Welcome to this short talk on the burnout issue and why it might not be exactly what you think.
In this short reflection I am going to talk about something that has become all too familiar in the modern workplace and that is burnout.
Over the next few minutes I'm going to invite you to seeing burnout slightly differently and to questioning whether it's really caused by what we've been told as a society.
A common belief is that burnout comes from doing too much for too long,
Too many emails,
Too many pings,
Too many deadlines,
Too much pressure.
But what if that is only part of the truth?
What if burnout is less about the workload itself and more about the thinking that we carry about the workload,
The weight that we put on our proverbial shoulders?
In my case I worked incredibly long hours in a digital partnerships role.
I have always been London based and it was not uncommon for my New York colleagues to book a 9 p.
M.
Meeting in my diary.
I'd finish my day,
I'd go home,
I'd eat,
I'd log back on and it never really troubled me.
Fast forward a couple of years and I decide to do more heart-aligned work and the hours are much friendlier.
I joined a training organization but the pressure felt different.
My energy weared differently,
Much faster and the Sunday scary is decided to set in.
And this points to something that our experience doesn't necessarily come from our circumstances but from the thoughts that we're believing in the moment.
What does this mean for burnout?
Often it's not the job itself that burns us out,
It's how much time we spend in our heads trying to manage the future,
Trying to control the outcomes,
Rehearse every possible scenario,
Go back over our day and all the things that we would do differently.
In other words it tends to be overthinking rather than overworking that truly drains us.
Think about it,
Have you ever had a packed day where everything just flowed?
You felt energized,
Exhilarated and driven by everything that you had to do in front of you and I can liken this to my always-on days in partnerships.
And then another day the same schedule just felt like wading through mud in a pair of Converse and not the rubber ones,
The canvas plimsolls that really get stuck and really find difficult to move.
The difference wasn't necessarily in the tasks but in the quality of thought,
The mental load we were carrying on top of the to-do list.
Now this doesn't necessarily mean that we completely ignore the need for rest and the need for boundaries.
Both of those things are incredibly important but relief comes from seeing it's a real source of the pressure.
When we glimpse that our experience is coming from thought in the moment,
It's impactful.
We stop trying to fix the world from the outside and we start looking inward.
We start to notice how our inside world constantly move,
Changes,
Dances and the noise settles and clarity can return and with it we see fresh options that we didn't see before.
There's information in the feeling including burnout and including when we settle.
And when we see those new options we can take action on the outside that better reflects our inner world,
Our values,
Our true and higher self.
So if you are feeling burnout please know you don't need to fix everything.
You don't need to change jobs or rebuild your life overnight.
Those things can come but take a moment and begin to notice where your experience is really coming from.
Ask yourself am I experiencing thought as reality?
You might be surprised how quickly things can change when you stop chasing peace of mind and start seeing what's already built in,
What you already have going for you,
Your own innate well-being.
Thanks for listening.
