Tips for proper mental rest which worked for me when I was approaching burnout (share these tips with your coaching clients)
Hello friends! Let’s talk about how to have proper mental rest without feeling guilty.
Hi! I’m Shikah, I’m a former counsellor and I create done-for-you lead magnets and workbooks for coaches.
In this video, I share advice and tips for proper mental rest which worked for me when I was on the verge of burnout two weeks ago. You can modify and share these tips with your clients or in your content. You can also apply these tips for yourself if you feel yourself reaching burnout.
Let’s get to the topic. Why did I choose ‘mental’ rest instead of physical rest or emotional rest? Well, you’ll realise that when your mind is racing, thinking, brainstorming during your rest days, the ‘off’ day feels completely wasted. You end up feeling just as confused, exhausted, foggy brained and as restless as when you are having a stressful day. We have to somehow slow down our racing minds and calm them before we can enjoy the sweet experience of having a true day off.
The first tip I have is to consume content which is a 180-degree turn from your work or business.
If you are a coach, don’t watch or read self-improvement videos and books on your rest days. For example, when I was approaching burnout two weeks ago, I binge-watched house decorating videos, makeup tutorials, hairstyle tutorials, esoteric content such as psychic readings,videos on how to follow your intuition. Really out there stuff. I also read fiction books, romantic comedy books - basically books I rarely have the time to read on most days. The content I consumed during my ‘healing from burnout days’ was 100% not related to my business at all. Like I mentioned, I create done-for-you materials for coaches, so I avoid all forms of personal development content on my day off. This tip works for your clients if they need a concrete, tangible, logical suggestion on how to have proper mental rest on their days off.
Another tip I have is to indulge and rest for a few days if you need to.
Many of us will naively think that having just one day off is enough to recover from the start of burnout. But from my experience, at least for myself, I will need at least 2 days to recover from my burnout and get motivated to work again. I am lucky in that sense because 2 or 3 days of proper mental rest is sufficient for me to get excited about my business again. I have heard of business owners who need months of recovery before they can touch their laptops again. You have to know your nervous system and your mental health intimately and come face to face with how your mind and body works. Work with your mind and body instead of against it. Does that mean you will feel frustrated that you may need one week of rest instead of just one day? Maybe you will. However, working with your body will ensure a speedier recovery.
At this point in the video you may be wondering how you can help your clients identify if they are stressed out and lacking self-care.
That’s why I want you to download my Free Self-Care Audit which you can use as a lead magnet to grow your list. Simply sign up below to get your copy for free!
Now with that out of the way, let’s move onto the next tip on how to have proper mental rest.
The next tip I have for you to have proper mental rest is to spend time ‘being’ instead of ‘doing’.
What does that mean? It just means being present in the moment, present in your body, present with your thoughts and present with your emotions. Sounds like a lot to do, yes? Actually, being present recharges your energy like no other.
I did a mistake when I was ‘resting’ for my burnout. I decided to escape my ruminating and racing thoughts by doing tasks and chores. Instead of accepting that my mind was racing and actively looking for activities which calm my nervous system, I started doing chores. On my ‘rest’ day, I did the laundry, baked brownies, I cooked dinner mopped the house, vacuumed the floors, I created Pinterest pins for my business because it is a creative and so-called relaxing thing to do.
It may be relaxing when I am not at the edge of burnout, but doing anything remotely work-related is not relaxing at all. Anyway, my reasoning for doing tasks on my rest day was : “At least I get to escape my racing thoughts by doing things and being productive today.” It was a big mistake. The next day, I experienced burnout. Thankfully, it took just a couple of days to recover from that burnout, but I learned my lesson. Spend more time being with yourself instead of escaping yourself when you are burnt out or stressed out.
You can experience ‘being’ with activities which, number one : stop your racing thoughts and number two, which make you feel positive emotions. Some examples are meditation, working out, running, hiking, creating something with your hands, cooking, visualising, reconnecting with your hobby which is not tech-related hopefully.
Let me know activities which can slow down racing thoughts in the comments below.
Another tip to have proper mental rest is to add joy back into your life.
In our busy-ness with running a business, or if your clients have demanding 9-6 jobs, it is easy to ignore and forget joy. Joy even seems like an indulgence and not a need for some people. Well, human beings need joy in our lives. We do not come into this world to suffer, sacrifice or lead joyless lives. There is no point in living life like that. Anyway, I don’t have to even elaborate much about the importance of doing activities which trigger joy in you. It can be as ‘indulgent’ as spending time alone with a good book in a cafe or binge-listening your favourite podcast episodes, dancing or listening to your favourite music, eating your favourite food, exploring your city as though you are a tourist, creating art, visualising your dream reality.
Now you know the tips on how to have proper mental rest, but you may not know how to coach your clients to prioritise self-care and mental rest. If that’s you, you can check out my ready-to-launch Self-Care masterclass which you can launch and sell to your clients. You can conduct the masterclass once via Zoom and sell the recordings on your website. That’s how you can create a more passive income stream in your coaching business.
It is so much easier to have someone who is experienced in the self-improvement field - which is me - to write your coaching materials for you. You feel good knowing you are offering coaching materials which work, and you can take time off or focus on servicing your clients. The link to purchase this done-for-you Self-Care masterclass is here.
And if you want me to create a custom lead magnet for you to grow your email list and clients, you can see the full details such as pricing and scope of work here.
Thank you and see you in the next episode Goodbye.
Don’t put too much pressure on yourself in business
Have you ever felt embarrassed making changes or being indecisive in your business? I share 2 things you can do to stop putting too much pressure on yourself as an aspiring or new business owner.
(Transcript coming soon!)
What to do when you feel indecisive in your business
Today I want to talk about a topic which has been bothering me for quite some time and that is indecision. If you are new to me, I’m Shikah and I offer done-for-you coaching tools which you can sell and use with your clients.
So I have been battling feeling much indecision about my business recently and in particular two business indecisions indecision moments that I've been facing recently.
And I'm going to share with you what they are and also what I'm doing right now to handle indecision.
So if you are an overthinker like me, most probably you are not new to being indecisive and you are also someone who may take a long time to be make just a simple decision.
And I know that this is not a very healthy or and it's not a very healthy or positive way to run your business or run your life. I will share with you what I'm going to be doing for these couple of months to somehow reduce my indecisiveness and reduce my indecision moments.
So that's what I'm going to be sharing with you today. And I have to admit that I am someone who will need to to have 10 steps laid out in front of me before I take one new step.
If you are someone like that, then you know that you're going to be pretty much stuck in analysis paralysis for for a while when you want to make a new step or take a new action in your business.
Okay, so that is not exactly a healthy way to run our business and our lives. And I would say that the first indecision that I'm having right now is what I should be offering to expand my business. That is something I've been thinking about.
My Indecisive Moment #1
I've been wanting to expand my business services for a long time. I want to offer emotional and also mindset support for new entrepreneurs and also would-be entrepreneurs, people who want to start their own business. So it's something that I've been thinking about.
And then of course I'll be having all these indecision type questions, you know, such as “Should I run a low cost membership? Should I run a high cost membership because that's more sustainable and more worth my time or should I offer consultations instead? One to one consultations? Will people be paying for this?” So that's also another battle because I know that as solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, new entrepreneurs, any entrepreneur, wherever you are on the spectrum of entrepreneurship, we usually have one thing that we all want in common and that is to get more clients and to get more sales and make more money. That's essentially what most entrepreneurs want.
So I am battling this…this enthusiastic idea that I have. I have been wanting to, like I mentioned, support entrepreneurs emotionally and mind and mindset-wise.
So I was wondering, will people actually pay for that because we are all more keen or more focused on making more money? Will you pay for it? I'm not sure.
That is something that I've been battling in my mind. Should I really launch this coaching service or not? Are people going to sign up for it or what if only 3 people sign up for it? That's also not very sustainable. And so all these things are playing in my mind.
That is indecision number one.
The thing about running a business is that we have to take action. So it's not very good to be stuck in an indecisive place because when you take action, that's when you see changes and results. So taking action in business is very important.
It's not like being in a full time job where more or less every day is pretty much predictable. You do more or less the same things every day, at least in my experience when I was a counselor in the past, it's pretty much predictable. Every day you get a predictable amount at the end of the month, everything is more routine.
Whereas if you're running your own business, sometimes you put in a lot of effort to launch something and nobody buys it.
So there are more surprises. There are a lot more surprises involved when running your own business.
That is why taking action is incredibly important instead of being stuck in analysis paralysis and indecisiveness like what I am experiencing right now - just being real with you here.
I love creating workshops and workbooks for coaches. That's what I'm doing now. It's just that when I'm facing the laptop and facing books about five hours a day or more, it starts to get a bit isolating.
And I do believe that the best transformations or the fastest transformations happen when you communicate with people more directly, whether it's through podcast episodes or group coaching or one to one coaching or whatever it is - even podcasting is a form of communication because you can hear me, you can respond to me.
There are more chances of conversation there happening instead of, you know, me creating done-for-you workshops and done-for-you workbooks and you can't really communicate with me much.
I have this longing to communicate more with other solopreneurs and coaches out there. That's why I am thinking of offering some kind of coaching service for entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs.
I'm still thinking about that and wondering about the logistics of it and overthinking all the details as I've mentioned. So that's the indecisiveness that I'm facing - indecisiveness number one.
My Indecisive Moment #2
I also have indecisiveness number two, which is which platform should I run this theoretical coaching membership/service on?
Okay, so as you know, there are many platforms out there and if you're starting a new venture or if you're starting to offer a new service, sometimes you are torn between paying for a platform or doing it on something free or doing it with something low-cost.
To be honest, I've never been a fan of free platforms because you will be restricted in so many ways and it just doesn't feel good energetically to conduct your business using a free platform or free service, if you know what I mean. If you are starting out from ground zero, maybe it's something you can consider.
But if you are going to treat your business seriously, running your business with a free platform is just…it's just not a good vibe because they are going to change their terms sooner or later and you're going to be stuck and then you're not going to move forward.
So that's why I'm also indecisive about which platform to run my coaching membership or coaching group or coaching business in.
And I was also thinking, should I pay a small cost for a platform? I think that's a more viable option because when you're not making any money yet because you're launching something new, you are also a bit more cautious about your ROI - Return of investment. Should I invest this amount every month when I'm not seeing money yet?
Reasonable software option #1 for launching something new
Meanwhile, let me suggest a few which can be helpful for you if you are starting out or if you are about to launch something new and you don't want to, you know, pay $99 per month for Skool’s premium plan or something like that. Skool is a course platform. It's great for running your business on.
But anyway, I saw that Payhip - Payhip.com - is actually quite a good option. It is free. They have free and paid tiers. Even though I'm not a fan of creating my business from with free platforms, but the free tier has a transaction fee.
You are essentially paying a small amount when someone buys your products. So it's not exactly free in that sense. It's not 100% free. There's a transaction fee involved and they have paid tiers as well.
And I think Payhip has been around for many, many years. So that is one option for you if you're starting out and you're not sure which option to go for when you're running your courses or memberships.
I've been running my blog on Squarespace and Squarespace has an option as well for you to sell courses and memberships. So you can consider that if you are already on Squarespace, although I do not recommend it because Squarespace’s focus is on blogging and website building. It's not exactly for running courses. So you might run into many restrictions. That’s my input about Squarespace.
Reasonable software option #2 for launching something new
So anyway, another option is Skool’s hobby plan. They have a $9 per month plan recently.
I think it's pretty decent. You get to upload your videos there and your videos are auto-captioned and, and it's very easy to just upload a course and run with it. So that is also an option for you.
Of course there will be some restrictions as well from what I see.
A few restrictions here and there, but it's still a good beginner option. So those are the options I was looking at. And you know as I mentioned, I'm overthinking this as well. So this is indecisiveness number two.
What I’ve been doing for my indecisiveness (for mental peace)
So I've got two indecisive points at this moment and what have I been doing to give myself more inner mental peace when it comes to these things is that I have been taking a so called ‘mental break’.
There is no formal word for this, so a mental break is more like - I've been reducing the mental energy I spend thinking about my business and researching and brainstorming.
If you are a solopreneur or a business owner, I think you may be able to relate to what I'm saying.
You are always brainstorming, looking out for ideas, researching. It’s always at the back of your mind. At least for me, these things are always at the back of my mind.
I've been trying to dial that down a little bit and be more present in my environment.
What I'm going to do during my ‘mental break’ is that I will still be creating podcast episodes and writing emails.
I've decided to be more active podcasting because I love communicating with you all and if you all can leave me a comment or reply back, that'll be nice. It’s a form of communication with you.
And I will also write emails because I love writing emails. So these two, I will continue on. Most likely, for this month of August 2025, I may not create a new product. I will not create a new done-for-you coaching product for this month because I want to rest my mind and because when we give our minds a break, there is more mental space for it to get creative.
Have you noticed this? Let me know.
When you take a total break, a clean break, a clean rest from your work and your mind is not racing a mile a minute thinking about : “What am I going to launch next?” “What am I going to write to my subscribers next?” You know, when your mind is totally well rested, you will realize that you have more creative ideas coming up. You have new perspectives coming up. You just get creative and then the motivation just comes naturally.
I don't know how to exactly describe it, but when you take a break the ‘correct’ way, you will have all sorts of benefits.
You experience all these benefits within yourself. You will get creative. You have ideas, you have perspectives. You get ideas which you will never get when you're trying to force them out.
Ideas will never come when you're forcing them out.
When you're stressed out and forcing yourself to come up with a new idea, forcing yourself to come up with a new angle or a new product or a new service or a new way of marketing, they will never come.
You will just stress yourself out and give yourself a headache.
What I’ve been doing for my ‘mental break’ this month
So just take a break. Take a ‘mental break’. Like I mentioned, don't think about your work at all.
Do more fun things. This is how I have been, this is what I've been doing recently. Doing more fun things - watching more fun videos on YouTube, fun makeup videos, fun celebrity videos. I love watching celebrity interviews by the way.
I've been doing that more often, doing more fun things with my daughter and family and reading more fun books, rom coms and books which are not work-related because I spend too much of my free time reading self help and personal development books because that's what my business is about.
So now I've switched to reading more rom com and fun books. This is what I've been doing to take a mental break and to give my mind a rest so that more ideas can come and I get more motivated and I get more creative ideas on the products that I can launch in future.
So that's what I've been doing. I really hope that this is helpful for you because this is what I've been doing and it has been helping me a lot mental health wise and it also helps me business wise and creativity wise.
And so do you have any ideas or any services that I can launch to help you with your business?
If you do, you can leave a comment depending on where you're catching me from.
Let me know if this is something you can relate to!
And at the same time let me know if this is something that you can relate to.
I record my podcast in a ‘live’ fashion so I don't really edit it - it’s raw and real.
If you have any ideas on a service that I can launch which is a fair exchange for both parties - not too much of an energy drain on my part and not too much of an energy drain or monetary drain on your part.
Basically, a win-win situation.
So if you have any ideas on what I can offer you, you can leave a comment in the description box or leave me an email and I will reply you.
So that's all I'm sharing today and I hope to see you in my next episode.
Goodbye!
How to slow down ‘hustle’ mode and be more mindful running your business
I'll be sharing the basics for you to run your business with more intention and more peace :).
Timestamps:
03:23 : The first thing you can do to start a gratitude practice despite being busy
07:14 : How to start a gratitude habit and stick to it
09: 06 : A practice you can do at night to slow down your days
Listen to the podcast here :
https://open.spotify.com/show/2v9CgxvU1cReABUGDLdmmv?si=a9131636459747ac
If you want a done-for-you Mindfulness masterclass to launch and sell to your audience, head to: https://shikahanuar.shop/collections/done-for-you-courses-and-masterclasses-to-sell/products/done-for-you-mindfulness-workshop-script-and-workbook
Want to take a long break from social media? Get these 30 done-for-you mindfulness Instagram posts and captions :
If you want done-for-you mindset coaching tools to use and sell with your audience, head to: https://www.shikahanuar.shop
⭐️⭐️
In case you are curious about my background, I used to work as a counsellor with a government ministry.
I now create done-for-you coaching materials which you can sell and share with your audience.
Take care,
Shikah
Self compassion and stress : 3 mindset shifts for your clients
Hi there! I’m Shikah, I have helped thousands of coaches save time, save money and also make money by offering done-for-you coaching tools using my counselling experience.
For today, let’s talk about 3 mindset shifts your clients can do to face stress with self-compassion and prevent burnout. You can share these tips with your audience in emails, reels or other social media platforms.
The first mindset shift to help your clients handle stress with self compassion is to install the belief that people around us, our colleagues, our family members, friends and the world in general are kinder to us than we think.
Our stress sometimes comes from the mindset that other people will be ‘let down’, disappointed, angry or have some sort of negative emotion when we do not ‘do a good job’. Your clients may have a less-than-positive viewpoint of the people around them.
Having a mindset shift that the world in general is understanding and forgiving can ease stress and pressure. This mindset also allows them to be self forgiving when they make mistakes. And this mindset is helpful when they are facing mountains of work and they feel overwhelmed.
Instead of pushing through the stress and overwhelm and burning themselves out to produce perfect work, they can choose to do work that is ‘good enough’. If they are comfortable doing so, your clients can also express how overwhelmed they are and hope for their colleagues’ or other people’s understanding.
Being open with their vulnerabilities can invite other people to be understanding and avoid miscommunication. But of course, this approach highly depends on their work culture and office culture. some offices may not welcome such expressions of vulnerability. If so, your clients can choose to express their overwhelm to people they trust.
Moving on to the next mindset we can practice to face stress with self compassion, your clients can redefine what success means to them.
When I mention the word ‘success’, there’s a high chance that pictures of money, awards and fame come to your mind. However, we have to be realistic that only a small percentage of people out there can have everything at one go.
I remember one successful much older business owner telling me this when I was 21 years old. He said that “you can have everything you want, but usually not all at the same time.” If your clients have placed very high expectations on themselves and burning out, you can invite them to redefine success.
In fact you can define success in any way you want.
If they are stressed out because they are not meeting their income goals, you can invite them to expand their definition of success.
Some suggestions of success include having ‘good health’, ‘ healthy relationships’, enjoying freedom of time, having a balanced life and also mental peace. There are people who have money and recognition but do not have all that.
Encourage your clients to write down the things and people they have in their lives which are blessings that they take for granted. When they feel stressed out about not achieving their goals on time, they can remind themselves that they have other successes in their lives which they overlook.
At this point, you may have extra questions about how to coach your clients to set aligned and achievable goals which dont stress them out. Dont worry, i have created a free coaching tool to help your clients set goals which feel good and which align with their values. Fill in your details below to get it sent to your inbox.
The next mindset shift to face stress with self-compassion is to have a healthy relationship with mistakes and failure. If your clients are perfectionists, they are going to cringe at this suggestion. Invite your clients to be open to trying new strategies and failing fast.
The good thing about failure and mistakes is that they are very good teachers. Trying new ways of doing things or new ways of handling situations is refreshing and can encourage a growth mindset. They can choose to adopt a curious mindset when they try something new.
For example, if they are stressed out that they can’t finish work before a deadline, they can experiment with submitting work which is not perfect and see what happens. This curious mindset allows them to be a bit more playful with work and takes some of the stress off.
If they ‘fail’ or get an outcome they do not want, they can take that experience as a learning moment instead of letting that failure define their career or define their reputation. Having a playful and curious approach to life in general can reduce your clients’ stress.
While most coaches can share these mindset tips with their audience, I find that they get better results when you offer them a download or a workshop to help them out. If you are someone who wants to level up, download the free lead magnet BELOW and share it with your audience.
Thanks for being here and see you.
Shikah