[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] Right. Let's do it. I'm ready. Hello, my friends. This is Dex and welcome to this week's episode on Authenticity, which really I think is something I spend a lot of time on with my clients because it's always lacking in burnout. When my clients start thinking about re inhabiting their authentic self, I see it as a marker of their progress in burnout recovery.

[00:00:47] It's a really big call and it's a very positive one. The willingness to be, to embody, to stand by who you truly are, returns an unshakable power and a liveliness to your soul. So here goes, let's talk about it, shall we? And I think we can define authenticity. Here's a definition I really like.

[00:01:13] Authenticity is being true to your own personality, values and spirit, regardless of the pressure that you're under to act otherwise. Do you feel me? Oh, heck. That really resonated for me. And I think it's very important for all of us to have an appreciation for authenticity because in a way it really is the opposite state to burnout.

[00:01:41] Burnout's all about fear and vulnerability and shutting down to pain. It's an approach that makes every day a little bit chancy to be honest. Whereas Authenticity is bold and expansive and open to life. It's juicy, it has an inherent courage, dignity and strength, which gives a marvellous protective quality that's pretty hard to dent.

[00:02:07] Because now we're not hiding anymore, we can never be caught in a lie. Because Authenticity is the true essential self, unfiltered. And I think most importantly, Authenticity is the part of our personality that is not inherited and not learned. It's the bit we're born with. And if you're listening to this and you're, approaching burnout, in burnout, you might be able to relate to this, that most people in burnout don't know who they are.

[00:02:43] Or what they like to do. Because they've shut down so long ago those tender parts of themselves, their vivid personal joys, they've tidied them away a real long time ago and they can't remember where they put them. They've just been operating in a kind of robotic way to get through their obligations.

[00:03:05] Essentially that. And then collapse into bed and get up and do the same tomorrow. But being authentic is actually flow state. So it's not only the least effortful way to live, because it gets rid of all that second guessing and silencing ourselves, editing ourselves, but it's also the most joyful, genuine and connecting.

[00:03:32] We're at our most vital and alive when we're truly and freely ourselves. And then we feel wonder at ourselves and at our world. Our spirits will soar. 

[00:03:44] So why don't we do that? Well the trouble is, you might relate to this a little bit as well, as I in fact do myself, the trouble is as kids we self censored to stay alive.

[00:04:00] We learned what it was okay to do, and to be, and to say, and what it wasn't. And as young kids especially, we don't usually push those limits too hard, because we need our parents to keep wanting to care for us. It's not really an option. So we learned to self censor quite young, and because this is a survival imperative, when we embed those protective tactics into our memory banks, they form really strong neural pathways that become over time so familiar that we later assume 

[00:04:37] that they're who we really are. We don't distinguish anymore. Hence, when I ask adults in burnout what they love to do, they can't remember. Nothing comes to mind. That energy is lost to them. It's all pretty sad, isn't it? Because burnt out adults are like cardboard cutouts of themselves. It's no wonder they're listless and blue and can't find joy.

[00:05:06] So burnout recovery in that context is really a journey of self discovery. It's a return to the joy that, quite rightly, animates us. That's uniquely ours. And to get there, we need to shift the fears of rejection from our childhoods. We might notice that in that time to compensate for the unconditional approval, love, or attention we never got, we actually turned into hyper autonomous self sufficient adults.

[00:05:40] That's the formula for burnout, by the way. Adults who need nothing, ever. Completely self contained units that look after themselves. And if that's how we've behaved, that's fear at work, isn't it? Along with a distrust of others. So to reverse this out, to allow ourselves to fully inhabit our own bodies, minds and souls.

[00:06:07] We start by giving ourselves permission to be our full self. Glorious, quirky, flawed, messy delightful, untamed, outrageous, however we want to be. And when we give ourselves that permission to be ourselves, it can feel a little bit alarming if we're in fear of rejection at the time. I'll talk about that in a minute, but when we give ourselves that permission and we start behaving outside the bounds of who we used to be, other people must make of that whatever they will. Even though some people may not wish us to change, or actively wish us not to change,

[00:06:49] most people will enjoy our new exuberance as we step into our real self. We can't please all of the people all of the time and trying to avoid rejection by being a conformist and shutting down all those unacceptable or unaccepted parts of us diminishes our relationships with the world, with everyone, including ourself.

[00:07:12] So we pay a really big price. So we need to make it okay for us to need help, to need and want connection, and also emotional expression and support. We need to make it okay to make mistakes and to be spontaneous. And we can make this okay, we can do it for ourselves, inside ourselves. We don't need anyone else's assistance with this.

[00:07:39] It's our task to do. Because if you want to return to authenticity, you'll first need to create the internal environment that makes that safe and okay to do. So you have to make an agreement with yourself you're going to go on this journey. And to do that you simply offer yourself unconditional love, approval and acceptance.

[00:08:04] You can do that anytime you're ready. You're probably not doing it now by habit if you're in burnout. You just give yourself permission to be, do, say, think and like whatever you wish. And that of course includes having boundaries. You are about to stop being an apologist for you. And that's not a theoretical thing, it's a practice, a daily practice.

[00:08:31] Treat yourself as you would a small, distressed and abandoned child. Love yourself. Really actively love yourself. Every time you do, or say, or think, something you would have previously disapproved of. Be the champion of you. And offer yourself, in the moment, love and acceptance. You just say to yourself in your mind, "That's okay, I love you always".

[00:08:58] Whatever you do, right? Whatever you think. "That's okay, I love you always". And inside, maybe you can see, or imagine or visualize yourself hugging the part of you that's expecting a whipping for doing whatever it was they just did. Because, has harsh discipline ever worked for you? Really, I think probably it simply strips you of your essence and your spirit.

[00:09:26] And once the spirit's broken, it's hard to mend. But trust me, you can do it. You can become, I don't know why I thought of this, you can be like a child whisperer. Coax and encourage your young and tender heart that still lives inside you back there. Console the hurt like a gentle, loving, wise grandparent.

[00:09:53] Because the precursors to authenticity are safety, self approval, self acceptance, and love for the self. Worthiness and permission. And you can grant all of those. It's up to you. Anytime you want, you can do that for yourself. And a word on worthiness. I believe it's indelible. I believe that all babies are born unblemished, fully worthy of love and this human life.

[00:10:27] It's only the layers of survival mechanisms we learn and the stories we tell ourselves about that make us forget or detach from our worthiness. But nothing you do can change your worthiness. Neither increase, nor decrease, nor kill off your worthiness. Because your human potential, the love in your heart, remains intact.

[00:10:58] You hang on to it for life. So I think this is good news because this is one of the foundations On which we can rebuild a life of joy and engagement and fun. Sounds a bit alarming? It may do. To us when we're in fear, everything sounds alarming. But, if you don't know who you really are, then you're probably chronically shut down from repeated experiences of fear and pain.

[00:11:29] So how can you take the nutcrackers off yourself and give yourself permission to do whatever you like? To be whoever you are. How can you transcend that chidhood conditioning? For men, stuff like, Oh, boys don't cry. Or they don't dance. Or they don't show weakness. Boys are tough. Boys stay in control. How were you ridiculed or judged as a child for your personality?

[00:11:54] How has the man box limited or distorted who you really are? And women, what would you choose if you didn't feel obligated to care for everyone's needs except your own? If you didn't put yourself last? If it was okay to be talented and speak your mind? If it was okay to take breaks and do nothing? How has female conditioning prevented you from expressing Your gifts and yourself.

[00:12:26] And of course there are non gendered expectations as well, but I think common to most of us in burnout, where we've got with the expectations that were placed on us and our reactions to them as we grew up is, when we get into burnout as adults. And we experience things like imposter syndrome, perfectionism, people pleasing for sure, patchy or low self esteem underweight human connections.

[00:12:54] We have human connections, but not at the value, the quality, the depth that we would like. And we have low self confidence. There's a whole bunch of other stuff but I think you can get my drift if you can relate to those and if you can relate to being in burnout then you know this thing about authenticity it might be an adventure you'd like to go on and how you really do that, once you've given yourself permission and started to recognize that you can love and accept and support yourself more fully going forward what you're going to need to do is forget your past not keep mindlessly recreating it by thinking about your past failures all the time. You'll start to define yourself from a vision of who you want to be in the future.

[00:13:43] From anticipated new capacities that you will inhabit. Not history of incapacity. We're going to be looking at this from abundance, not lack. We're not going to prove anything by looking back into the past, where we had deficits. So we start looking into the future and acting into the future as if the future was already here, which means also you'll stop people pleasing.

[00:14:11] You'll start making decisions from your heart because your heart, I don't know if you've ever tried this, but if you're making a decision and you say to your heart, okay, what do you want heart? What would you like to do? It will almost always come up with the best quality answer. I trust my heart completely to make good decisions for me, when I rest in my heart and say, okay, what do I truly want to do here?

[00:14:35] And I will be abiding by my values and my wishes and my personality. It's almost certainly going to produce a result that works out better than me choosing what I should choose. So I think of making decisions from the heart as an authentic practice. A practice of being the authentic you. And I do think the odds are in your favour when you do that of things working out better.

[00:15:02] Another thing is, you can ask what you used to enjoy doing when you were carefree, unfettered, and had the time, that you're not doing anymore. So maybe you're looking back to your youth for this. It's also useful to cultivate play. Play is aimless free time for pure enjoyment really, isn't it?

[00:15:25] And play is actually essential to adult well being. Creativity. Freedom. Non goal oriented activities are best. Can you unhook this expectation of everything you do being productive? Can you suspend that idea long enough to play? Let yourself off the rein. Do what you love to do. It will start to emerge from you when you cultivate a practice of play.

[00:15:51] And it's very good for your mental health and your nervous system and your state of well being to allow yourself to play. So if you never have, you might want to investigate how to do that. And by the way, the book Essentialism is very good about this. I'll pop that in the show notes.

[00:16:08] You will also need to stop hiding behind imposter syndrome and shame and fear of rejection. Dare to be you. Announce yourself. Surprise people. Because remember, people do respect you for your knowledge and your status and skills, but they like and connect with you through your quirks and your flaws, your vulnerabilities.

[00:16:32] No one really wants to be around Mr. Perfect, do they? Be human. Connect.

[00:16:37] And if you really don't know what you like, think about what you have enjoyed in the past, and also the kinds of people that you enjoyed hanging out with, and the places you like to go. Ask yourself if recreating similar, activities and context now might be an interesting adventure because there's no defined outcome, right?

[00:16:58] This is not a win or lose situation. It's just an open exploration of, okay, what might I still enjoy? And also think about what you might regret failing to do at the end of your life, because our regrets, not usually about work, are they? They're about people and experiences and connection and joy, love, things that we do for other people or with other people.

[00:17:27] So ask yourself that. And in case you have really no idea how to get started, getting to know your real self and finding out What makes you happy? I'm going to include an old book by Julia Cameron. It's called The Artist's Way. Don't be put off by the artist's word being in there. I'm going to put it in the show notes because it contains exercises to help you unearth your creativity, your joys, and open your mind to what you might enjoy doing.

[00:17:55] Your subconscious, when you do the exercises, it will start telling you what it likes to do. It'll start prompting you, once you begin prompting it. And I think we're all creative beings fundamentally and that this is at the heart of our authenticity. This is where the juice comes from. So once you've started to find and inhabit and enjoy your true self, your world would actually open up and you're going to start seeing more things.

[00:18:27] That you wouldn't have seen before. Opportunities will pop up that you wouldn't have noticed before. At work or outside work or anywhere. It reintroduces fun and spontaneity in your life. And if you reject spontaneity now, it's not love that rejects spontaneity, it's fear that rejects spontaneity.

[00:18:49] So a lack of spontaneity is just an expression of fear. So once you let that go, spontaneity becomes more appealing, becomes more exciting, like it probably would have been as a kid. So when you bring in fun, when you bring in spontaneity, new avenues open and you will start to as well meet or reconnect with

[00:19:12] people who are on the same wavelength as you now. And the best part of all of this is you're going to love it. It's a really enriching adventure to have and you can do it anytime because I think you were not meant to live in perpetual sorrow and lack and I do wish you very many happy adventures in returning to the true you with all the love and joy that brings.

[00:19:43] If you're in burnout to quit burnout and to return to your own powerful and wonderful authenticity come and talk to me for free and let's make a plan for your revival. You can book an appointment at DexRandall. com. If you enjoyed this episode, please help me reach more people in burnout by rating and reviewing the podcast and sharing the podcast with your friends.

[00:20:07] It has been lovely to talk, I guess at you more than with you today. It has been a bit one way, and I regret this. I would love to hear from you. You can share your thoughts with me via the link in the show notes. Thank you for being here and I will catch you next time.