You Teach People to Take Care of Themselves. Are You Actually Doing It?

Here's something I see all the time: vegan coaches, consultants, and practitioners who are completely burnt out.

You help people find balance, manage stress, and take care of their bodies. And then you look at your own life and realize you haven't had a real day off in months. You're answering emails at 10 p.m., skipping meals between sessions, and running on fumes.

The irony is brutal.

I have to admit something. I’ve been in business long enough to have gone through more than one cycle of realizing I wasn’t taking care of myself. I’ve pushed harder than I needed to, worked longer hours, convinced myself that doing more would yield more. But the reality is, I was just digging myself into a deeper hole.

And I haven’t perfected this — I’m still working through it.

Here’s what I’ve learned as a coach who’s been doing this for over a decade: the emotional weight of your clients can follow you home. Their pain, their frustration, their stress — it can carry into your evening, into your weekend, and sometimes into the next week. I’ve had to start understanding the difference between my anxiety and my client’s anxiety. Because sometimes I think I’m stressed about my business, but what’s really happening is I’m carrying someone else’s situation. I’m trying to solve their problem from their perspective, feeling what they feel, absorbing the pressure they’re under.

And while it’s good to see your clients through their own eyes — that empathy is what makes you a great coach — you have to be careful. You are not them. You are not going through their experience. You don’t have to carry the emotional weight just because you can see it. There’s a difference between thinking and planning and strategizing about a client’s situation versus feeling their feelings about it. Learning to separate my emotions from the work I need to do is something I continue to work on. I won’t pretend I’ve mastered it.

The other thing I’ve been working on is the return on my effort. I used to believe that more work yielded more results. It doesn’t. I’m a very effective person. I can do a lot. And what I’ve found is that instead of pushing harder, working more hours, and doing more — what I really need is space. A reset.

And not a vacation-once-a-year kind of reset. I need it every week.

I used to think I could power through and then take a trip to shake it off. And while I do need those bigger breaks, what I’ve realized is that I need a place, a time, and space every single week where I can let go of everything I’m thinking about and feeling. Where I’m not being pulled in a direction. Where I don’t have to be quick on my feet. Where I don’t have to solve anything.

A time to not just reset — but to be me again. Not the coach. Not the strategist. Not the person everyone comes to for answers. Just me.

And I think one of the mistakes we make as coaches — or maybe this is just a mistake I make — is that we stay “on” in our personal lives too. We’re always trying to answer, solve, fix. We bring the coaching brain home with us. But for me to be a better coach, I need to give myself time to unplug, relax, and honestly? Sometimes, just sit in zombie mode. No thinking. No fixing. No being useful to anyone.

That’s not lazy. That’s survival. And the weeks I do it, I show up better for everyone — my clients, my team, and myself.

Boundaries aren't just about saying no to clients. They're about protecting the time and energy you need to have a life outside your business. 

Block time for yourself, set office hours, turn off notifications, and stop booking back-to-back with no buffer. The first time you enforce a boundary, it will feel uncomfortable. But your clients will respect it. And the ones who don't? They're not your people.

You wouldn't cancel on a client because "something came up." So why do we cancel on ourselves? If movement, meal prep, therapy, or rest matter to you — put them in your calendar like appointments. If it's on the calendar, it's real. And you're worth showing up for.

You probably ask your clients regularly: "How are you feeling? What's working and what's not?" When's the last time you asked yourself those questions? Weekly check-ins and monthly reviews aren't a luxury — they're how you catch burnout before it catches you.

One of the fastest ways to burn out is trying to do everything yourself. Automate scheduling, use email templates, batch your content creation, consider a VA even for 5–10 hours a month… Systems buy you time. And time buys you the space to actually rest.

Taking care of yourself is not selfish. It's strategic. When you rest, you show up better for your clients. When you set boundaries, you model healthy behavior for the people you serve. Your clients don't need a burnt-out version of you. They need you at your best.