Empaths are naturals for the helping professions, from medicine to teaching.

These jobs feed our giving nature and provide opportunities to tap our sensitivities to offer others healing and insight.

Unfortunately, many also burn out.

Here are 10 self-care strategies to practice both at work and home that will protect you from compassion fatigue so you are not constantly absorbing people’s stress, emotions, or physical symptoms.

Tips to Prevent Burnout and Compassion Fatigue

1. Plan breaks. Take regular five-minute breaks to rest, meditate, or enjoy a walk between appointments. Be careful not to schedule clients back to back, which will quickly lead to burnout.

2. Don’t overbook yourself. If possible, limit the number of clients you see to what feels right. When you’re busy, try not to squeeze in new appointments if you can reschedule them for a lighter day.

3. Eat well. Don’t skip meals and make sure they include protein, which grounds you. Nibbling on protein throughout the day will keep your energy and blood sugar stable.

4. Create a serene workspace. Have a peaceful office. Surround yourself with inspirational sayings, sacred objects, and anything else that brings you peace.

5. Practice deep breathing regularly. Mindful deep breathing clears the negativity you pick up.

6. Fill your office with heart energy. Once or more daily, take a few minutes to focus on your heart chakra, which is in the middle of your chest. Feel that loving energy flow through your body as it balances you. As you do this, the loving energy will overflow and fill the room with warmth and positivity.

7. Set clear boundaries. Firmly and kindly say “no” to the energy vampires in your workplace. Protect your time so you are not drained.

8. Shield yourself. Before you start your day, imagine a shield of white light all around you that protects and allows in only the positive.

9. Detoxify in water. Take Epsom salt baths or shower after a long day to wash away the stress and energies of others you might have absorbed.

10. Have fun outside of work. Allow regular time for play, fun, and recreation. Walking in nature while you enjoy the trees, birds, and plants can revive your joy.

The more you use these strategies, the more energized you’ll feel and the less prone you’ll be to burnout. Then you can really feel the passion and thrill of helping others.

Learn more about these strategies during my Stay Attuned: Advanced Energetic Tools and Life Strategies for Empaths, Healers, & Highly Sensitive People. This 6-week online course begins on April 14th.

How do empaths pursue their calling as healers and therapists without being sick, tired, or taking on their client’s emotions and symptoms?

Use these 5 protection strategies below to stop taking on your client’s emotions:

1. Adjust your mindset. Don’t become a martyr. Your role is to be a guide for your clients, not to take on their pain or remove it. When you’re clear about this, you’ll enjoy your work more and have more energy for your soul’s purpose.

2. Identify three obvious differences between you and your client. A great way to distance yourself from a client’s emotions and pain after a session is to focus on three clear differences between you. This helps you to appreciate what’s you and what’s your client’s and creates a boundary that helps prevent you from absorbing unwanted energy.

3. Don’t try to fix people. People heal themselves. You can support your client’s healing, but they must be willing to make the necessary changes to free themselves from suffering.

4. Watch out for codependency. Be careful not to get hooked into feeling responsible for someone’s progress or experience. People change on their own timeline, not yours. Be empathetic but remember you are not responsible for their growth.

5. Work on your own issues. We tend to absorb energy that is related to issues we haven’t resolved in ourselves. Notice when your clients push your emotional triggers. Then ask yourself, “is this person mirroring issues in me that need healing? Focus on healing those triggers and issues in yourself. A good therapist has a good therapist.

Remember to always stay centered in your heart with clients.

For more protection strategies, join my Stay Attuned: Advanced Energetic Tools and Life Strategies for Empaths, Healers, & Highly Sensitive People course.

We begin on April 14th.

What’s standing in the way of you reaching the level of success you desire, enjoying a great relationship, or feeling great in your body the first time? Is the problem that you don’t know enough? No. Is there too much competition? Not even close. The only obstacle is a lack of mastery over yourself. Don’t believe it?

You will.

Are you in great shape? Do you only eat healthy foods? Why not? Is it because you’re confused about which foods are healthy and which are not? Are you confused about whether it’s better to exercise by running down the block or by sitting on the couch?

Hardly.

You know enough to make significant changes in your life. Knowledge isn’t the challenge. The challenge is managing yourself and your behaviors.

Haven’t had a date in a year? Are you confused about how to get a date? The key to getting dates is to ask people out. How many people have you asked out in the last week? How many new people have you spoken to in the last week? Are you able to say the things that need to be said? Are you able to be silent when you know you should? Can you make yourself go to the gym or eat an apple instead of a piece of apple pie?

Mastering yourself is the only goal you need to achieve. From that, you can achieve all your other goals!

Use these strategies to become the master of yourself:

1. Make a list of the things you want to do each day to be successful, but aren’t. This list might include things like exercising, playing the piano for 20 minutes, drinking eight glasses of water, paying your bills, flossing, and making social connections.

2. Make a list of the things you do each day that take you away from your goals. Maybe you stay up too late, watch too much TV, waste time playing video games, smoke, and show up late to work. Think about all the things you do that sacrifice your health, career, finances, social life, and happiness.

3. Begin by addressing one item from each list. Slowly eliminate one of the negative items and add one of the positive items. Habits are challenging to change, but you’ve developed habits without even trying. Imagine what you can accomplish intentionally!

4. Have a long-term focus. Negative behaviors have short-term rewards. Eating ice cream or watching TV are rewarding immediately. They can be harmful in the long-term, but they pay off right now.

Adopt a long-term focus and consider the long-term implications of your behavior before you indulge in it. What will it cost you down the road if you don’t change?

Self-mastery is the key.

If you can master yourself, everything else becomes easy.

It’s easy to get ahead at work. It’s easy to be healthy. It’s easy to save money and maintain relationships.

Can you master yourself? Key your attention on the long-term impact of behaviors and avoid short-term pleasures that lead to long-term challenges.

Change, update, and rewire your bad habits with hypnotherapy. Hypnotherapy is an effective and quick method to remove your blocks, limited self-beliefs, and unhealthy behaviors so you can reach your ultimate goal…Self-Mastery.

Schedule your free 30-minute initial consult here to learn how hypnotherapy can help you.

We’ve all had the experience of walking into a room and saying, “Ahh,” as if it’s the most restful place to be. And then there are those times when, upon entering an abode, we comment, “Wow!” Maybe it’s the underlying feeling of energy in the room.

But what makes us have these strong, spontaneous reactions to our surroundings?

Your reactions and psychological responses could be due largely in part to the colors used in the décor and design of the space. Although all psychological experts don’t agree, many believe there is such a thing as color psychology.

Historically, different cultures have regarded color as having the power to affect your mood, feelings, health, and even your behavior.

So, if you want to change the mood you experience in your home, consider the following information. It might help you achieve the ambiance you’re seeking in your cherished spaces.

1. Blue. If blue is your favorite color, you might not be too surprised to read that this particular color will aid healing and help manage pain. Blue can also promote feelings of tranquility.

2. Green. Because green brings thoughts of the outdoors and the wonders of nature, it’s believed to bring about feelings of serenity, restfulness, and perhaps even joy. Some find that the color green decreases stress and increases feelings of relaxation.

3. Orange. Orange is said to promote healthy lungs and produce energy and vitality in people. Closely related to red, orange is considered a warm color that brings excitement. You know it’s true when you walk into a room that’s painted orange, it definitely grabs your attention.

4. Yellow. The color of the sun produces feelings of warmth and brightness. Like orange, yellow cannot be ignored. It’s even been referred to as the most “visible” hue in the color spectrum. If you want to “cheer up” your kitchen, yellow might be the right choice for you.

5. Red. Full of drama and mystery, a room painted red is evocative of emotions such as comfort, intensity, warmth, and even love.

6. Black. Although you may not consider black a true color, it’s an important hue. The color black is formed due to a complete lack of light. In terms of your feelings, black can induce a gamut of strong emotions. You might experience sensuality, mourning, or sadness when you’re exposed to black.

* In film, you’ll notice that black is often used to represent a deep, dark, ominous character.

* Ultimately, black is not only a conflict in terms but brings about conflicting feelings for many as well.

7. White. The antithesis to black, white evokes feelings of innocence. It’s customary to have a lot of white in hospitals as the color has come to indicate sterility and cleanliness. Although white walls are often viewed as boring by some, the color is often used to trick the eye when walking into a room.

* Want a room to appear bigger? Put some white paint on the walls. If you want a dark space to appear lighter, white is your solution. Using white as a trim color in a room will make your wall color “pop.”

* Your feelings in a white room will run the gamut from feeling bright to being overwhelmed by the overload of light and space around you.

* It may be bland on its own, but white can enhance the appearance of deeper colors and hues used with it. So, how you feel when you see white depends on how much white is used and the way the other colors in the room are presented.

Colors are powerful in that they do affect how you feel. To lift your mood, bring about feelings of tranquility, or induce excitement, use these basics of color psychology to decorate your home. Encourage the mood and feelings you strive for just by skillfully selecting wall and accessory colors!

It can easily be argued that every decision a person makes is in the pursuit of happiness. You might say, “Wait a minute. I go to a job I hate every day just so I can pay my bills and barely survive.” True, but you really think that going to that miserable job will leave you happier than staying home and losing the ability to pay your bills.

The need to be happy drives everyone, but people pursue happiness through different means. Some believe they’ll be happy if they can only amass a large enough fortune. Others believe they’ll be happy by helping others. Some pursue a family, while other believe the freedom of staying single provides a better opportunity for happiness.

An investment banker and a Buddhist monk are still pursuing the same thing, only in dramatically different ways.

“Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.” -Thoreau

Can you make yourself happy on purpose? Can you pursue happiness and capture it like a child chasing a firefly? Science says “no.”

Find happiness without pursuing happiness:

1. Avoid overestimating the effect of your circumstances on your happiness. Even a perfect relationship and perfect job can become a grind after the newness wears off. You don’t need to live in the perfect location or have the ideal career to be happy. Nothing is perfect all the time.

* Studies show that people with modest incomes and possessions can be just as happy as the wealthy. There are happy and miserable people in the US, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and everywhere else in the world.

* There are happy and miserable doctors, clowns, homeless people, Christians, Jews, Muslims, tall people, short people, men, and women.

2. Searching for strong emotions. Studies find that the happiest people are moderately happy on a regular basis. The frequency of positive emotions is much more important for happiness than the intensity of the emotions.

3. Focusing on happiness leads to misery. Several scientific studies have shown that when subjects focused on happiness, they reported feeling lonely and depressed. Searching for happiness is a singular, perhaps even selfish, activity. Putting too much of your attention on yourself results in lowered mental health.

* Keep your attention on others if you want to be happy. It’s hard to be happy if you spend a lot of time alone.

4. Gratitude is an important component of happiness. If you have a lot to be grateful for, you’ll naturally be happy, too. Make gratitude a habit. Ask yourself what you’re grateful for several times each day.

* Set up trigger points, such as when you take a shower, put on your shoes, start your car, walk into your place of work, take off your shoes, and get into bed. These are just a few ideas. Think about your own life. What are your current morning and evening routines? Use those routines to remind you to be grateful.

Happiness is the goal, but it can’t be pursued. It just happens when you’re living your life. A few good friends, the right mindset, and gratitude are all the intelligent person requires to have a happy life. Live your life per your values. Following your values might not make you happy, but it will help to avoid being unhappy.

There’s no reason to put off being happy until you’re married, make six figures, or climb Mount Everest. Choose to be happy now.