“I am completely burnt out from all of it. Where do I even begin?”
I got this question during a recent Q&A, and it stuck with me – because if you’ve ever felt this way, you know it’s not just overwhelm.
It’s that feeling where you know what you should be doing… but you can’t move. I’ve been there too.
There was a time in my life when I could barely get out of bed. I had to force myself to move. I was completely non-functional. It felt like my mind and my body had just frozen.
Later, I learned there’s actually a name for this: functional freeze. It’s when your brain is still online enough to know what should be happening, but your body stays locked in stillness.
So if this is where you are, this isn’t a motivation problem. It’s your nervous system trying to protect you.
Why “Just Push Through” Doesn’t Work
When you’re completely burnt out, most advice tells you to push harder or take things day by day. But when you’re in that frozen state, even that can feel impossible.
I remember hearing that advice during one of the hardest seasons of my life – and feeling like I was failing because I couldn’t follow it.
At the time, I was a single mom, managing a high-pressure executive role, commuting 20+ hours a week… and grieving the suicide loss of my partner.
There were days I could barely get out of bed. Simple things felt impossible. And yet, my mind was still fully aware of everything I should be doing. That’s what makes burnout so frustrating – you know, but you can’t move.
So when people said “just take it day by day,” I couldn’t. Not because I didn’t want to – but because I physically couldn’t. And as someone who’s always thinking five steps ahead, that scared me. It felt like I was losing momentum.
But what I learned is this: The way out isn’t to push forward. It’s to take a step back – so you can take three steps forward.
What to Do When You’re Completely Burnt Out
When I was in this place, I followed four simple steps that helped me move through it.
1. Create space and accept where you are
The first step is acceptance.
Not in a passive way, but in a way that allows your body to feel safe again.
Your body enters functional freeze for a reason – it’s trying to protect you during intense stress. So the more you fight it, the longer it lasts.
For me, this meant taking time off, sleeping more, and giving myself space to think. Long walks, quiet time, and simply allowing myself to slow down were all part of creating that space.
It wasn’t about doing more. It was about giving my body what it needed to unlock that frozen feeling.
2. Engage your support circle
The second step is asking for support. And this is where a lot of high performers get stuck.
I had to ask for help from multiple places – my job, my family, and the people around me. There were moments where I was so burnt out, I couldn’t even complete simple tasks.
Instead of waiting for someone to offer help, I had to ask for it directly.
This support is temporary. You’re not stepping back forever – you’re creating the space you need to recover so you can move forward again.
3. Shift from future-focused to day by day
When you’re burnt out, being focused on the future creates pressure. So instead, I shifted to something much simpler.
At the start of each day, I asked myself: what would make today a good day?
Not perfect. Not highly productive. Just a little better than yesterday.
Sometimes that meant getting outside, getting extra rest, or having one meaningful conversation. You only need one to three priorities.
That’s what “day by day” is actually supposed to mean – small, incremental improvements, not a full schedule of tasks.
4. Shift your mindset with a simple challenge
The last step is shifting your mindset – but not in a forced way.
When you’re that burnt out, everything feels negative. And being told to “just be grateful” can feel completely inauthentic.
So instead of a gratitude practice, I made it a challenge.
Every morning before getting out of bed, I’d think of three ordinary things I was grateful for. Not big things—simple, everyday things.
Things like having clean laundry, finding something I had lost, or knowing I had support that day.
Over time, something shifted. I started noticing more positive moments throughout the day. My brain stopped focusing only on what was wrong and started seeing what was working.
That’s how you begin to rebuild momentum.
This Isn’t Permanent
If you’re feeling completely burnt out right now, here’s what I want you to know.
This is not a personal failure. It’s neurobiology. Your body is under stress and is responding the way it’s designed to.
When you create space, ask for support, and focus on small daily steps, your energy will come back. Your clarity will come back. And eventually, your ability to think about the future will come back too.
That’s exactly what happened for me.
Ready to Go Deeper?
If this resonated with you, this is exactly what I break down in my book, The 5 Overwhelm Culprits™.
In it, I go deeper into what’s actually driving your overwhelm – and the simple, practical frameworks you can use to move forward, even when life feels like a lot.
If you’re ready to understand what’s keeping you stuck and start taking aligned action again, you can pre-order your copy here.
Pre-orders also include access to a 5-week live Learning Circle, where we take this work even further together.
CLICK FOR TRANSCRIPT
I am completely burnt out from all of it. Where do I even begin? I hear to take it day by day, but I could barely do that. This is a real audience question that I received during a recent private event Q&A, and the reason why this frozen reaction happens may surprise you.
If you too are feeling completely paralyzed by burnout stick around because by the end of this video, you’re gonna learn exactly where to start. I’m also gonna share with you my super simple mindset challenge that’ll help you regain your positivity and start rebuilding your momentum again.
If you’re new here, my name is Corrie LoGiudice, otherwise known as Corrie Lo, and I’m a professional keynote speaker, facilitator, executive coach, and author who helps leaders transform overwhelm into confident action even in times of crisis.
So I actually cover this question in detail in chapter 10 of [00:01:00] my new book that’s coming out on May 12th. It’s called The Five Overwhelm Culprits™ Strategies to Save Your Sanity Without Sacrificing Your Success. And in the chapter, I share my experience of being completely burnt out. And in my situation, I was not only burnt out from career stress, which for me looked like commuting over 20 hours a week, while also managing a senior vice president career while being a single mom.
So it was a lot all at once, but I also had to add to this, the trauma of having just lost my partner to suicide, so it was a lot. What this looked like for me during this timeframe was I could barely get out of bed every day. I had to force myself to get up out of bed, I had to take excessive time off from work.
I was completely non-functional, I couldn’t function. It was like my mind and my body froze. And what’s interesting about this is I learned later that there’s something called functional freeze, which occurs when your [00:02:00] executive functioning is online enough to know what you should be doing and what should happen, but your body stays locked in stillness.
I also, during this timeframe, similar to the person who asked the question had heard the term ‘ take things day by day.’ And I had so much difficulty in implementing this, and this was due in large part to number one, my negative thought loops about my situation and feeling like I was always gonna be stuck in them.
I had just lost a partner, it was like no one was gonna bring ’em back. So it was just these negative thought cycles over and over and over again. I also was a high performer and it was very, very hard for me to shift my thinking from being future focused, which is usually the case with high performers.
You’re always thinking 10 steps ahead from where you are. For me, it’s always my five year vision, which I talk a lot about in my work and on this channel. So for me, having to pause this vision based on my body essentially shutting down. I was terrified because to me that meant that I was gonna [00:03:00] lose momentum towards what I was working on.
So I’d love to know, have you ever felt this way before? I know I’m not alone. Like 78% of the workforce right now says that they are overwhelmed and burnt out. So let me know, comment below with your experience. I would love to hear it.
So what I learned during this stage of my life was the best way to get out of this situation was by purposefully taking a step back in order to take three steps forward. Allow me to explain
So here’s exactly what I did, and it was four steps, and it was very easy and simple. When you look at it, lay down in front of you.
So first things first. You have to be okay with creating the time and space necessary to give your body the safety it needs for the functional freeze to lift. Acceptance of this is key.
There’s a reason that your body enters the functional freeze and it’s to protect you in your nervous system in times of stress. So the more work that I did on number one, acceptance of [00:04:00] my situation. Number two, creating that time and space and being okay with it. So for me, I did take time off from work.
I did allow myself extra time for things like sleeping or just going for long walks where I could think. I just really had to create that space for me to give my body what it needed to unlock that frozen feeling. So that was first.
Next. It’s really important that you engage your support circle to help you create that temporary space. So for me, like I bet you before I was a single mom in an SVP role, so I had to ask for support from multiple different places. I had to ask for support from my job. Definitely helps that I was working in my family’s business at that point in time, but either way, I still had to ask for permission to take off that bereavement time. I also needed to ask for additional support from my parents as well as my live-in au pair at that time to help with my son because I [00:05:00] was quite literally non-functional. He would ask me for Cheerios and I could not move to get them for him. So it was very important to me that I didn’t just sit and wait for people to ask how they could help me. That I did ask, “Hey, could I take this time off?” And ” Hey, can you help for a couple of weeks while I get my bearings under me and figure out what my next steps are from this?”
So the other thing that’s important to recognize with this too is you’re asking for temporary space, it’s not permanent.
Whatever it is you need just enough time and sometimes when you purposely take that step back in order to take three steps forward and you have full acceptance of it, it actually works for you much faster than it does when you’re fighting it day by day. So make sure you engage that support circle and you have folks that are gonna help you create the temporary space that you need.
The next step for me is shifting from a five year vision, so being very future focused. To learning how to adopt that day by day. How exactly do you do that when [00:06:00] you’re a high performer and you’re always thinking 10 steps ahead of you. How does that happen? So the easiest way to do this is at the start of each and every day, you envision what would make that day great just for today. It’s really that simple. So it’s an intentional practice of at the beginning of your day or even the night before. Just mapping out for you. You could journal it, you could write it somewhere. You can mentally frame it. Set yourself an alarm on your phone, just that you think about this. But what would make each day a great day based on what you’re going through that day.
So for examples for me during this timeframe, it might have been okay, I’m gonna be able to sleep a little bit later, I’m gonna actually get outside. I didn’t wanna go outside. I’m gonna get outside. I’m gonna get some sunshine. I’m gonna go for a walk. And then it would also be great if I spoke to my therapist.
Just a couple of things, it was whatever you need that day to feel nourished and cared for. So envision that. What does it look like? Does it look like sleep? Does it look [00:07:00] like nourishment in terms of what you’re eating, in terms of your soul, inspiration. Build around what you feel that you need that day.
That’s what they mean day by day. And the important part to this too, is you don’t have to map out like a full agenda, like nine to five, all the different things you’re gonna do. You really only want to pick one to three priorities that would make that day an improvement over the day that you had before.
So that’s really what you’re talking about when you’re shifting to day by day. It’s comparing what’s going on day by day too. You’re making small, incremental improvements to improve your situation instead of big, drastic changes.
Now with time when the functional freeze ends up lifting, which is gonna happen naturally because you have the time, space and capacity to be able to process what’s going on, you’re gonna notice that you’re gonna naturally start shifting that focus back to the future focus.
So you’re gonna eventually with time, go back to your default. And it’s gonna feel natural and it’s gonna feel exciting and invigorating. And when that happens, you know the functional freeze is lifted [00:08:00] and that you can shift out of having to do it day by day, and instead going back to the way that you were planning your productivity and what would make a great day before that. Just go back to your default.
Now, the last and final step is important. You need to shift your mindset out of those negative thought loops and into a more positive mindset. So the way that I found it best to do this, because, let’s be honest, similar to the person who asked this question, when you are so burnt out, you are so negative.
Everything just seems like a chore and it’s awful, and people tell you “Oh have a gratitude practice, take things day by day.”
And none of that seems like it’s gonna help because it feels fake. So what I did, which was transformational, was I did more or less a gratitude challenge versus a practice.
I was like, alright, people are telling me that this is gonna work. Haha, yeah right, so let’s try it so I could prove them what bs this is.
So what you do to implement [00:09:00] this is every morning before you get outta bed you just think of three everyday ordinary things that you are grateful for that day. Because that’s what people really get tripped up on with this is you think when you’re starting a gratitude practice, you have to be grateful for things like rainbows and unicorns and sunshine and it just doesn’t feel authentic because you are in such a low, dark place that it’s not authentic.
That’s not the way that you feel. So by focusing on ordinary, everyday things, so here’s some examples of mine for context. I remember waking up one morning and my gratitude before I got out of bed was, I am grateful that I did laundry the day before. Cause I didn’t have to do it that day.
So that was something I was grateful for. I was grateful that I found my son’s missing shoe. He had been missing a shoe for, I don’t know, weeks at that point. And I found it buried in the bottom of closet somewhere. And I was also grateful that I had therapy that night ’cause I really needed someone to talk to.
So it was very minor, almost silly [00:10:00] things when you think about it to be grateful for, but what happens is with time. You start throughout the day, then looking for things to add to this bs gratitude challenge the following day, and it makes you start looking for positive things that are happening.
So naturally with time, it grew to like on days that I actually did get outside, like, oh, the sun feels warm, that feels really nice. That’s something I’m grateful for today, and then I would mentally bank it for the following day. So I didn’t have to do as much work trying to think of things I was grateful for.
And with time, it does naturally shift your mindset from being in constant thought loops around negativity and how awful your situation is and how terrible you feel and how you’re stuck and how you have no energy and how nothing’s ever gonna change. It does change your mindset to start looking for things that are bright, that are positive, that have opportunity, that are inspiring. You start looking for things instead of avoiding the world and that’s most important.
So to recap, what we just talked [00:11:00] about when you were feeling so burnt out. You don’t know where to start. Remember, it is not necessarily a shortcoming on your part. It’s neurobiology. Your body is under so much intense stress and pressure.
It is shutting down so that it could serve until you reduce that stress. In order to be able to reduce that stress, you have to create capacity for things to start running again. So in order to do that, you could follow these four simple steps to get yourself out of it.
Number one, I talked about you have to accept the fact that this is happening, that it’s not necessarily a bad thing and you need to create the space necessary to be able to lift yourself out of that functional freeze.
And that space is gonna look like time for yourself. It’s going to look like caring for yourself. It’s going to look like getting support from other people.
Which brings us to number two. You’re gonna engage your support circle for temporary help. Again, this is not gonna take you a really long time, especially if you fully invest yourself in taking that one step back to take three steps forward. So you’re gonna engage your [00:12:00] sports circle for temporary support, which is ultimately gonna help cover for you so that you could focus on recovering.
From there, number three is you’re gonna shift from being very future focused and feeling like you’re failing if you’re not, taking actions every single day on whatever your five year goal is to shifting to a day by day vision. Again, this is only temporary and this is only to help you reset the patternings to looking at your day in a positive manner instead of a negative manner.
And number four is you’re gonna shift your mindset and actually start looking for the positive in life by starting a simple gratitude challenge. So every single morning before you wake up, think of three different things. As minor and mundane as they are that you could be grateful for before you get out of bed and you repeat it until you are authentically feeling grateful about all the different opportunity and inspiration and people in your life. It won’t take you as long as you think.
When I went through and I fully devoted myself to this, I was out of this funk in three months. And to really shift your [00:13:00] perspective with it, I had gone from being so burnt out and so traumatized that I couldn’t get outta bed to eventually six months later meeting who would become my husband.
It was that drastic of a shift, but it was because I put the work in, I made the space, I took the step back and I did the work and you can too.
So hopefully you found my sharing this today helpful and if you have a question that you would like me to answer just like this Q&A audience member, please feel free to go ahead.
You can drop ’em in the comments and I just may feature it on a future episode. And as I mentioned before too, I cover this specific question in detail. There’s a whole chapter on it. With even more strategies to try in my book, The Five Overwhelm Culprits™ Strategies to Save Your Sanity Without Sacrificing Your Success, it’s gonna be out on May 12th, and it’s available for pre-order right now.
Just click the link in the show notes. You could also learn about more ways to work with me, whether that be one-on-one or bringing me in to speak to your organization or work with your [00:14:00] team in the show notes as well. So thanks so much for being here and I can’t wait to see you on the next episode.
I’ll see you next time.
Thanks for checking out the next step with Corrie Lo If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend, subscribe and leave a review. Together we’ll transform overwhelm into action and we’ll keep taking the next step towards competent leadership. See you next time.