. It’s a huge relief not to have to uphold an image that isn’t realistic or sustainable.
Let’s Talk Solutions
Ok, so. Let’s talk solutions. Initially, this blog wasn’t intended to market my own stuff (I promise). But as I have come to realize, I created courses on two of the main solutions towards getting myself back on track: 1. Breathwork, and 2. Honesty and Connection. As I started to write this blog about a month ago, I decided to let these courses launch in January, so you can tie them to your new year’s resolutions (ok, yes, the publication date was a marketing decision).
Breathwork
The physical healing power of breathwork has been a huge help in giving me the control to calm my body down after a period of chronically stressing myself out. Breathing helps me to ground myself, become calm, focused, open, and recovered. There is a reason why in yoga, pranayama (practice of lengthening the breath), comes before meditation. Breathwork has become my go-to practice of the day. When all other things (like exercise, yoga, journaling, meditation) feel like way too much on my plate, the only thing I do is sit down for my breathing routine, and this makes me feel whole, connected, and calm.
If you are interested in (re)discovering your physical and emotional connection with yourself, I recommend you take part in the 21-day Breathwork Challenge starting this January. The Opening Ceremony is set on Sunday the 5th, you can sign up for the 11.00 session, or the 19.00 session. It’s free. The 21-day Breathwork challenge is released on the 2nd of January on Insight Timer, you can start on any day. If you follow my profile on Insight Timer, you will see a new day of the challenge released every day starting January 2nd.
Honest Connection
The second course, called “How to Resolve Conflict Effectively,” is released on the 2nd of January as well. Quite often, when we are chronically stressed, we experience internal conflicts arising from huge expectations, insecurities, and negative assumptions about ourselves or others. As stress rises, we also get into conflict with the people we love most. The irony is, that we need solid, safe, and open connection with others to relax us. So being able to deal with these internal and external conflicts is essential in becoming calmer and more balanced.
This course is about rekindling connection with yourself through practicing complete honesty and openness of what is going on inside you, and then rekindling connection with others through communicating your inner struggles, wishes, and needs with them in a constructive way. As I have mentioned before, being completely honest with yourself, and accepting yourself just as you are with all your flaws and failures and the inability to meet all the expectations, is KEY to burnout prevention and recovery. Building a practice that supports this, that helps you share this authentic version of yourself with others, will help to move you from a constant state of inner and outer conflict, to a state of honesty, authenticity, and calm.
Time Management for Mortals
Last but not least, I wanted to mention an audio course by someone else, that has been fundamental in my shift towards being less hard on myself. Lately, I have been inspired by the work of writer Oliver Burkeman, who wrote the books “The Imperfectionist,” and “Time Management for Mere Mortals.” I recently did two of his courses on the Waking Up app, and it has been a huge shifter in my awareness of what I was doing to myself.
Oliver Burkeman posits a puzzling question, at least when you live in the culture we live in, that is all about becoming more productive, healthier, better, faster, stronger. He asks:
"What if you didn’t need to become more productive, or more calm, or more focused?
What if things were fine, just as they are?"
This is a potentially liberating question to ask ourselves. Especially in this period of trying to become some better version of ourselves. In the pursuit of wanting to become better, we forget one of the most profound ideas of yoga and Buddhism: Our purpose is not to become better, but to find out that who we are, and what we are, is already enough. Accepting ourselves, and freeing ourselves from pressure and anxiety through compassion and acceptance, is key.
So, if you are looking for content that might help you with compassion and acceptance and doing less (and having fewer goals), I can wholeheartedly recommend Oliver Burkeman’s work on the Waking Up app: Time Management for Mortals. I wish I had that course when I designed my New Years Resolutions last year, because I think it might have saved me from myself.
Looking Ahead to 2025
So, my goal for 2025, is to revisit my goal for 2024. The good thing is, this time, I have actual practices in place that will help me with that. I will let you know how it pans out. I really hope I won’t be needing to re-post this blog again in the beginning of 2026, but I promise, one thing; I will be honest about it 😊.
Happy 2025!