Something I hear way too often from my fellow beauty biz practitioners is that they are feeling overwhelmed and overworked, and they don’t know what to do about it.

What you are feeling is normal for service providers, especially after particularly busy times in the industry.

Skin care professionals tend to operate in one of two modes:

1. Service
or

2. Sacrifice.

Service mode is giving to others in a generous way. In service mode, you’re giving, giving, giving. It feels joyful to go out of your way for your family, friends and clients. It feels like walking on sunshine, and everyone loves you!

However, if you neglect your needs for very long while deeply serving others, it is easy to slip from service mode into sacrifice mode.

What is Sacrifice mode?

Sacrifice mode is that frustrating place, where you feel overwhelmed, overworked and just generally frazzled. It’s chaos. Your to-do list never ends and some days you don’t feel like you’ve been able to check a single thing off. Once you’ve entered sacrifice mode, if someone approaches you and wants or needs something from you, you just want to shut down or run away.

Burnout happens when you live in sacrifice mode for too long.

So what can you do?

How do you get yourself out of this awful place when your work is being in service to others all the time?

Is it even possible?

Yes! I have some tips below that will help you…

The first step to feeling centered, balanced and soulful again is to recognize what causes you to operate from sacrifice mode. You have to pay attention to notice what is triggering you. You may need to carry around a little notebook to jot things down in when you feel it happening. Alternately, the voice recorder on your phone can let you leave a quick little note to yourself.

Once you are aware of what causes you to feel the pressure that ultimately leads to burnout, you must commit to the following:

1. Give yourself a 24-hour period to vent, be a victim, complain and be cranky.

2. Compile the list of all the things that made you feel depleted and frazzled.

3. At the end of the 24-hour period, move on. Allow yourself to feel gratitude for the awareness the experiences have given you. Then, let it go and start to take care of yourself.

4. Begin to remove-and-replace.

In this step, you’ll start to replace your stressors with things that bring you joy instead.

Look at your compiled list and choose three things that triggered you. List them out:

1._________________________________
2._________________________________
3._________________________________

Now think about three joy-filled things that you can use to replace those stressors.

1._________________________________
2._________________________________
3._________________________________

For this to work right, these replacements must be viewed as something you deserve. No feelings of guilt are allowed. This is about pure indulgence, and everyone is worthy of these moments – even you.

This content was originally created for Skin, Inc. Magazine.