Day 1: Unwrapping the 12 Days of Burnout Breakthrough
Burnout
Burnout is a sneaky adversary—it doesn’t announce itself with fanfare but creeps in silently, taking a toll on our emotional, physical, and mental well-being. If you’ve ever felt like you’re running on empty, constantly stressed, or wondering why your dream job no longer excites you, you’re not alone. Burnout is more than just being tired; it’s a state of exhaustion caused by prolonged stress.
In the first episode of the 12 Days of Holiday Burnout Breakthrough, we dove into this important topic. Let’s explore the key takeaways and practical insights to help you identify and combat burnout, whether in your workplace or your personal life.
Watch today’s episode here:
Listen on Kathie’s Coaching Podcast Here:
What Is Burnout?
Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged stress. Unlike temporary fatigue, burnout doesn’t go away after a good night’s sleep. It builds over time, often linked to environments that demand too much without offering enough support or reward.
Kathie shared her personal story of realizing she was burned out only after leaving a toxic workplace. Despite loving her role as a corporate wellness coach, the lack of recognition, support, and leadership development created a toxic flow restrictor—stifling her passion and leading to anxiety and exhaustion. Watch the video now!
The Workplace Burnout Cycle
The Workplace Burnout Cycle
A toxic workplace often fuels burnout in subtle but pervasive ways:
Lack of Leadership Development: Putting individuals into leadership roles without proper training or development creates frustration and failure—for both leaders and their teams. This stifles growth and increases stress across the board.
No Recognition or Rewards: Failing to acknowledge employees’ efforts and contributions undermines morale and depletes motivation.
Toxic Behaviors: Bullying, poor communication, and lack of emotional intelligence create ripple effects that can damage an entire team’s well-being.
Kathie emphasizes the importance of structure and development within organizations to break this cycle. Leadership training, emotional intelligence, and open communication are not optional; they are essential for fostering a healthy workplace culture.
Physical, Mental and Emotional Wellness
The Role of Physical, Mental, and Emotional Wellness
Burnout isn’t just a mental health issue—it affects every aspect of your well-being:
Physical Health: Regular exercise and movement combat physical fatigue and boost energy levels.
Mental Health: Open conversations and support systems are crucial. Leaders and team members must feel seen, heard, and supported.
Emotional Health: Emotional intelligence is the foundation of healthy relationships at work. Addressing emotions openly helps prevent misunderstandings and toxic behaviors.
Kathie’s approach to combating burnout integrates these dimensions through holistic corporate wellness programs, which she’ll unpack further in the coming episodes.
Signs You Might Be Burned Out
Signs You Might Be Burned Out
Burnout manifests differently for everyone, but some common signs include:
Chronic fatigue and low energy
Feeling unmotivated or disengaged
Increased anxiety or irritability
Difficulty concentrating or completing tasks
Physical symptoms like headaches or sleep disturbances
If you recognize these signs, don’t ignore them. The first step to recovery is awareness.
Why This Matters
Why This Matters
Kathie’s mission is clear: to end toxic workplace culture through holistic wellness programs. Burnout isn’t just a personal issue—it impacts organizational success. Companies with healthy cultures attract and retain top talent, foster productivity, and create environments where employees thrive.
The 12 Days of Burnout Breakthrough is more than a series—it’s a toolkit to help you and your workplace prevent and heal from burnout. From expert insights to actionable strategies, each episode will provide a pathway to a healthier, happier work life.
Your CTA Burnout
Your Call to Action
Here’s your first assignment: Reflect on your own life and work. Are you experiencing signs of burnout? What about your workplace—does it support or hinder your well-being?
Over the next 12 days, Kathie will explore practical steps to address burnout, featuring expert interviews and actionable strategies. Stay tuned for Day 2, where we’ll dig deeper into preventing burnout and building resilient teams.
Let’s make work a place you want to be. Because, as Kathie says, we spend most of our time there—why not make it fun and fulfilling?
Stay connected! Bookmark Kathie’s blog and subscribe to her YouTube channel for updates, free resources, and bonus content to support your journey. Peace out and Namaste!
About the Author:
Kathie Owen is a seasoned corporate wellness consultant, life coach, and former fitness and wellness director with over two decades of experience in creating healthier, happier workplaces. With a psychology degree from the University of Houston and a passion for motivation, Kathie has dedicated her career to ending toxic workplace cultures through holistic wellness programs that truly make a difference.
Kathie Owen, Corporate Wellness Consultant since 2012 (Our Story)
Having worked in both corporate and fitness environments, Kathie blends her expertise in employee engagement, leadership development, physical health, and mental well-being to design programs that prevent burnout and inspire thriving teams. She’s been a certified fitness trainer since 2002 and has personally coached hundreds of individuals to reach their wellness goals. Now, she’s on a mission to share her strategies with companies that value their people.
Through her 12 Days of Burnout Breakthrough series, Kathie combines personal stories, expert insights, and practical tips to help you recognize, prevent, and heal from burnout. Her goal? To show you how a little bit of wellness can transform not only your workplace but also your life.
When she’s not leading workshops, coaching aspiring wellness professionals, or writing her next blog post, you’ll find Kathie walking her dog Rusty, diving into her favorite self-development books, or dreaming up her next big idea to inspire and uplift others.
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Transcript:
Hello, hello, and welcome to Kathie's Coaching Podcast. Today, we're going to talk about the 12 Days of Burnout Breakthrough. And today is day number one. Why did I decide to do this? I realized I was burnt out. After I had been doing a job that I absolutely loved, but actually got validated that I was burned out after I left this company. Because what happened was, I was doing exactly what I love, but I wasn't getting rewarded. And how did I find that out? Just like you're finding out today, there's different signs of burnout and let's define burnout first of all. Burnout is more than just feeling tired. It is a state Of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion due to prolonged stress. And over the next 12 days or 12 episodes here on Kathie's Coaching Podcast and on my YouTube channel, we're going to talk about burnout. But burnout can be so many different things as you're going to find out. And And it's kind of hard to identify, but if you found this video and you're watching today, I want you to sit back and relax and listen and understand that there's many different signs of burnout. But it's physical, it's mental, it's emotional exhaustion due to prolonged stress. So for me, I was in a workplace that was actually toxic and I was trying to work against that. That is not in flow. It was actually a flow restrictor. It was stopping me from accomplishing my goals. And it caused me major anxiety. I was being bullied by my manager and it was being enabled by the higher ups. and the departments inside the company. And so, I thought I was doing a good thing. I was going above and beyond, doing more than just my job, which they call me just a fitness instructor, but I'm a corporate wellness consultant and coach. I teach people how to do a corporate wellness program. And I am really good at what I do, but they didn't want that. So it was almost like I was working with a bad customer, but I was in the trenches with the employees and saw what was going on inside the company. There was burnout because there was no structure in their training and development. What do I mean by this? They put people in leadership positions and just let them sit there for years and years and years and that titled them as a great leader, when in fact they were not. Or they would put somebody in a leadership position and not even train them and expect them to understand. Both of those people would experience burnout because there was no development inside the company. That's just one piece of the puzzle that I teach as a corporate wellness professional. Because there's also physical burnout. We need exercise. That is probably my forte because I've been a personal trainer since 2002. I understand fitness. I understand how it works in the body and how it helps. And during these next lessons, you're going to hear other experts, not just me, talking about the different aspects of physical health that attribute or help prevent and treat burnout. Then we have the mental and the emotional state. And mental health is super important to discuss in the workplace. We want to understand how people are doing. We don't want to tell them how to do things. We want to help them and better them. That's where the leadership development comes in. And I'm going to be interviewing an expert leadership coach and he's going to give you some ways that leaders actually get burned out and this affects the entire team. What happens is there's a ripple effect and that ripple effect can either be positive or negative. It depends on how you're doing this inside the company, how you're viewing mental health. Not talking about it or stuffing it under the table and expecting different results is not going to work. Dealing with the emotions is also important when it comes to burnout. Emotional intelligence is is imperative to just talk about, keep it an open conversation, because when somebody's not emotionally intelligent, they're going to bully others. They're going to disrespect others because they don't understand what's going on. In my case, I'm I was being bullied for trying to better the workplace. They didn't want that. That I was challenging the status quo. They wanted to stay that way. And that's an old way of thinking. In fact, assessments is the best way to understand the temperature of your team. And I was trying to get them to do assessments of the team to understand where they were feeling. Physical. Mental, emotional, burnout. Because when you understand those, you can start to work on them. Instead of putting a band aid on a bleeding, injury, which will never work because it will never heal. It'll just keep bleeding until you bleed to death. And we don't want to do that. We want to fix it. At least start. Start slow, start easy, and make it. So on these next 12 days, the 12 days of holidays, starting December 1st through December 12th, it's not a Christmas thing. It's an everyday thing. So depending on when you watch this, it doesn't matter. There's 12 different episodes. on burnout with different experts coming in to speak to you about how they help prevent burnout. These experts work inside my corporate wellness programs to, we're like a little mastermind of people and we help build healthy, happy teams and we help prevent a toxic workplace culture because now I'm actually on a mission to prevent toxic workplace culture through holistic wellness programs. So I want you to pay attention to these next 12 episodes. I will have a link to the page that includes all of the blog posts for this episode as they come out, as well as I always write a blog post on every episode I do on this channel. And on that blog post, you will find bonus resources that go with today's episode, all for free. All to help you prevent burnout in your own life, even if you work inside a toxic workplace culture, because that's what happened to me. I was doing exactly what I love. I was coaching people, I was helping people who wanted the help. There were those that didn't, and that's fine, but that's going to happen inside any company. But when you start to Build a healthy culture inside your your company. You're going to attract top talent. You're going to retain top talent. You're going to have more productive employees and you're going to have a better environment because we spend most of our time at work. Don't you want it to be fun? I don't know about you but I want it to be fun and I want to be happy and that's what I was striving for. And if they don't want it, Maybe it's time to leave. Maybe it's time to start looking somewhere else. Because there are other options. And go where you're wanted. Go where you're recognized. Go where you're rewarded. Because recognition and rewards is also a part of a healthy, happy life. Culture. All right, that's my episode for today. I trust that you found it helpful. Please stay tuned for our 12 days of holiday burnout breakthrough and I can't wait to see you tomorrow on the next episode. All right, that's my episode for today and until next time, I will see you next time. Peace out and Namaste.
