Ep#90 The 7 Deadly Sins of Burnout

Hi everyone, my name is 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. Hello, my friends, this is Dex, and this week's episode is actually coming from an original blog post that I wrote in 2021. The only thing that's really changed about burnout since then is that it's really been on a massive pandemic style rise. Now I would say that lost productivity due to stress is costing the global economy one trillion a year. Disengagement at work of almost 60% of the workforce is costing 8.8 trillion per year globally, which is 9% of global GDP. I don't think it gets any more alarming than that, does it? So when I look at the landscape now since 2021, and I've been working with burnout since 2018, still many people have no access to tried and tested rapid burnout solutions and many people are still just pointing the finger of blame as if that's going to change anything. I mean, yes, absolutely organizations, industries and cultures can affect change for good, and absolutely we'd follow that trap. But if we wait for that to happen, we're really not seeing our own power for change, because on a personal level, burnout can be reversed reliably in a matter of weeks. But when you recover from burnout, you become the leader who protects your people from burnout.

So I'm delighted that you're here for this week's episode on the seven deadly sins of burnout and I am saying that slightly tongue in cheek, don't worry. So burnout's a state of physical and mental exhaustion caused by excessive, prolonged stress. It can happen to anyone who works too hard for too long without taking adequate care of themselves. So whilst this episode is great for diagnosing burnout in yourself, I really want to stress that if you're experiencing burnout, it's not your fault and there's nothing fundamentally wrong with you, and your competence and work ethic are not in question and can be restored. I believe in your 100% as an excellent, high functioning human who just hit an occupational road bump. Further, armed with the knowledge that you may be in burnout yourself, you can 100% recover. A full, stable, on-going burnout recovery is what I teach all my clients to achieve and sustain. So, your mojo can come back faster and stronger and more durably than ever, giving you terrific energy, performance and success at work, a solid career revival, deeper, more effective leadership, an increased fulfillment for many years to come, regardless of your age, job, gender or profession. So, that said, the Seven Deadly Sins of Burnout. This episode really is subtitled How to Recognize Burnout in Yourself. Let's have a look, because if it's burnout looming for you.

Listen to the seven points I'm about to cover and, if that is you, please adjust your course. I beg you. Now would be a really good time to do that. So what are the seven?

One number one is anxiety, and in this context, I think about it as fretting about your productivity, performance, status, job security, your emotional stability and resilience, your energy, motivation, mood and your attitude to work. It's worrying about all of those things to the point where you feel compelled to keep burnout a secret and not asking for help is the biggest single factor keeping us in burnout. It leaves us in anxious isolation and denies us the resources we need to manage the stress. Not only that, anxiety is depleting and it further undermines our performance, confidence and engagement. So that's anxiety. I think probably most of us would know if we were experiencing that or not.

Number two, pride, and I see this as waiting until the deluge of overwork passes. Okay, because what happens there is we're telling ourselves that we'll get on top of things soon, when things quieten down a bit, like we always do. Now, typically, burnout does happen to high achievers who will try to overcome every problem by working harder. If that was going to be effective, though, we probably wouldn't be in burnout in the first place. Productivity, I think, declines from chronic stress, anxiety, overwork, overwhelm, exhaustion, separation and despair. All of that coupled with poor recovery strategies and entrenched overwork behaviors. So number two pride. Number three next up after pride denial. So this is clinging to the mirage of invincibility, presuming incorrectly, that burnout will not affect our health, our home life, our relationships, financial stability and all of those things. But in fact most people in burnout will engage in increasingly unhelpful coping strategies, also emotional avoidance and quite often addictive behaviors as well. At the same time, anger, irritability and defensiveness increase and relationships often become strained until the kind of defensive isolation becomes the default choice, and that by itself makes things a lot worse, leaving us alone in our suffering, which of course only adds to our anxiety. So three denial.

Number four fear. This is a little bit like believing the boss doesn't know how badly we're doing on the inside, being terrified they're going to find out. This is kind of the ultimate comb over of burnout, isn't it? And then we avoid people to reduce that fear, to conserve energy and to avoid conflict and additional pressure. So a person in burnout really conceals their activity and performance as a routine thing to avoid both criticism and, ironically, collaboration. It becomes too painful to work with people. Instead, we assume people are judging us and we worry endlessly about that. So it's number four fear.

Number five, with which you would doubtless be familiar if you are in burnout frustration, I think in the inside what's happening is we're worrying that this might be the end of our career. That it's all over, the show's over. And then, if we do think that, we're hating everyone and everything for this, we're blaming other people. Usually we think that only switching jobs or careers will fix our problems. But we can't. We're not really decisive enough in burnout to make that choice anyway. But at the same time we're kind of desperate for a reward and connection at work. It's like the grass is definitely greener somewhere else, but we're not quite sure where and worryingly, towards the end we're not even sure ". Okay, so that's frustration.

Number six, of course, come along with that, anger. So we're resenting people and circumstances for causing our misery. We overreact to perceived obstacles and attack anyone we think is blocking, criticising or merely outperforming us, or simply looking relaxed and happy. We envy others their success and apparent resilience. We feel alone and left out, and all we see is doors closing in our face. Watch out, though, if this is you right and you're a little bit in anger, watch out that you're.. Just notice if that anger is hardening into resentment, because resentment is a is a probably a bigger problem than anger, because it eats away at our insides, and I think that this is really a big part of the hollowing out of our soul that occurs in burnout. Okay, so that's six. Anger, seven. How could I miss number seven? Shame.

What's happening at Burnout is we're overindulging in self-doubt and imposter syndrome, relentlessly. Really, we're focusing on what's going wrong, not what's going right, thinking we're at fault. We worry about our time management, brain fog, flagging performance, our public face, exhaustion, unstable moods and letting people down. We're enveloped in a shame that's really a lot deeper than mere guilt that we're not performing. It's sent us in on who we think we are and, ironically as well, we know we used to be better than this, but where is that competence now? So, in this shame, we're really staring down the barrel of unconscionable loss. That's what Burnout feels like. It feels like a level of loss that we have no idea how to survive and so really we're failing to revive our professional performance that we've lost, and our status, but as well our personal strength as a human. So if you're listening to that and you think that some of that sounds a little bit familiar, it might be happening for you.

If you are in or approaching Burnout, it is vital for you to take action. Not the actions you're taking now okay, working harder, that's going to entrench your Burnout even further, but contrary action. You need to change your MO basically. And for that, my friend, you will need to ask for help. So I only coach people in or near Burnout. I help men step back from the precipice of Burnout and return to peak performance, resilience and enjoyment at work via the Burnout to Leadership Program, a tried tested, guaranteed recovery process that works for all professionals. It basically changes everything. It will be for those people who take this coaching on. It will be the most powerful, pivotal, regenerative six months of their lives. And I'm offering this to you. If you're in Burnout, you can start to feel better in the first three to four weeks of coaching you can be out of Burnout forever by week 12 and then go on to develop the best quality leadership and performance of your career. It's an amazing bargain, if I say to myself and if you're in Burnout, I really want to help you.

Personally, in my case, I stayed in Burnout far too long, continuing to try to fix it myself by making more effort and feeling increasingly lost and helpless. By the way and I really did that because I didn't know what else to do. I had no idea how simple it can be to recover, but unfortunately that track didn't work out for me. I had a whopping heart attack and I nearly died at 55. So I don't want you to do that. Here's what one of my clients shared about his experience of coaching with me, and I quote "I battled perfectionism, people pleasing, indecisiveness, shame, guilt and anxiety. My happiness was extrinsically linked. I've seen exponential growth in my personal life and professional life in this program. I finally found my self-worth and learned self-compassion. My relationships with others have become deeper and more meaningful and I've become more decisive.

Dex is an amazing coach. He'll guide you and open your mind to things you never knew were possible for you." So if you are in Burnout, I'm talking directly to you now. I want to make you an offer Come and talk to me about how to recover quickly and sustainably and get back to your best performance leadership, career growth and, most of all, I think, enjoyment inside working out. And, by the way, you'll restore your personal relationships too. If you're interested in that, have a look at DexRandallcom.

And for all of you, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope it helps you see through a little bit the aspects of Burnout you may not have recognized before. If you did enjoy the episode, please help me reach more people in Burnout by subscribing, rating and reviewing this podcast. I really invite you to pay it forward.

Men are suffering out there, perhaps just like you, and don't know that a complete solution is available. When a person has the attributes that predispose them to Burnout, they almost certainly will arrive in Burnout at some time. So prevention, I believe, is the best cure. If you already know somebody who's heading towards or in Burnout and you can see that they're suffering, please hold at your hand and send them the link to this podcast, which is full of practical tips for recovery. I recommend that new listeners start with the first five episodes, but thank you so much for being here today, for being you. I 100% believe in you, and I appreciate you tuning into this podcast. I hope this episode was helpful for you. 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. dexrandall. burnoutdexroundcom. Tell me what's bugging you and let's make a plan to fix it.