Who am I? Why the name WonderBalance?

A story of how I went from Burnout to Balance - from WonderWoman to WonderBalance!

My name is Sanna Kulevska and I’m a Lawyer and Certified Stress & Burnout Coach. You may wonder how these two titles fit together. I will tell you now.

“Burnout happens when you avoid being human for too long”

- Michael Gungor -

Michael Gungor once said: “Burnout happens when you avoid being human for too long”. I couldn’t agree more. I have spent four years of my life on full-time sick leave from my lawyer work due to not just one, but two burnouts.

Throughout my life, I have heard people in my surroundings describing me as “WonderWoman” and asking me how I was always able to perform on top and have the ability to do everything in life successfully. Everything. With perfection. With Harvard Law School, Google, adidas, IKEA, and a large global law firm on my CV along with a semi-professional handball career and international fashion model jobs, I managed to achieve everything I set my mind to. Until one day my brain and body completely shut down. I hit the wall, and the fire that’s been burning for so long had now burned out. Black. Extreme fatigue, anxiety, depression, memory loss, sensitivity to lights and sounds, and severe cognitive difficulties became my new life and I had suddenly become everything I normally wasn’t.

My past couple of years of dealing with and recovering from my burnouts, have truly forced me to rethink where I feel purpose and what kind of life I am striving to come back to. I am not aiming to come back to that same kind of “WonderWoman”, which is what I call “Sanna 1.0” — Sanna before the burnouts. Instead, I have built myself from the ground up, an upgrade to “Sanna 2.0” — who knows that my worth as a person is not dependent on WHAT I do, but rather WHO I am. A redefinition of success knowing that a true “WonderWoman” is not the one who does everything perfectly and pushes herself to the extreme, but the one who knows when to push and when to pause. A person in balance, mental and physical balance. In WonderBalance.

“It is health that is real wealth”

- Gandhi -

Gandhi once said that “It is health that is real wealth”. I completely agree, and I have had to learn this the hard way in my conscious transformation from Stressed to Blessed. My stressed life was shaped by what I choose to call “The 3 P:s” –– Performance – Prestige – Perfection. They have now been exchanged for a blessed life following “The 3 B:s” — Balance — Beauty — Be. When we live a life in Balance we are able to see all the Beauty around us, that we could easily just miss and run by when being too stressed. This also allows us to just Be — to be truly present in the present moment. Not stuck in the past or dreaming about the future, but to be right here — right now.

Although I’m never going to stop performing or being ambitious, I’m going to be aware, purpose-filled, and balanced when doing so. Like Michael Gungor once said: “Burnout happens when you avoid being human for too long”. I feel like I have now returned to being human. I truly love how I have gone from stressed to blessed and I can proudly say that “WonderWoman” has now become “WonderBalanced”! If you are curious to read more about my journey from burnout to balance please check out my blog article called “My Burnout Story”. You find the short “teaser” version here and the full version here.

As your Stress & Burnout Coach, my ultimate aim is for you to not have to suffer the way I have in order to create a balanced, purposeful, and confident life. I invite my stressed and overworked clients on a coaching journey to discover what it truly is to be human. With me, you are safe to explore what it means to just be who you are truly born to be and confidently start crafting a balanced and purposeful future on your own terms.