Blogger Interview With Jes Dickerson

I am a homeschooling mom of 2 and a certified life coach, speaker, and writer. I came to coaching because I had a lot of life experiences that burned me out – both physically and mentally. Recovering from the burnout was harder than I could ever imagine. Every time I thought I was better, I would be reminded that I was still healing. Recovery is a process. And while my body is healed, the mental health struggles that I overcame are lessons that I will continue to revisit throughout my life.

Because of this experience, I decided that I wanted to be able to prevent as many people as I could from going through that. We can all learn to be less busy but more productive. We can also learn how to be less stressed and more resilient. Life will always throw us curveballs as soon as we think we’ve got it handled – so learning to take care of our wellbeing is a lifelong process.

My blog is a reflection of my struggles and what I hope to teach people everywhere about how to take care of their wellbeing while still accomplishing their goals in life. I talk all about how to improve your productivity in ways that are meant to save your sanity. I give not only tips on how to manage your stress, but what processes you can go through and questions you can ask yourself to actually decrease the stress at its source. All of my posts include the science behind why we think the way we do, and also practical ways to grow through our struggles.

Burnout Recovery: 5 lessons I learned that can help you recover

I just wrote this but it’s so critical in today’s society. We are a bunch of overly busy, stressed people. So many people are burned out or teeter on the edge on the regular. This post is a culmination of all that I learned through my recovery, and it can help anyone that is dealing with a mountain of stress –which is basically everyone.

Outgoing. I’m very extroverted and love to be around people. I can strike up a conversation with just about anyone.

With 2 kids at home with me all the time, I prefer to get my workouts done at home. It gives them a chance to see me taking care of myself and they join in too sometimes. I currently do a strength/cardio program 6 days a week and ice skate on the other day. Ice skating is a family activity and I love seeing the gains I get from the at-home workouts improving my skating.

As far as nutrition I try to meal prep as much as possible. I’ll double or triple a recipe and keep it in the freezer for days when life is too crazy (which is often!). I am currently following the nutrition that is associated with the workout that I’m doing (80 Day Obsession) – so it gives you the number of portions of each type of food per day and when to eat. I do my best to stick with it because it makes me feel good to eat so many fruits and vegetables and stay away from the junk.

However, I have also been down the road of orthorexia – so I no longer get so obsessed with what I put in my mouth that I stop enjoying food. I have a small amount of mint chocolate almost daily and an occasional bigger treat – but only when it’s worth it!

This is ironic, but I think it’s that advice doesn’t work. I mean advice is great for what dishwasher to get, or what dry cleaner is best, but very few people follow other people’s life advice. What you do follow is the ideas that you come up with for yourself based on your own research and conversations with trusted people.

I learned this in my coach training. That is why my coaching conversations are a matter of asking you powerful questions to help you find your truth. Many times we already know deep down what to do – all I do is help you find it. No advice needed.

This also extends to my blog. I try to provide readers with research and options. No one way is going to fit everyone. And it’s hard if you see some advice that has thousands of raving fans, but then doesn’t work for you. It makes you feel like you’re broken. It’s not you, it’s the advice.

I try to provide people with methods to figure out what works for them, rather than all out “here’s what will fix it” information. As much as we’d all love that magic pill to fix whatever is wrong — the real answer lies in doing the work on yourself to find the right answer for you.

I have come to understand that feeling motivated isn’t necessary. If you have an intense desire to do something that you think about all the time – then you are motivated. If you’re not taking action to get there – that is a completely different problem.

The key for me is to figure out what I want, how I need to get there – and then stop thinking. You can’t give yourself an out – you have to just do. I don’t think about whether or not I’m going to work out today – I plan when I’m going to do it and then do it. I may hate every darn second of it, because that’s life some days. Feelings are fleeting. The feeling of motivation comes and goes on a whim and you can’t depend on it to pull you through. You just have to know that eventually doing the actions that you set out for yourself will get you all the things that you want.

TIME! We all get the same 24 hours, but we don’t all have the same responsibilities in that time frame. With 2 kids at home – one with special needs that I homeschool – and all their activities, it’s hard to find time to build a business and take care of myself. But I learned long ago that you can’t cram every minute of your day full and expect to be your most productive self. We all need breaks and free time to space out. That’s when the magic happens.

So I have scheduled out every day with our activities, and my workout time, time to make dinner, time to work. Sometimes those slots for work are very small but you can get a lot done in 15 focused minutes. But then when the day is over, I switch it off and enjoy my free time. By doing this I’m so much happier and more productive in those times when I’m actually working.

My laptop and my headphones. My youngest needs me to be physically there even when we’re not doing something together. So my desk is in our dining room in the middle of our house. But I can’t work with her playing or watching tv, so I have noise-canceling headphones at my desk.

And when we go to activities where I know I’ll have some downtime I pop headphones in and blast the white noise and get to work on my laptop.

Mel Robbins. She has been a huge inspiration on my journey to be a coach and speaker. I identify a lot with her no-nonsense approach. She has overcome a lot and has inspired me to get my act together and be responsible for the hard work it takes to make your dreams come true.

I would like to grow my coaching practice, get some larger speaking gigs, and run a workshop to help people recover from burnout.

Right after my workout in the morning. I am NOT a morning person so the fact that I was able to drag myself out of bed early so I could workout is a triumph. By then I usually have some endorphins, plus I get to eat and have my coffee — which I LOVE.

I’m super into just about anything crafty. I love to knit and quilt. I also enjoy drawing, lettering or making anything with paper. And I make over the top cakes for my kids birthdays – Ace of Cakes style.

I would say to stop glorifying busyness. We’re all so busy all of the time, but we’re not productive. We’re just constantly doing. We say yes to everything before we even stop to think what that costs us. Often it’s our time, energy, and mental health.

If we as a society could start valuing productivity – which is getting more done in less time AND stop feeling like we need to fill up that spare time with more work, so many people would feel such relief. Instead of constantly talking about how busy we are, let’s shift the conversation to how much we are enjoying life. About how much more we get done when we slow down and take care of ourselves. If your friend talks about how busy she is, ask her what she’s doing to take care of herself. Let’s pivot from something that’s damaging our mental health to something that can help heal it.