Welcome!

My name is Melissa Pickle, an Associate Certified Life Coach who created this course because of my own experiences with stress and burnout. I have been in the helping profession for nearly 30 years. Although I have loved the work and have found it extremely rewarding, it is also very stressful. Multiple times during my career I found myself feeling like I was stressed to the breaking point, completely exhausted and feeling like a failure. Every aspect of my life was affected, my personal life, work life, physical health, mental health, relationships, everything. I saw others I worked with experiencing the same struggles. I knew that if I was going to continue to do the work in my chosen field and stay sane that I needed to do something different. That’ difference was learning about meaningful self-care and the impact of stress on our physical, mental and emotional well being. I am absolutely passionate about wellness, particularly for those who help others.

Through this course, you will learn strategies to help you design a life that is much more manageable, meaningful, and joyful by creating balance and regaining a sense of control. Here is what we will cover:

• The stress response cycle including what it is, the importance of completing your stress cycle, as well as the impact of how it affects your physical, mental and emotional wellbeing when you don’t complete it.
• Recognizing your own signs and responses to stress so that you can address it early on, before it spirals into burnout.
• Learn practical self-care strategies that are tailored to your life and specific needs to develop a self-care action plan that actually works for you.
• Learn additional techniques and strategies to help you live a life that energizes you rather than exhausts you.
  

Attached to this lesson is a workbook you can download. Throughout this course there are several writing exercises. Please take the time to do each of these as they are designed to support you in getting as much from this course as possible. You can either do the exercises in the workbook or write your answers down in a notebook or journal, it doesn’t matter which. What is important is that you document your answers for yourself.

At the end of the workbook I have included some of my favorite self-care quotes along with a suggested reading list so I highly recommend you check those out. Now, let's get started!