Have you ever felt consistently exhausted because of everything you do?  The job that you love starts to become something you dread because you never can catch up or catch a break?  Or you are so busy your relationships and health become neglected? 

These are classic signs of burnout.  

So what causes burnout?

Sometimes it’s feeling like you don’t control your environment enough.  You have been stuck on the years long doom-project that never seems to shape up no matter how much work you put in.  What you do doesn’t seem to matter.

Sometimes it’s feeling like you’re not progressing in your career or on your goals.  You’re not feeling the improvements you are making, enough.  Progress could be promotions, feeling more skilled, or social recognition.

In many cases, burnout is caused by being out of balance in your life.  When we don’t take care of out bodies, invest in our relationships, or take time...

Sometimes we can be hugely successful through our work.  Lucky breaks, planning, commitment, and our smarts can get us far towards building the lives we want.

Yet, at some point, we realize we need others to get to our next level.

 We develop blindspot in what’s slowing us down.  We get complacent because we “have things figured out” and stop innovating.  We miss the obvious wins because we are too close to the work or issues to see them.  We forget to celebrate our progress and burn out, chasing the next big thing.

That’s when a coach can help.

Want to up your performance?  A great coach can shave .1 seconds off of a sprint.  They can get you thinking about what you’re measuring in your business, why, and if it’s the RIGHT thing to measure, so you make a bigger impact and profit.  They can help you discover your own mindsets and thinking, and help you realize if those thoughts help or hurt you....

This week's video is a reminder of what to do when you are stressed out about emergencies.

I'm going on a few hours of sleep because I'm in California, with so many others, dealing with the heatwave and smoky air from the multitude of fires.  In a pandemic.

Hello, apocalypse...  

So let's start this week with some gratitude.  What are you grateful for?

Today I'm counting the small things.  I'm grateful to have these morning meetings with you all and to have found my purpose each day.  I'm grateful for my little home office, even if it's a little busy in the background sometimes.  I'm grateful for my healthy family and friends, to be starting a few new personal health initiatives, and my friendly text group of old buddies, who joke and push each other on.

That's a little of what's good in my life now, how about you?  Comment below if you dare! :) 

Stay strong, keep each other safe, and take a nap.... 

Shawn

PS.  If...

Productivity and success are more than what you get done at work.  It's the quality of your personal relationships.  It's the level of your health and well-being.  It's the joy you can cultivate through hobbies, passions, and interactions.

When we are able to get more done, we should be able to free up time for other things.  Why is it that being more productive usually creates less time?  This is the productivity paradox - the more we do, the less time it frees up.

We have a myth in our society that hours worked equal virtue.  You hear it with all the "grind until you die", "sleep is for when your dead" advice.  

But hours put in is not productivity.  Have you ever worked a job that made you work certain hours, no matter how little actual work there is to be done?  Like, you've cleaned the place 30 times, gotten ahead of what needs to be done that week, and you still need to be at your station?

This is not productive, time-wise. 

So...

I'm trying something new this week, and doing a blog on the best "Start Your Morning WIth a Coach" live video of the week (subscribe on FB, YT, or IG on the social icons below).  And that video is on why creating unshakable confidence is something everyone needs to learn.

We are all told to be more confident, that confidence leads to success or that confidence is attractive in a partner.

But what does confidence really add to your life?

As someone who has consistently worked on being more confident in multiple areas of life, it's been transformational when I've found my footing.

From my career in tech, dating, and just being ok with my dorky-weird self, confidence has unlocked my next level of joy, growth, and impact.

I used to be painfully shy and would stress out about every social interaction I encountered.  When it was time to head out to college, I realized I needed to get over my social anxiety if I were to make new friends.  So I decided to try to face my...

Confidence is a feeling we can create when we need it.  When it’s time to try something new, lead, do the task, or take responsibility, we need to be confident.

That’s not to say we want to have fake or false confidence.  Knowing where we will be learning, needing and asking for help, and being ok to fail a bit is the kind of confidence we want.  Not the ego-centric, I can do anything even though I don’t know anything about this task confidence - most people can see inauthentic confidence and don’t particularly like it.

So what can you do, every day, to build your authentic confidence?

Find out four daily actions to keep creating the confidence you need in this vblog!

Today's topic is about being more. 

The folks that end up changing the world have the most significant impact, which is one of the three objectives of the show: to find more joy, growth, and impact in your life.  

People that achieve these three goals ( in particular greater impact ) consistently pushed themselves to be even more than their past experiences. 

So if you've ever felt stuck in your job, if you've ever felt unhappy for an extended period of time, or you felt that you've been stuck in a relationship, it's probably because the progress stopped happening. Maybe you don't feel like you're not progressing in your career, not seeing the results on the scale from your new workout regimen, not building that deeper intimacy level with friends or with your significant other. 

It's important for people to feel progress and not feel stuck. So how do you get into that zone? Part of it is it's consistently trying to be a better human being, and that's...

Our perspectives from our unique career paths, upbringing, and experience can be our superpower.

Taking strategies and ideas from one area of our lives to another can help you seem like a superhero or rockstar. It's why companies who are well managed encourage employees to change teams and areas. It's why successful technology companies have engineers who also have experience in areas other than computer science. The more diverse experience employees have, the more varied the thinking and solutions to problems.  

Sometimes remembering how successful we've been in the past can help us succeed in the present.

I've recently been working on some of my business processes and have been combining my business background with my software background.  

I've been in the non-technical part of my coaching business the past year and realized there are manual processes I could automate or tools I could write to help speed up some of my daily activities.

It's been fun to dust...

Bob Dylan once sang, "the times they are a-changin'."  And it's a good thing.

There is so much opportunity for positive things to come out of these times.  It'll take everyone to make sure progress happens, and I think we will be stronger from it.

But so many people struggle to keep engaged.  There are social media and news, telling us we need to be afraid of each other because of coronavirus, rioters, and other threats.  It can be overwhelming to keep up with everything, to show up in your life each day because of the pace of change, and scale of anxiety.

Make no mistake.  The human condition is one of change, progress, and struggle.

Sometimes it feels like we are currently living in all three of these factors.

There have been times when I have lived in all three.  See, when I was five my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer.  It was a scary time seeing her go through treatment, and the toll it took on her.  It was also...