[00:00:00] Hi everyone. My name's Dex Randall, and this is the Burnout to Leadership podcast, where I teach professional men to recover from burnout and get back to passion and reward at work.

[00:00:23] Hello, my friends, this is Dex back on the podcast with you again, and today we're going to talk about something, yet another thing that's very dear to my heart, um, as it probably will become to yours if you start coaching with me. And it's protecting the asset, you. And over the next four episodes, we're really going to dig into how to best look after your one precious human life when your start point is burnout.

[00:00:49] And, you know, we constantly see in the media, all these platitudes about self care and why you should do it. How you should do more exercise, yoga, meditation, how you should eat better, stop drinking, uh, drink green juice, establish better sleep habit, you know, and on and on and on. And all of those things are really wonderful and beneficial because giving time, energy, And above all, care to yourself.

[00:01:18] It's really very likely to improve the quality of your physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing, especially when you're already functioning okay at a basic level. They're just not likely to be the things that turn burnout around. And that's partly because lack of those habits isn't what causes burnout.

[00:01:40] And partly because You are almost certainly too tired and demoralized in burnout to stick to such a self-care routine. I mean, really, your mental priorities are much more likely to be oriented to surviving another stressful day than wondering how to best deploy your spare time. You don't have any of that, right?

[00:02:02] That's a big part of your problem. No actual restorative rest. And let's face it really, in burnout your spare time is more likely spent hunched, silently scowling probably in front of the TV, maybe nursing a beer, eating chips, and hoping your family will leave you alone for a couple of hours. So, starting all those kind of healthy habits, health regimes when you're in burnout is a little bit like asking a six year old to lift a hundred pounds.

[00:02:35] I mean, if you manage to do an hour's yoga every day, more power to you. I salute you. That's terrific. But for most listeners, don't beat yourself up if you don't. Some restoration of your energy, mood, and stress levels really needs to happen first. So in these next four episodes, let's talk about the most useful ways you can work with yourself to begin an actual burnout recovery when you feel like shit, when your whole idea of self care, it just pisses you off a little bit.

[00:03:05] It's the way I look at it. Beating burnout is really, we need to first reduce stress, we need to increase energy, we need to boost your return in investment in all the good things that you are doing, hopefully create a little bit more calm, a little bit more joy, and by doing all of those things we really create a bit motivation and enough engagement to continue on the burnout recovery work really and create something better for yourself.

[00:03:37] So by the way, that's where we start with my burnout coaching program. The first few weeks are all about. Returning to buoyancy, to energy, to resilience, a little bit of power. It's really all about feeling better at the beginning. Pain reduction and feeling better. So this is the first of those four episodes on protecting the asset.

[00:03:57] And today I'm going to talk about why you haven't been able to look after yourself adequately in burnout. We're going to talk about your worth versus your value. And I think about this, okay, your net worth as a human is really your value right now and your intrinsic value, your inner value, and that is that if that's your net worth, then the other kind of value is extrinsic, it's external.

[00:04:30] And I think about it like this, your worth or your worthiness as a human is innate, it is intrinsic. If we take it from one view, it's a, you're a hundred percent worthy now and always will be. Because I think of it like this, you were born perfect and underneath all the opinions, the feelings, the behaviors, despite all the scars, you remain that way.

[00:04:56] Your perfection, if you like, is your spirit. It's indelibly good. It's your inner nature. And that means that that intrinsic worth is not self defined. You just have it. Some people see it as God given. I see it as really, fundamentally, at least this, that no baby was ever born having already done wrong. I don't really believe in the doctrine of original sin myself, but with your self talk, you can certainly chip away at your perception of your worth.

[00:05:33] And that's probably what's happened in burnout. Conversely, your value as a human is determined by other people. It's external, it's extrinsic. It's. Essentially, it's your market value. Something I bet you've been worrying about a lot in Burnley. Your value is a reflection of how you show up in the world.

[00:05:55] Your attitude, your speech, your behaviours. And how that colors other people's perceptions of you and your human interface with them. And this is all according to their rules about what a, what a good human is, what a good human is like. It's not your rules, your values, it's theirs. And so that's really an expression of why you can't please all of the people all the time.

[00:06:21] And if you're in burnout, I think you're nowhere near that anyway. I imagine what you more feel is There's a great risk of judgment and rejection probably hovering, hovering constantly over you. And of course, external value is also about supply and demand. Like the stock market, it's based on sentiment.

[00:06:40] It's the bull and bear market. So what you could do is really, you could analyze your external value as they do in the stock market based on fundamentals. And then to some extent, of course, because there is sentiment, you can manipulate your value above fundamentals. But it might not be sustainable. It might in fact, just be bullshit.

[00:07:05] Whereas if you do focus on your fundamentals, on improving your fundamentals, it's always going to give your value a solid platform. It's kind of the protection of you, the asset that we're focusing on here, um, by coming home to that. In any case, what I'm really thinking is your worth and your value are not the same.

[00:07:29] Although eventually in the market, if your fundamentals are weak, if you've overstated yourself, you feel a bit overpriced, then you're There can be a reality check. Uh, you might be setting yourself up for a price drop. Your value might realign with your fundamentals that are lower. So, you know, based on that concept, I thought of a couple of exercises that you could do now.

[00:07:51] So, you know, get a paper and pen or punch up to your computer, notepad or whatever. Um, but of course, please don't do these exercises now, do them later. If you're doing something you need to focus on, Like driving or minding your kids at the pool. Keep your eye on what's important, right? But anyway, here is the first exercise and I call it checking your fundamentals.

[00:08:16] Or if you like, in another way, it's kind of the balance sheet of you. I want to ask you to rate your fundamentals from one to ten. If one is poor and ten is strong. So I want you to rate your well being in the following areas, one to ten. I mean, and not just at work, so this is in general. So how do you rate from 1 to 10 your mental well being?

[00:08:41] How about your physical? Just jot down the first number that comes to mind. How about your emotional well being? And how about your spiritual well being? 1 to 10. How about your family and partnership? Or partnerships, if you have more than one. How do you rate your finances, your financial well being? How do you rate your self care, your investment in your own world?

[00:09:10] How's that one to ten? And how about your performance? This is external really. How do you think you're performing in the world? How do you rate your motivation and or engagement in the things that you think you need to do? And the last one is, how do you rate The extent to which you champion yourself. So for this one, think about how supported you feel inside.

[00:09:38] Do you really have your own back? And so if you did that, maybe you just paused and jotted down a few numbers. Perhaps you can see based on your scores or even your total score, what you think about yourself and how you think, you know, you're supporting yourself, how you think you're doing in life. So that's one exercise.

[00:10:01] Now let's do another exercise, which is really looking at personal profitability. It's Your emotional costs in life versus your emotional revenue in life. So I think about this really is, you know, the emotional cost is emotional wear and tear and emotional revenue is uplifting emotional experiences that you have.

[00:10:22] So what's the negative and the positive? What's your outgoing and incoming emotional scores? And if you want to take a look at that for yourself, here's a couple of questions to ask yourself. And the first one is, what is your sentiment About other people.

[00:10:41] And then the second one in relation to that is, what do you think other people's sentiment, what's the market sentiment about you? Just what you guess that it is, you can't know really. And number three, how's your inner voice? What does your inner monologue sound like? What's the emotional revenue versus cost of that inner voice in your head?

[00:11:06] Is it like wildly critical? Is it supportive? Is it a mix of the two? Where's it sitting right? And number four, how much is? joy and relaxation are you creating in your life?

[00:11:24] And number five, really based on all of the answers to those, how are you seeing your coming 12 months? What do you think is going to change for you? Where do you think you'll be sitting in 12 months time? What are you doing to change, you know, the emotional outgoing and the emotional incoming for you, if anything?

[00:11:43] And, you know, you can sit down and reflect on these later, maybe just replay a little bit of that just to hear the questions again. If you did that and you identified. challenges or maybe deficits in those two exercises. And of course, so many of us do, particularly if we're experiencing burnout like symptoms, don't worry.

[00:12:05] Okay. It's just, it's just a look under the hood, but it's very biased. And if you're in burnout, it's probably very negatively biased. You probably judged yourself quite harshly in there and it's not fully representative. And be very, very gentle with yourself about that because really you're just a standard human stuck on the side of a spinning planet, possibly experiencing long term stress, which is affecting the way you answer those questions.

[00:12:36] And if you did answer them in a way that didn't please you, it's actually temporary and you can fix it. And that's the work that I do in coaching with my students. If on the other hand, those exercises hurt you a bit, you might think about taking action. And here's what's possible for you. This is what I'm suggesting.

[00:12:57] Coaching through burnout will help you to remedy any of those values you think are slipped. Neuroplasticity is your second best friend, and you will become your first friend. Okay? Burnout is recoverable. And for now, I really suggest, and I always suggest this is that you offer yourself grace. And we can do this right now, particularly if those exercises were a little bit painful.

[00:13:24] Let's try it now together live. Sit down somewhere safe and undisturbed if you can. Feet on the floor, grounded. And warning, please don't do this if you're driving or doing something else that requires your attention because it can be quite distracting and it can be quite emotional. But for those of you who are still with me, if you are in a safe place to do this, take a really big, deep breath.

[00:13:54] And just say these things to yourself. Say it now with me. Okay, say to yourself. Self. You can put your name in there if you like. Self, I know you're hurting, but I care about you. I know you're doing your best. I believe in you, and I'm sorry you're suffering. I love you very much, no matter how things are for you, how you're thinking, talking, and behaving.

[00:14:26] What you're doing or what you're not. And I'm going to help you out. You're a good person. You have a good heart. I'm here for you.

[00:14:41] Okay. And if you just did that, whether it hit home or not, whether you felt any emotion, good or bad, or not, even if it made you angry or upset you, this is the beginning of recovery. That was you choosing in that moment to be there for yourself. And that's the kind of skill that you need. that will become stronger with practice.

[00:15:06] It's the foundation of self care that actually works. You can thank yourself for this act of kindness, of kind intention, if you like. So let me say again, protecting the asset, recovering from burnout, is really about having your own back, like a parent to a child, and possibly the parent you wish you'd had.

[00:15:32] And I will teach you in this coaching program how to support yourself back to thriving. It's all about how to invest in the self, and this is Something about really raising belief in yourself, raising your personal story about your self worth to start with. And you're going to do that so that you can emit higher value into the external world.

[00:15:58] Because whatever good you give to yourself is naturally going to overflow into your world. When you feel your own calm, it will overflow onto other people around you, that good. And in the upcoming episodes, I'm going to talk about this a little bit more, so some episodes I've got coming is How to protect yourself emotionally and give yourself emotional strength and emotional resilience so that you can feel a bit safer in the world day to day.

[00:16:28] I'm going to talk about as well how to fill the emptiness inside of you, the loneliness, the not belonging, not feeling value. And I'm also going to talk about how to reignite passion by doing what you love. And I don't necessarily mean changing your job there either, you'll find out. So tune in next, next time.

[00:16:47] This is all about getting your passion and your mojo back, feeling better at work and in life. And if you are in burnout and if you want out, then listen for the link at the end. Come and talk to me about how to recover from burnout quickly and sustainably and get back to your best performance.

[00:17:04] Leadership and most of all enjoyment inside work and out. Thank you for listening to me today and I will catch you again next time. If you're in burnout and ready to recover, come and join my Burnout to Leadership program. You can book in to talk with me at burnout. dexrandle. com. Just tell me what's bugging you and let's make a plan to fix it.