This is Theresa Lambert and she is RESILIENT.
CONTENT WARNING: The I Am Resilient Project provides an open space for people to share their personal experiences. Some content in this post and on this website will include topics that you may find difficult.
Describe the situation where you had to be resilient:
I just remember the day that stood out to me when I woke up exhausted, tired and really didn’t want to do anything anymore, particularly not going to work. I had an epiphany moment when I said to myself that there has got to be a better way to do what I love without burning myself out and into the ground.
Theresa’s Story
I had a huge focus after taking on the General Manager position with Nita Lake Lodge to really pour my heart and soul into building the business and building up the team. I was absorbed by my own high-achieving self wanting to prove that I could make it as a young woman in business. I had never managed a hotel before so in order to learn what I needed my focus shifted solemnly to my career. What ended up happening was that I completely lost sight of everything that’s fueled my passion that didn’t belong to work. This included neglecting my health, relationships and my obsession with proving my worth meant I was dropping everything or anything if it wasn’t related to work. I created a lot of success with what I was doing in my career but my health and my life kind of stalled.
What ended up happening was that I got to a point where I got sick all the time; I got the flu badly and ended up having a cold pretty much for an entire year. It seemed like there was always something in my body that felt out of alignment. My digestive system was out of whack, causing problems, from constant stomach issues to not absorbing important vitamins. I had brain fog all the time, to the point that three to four times a week when having conversations I wouldn’t have any recollection of what the conversation was about. I was training for a half marathon so I was being active, yet despite what I was eating or doing, it was like I was completely unhealthy, having zero energy, felt constantly hungry but never satiated and even if I got a solid night sleep I woke up exhausted. I felt like my day was just dragging on. It didn’t matter how much I was working on how much effort I was putting in, it just felt like it just never got anywhere.
From the outside, I still looked like a poster child for success but on the inside, I was at war with myself. I often wondered how I could keep doing this without tearing down all I had built? I felt like something was about to implode. It felt like things were so out of alignment and then physically and mentally it started to get worse. I piled on 30 lbs in a matter of 2-months and started to wake up with cold sweats in the middle of the night. Deep down at that point, I knew something was seriously not right anymore. Despite my efforts of eating healthy and working out, my body basically was like, “I’m going to find a way to shut you down.”
The last piece that added to the burnout was my mental state. I didn’t want to make decisions anymore and I was leaning on everyone else to help me make decisions. I was never happy with any decision I made. This is almost like a depressive state where I was sad all the time. I remember waking up in tears and going to sleep in tears. I would close my office door sometimes and would have a full-on breakdown in my office. I hid it well but you can only do that for so long. Eventually, you could start to see that things weren’t heading in the right direction anymore.
When I entered that last stage of burnout, I knew I needed to get help. To be honest, I wished I would have started to take my symptoms seriously earlier. My road to recovery took me over 12-months, but with the support and guidance of my Naturopath, Coaches and some Counselling I finally found a way to balance the needs of my body with my high-achiever mindset and accepted that putting myself first on my priority list is the greatest act of self-respect.
How did you practice resilience when you were faced with this challenge?
I started with some really small things. What that meant for me was thinking about what do I need to do which is a small step towards big results. I was thinking of small tools. So, one of them was for me that I started with something I call “silent minutes.” Basically it’s a morning routine (you could call it a form of meditation) but I like to call it silent minutes. I started actually with 5 minutes. I would get up and for 5 minutes I wasn’t allowed to do anything. So no more getting up and checking my emails and seeing what I missed or trying to answer them you know before I had my cup of tea. There’s no music, no podcast or TV. I eventually worked my way up to thirty minutes. Instead of being reactive from the moment I wake up, I would just consciously be. This allowed me to start my day with a clear and calm state of mind rather than frantically trying to solve every problem that there is in the first five minutes of waking up.
Please share one piece of advice for people who are going through a similar challenge.
Be kind to yourself. When you’ve gotten yourself to the point of burnout and you feel exhausted, tired and you see that things aren’t going so well anymore, be kind to yourself. Acknowledge that you need to make a change and give yourself permission to take time out of your day for yourself.
Are you ready to share your story of RESILIENCE? You can do that HERE.
