Burnout to Balance with Hannah Brencher Episode 321

Burnout to Balance

Today, we are with one of my favorite smart girls- Hannah Brencher. She is a bestselling author, speaker, and course creator. She’s back on the show and sharing the behind-the-scenes you won’t get anywhere else. 

Hannah Brencher is the founder of More Love Letters (leaving letters for strangers), a TED speaker, an entrepreneur, an author, and an online educator. 

Hannah teaches people to establish important disciplines through her fantastic online courses and doesn’t shy away from tough topics like mental illness. 

In her new book, The Unplugged Hours: Cultivating a Life of Presence in a Digitally Connected World, Hannah demonstrates how powering down changed her entire life. The Unplugged Hours gives you the practical ideas and spiritual inspiration you need to stop scrolling and start living.

What Burnout Looked Like For Hannah

Hannah shares that burnout for her happened slowly over time without her realizing it. She said it was in 2021 when she started to unplug and power down, and started to turn off her phone more intentionally. She felt better and more at peace when she wasn’t online. And social media wasn’t fun for her anymore and she always wanted it to be fun. 

She was also feeling stressed all the time, anxious, and felt like she wasn’t giving her best to the people she needed to give her best to. So, when she was on her phone, she was giving her best to those online, but then her loved ones were receiving scraps and that was a hard shift she had to make. 

How to Balance Unplugging to Help with Burnout

Hannah shares how unplugging from her home changed her. She said it started around her birthday because she treats her birthday like a second new year and she was thinking about her goals and what she wanted to accomplish within the next year. But this particular birthday, she was feeling worn out and a little burnt out, and then she felt a nudge to turn off her phone. 

And it wasn’t a feeling of ‘turn off your phone for the day.’ It was – this is what the next year is going to be about. So, she thought it was going to be a challenge like she was going to try to turn off her phone for 1000 hours. She had no idea that she was going to get her life back and had not realized how her life was actually taken from her. And now she feels like she’s back to the person she was 10 years ago! 

Advice For Creating Courses 

Since Hannah mentioned having to make shifts in her life so I asked her about her business and the shifts she had to make there. One of the biggest changes was her courses – she said that she started teaching live classes in 2015, but in 2020, with the pandemic, she started creating online courses because she wanted to stay home with her daughter. 

She said that anyone creating online courses should invest in some courses first to learn what they like and what they don’t like and what their learning approach is. And don’t be afraid to go outside of the box and create modules or creates that you haven’t seen before. Don’t be afraid to try new things to see if they work or maybe don’t work, but that’s the fun of learning. 

Alright, Hannah will be back in the fall to discuss her new book on unplugging and burnout, but now it’s time for some coaching. 

My Number One Tip for Success 

This is something that some people might not like what I’m going to say, but success in life is not just about being smart or being naturally talented. In fact, I don’t think it has that much to do with it to begin with. Lots of geniuses don’t do anything with their lives, but people who consider themselves pretty average or mediocre are lapping them because of their work ethic and because they have a little bit of grit. What a lot of people lack in genetic genius, they made up for it in grit. Seriously, I want you to remember this phrase, “grip lapse genius.” Whatever you lack you can work around it because the number one thing you need for success on top of grit is getting the support you need. 

It’s super important that you have the help you need to get where you want to go. Whether it’s a coach, a mentor, or a group of like-minded women. Whatever it is, I want you to go for it, but you need help going for it. If you’re trying to do it alone, it’s going to be 10x as hard. All successful people have coaches, executives, entrepreneurs, actors, athletes, writers, people who are just super healthy and you’re like, they must be born that way. No, they probably have a coach working with them on every little thing. So remember, for success, you need grit and support! 

Listen or Watch now:

iTunes.

Spotify.

YouTube.

Favorite Quotes: 

“Little by little, you change and you develop, but you have to be really careful that you don’t change and develop into what you think other people want you to be.”

(9:16 audio)

“Knowing your readers and your audience and knowing what they want is so critical because you have this opportunity to serve them.”

(19:24 audio)

“Be willing to experiment. It is okay to feel nervous and afraid, it means you care. It would be more problematic if you felt nothing at all.”

(21:32 audio )

“Create before you consume.”

(26:13 audio)

“Look for the one rather than looking for the masses.”

(29:30 audio)

Links to Great Things We Discussed:

• Hannah Brencher Website
• Hannah Brencher Instagram
• The Unplugged Hours: Cultivating a Life of Presence in a Digitally Connected World
• Catfish
• Oppenheimer
• Mulan
• Homer
• Notion
• The Fall Guy
• La La Land
• Apply for Alli’s Free Coaching
• Create a Course
• Alli on YouTube
• Remaining You While Raising Them

Order your copy of Remaining You While Raising Them here.

Hope you loved this episode!  Be sure to subscribe in iTunes and slap some stars on a review! 🙂

xo,

Alli