Work Life Balance

Beyond Spa Days: Using Core Values to Set Boundaries and Prevent Burnout

Almost every industry experiences burnout in some way other another. But these days I have been dealing with identifying and taking care of my own burnout.

In my digital marketing world traditonal worksplace stress gets amplified with its unique challenges: the need to be "always on" across multiple platforms, the pressure to constantly create fresh content, and the anxiety of campaigns that can succeed or fail in real-time.

Add in the blur between personal and professional social media presence, and it becomes nearly impossible for me to truly disconnect.

Which is why this week we have a guest post from Katy Owens while I embark on a mini digital detox.

I’m thrilled to have Katy share her insights on burnout prevention and values-based self-care. (She’s the first one I text to ask her if I am actually in burnout or if I need to just drink a glass of water.)

Her perspective as both a healthcare provider and someone who has navigated her own healing journey brings valuable depth to this important topic.

So without further ado here’s Katy’s blog:

Burnout seems to be quite the hot topic lately – and it’s no surprise. You will hear the phrase “Self care” thrown around a lot in the context of Burnout, but what does that actually mean?

While spa days and pedicures can be lovely (if you can indulge responsibly), that’s not the essence of self care. What I want you to consider is that true self-care involves setting reasonable boundaries on your ability to say “yes” to projects, engage energetically with friends and family, and carving out intentional time for your own interests. Setting boundaries is often a challenging topic in and of itself, so I want to take a step back and start with examining our Core Values.

When I think about core values, I turn to an expert: Berné Brown. She has pioneered research on shame and vulnerability and the impact these emotions have on our lives, and she also has contributed so much to topics including values exploration. I often complete her Living into Our Values exercises during presentations with other occupational therapists as well as with clients.

I highly recommend following this link for the full instructions and downloadable PDFs, but we’ll break it down here as well. https://brenebrown.com/resources/living-into-our-values/

First, what is a core value? A core value is a foundation on which you can base life decisions. Think of concepts like honesty, authenticity, or community. When we can identify these core values, we are able to use them to guide our decision making and boundary setting. If I say that authenticity is one of my core values, and someone asks me to run an ad on my social media supporting a product that is not evidence based, or not something I ever would use personally, it’s easy for me to say no to the offer because I understand that it’s not in line with one of my core values. Without clear core values, it would be much easier for me to say yes to an opportunity that might make me money but leave me feeling taken advantage of in the long run.

Consider actions that you have taken in the past, and how these could be examples of living into your core values. Then, take a moment to think of actions or scenarios where you might be led to acting outside of your core values. So, if you identify Family as a core value, what actions to you take to reinforce or live that value in your day-to-day life? Are there instances when you find yourself putting your core value second, maybe by picking up an extra shift at work when you could be at home with your kids or missing a school concert for an important client meeting.

You can see that life often provides us with opportunities to test our core values, and we get to decide how we are best living into them. Maybe the client meeting is essential be able to reach a certain income goal to facilitate a much-needed family vacation.

Only by identifying and exploring our core values can we know how best to make difficult decisions. Once you have a handle on your core values, we can return to the idea of setting boundaries on our time, energy, money and more. Let your core values guide how you respond to asks, and know that you are making the correct decision to support your goals and vision. It will take practice to use your core values as a guide, but it gets easier over time.

Burnout is such a hot topic right now because so many people are feeling overwhelmed and seeing support and a way to lighten the load. Take this blog post as a sign that you are not alone. I encourage you to seek support from friends, family, spiritual groups, or professionals as needed. Preventing and managing burnout is a topic much larger than one blog post, but I encourage you to complete this as a first step towards management.

About Katy

I work as an acute care occupational therapist in Northern Colorado and also own an occupational therapy private practice specializing in pain management. I earned my Master’s in Occupational Therapy from Colorado State University, where I was honored to receive the distinction of Outstanding Grad Student of the Class of 2022 from the College of Health and Human Services. 

Before starting my career as an occupational therapist, I served in the United States Coast Guard. An injury and my subsequent rehabilitation sparked my interest in occupational therapy and fueled my passion for advocating a biopsychosocial approach to pain management combined with an occupation-based approach.

 I had the opportunity to present at the Colorado State Association Annual Conference in both 2023 and 2024. I was also selected from a wide pool of applicants to speak at the UCHealth 2024 Symposium, where I shared with fellow therapy practitioners and other medical professionals the value of OT in pain management and the biopsychosocial model of pain.

Connect With Katy:

www.empoweredpathot.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katy-owens-ot/

Why Automating Your Digital Marketing Will Make Your Vacation More Relaxing

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Vacation and road trip season is one of the best times of year here in the Northern Hemisphere.  The smell of the campfires, the taste of the s’mores, the fresh mountain air, your toes in the warm sand, or the feel of the linen sheets at your 5-star resort.  As an independent business owner, you want to experience all of the luxuries of summer as well. You don’t want to be typing away at your desk or on your phone to make sure that you get that day’s digital marketing post up and out to the world.

You’d rather be out and about seeing the sights, but you still have a business to market. This post is for all the DIYers of their companies digital marketing presence.  To really enjoy yourself and get away to the places where the wifi is weak, you need to plan your content in advance, schedule it, and use a platform that will automatically post on your behalf.

To make this feat attainable, you need to think about your content in advance. One thing that I recommend is making a stop at the dollar store and purchase one of their monthly calendars.  Each month decide on a theme and post content that is relevant to that theme. At my networking event talks and one-on-one coaching sessions, I get told a version of this all of the time, “I just don’t know what to write. I write something then delete it, I write it again, and then I delete it, I do this three times, and then I just get so frustrated that I don’t post at all.”

Planning a monthly theme will help you not only when you want to automate to go on vacation but will keep your entrepreneur brain sane not only during your DIY marketing time but when you are also ready to scale and hire out to someone like me.

A few of my favorite Instagram scheduling and posting apps:

Later  (Free Up to 30 Posts) Later is excellent because it will automatically resize the photo when it is automatically posting on your behalf.  I have worked with professional photographers and clients whose photo content comes directly from a professional photographer, and they say this aspect of it has been a lifesaver.  Later will also allow you to publish to Stories, Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook.

Planoly  (Free Up to 30 posts)  Planoly is excellent if you are into your entire feed having an individual feel. The benefit to Planoly is when you plug individual photos in you will see how they will look in the entirety of your feed.  My word of caution on this is Planoly will not resize the picture for you when it automatically posts, in other words, it just won’t publish your photo at all if it is out of proportion. Planoly will only allow you to post to your stories and your grid.

Tailwind (Free 30 days then $15/month)  Tailwind is more of a planning and scheduling platform for Pinterest; however, you are also able to schedule and post to your Instagram.  

By planning ahead, scheduling and automating the publication of your digital marketing posts you will have the peace of mind to enjoy that vacation or the weekend off that you have worked so hard to earn.


The Power of Location Tags

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I am fresh off of Social Media Week Austin, and my head is full of ideas and information to pass along to you friends.  I have so many things to share with all of you in the next few weeks. However today I wanted to talk about how vital adding a location to your Instagram post is and how it will help you in the algorithm because we all want help in the algorithm right?

Let's begin with the way people search for information which is as follows:

1. Google

2. YouTube

3. Social Media

When I booked my travel to Austin for social media week, I decided to experiment for the sake of content and education. All of the things that I was going to do with my downtime in Austin was going to be determined by posts I had seen or were sent to me solely on Instagram.  I set up the  Austin Collection, and anytime I searched and found photos of things I wanted to eat, drink or experience I saved it to the group. 

The thing is by now we know that the Instagram Algorithm LOVES it when you are engaged and social in posts. Saving posts and sending posts to other people tells the algorithm that actual photo is interesting, and when said photo starts to get a bunch of saves and sends the algorithm starts boosting that post and account up to potentially appear on the elusive EXPLORE page. 

There are plenty of reasons why photos get saved and sent because they are beautiful, the caption speaks to the person reading it, or you know some other petty reason. What will help you so much if you have a stunning image along with a caption that speaks to someone is if you correctly tag the photo. People are now typing into the search bar the locations of places they are traveling to for ideas of things to do when they get there. Haven't you noticed when you'd been out and about that location with high numbers of social media posts attached to them are usually very busy? Location tagging is yet another form of word of mouth advertising.

As a business account, we naturally want as many eyes to find out photos that can, and we should be using every resource available to us to achieve this goal. Case and point location tagging your posts when you are out and about.  When I am about to try out a new place I tend to go straight to social media and check the geotag and any hashtags that revolve around an area I am about to visit. I love doing this for two reasons:

1. When I have saved a post and the geotag has the address that automatically opens up in my maps and allows me to navigate to it.

2. I am nosy, and I want to know what it looks like, how others perceive the place, I want to know if the area cares about how others are "advertising" for them and how they are "advertising" themselves.  By doing this, I have had my fair share of experiences of walking into a beautiful restaurant or shop and not having the most fantastic food, or experience that 100's of foodies or influencers posts said was terrific. 

 

While I was searching the Austin geotag this renovated airstream came up along with the person talking about how this was one of the most exceptional Air BNB experiences they had. I noticed that the airstream had its hashtag, so I began looking at all of the posts attached to it, and after reading a few more posts I moved over to Air BNB to see if it was available. If you are someplace that you think is amazing or you just took a really dope photo, make sure that you geotag and tag the place in the post. Your audience wants to know what you like, and you never know who is researching, saving and sharing posts for a trip or searching of ideas for new things to do in their town. 

4 Things Every Boss Should Be Doing Before 8am

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Survey: Who here sets their alarm for 30 minutes before they absolutely need to get out of bed then proceeds to hit snooze at least 3 times? Not going to lie, I used to be guilty of this exact move.  Then one day I just realized that I can either continue to lay in this comfy cozy bed and dream about how I want my life to turn out or I can get up, put some pants on, do the work and make my dream life happen. Obviously I chose the later. Everyday I wake up around 5:30am yes even on "weekends" and I do the same routine to get my brain ready to make shit happen. Here's what I do.

Drink Water

First thing I get out of bed and drink a huge glass of water, because after being asleep your body and most importantly your brain is thirsty. Your brain requires water to function and to make shit happen properly, you may think coffee first but nope water first then coffee.

Mediate

 I mean seriously if this is something big time businesswomen like Oprah swears by I'm going to try and do it.  Also, not going to lie, meditating takes work y'all. Quieting your brain first thing in the morning when you are thinking of all the things you need to accomplish that day is tough.  Here's the thing though mediation is like the anti aging regime for the brain. It helps curb mind-wandering, is an effective anti-depressant and anti-anxiety treatment, increases focus and more. When it comes to meditation, anything helps, whether it's only five minutes or as long as an hour. I'm still training myself to do this and I'm only up to 15 minutes, I'm working my way to 30 minutes. 

Eat Breakfast

My nutritionist wants me to eat 30 grams of protein 30 minutes within waking, and here's why.  While you sleep, your body is doing a ton of maintenance, and part of that means it dips into your fat stores. When you give your body sugar in the morning, it’ll burn the sugar. Eating protein right away after waking  has been shown to increase energy levels throughout the day, reduce snacking and even improve short-term memory.

Make a list

I'm a big calendar blocker, meaning that I block out sets of times for certain tasks but also while  eating my breakfast and scrolling my feeds I brain dump all the things that have come into my mind. This is an awful way to make a list for the day, so I take my brain dump and narrow it down to things that need or can  be achieved that day. 

Then I drink the coffee, fire up my computer and begin kicking ass for the day.