Ep224 Best Way to Fix Burnout
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[00:00:00] Hi, everyone. My name's Dex Randall, and this is the Burnout to Leadership podcast, where I teach professionals to recover from burnout and get back to passion and reward at work.

[00:00:22] All righty, my friends, let me present to you a scenario. If you have a lot of stress and anxiety every day; if you're frustrated with yourself and other people; if you can't switch off at night, have little energy to spare for your loved ones, and wake in exhaustion and dread in the morning; if your situation seems without redemption, you can't fix it. Then all of these might indicate that your chronic stress might be tipping over into burnout.

[00:00:56] It's sneaky. You might have a gradual slide, an erosion of conditions, a lessening of hope, and not really notice. Just drop into angry exhaustion, still shouldering the burden like the trooper that you are. Occasionally wondering how it came to this and wishing it would stop. Feeling powerless.

[00:01:21] And in this, I think, burnout starts to resemble depression. You might also notice things like attention difficulties, brain fog, temper tantrums, restless energy, coping strategies that plunge you into addictive behaviors, perhaps, an urge to isolate as your fuse shortens and your capacity for emotional engagement dwindles, and this often prompts relationship problems.

[00:01:50] You might also experience insomnia, gut issues, loss of motivation, nervousness, anxiety, panic, and you might be witnessing all of the good in your life beginning to unravel and feel empty.

[00:02:06] If you hear me on this, please listen on today, and for goodness sake, take restorative action. Do not wait. Nothing pretty happens after this without help.

[00:02:19] Of course, for some people, the onset of burnout is more sudden. They're ejected from their job or their marriage, or a challenging life event stops them in their tracks. However, for such people, the genesis of burnout is exactly the same. It's just that the ending is more abrupt.

[00:02:40] Those people who are susceptible to burnout remain so.

[00:02:43] Oncoming burnout symptoms always worsen with time unless resolved. And by the way, changing jobs doesn't resolve it.

[00:02:53] So today what we're going to do is look more closely at why that is, and the precise steps that must be taken not only to recover from burnout, but to fly again, to restore passion and success, and to protect against burnout in the future.

[00:03:09] So first- Let's look at the dynamics of burnout. Going back to the 2019 World Health Organization definition of burnout- it's an experience you have in the workplace of loss of efficacy, demotivation and cynicism, and depletion or exhaustion. There's nowhere in there that says you have a terrible job or a terrible boss, or that AI is sucking the lifeblood out of you.

[00:03:36] It's important to notice that burnout is not classified as weakness, failure, illness, or a mental health crisis. Rather, it's an occupational phenomenon.

[00:03:48] It's also significant, I think, that this definition arrived in 2019.

[00:03:53] Why not before? And why is burnout skyrocketing now?

[00:03:59] We're looking at, depending on who you ask, 44% of global burnout, but up to 80% for some demographics (physicians, knowledge workers, Gen Z), compared to 39% in 2019.

[00:04:14] Now, I think the picture is quite a bit worse than that myself. At a global level, we need to also include quiet quitting or quiet cracking, disengagement, high turnover, career switching, graduate unemployment, mental health issues, and silent suffering, the latter in sectors such as medicine and law, where stigma prohibits disclosure.

[00:04:40] In the UK, about 91% of workers reported extreme stress in a recent survey, with 50% of sick days attributed to stress, anxiety, or burnout.

[00:04:53] In the US, 70% of workers report moderate to high workplace stress, and only 21% believe their employer cares about their mental health.

[00:05:04] So this has been going on for many years and always rising, but the perfect storm of burnout is still brewing.

[00:05:12] And it's not just AI. It's things like decreased job security and tenure; increased pace of work and rate of change across technology, business, and culture; increased complexity, moving targets and priorities; unclear role boundaries and responsibilities; pressure to upskill and cross-skill; nonlinear career paths; rapid rotation of personnel through every level; unexpected layoffs; and the education bait-and-switch in engineering particularly and information roles.

[00:05:49] A culture low on mentoring and mutual support, high on anxiety and blame. The work from home disconnection from workmates. The always-on mentality, a skewing of employee reviews towards latest metrics over intrinsic worth or long-term value, and on the same note, failure to provide career paths and training.

[00:06:13] Increased admin and compliance pressure has really got into a lot of industries, and there's a widespread, almost universal drop in leadership quality as the collective anxiety of the modern age takes over.

[00:06:28] Pretty big list, huh? But look at the pace of workflow environment changes that we've endured.

[00:06:34] If you look at it from the advent of, let's say, the internet and the mobile phone around 1993 through the dotcom boom, social media, startups, influencer cultures. Speeding up exponentially with AI, of course, which has the potential to redefine jobs and relationships on the fly and require faster learning, greater adaptability, and personal resilience whilst separating you from other people, from your coworkers.

[00:07:05] We've unconsciously in this age adopted a model of living that supports those in power and removes from us the essence of a good and healthy life.

[00:07:16] We're looking at a generational gap in satisfaction, and this, I think, progressively downgrades three critical factors that generate meaning and reward at work, and without which almost anyone will burn out.

[00:07:32] So number one: a sense of EFFICACY, mastery, contribution, and purpose. Remove this, and any high achiever is hit hard, feeling helpless, vulnerable, and locked out.

[00:07:46] Number two: a sense of BELONGING and authentic human connection. We're herd animals. No matter that we tend to operate as soloists at work, we still crave approval.

[00:07:59] Without nourishing connection, our nervous systems can't perform. They can't function. They just get fried. We become anxious, lonely, and depressed, and we fail to develop empathy and emotional intelligence, which then drives more selfish behavior.

[00:08:17] Three: functional PERFORMANCE. In this instant gratification culture exacerbated by AI use, we're losing confidence. Chronic anxiety plus outsourced problem-solving impairs our decision-making, attention, memory, creativity, time and energy management, mood, and concentration.

[00:08:42] Essentially, the accelerating culture change reduces the sense of purpose and achievement that is so vital to finding meaning and reward at work.

[00:08:53] It leaves us to contemplate or revive this on our own, at the same time as we're sucked into a cycle of overwork, compulsive behaviors, and superficial values that suck more juice out of our daily existence.

[00:09:08] The sad part is that driven high performers are particularly vulnerable, the least able to coast along in a fog and still feel okay about themselves.

[00:09:19] So I think a vital question we should ask then is: Why some people suffer burnout whilst others in the same role or industry don't?

[00:09:28] My perspective on this, the people who avoid burnout tend to have a more dependable, robust internal sense of their own worth. They decide if they're a good person or not.

[00:09:41] The people susceptible to burnout, on the other hand, have set impossible standards for their own worthiness and need constant reassurance that they are, in fact, worthy. They lack this robust inner sense of being good enough, and this results in a never-ending quest for approval, which in modern life is unobtainium.

[00:10:03] And such people, who you might recognize as Type AI achievers or strivers, fight hard for academic excellence and career success, for love, for wellbeing, for belonging. They're tough and resourceful, very high quality employees. But one day, if they hit a big enough snag, these people can and do implode in great numbers. Look at the statistics.

[00:10:33] I'm not saying that to judge anyone. I myself have suffered burnout. I'm saying it only because it has a wonderful silver lining. If you feel constantly judged, criticized, unrecognized, or underappreciated, what would happen if you could magically generate this big, warm buffer of self-approval?

[00:10:57] It's not a rhetorical question. I would ask yourself that one.

[00:11:01] In a moment, we're going to talk about core burnout issues and how to resolve them.

[00:11:07] But I think it's first worth noting that if you are burning out, you are in terrific company. You're an elite A player almost certainly. And just because you're struggling now, that doesn't change the intrinsic qualities, abilities, or worth of you.

[00:11:26] But if you've lost confidence, let's start getting that confidence back.

[00:11:30] To return to full function from deep stress when you're burning out, you will need to learn how to protect the asset, you. How to care for yourself effectively, protect yourself, nourish your heart, body, and soul, not just your mind. Create connections that bring you back to life. Feel your way back into your passion, sense of purpose, accomplishment, and reward. Reestablish camaraderie and lighthearted confidence, because the great news is you can create a world where you feel safe, relaxed, and valued.

[00:12:11] You can do that. No one can stop you.

[00:12:15] And I call this championing yourself. It's what I teach, skills you maybe didn't learn even as a child.

[00:12:22] Recovery and prevention of burnout is simply looking at everything through a lens of championing oneself, restoring personal protection, authority, dignity, authenticity, confidence and boundaries, balance, self-approval, self-assurance, self-belief, and self-confidence. All the things that will bring you back to life.

[00:12:51] It's an exercise in supplying yourself with whatever you've been trying to get from the world and failing.

[00:12:59] Having your own back and encouraging yourself from a generous sense of rightness in who you are. And when you develop those skills, you feel a lot safer in your skin, more comfortable out in the world, less permeable to the judgment of others.

[00:13:16] It will simply be okay to be you without masking, hiding, or straining to be better.

[00:13:24] When you practice and experience this as energizing, expansive, freeing, and joyful, then you're on the right track.

[00:13:34] So let's bear that in mind and look at the core issues of burnout, how they manifest, and how to reverse them. And just for the sake of brevity, and probably because they are the critical factors, I'm just going to lump them into three categories.

[00:13:50] So if you're going to have just three core burnout issues.

[00:13:53] Number one will be EXHAUSTION. And when you're exhausted, you lose morale, you lose motivation, you lose mood. You quite often lose your temper as well, social connections degrade. You're going to have less engagement at work and everywhere else. And then of course your mental skills, cognition will drop, and that impacts productivity, decision-making, memory.

[00:14:20] And on top of all of that, as if that's not bad enough, you're going to have an impact of exhaustion on your health, sleep, exercise, and the maintenance of your body. So exhaustion is a very big beast to grapple with, and don't underestimate how much it affects your ability to be okay in the world. So that's number one, exhaustion.

[00:14:42] Number two, you're FED UP. You're frustrated, angry, resentful, probably irritated, impatient. Full of blame. A little bit argumentative, provoking conflict because your mood and motivation are very low. You have a lot of negative feelings, and then you have escapism to try and run away from them.

[00:15:00] And all of this is going to help you draw away from people, so you're going to have reduced quality of connection and reduced sense of efficacy. You're going to feel helpless, you're going to feel a lack of support, a lack of recognition and reward, and you're going to want to control other people and how they interact with you.

[00:15:23] And if that doesn't work very well, after that you're going to feel an urge just to withdraw and hide away. Okay? So fed up is also a pretty big basket of stuff to carry around with you every day. Very impactful on your ability to work and conduct any kind of human interface.

[00:15:39] So number one, exhausted. Number two, fed up.

[00:15:41] Number three, anxious. Anxiety has become enormously prevalent, as you must know, and it affects so many parts of us as well. Obviously, our nervous system, and when our nervous system goes west, it takes a lot of things with it. But anxiety also affects mood, communication, cognition skills.

[00:16:00] When you're anxious, your cognition degrades, your functional skills degrade, so that affects performance. Also, if you're anxious, it's not going to be very motivating. It will affect your sleep, your attention. You'll probably develop compulsive behaviors to try and avoid the anxiety and procrastination to try and avoid difficult tasks that you don't feel you can complete.

[00:16:23] You'll feel then helpless. You'll lose confidence. If you wanna stay onside at work, you'll probably be people-pleasing by this stage. You'll probably be in perfectionism where you keep going with your work long past the point where it is acceptable, really to avoid judgment. Perfectionism is just avoidance of judgment.

[00:16:43] And then when all of that, again, doesn't work very well, you will probably socially isolate. And your worthiness will drop another notch or two when you start criticizing and blaming yourself, so the inner critic will be on fire.

[00:16:57] Anxiety is a closed loop with your nervous system. When you are anxious, it triggers your nervous system fight or flight, and when you trigger fight or flight, that triggers more anxious thinking. Devastating.

[00:17:12] All right the three core sets of experiences (exhaustion, being fed up, and being anxious), I would say are pretty central to most people's experiences.

[00:17:21] But let's say those three key drivers of burnout, if we fixed them, wouldn't the rest improve, too?

[00:17:29] Wouldn't it be easier to function in life and get better results?

[00:17:33] Motivation, performance, communications, problem-solving, team leadership, it would all lift on that rising tide.

[00:17:40] Notice that, although I'm talking about teaching practical skills today, the emphasis is on generating a much brighter, stronger internal power within you.

[00:17:51] Because you're already good at your job, you don't need a performance plan, that's not going to help with burnout, or a team lunch come to that.

[00:17:59] What you need to know is how to right your own ship once and for all.

[00:18:05] So let's look at how we can fix those three drivers, shall we? If you are exhausted, fed up, and anxious, what do you think would help?

[00:18:14] What would a fix look like for you?

[00:18:16] Very good questions to ask yourself. It may seem terminal, like nothing can help you, but really ask yourself deeply those questions.

[00:18:23] What do you think would help you? Not a quick fix, not a temporary fix, not a couple of days off, but a proper resolution. What would that fix look like for you?

[00:18:34] Or look at it the other way around. If you could gain strong, stable energy, enthusiasm, and confidence, what would change for you?

[00:18:44] That really embodies burnout recovery to me.

[00:18:47] The thing that would change for most people, the answer is life itself.

[00:18:52] Because if you're burning out, it's pervasive across all areas of your life.

[00:18:56] It's not contained to work, and then at home everything's fine.

[00:18:59] And really, because burnout masks as depression, you've lost connection with the most important things that make you YOU. That's performance, power, and people.

[00:19:16] You might feel like an automaton, like you don't matter, or an imposter, you shouldn't be there at all.

[00:19:24] How can you instead find yourself deserving of the very best that life has to offer, and reconnect with your own heart to open the road to get there?

[00:19:35] Yes, I'm talking about your heart now, that heart you've had locked in a box under the stairs. Luckily, it's very forgiving. You locked it away because you didn't want it to get hurt. It got hurt anyway, but it's very forgiving, and your heart has the power to reverse the whole mess, and there's nothing it would love to do more.

[00:19:54] It's your most devoted fan, and it makes very few mistakes. It knows and cares about what you love and what's best for you. So recruit it. That is championing yourself.

[00:20:08] If we're going to look at how to fix the core issues of burnout, consider from the champion's perspective.

[00:20:15] If you wanted to fix EXHAUSTION: firstly, you can find yourself worthy of better.

[00:20:21] Then you can recognize your own achievements, every single one, instead of doing them down. You can raise your self-esteem. Notice the good in you. Then you can start protecting yourself on the outside, reestablish your priorities, learn to say no when a no is required, set better boundaries, fix your schedule.

[00:20:41] Have a set, fixed schedule for each day and a fixed day end. Decide what you'll do and do it. Don't just have this open-ended, I can never get enough done mentality, because that is exhausting. Limit your communications. Have communication windows. Don't be a slave to other people who want to wander up and have a chat with you.

[00:21:01] Eliminate procrastination. When you've got an internal core that's stronger, you will feel more like doing that, and that includes limiting distractions, socials, playing with your phone, all of that. You're going to feel more like that when you feel more yourself.

[00:21:18] Stop perfectionism. Do your work well, finish it, hand it off. When you raise your inner equilibrium, you're going to worry less about what other people are thinking, and that becomes possible to limit perfectionism.

[00:21:32] Quit FOMO. You do not need to go to every meeting in case you miss out on something. So one way that most people I work with can regain some time and energy is to sign out of a lot of meetings that they don't really need to be at.

[00:21:46] Then at the end of the day, agree with yourself that you did a good day's work and go home. No compulsive phone checking after hours. Relax, socialize, be there for your people. Sleep well.

[00:22:00] So all of those strategies I've just mentioned -that would address exhaustion and returning some good energy to you- I have techniques that I teach for.

[00:22:10] I just shot them out in a list, in case you can recognize in yourself the possibility of change, which is something that people in burnout deny themselves rather brutally. It's "Yeah, it's never going to get any better. I can't do anything about this." That actually isn't true, and once you take it in hand and you start to see gains, they start to snowball in a positive direction.

[00:22:32] So that's about exhaustion. There's quite a lot on that because the exhaustion itself is normally very entrenched.

[00:22:40] How to fix feeling fed up. One of the things is it's better for us to know that we can't escape any single emotion. We can't feel happy and shut down sad. We can't feel contented and shut down resentment.

[00:22:54] We can't pick which emotions we'd like to have and which ones we wouldn't, so all this time when we try and block our emotions out, we're just pushing them down the road really.

[00:23:04] If we think about humans as having 50/50 of emotions, let's say 50% good, 50% bad available to us, every emotion available to every person, what if we just accepted that sometimes things won't go our way, or we'll have a moment of frustration?

[00:23:21] Rather than compound it and start a war, just go, "Okay, I feel frustrated right now. I'll move on."

[00:23:26] And of course, associated with being in touch with our real emotional landscape and not avoiding and running away from it or pretending it's not there, radical honesty is a very big asset in coming back home to ourselves and just going, "Yeah, I'm good like I am.

[00:23:43] I don't have to fix myself up. I don't have to pretend to be someone else. I can just be honest, direct and honest," which is a very respectful way of communicating as long as we don't add in the mix a bit of aggression. Respectful, radical honesty is very productive.

[00:23:58] I can take extreme ownership as well of my own experience. Very good book, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink, in the military setting about taking responsibility for every outcome of every situation regardless of who was involved in that situation. So it's a leadership quality of taking extreme ownership of everything that goes wrong regardless of why it was wrong, and I think it transfers into burnout recovery because if we can own our own part in creating our own misery, then suddenly we've got the agency to fix it. Still no blame, right?

[00:24:36] The other thing that's quite useful for fixing emotional outbursts and negative emotions is Cognitive Behavior Therapy, which I use to some extent to redirect negative energy into a more positive direction. That's something I teach my clients to self-coach with.

[00:24:53] The other thing that's really helpful, especially at work, to give up is expecting other people to conform to our wishes. Of course, we know how the world works, we know how people should be, and we think everybody else is going to behave how we think humans are supposed to behave.

[00:25:10] Wars can be started that way. It's not a very helpful view because however many people in the world there are today, this very moment, that's how many people will have a different value set to you and a different idea of what a good human is and what a good human does. So trying to impose your view of what a good human does onto other people is doomed.

[00:25:33] It's doomed. So it's quite helpful just to notice, okay, they do it differently than me, and that's just them. I must accept that they will continue to be themselves. If there's one thing we can trust people to do, it's continue to be themselves. Most people don't employ a very great deal of neuroplasticity during their lifetime.

[00:25:51] So stop expecting other people to do what we want. Stop trying to control them. Stop expecting that they will be malleable.

[00:25:59] We don't have to give away our values to do that. We can still stand by ourselves 100%, we just don't expect everyone to be the same as us.

[00:26:08] And if people behave in ways that we don't like, we can set boundaries. They can continue to do the thing that they want to do, whether it's smoking or revving the car for three hours outside your house, they can continue to do it, but the consequence is that you will be elsewhere, or that you won't let them into your house.

[00:26:25] Whatever. There's a consequence.

[00:26:27] And lastly, the thing that fixes fed up is being a bit more impermeable to other people's opinions, because same said number of people on this planet won't have the same value system as you. It means that they won't have the same opinion as you about anything either. But you can only stay true to your own values, not theirs, so it's much better for you to go, "Oh, am I in line with my own values? That's as good as I get."

[00:26:53] Then you don't have to worry if it doesn't suit other people for you to be that way. The thing that springs to my mind is religious beliefs. I don't expect other people to convert to my religion, but it doesn't mean I can't uphold it myself. Okay?

[00:27:08] When we start taking that stance, people's behavior becomes much more explainable. "Oh, that's just them being them. Oh, that's just them doing what they've been taught to do to be a good person." It doesn't agree with me? Oh well, find a way past that. But becoming impermeable to other people's opinions and judgments, you're saving yourself a ton of energy and hassle.

[00:27:32] That brings us to the last one, how to fix anxious. Really, a lot of anxiety comes from our inner critic, which is generally speaking on fire while we're burning out. So although we think it's other people we're afraid of who are criticizing and judging and being mean to us, normally it's this thing inside our own head.

[00:27:54] So if we can turn down our own inner critic, we're going to go a really long way to reclaiming some sense of wellbeing, some sense of worthiness, and also energy. Then when we can get to agree that we're okay as we are, we can protect ourselves on our values. We can acknowledge our skills and wins. We can collaborate effectively with other people actually, and we can be authentic without quite so much friction if the inner critic is turned down or even off.

[00:28:23] Anyway, one exercise I give to my clients is I ask them every day to write down 10 things about themselves that they appreciate, but it needs to be different every day, and when they've done it for a month, they're going to have 300. ' Cause a lot of people don't give a lot of time to noticing their own goodness, and when you champion yourself, noticing your own goodness is first cab off the rank.

[00:28:49] Couple more things. Obviously, the compulsive behaviors, the addiction to social media, the picking up your phone every time there's a break in proceedings, or watching too much news. Those types of activities are very anxiety-provoking, and they will keep your anxiety cycle in top gear.

[00:29:11] Pulling back on those can really make a big difference too.

[00:29:13] In the end, although I can help you learn many specific skills and techniques to recover from burnout, the willingness to apply them comes from you, and I can also help you develop that commitment to yourself in the first place, because life is too long to spend in misery.

[00:29:31] The practices to reverse your pain points arise organically when you adopt a championing relationship with yourself. As if you were talking to an eight-year-old version of you, be gentle with yourself. It's not only your gift to love and appreciate and support yourself fully, it's your duty.

[00:29:52] Because if you don't, no one else can. You won't receive from others what you won't give to yourself. It's going to be a pretty arid place if you cannot choose to give yourself the love and support that you need.

[00:30:06] If you criticize your own work, for example, you teach other people not to accept it. If you don't encourage yourself to experiment, try new things, and fail, no one else will back you either.

[00:30:19] If you're mean to yourself, even when you achieve something worthwhile, other people won't rate you either, and nor will you encourage your own team.

[00:30:29] So ultimately, I think if you recognize the signs of impending burnout in what you heard today, I can help you unwind them and get back to your best.

[00:30:39] And I do not want you to take away from today any kind of self-judgment.

[00:30:44] That's what you've dwelt in so far if you're burning out, and how is it serving you?

[00:30:48] So what I would encourage you to notice is, "Ah, there's a way through this, and I can give that gift to myself. I'm worth that."

[00:30:58] So thank you for listening today, and please, if you're burning out, don't put up with it. It will not improve by itself, fueled by your negative thoughts, your negative feelings, and your low energy.

[00:31:12] Burnout recovery is not a solo sport. It wasn't for me, and I haven't found it to be for other people.

[00:31:18] So this is why I run a three-month one-on-one program to help excellent people such as yourself get back on their feet. It's a step-by-step process, no guesswork, but it is personalized to your specific work experience and needs. You can find out more about it at leadership.dexrandall.com. Thank you for listening today.