The Real Reason You're Burned Out (It's Not Your Schedule)

Over half of workers say they've felt burned out in the past year. And most of the advice out there doesn't actually fix it. Sleep more, take a vacation, work fewer hours... none of that gets to the real problem.

In this episode I get into what's actually causing burnout, and I share my own story of experiencing it after years of chasing success and realizing it wasn't enough.

What you'll get from this one:

• Why the advice you keep hearing about burnout doesn't work
• Why the same task can drain one person and light another person up
• A simple exercise you can try this week to figure out what's actually draining you

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Burnout is one of the most widely talked about and also most widely misunderstood things in our society right now. And I say that as somebody who has committed his life to helping individuals and organizations prevent burnout and somebody who's been through burnout personally. And so my advice today for you, if you're feeling burned out, is not going to be just rest more, drink more water, have less responsibility, or any of those things. Because if that was the simple solution, then we would have less than half the world burned out right now. There's a recent study that came out. I can't tell you the source off the top of my head, but it's there. I read it. You can Google it, I think. And it said that 55 to 60% of workers say that they've experienced burnout within the past year, which is a crazy statistic. And I think that there's two dimensions to burnout. And I want to talk about the individual dimension today. So organizational and systemic burnout is a completely different topic. And we're going to get to that. However, like most things, it starts with the individual, and that's what I believe to be the most effective way to change. And so we're going to start and focus there. So let's go over some myths and debunk them around burnout. Okay, myth number one is burnout comes from working too many hours. So maybe if you're listening to this, you can answer this question in your head. When's the last time that you had a super busy day and you felt super energized and you felt super satisfied after? I know I felt that way. And then think about another day where you have worked just as many hours, yet you felt frustrated and you felt really drained after. So if burnout was just about how many hours we worked, you would be feeling burned out no matter what. Right? So it's not necessarily about the hours that we're working, it's about something deeper to that. And we'll get into that in a minute. The second thing is that burnout will be fixed with a good night's sleep. Show of hands. If you want to, you can raise your hand up. How many of you have slept eight hours and still felt tired the next day? Right. I'm sure most of you have. And it's because that burnout isn't just something that can be fixed with a good night's sleep. Burnout is a lot deeper than that. And again, we're gonna get into what that is. And the third thing is a vacation will fix your burnout. So a lot of times we set up our lives to where the majority of our life is something that we really don't enjoy and something that we tolerate. And then little tidbits of our life are things that we actually enjoy, like going to the Bahamas for a week or going to Mexico for a few days, or going on a weekend getaway. And so what we do is we kind of pressure cooker ourselves up throughout the week. We do things that we consistently don't enjoy, we do things that we feel like we have to do. And then just to make sure we're barely able to tolerate it, we go off and we relieve the pressure and we relieve the stress. Okay, by going and relaxing or drinking or whatever. And what I see a lot with the burnout cycle is that those types of temporary solutions are just temporary, right? What happens is it's like taking an ibuprofen for a headache. If the reason why you're getting headaches is because you're dehydrated, just taking ibuprofen may cover up the fact that you have pain, but nothing's gonna really help you unless you drink the water and nourish yourself, right? So burnout operates in the same way. So burnout isn't just about the things that we're doing. Burnout happens when what we're doing is out of integrity with our value system. And maybe you've heard some variation of this before. I promise you, I'm gonna demystify this. Okay, so all of us have core values. Whether or not we actually live in accordance with those core values is a different story. Because a lot of times, based off our environment and the society and the culture that we grow up in, we're conditioned to value certain things and devalue other things. So if you're listening to this and you're part of Western culture, and there's also other cultures that this applies to, but I'm in America. What happens a lot of times is we are taught at a deep unconscious level that our value as human beings comes from how productive we are, or it comes from how accomplished we are. We live in this fast microwave society. And because of that, we're taught at a really young age that who we are and our value is tied to our results and our accomplishments and our achievements. And how belief systems work is from the time we're zero, from the time we're seven, we are forming beliefs about ourself and the world. And the thing about this is we don't have the conscious awareness and we don't have the resources available to us to be able to question beliefs that we had indoctrinate into, right? So if I grew up in a household and I watched my parents work really hard for money, and I felt that the only way to make money was to work hard and to burn myself out, then I'm gonna believe that to be true at an unconscious level. And then that's gonna translate into certain patterns of behavior that's gonna turn into working a lot of hours, not taking care of myself, being a people pleaser, maybe, avoiding things. It can manifest in a lot of different ways. And that's what happens. So it starts with an unconscious belief, which forms our perception of ourself and the world because our belief system acts as a filter with how we see reality and how we see ourselves. That belief turns into the filter, it turns into the thoughts that we have. So it turns into the story that we tell ourselves. And then that story is what translates into the actions that we take on a daily basis. And so the big wound that I feel is running amuck in our society that's also invisible, which is why it's so hard to address, is the wound that says who we are alone is not enough. The wound that says our value comes from our productivity, our accomplishments, or what we do. And here's the thing: I'm not advocating for laziness, I'm not advocating for not doing anything with your life. I'm actually the opposite of that. I think it's really important to figure out what your purpose is in life and to go out and do everything you can to make the impact that you're here to make. However, when it's coming from a place of I'm not good enough, the energy that we're using to take action is what I call toxic fuel. Okay, so if we're acting from a place of I'm not good enough, we're acting from a place of fear, of shame, of depression, of not enoughness. Right. And because of that, the way that we pursue goals and the way that we do things in our life doesn't feel good. It's a corrosive fuel. It'll maybe maybe help us get somewhere really fast. It'll temporarily work, but then eventually that fuel is going to run out and we have to change what drives us to do certain things. So bringing it back to burnout, burnout happens when the ratio of stuff in our life that drains us outweighs the ratio of stuff that fulfills us. It happens when we are operating in a fuel source that's not really in alignment with who we are, because our value system and who we are as a true human being does not come from our environment and our society. Our true value system is innate within us, waiting to be discovered. And what happens when we're conditioned to think that we're someone we're not, and we engage in behaviors and habits and adopt mindsets that reflect the person that we're not, then we're gonna feel consistently drained, overwhelmed, underappreciated, undervalued. And what happens is our perception of why we're burned out is gonna be blaming our circumstances. It's gonna be blaming our environment. We're gonna say that we're burned out because of the job we're in. We're gonna say we're burned out because of other people in our life. And what happens is that actually keeps us deeper in the cycle because we're gonna go and try to change our circumstances and try to change the things outside of us, but we're not actually gonna address the root cause, which is the belief that we are not enough as we are. And I'm gonna get really practical here because I know that this can maybe sound um woo-hoo for some people or mystical. And so we can give some practical examples to really ground this. I want you to think about last time you talked to somebody and then you felt like you wanted to take a nap after. Really think about it. Think about the person in your life that every single time that you talk to them, you feel like you just you want to go lay down and go to bed. And then I want you to think about somebody in your life where every time you talk to them, you feel energized and you feel full of life force and you feel inspired to do things. My question to you would be what's the difference between those two people? What's the difference between the person that gives you life and the person that takes your life away? And then I also want you to think about things that you do. Think about the last time that you did something, and as you were doing it, you felt like it was draining your energy. Maybe it's some things that you're doing at your job right now. Maybe it's having a conversation with a parent that just you know is toxic. Right? Just think about the last time you did something and you felt drained. And now I want you to think about the last time you did something and it felt energizing. Have you ever noticed that the things that may energize you may drain somebody else? Well, why is that? Because if we're thinking about burnout as just the things that we do, then everybody should be drained by the same things and energized by the same things, right? So what's the difference for us? And here's what it is The things that energize us are in alignment with our value system. It is gods or the universes or whatever you want to call its way of life showing you that you are doing the thing that you're meant to be doing. And then if you're feeling drained, it's a call to action, it's a signal that either the thing that you're doing or the way that you're doing the thing is not in alignment with how you were designed to be. And what happens is we are taught in our society to be purely up here in our head. So our body has a ton of wisdom. It has intuition, it has its own form of intelligence, and there's numerous research and studies on this. Your heart has its own source of intelligence, and your head is not designed to make decisions. Okay. Your head is designed to help you with bringing the decisions that you make from your heart to life. Your, your, your, your uh mind is all about the what and the how. Your heart is the who and the why. Okay, so burnout happens when we are making decisions and we are operating from just our head and our logic and not our body and our heart space. Okay, so practically the way you can think about this is let's say that you're in a relationship right now and it's draining your energy. Let's say that you can kind of look back on your life and you've found that ever since you've been in this relationship, you're maybe a shell of who you once were. Well, that happens because this person that you're with does not align with your value system. And maybe you're tolerating behaviors and circumstances and things from them that are making you smaller, right? And maybe why you're doing that is because your model of being loved growing up from your parents or from a TV show or whatever was being treated poorly is just a part of love. Right? Maybe that's what you learned unconsciously. It's like you weren't worthy of being loved as you are. And so you have to conform yourself for somebody else to love you. And the negative consequences of conforming yourself is feeling drained and feeling burned out. And so to kind of zoom this out in a super high-level perspective here, burnout happens when we are disconnected from the things that give us life. The opposite of burnout is connection. Okay. And I'm going to give a practical example for my own life too, so we can keep driving this thing home. Uh, for me, I worked for a super fast-growing nutrition supplement company from the time I was 19 to the time I was 25. And when I first started with this company, I felt really energized and I felt alive. And I also felt like there was something I had to prove within myself. Again, I was always the kid who was a theater kid. I grew up in really hard circumstances. I was buoyed at school. So I didn't really have a strong self-esteem or a sense of self-worth anyway. And so I went into this company and I very much so wanted to prove myself. And so over time, what started to happen, in order for me to continuously meet the demands of this company, I just put work above everything. And then I just completely sacrificed other areas of my life. I sacrificed my social life, I sacrificed my peace, I sacrificed my relationships. And it's because I believed at an unconscious level that I wasn't worthy of feeling good and accomplishing things. I believed that I had to sacrifice myself to be successful because who I was fundamentally was not good enough. And I learned that growing up with a stepmom who was always yelling at me and was bipolar and just you didn't really know who you're gonna wake up to. And I learned that by feeling like I had to change who I was depending on the household that I lived in. So I came from a background of learning that love from other people was conditional. That translated into patterns of overworking myself, people pleasing, and also avoidance a lot of times. And that translated into me making decisions in my life, in my career, that where I would put myself on the back burner and I would just keep taking caffeine and stimulants and whatever I needed to in order to keep pushing through and accomplishing my goals. And so eventually, you can imagine six years later, I had nothing left. I had a ton of external accomplishments, but internally I was dead inside. I felt completely disconnected from my body, and I just my whole sense of self was wrapped into my job. Literally, I have a tattoo on my arm with the name of the company that I used to work for. That's how much I tied myself worth to my job. And so, burnout, fundamentally, it's a pattern of behavior. And it's not just one source either. So typically, the one source of burnout is I'm not good enough unless I do X. That's the unconscious belief. And then that turns into certain stories that we tell ourselves, certain thought patterns. So maybe for you, burnout is the thought pattern of, oh man, like um, it's okay, I can do this for somebody else, even if you're feeling exhausted. Maybe the thought pattern is I have to keep pushing, even if your body is screaming at you to stop. So the story that you're telling yourself is contradicting your body's innate wisdom, right? And then the behavioral pattern that shows up in is typically people pleasing. So saying yes to when you want to say no. It's avoiding confrontation. So maybe you you scroll a lot on your phone when you're feeling uncomfortable or anxious, or maybe you scroll a lot when you're feeling good because it's hard for you to really hold the sensation of feeling good in your body. Um, and it's also overachieving. It's it's chasing the next goal, it's being addicted to success, it's doing the next thing, being busy in your life, having your calendar stacked full, because silence makes you feel guilty and it makes you feel uncomfortable because you've been taught to equate your worth to your productivity. So the three most common ways I see the burnout pattern play out is the avoidant pattern, which is you're filling your minds with busy work, you're numbing yourself through drugs, through overworking, through just your calendar being stacked full. Two, it's overachieving, meaning that you place your value um towards your self-worth. So you're constantly chasing the next goal, you're not satisfied with yourself, you don't really uh give yourself pats on the back, you just always chase the next thing, the next promotion, the next this. You think that once you get to a certain point, you'll feel better. And then also the people pleaser. We all know this one where you say yes when you want to say no, you don't really talk about how you really feel, you hide your true emotions from people. And all of this collectively, no matter what form it shows up in with you, if not all of them, is it builds this energetic debt in our life. Because if you think about burnout, really what it's about is it's about energy management. So that means that whenever you are depositing into things and you're not getting a return of investment of your energy consistently, you're gonna go into energetic debt. Right. And then also you're teaching yourself when you do these things that are draining you, even though it's not an integrity with what you truly want to do, every time you bypass what your body's telling you, what your heart's telling you, what your intuition's telling you, what you're doing is you're teaching yourself that you can't trust yourself. Right. And that's the big trap, right? Every time that we're stuck in a pattern of behavior, a lot of times it's because we are valuing what's gonna happen next and certainty over self-trust. So if we continuously people please, the benefit and the reward that we're getting from that is at least we know what's gonna happen next. Right? If we stop people pleasing, we don't know what our life is gonna look like. And so a lot of times we'll stay in a familiar hell and go into an unfamiliar heaven. Right. And that's what the unconscious mind does. Whenever you have belief systems that aren't in integrity with the person that you came here to be, then it's gonna keep you in loops and keep you stuck until you go in and do the inner work required to really change it. Okay, so burnout on an individual level is when you are forcing yourself to do things that are not in alignment with your value system, when you're bypassing your body, when you're not letting letting yourself trust your intuition, and when you are engaging in behaviors that just don't help you become the person that you're meant to become. That's what it is. If you want to go even higher level with that, I believe that burnout comes from a suppression of feminine energy and an overuse of masculine energy. So masculine energy is doing, execution, strategy, it's external focus, it's penetrative. Feminine energy is internal, it's emotions, it's introspective, it's receptive, and it's receiving. Okay, a lot of us have feminine wounds, especially men, but this happens in women all the time too, where when we believe at a deep unconscious level that our value comes from our productivity, we're gonna devalue things like rest, receiving, emotions, introspection, reflection, joy, creativity, intangible things. And we're gonna overvalue things that we can see, right? It's doing discipline, execution, direction, strategy. Um, yeah, taking consistent external action. And so that's the wound, and that's my perspective of where burnout really comes from. And so now I want to get into a super practical thing that you can do to start breaking free from the burnout cycle. Because the good news here is that you can empower yourself to change this. It's just not gonna be the typical solutions that you hear on the internet, which is drink more water, rest more, sleep better, whatever, right? This is gonna be how you get to really the source of it. So this is an exercise that I call the energy audit. And what this is is it'll help you identify what areas in your life are draining your energy so that you can stop doing the stuff that's draining you and start doing more of the stuff that's energizing you. And there's more layers to this, um, but this is the simplest, most effective thing you can do right now if you feel like you're really drained. Okay. So step one is I want you to write down all the things that you do on your busiest day of the week. So I want you to literally take out a piece of paper, a journal, a note, whatever, write that down. Two is I want you to reflect on that day. I want you to write down a plus sign next to the activities that energized you. So you felt like it was giving you life as you were doing it. I want you to put a minus sign next to the things that you felt drained by. And maybe just put a little squiggly line, I don't know what you call that, whenever you're not really sure. And then I want you to add up how many plus signs you have versus how many minus signs you have. If you have more plus signs than minus signs, that means overall you're in alignment, you feel fulfilled. If you have more minus signs, that means that you are engaging with a lot of things that drain your energy. Okay, then I want you to look at it and see how you can rectify those minus signs. So maybe you can, if you're a business owner or a leader, you can delegate stuff that drains you. Maybe you can just stop doing it entirely because it's not something you need to do to begin with. And maybe you can redesign it. Maybe you can do it in a way that's more aligned and energizing for you. And so if you do that consistently, then you're gonna start really figuring out, okay, this is the stuff that's energizing me. And you can start kind of debunking this belief that says that in order to be successful, in order to live my life, I have to do things consistently that drain me. Because a lot of times that's just the stories that we've come up with based off our conditioning, based off the culture that we grew up in. And so I hope this really helped you. If you're somebody who's struggling with individual burnout, you're not alone. I have other resources if you're interested, and uh if you want to join my newsletter, I talk about burnout consistently. And yeah, I'd love to support you in preventing burnout in your own life. So keep following my stuff and thank you so much for listening. And I'll talk to you later.