Entrepreneurial Tightrope: Bored? Break up your old routine

— -- Hi, Gladys, Can an entrepreneur suffer from burnout? For 23 years I have owned a successful health and fitness center. Don't get me wrong. I am grateful for the clients and customers and for the money I make. However, for the past few years I have had a ho-hum attitude. I remember the excitement of starting and growing the company, but I no longer feel that way. Please don't tell me to expand; I have no burning desire to make the company bigger. My wife thinks I might be depressed and suggested I see a therapist. I don't feel depressed. But I am also tired of the day-to-day grind. What's up with this feeling? — N. K.

Sometimes we use "burnout" to describe lack of enthusiasm for something or when we have grown weary of the daily routine.

After you have had a series of medical tests and investigated your wife's concern of depression and emerge with a clean bill of mental and physical health, it might be time to make a few changes and add a bit of freshness to your life. On the other hand, you should remember that every aspect of life has a start and a finish line. Maybe you have reached the completion of your time in the health and fitness business.

Review the past few years of your life. Do you find yourself taking the same route to your company? Passing the same people who are doing the same things, day after day? Do you eat the same basic lunch at the same time in the same old places? Your description of a "day-to-day grind" implies that things have fallen into a predictable routine.

The big picture is that there is a possibility that you have run the course with your company and it's time to move on. However, before you take such a big step, try making some minor changes in how you live your life. Here's an example of what I mean:

A couple of years ago I was doing a business development workshop for entrepreneurs when one of the participants asked a question similar to yours. She asked if there was such a thing as being in business too long.

The question seemed to come out of nowhere and had nothing to do with the topic. She went on to say that she loved her business but had started to feel bored. To my surprise almost half of the participants said they had experienced similar feelings.

I gave the group an assignment that I had once done for myself. I asked them to buy a small notebook and list in it 100 things that they would like to do before they died. I told them that it would take them a while to complete the list but to please keep me informed by e-mail as to how they were coming along. I suggested that once the list was complete, they should refer to it and make a point to do at least one thing from the list each time they felt bored, frustrated with the routine, or whenever they just felt like giving a gift to themselves.

As the months rolled on and I kept in close contact with the group not one of them could come up with 25 things to put into their notebooks. For more than a year I worked with them via the Internet and phone and pushed and prodded them into finding those 100 things that each would enjoy doing before that ultimate date with death.

The good news is that they all found a sense of renewal in life by not only completing their list but they have started to do the things on the list and have cured their "burnout" and "boredom."