Healing From Burnout & Creating My Dream Life

Fun fact: I love Mondays now.

I used to dread them, knowing how busy I would be, and by Wednesday I would be wishing it were the weekend… only to then spend the weekend convincing myself not to work. But my mind was in survival mode and couldn't stop.

It has taken three years for me to heal so much of the damage that mindset had on me. By default, nothing was ever enough, or, to plainly say it, nothing I did ever felt like it was satisfying.

Lack of fulfillment always led me to the grand crash out of feeling tapped-out. Sound familiar?

Three Years of Unlearning What Burnout Taught Me

Healing from burnout wasn't gained by one particular method or moment. It involved three years of slowly unlearning a mindset that told me rest had to be earned.

It's not lost on me that I reached major milestones in creating my dream lifestyle over the past two years. I work for myself, make my own schedule, and if a project doesn't align with my values any longer, I can gracefully bow out of that contract and open up space for new clients to life coach.

All because I built this. A schedule where I can be more free and heart-centered, leaving room for things that are important to me throughout the day and not feel constant pressure to climb a ladder while still striving for success.

I can, without a doubt, offer my time to help someone who needs support so they can rise up — no strings attached.

Most days, I coach at drug and alcohol rehabs all over Los Angeles, and I also have the privilege to work with one-on-one clients online, and take on pro-bono cases based on what my free-time looks like.

This fills me up. So when I get to Mondays, I message the people on my heart I get to work with, lead thoughtful conversations, sit with people to plan how they can bring their visions to life, and still get to have tons of healthy time for me now.

I wanted to share this because all weekend I was actively working on NOT WORKING.

Even though I healed a lot of my corporate mindset, I had to remind myself, "This was the point." I wanted to let go and just enjoy nothingness, guilt- and anxiety-free, FOR ME.

So… I spent a copious amount of hours lying on my living room carpet with a bunch of pillows and two dogs tugging at me while I read and wrote for kicks. Got up to go to a coffee rave. I hosted a dinner and karaoke night and laughed till it hurt. I chose not to prioritize organizing the millions of piles of things I know I need to get done hidden throughout my apartment to cope with the need to be productive.

I simply, deliciously, just enjoyed that I was living the way I desperately prayed I would be able to three years ago before I was laid off from my job and diagnosed with cancer two weeks later.

This is what it was all for. The little moments I can just enjoy living on my own terms and allow myself to be excited for what's to come.

What Actually Changed

None of this happened by accident. I didn't wake up loving Mondays — I built a relationship with time where Mondays could be loved. Piece by piece, boundary by boundary, until the version of me who used to dread the week became someone who opens up her computer with excitement instead of dread.

If you're wondering what healing from burnout actually looked like in practice, it wasn't one big leap. It was a handful of decisions, repeated until they became part of my natural thought process:

1. I stopped taking every client who came my way, and started choosing the ones who felt aligned — even when that meant fewer contracts for a while.

2. I built a schedule around energy, not obligation, so pro-bono work and passion projects had real room instead of getting squeezed into leftover hours.

3. I let rest be unproductive on purpose — no journaling, no optimizing, no proving it was "worth it" after the fact.

4. And I kept practicing believing there was enough time, even on the days it didn't feel true yet.

It's all about repetition. I made the decisions above, one at a time, until I allowed myself to believe the truth about what I wanted to be consuming my time and mind.

That I'm great at what I do, I love it, and my quality of life doesn't have to be compromised by my need to feel fulfilled by work.

If you've spent years measuring your worth by what you produce, you need to focus on unlearning that — reframing what deserves your time, and letting the small moments count without needing to earn them first.

Join me in the Time Romance Challenge for 30 days — and see what a Monday can feel like on the other side of this.

JOIN THE CHALLENGE