Why Entrepreneurial Burnout is Like that Messy Breakup with your Ex

I’m not one to write those ‘Sorry I haven’t written posts’ - yet you might have noticed I haven’t written very much in the last week. In fact, it was my longest stretch of not writing on my blog ever. You can see where I am going with this - last week, I hit my breaking point. Yeah, I know. Running a business is hard. I should have gotten an assistant 6 months ago. I shouldn’t have piled my plate so high. I shouldn’t have overcommitted, I shouldn’t have *insert nearly anything you can think of here*.

But last week for the first time ever, a thought crossed my mind - a thought that feels almost sacrileges to say out loud - I thought about finding a way out of running Sparkplugging. And the moment I thought it I knew I had pushed myself too far.

Quite honestly, there are pressures going on behind the scenes that I can’t fully share. Not because I want to keep secrets from you, more because some of this stuff just isn’t appropriate to talk about on a blog. Between a growing amount of money owed to me and a growing amount of work on my plate, I got to a point where no matter what the personal reward of running my business is, the stress and financial pressure weren’t effing worth it.

And that’s a sad place to be.

I realized then that I had made a big mistake. I had been putting the needs of the business before my own needs. And the more I gave to the business, the less I gave to myself. It began to look like one of those dysfunctional co-dependent relationships with one partner giving, giving, giving and the other one taking, taking, taking.

As painful as it was to not write on my blog - my haven, my one sacred place I have always come to share my deep passion for business and entrepreneurship with you - suddenly it became more painful to write. I HAD to take a step back and balance my ‘business relationship’ again.

The Needy Girlfriend and the Arrogant Boyfriend

I’m thinking this ‘dysfunctional relationship’ metaphor is spot-on, the more I consider it. I think everyone at some point in their lives has been in that place of humility when you have fallen head over heels with someone, someone that you would go to the ends of the earth for. Someone who consumes your being, someone who you find, after a while, seems to feed off of the loss of your identity. And as you lose yourself in that person, the only way out is a painful extraction back into finding yourself again. Because we all know the end to that anti-love story - when you lose yourself, there is no relationship left.

I’ve had my share of heartbreaks in the past. I can think of one guy in particular that really broke my heart. I would have married this guy - yet it ended abruptly as I forgot who I was. It took a few months for me to get my perspective again - and in the meantime he had found someone else. I didn’t understand how we could be soulmates one day and awkward strangers the next day.

Finally, I got it. I made the decision to put myself and put my happiness first. And of course, within a week, I got a letter from him saying he was sorry he broke up with me and that he thought it was a big mistake on his part (damn right, baby!).

Fortunately, fixing my relationship with my business is way easier than fixing a relationship with an indecisive and insecure guy.

Step One :: Have a Good Cry

When you realize you’ve gotten your priorities messed up and when you haven’t been taking care of yourself, there’s an inevitable sadness that you have kind of betrayed yourself. I messed up. I wasn’t in the relationship in which I wanted to be. I had to pull back and mourn the loss of what I thought I wanted. And quite honestly, I went over to my coach’s house and cried my eyes out (thanks again, Marla!).

A good cry gets the emotion out of your system so that you can think clearly again.

Step Two :: Ask Different Questions

This is something I should have done a long time ago - I’ve even written about it many times, telling other people to do it. I was asking myself the crappiest questions, forcing me to focus on crappy answers:

“Why isn’t this working?”  “What am I doing wrong?”  “Why can’t I make this work?”

With questions like that, who need enemies, right? My answers to myself kept me focused on what wasn’t working, what I wasn’t doing, and why I couldn’t fix it. I probably asked myself those same stupid questions when my relationship with that guy was disintegrating. No wonder it didn’t work out.

To refocus myself and my efforts, I had to ask myself better questions. So I took a look at my relationship and “took my power back” - and asked things like “How can I leverage my assets to gain more help from others?” and “How can I get what I need out of my business?” and “How can I approach this differently to ensure my happiness comes first?”

Step Three :: Ask for Help

Besides getting a ton of help from my coach, the administrative load I have been carrying in this business has been the absolute hardest part of keeping things together. Between the constant emails, promotion, author management, travel & speaking, launching a 15 blog network in less than 6 months and the launch of another huge project later this week, Marla really pushed me to find a way to get some work off of my plate.

Because of my growing accounts receivables, paying for that help wasn’t an option. And this is a big problem for nearly all solo business owners - how do you find a way to get help when you don’t have the budget for it? I got creative. For my big project, I gave someone a percentage of the future business in exchange for her project management help now. And then thanks to this post, I had a few VAs reach out to me and offer their services in exchange for my mentoring. I jumped on it.

Congratulate me - I finally have a VA! You’ve been probably wondering why the HELL I hadn’t done it sooner. Now you know.

Step Four :: Create Boundaries

As I was coming out of that relationship fog with that guy, it was super-hard to stay on the path to get back on track. I’d be OK if I was out with friends or doing my hobbies, but if I saw him, or indulged in listening to ‘our song’, then I’d immediately fall back into that place of downright neediness. I had to pretty much ‘fake it’ when he was around, because I knew that showing my old feelings for him turned my mind into a toxic waste dump.

As much as I didn’t want to work last week, I did need to push myself through that final hump of work to get this project wrapped and launched. I walked through the motions of getting it done - and then promptly walked away from my computer as soon as I could. I missed a few deadlines, and not everything was perfect. And instead of letting it bother me and giving in to the demands of work, I had to put my foot down and just let things sit there imperfectly. It was uncomfortable to say the least. But my new mantra is, “I am more important than the business”.

Step Five :: Get Your Priorities Straight

I think sometimes we assume that if we can get our priorities straight that they will simply stay that way. What I’ve found is that nothing could be further from the truth. The older and wiser I get, I find that business, life and even love is a never ending series of course corrections. We get on the right track just as much as we get offtrack sometimes. To make it simple, getting your priorities straight is a journey, not a destination.

There was a time when there was a perfect balance between me and that guy - I still had my strength and my self-confidence, he still had his openness and charm. Somewhere the balance tipped in his favor and I began chasing. Instead of pulling back, I continued to go down the road of chasing, thinking it would get me what I want, only realizing I was wrong when it was too late.

I’m glad that it happened the way it did - because I wouldn’t be married to my awesome hubby today if I hadn’t learned those lessons the hard way. The same can be said for my second business that I ended because I crashed and burned. If I hadn’t been through that experience, I might not have seen the warning signs last week that I was in dire need of a course correction. And if I didn’t make that course correction, I might have gotten to the point where I would have given up on my dream.

Step Six :: Find Yourself Again

Giving up on my dream is not an option. Period. Though after last week, I can now step back and see that I have been in chase mode, thinking the dream had to be ‘just so’ in order to come true. But ‘just so’ was robbing me of my self-confidence and my strength, and I’m no longer willing to sacrifice those things. Pursuing the business dream in chase mode is like pursing the ex in needy mode. It will never, ever lead to a healthy relationship, and ultimately leads you to a mind filled with toxic thoughts that rob you of your identity.

I was just talking to a dear friend about the solution earlier this week. No matter what problem or challenge I have faced in my life, the right solution has always been to put my happiness and health first. When I do that, everything falls into place, emotionally, financially and even spiritually.

And if my business were my ex, it would now be writing me a letter telling me that it was sorry it let our relationship crumble, and would I give it a second chance? And this time, I can happily say yes, now that I have found myself again.