A Step-by-Step Guide to Regaining Control of Your Life
This two-day online retreat is for you if you desperately want to stop worrying excessively, dramatically lower your stress levels, stop feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, prevent /recover from burnout AND positively impact other people’s lives.
An Esprit Meraki Online Retreat
You want to make a difference. You want to make a contribution, but you are exhausted by the ever-escalating demands of your professional and personal life.
You despair of ever getting a proper night’s sleep again. You drag yourself out of bed every morning and need at least 3 cups of strong coffee before you can get yourself together enough to face the day. Breakfast, if there is time, might have to be cold pizza because you barely had enough energy after a demoralising day at work to pick up a pizza, never mind shop for healthier alternatives.
If this resonates, know that you are not alone. I know exactly how you feel, I have been precisely where you are now. During the Burnout 2 Breakthrough online retreat, I will share with you what you can do to get back in control of your life.
In less than 2 hours a day, twice a day, for two days, you will learn:
- How to get a fully restorative, refreshing and rejuvenating night’s sleep, night after night, so that you will stop feeling exhausted, have all the energy you need to get through the day, stop on the way home to shop for healthier food and even get some exercise two or three times a week.
- How you can use three highly effective science-based resilience rituals that can help you to rewire your brain so that you’ll be able to cope more effectively with whatever challenges come your way, without getting irritated or frustrated because you are too tired to concentrate.
- How to incorporate these rituals in a short, simple, time-saving tried-and-tested morning and evening routine that can help you burnout-proof your life once-and-for-all, and safeguard your mental and physical health long-term.
What other people have to say about the retreat:
I am a busy person. Stress is part of a busy life. A friend suggested a retreat. This is something that I do not have the money or the time or the wherewithal to do. My friend asked me to do this retreat. Finding the time still wasn’t easy but it was doable so I did it. I was surprised. I took a lot on board in manageable, memorable ways. It was like having weights lifted from my shoulders. I wept a bit, which wasn’t what I expected. It was a relief to have resistances, I have built up over the years, dismantled. It seems they were no longer needed but still in place. I feel more energised because I can now park exhausting, unnecessary worrying and shut that horrible, criticising voice inside my head up. These are some of the best ‘shut-the-world-out’ moments I have spent. The retreat is, in its small quiet way, life-changing. S de P 2023
I wanted to reach out and let you know how impressed I am with the course you’ve created on burnout. It’s such an important topic, and I think the way you’ve approached it is really insightful and helpful. In particular, I appreciate how you’ve focused not just on the emotional and mental aspects of burnout, but also on the physical symptoms that can come along with it. I also wanted to tell you that I’ve learned so much from the course already. Your explanations of what burnout is and how it can happen were really eye-opening for me, and I’ve already started to recognise some of the signs of burnout in my own life. The strategies you’ve shared for preventing and managing burnout are also really practical and useful. I found the guided meditation particularly engaging. Overall, I just wanted to say a huge thank you for creating this course. I think it has the potential to help so many people, and I’m really excited to continue learning from it. Keep up the great work! D.S. 2023
Why I am qualified to lead this retreat:
I am a retired medical doctor. I had to retire early because stress permanently damaged my physical health.
I do not want this to happen to you.
In fact, helping others prevent the damage stress can do to their health is my life’s work.
When I started to feel seriously overwhelmed, to get back into control of my life, I took two days out. Not two full days, I didn’t have time for that (I wish!) but two hours twice a day for two days, and I got my life back on track.
I used to think that I had to take time off and travel to somewhere peaceful and quiet, to recharge my batteries. Because of my horses, this is not often an option, so I had to find strategies that work when I can only retreat for a couple of hours twice a day, for two days, at home.
I get it…I’ve been there.
“Why don’t you take three months to think it over, and when you are ready come back and we will remove that eye for you.”
I am lying in bed. It’s 3 am. My eyes are squeezed shut, my hands balled into fists, my knees pulled up to my chin. It’s the third night in a row that I have woken up hearing those words ricocheting inside my skull.
It has been two years since “that eye” has been removed, so why have those mind-numbing words come back to haunt me now?
The last two years have been difficult and not just because I had to get used to the various debilitating limitations of my now monocular state. If my remaining eye was fully functional, it would have no doubt been much easier, but due to several previous operations, I have initially undiagnosed glaucoma with a resultant loss of peripheral vision in “the other eye.”
Coping with this new visual setback was challenging, but not the main reason why I struggled. There was also the stress of a volatile divorce to manage, as well as increasing my workload so that I could earn enough to pay my own way. The fear of losing my house and thus my source of income was never far from my thoughts.
By the time I started waking up at 3 am, all this had been going on for more than two years and I was teetering on the edge of burnout.
I love hosting retreats, but the frequency and intensity of the retreats I was hosting to make ends meet, was physically and mentally exhausting. Without the help of my friends, and my horses, I would never have made it. Even with all their help, I had reached an impasse: working this hard was threatening the limited sight I had left.
Just before I started waking up at 3 am, I had seen my eye doctor, who told me I now have malignant glaucoma, and that I might need further surgery to save the vision I have left.
That night, as on all the previous nights, as I lay awake, thoughts tumbled over each other as I tried to find a solution to my predicament. I cannot work less and still afford to pay the bills, but I cannot continue to work at this tempo either as it threatens my sight. By daybreak, light dawned and by 7 am I was sitting up in bed with my laptop on my knees.
Four hours of soul-searching highlighted the obvious: I needed a break.
I needed, not just time off, but the opportunity to fully recharge my batteries.
This Burnout 2 Breakthrough retreat is the result of that early-morning epiphany. If you look at the number and variety of letters after my name, you might mistakenly conclude that these certify my aptitude to lead this retreat. Not so. It is because I have been, in person, exactly where you are now: overwhelmed and overworked, worrying myself out of my mind at 3 am in the morning, that I am qualified to lead this retreat.
This retreat is exactly what I did to dig myself out of the mess I found myself in.
I took two hours twice a day out and used the most powerful and empowering strategies I know to get myself back on track: rested, resourced, refocused, rejuvenated, and restored.
During this online retreat, I share with you what works for me, and what works for my guests, during the residential retreats that I have been running here in the south of France for the last decade. Admittedly, I have also had the support of my friends and family, and most importantly, of my three magnificent Friesian mares – during this online retreat I share with you what they have taught me. You do not have to be a horse lover to benefit from this retreat, but if you are, you will get additional value.
You are unique. You are powerful, gifted, strong, valuable, talented, courageous, special, caring and lovable.
You can use these resilience rituals to reduce overwhelm, stop worrying and prevent burnout.
So that YOU can make a difference in other people’s lives.
Your mission, in the next two days, is to implement 3 resilience rituals (instantly effective) that will enable you stop worrying and feel calm, confident, creative and in control at the end of the retreat: Challenge yourself to be a WARRIOR instead of a worrier!
Retreat Overview
This retreat will benefit Anyone whose worrying is spiralling out of control, and who is teetering on the edge of burnout – a state of persistent, intense stress leading to physical and mental exhaustion that occurs when you feel overwhelmed, overworked, underappreciated, permanently in overdrive and unable to meet the ever-escalating demands of your personal and/or professional life. It can also help you if you are recovering from burnout.
This retreat is not for: Anyone who cannot set aside 4 hours a day, for two days, to invest in their future physical and mental health. It is not for people who want an instant solution without putting in any effort or who suffer from serious psychological problems – these should be addressed by a health professional.
Retreat Content
Introduction
Module 1 (Day 1) The most powerful (but often under-rated and under-implemented) worry and stress-busting tool: Mindfulness – how it can help slow down to a full stop the thousands of thoughts buzzing around in your head and substantially reduce your stress levels.
Module 2 (Day 1) How focusing on what you already have can be a dynamic antidote to worrying/stress/anxiety. Scientific proof of the effectiveness of this strategy and how you can use this strategy to get a good night’s rest, especially if you feel physically exhausted from carrying a heavy load of responsibilities.
Module 3 (Day 2) How shifting your attention from your own problems to helping others with theirs can give you a new perspective and offer unexpected solutions to hitherto unsolvable problems. Generosity toward others, and towards yourself, can help you not only to stop worrying but also make you happier and healthier and live a more purposeful, meaningful and fulfilling
Module 4 (Day 2) Use what you have learned in these two days to remain in control of your worrying for the rest of your life + Introduction to the Meraki Morning and Evening routine
What is included: video training, quizzes, including the How Stressed are You?-quiz and the How Resilient are You?—quiz, audio recordings including the Get a Good Night’s Sleep recording, to help you sleep better, worksheets, badges – each module you complete, will earn you a badge and qualify you for your License to Stop Worrying (Certificate of Completion) that you can display somewhere prominent to remind yourself that you know how to stop worrying and avoid burnout.
Pause because you want to, not because you have to. Dr. M. Montagu
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Standard DIY retreat: 199 € – This 2-day DIY retreat consists of video and audio recordings, printable worksheets, quizzes, and badges awarded for the completing of each step that finally leads to the of allocation a certificate of completion: Your License to Stop Worrying
Premium one-on-one retreat: 299 € – all the above plus a live online consultation, and a 2-day detox eating and exercise plan
Any questions, please send an e-mail to margarethamontagu@gmail.com
If you think someone you know might benefit from this 2-day retreat, please share it with them. You can also share it with your friends and family; we never know who might be silently going through a difficult time and might be in need of help.
This way you can, in turn, make a significant positive difference in their lives.