Ep#103 Post-Covid stress hangover

**Dex** (00:00:09) - 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. Once again this is Dex and on the episode today I'm going to talk about post-Covid pessimism. Because do you have that? Are you feeling on shakier ground since Covid? Do you have a sort of ongoing shift in your perspective on the world? And then it turns out that as a society, we do feel more vulnerable since Covid. And I'll give you some stats, and this is from the Planet Money podcast, which is in the show notes if you want to listen. So what they're really talking about is they're trying to examine from a financial perspective. Even though they're studying in the US. So I'm using US as an example. The US is doing relatively well in the economy, but sentiment's really right out of sync with that. Sentiment stayed really comparatively very low. And they did a survey in October 23rd.

**Dex** (00:01:21) - It said 51% of people think that they're worse off than they were a year ago. And when they were asked if they expect good or bad times in the coming 12 months, two thirds said bad and almost 80% said it was a bad time to buy a house. You know, we're in a period of high climbing interest rates and also high home prices. In fact, in the US says that the mortgage rates have been the highest in 30 years. But even so, inflation is not as bad as it was, for example, in the 70s. And on the podcast they talked about angry voters. So there's a politicization of the way they think about their finances and money. And I think about that as well. Sometimes the way politics have changed in recent years, it's been quite tangible, hasn't it? And also the reporting on politics has changed. So as I said, they did their study in the US so that's what I'm reporting the figures back on.

**Dex** (00:02:28) - But I imagine that many of you can relate wherever you live. I'm in Australia and the landscape, the financial, the economical, the political landscape is certainly following a similar trajectory in my impression. And it appears that we're all bearing the scars of Covid. And this pessimism, if you like, is very much borne out in the work that I do with professionals in burnout. This is what I'm hearing from people. And my experience of those people is, Type-A professionals are super high performers who really maintain a sense of safety in work and in life by being at the top of the tree. They're super achievers, that's what they do. So it's about being alpha. It's about going hard. And when they do that, they have reached and probably sustained a pretty comfortable peak of performance that keeps them in the top strata. So this is in their professional lives, but often in the rest of their lives too, because how we are at work is how we are everywhere, right? And what that does for those people who are up at that level is it helps them to feel invincible, which is a strong need isn't it? For all of us? We would like invincibility, but for those people particularly.

**Dex** (00:03:55) - And they tend to have been brought up in a culture or family where they've been taught to be ashamed of their weakness. So, so important, then, for those people not to be perceived as weak. Yet in Covid, perhaps weakness has been thrust upon them by circumstances. So I wonder, do you also feel that fear or loss of control or status or solid ground under your feet? Because tthis is really a huge feature of burnout, that's exacerbated when we are. feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, overworked. We feel like we're not keeping up with demands or we're not performing satisfactorily to maintain that border, that expectation of safety. So, for people in burnout, it can be extremely corrosive to their sense of security. And if that's happening for you, it's not just you. This is how the hopelessness, helplessness, dread and despair set in, in burnout. And I'm including in the Show notes, a Brené Brown podcast episode with Adam Grant on vulnerability.

**Dex** (00:05:17) - You might have heard her talking about it in a Ted talk. I'm going to put that in the show notes, because it's the opposite side of the coin. She is, of course, the queen of embracing vulnerability as personal power. So let's come back to Covid and pessimism and burnout. I think Covid was the great leveler. Almost all of us felt in some way newly vincible, exposed, vulnerable because anyone can get Covid. And so many of us faced prolonged social restrictions, restrictions of movement,  perhaps separation from work or education which provided a sense of well-being, or a buffer against the rest of the world. And there was so much financial risk and loss and a such a high rate of change in our environmental conditions. And also almost all of us had some exposure in our families, in our networks, to unexpected levels of sickness and death. And I'm truly sorry if you've been touched in that way.

**Dex** (00:06:31) - Any loss you personally may have suffered. And I remember one day during Covid, I was coaching a woman who was in her second bout of Covid. And even as she was talking to me from her sickbed, she was struggling to breathe and very fearful about that. And her kids were in the next room. And I will say she was in her recovery phase at the time. So we worked on calm and breathing, which she found very helpful for her. And yes, she did go on to make a full recovery shortly afterwards. So I really wonder what the factors are for you if you are less optimistic since Covid. And some factors that might have contributed might include things like the immersive fear mongering we have in the media, and I think that escalated a great deal during the time of Covid. And I also think they escalated the reporting on these intangible fears that are beyond our control, like climate change, gun crime, politics, war, that type of thing.

**Dex** (00:07:48) - And of course, it makes sense really that fear mongering in the media will keep escalating because that's capitalism. Emotion sells, and the easiest way to control people en masse is through fear. So I get it. But I think it was very noticeable in the last five years or so. I would say it's really escalated for me, and I know a lot of people have stopped watching the news or consuming the news at the rate that they used to, because the quality plummeted and the coverage is too emotionally triggering for for so many of us, it's not really necessary. It's not really having anything for us. During that phase we were already living in this ongoing sense of vulnerability, instability, insecurity, unpredictability. We were already in the shifting sands. That was very uncomfortable for us. So to have that reporting on top was unhelpful, shall we just call it that? And then also another factor for many of us is our workplace perhaps became a little bit less predictable.

**Dex** (00:09:02) - A lot more people shifted to the gig economy, to work from home. There was a very high rate of change in the work we did, or the way we worked. That really shot off in a different direction. And also the way that we connected with people at work changed and became, for many, less supporting. And during the Covid period, there was a lot of governmental compensation in many places for the Covid difficulties, there were the stimulus payments in the US. It was the same in Australia, I imagine it was the same elsewhere. It didn't necessarily fill the gap. And also we all knew it wasn't going to continue. So what was going to happen then, particularly if we had reduced amount of capital or savings? So our financial landscape changed and we knew it wasn't going to continue to be supported. So there were a lot of things around work and income that changed in that period, obviously. And. I think at a foundation level that that affects us very deeply, particularly those of us with families to support.

**Dex** (00:10:14) - Also there was an increasing wealth gap, the gap between the rich and the poor continued to increase and was perhaps more highlighted during that period. Also the escalation of expectations on us as performers. It just continued to increase with the rise and rise and rise of social media, where we're supposed to be Insta famous. There was that increasing expectation on all of us to be extraordinary. We were supposed to come across as extraordinary humans overperforming. So our internal realization or increasing contact with the idea - nope, I'm still flawed. I'm still human. I'm still not some incomparable high performer because that's post-human really, isn't it? So I'm not extraordinary. And really, that's no longer culturally acceptable not to be extraordinary. Right? Can't we airbrush me and make me look better? And somehow it's become our fault that we're not extraordinary. We didn't try hard enough. And as Brené Brown says, we we usually wear our thickest armor at work to protect ourselves and the perception of us and our status.

**Dex** (00:11:35) - So, we've gone through this terrible period in Covid of uncertain or unstable income. And since then, ongoing, we've had inflation. We've had a change in our asset to debt ratio, with most of us have had a lack of wage increase at the previously expected rates. At the same time, a constant shift in business structure, but also requirements that we must meet, have grown. The amount of red tape or insurance stuff or regulations has increased throughout, at work and elsewhere. There's a lot more red tape than there used to be before Covid. We became much more conscious of our contact with people and how that needed to work, and how our performance at work was going to be measured. So I think, you know, if we do have pessimism post-Covid, it relates fundamentally to a perceived loss of safety and control. Safety is a survival need. We can't say anything about that. So really I think it's worth looking at if you do have.

**Dex** (00:12:48) - A new sense of pessimism during and after Covid. Then let's look at where we might where our safety might have been eroded externally in the world and internally within ourselves and our self-belief. Our ability to manage our resilience and wellbeing. So let's look at external safety. I touched on a few things already. And I think in the media there was a lot of reportage about government misdemeanour, as well as a lot of reporting about gun crime, hate crime and weather events. Oh, how much weather have we seen? Have we suddenly got more weather in the world these days? Drought, earthquake, fire, floods, all of that happening more frequently, or has it just been reported on more frequently? Then in terms of external safety, if you've got kids, you'd be thinking about their future. So. The future resilience of your kids, the financial well-being of your kids, the mental health, the schooling and pressure to perform which is increasing constantly. College education. Very high desirability to get your kids into the best schools and then worry about the affordability of that.

**Dex** (00:14:06) - That whole landscape, I think, has worsened the concerns about helicopter parenting. And am I over or under managing the kids? And so there's also this perfectionist train that has been escalating in terms of how to be a good parent. What is a good parent? What do I do if I'm a good parent? What don't I do? And most of the people who come to me in burnout, who have kids are excruciatingly suffering from parent failure self perceptions. And I can't really think of anything more painful than that. Is worrying that you're letting down your kids every moment of every day. Of course, that's not realistic, is it? We are subscribing to standards that are placed on us culturally. That really aren't a great fit for good parenting necessarily. Some of them yes. Some of them no. Then there's this fundamental need in Covid, supermarket shelves looked a bit bare at times, or we couldn't have access the way we wanted to fuel, or even to water, food, medicine, housing, essentials.

**Dex** (00:15:13) - I don't know what it's like where you live, but here we had a run on toilet paper for a long time in Covid, and it did surprise me that it was more important to people to have toilet paper, that there is a longer and more sustained run on toilet paper and lack of supply of toilet paper, than food. Strange. So that survival and survivability aspect really came home to us in Covid in terms of can I get the basic supply needs met for myself and my family? And I also think we worried a great deal about maintenance of good health and not just Covid related good health, but other aspects of health as well. And the the news and media played up to that. In my experience, talking a lot about exposure to the idea of threats to our health rather than actual threats to our health, and also there was a lot of coverage about future pandemics. What's going to get worse in pandemics to come? And things like overuse of drugs and them becoming inefficient.

**Dex** (00:16:24) - So there was an overarching increasing concern about being able to maintain good health. And I think a particularly devastating part of Covid for many people. And for some people it was overt, and for some people it was less on the surface is the social separation. So obviously people at risk were very concerned about that, perhaps retired people, lonely people, people who are distant from their families worried about that. But I think it plays into our deepest need for connection and the enforced separation that so many of us experienced from people cut a lot deeper than perhaps we realize. And after Covid, I find that there's a kind of aftershock and our focus on where we have separation in our life, and there's some separation anxiety that still continues even though the restrictions may have gone. And of course, there's been a very high incidence of mental health problems during Covid and a lack of supply of remedies for that, or lack of access to remedies for that.

**Dex** (00:17:44) - And also chronic physical ill health has been on the rise during the Covid period. And. There's been a lot of talk about that, so we worry about it more than we used to. Even things like environmental toxins and what's happening around us. And can we can we get clean enough food? Can we get clean enough air and water? And for many of us, we're very privileged and we can. But for a lot of people, they simply can't. And that may have been exacerbated in Covid, but it's certainly something that's been drawn to our attention. So there's a lot of factors outside of ourselves. That we will have been ingesting media about during that period that haven't really resolved just because the Covid restrictions or the high incidence of Covid itself have reduced. So I think let's not underplay the external effect of that on us, because it's a safety issue. So, each of us will probably have experienced a sense of personal vulnerability during and after Covid.

**Dex** (00:18:59) - Part of that is about this general acceleration in the rate of change of work, of technology, of communications, of restrictions of media, and of governmental response. Nothing is as predictable anymore as it used to be before Covid and. It accelerated the change in communication, which became more and more indirect, was less person to person. And some of that has prevailed to this day. And also I think increasingly during that period, we were left out of decision making because we weren't collecting together, because the government took over some of our decision making for us, and they made that very clear. So because of those things, we feel many of us have a general loss of self-efficacy and agency in our own life. Post-Covid, maybe we're thinking, well I can't protect myself and my family the way I used to, and everybody else is suffering too. Who's going to help me? You might be thinking, well, I'm experiencing more anxiety and fear more often than I used to.

**Dex** (00:20:14) - I'm in more survival based thinking than I used to be, which will be fear and anxiety. Well, maybe your personal habits changed during Covid. Maybe you're thinking, well, I'm overweight now. I'm more addicted than I used to be. I'm less healthy than I was maybe 5 or 10 years ago. And maybe that's not all due to aging. Maybe there's some of that is circumstantial. Environmental. Maybe you're thinking I'm not as active as I used to be. Maybe I've got less time to be active than I used to be. And I think, we've become even more dependent on pharmaceuticals and medication than we used to be. Maybe our mental health has taken an impact collectively or individually. Maybe it's not quite as robust as before. We feel a little shaky. Maybe we still do have more stress, more fear, more anxiety, more insecurity. Maybe also we have less sense of belonging, which is really, really important to wellbeing, less calm, less sense of control over our lives.

**Dex** (00:21:22) - And all of this is going to add up together to. Higher incidence of mental stress at the very least. And mental health problems are. Globally on the rise at a rate that we have never seen before. And then add in this if you've got parenting pressure, if you feel like you're failing your kids, if that's something that's happening to you every day. I was talking with a teacher yesterday and she said, I'm getting out of teaching. She said, I can't take the pressure anymore. The pressure for the kids to perform, which is not entirely within the remit of the teacher to be able to manage. And I think, and the parents feel the same way. They feel out of control of the kids. The kids themselves feel out of control. So that's a little bit of a whirlwind in the educational system that a lot of people would love to be able to fix. But actually, it's just entrenching people in more stress than they might have had previously.

**Dex** (00:22:28) - You might also be in pressure in your relationship. Some of which will be a Covid after effect. And probably if you're feeling pressurised by Covid and by the things that happened at work and financially and environmentally during that period, you probably will feel more pressure at work than you would have previously. You probably have feel that you have less time. You need more me time, or any me time. Your mood might very well be impacted as well. You might be in a bad mood more often, and you might feel that you have no energy left for yourself, even for your partner and your kids. You might be under pressure there. You might just be doing less, or not have the energy to do as much as you used to do outside of work and socially. And if you think really about our collective pessimism about the future due to all of these pressures that have added up, you know, the collective pessimism at a societal level, even if we use money as an example here.

**Dex** (00:23:38) - So this is coming back to the podcast episode that I mentioned earlier, and they were talking about recession starts with sentiment. A recession can be caused by sentiment, not the economic statistics of the day. And if recession starts in sentiment, then burnout is a recession. It's an internal recession of who you are, right? So burnout also starts in sentiment. And I think that's good news though, because sentiment can be changed. And the World Health Organization back in 2019 defined burnout as three kind of conditions. One is depletion and exhaustion. So you'll know if you have that. Two, it's really a disengagement from work, a separation from work and a cynicism about work. You'll know if you have that. And three is a reduced professional efficacy or really just your perception of your performance at work, not necessarily the performance itself. I think in addition to that there's been a loss of belonging, a loss of camaraderie and teamwork. We're not as connected as we used to be. Quite often because we're all under pressure.

**Dex** (00:24:58) - You won't have been receiving the recognition, reward and sense of fulfilment that you might once have enjoyed or look forward to. You probably feel a loss of agency, and you could easily be being micromanaged or even bullied at work. And there's going to be an inadequacy of decision making, possibly in you, but probably in others as well. There are shifting requirements. When we're in survival mode, there's an increase in aggressive behavior, kind of a dog eat dog culture, a negative feeling culture. And there's increasing demands. Your boss or the system that you work within might be increasingly unreasonable to you. You probably feel out of control, overworked, overwhelmed. You might have a sense of falling behind, never, ever being able to get enough work done to feel okay. And then feeling cranky all the time because of that and that risk as well. I think if we don't think we're getting all our work done. And that might lead you to to be always on, even when you're not at work, to be constantly kind of cocking an ear to see what's happening at work, keeping an eye on your messages, trying to respond to messages quickly so you don't let anyone down so you're not even experiencing a further sense of vulnerability.

**Dex** (00:26:19) - And there's a very sharp rise, I think, in all of us who experience burnout. Worrying about what other people think about us and try to kind of manage what other people think about us. And also, I think because of all of those factors, we're not getting the support and the encouragement or perhaps even the training we need to do our jobs properly. So I think if we look at all of that, it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that there's a bit of throwback after Covid of people not really feeling. As good as they need to feel to be able to do their work. Even at the level that they would have done before Covid. So here's what to do if you can relate to any of those things that I've talked about, any of those factors or any of those experiences internally, here's what to do. And let me just say, your well-being does not depend on your external world. Because that could be a doomed situation, couldn't you? If the external world refuses to change and support you more? You actually do have way more control over your own well-being than you think.

**Dex** (00:27:31) - And what I do with people is I teach them how to assert their own power, their innate power to effect the transformation they seek to feel good again. So it's my contention that you have enough good in you, enough power in you to be able to change, transform entirely your experience of work and by extension of life. You have that power. We don't have to wait for someone else to help us out. Otherwise I'd be out of a job. Really? I wouldn't be able to help people recover from burnout. So. Really, I think let's talk about how to thrive. Let's talk about some of the aspects of thriving. If we're going to return to thriving from burnout. First of all, you don't need to go down with the ship of this fear culture that we're in. So you have some control over that, perhaps starting with not ingesting quite so much, but also not feeding on it. So when we have an anxiety cycle, it becomes compulsive.

**Dex** (00:28:36) - When we look for all of the risks in the environment. So we may consume a lot of news because we're looking for risk, but that makes us more anxious. So one of the keys to that is not to consume quite so much, and not to be addicted to finding out what's going wrong. So that's really you can manage your level of immersion in news media and fear mongering. It's much more helpful for us as individuals to focus on the things that we can control. So here's some of the things that you can control, even though you may not have that experience right now because you're so deep into burnout and anxiety and fear, you may not have that experience, but this is possible, right? Things you can control. Thoughts. What you make, external events or information mean for you, or about you, or about your future. You can control that. You can control your feelings, how you feel about the way you interpret what's happening in the world. So if you have a lot of very negative thinking about what's happening in the world and the result you think it's going to manifest for you, if you immerse yourself in that, then you're going to feel bad much more frequently and more deeply than if you're able to cultivate a more even interpretation of what's happening and your future.

**Dex** (00:30:05) - So we can control our thoughts. We can control our feelings. Control mood. If you are in pessimism quite frequently, and it's going to be an experience that seems a bit dark, it seems a bit. You might feel very helpless, angry, resentful, exhausted. If you keep feeding yourself pessimistic thoughts. You're feeding the wrong dog in the fight. You're feeding the bad dog in the fight. It's going to attack you. So the way we control our mood is by letting new possibilities enter our minds. Okay, so when you think about possibility, you can think about, okay, are all those terrible things happening to me right now? Probably they aren't. Usually they're not. Because anxieties fear for the future. I'm okay now, but then I won't be. So usually if we focus on what's happening now, it's manageable. So possibility is okay. It's manageable now. What if it's manageable? Manageable in the future as well? What if that happens? So really, am I currently okay? Is it possible that I'll continue to be okay? All right.

**Dex** (00:31:14) - So the other thing that you can control on top of that, of course, is how you spend your time and energy. And. Often when we're feeling rough, we're not spending our time and energy as well or as productively. For as authentically as we could be, and that could be easily changed. You can control how you start your day. If you wake in the morning and you're in anxiety. Do you let that take over your head and slash and burn your way through breakfast now? Or do you have some practice in the morning that lifts your mood because you can lift your own mood. Doesn't matter how deep it's gone, even in depression. It is possible to let another perspective in. That will help stabilize your mood a little. Setting boundaries is another one, and usually people in burnout are not setting very good boundaries. They're letting other people ride roughshod over them. They're letting other people say, you need to do this. You need to do this, I want this, I want that, without setting any restrictions.

**Dex** (00:32:23) - So. It is possible to set better boundaries without it costing other people what they want. There is a win win you can make by setting boundaries. The other thing is. Don't allow anxiety to have you working 24x7 or thinking about work 24x7, because you're worried about what'll happen if you're not paying attention to work. That's anxiety driven. It's fear driven. It's not necessarily the full reality of what needs to happen for you. So if you're saying yes to everything, if you're looking at all your messages and saying yes to everything that's asked of you. Then really, you're probably going to be drowning even further, and you're probably going to be drowning in exhaustion, but also resentment and frustration. So it's actually not possible to please all of the people all of the time. But you are probably making that attempt now, because if you're worried about what other people are thinking about you, you worry about letting other people down and the repercussions of that. But a lot of that is not entirely realistic.

**Dex** (00:33:35) - So what you can do when you set good boundaries, when you don't say yes to everything that's asked of you. You can make a little bit of space to support yourself emotionally. Because if you're just doing everything for everybody else, anytime they ask what you're doing is it's kind of an aspect in there, which is self neglect. And really, each of us will do better if we're able to give ourselves a little bit of time and attention and support ourselves a little bit. Because what we're doing then is we're finding ourselves important enough to care for. And we need to do that to feel okay. It won't matter if other people find you're important enough to care for. If you're not doing that for yourself, it's going to bounce off you. So a part of recovery is okay. I am important enough to care for, and I'm going to find a little chink in my day to give myself that care. And maybe that really looks like spirituality. Maybe it looks like even a few moments of meditation or walking.

**Dex** (00:34:42) - A little moment in nature in the garden. Um, or just bringing your attention back to your breath and being in the moment. If you have a habit of doing that for just three breaths, which just takes a minute. It's investing in you and inside of you. There's something there that there is a being there that wants you to pay attention. Internally. We all want our own attention, not just the attention of other people. So just taking a few moments. Doing whatever makes sense to you. Preferably in the morning. So you set yourself up for. Improving your own mood just that little bit each day is really, really important. And in terms of performance, you be the judge of your performance. Other people can and will judge, but nobody else's judgment is is as important as your own. So worrying about what others think is just a kind of time and energy suck. Yes, we pay attention to what other people think. Particularly if there are bosses or our clients or whatever. But we don't have to let our heads be ruled by what other people think.

**Dex** (00:35:52) - We can be true to ourselves and what we consider to be good performance. So. You know, if you're worrying about what other people think about you or how other people are judging you. What you're really doing is you're outsourcing approval of you to people who are probably also burned out a drowning. They're scared, they're miserable. They're exhausted. They're fed up. So you're outsourcing approval to that. It may not work as well as giving it to yourself. So then when you think about your time and valuing your time and saying no to people, really, the other thing you can do around time and work is don't allow anxious negative thinking, doubt, worry, frustration, resentment to consume you and to paralyze you into procrastination and self-doubts. A big one in here as well. If you don't think you're doing very well, or if you're worried you can't do something to, standard procrastination is one of the very common results about that. So we can buy back that time. We don't need to procrastinate if we don't spend time in this repeating cycle of anxiety.

**Dex** (00:37:05) - And then what happens is we start to value ourselves slightly differently. And we feel that typically we do feel that. And then we start saying no to work that we should be saying no to or requests that we should be saying no to, and we become willing. To entertain a shift in the way that we work, or the frequency of work, or the duration of work. Each day we become willing to work less. But better and better is available to you. However, how you think you're performing now better is still available, but better needs to come with working less. Not working more can't be a function of overwork. So when you do that, when you count down a little bit and start valuing yourself, improving yourself, giving yourself some attention, you're you're going to center in a little bit more on who you truly are. And I would encourage you even now listening to this, if you feel lousy listening to this, listen to your heart. Maybe put your hand on your heart. This is what I do to connect with it.

**Dex** (00:38:05) - Guaranteed. Your heart is still good. Burnout has not diminished your heart. So no matter how crappy you feel. Make decisions from your heart. See what your heart wants to do. Ask it what? What shall I do about this? And listen to your heart. So this is the antidote to letting the anxious thoughts make decisions for you. It's going okay. Heart. What do you want? What do you truly want here? And quite often it will tell you so we act from love, not fear. If we're able to do that, it will change the way that we experience ourselves and therefore our lives. So I've outlined a lot of things there that might seem a bit out of reach to you. If you're in burnout, you're probably tell yourself you can't do any of those things. That isn't the absolute truth. So what I've just outlined there is really the bones of the burnout recovery process. And that's the one that I lead professionals in burnout through when they come to me.

**Dex** (00:39:07) - And I really do want you to know. No matter how awful you feel right now, recovery is possible for you too. And the reason I'm making this podcast today is that when you come out of burnout now, even after Covid and any throwback from that, your mood and outlook will swing back into the positive. You're going to naturally be more in command of your performance and your drive at work and everywhere else. You're going to see work completely differently than you do now. You're going to have a different relationship with work than you do now, and you won't be ruled anymore by the negative aspects of it, or by what you perceive now as threats you're going to find. The things that you used to worry about. Less significant. And your personal power will rise to meet them, and you're going to start to thrive. That's what Burnout recovery looks like. You're going to tap into a whole new seam of buoyant optimism that you didn't even know was there. And that's going to carry you through work and create a different experience, a transformed experience for you.

**Dex** (00:40:17) - Essentially, what will happen when you recover from burnout is you won't lose your head, even though all about you are losing theirs. And how I know this will happen for you. Whatever you'll burn out experience may currently be is that this is the work I do every day with people just like you. People in anxious despair, worn out, angry, fed up over it, ready to quit. And recovery is really reliable. You never need to worry whether or not it will work for you, because that's my job, to guide you there. And I'm going to teach you how to rescue yourself. Remaining in burnout, I regard as optional. Even if you're in burnout now, you don't have to stay there. And your boss, your system, your job doesn't have to change for you to feel better. So I know if you're in burnout, I know you're not enjoying it. So if you're ready and willing to explore a new way of being, particularly as we approaching the new year, do you want the next year to be better for you? Come and talk to me and let's plan out what recovery would look like for you with the specific problems that you yourself face at work.

**Dex** (00:41:29) - Because if both burnout and recessions can be caused by sentiment, then the chief thing you need to change is your sentiment, right? You'll need to find optimism. And that's what burnout recovery will do for you. So if you are in burnout looking to talk to me at dexrandall.com and we'll make a plan together for you to recover quickly and sustainably and get back to your best performance, leadership, success, and most of all, enjoyment inside work and out. Thank you for listening. Today I do wish you all the best and if you've enjoyed this episode, please do subscribe, rate and review the podcast. I really appreciate your support in this so we can reach more people suffering burnout. And if you do know somebody who is. Heading towards or in burnout. Please send on the podcast link. It's packed, as you know, with practical tips for burnout recovery that you can start using straight away. And I do recommend that new people listen to the first five episodes to get started. If you're in burnout and ready to recover, come and join my Burnout to Leadership program.

**Dex** (00:42:46) - You can book in to talk with me at burnout.dexrandall.com. Just tell me what's bugging you and let's make a plan to fix it.