[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 with you again for another episode and today we're going to talk about the need to be right. Because really it's an affliction that's quite common amongst people experiencing burnout. And why do you think that is? I think it's because in burnout we have a prevailing very low opinion of ourselves,
[00:00:41] our work and our general acceptability as humans. We find ourselves deficient in so many ways and it's so so painful that we don't want anyone else to join in and we also feel a lack of control. All of this is unfortunately quite normal in burnout. Our view of ourselves though is distorted. It's unnecessarily harsh, it's relentless self criticism, self diminishing and in fact self abandoning really.
[00:01:13] Our brains are giving us the acid bath treatment, no? Based on conjecture and fear, of course, not the actual truth of who we are. And therein lies the distortion. Because really, burnout lies to us about quite a few things, but one of those is about our worth. But it does this very persistently in an annoyingly convincing way.
[00:01:36] Presenting all this bogus evidence that we're useless impostors. Manipulating the facts, skewing the picture, ignoring our so many good points. Really, I think of the way the brain treats us when we're in burnout. It's really the trash talk of an unbalanced mind. Because once, if you think about it, we believed differently.
[00:02:01] Once we just felt maligned, when others treated us poorly or didn't acknowledge our worth. We might have felt overlooked, underappreciated or ignored. And perhaps we still do, but now we're justifying that, rather than fighting it. We've probably lost one battle too many within ourselves. And now in burnout, even we can see that we're not performing as we should be, not really showing up with anything in the tank.
[00:02:29] So our need to be right, to justify ourselves, to feel some semblance of control and order is boiling over. Possibly also accompanied by a sense of entitlement to something better. But at the same time, we'll be almost certainly howling inside with some form of helpless and bitter rage. We're seeing the solutions to our burnout as unreachable, we're dropping more balls. We are wondering why people hate us and how on earth things got this bad.
[00:03:06] So we put the shield up, if you like, to protect ourselves in public by explaining why we're right, perhaps over explaining, fishing for approval, endorsement, acceptance. And if that's happening, I think the next question has to be, why do we need all of those things? Why do we need the people outside of us to give us this endorsement and acceptance?
[00:03:32] So for me, to put it bluntly, it's because we're not giving ourselves the kind of response we need when things aren't going right. Instead, we're probably being pretty mean to ourselves, almost to the point of self abuse. We'll be creating a stew of discomfort within ourselves about this lack of worth we perceive.
[00:03:55] And then when we see that, all that's happening, then we're starting to run a little bit scared. Because things are probably going wrong wholesale at work, or at home, or across the rest of our life, and we don't even have our own back while that's happening. Miserable, exhausted, humiliated, and probably very angry, like a cornered rat.
[00:04:17] We're going to give ourselves more hate, all the while trying to defend ourselves to others. Maybe you recognize some of your experiences in these patterns. For some reason, when I said that, this image came to me of my sister's boyfriend when she was about 17. He followed her back to England from France, and she had a tiff with him one night.
[00:04:41] I think she might have broken up with him, can't quite remember, but he went outside our house in the dark onto the street and started bashing his head repeatedly on a concrete bus shelter. And it was, to me, quite a terrifying sight. Because why do we do that to ourselves? Compound our difficulties or our frailties or our failures by beating up on ourselves.
[00:05:08] A well balanced mind would surely choose compassion and kindness and care. In burnout, of course, that's not available, and burnout itself is involuntary, so no judgment. If you feel that self-compassion is not available right now to you in burnout. And no blame, please do not pile shame on yourself. That's completely inappropriate. To anyone who is in burnout listening,
[00:05:39] I say again, burnout is not your fault. It's the natural consequence. of your human life. However, it is 100 percent fixable and you are not fundamentally broken. Burnout really happens to people with form in the self criticism department. You get me? People who haven't been brought up to see themselves as unconditionally worthy.
[00:06:05] And again, blame has no place at all in this. We don't blame parents either. But these people, in one sense, will have always had to sing for their supper. They always would have had to justify their existence. And people in burnout thus have predicated their life on that self justifying model to some extent.
[00:06:29] So if that model fails, if they can't justify themselves successfully, if they hit work or life problems they can't fix. And if they become worn out trying and lose motivation and hope of things ever coming good, then they feel a huge risk at that point. Stress is going to be off the charts. Sleep, digestion and relaxation become things of the past.
[00:06:57] Relationships suffer a great deal. And at such times, generally, they will keep showing up at work, but too tired to function, make decisions or complete their assigned workload. They're going to bark at people, losing social credit, and then withdraw into themselves. And they need to be right, it's going to be through the roof by that time.
[00:07:18] The ego, feeling threatened, is going to drive that. And the sense of loss of control in burnout - it's in the extreme fire danger most of the time. People predisposed to burnout are more used to being in command of their situation, as the go to person at work, the one with all the answers.
[00:07:38] Previously, the consistent high achiever that others relied on. And now in burnout, they've been winged. Their self image breaks. The shield of invincibility is gone. The world has spun out of control. And they feel naked, helpless, vulnerable, alone. And they will desperately need control back. Sadly, by this point, they'll be so depleted that they're not capable of managing the situation that now exists, and that's usually a first for them, and not in a good way.
[00:08:12] So, the need for control, and the need to be right are very close companions. The shield of invincibility was what previously saved them from constant fear of being unapproved, uncared for, or attacked. As they felt when they were a child, probably. Because if we look at the need to be right in a rational world, well really, it's an unrealistic expectation, isn't it?
[00:08:42] It has a low probability. We're surrounded by people all day, every day, who believe differently than us and don't agree with us. And who also probably feel a little bit scared, and themselves have a need to be right and a need to be in control. So at best, it becomes a battle of wills that we dutifully show up to fight every day.
[00:09:05] So we could ask ourselves, how likely is it that in any given situation, everyone will agree with us or can be persuaded to agree with us? 8 billion people in the world. So I think one of the keys to burnout recovery is to reduce our need to be right, our need for control, or our impulse to justify ourselves,
[00:09:26] when any of those things has gone a bit overboard. Because really each of those is an expression that we don't feel worthy and safe inside. It turns out to be a better option to cultivate a strong sense of okayness, of safety, and worthiness and rightness inside of ourselves. Where we have constant access to it and we don't need to strain every day to obtain the next little nibble of approval to shore up our self esteem.
[00:09:57] And I say this because it turns out that in burnout recovery we can generate this internal supply of safety. We can stoke the fires of our self esteem and we can learn to actively have our own back in difficult times, to be compassionate with our failures and to encourage ourselves to rebound. We can learn to give ourselves the unconditional love and support that we've always wanted but never quite got.
[00:10:25] And we do this, oddly, by taking our blinkers off. By finally choosing to disagree, but silently, in the privacy of our own minds, with anyone else's assessment of us as unworthy. We don't need to argue with anyone about that. It's not a negotiation. We just make a decision to find ourselves worthy and we create the beliefs that support that. Because think of a baby. Can a baby be born unworthy?
[00:10:58] If your answer to that is no, then your own fundamental condition must be worthiness. And worthiness can't be taken away or destroyed. You still have the same goodness in you that you had back then. It's just that now, in burnout, you've stopped accessing it, recognizing it, letting it reach the surface of your life.
[00:11:21] You've stopped connecting with people from that worthiness. In a way, you have denied it. Because people told you it wasn't enough in the beginning, or you weren't enough in the beginning. And you locked that tender pain away, away from prying eyes. You gave up, you shut down, and you became jaded.
[00:11:41] Because that's what a youngster will do in that situation. Again, no blame. But the condition of burnout necessarily includes feeling jaded. Disillusioned, it feels like. But what if your worthiness never was illusory? If it's the most fundamentally real thing about you? Well then how about reclaiming it?
[00:12:06] How about acknowledging, reconnecting with, and actually living from your worthiness? That true self, your authentic goodness. Because if you did that, what would change there? When your goodness is released back out into the wild with you, the adult you, as a protector. You don't need to feel vulnerable and raw to do this.
[00:12:32] You can create enough internal safety so that you don't feel raw and exposed when you are your true self. Coming out of burnout, it is possible, in fact requisite, to trade this rundown, hopeless self for a depth of safety and self belief that fosters vitality, courage, cheerfulness, enthusiasm, and genuine connection with other people.
[00:13:02] And in case you're poo pooing that, this is not a theory. In my practice, this is the journey I encourage my clients to take, and I help them create that change within. I teach them how to like themselves again, and how to support themselves in a way that feels secure and gentle, but still real. So, if you feel a frequent and urgent need to be right, or need to prove yourself, or need for control, Ask yourself what's driving that, what's behind that.
[00:13:33] Check in with your beliefs about yourself and your willingness to be kind, gentle, compassionate and encouraging to yourself. Because if your inner critic is raging, perhaps it's time to tame it. As you listen to this, Know that you are enough, whatever you've thought about yourself until now. I believe in you.
[00:13:56] That's what I have for you today. Thank you for listening. If you have questions, you can SMS them to me via the link in the show notes. And if you're in burnout and would like to drop an overwhelming need to be right, need for control, so you can enjoy your work and life and people more, I invite you to come and talk to me for free.
[00:14:18] Let's make a plan for you to recover quickly and sustainably and get back to your best performance, leadership, success, and career fruition. You can book an appointment to meet with me at DexRandall. com. And if you enjoyed this episode, please help me reach more people in burnout by sharing this podcast with your friends or by rating and reviewing the podcast.
[00:14:43] Thank you.
