[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. And this week we are on to burnout recovery power tool number four, which is about mastering your emotional landscape. And it's a really vital tool in this series of 10, delivering all the wisdom I've accumulated over seven years of burnout coaching, distilled into 10 tool sets that you can use to overcome burnout.

[00:00:46] And you can catch the whole series for free on the Power Tools page in the show notes and listen to the podcast from episode number 155. And I do recommend you practice all of the exercises and resources offered to strengthen your will to create actual change in your life. Because the content that I'm presenting here gives you the 10 essential tool sets to beat burnout.

[00:01:14] It's the exact same process that I use with my professional burnout clients. But of course, simply listening to the podcast will not create change for you. You need to DO, you need to practice. I think you know this, right? I really beg you to give yourself this gift today, now, not later when you think you might feel a bit more like it.

[00:01:41] So start. Start small, but start now. And, if you're burning out and you don't love your current life, why wouldn't you? In the introductory episodes of this series, you're going to find a commitment worksheet. Please use it. It's going to help you firm up your will and commitment to actually create change for a better life for yourself.

[00:02:04] And I keep banging on about commitment because it turns out it's one of the biggest predictors of success. " The universe doesn't give you what you ask for with your thoughts. It gives you what you demand with your actions." That's Steve Maraboli. With my coaching clients, I do help them create and sustain momentum from day one, way before they start to see any change for the better.

[00:02:31] And you already have enough professional acumen to do this and start recovery for yourself if you choose to. So pin your ears back for the 10 power tools on the podcast and then, I'm deadly serious, practice like your pants are on fire. Allow yourself to be in beginner's mind, to make mistakes, to if you like practice poorly at the beginning, but just keep going and keep going, because people have recovered using these methods that I'm sharing with you and I would love you to recover too.

[00:03:05] So then power tool number four for burnout recovery, emotional freedom. Super, super important. Men, don't run off thinking this one's not for you. If you're human, it's especially for you. It's really emotional freedom is where your missing power lies. And that's how you can reclaim it. But in case you don't really know what I mean by emotional freedom, I think of it as the ability to act without constraint due to emotion.

[00:03:38] It's being able to make any choice you wish about your future, your actions, Success, behaviors and values, your very personality, without being held back by fear, dread, panic, rage, doubt, anxiety, inadequacy, there's a good one, or any other emotion that you wish not to have. So to the extent you become willing to experience any emotion without flinching or running away or shutting down,

[00:04:13] you become unlimited. This is how you take the brakes off what you can achieve in this lifetime. Because you can make any choice for yourself, even choices that you've been unable to make in the past. So if that's true, it's true for all of us, clearly then, we can all create a new future. We can literally change who we are being, our personality, and our beliefs,

[00:04:40] to suit our aspirations for the future. Because if whatever you're doing now isn't working, please don't continue with it. Change.

[00:04:51] All the fluff you hear about being your best self through, discipline and force of will, as if we could conveniently step over our current self and arrive magically at perfection, is just silly. This being your best self idea, I don't buy it. In fact, mostly that idea is used as self aggression and self judgment.

[00:05:13] People use it to beat themselves up. And for my money, no one got to be their best self through hating who they are now. And it's December the 30th as I record this episode, so if becoming your best self was your plan for this coming year, there's a gentler way to love yourself into your most authentic nature.

[00:05:36] Full of love, able to relax and appreciate who you actually are. It's earthy, grounded, and you can emerge with your sense of humour intact. And guess what? The more authentic you are, the less friction there's going to be in your work and life. And the easier it will be to enjoy people, to have fun, and to create the success that you want.

[00:06:01] Because the truth is, our best self is already inside us, six layers deep probably, waiting to blossom as soon as we take off the handcuffs of our emotional avoidance and abandon this self laceration we put ourselves through each day. And then we simply embrace all of who we are. And then all the good stuff can come burbling out.

[00:06:26] Alternatively, if you are currently suffering, miserable, exhausted, frustrated, and self hating, that is not the authentic you. What we do here with Burnout Recovery is we peel back some of those layers of trying to be accepted, and fitting in on other people's terms. And we allow the real you, the one that's already good enough to step forward and flourish.

[00:06:52] It's really about agreeing inside your head that you are already good. And then making choices to create a better future from an open field of possibility, not the limited hand you're playing right now. So the way we get this open field of possibility is to manage our emotions and to conduct our lives and make our decisions without being dragged back into our old patterns that have held us back.

[00:07:20] Old thoughts and emotions of a diminished and unacceptable self. That was always a false view. But those patterns , if we group them together, form the basis of all addiction. Because the mechanics of addiction, any addiction, is trying to escape a feeling we don't want, in the hope of feeling a better one.

[00:07:43] And as you may know, this process is doomed to fail. Reason number one it fails, due to the law of diminishing returns. We need ever more of the object of our addiction to produce relief, as the dopamine hit reduces with repetition. And when it does reduce, that triggers what we call the urge and buffering cycle.

[00:08:02] The urge is the impulse we have to escape our feeling. It flashes up as a thought of where we need to go right now, what we should be doing right, right now. So that's the urge. The buffer is the thing that we consume in order to change our emotional state. And , reason number two that this addictive cycle fails is Because as humans, we can't escape our emotions.

[00:08:28] They form a vital part of our being. They're messages from our brain, part of this whole homeostasis and survival mechanism that we have inside this fantastically complex system that we call the human body. In the show notes today, you can see how the addictive cycle plays out for you by completing the urges worksheet.

[00:08:51] And the buffering worksheet. Because forewarned is forearmed, right? Once you can see your own choices and behaviours really clearly, you can begin to change them. And I'm really all about empowering you to create change. So if you do the two worksheets, urges and buffering, that will start you off. It'll give you the impetus to begin the practice.

[00:09:14] Because the short term cost, I think, of addictive behaviours is We abdicate from our experience, probably to waste a bit of time and perhaps to do something we don't entirely approve of. That's when we get the urge and we buffer with eating, drinking, our phone, Netflix, whatever it is .

[00:09:33] So the short term cost of those addictive behaviors is wasted time and energy. We're not fully present to our full human life. And that might sound inconsequential. But inside of us, we know we're not willing to be fully there for ourselves. And this hurts our spirits, and it erodes our confidence and energy.

[00:09:57] We've lost faith, and then we've abandoned ourselves. And I think inside we interpret this on a childlike level, as not being worthy of our own support and attention. So we need to reverse this, right? Typically, if we feel like that, If we want to escape our emotions, we procrastinate. We don't get stuff done, particularly at work.

[00:10:20] We don't meet our obligations. Or we fail where we could have succeeded. Lose opportunities, give up, let people down, or even fail our loved ones. And all of that just reinforces our lack of self belief. And we take another turn around the cycle. So I think addiction affects not just our worldly success at work, but our sense of belonging, companionship, connection and depth of relationships.

[00:10:50] And it affects our self esteem, doesn't it? Our confidence and ambition, ushering in shame and guilt instead. And never underestimate the toxicity of shame.

[00:11:02] Addiction does also have long term negative effects and they depend on the object of our addiction. So the addictive process is constant, but the object of our addiction changes person to person. Let's say it's food. The long term negative there might be weight gain, social distress, maybe even diabetes and disease.

[00:11:23] For drinking, again, weight gain and disease, but also loss of social control, embarrassment, hangovers, maybe unwanted aggression, relationship stress. For gambling, financial stress and relationship stress. For this kind of modest everyday addiction that almost everybody has, for news, social media, and all the stuff that floats past on your phone, the long term cost is anxiety, self criticism, social withdrawal, loss of self esteem, judgment.

[00:11:58] And I would never underestimate the harmful long term effects of social media and news addiction. But really in any addiction we lose time and energy doing something that effectively harms and diminishes us. We compromise our ability to perform and we hold ourselves back from greatness, ease, success and joy.

[00:12:22] I've said all of that just to outline the picture for you but we need attach no blame to addiction. I don't want you to find something wrong with yourself if you notice you have addictive behaviors. It's a human norm from which very few people are exempt. So really the reason I'm talking about it today is so that you can start understanding your patterns and do something to modify them in a way that you prefer.

[00:12:50] So if you have addictive behaviors of any kind, be very gentle, kind and compassionate. towards yourself. If you like, hold out the hand of redemption and support to yourself, care for yourself, because addiction is suffering. And we do have ways to mitigate addictive behaviors that we'll talk about today.

[00:13:11] The key, if addiction is running from our emotions, is to retrain ourselves to accept and work more skillfully with our emotions, just truncate it at source. And you can learn how to do this here today. We'll talk about it in a second. And in doing so, you become more willing to stand by yourself no matter what, which is a new superpower in a class all of its own, really.

[00:13:40] And let's just be clear from the outset. If we're talking about emotional avoidance and addiction today, we cannot avoid our emotions. All we can do is temporarily block them or defer them. You know how much they grow when you do that, right? Yeah, me too. They just intensify. Any emotion that we avoid will intensify and keep recurring.

[00:14:05] And also, we can't pick and choose the emotions we do and don't want to feel. When you're willing to feel all your emotions, you're willing to feel all of them, both good and bad. You can't say, I'll have these ones, but not those ones, because our system doesn't work that way. We're all capable of feeling every emotion at times.

[00:14:29] We don't get to eliminate any, just like you can't knock a few piano keys out and still make music. We need them. They have a purpose. So we can't ever make our emotional range pretty and acceptable. That's just not how humans work. Every emotion has its purpose, it has its place, and no emotion can be truly avoided.

[00:14:54] But in fact, as you'll find out in a minute, it doesn't need to be. What we can rather do is listen to our emotions and make use of them. That's why they're there. But without getting swept away, without acting out, without yelling and screaming and kicking and fighting. We can be better friends to ourselves and our emotions.

[00:15:14] We can just listen to them, we can try to understand them, allow each emotion to be there, flushing as it does as energy throughout the body. And if you don't know how to feel your emotions, if you've got some sort of vague awareness, like if you're angry, you know you're angry, irritated, you know you're irritated, but you don't really recognize a whole bunch of your emotions, Or you think you can't recognize them or feel them.

[00:15:40] I'd love just to try a quick exercise together now. And I'll just talk you through how to do that. Because it's a skill that you can cultivate and it's a truly useful one that will help you regulate your emotional resilience if you like. And your emotional intelligence as well will be boosted by this.

[00:15:58] So, let's do it now. Find a quiet spot to sit down if you can. Where you won't be interrupted for a few minutes. Pause the podcast if you need to while you do that and come back. And by the way, I don't mean sit in a car. If you're driving a car, you're going to need to stop it to do this exercise. Okay, so if you're sitting somewhere quiet, if it is safe to close your eyes now, do that for a minute because it will really help you to pull the focus of your attention inside yourself.

[00:16:31] Putting your focus on yourself, your body, the elements and energies of your body. Sometimes it's easier to do that when you close your eyes. So just go within, take your attention within, and notice your breath first of all. Moving in through your mouth or nose, down your throat, and also whilst you're noticing your breath, notice other parts of your body and how they feel.

[00:16:56] Notice your body in contact with the seat you're sitting on. You'll probably notice your mind spinning while this is happening. If you can, keep your attention on the body and slow your mind down to your body's rhythm. Letting your racing thoughts shoot past without latching onto them and following them, paying too much attention to them.

[00:17:15] Just stay with your body. And then feel the rise and fall of your chest as you breathe. Notice as you breathe how your head feels. Your eyes, your neck, your throat, your shoulders and your back, your stomach and your legs. Just take your attention to each of those places. Notice as well, if there's any tightness or pain anywhere in your body, just be as present as you can to your body,

[00:17:47] bodily sensations, your itches, your gurgling stomach, whatever's happening in there, just be present to all of that as the observer. Okay, so once you're a little bit in touch with your body, think of a time, preferably today or yesterday, a recent time, when you remember feeling some kind of negative emotion, irritation perhaps, anger, fear, anxiety, disappointment, impatience,

[00:18:13] frustration, doubt, dread or outrage. Something that fired you up a little bit, something that you can recall. It doesn't really matter what the feeling is, but think about what was happening at that time, at that moment, and see if when you think about it, that same feeling comes up for you now as you think about it again.

[00:18:34] So maybe you missed the train, had an argument, were treated poorly. Just, visualize or see or recall that moment again in your mind, how it played out for you, and let yourself get into that feeling again now that you had. Name the feeling as best you can. This is anger, or this is anxiety. If your mind is still racing, just let it be.

[00:18:59] Stay focused on your body. Keep returning to your breath and your body. Pull your attention down inside your body. While you're doing this, if the difficult emotion is coming up for you, you might feel what we call an urge. An urge is an urgent impulse to escape the feeling and eat or drink or check your phone.

[00:19:23] Anything to avoid what you're feeling right now. So if that's happening for you, just notice that urge. Notice it without reacting. Stay where you are and keep observing your body. Keep your attention on your body. Maybe this process that I'm going through right now is unfamiliar to you.

[00:19:41] Don't worry if you can't connect with that feeling at first, if it's not your habit. Just allow your attention to stay with your body. Listen to it, observe it, breathe into it, and see. If a feeling comes up, see if you notice where you feel it in your body. Which part of your body draws your attention while you're feeling it?

[00:20:07] And this is not a thinking process. It's not an analytical process. We're not answering this question with our minds. It's an intuitive process. Your body knows what's going on already. So just ask the feeling where it is in your body and listen for your body's answers, not your brain's answer. We're parking the brain for a minute as much as we can.

[00:20:28] We're letting it chunter on in the background.

[00:20:31] Just really notice where the energy is collecting inside your body. Notice where your body becomes tight or where it throbs or vibrates or feels blocked or hurts. And notice if there's a temperature change. You feel suddenly warmer or cooler. Where do you feel that? Certainly if the feeling is anger, it can often bring heat.

[00:20:55] Might be a clue. Can you, in your mind's eye, in your intuition, can you see where the energy is and describe it, or feel where the energy is and describe it? Can you see it as having a size, or a volume, or a weight? Can you see it as having a shape, or a density, or a colour? Is it moving or is it still?

[00:21:20] Is it growing or shrinking? Maybe even ask it, what are you trying to tell me? Again, notice if you're uncomfortable, restless, or need to take the weight off one part of you. Just let your body call attention to itself, yeah? And just observe it as the observer. Whatever you detect, don't try and change it, just notice it.

[00:21:44] If the sensations or energy you notice go with the feeling, listen for which feeling that is. Or ask into your body, what feeling is this? Get a sense of it. Let your body answer you back. Because it might not be the feeling that you started off with.

[00:22:01] And that's it. Whether you're able to connect or not, that's just a first step in acknowledging that we do have feelings, that they are in our bodies, and that we can, with time and practice, start to connect with them and the message that they're trying to give to us. So we connect with the sensations of a feeling.

[00:22:20] It's like we're getting to know ourselves and the language of our emotions inside our body. Listening to our feelings, listening to what they're trying to tell us. And you can practice this exercise obviously anytime, it's free. Just go inside your body and have another listen. And you will find over time that your body will yield more and more information to you once it gets used to you listening.

[00:22:44] So practice anytime you're upset and it can really help you face, accept and release what you think of as a negative emotion, something you don't want to feel. It can help you sit with that and allow it to flow through your body.

[00:23:01] Because in scientific terms, each emotion has sensations associated with it. And if you don't reject them, fight them, run from them, suppress them, those sensations with that emotion last only 90 seconds in the body.

[00:23:17] So, If you do want to run away from a feeling that you're having, what exactly then are you running from? Because feelings can't hurt you unless you block them in your body. If we align with the Eastern healing philosophy, which I personally do as a practitioner, the energy of blocked feelings can be trapped inside the body for minutes, for days, for weeks, or even for years, eventually causing dysfunction in the body, which eventuates as pain, injury, or disease.

[00:23:50] So rather, if you allow your emotions to show themselves real time in your body, the sensations will fade in around 90 seconds, no harm done. This is how feelings are really designed to work, deliver a message and then leave. But the big upside I think of allowing your emotions to pass through you in this way, simply noticing the energy and letting it disperse, is that it's going to reduce your fear of that emotion.

[00:24:22] You're going to be less reactive and volatile, and you're going to reduce your emotional avoidance strategies. You'll have less urges to escape. And when you do this for more and more of your emotions, you're reclaiming your power over yourself and your internal energies and your mood.

[00:24:42] So let's just say for example the feeling you had just then was anger and you felt it boiling up in your chest, burning your throat, tightening your shoulders and causing pressure in your head. Your mind you probably noticed was racing on injustice and payback. But let's say when you were noticing all of that, this time you don't block it, or reach for a snack, or yell, or channel it into some form of outward aggression.

[00:25:12] Instead you pause, and you let that urgent impulse to escape pass. You just simply observe it. Oh, I'm twitchy, I need to go and do something. Okay, I'm twitchy. Observe your mind and body. This is the critical pause you need, to interrupt the addictive process. If you can notice an urge come up and not react by running away, that is you changing the course of your addictive process.

[00:25:41] Observing your feeling, your body, possibly a little moment of discomfort, without rejecting it. How about then if it just passes through you? The heat passes, taking the tension with it and you start to relax. Because over time, what you might notice is you don't need to be afraid of your anger. Because now you don't need to blow your stack when it comes up.

[00:26:06] You can let the heat escape through your body, and then you can resolve your dispute once you've calmed down from a quieter headspace. You won't need to overreact, and you won't need to overindulge and run away. This process that I've just described, if you keep practising it, is how you can overcome the addictive process, no matter what the object of addiction is.

[00:26:27] Now, sometimes there are addictions that need more support than others, but if the root of all addictive processes is being unwilling to feel your emotions, then being willing to feel your emotions, it's going to resolve the itch. One feeling at a time, one urge to escape at a time, And then you train your body and your mind not to need to escape anywhere near so much.

[00:26:54] Interrupt the feeling in that hot moment when your mind wants you to fly off into your addiction. Instead, simply wait it out. Observe it. Notice the urgency to consume. And simply do nothing for a few moments until, if you like, the storm passes.

[00:27:11] It's the same process for any emotion, so you could use this with anxiety, for example, or fear. If you can allow those hot, restless, urgent sensations to pass through your body, you won't need a beer or a snack to take the edge off. If you are working with chronic anxiety, go back and listen to episode number 156, Power Tool number 1, for a refresher on handling the racing mind, the thought loop of anxiety, which also is itself an addictive process.

[00:27:44] Because when you get good at feeling your feelings, you can start doing it with more challenging, urge inducing feelings like boredom, like humiliation, or even joy. Try it with any feeling.

[00:27:58] Because when you master the art of feeling your feelings, the world is your oyster. You will basically be at the helm of your life, not afraid to make any decision, because now you're willing to experience any resulting emotion, as uncomfortable as it may be, for just 90 seconds. And when that time passes, if you don't re stoke the fire with thought loops, more anxiety, etc, then it will pass.

[00:28:26] And you'll become the master of your feelings, your body, your reactions, and therefore your future. And that, my friends, is a very powerful place to be. As Max Ehrman said, "Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You're a child of the universe. No less than the trees and the stars. You have a right to be here.

[00:28:51] And whether or not it's clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should." So I wish you well with that. Please do reattempt this exercise frequently. Train yourself up so you can get in touch with your emotions and it quickly becomes a much easier process. That's what I have for you today.

[00:29:08] Don't forget to visit the Power Tools page in the show notes. So you get all the free resources that will speed you on your way. Next week, we've got Power Tool number five. You're going to love this one. How to champion yourself. If you've enjoyed today's show, I'd love you to share it with your mates, because this is how we can reach out to help more people who suffer in burnout.

[00:29:29] If you yourself are in burnout and you'd like some personal support to resolve it. Come and talk to me for free 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

[00:29:52] Thank you so much for listening.