Sustainable Work-Life Balance with Nikole Stanfield

Today's guest is Nikole Stanfield, intuition coach whose goal is to help entrepreneurs reach a work-life balance that allows them to work through, and even avoid, burnout.

Nikole realized she had to change when even after making herself take a week off from working, she didn't feel any better. She was irritable, anxious, distracted, constantly working, and unable to enjoy the lifestyle she was trying to create for herself.

Burnout can look different for different people, but you are not alone.  The key is learning to listen to your body and do what you need, giving yourself permission to take care of yourself.

Connect with Nikole and take her Balance Quiz on her website: https://www.myintuitioncoach.com/balancequiz/

Connect with Magic:

A Magical Life Podcast on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amagicallifepodcast/

On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wholisticnaturalhealth/

Online: https://wholisticnaturalhealth.com.au

A Subito Media production

Transcript

Magic Barclay: 1:00

Welcome back to a magical life. I'm your host magic Barclay. And today I'm joined by Nicole Stanfield and Nicole is talking to us today about sustainable work life balance. Now, you know, sustainable is one of my favorite words. I can't wait for this episode. Nicole has since 2014 owned her own business and worked to improve herself through personal development. After personally experiencing burnout, she now helps successful entrepreneurs who struggled to take time away from their business to create a sustainable work life balance. You can learn more about her@wwwdotmyintuitioncoach.com. Welcome Nicole. I'm

Nikole Stanfield: 1:47

so excited to be here. Thank you for having me magic.

Magic Barclay: 1:50

Absolute pleasure. Now sustainable is one of my favorite words, but tell us a bit about your personal journey to finding the need for this sustainable work life balance.

Nikole Stanfield: 2:05

Absolutely. So, I'll tell my story, but real quick, before I share that if anybody is listening to this and they're like work life balance, that's a fraud that doesn't exist. Those are lies. Um, that's fine. You can have that judgment. No problem. Um, I get sometimes some. intense responses from people thinking that work life balance means that you have to steal from one area of your life in order to take care of the other one. And I don't think it has to look like. But I used to think it had to look like that. So when I first started as an entrepreneur, I worked really hard and I made my financial goals and I met them and that was great. And it was like, this is, this is where I wanted to be. But I found that I didn't have. Very much of the freedom that we look for as entrepreneurs and the reason we start our own business or the reason that we're working for ourselves, et cetera. And so I thought, oh, okay. I need to work harder. I need to, do more so that then I can make more money. So then I could, whatever that is, fill that in. Right. And. What ended up happening is that because I wanted to be able to have that freedom, I would work more and then I would have, I wouldn't have time for like personal things. So I would miss them. I would skip them. I would forget about them if they weren't in my calendar, I just blow right by them and then I'd feel guilty. So what would I do? I would work more because I felt bad because I wasn't doing the things I said that I wanted to be doing and having that free time. So how this showed up for me, and I didn't realize that I was headed towards burnout. Until like six months in, but when it first started, I was like, we would finish a project. And instead of being excited that the project was finished and feeling a sense of pride and accomplishment, I would just feel really down and being, uh, saying that the client, they won't like it they'll find problems with it. It won't be good enough, et cetera. That's what I was saying in my. And then it progressed and it got to a point where about six months later, I started noticing some things such as I was always angry. I was frustrated. I couldn't sit in a meeting. I would be on a zoom call. And then afterwards I'd have to like, just have this really. Like almost yelling Fest where all the things that frustrated me, I just couldn't handle it. I'd get a client email and I just have to rage quit for 15 minutes afterwards because they were being needy or whatever it was. And I. I as a marketer, it's really important to be creative. And I just felt like my creative, well dried up. I had nothing left to give, I couldn't solve a problem. I couldn't provide an opportunity or solution or an idea or anything. And that was really scary because that's been a part of my identity for so long. And then the other part, the other area that I really noticed things changed was that I. I didn't realize this at the time, looking back, I was really addicted to being busy. So I was running around all the time. I would fill up my calendar with meetings to the point where if I saw someone randomly, I couldn't say, Hey, Let me talk to you for 15 minutes or let me grab a coffee or let me take a break or grab lunch. I was booked right on top of each other. And so I was running from one thing to the next. And so my energy just got to the point where I didn't care about. A lot of things and I would try to work and I could work like 15 minutes and then I'd need to take an hour long break just to recover from working for 15 minutes, which is very strange because I've been very motivated and always a go getter and very focused on what do I want and what I'm achieving and moving forward. And so to be in a place where I was. Numb. I didn't have anything to give. I would go through my week and I would during the weekend, I would just sit there. I didn't wanna do anything. I didn't wanna go anywhere. I didn't want to engage. I didn't care about cleaning the house or cooking dinner, anything like that. I call that work week sickness where it's, I wasn't sick, but my energy was so low. I almost felt like I was recovering from something. And so I decided the way to solve this which I laugh because, um, looking back at. This wasn't the solution, but I thought I could heal myself in a week. So after four years of running my own business and not taking any vacations, I took a week off, uh, to solve everything. And it didn't, which is why I laugh. and I basically spent that week sitting on the couch. and not really caring about very much as struggling to go to the store to go and get food. So as I was experiencing this burnout and this overwhelm and trying to figure out what was going on, I realized that there were some toxic things in my life and that. I wasn't showing up very authentically. That was a really hard moment to realize that I wasn't being honest with myself. I wasn't enjoying the work that I was doing some of the work that I was doing, but I wasn't being honest about it because that was my biggest client. That was where I was getting the most amount of money. So I was just clinging to that. Clients so hard because I was terrified of what would happen if I let go. And if I walked away and I would never make that much money again and, and all those things, and I had to come to a decision about a couple weeks after I took my, my one week. And I realized that. It was just too toxic. And then I had to step away, even though it was scary and it was hard. And I didn't know it was gonna happen to my business. And I lost like$20,000 and I took a huge pay cut. And luckily my husband was on board. And so we figured out how to survive. With a different paradigm. And I took some additional time for myself. And during that time I did some things to help heal myself. And so part of that was physical exercise, having something that would be a consistent way of getting exercise. I gave myself permission to take naps when I wanted to. I gave myself permission to listen to what, how I was feeling, what my needs were, where I was at. If I was low, that was okay. If I had energy, I didn't have to go out and do 12 things because I hadn't done them the day before I could say, okay, I have energy. And, but I'm gonna focus on doing these three things, whatever that looked like. I think one of the biggest shifts for me, Was meditation. And I had a lot of judgment towards mindfulness meditation when I first heard about it and just meditation in general, but the science behind mindfulness helps shift your brain from being always. That aggressive RA anger reactive side, which is where a lot of my anger is coming from. And it helps teach neurons and shift that so that you can be reflective and take that pause. It's that beat where you're in a meeting and someone says something and you just it's always that person who says that frustrating thing. And instead of being like, you can't even handle it, you have to leave the meeting. You can kind of take a beat and be like, It's just that person, or you can take a beat and then, then engage in a conversation and say, I think that it could look different. So those were the big things that stood out to me. And then as I healed myself and built up better. Habits, um, better balance with my business. Then I took those core concepts and that is what I teach other entrepreneurs now. So that then they don't have to get to that point of almost shut down burnout where they're like, am I gonna lose my business? And that's a terrifying and really scary place to be. So I'm like the. If you're headed down that hill right now, and you're listening to this, I'm like the ladder to help you get to the other side. So you don't have to go down to that. Shut down, scary burnout place at the very bottom of the hill.

Magic Barclay: 10:46

Fantastic. Now, Nicole, I always ask my guests the same three questions and everyone gives me such an array of answers. I find it absolutely fascinating. So here comes your first one and that. What can your expertise do to accelerate health? Be it physical, emotional, or spiritual.

Nikole Stanfield: 11:10

So I think that when we're talking about health, There are multiple aspects of it. Sometimes I need more of the physical health. Sometimes I need more emotional health. One of the parts of burnout that showed up for me is that I wasn't listening to my emotions and I was really taking that and just pushing through, um, continuing to push on, not acknowledging some of that. And then it kind of just. Came out and at one time, and I didn't have control, I didn't feel like I had control over it. So what I, why I tried to share my story and how it felt and what I experienced is because I want people to know that they're not alone and that. It can look a lot of different ways and you could be having a small amount of burnout. Like we all feel burnout after the holidays with our families, right. I can be burned out from my family or, uh, when there are times, uh, during finals week, you can be burned out with school or learning or cramming things in your brain, whatever that looks like for you. But I just want to make sure that they know that they're not alone. You're not isolated. There are ways that you can get support to help build whatever area that you need that support in.

Magic Barclay: 12:31

For sure. Always reach out if you need help. It's not a weakness to say that you do need a, a leg up or a hand. Now we talk. Yeah. We talk about wealth here. And so what would be your top three tips to creating wealth? Not just the financial, but personal wealth and emotional wealth. I know that you love self development. So how do you create that wealth?

Nikole Stanfield: 13:01

I think, as you mentioned, a lot of times we focus wealth, we think financial, and I'm really glad that you brought in other components of wealth. So my first thing is that I believe you have to be able to enjoy your success. So if you're always running around and creating more money, more opportunities, whatever that looks like for you, but you're never taking that time to enjoy it. Then why are you creating it? What's the point, what are we accomplishing? What are we working towards? So that can look like a celebration of something that you've accomplished. That can be success. It's moving you forward. And I feel like wealth can help you having an understanding of the wealth that you already have as you continue to grow more is incredibly important. the second thing. I think that wealth includes taking care of yourself and your needs. So if you're sacrificing your mental health or your physical health in order to make lots of money, like I, I met someone who in the nineties, they were selling all these things, phone selling. And they were making$10,000 a month, crazy amounts of money. And, and then the, the bubble burst, and they said, looking back, they were at their desk all day long. They were doing crazy things to keep going energy, drinks, stuff like that. And so that is, I would consider not very wealthy environment to be in. And so I believe that to create that wealth, you need to be able to also experience it by taking care of yourself and your needs. And then third wealth to me means being able to take time off so you can get support from others. So if you're once again, very successful and, uh, you're changed to your desk all the time, or you're always working and you're never having that downtime, I believe that. Means that if you get to take freedoms, you get to have downtime. You get to have free time, you time, whatever that looks like for you. It doesn't have to have a certain title, but just the opportunity to have that instead of that, I always have to be doing or busy or, or whatever that looks like. Wealth means that it is incorporating that free time.

Magic Barclay: 15:35

Couldn't agree more, some fantastic tips there, listeners. Now, Nicole, if you've ever battled your weight, what was the trigger to lose it? And what can you offer the listeners on their weight loss journey, particularly around stress, because we know that's a key issue in weight gain and massive weight loss. And as an entrepreneur, you are living an already stressful life.

Nikole Stanfield: 16:01

I am living a stressful life. Oh man. Um, that's a good question. So some of the things that when I started working from home, I did gain some weight, uh, because I was working in my back office and I was more sedentary. So those were things that showed up for me. When that happened, it was not very fun and was like, uh, oh, I need to do something about this. Right. How can I incorporate things into my day that I like to do? That will help me with working on my stress and also with my physical needs and exercise. So I'm, I'm not, I'm gonna be totally transparent and honest. I'm not perfect at this. So please don't hear me say that I'm perfect at these, but I found simple ways to. Take breaks in my day. So that adds balance and do things like taking my dogs for a walk. So that gets me outside. That gets me some exercise and it helps me with some mental. Health, because I get a break from screens and from being in front of my computer and all of that. So those, I do that. And then I also am a Zumba instructor, which is very random, but during COVID I was like, oh my gosh, how am I going to. Continue to take care of myself physically when you can't go to gym. So we can't go out and we can't do all this stuff. And so I, I really love dance. So I was like, I'm gonna become a Zumba instructor, try to teach lessons online. Doesn't really work, but I do it for myself and that's enough or close family that I love. And so finding those really simple ways to incorporate things that you enjoy working through. You're weak as you address stress. And as you address the. Being sedentary that can definitely happen if you're an entrepreneur and you're working from home the last, my last tip. And the last best thing that I probably did for myself was when I bought a desk that is a sit stand desk. So I tried to stand for a portion of my day and then sit for a portion of my day. So I'm not sitting all day and, um, having the negative health impacts from that. And so that helps me manage my. it helps me, do my best to stay healthy. I am moving around more when I'm standing. Those are all good things. Like I say, it's a work in progress, so I'm continuing to work on that. And I think that that is what shows up for a lot of us is that there isn't a magic answer. You have to figure it out for yourself.

Magic Barclay: 18:52

Totally and something I learned working from home was that I had no excuses. If I didn't have something booked in the next 10 minutes, I could go and do a couple of blocks in the sun. Yeah. Like just go for a walk, like that's, you know, so free to be able to have that on your doorstep. Yes. Now we do love freebees here for our listeners and your freebee is on your website, which is capital M for my capital, I for intuition, capital C for coach.com. So my intuition coach.com. What is your freebie?

Nikole Stanfield: 19:33

So I have a balance quiz. It takes about two minutes, two to five minutes, and it gives you an opportunity to see where there are some areas in your life that you could maybe improve some balance or some things that we forget about. They're very simple and it's really quick and easy. And so you can get a gauge on where your balance is at right now. So if you go to my intuition, coach dot. Forward slash balance quiz, then you'll find it there and you can take it. And I share results with you and then give you personalized feedback at the end. Once your results come in.

Magic Barclay: 20:11

That is such a great freebie listeners. Get onto that and help create your sustainable work life balance. Now Nicole can be found on Facebook at my intuition coach. Also Instagram, my intuition coach. On LinkedIn at Nicole Stanfield, that's Nicole with a K and we've said the website, my intuition coach.com. Nicole will be back with us in episode 1 34, telling us about how we can discover that we have time listeners. I hope you enjoyed this episode. 1 33 for now. Thank you for your time. Go forth and create your magical life.