[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 Recharging Yourself. Probably a topic that is front of mind whenever you're feeling overburdened. And we're going to apply this to anybody who is, for example, chronically exhausted, anxious, overwhelmed, burdened by their never ending responsibilities.

[00:00:46] It's really for people whose energy and resources don't feel anywhere near enough to meet each new day's demand. These days, really, that's most parents, and caregivers, and really quite a large number of workers. And my first premise is that recharging is essential. It's definitely not a luxury. When you're hungry, eat.

[00:01:09] When you're exhausted, rest. When you're overwrought, anxious, overwhelmed, reset. Remove the root causes of overwhelm. Rescue your nervous system, sleep, and your frazzled brain. Being overworked, sick, withdrawn and feeling depressed and desperate are not normal. And although I do think yoga, health spas, work from home, holidays, exercise, nights out, even sick days are wonderful,

[00:01:43] unless you tame anxiety, the reprieve they give you will be short lived or non existent. So if you've tried any of those and you do not feel recharged, a deeper, more fundamental remedy is called for. And my first suggestion to you is to take immediate steps to tame two things. Anxiety and time. And if you can, enlist the compassionate support of someone you trust.

[00:02:13] Of course, if you're chronically overstressed and anxious, you won't want to do that. And this is even more true if you're not getting adequate sleep and your mood and motivation are low, which really encompasses most people in burnout, and again, many parents. Up to 66 percent of the workforce felt burnt out in the last three months.

[00:02:35] But just because other people aren't tackling this successfully, it doesn't make it normal. You know how you feel and if you need to recharge, be a sport and change how you live and work. So to recharge, reduce anxiety and manage time. If you don't tackle anxiety, you're not going to feel the gains of managing time.

[00:03:00] Why am I saying that? Because really, the queue of tasks you have in the back of your mind, waiting to be done, some urgently, most of which won't get done today, are very heavy. They weigh on you, don't they? And your inner critic probably never lets up all day, telling you all the ways you're letting the side down.

[00:03:22] And managing time well doesn't let you off that hook, when that critic is still nagging away at you all day and all night, and you still feel pressured.

[00:03:35] Anxiety really is why you can never rest. Why your brain is fried. And paradoxically, high levels of anxiety are self perpetuating. Here's how. Anxious thoughts present a sense of threat. Which triggers our amygdala, which puts us in fight or flight. Which predisposes us to be hypervigilant for additional threats.

[00:04:04] Which means our prefrontal cortex, the part of us that makes rational decisions, shuts down and we have more anxious thoughts. That's the spin cycle of anxiety. And on top of that, our amygdala produces the stress hormone cortisol, that shoots a burst of high energy through our system to increase our heart rate, our blood sugar, and our respiratory rate, to prime our muscles to fight or run, and generally puts us on high alert.

[00:04:37] And there are some problems with this when we're actually anxious rather than being chased by the proverbial tiger. Firstly, we're now hyper with racing anxious thoughts and an urgency for a quick fix. Yet of course we cannot escape the threat because it's a thought in our head. Secondly, the sugar spike in our bloodstream.

[00:05:03] On one level it feels good, suddenly we have energy. But sugar is more addictive than cocaine, so calming our mind and body down is a hard choice to make in our frazzled state. Third, anxious thinking forms a closed loop, so we can stay in a hyper and anxious state for extended periods. And this can feel useful.

[00:05:29] It masquerades as productive, but it's terrible for our health, and overall, it increases our stress and exhaustion. Fourth, we can't think our way out of it. Our executive brain is offline. So we make the kind of save me now emergency decisions. Not long term, effective, strategic ones. And fifth, our sensory perceptions change.

[00:05:59] For example, we stop receiving conversational sound, such as from our well intentioned human companions, as we detach from noticing our surroundings, except for the threatening bit. What this really means is we may have difficulty recognizing and accepting help. If your anxiety is chronic, then, you may be entrained on a hamster wheel of mental and physical hyperactivity.

[00:06:28] Just trying to get through each day. If you haven't found a way to reign that in, you might see that anxiety perpetuates anxiety. It becomes a vicious cycle. And to you it might look like no other choice is available, but that thought alone will generate more anxiety and exhaustion. If you're anxious, and exhausted,

[00:06:52] much of that exhaustion you feel will likely be emotional. The wear and tear of being in the stress state. In a way it's good news because it means that if you can manage anxiety, your energy will quickly return. Often surprisingly quickly.

[00:07:10] So let's support that right now. Let's take a couple of deep breaths. So do this with me, right? Deep and slow, right down into your throat, through your chest, right into your abdomen, and feeling your breath expanding your ribs. So with me, breathing in, scrunch up your shoulders tight, as you fill your ribcage with air, breathing out, drop your shoulders and let go all of that tension.

[00:07:46] Breathing in, follow your breath down your torso, into your guts. Hold for a moment. Breathing out, release it slow, preferably slower than your in breath. Breathing in again, breathe into your lungs and into your heart and see them expand. Breathing out, breathe out any tension that's in your chest as the breath goes out.

[00:08:17] And please, that was just three breaths. Do not judge your effort. There is no wrong way to breathe. Your body knows how to do it. So, whatever experience you had then, whatever you're saying to yourself in your mind now, center yourself right here. Stay with me in the now. Bring your mind gently back to my voice.

[00:08:44] And offer yourself a kind thought. Remind yourself it's okay to be who you are. Just as you are, right now. Even though you may struggle.

[00:08:56] When you do any breathing exercise like that, it creates a gap. A little momentary gap in your anxious thinking. And also, in your bodily experience. So it brings you back from your fears for the future into your good old body right now. Long, slow, deep breathing, particularly with a slower out breath is a very effective way of resetting your jangling nervous system to a restful state.

[00:09:29] And it does this through the vagus nerve. Even a few slow breaths, like we did, can lower your stress response. Because no one ever did deep, slow breaths when they were being chased by a tiger. And if that breathing exercise felt hard for you, that's okay too. You're here, listening, and that's a start.

[00:09:50] It shows your good intentions towards yourself. And goodwill towards yourself is fundamental to thriving.

[00:10:00] If, by the way, you're wishing you had the compassionate support of someone you trust, but you don't feel that you do have that, Of course it can also be your God or your higher power, your spirit, your spirituality. Or here we are, it can be you, through the choices you make, finding yourself deserving of your own kind attention, choosing to heal, giving yourself compassionate care in tough times.

[00:10:28] And when you learn to meditate, this alone can facilitate the healing process, a more loving connection with yourself. And many of us have not been trained in this. And I think meditation can be a good vehicle for that. Again, if you struggle, there's burnout coaching for one thing, where I will help you develop compassion and joyful connection.

[00:10:50] But there are also programs like Dr. Joe Dispenza. He and I share, I think, a desire to help people love themselves, particularly people for whom this is, shall we call it, unfamiliar territory. You can learn to love yourself in a way that feels nourishing and peaceful and supportive, even if you've never tried this before.

[00:11:13] It's actually never too late.

[00:11:17] All right, so let's come back to recharging. If you want to recharge in the short term, i. e. today, there may be one or two immediate decisions you can make that will help you. Initially, it's really about micro improvement, becoming willing to interrupt your status quo, taking tiny steps forward, investing in yourself.

[00:11:42] So for a start consider, is there any chance you can take something off your plate inside or outside work hours? You might reflexively say no. You might want to tell me that's impossible. To preserve your well being and sanity, do you think a change is actually required for you? What would your best friend say?

[00:12:08] What would need to change, if your stress became so bad it made you ill and you had to stop? So I think really consider it again, ask yourself again. Some options for you at work might be saying no to a meeting that holds very little relevance for you. Maybe you're attending through habit or sense of obligation,

[00:12:30] or FOMO, or simply because you dread telling anyone you're not coming. Another one, turning off your notifications and alarms on your phone or on your computer, on your devices, to reduce distraction when you're working on a task requiring concentration. Do yourself a favor, get that one task done. Here's another.

[00:12:53] Choosing not to read your messages after work, or before bed, or as soon as you wake up. Because they crank up your anxiety, isn't that your experience of them? Even putting your phone on silent, and maybe checking messages on the hour every hour, rather than all day. This one's kind of hard, so prepare yourself for your anxious mind telling you that you're missing something urgent before you do it and agree with yourself that you probably aren't, unless you're an on call, in which case you may be.

[00:13:28] Likewise checking emails at set times, not flicking back and forth all day into your email checking them real time, because that really will take away your concentration on other tasks that you have to do and it has a terrible impact on efficiency. Also, it ramps up anxiety. How about this one?

[00:13:45] Choosing to have one day free of doom scrolling. No social media, no news. Imagine what you'd get done if you didn't do that. Remember, this is all about calming your nervous system, really. Another one, choosing not to accommodate one last minute walk in request on your time today. Just one. Just gently decline, or ask if you can help them at another time when you have capacity, and see what happens.

[00:14:17] Because when you make interrupting you easy, and you feel like you must solve every problem for everyone, then anyone who doesn't feel like handling their own challenges, will bring them to you. And I think oddly, for people in professional roles, saying no to spontaneous requests and preserving one's own time and energy is usually respected by other people.

[00:14:41] You can set new rules on your availability. So just have a tiny experiment with it. So listening to some of those outlandish suggestions, right? How dare I? Listening to each of those. Each one of which can measurably alter the amount of pressure you feel. Did you get some kickback from your brain? Because most people do.

[00:15:06] And naturally in some professions or situations, and for some people this is more acute than it is for others. And in some roles, such as surgeons, choice may be limited. But if you listen to your brain objecting to what I was saying, or finding reasons you couldn't do that, what you now have is a catalogue of reasons why you can't or won't do any of those things to help yourself.

[00:15:31] So now you've become more acutely aware of why you have chronic anxiety and feel overworked and overwhelmed. Because the truth is we're rarely in a choiceless situation, but the first objection you have to overcome to changing is your own. After that really it does become much easier. If, on the other hand, you said yes to trying one of those suggestions, bravo!

[00:15:58] Being willing to experiment , in safeguarding your energy, is really a big part of success. And especially for adults, because we think we already know the best way, or even the only way, to conduct ourselves. So I do recommend that you try, but be very gentle and kind to yourself about results. If your first attempt doesn't give the result that you want, that means nothing.

[00:16:23] You can just retry, but above all, I think applaud yourself for trying, to be willing to try, be generous, be thankful, be proud, and be encouraging of yourself. And if you do have a "kid learning to ride a bike" experience and fall off, be like a kid and keep trying. Because really, reducing stress and exhaustion at work, or at home, will radically alter the quality of your life.

[00:16:54] Taken to the point where you're beyond the reaches of burnout, it transforms everything. So, never tell yourself it doesn't matter, or that you don't matter. Because inside, if you say that to yourself, another little piece of you dies. Instant flame out. You don't ever need to do that to yourself. You are worthy, firstly, of your own love and support.

[00:17:20] And for any adult trying to change their habits, professional or otherwise, I'm going to put Atomic Habits in the show notes because it shares masterful ways to successfully adopt new habits, in tiny incremental steps that are as pain free as possible. But just promise yourself to take one tiny action per day to help yourself out.

[00:17:43] And make it easy, because you're going to create compound returns that way. Okay now, coming back to those of you whose eyes rolled back in your heads at the very thought of change, let's explore. Why don't we want to change the status quo even when it will help us? I think on a head level there are three important reasons.

[00:18:03] Number one, our egos are very change resistant. Ego wants to control and be right. It hates change. Our inner adjudicator, when faced with change, might sound passionate and utterly convincing about all the reasons why we won't. It might shame us into compliance. In the case of reducing anxiety and exhaustion, it will be wrong.

[00:18:29] You don't have to listen. Number two, we don't want to rock the boat. Because as adults, we have our place in the world. We are unconsciously competent at work. Whatever worked yesterday, well let's just keep doing that, no matter how painful it has become. Any change, almost universally involving conscious incompetence, looks a bit more unattractive, a bit more risky.

[00:18:59] And number three, big one, we don't think we can change. Maybe actually it's because we don't give ourselves permission to try. Or maybe we see ourselves as incapable. Maybe we don't make those kinds of decisions for ourselves. Maybe we feel obligated to over effort our way through life, serving everyone except ourselves.

[00:19:23] Or maybe we just think the sky will fall in with change. So that's on a mental level. On a more emotional level, I think there are four other reasons. And the first one is loss of status. We don't want to be seen as lazy, failing, unsuccessful, incapable, stupid, unreliable, or difficult. If we aim for some change.

[00:19:44] And then we feel guilty or ashamed. Number two is loss of power. We lose sight of our role, and we mistakenly think we should be fixing everything. We feel inadequate. This is where imposter syndrome comes in. Number three, loss of respect. We're worried that people will be upset if we say no to them. We fear rejection.

[00:20:10] Number four, Loss of an escape hatch. So what's your emotional escape hatch when your stress gets too high? Donuts? Coffee? Social media? Netflix? Alcohol? Or anything that numbs your brain? If you do change your anxiety and time habits, you might have to start feeling the awkward emotions that you've been avoiding.

[00:20:36] So if you baulked at making any changes, even though you are overwhelmed in daily life and you can't keep going like this, it's pretty easy to see why. But, since you're here, let's imagine the day where you can breeze into work in the morning, on time and refreshed, with a plan for the day that you trust yourself to complete, everyday challenges that are just puzzles to solve, which you're actually very good at, and you're rarely caught off guard.

[00:21:09] And you enjoy working with people. You're still working hard, at a very high level. But at the end of the day, you go home satisfied with your work and you leave work concerns behind. What I've just described is not a pipe dream. That's what happens in burnout recovery. You can deliver your professional best without feeling like your job is crushing you.

[00:21:35] In a world where burnout has become normalized, it's still not a life sentence. You can recover from within. And that's why I'm talking about anxiety and time, rather than changing something in your workplace. You don't need to wait for your toxic workplace, organization, or boss to change for you. So really to recover from burnout, you need to decide to create change in your life; seek and accept expert help to mentor you in that change;

[00:22:08] learn and practice new empowering habits that free your mind; and back yourself at a whole new level. And of course, if you would like to do that, if you're in burnout now, I'm here for you. However, to recharge your work life, just one little step at a time, do yourself a really big favor and see if you can reduce your resistance to trying one or two of the things that I've mentioned today.

[00:22:34] Just have that as an experiment. Because when you tame anxiety and time, even a little bit, your mind and body will thank you. My friends, one life. I really doubt that we're put here to make ourselves suffer as much as we can. So be good to yourself where you can. And that's what I have for you today. If you're in burnout, struggling with anxiety, time, overwhelm, and all the rest, come and talk to me for free.

[00:23:05] And let's make a plan 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. You can book an appointment at DexRandall. com. If you enjoyed this episode, if the people around you are in need, if they are also stressed, anxious and burned out, please share the podcast with them because the whole podcast is really full of very practical tips for you to help yourself out.

[00:23:35] Thank you so much for being here and listening today. I will catch you next time.