[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, and welcome to this week's episode on the alchemy of transforming burnout into joy. But first, I do have a listener from Pennsylvania who asked a question on the podcast this week, and you can all do that if you like via the link in the show notes.

[00:00:39] And the question was this, I am experiencing brain fog and lack of feelings. Is this burnout? Okay, good question. For sure brain fog can occur in burnout. Many mental capacities like memory, attention, concentration, decision making, analytical thinking, can be affected by burnout. Some of that can be associated with, exhaustion, insomnia, stress, of course, amygdala overaction, and perhaps also physical problems like migraines or poor digestion associated with chronic stress.

[00:01:15] However, of course, there are many causes for brain fog, so you may need to dig around to discover the cause in you. What I will say is that brain fog lifts with burnout recovery. I've discovered this for myself and also my clients. Because a flat out exhausted and stressed brain just can't perform at its best, and it's very easily overwhelmed.

[00:01:41] Lack of feelings, again, can have many causes. But emotional avoidance, feeling numb or being out of touch with your feelings, does occur in burnout. It's natural again when we have chronic stress, low mood and motivation, for our brain to want to shut down on some of that misery. The trouble is we can't selectively suppress just our negative emotions.

[00:02:07] We're also going to shut down our positive ones. Healing things like joy, contentment, affection. So numbing emotions out doesn't normally feel good to us. It's an emergency tactic that only seems to protect us from pain. Actually, it also makes us feel a bit dead inside and disconnected from others. It can lead to loneliness.

[00:02:34] So if you're not sure about all of that, you're welcome to come on a free call with me. And I'll help you identify if you're burned out or not. And perhaps I'll give you a few personal tips on feeling better. So thank you, my Pennsylvania listener, for asking those questions that I'm sure have helped other people understand burnout a little bit better.

[00:02:54] Okay, so back to today's topic on the alchemy of transforming burnout into joy. Because I looked up alchemy, as I do, and it said, "the medieval chemical science and speculative philosophy whose aims were the transmutation of the base metals into gold, the discovery of a universal cure for diseases. And the discovery of a means for indefinitely prolonging life." Which I find curiously fitting.

[00:03:23] Let's take the base metals of burnout, which I take to be the symptoms and emotions, and turn them into gold, shall we? That's the alchemy of burnout recovery that is available to anyone in burnout. And I'm going to describe how that alchemy works, and how it's actually just a step by step learning process that anyone can apply to find more success and happiness,

[00:03:48] in work, relationships, and life in general. If you want to turn your burnout based emotions into gold, what exactly are those emotions? Here's a typical scenario for somebody in burnout. They've usually got a basic pattern of overwork, overwhelm, frustration, irritability, loss of confidence, motivation and enthusiasm, impatience, distrust, disengagement, loss of purpose, reduced efficacy, self criticism, fear of judgment, blame, and finally ending with hopelessness, dread, withdrawal, and a blank despair.

[00:04:30] Sounds like fun, doesn't it? No wonder we want to turn it into gold. So the prevailing emotions of burnout do vary amongst people, but it might be exhaustion, overwhelm, anxiety, rage, frustration, helplessness, and defeat. Some kind of territory like that. Let's just say that there are a vast range of emotions you can pick from here that accompany burnout.

[00:04:58] And you're probably gonna have most of them, or many of them, all at once if you are in burnout. So of course, as humans, we're gonna buckle under the strain of all that, and really withdraw hurt from human interactions. Perform less than our best, both at work and socially. However, if you're interested, listen to episode two of this podcast on who gets burnout and why. I'm going to go there into the causes of burnout and how people get it much more deeply than I am today.

[00:05:31] Just to recap slightly, it tends to be Type A high achievers who, are perfectionists, Often people pleasers and quite demanding of other people as they are of themselves.

[00:05:41] So I'm going to put the link to episode 2 explaining that more fully in the show notes. But really, being hard driven perfectionists has quite a lot to do with it. Capable, hard working, intelligent and smart adults drop into burnout because they push themselves relentlessly. In the end, too hard for too long.

[00:06:07] And they're not really with their own performance. It doesn't really feel truly safe to be who they are, where they are, how they are doing their job, even though they have enormous skill. And they become with time overwhelmed, with trying and fighting and overworking and pushing for better results.

[00:06:30] Watching the system demands rising, losing control, seeing their workplaces as preventing them from succeeding, or their boss is against them, or the economy, their industry, whatever, until they basically lose heart and stop being able to put the same amount of weight into work. Even though they're still overworking, working long hours typically, Unable to really rest well due to stress, never really off duty, trying to fix everyone else's problems as well as their own.

[00:07:03] They're too tired and demoralized to keep up. Even if their work rate's the same, it's probably yielding less success than it used to. Or maybe they see the people around them as having become slower, more useless, less grateful, uncooperative. When we're in burnout, we have an unsympathetic view of others.

[00:07:26] And most things in our lives, really. So somebody who's having that experience is going to stop having the sense of being the fixer of everything. They can't win anymore. They start dreading going to work or talking to people and they feel trapped in this no win situation, which they hate. So maybe you can relate to some of that.

[00:07:47] So I think really the alchemy takes place in these base emotions of stormy, anxious, depressed, beaten. This whole slew of painful negativity and the alchemy was going to turn that into gold. So how on earth do you do that? It's alchemy, right? It's magic. But oddly, there is a reliable step by step recipe for that alchemy.

[00:08:13] And I think you just follow a few basic principles. So I'm going to share four of them with you today. These are the basic principles to follow. Principle number one, our life experience is not a direct experience of our life. Our experience actually springs from our beliefs about life. We have cognitive bias.

[00:08:34] We will only see life according to our preconceived notions of how life is. So one client this morning was experiencing extreme loss of motivation and telling himself that he was thus failing at his job, not getting urgent tasks done, which indeed he was not. Because by the time he told himself that he couldn't do it, wasn't good at it, didn't have the support of his boss and so on, he actually just stopped trying.

[00:09:05] When you act from a belief, you won't be in the present moment. You'll be telling yourself an old story living from the past. Perhaps not even your past, probably your parents' past. So if you have a negative belief that you can't win at something, and that drives negative emotion in you, not particularly helpful behavior, you're really going to get an experience of life consistent with that belief.

[00:09:32] So then it follows that if you're a high achiever, strong work ethic, perfectionist, you'll probably rate highly in self criticism. So you're probably feeding yourself a lot of negative beliefs about yourself all day long. It's like if you're learning to drive a car and staring at a lamppost you don't want to hit, what happens next?

[00:09:55] So principle number one. If you've got black tinted glasses on and everything out there looks black, take the glasses off. It's quite modest alchemy, but it does work. Principle number two. To go deeper into the alchemy you've actually never tried so far because you didn't know about it. Remove the root cause of your perfectionism and self criticism because you can't force yourself to stop self criticizing.

[00:10:27] That gets really ugly. Although I use tools to demonstrate to clients how they can take off these black glasses, By nature, you're going to feel a little bit naked without them. And in times of stress, they'll put them back on because it feels self protective. Glare of the sun, put the glasses back on.

[00:10:49] Okay, and then what happens is you put the glasses back on and you're hammering yourself a bit verbally. The self criticism's cranked up. Now you're on home turf, it feels familiar. Because the base metal of self criticism, the badge it wears, is that it will protect you from harm. Stop you making mistakes, incite you to behave well or better.

[00:11:13] But really, what's your experience of self criticism? Is it working out that way for you? Does your life become peachy after a bout of self abuse? We really need to see through this vacuous ruse after all these years and find out how self criticism became such an ingrained default habit, even as its bile is destroying our well being and chirpiness us all day every day. So the answer to that is quite simple. Anytime in our younger life, when a parent figure chided or blamed or belted us for something that we did or failed to do, then we as kids, we ingested that as a personal failure.

[00:11:57] And that hits really hard with a child whose literal survival depends on retaining the good graces of parents. And when that process is repeated, it stops being, I did something wrong for the child and turns into, I am something wrong. I must try harder, behave better, meet expectations to get approval. We actually deduce I'm not approved or accepted for who I am.

[00:12:25] I'm not lovable. It must be my fault. And so because of this, if there's a repeated or habitual rebukes, they cause shame in us. So we need to take back control of our personal beliefs and values about ourselves, as adults. It's time we chose what good enough looks like for us and about us. We in fact get to choose who we actually are. Under what conditions

[00:12:56] we think we're a good human and we will love and approve of ourselves. Now, I do suggest unconditional is best. However, I have two conditions for loving myself because I like ticking boxes, no other reason. And my two conditions are this. Do I have a good heart? Am I basically well intentioned? And they're always a yes for me, by the way.

[00:13:22] In fact, I have such strong belief in the fundamental goodness of a newborn human, that these conditions are also true about every human I meet. Because no one behaves poorly from their basic nature. No one is born evil, according to me. But the fear and suffering that we endure, that life triggers bring on unfortunate responses in us and unfortunate behaviours.

[00:13:48] If you don't think this is true, then really experiment with viewing your own flawed behaviors in this light. What's happening for you when you do something that you yourself don't think is quite how you'd like to be? So anyway, when you're thinking about loving and accepting yourself, pick conditions if you must, but allow yourself to see, cherish, love, approve of, and accept yourself as you are.

[00:14:14] Fundamentally as you are. Because forcing yourself to jump over the bar of somebody else's judgments It's really old news for you by now, right? Why would you carry their burden of belief for them? They probably didn't enjoy it that much either. So give yourself full permission to be you. You can't be anyone else.

[00:14:33] You're designed to be you. It's a feature, not a bug. Discover this sense of deep self acceptance. Dig it up from inside yourself. A self acceptance that will allow you to outlaw self criticism, which will no longer be true and no longer be useful. So principle number two, stage two alchemy, if you like, stop manufacturing black glasses altogether.

[00:15:02] See the light, accept yourself as you are. Principle number three, in order to uphold this new view of yourself as a decent person, it helps to try and live up to your potential to be a good citizen in your world, according to your new rules. So whatever your new rules are, whatever your values are and beliefs are now that you've reinvented them, practice, practice them.

[00:15:27] And this is going to become your new way to live. If like me, you want to honor your good heart, for example, then ask yourself each day, okay, how can I let that good heart guide my actions? What does a person with a good heart do? So whatever the equivalent of that is for you, give it a try. Each morning, ask yourself.

[00:15:49] So first, I practice love and acceptance for myself. I can find ways to appreciate and support myself. Encourage and console myself and extend compassion to myself. It's not selfish, because to the extent I can be gentle, patient and kind to myself, I'll be less fearful, critical and needy out in the world and I will naturally become more gentle and kind to other people as well.

[00:16:21] And for most of us, compared to burnout, that alone will bring enormous relief and ease. Then I'm going to look for more and more ways to believe in myself, creating confidence, peace, enthusiasm, gratitude, whatever I want. And you can see how that's going to play out, if you encourage your good side. When I find myself basically good, I stop criticizing myself, and I'm less judgmental of others.

[00:16:48] I fear life and people less, and I feel safer walking in the world. So principle three, this is level three alchemy. See myself as good and adjust my behaviors to those of such a good person. Principle number four then, take myself out of harm's way. Once I've started to love and cherish myself in this way, and behave like a decent human, I will develop a warm and tender urge to keep myself safe.

[00:17:20] I will be caring more about myself. I'll stop throwing myself to the jackals like I did with self criticism and conflict previously, like I did with my need for control, my need to be right, my need for status and approval. I'm going to become open and curious towards people and ideas. Treating everything more lightly, now that I feel safe anyway, and I've stopped outsourcing my sense of safety to people who don't have my best interests at heart.

[00:17:50] Now I'm not judging myself. I won't mind so much what other people think about me. It's going to carry less weight. Trust in myself is developing, and I'm starting to feel good enough. Perhaps I can support others from this place? Perhaps alchemy is contagious? Because I will start to find human connection more pleasurable, and almost certainly take pressure off relationships, and be easier to hang out with.

[00:18:18] Perfectionism will also dissolve, since it's the art of avoiding letting people see me, or my work, in case they judge me. If you think perfectionism is connected with heightened performance, you may be mistaken. In my view, it adds nothing to quality because it's driven by fear. But all this goodness I have has come from self acceptance.

[00:18:41] My choice that I'm a good enough human. And it creates so much internal safety. Because my love for myself is always available. My approval is always available. But it takes pressure off everything external to make my life safe for me. It makes it safe to sit quietly in my own body,

[00:19:01] having my own emotions without being mean to myself about any of it, just kind and soothing. And if you do this, you might find at this point that your spirit or your soul or your godliness springs back to life. Having found a fertile environment in which to grow and be nourished. Now you are home. The alchemy is complete.

[00:19:27] So alchemy number four, the final frontier, is coming home to yourself. You're golden, almost untouchable at this point. Finding your mojo, your soul, your joy, your flow, and taking care of that. So I hope that was useful for you. If you're in burnout and you want that alchemy in your life, And who wouldn't? I can help.

[00:19:52] Come and talk to me for free and let's plan your personal alchemy so you can quit burnout and find the good inside for your best performance, leadership, success, and most of all, enjoyment inside work and out. If you'd like to book an appointment to talk to me, go to dexrandall.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, please help me reach more people in burnout by rating and reviewing the podcast

[00:20:18] and sharing this podcast with your friends. Thank you for listening. I'd love to hear from you. SMS me your thoughts via the link in the show notes. I will answer your question in a future episode.