Burnout Recovery
The podcast for slightly dented execs and professionals seeking massive success, strong leadership and fulfilment. Weekly tips and techniques for high-achieving Type A professionals to beat burnout and restore outstanding leadership, performance and ease at work. Podcast hosted by Master Burnout Coach Dex Randall.
- Burnout Recovery Coaching https://dexrandall.com
- Burnout Recovery eCourse https://bit.ly/burnoutecourse
- Guest Podcast Appearances https://bit.ly/dex-guest-appearances
Burnout Recovery
Ep#127 Burnout Prevention
Get my 4 best tips to prevent burnout here.
Do ever wonder where the line is between chronic stress and burnout? And if you have crossed it? Or how to know if your loved ones or colleagues are burned out?
This week's episode helps you recognize burnout and make good decisions about it, whether it's your burnout or someone else's.
I outline some critical aspects of burnout that affect morale and work, and what price we pay as individuals and teams/organisations for letting burnout slide, untended. I hope you are not doing this!
I also share the remedy for each of these challenges.
Don't put up with burnout! Take action now! Burnout is fixable using a precision method that does not fail. Come talk to me to find out how.
Show Notes:
Ep 36 Championing Yourself
Ep 38 Creating Safety
Ep 39 7 tips to reduce resentment
Ep 12 Saying No
Ep 21 How to set effective boundaries
The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety by Timothy R Clark
Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull
Good to Great by Jim Collins
----------------------------------- Burnout Resources:
Get 1-on-1 burnout recovery coaching at https:/mini.dexrandall.com
Burnout Recovery eCourse: https://go.dexrandall.com/beatburnout
For even more TIPS see
FACEBOOK: @coachdexrandall
INSTAGRAM: @coachdexrandall
LINKEDIN: @coachdexrandall
TWITTER: @coachdexrandall
or join the FACEBOOK group for burnout coaches only
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1030925731159138
See https://linktr.ee/coachdexrandall for all links
[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.
[00:00:22] Hello my friends, this is Dex. Welcome to this week's episode on burnout prevention. I can't believe it's taken me this long to get around to it. And I know a lot of people are talking about burnout prevention. It's probably the first thing you want to know about how to protect yourself from burnout, yeah?
[00:00:39] Or maybe you're just feeling that first little nibble of burnout. You're wondering how to backpedal and get yourself out of it, or maybe if you run teams or organizations, especially in an industry where burnout's endemic, how can you protect your team members from burnout and foster teamwork, mutual support, great communication, engagement, selflessness, creativity,
[00:01:05] strong problem solving and of course more enjoyment and reward. I know it's been uppermost in my mind when I've been running a team is I really need to have it running very smoothly for me to be able to feel like I'm doing my job. So for those people in burnout, for those leaders in burnout, that's really quite a big ask.
[00:01:27] And if you lack any of those attributes that I just spoke about. Maybe that suggests that you are susceptible to burnout. It's a good job you're here, really. I would love to be able to help you. Because humans, of course, we're built to cooperate, aren't we? And contribute. They're two very strong drivers in us.
[00:01:46] Community and contribution. Because human survival is a team sport, we're tribal animals. So if you feel excluded, or if you feel a bit less than capable of pulling your own weight at work, or indeed at home, outside work, it really is an erosion of the self, of the imperative as a human to belong and to work together.
[00:02:14] It's an erosion of the self from the inside. And I would say, and I'm sure you feel this too, that very little good is going to come of that. If you see yourself as failing, everywhere you look, helpless, failing, not good enough, then please, I implore you, take some different action, because burnout's not good for us, and it turns us into haters.
[00:02:43] Against our will, and against our better natures, we become fearful, faithless, we lose hope, we start to radiate bitterness. So if you're there or near there, or if you're in a chronic state of fear and anxiety that perhaps persuades you to be a little bit in retreat from the world, then please take action because all the things that I've just described really are the root of burnout.
[00:03:12] And come and talk with me. Let's make a plan for your resurgence. Okay? Quick smart. If that's happening for you, please do something. Don't just listen to this and hope it goes away. Because maybe it won't. Maybe it will, if you're lucky. But burnout is episodic, it tends to get worse over time. So I think it makes a lot more sense to tackle burnout once you recognize you're in it than to leave it and hope it's going to get better by itself.
[00:03:43] And of course, I mentioned this before, the cost of burnout is immense. Prevention is way better than cure if you can do that. The cost to workforces, organizations, and even whole countries, of burnout is huge in USA. The cost of burnout is measured in trillions each year.
[00:04:08] And I do care about that. I care about the cumulative effect on the workforce, industries, society itself, really. Take farming in Australia, an industry that's besieged with meteorological, political, financial pressures that are having a terrible impact on the suicide rate. Take medicine, internationally bogged down in seemingly insurmountable capitalist imperatives and associated problems.
[00:04:40] I could go on. Of course, I do heed all of this and I feel a deep sadness in what it shows us about modern society. But, way more than that, I care about people. I care about teams, and I care about individuals, and I care about leaders. I care about you, if you're in or near burnout. I know what it's like.
[00:05:05] I've come through burnout myself. If you have yet to experience it, that's marvellous for a kick off, but I do particularly recommend prevention because burnout is one of the darkest kinds of suffering. It's toxic to all enjoyment of life, to self esteem, to how we think about our worthiness as human, and also to partnerships and families.
[00:05:35] So okay, today let's focus hard on burnout prevention. How people end up in burnout and how can you identify if you are in or near burnout. If today's episode rings alarm bells for you,
[00:05:50] I actually do suggest that you listen to the very first five episodes of this podcast so that you can orient yourself, understand burnout a little bit better, and also begin your prevention or recovery journey. Don't delay with that. And I'll also put some resources in the show notes today, which I'll mention as I go through.
[00:06:13] The thing that I really would like you to do, any of you listening, is when you learn to recognize the signs of burnout, in yourself, in a mate, at your workplace, is do something. Don't wait for it to blow up into a crisis, take action. Burnout is recoverable, but clearly only if you do something different than you're doing now.
[00:06:37] So stand up, speak up, activate the remedy. And you're most welcome to come, if you'd like, for a free consult with me to find out how to help yourself, or your teams, or petition your boss, if you see burnout is an issue around you and your workplace. So burnout recovery really requires a change in MO.
[00:07:03] And to some extent, burnout prevention also does. As adults, we'll only change our M. O. if we've got a bloody good reason to, won't we? Because we're professionals, we know what we're doing, and we really don't like changing who we think we are. So if that's happening for you, let me help you out. Here are my top three reasons to choose change for somebody who's working in the arena of burnout.
[00:07:35] And the first three are going to be for an individual, maybe for yourself or for a mate at work or whatever. And then I'm going to talk about In a team and organization. So for yourself, number one to restore your natural human performance. at work. That's why you would want to change. And if you restore your performance, it's going to preserve the important things at work, like your employability, your career , your earning potential, your work relationships, energy, mood, problem solving, collaboration, decision making, productivity, leadership,
[00:08:16] and other performance factors. On top of all that, it's going to make you want to work again. Which I think it's perhaps one of the biggest bonuses. You're going to get your mojo back. So that's one reason you might want to change. The next one is to protect your physical and mental health from rapid decline into chronic health conditions.
[00:08:37] You can't stay in burnout and preserve your mental and physical health. When you're running your system down, you're running your system down. Recommend it, particularly if you've got some insight into your health conditions, not as good as you want. Headaches, insomnia, gut aches and all that kind of stuff.
[00:08:56] Spinal problems, neck problems, jaw problems. If you've got inklings, then I would recommend you do something to sort those out before they get any worse. And they will rebound along with the rest of your vitality. And the third one is If you're a person in burnout, why you might want to change to protect personal relationships.
[00:09:16] And I mean spouse, family, friends, to protect those relationships from long term degradation. Because if you don't come out of burnout, it gets worse. So however things are for you around people at the moment, if you'd like to improve those, then halt the burnout. So many people do come to me, When their marital partner is thinking about leaving.
[00:09:44] That's how bad a lot of people get. And, don't strain your relationships that far if you can avoid it. Because burnout recovery is, to quite a large extent, marriage recovery. Same with your kids. Burnout recovery is parenting recovery. You're going to be a better partner and a better parent when you recover from burnout.
[00:10:06] And this impacts as well from the relationship with yourself. You can't sustain great relationships with other people when you're a permanent grouch and your relationship with yourself isn't that good. Also, everyone at work that you currently hate or despise or resent, When you recover from burnout, you'll begin to see their good side.
[00:10:31] I'm not kidding. You don't by nature want to hate everyone and everything, do you? So when you bounce back from burnout, you won't. So that was the top three reasons if you're a person approaching or in burnout. Here's the top three reasons to choose change in your team or organization. Number one, to boost your leadership performance,
[00:10:54] trustability, engagement, team fluency, building more powerful, highly cooperative team, and therefore reducing friction, cost, absenteeism, turnover, performance loss within those teams and projects. That's reason one. Number two is to become the inspiration for others. Bringing some reassurance and more joy to their work as well as your own.
[00:11:23] Take the pressure off yourself. Free up your ability to support others. Because I bet you've got that streak a mile wide that you'd love to support others better. If your brain is quietly scoffing at the very idea of those things, if a piece of you can't believe that, then be a little bit careful.
[00:11:42] Because that's one of the signs of burnout. This relentless negativity and doubt of anything good happening. Number three. To contribute at your highest level to your team and organization in a way that reveals your best work and opens new avenues to you that you will enjoy. So really, as a leader, when you recover from burnout, I promise you work will be more fun.
[00:12:14] Some of your passion and enthusiasm will return little by little and then one day you'll be there having a lot more fun than you used to and work will seem like a good thing to do again. And I think that alone is priceless. To me it is, anyway. And in case you wonder, because I know all that's a little bit hard to believe in if you're in burnout.
[00:12:34] No, I didn't make any of that up. The things that I'm describing there are just routine for the people who are courageous enough to acknowledge burnout and take the right restorative action. That other side of the coin, where work is fun, does still exist, whether or not you've seen it lately, burnout, of course, is very blind to the goodness.
[00:12:59] Burnout is much more angry, blaming and resentful, entrenched in pain. But that's not your true nature. If that's your experience right now, no matter how long it's been going on, that's not your true nature. And that's why you can recover from burnout and start enjoying work again. And one of the ways I know what the upsides are, and that they're real, is by studying the results of each of my clients, and I quite often see this look of surprise and delight on their faces as they begin to conquer their problems and tap into a new seam of growth and connection and enjoyment.
[00:13:41] They actually start to step into the light and I watch them doing that more and more as we work together. And of course, I've experienced this in my own burnout recovery as well, because when I was in burnout, It seemed that the only conclusion that it could come to if I left it to run its course was to extinguish my soul completely and have me fall into this perpetual darkness and failure.
[00:14:06] That's what burnout said to me when I was in it. But the negativity of burnout is its biggest lie. It's a bit like the negativity of depression. I often compare the two. Depression tells you nothing will ever get any better than this. Well in burnout our brains tell us that too. And ask yourself this, have you ever felt convinced, if you are in burnout, that nothing could get better than this?
[00:14:30] That maybe your previous glory at work has died? That it's all downhill from here? And if that's happened to you, do you think that is the burnout talking? Could that be possible? Is it churning out these dark, anxious thoughts all day, every day? But still, was there ever a time when you believed differently about yourself and about work, where you had passion and belief?
[00:14:57] Just ask yourself that, because that person who once had more optimism than you have now is still inside of you and they're still accessible, can still be brought forth again. Because what happened for me is once I recovered from burnout I bounced back as a human, first and foremost as a person, I bounced back.
[00:15:15] And then my leadership changed quite dramatically because recovery really freed up a part of me that loves people. It freed that part of me up so I could access that love and the care that I had for other people more easily. And I made it safe for myself to do that. And from there, all sorts of good things became possible again.
[00:15:43] I found a new, much gentler way of working with people, including myself. Because love isn't a dirty word. I'm allowed to love people, and I'm allowed to love myself. Just try and stop me. Because if I don't, who will? How can I mend things inside myself if there's no love? When you're in burnout, even though the depth of suffering is crippling, it is worth contemplating because that's just coming from thoughts a lot of it.
[00:16:16] Negative thinking about yourself. Is that the energy I want to bring to the world? Because if it isn't, another option is still viable. That's what I'm really saying. As we're talking about burnout prevention today, I am going to share with you some thoughts and some questions to ask yourself, and I'm going to offer you . Some ways of overcoming obstacles that can support you at whatever stage you're at in burnout prevention or burnout recovery. So I've got four of those.
[00:16:45] Number one, the biggest challenge of burnout or impending burnout is how mean we are to ourselves. True? Have you noticed that your brain frequently feeds you insults, judgments, criticism, and blame about you? And, in for a penny, about other people too. How many times a day does it do that, do you think?
[00:17:08] And how outrageous are the insults? Don't you feel then trapped in helpless rage, hatred, frustration and resentment? And if you have those insults, those judgments, are they all true? It doesn't even matter for how much they sting, right? I guess really this applies to burnout prevention and recovery.
[00:17:36] If we are self basting in vitriol against ourselves all day, it's going to be very hard to feel good about ourselves and anything happening in our world, isn't it? We're quite likely to doubt and reject, under such a regime, even compliments that other people offer to us. We won't even hear them. We won't even take them in.
[00:18:01] So if your inner critic is a blazing inferno of invective, gunning you down, do something, because self criticism, it's just thoughts. It means nothing. It's just babble. Even the criticism or judgment of other people towards us, really, it tells us a lot more about who they are than who we are. So we can take them with a pinch of salt.
[00:18:28] Humans are fallible. Them, as well as us. Oh well, doesn't matter. So really if you've got a lot of criticism, for yourself, for others, it's time to learn to champion yourself. Because you know that person, there must have been one person somewhere in your life who believed in you completely. Maybe a grandparent, or a kindly neighbour, a teacher, when you were young, could even be a dog.
[00:18:52] You need to be that to yourself. If you want to live well, you need to support yourself to the hilt. Learn to trust your good heart and let everything else go. You need to compliment and encourage yourself. Although we're not accustomed to doing this, it's simply a practice or a habit you can cultivate and learn on purpose, if you truly want to be good to yourself.
[00:19:18] Because if you're not kind to yourself, it makes it hard to receive kindness from others, or give kindness to others. And if you feel thus embittered, you disincent other people from offering kindness to you. That self reinforcing loop really needs to be reversed. Because kindness begets kindness. You can do it.
[00:19:42] Just switching one habit for a new one. And I talk a lot more about this in episode number 36, which is called Championing Yourself. I tell you how to do that. So listen to that episode if you'd like to learn the method. But if you want to keep burnout at bay, you will need to do this. You can't poison your own well and expect to flourish, eh?
[00:20:03] That's the truth of it, really. And then the second thing is, once you've started being kind to yourself, is stop fighting everyone else. A near neighbour of self criticism is finding other people wrong. That's easy, isn't it? You could do that with your eyes shut any day at all, right? Just make something up and convince yourself you're right.
[00:20:27] And I think we learned this trick in the schoolyard, if nowhere else. Because, everybody's thinking, Oh, let's pick on the kid who's different. Kids can be a real tough audience, can't they? No wonder becoming a teenager is so hard. And in burnout, we've got this torrent of boiling pain inside us and it emerges as malice, unsurprisingly.
[00:20:47] We feel untrusting of other people. We become very suspicious of other people and their intentions because after all, our suffering must be their fault, right? And in making others wrong, we compound our own vitriol and suffer more. And somewhere, right in the back there, we don't really tend to look for it, but it's there.
[00:21:09] We might be a bit dark on other people, but we're even darker on ourselves for being so mean to them. Somewhere inside, we're actually keeping a tally of our meanness and holding it against ourselves. But now okay, you've got options. You're an adult. You've got self awareness, you can choose.
[00:21:29] You can choose to walk in the world with a wrongness detector or a rightness detector. Or even better, you can give people the benefit of the doubt. And that's including you, of course. So we don't know why another person behaves in a way that we interpret as wrong or malicious. We often make incorrect assumptions about other people's motivations, don't we?
[00:21:55] But really, people spend about 99 percent of their days on the ME plan, thinking about me. We think about the world and our perceptions of the world in terms of ourselves. What it means for us, or about us. So necessarily, we won't spare the time to understand others particularly well. We just make a bunch of assumptions usually.
[00:22:20] But the thing is, we tell ourselves we DO understand them. We convince ourselves that they don't like us, they're doing us wrong. So here's an example. The boss assigns us to a different project. We straight away think, he hates me, he's punishing me, why didn't he discuss it with me first etc, etc. We never think that he might have another motive.
[00:22:42] But knowing that we behave in this way allows us to reconsider why we're adding unnecessarily to our own suffering and alienating ourselves from our people. Because the people we live our lives around are our people.
[00:22:57] How could he do that? We cry. We unbelong ourselves in disgust. And then we're alone with our own thoughts. Not a good place to be sometimes. If you would like to develop a new attitude that's going to help relieve your burden of judgment, listen to episode number 38, Creating Safety, and 39, 7 Tips to Reduce Resentment.
[00:23:19] That's a goodie. I'll put these in the show notes. So my third tip is another stop. It's stop people pleasing. People pleasing sounds great, but it actually causes a bit of damage. When we don't have very high self esteem, we spend a lot of energy trying to make sure other people like and approve of us.
[00:23:42] Typically because we don't like and approve of ourselves enough. Unfortunately, by people pleasing we choose a very poor way of doing this. We try to manipulate others into liking us by telling them what we think they want to hear. People pleasing then prompts us to pretzel ourselves into a more likeable version of ourselves in a quest for the approval that will make us feel safe.
[00:24:12] That's very unfortunate because it's fake. We're lying to them about who we are. And what we like to do or can do to get them to be kind to us. I really don't think that's fair to either person. And personally, I don't enjoy being people pleased by others either. I'd much rather know who they really are and what they really will do or would like to do.
[00:24:40] Because think about somebody in your life who's a people pleaser. Can you tell, when they're people pleasing you? Not quite telling the truth? Saying yes when they mean no? And does that feel good to you? Maybe it works for some authority figures to be surrounded by Yes men, but only if the yes men deliver on what they promise.
[00:25:00] It's not a really functional model that we would choose, for our important human connections. When we people please, we're not allowing other people to get to know our true self and form a fully functional relationship with us, a mutual relationship with us. We're, if you like, self rejecting.
[00:25:20] We're rejecting a piece of ourselves and then we can't give that piece to them either. We're not owning who we are. And I find that rather tragic that we can't accept ourselves just as we are. And generally, there's no point in blaming ourselves if we're people pleasers. It just happened that way.
[00:25:38] Because people pleasing is usually learned in childhood. If you can relate to people pleasing yourself, be very gentle in unwinding this habit. And expressly, if you're female and you learned it's your duty to fulfill other people's needs at your own cost. Although many boys also learn to shoulder that responsibility.
[00:26:00] Anyhow, the antidote to people pleasing and the way to prevent a descent into burnout as a consequence of people pleasing, because people pleasing has a cost. We say we'll do something we don't want to do or we don't have time to do. And that breeds a resentment in us and hatred. So it does feed into burnout.
[00:26:18] So the antidote is to reassert yourself and stand by your own needs. And in the first instance for this, you're going to need to get clarity on where you are losing yourself. And also you need to learn a little bit more about who you are on the inside, what you truly like and don't like, will do and won't do, and what your basic needs really are.
[00:26:42] A lot of people won't know this. Okay. Because they will have lived so far from their reality for such a long time. So that's a really delicate business, discovering needs versus wants particularly. And I think it's better not undertaken when you are angry or resentful at someone. Rather, we can approach it with emotional maturity, emotional neutrality, discernment.
[00:27:08] And respect for ourselves and for the other people. It's an exercise in being more you, not blaming, punishing, or otherwise harming other people. We're just, is there a reclamation here? And generally, I think an exploration into self assertion is best done with guidance, external help, starting very gently and consciously.
[00:27:37] And I would suggest that you get external help, because we're not very good at this when we begin, and the penalty for getting it wrong, particularly in the learning stages, can be very sharp. By all means, become more assertive, but get external help and objective viewpoints so that you can steer yourself on an easy path and not make too many painful mistakes.
[00:27:59] So some behaviours that you can then adopt very gently. 1. Saying no when you mean no. In a discerning and respectful way. Not like a child refusing to eat dinner. We're not talking about tantrums here. And I talk about this one in episode 12, which I'll put in the show notes as well. How to say no.
[00:28:19] Setting boundaries. On a similar vein. An area where many of us are very deficient, especially if we had domineering parents. I'll put my hand up there. Again, it needs to be learned very gently and done with respect, not aggression or defensiveness. And I talk about that a little bit in episode 21 on setting boundaries without harm.
[00:28:47] And then the next one is negotiating. So that's a little bit like saying no, but it's more like. I'd like to help you out, but we'll need to change the request a little bit more before I can accommodate it. For example, rather than thinking, Oh no, I have to make that meeting, but I'm going to be late home tonight, and my procedure starts at 8am tomorrow.
[00:29:07] So instead of thinking something like that, you might just ask them, Can I be present for a part of the meeting, or attend online, or have a little pre or post meeting debrief? Or can I nominate a substitute? So you just negotiate, rather than just saying a flat no, you negotiate a compromise solution from a place of respect.
[00:29:28] So winding down people pleasing really is an exercise in honoring yourself first and foremost. You're allowed to be you and you can accomplish that without conflict by being solution focused and making requests from a place of calmness, respect and goodwill. You don't have to fight for your rights on this one.
[00:29:53] You can negotiate your way there without doing any damage to existing relationships. And when you start relating with yourself better and being clear with others about boundaries, life becomes easier. You will be more consistent in what you say and how you present and what you do.
[00:30:14] You'll be able to produce actually better quality work instead of being over committed. People will know what to expect of you and that often goes down a lot better than uncertainty and fear of kickback. And all of that work I've just talked about there, it really lays the groundwork for taming your schedule, overwork, overwhelm, exhaustion, irritation and frustration, all that work side of burnout.
[00:30:41] I think we need to deal with the people aspects of it first. So that it gives us the room to move on the tactical side of handling our schedule and our overwork and etc.
[00:30:53] So the last one, number four, I am including psychological safety as a preventive for burnout, because it is. Ask yourself this, if you know someone in burnout, do you think they feel safe?
[00:31:07] I'd probably put money on that if I was a betting person that the answer will be no. All right If creating psychological safety is within your remit at work, i. e. you're a leader, then preventing burnout in yourself becomes a gift you can give to your team. So psychological safety is fundamentally about freedom of self expression.
[00:31:29] So it's a range of team communication protocols that you can cultivate within yourself and your team. You, of course, as the leader, will be the pivot around which safety turns because only you, the authority figure in your team can grant or withhold safety privileges at the top level. It's your personal offering to your team, and it's up to you to cultivate that environment.
[00:31:57] Doing this does not require that you yourself enjoy psychological safety with your own boss. Although ideally you will, since the safety you offer your team could possibly be undercut from above.
[00:32:12] Anyway, let me share with you my favorite instruction manual on creating psychological safety. Just like an A to Z, you just follow the bouncing ball all the way through the book. It's called The Four Stages of Psychological Safety. It's by Timothy R. Clark. It's quite a small book. Read the book, do what it says.
[00:32:30] It'll make sense to you. He explains everything very well. What it does really is it renders your team's performance to its highest possible level and you'll also lift team cohesion and engagement. Another couple of books I recommend on this topic. I think it's actually worth reading if you don't really understand how psychological safety is beneficial, particularly and how it impacts the bottom line, then these books are all really, really good.
[00:32:58] There's another book called Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull who took Pixar's animation teams on a journey of psychological safety to their best performance ever. Beautiful story about the things that he tried and failed, what worked, what didn't, why it worked, why it didn't work, how he adjusted and kept moving.
[00:33:20] And then lastly, Jim Collins Good to Great was the book I first read extolling the virtues of psychological safety, although he never called it that. In a very long study he held on the management styles of companies who consistently outperformed others in their industry, and it was across various industries.
[00:33:39] It was long term great performing companies. So I'll put all of those books in the show notes because I think all of them are epic. But coming back to psychological safety, really, why would you do it? You would do it because it pays. It reduces absenteeism, presenteeism, sick days, procrastination, quiet quitting, dissent amongst team members.
[00:34:05] And it improves employee retention, engagement, problem solving skills, velocity, productivity, quality, and ultimately, of course, profit. It's also, very happily for the rest of us, more fun and rewarding. And it's more creative and there's more diversity of thinking in it. Because a safe team takes care of each other.
[00:34:29] They'll bond and they'll pull together. And it'll just be a functional unit instead of a set of bickering.
[00:34:35] I think you know what I mean. But of course that's all very well if you're a team leader. If you're listening to this and you're not a team leader you may perhaps have very little agency in creating safety within your team or organization. So here, the lot falls to you to create inner safety within yourself.
[00:34:56] This is the sense of safety that develops when you are championing yourself, approving of yourself and always having your own back, so you can create this sense of internal safety regardless of anything else that's happening around you. And this is something I teach all my clients. It makes a world of difference to raise the bar of our internal self support, because to a great extent that inoculates us against the sting of external criticism.
[00:35:28] We become much less sensitive to what anyone else is thinking. The reason criticism hurts so much is because we believe it. Once we have our own back and believe in ourselves more and focus more on our strengths, we care a lot less about the judgment of others. And internal safety really is the upside of downsizing your inner critic.
[00:35:52] It's the replacement for your inner critic. So all of that negative self talk you replace with purposeful self encouragement, self acceptance, and celebration of the essential you-ness of you. And this is really an advanced topic in burnout recovery, but it's nonetheless attainable by you from whatever stage you're at now, if you will do the work.
[00:36:21] So if you do want to prevent burnout or begin recovering from burnout as an individual, the four areas likely to have the biggest impact before you tackle your workload. One, stop being so mean to yourself. Two, stop fighting everyone else. Three, stop people pleasing. And four, create safety. And those four alone, you would be amazed, will alleviate a great deal of stress and recover time and energy.
[00:36:52] And then you can go on to phase two, which is managing your workload. And this is going to be much, much easier than you might think, once you've handled some of the interpersonal problems, believe me, and if you lead a team, still those same four areas apply, and you'll be able to turn the culture around to safety, to help swap criticism, blame, and infighting for greater creativity, mutual support, and investment in results.
[00:37:20] That's what I've got for you today. I've got very, very many more suggestions for preventing or and recovering from burnout. Far too many to get into this one episode. However, if you do follow my suggestions today, you can do a great deal to protect yourself from burnout or to reverse out much of the pain of burnout.
[00:37:39] And I do hope you will do this. I'm more than happy to fast track it for you as an individual, a leader, or a team. It takes just a matter of weeks to start shaking loose the suffering of burnout. So if that's you, if you'd like some help, I'm here for you. Come and talk to me about how to prevent burnout or how to recover quickly and sustainably if you're in burnout.
[00:38:03] And get back to your best performance, teamwork, success, and most of all enjoyment, inside working out. You can book an appointment to talk with me at DexRandall. com. If you enjoyed this episode, please help me reach more people in burnout by rating and reviewing the podcast or forwarding the podcast to anyone you know.
[00:38:24] And if you know somebody who's in burnout, please send them the podcast link too because it's packed with practical tips for burnout recovery. I recommend that new people acclimatize themselves by listening to the first five episodes to get started. Thank you so much for your time today and I wish you all the best.