184. Burnout, Revisited
Your work is important, and there's a lot of it. It can be difficult to manage. But that doesn't mean you're doomed to burnout and overwhelm.
In fact, there are some specific skills and mindset shifts you can learn that will help you feel sooo much better AND do high-quality work.
Tune in to today’s episode to learn impactful shifts you can make immediately to get some relief, set yourself up for success, and yes, get those to-do items done, too.
Oh and be sure to listen until the end to learn how to get a copy of a super helpful workbook!
Want customized support creating your wildly delicious life? Let’s hop on a free consultation call.
I’ll help you understand the blockers you’re facing and how to handle them moving forward. And I’ll share how a three-month 1:1 coaching package could supercharge your progress as well as your satisfaction.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
The six factors that cause burnout, according to researchers.
The antidote to each factor.
The role of satisfaction as a burnout preventative or treatment.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about burnout, again.
The Satisfied AF podcast is the place to learn how to create a life and career that’s wildly delicious. Want a steamier sex life? We’ve got you. Want a more satisfying career? We’ll cover that too. And you can be sure we’ll spend lots of time talking about how to build connected, fun relationships that can handle life’s ups and downs. No matter what goals you’re working on, this show will help you create a one of a kind life that is just right for you. Join me, life and career coach Kori Linn and each week I’ll give you lots of practical tips, tools, and proven strategies to help you create all the satisfaction your heart desires.
Hello, hello, hello. Happy Wednesday. I have a great episode for you here today. So I recently was invited to give a talk, and even though it’s been a long time since I’ve spoken about burnout, this person who invited me found me by Googling burnout and coach.
And even though a lot of my work these days focuses on satisfaction and delight, this person wanted to know if I could speak to those through the lens of burnout. And so I said, yes. And in writing the talk, I did some research. I got very excited and I really love the new content I came up with. So I wanted to share it with you today too.
So one of my very first podcast episodes was on burnout. And I think that that episode probably has valuable insights in it. And as with everything else, like things change, things evolve. And my understanding of burnout has evolved a lot. And the first time I talked about burnout, I talked about it through very much a coaching lens. And this time I’m talking about it through a different lens.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a coach, so it’ll still be a coaching lens. But it’s also related to some research I read about burnout. So it’s a different take on a new topic several years later. And I think you are going to find a lot of value from this podcast and it’s really going to help.
First things first, even though this episode is going to be helpful and give you skills and shifts you can use right away, it’s also essential to point out that some things will be beyond the scope of this podcast episode. Sometimes when you’re experiencing burnout, you need personalized support to move through it. This might be medical support, therapy, a leave of absence, working with a coach like me or someone else or something else entirely.
But it’s important to mention that there are many different kinds and degrees of burnout, and they might require different kinds and levels of support. That being said, let’s take a look at the basics of burnout and what you can do to, one, preferably prevent it or, two, make your way through it. If you happen to find yourself there.
So according to research done by Christina Maslach of the University of California, Berkeley, Susan E. Jackson of Rutgers and Michael Leiter of Deakin University, there are six factors that cause burnout. Unsustainable workload, perceived lack of control, insufficient rewards for effort, lack of a supportive community, lack of fairness and mismatch of values and skills.
To say this a different way, burnout happens when you try to give more than you have the capacity to give, often over and over. Burnout happens when there is no clear end point to your workload and you feel constantly under pressure to do more. Burnout happens when you hold yourself personally accountable for solving big systemic problems and force yourself to overwork in order to compensate for issues that are way beyond the scope of your job.
Burnout happens when what you get out of your work doesn’t match what you put in. Burnout happens when you feel alone in your work, your community, or the larger world. Burnout happens when you work with organizations and cultures that aren’t a good fit for you without any kind of buffers in place to protect yourself or your values. And burnout happens when you witness on large and small scales, the many, many ways that our world and its systems are deeply unfair, often by design.
So I’m guessing you have experienced one or more of these, I know I have. Living in our world at all puts you in contact with at least one of these, and chances are you’ve probably encountered most of them, possibly all within the last week. But when we look at the list of burnout factors, inside of each factor are the clues as to how we can prevent, handle and recover from burnout.
So I’m going to take you through each of the factors one by one, but we’re going to spend extra time on the first one because in many ways it’s the basis for everything else.
The first factor to review was unsustainable workload. This makes sense. By definition an unsustainable workload is too much work to keep up with. And while you may have an unsustainable workload at your job, you may also face this issue in other areas of your life too. Showing up fully for your partner or for your effort to find a partner. Parenting and other family responsibilities. Keeping up with friendships. Keeping up with health. Tackling your finances. Even hobbies can feel unsustainable.
So many people are facing extremely large amounts of work in one or more areas of their personal lives in addition to their careers. And sometimes it’s just the collection of so many different pieces. Like maybe you have different pieces of your life where each thing feels sustainable, but then you add them all up together and it’s the collection that feels unsustainable.
So what’s the clue hidden within this factor? The clue is workloads must be sustainable. Now, I get that this might sound impossible. If there’s too much work, there’s too much work. Trying to do all the work may seem like the only option, but it’s not. Y’all, it can’t be.
In order to avoid and recover from burnout, you have to decline the unsustainable workload, which means you have to prioritize. You have to pick things to do, and yes, you have to pick things to not do. Everyone hates this part, but without this, there is no moving forward.
If you’re drowning in work in one or more areas of your life, there’s no way for you to find the time or energy to make the changes that so desperately need to be made. And even if everything else changed, if you’re drowning in work, you are probably going to feel burned out.
So the first change is, and has to be, you reclaim some of your time and energy. You pick things to delegate. You pick things to do worse. You pick things to simply not do. You place limits on what can be done, and then you have to also honor those limits.
The good news is you already have limits. The bad news is they’re probably not in the right place yet. The limits you have, if you’re like most people, are probably at the very edge of your capacity and maybe even past the edge, which means you do as much as you can do and then you do a little bit more than that.
This would be like spending every dollar in your budget and then putting an extra hundred bucks on a credit card. I get the temptation, but it will put you deeper and deeper into the red every month. In order to prevent and recover from burnout, you need to come out of the red, which means you need to spend less of your time, energy, and attention.
You need to retain some of that capacity and put it into essentially like a savings account instead of spending it all. You need to be mindful of what can be spent and what needs to be set aside for future needs. You may wonder how to do this or what it looks like.
Here are some examples. It looks like saying no or pushing back on requests and deadlines before you’re overwhelmed and underwater. It looks like only allowing your calendar to book up 80% and saving the other 20% for emergencies and oh shit moments. It looks like picking between two tasks that are super important because you can actually only do one and still have enough time and energy left over to not be completely wiped out. Sometimes it looks like letting other people be disappointed with you because they’re used to you saving the day.
But the better you get at this, the more it looks like negotiating ahead of time and people getting used to your new boundaries and you doing work without completely depleting yourself. Then it looks like you having energy for yourself after work and on the weekends. Then it looks like resting while knowing that your sweetie is handling the laundry that needs to be done, or your kid is making dinner that night.
First, you will need to make a shift in how you show up and what you say yes to and what you say no to. But once you do that, you’re going to reap so many rewards, which is to say this is worth the discomfort of learning to do things differently.
Now, it would be great if someone else would set these limits for you. In some places around the world there are rules about how much can be asked of you and when people are or are not allowed to contact you outside of work hours. These kinds of norms and regulations are important and I hope to see more of them. But for most of the people I coach, these external limits don’t exist yet. So it’s an important skill to know how to create them on your side.
Is that fair and okay? Abso-fucking-lutely not, but I’m also not trying to wait for you to feel better until all of those things are in place. In addition to that, here’s something I’ve seen again and again and again as a coach. Many people have an internal drive to overwork. Maybe that’s you. I know for sure sometimes it’s been me.
Now, you probably weren’t born with this drive. I’ve never met any babies who were like, I need to be really productive. This, if you have it, was probably socialized into you as a child or a young adult, maybe in the way you were parented around school or other kinds of achievement.
But by the time you’re a burnt out adult or semi burnt out or soon to be burnt out adult, the drive to always do more may feel like who you are or just how you do things. It may feel like more of an internal pressure than an external pressure or cue you receive from like other people in your workplace.
And if this is you, one thing to note is that you need to be setting boundaries with yourself as much as, or maybe even more than with others. For a lot of people, this is the hardest part. They’ll start out worried about what others will think if they set limits, but ultimately it comes down to what they’ll think of themselves, which is to say what you’ll think of yourself.
So again, this is why, or this is another reason why it’s essential to learn to solve this problem on the individual level, as well as addressing it at the level of regulations or organizational cultures. You have to be able to stop working before you’ve given every inch of time and energy you have available. You have to be able to not just create, but tolerate a sustainable workload and protect it against all demands and invitations to do more.
And when I say tolerate, you might think like, that’s a really weird thing to say, Kori. Why would I have to tolerate a sustainable workload? But for people who are used to overworking, or if you get your sense of worthiness from overworking, or if you get your sense of importance at your office from overworking, and again, this can happen at home too.
So like if you get your sense of importance in your household from over-efforting, it may feel very uncomfortable. You may feel guilty. It might feel scary to step away from being the one who does it all. That’s why you have to learn to tolerate a sustainable workload. It might not feel good at first, even if it is ultimately where you want to wind up.
A lot of times when we’re changing where our limits are, when we’re learning to set new boundaries, things like that, it doesn’t feel comfortable at first. And at first, it almost feels like we’re doing something wrong because we’re no longer following the old rules we used to live by. And so we have to be able to tolerate that transition in order to get to the part where this feels good and we feel happy and energized.
So I don’t recommend doing this in a cold turkey way. I think it’s much easier to make little tiny baby shifts until you get to a place that feels more sustainable.
That being said, if you like to do things cold turkey and that works for you, I’m not here to tell you that’s wrong. I just see that generally when people are changing habits, it’s easiest and most sustainable to do it bit by bit and to help give the nervous system time to adjust to the new levels because sometimes when you make a big change, it can feel kind of unsettling or scary or like too much, too fast and you might revert back to the old way of being.
So let’s look at some examples of baby shifts. If you’re working more hours than feels sustainable, like if you’re working way more than 40 hours a week, this might look like doing 15 minutes less work each day until you’ve scaled back to eight hours.
If your calendar is frequently crammed to the gills, it might look like beginning to say no/not on that timeline to the least important requests and then expanding what you say no/not on that timeline to until your calendar is gloriously prioritized with lots of space blocked out for your important heads down work. Because a complaint I get from clients a lot is they’re in meetings all day and then they have a bunch of heads down work they have to do.
So when that’s the case, like we have to begin to say no to something because there’s a limited amount of hours in a day and a limited amount of time for us to get things done. So usually we have to set limits and say no to some things to create space for the things that truly matter.
Here’s another thing you need to know. This doesn’t just come down to what you choose to do. It also comes down to how you talk to yourself or what I’m going to call marketing.
I like calling this marketing because I think it makes it a little easier to understand, right? Like mindset is essentially how you are marketing from yourself to yourself, and also to other people. For instance, you need to market this shift to yourself and to those around you. Like you need to know this is not you being lazy or slacking off. If that’s the marketing you present, doing this is going to feel terrible and you’re probably going to stop.
But if you market to yourself like, hey, this is me performing well in a sustainable way, that marketing that you’re doing to yourself is going to help you make this change. So if you think that you have to give 150% to be doing enough, that marketing is going to make it very difficult to step away from an unsustainable workload. It’s going to make you overwork instead. So that would probably lead to burnout if it hasn’t already.
And I think it’s worth pointing out that that’s a poor outcome in its own right. Like it feels terrible. And it’s also a poor outcome for others. Like you working sustainably, it’s actually much better, not just for you, but also for stakeholders, colleagues, clients, your family, it’s better for everybody. Like no one actually benefits when you overwork and burn out. It’s not great in the long term. So let’s not do it.
Once you shift your workload from unsustainable to sustainable, you’re going to feel a lot better. You will be able to do good work on the work you choose to prioritize. You’re going to have more time and energy and headspace. And you’ll be able to look at the other factors of burnout and make some additional shifts.
So now that we’ve covered factor one and the way it opens up space for other changes, let’s move on to the other factors. And I probably should have said this at the beginning, but this podcast is probably going to be a little bit longer than they normally are because we’re covering the six factors here. So take it in pieces if you need to. If you need to digest each piece, that’s okay. You don’t have to listen to it all at one time.
The next factor is perceived lack of control. Now, here’s the thing. A lot of stuff is actually outside of your control. And it can be really good to admit that. If you’re running around trying to control everything, that will be very exhausting in its own right.
So I think the question here is where do you have control and how can you exert it? And then the next question is how do you proceed with the things you don’t have any control over? One interesting thing to note about control is it can be very easy to think everyone else has more than you.
At every level you have some control and there’s some you don’t have. So I think it’s useful to make peace with having some control, but not all the control because that’s pretty much all of life. As much control as you could gather, there will always be other humans. And even if you have some kind of power over them, like institutional power, guess what? They have free will. You can’t control them.
And likewise you have free will. So sometimes other people will have institutional power over you, but you still have free will. Now, of course there may be consequences for certain choices you could make, but that doesn’t actually mean you don’t have the option of making them.
So that gives me a lot of comfort. Like if I’m in a situation I don’t like where I’m like, okay, here are my options. I do have choices. I might not like the choices I have, but I do have choices.
Now, the other piece of control that you always have is your perspective. No matter what’s going on in the outside world, you get to choose how to think about it. You get to choose whether to think this workload is insane and will never get better or whether to think, okay, this is an opportunity to get really good at boundaries, even if I wish I didn’t have to do that.
You get to choose whether to think, if I don’t do this work, someone is going to suffer, or whether to think my job is to do what I can do sustainably. And no amount of work I could do would eliminate all suffering.
Perspective is free in that it won’t cost you money. Perspective is completely within your power because no one can control how you think about things. But it’s also important to note that most perspective is habitual. That means the way you think is the way you’ve been thinking. Usually, you’ll just keep thinking that way unless something comes and interrupts it.
And choosing a new way of thinking about things may feel weird or require practice. This doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. It means that it’s work like everything else. And it’s also so worth doing. It will fuel everything else. Changing how you think will enable you to shift your workload, like we talked about in factor one.
It will help you use the control you do have and navigate the situations where your control is limited. And it will also help with all the other factors of burnout, which is to say it will help you create more rewards for your effort. It will help you build a supportive community. It will help you create a fairer world and navigate the unfairness of our world. And it will help you create more balance between your skills and your values.
Do not sleep on this one, my friends. In my experience in my own life and coaching literally hundreds, maybe thousands of people, this is the number one most impactful change you can make. And it will support you in changing everything else that needs changing.
Okay, that leads us to our next factor, insufficient rewards for effort. First of all, just existing in the world is a lot of effort. Trying to be a good person, do good work, these things are a lot of work. And on top of that, I’m inviting you to make some changes that may feel difficult to make, like saying no to some of your unsustainable workload.
And when you make changes and do hard things, do you know what that means? You need sufficient rewards for your effort. Now, by rewards I don’t necessarily mean like cash prizes, although those are lovely. Rewards can be anything. They can be things you ask for from others, such as requesting additional compensation from a work organization. They can also be things you give to yourself to care for yourself or celebrate your achievements.
Don’t get me wrong, I love being praised and celebrated by other people as much as the next person. But if others aren’t doing it, you can give this to yourself. And if you really want it from others, you can use your words and ask for it.
There are so many ways to tap into reward energy. You can save up money and buy yourself something wonderful. You can start adding more micro moments of joy to your life, like a yummy hot drink or a cupcake or 10 minutes of silent reading in a cozy chair.
Another way to create a sense of reward for yourself is to collect positive feedback and revisit it from time to time. Chances are folks may already be sending you messages of gratitude. When we collect those in one place and review them periodically, it can help us feel more satisfied and appreciated. And if folks aren’t sending you messages like that, like I said before, you can ask directly.
Be mindful that if you ask for feedback, you may get positive and constructive feedback. If you want to know only what you’re doing well, I would tell people that. You can say something like, hey, I’m working really hard at X. Can you tell me what I’m doing well in this area? Maybe we can talk about my opportunities for growth later, but right now I really want to celebrate myself and bolster the effort I’ve put in.
I think sometimes we think we have to be open to constructive feedback and it might be really freeing for you to consider that no, you don’t. You’re allowed to just ask for praise sometimes and just revel in that praise. And then you can always circle back to improve later, if you want to. It’s also not required, which I think is a relief in its own right.
Like I grew up just thinking I had to be good at everything. And then anything I wasn’t good at, I had to get better at. And even things I was good at, I had to get better at. You don’t. You don’t. And there’s so much freedom when you embrace that it’s okay to not be perfect at everything.
So take a moment to think about it, what kind of rewards do you like? What kind of encouragement or celebrations delight you? How can you add more of them to your life, both day to day and over the long haul? Thinking this through may also inspire you to ask what feels rewarding to others.
You may decide you want to share with folks what they’re doing well and what you appreciate about them. You may find yourself buying a cup of coffee for a friend or throwing a party for your colleague’s big achievement. This kind of engagement with others feels really good, and it may also help you build a more supportive community, which is great because that’s the next topic on our list.
The fourth burnout factor is lack of supportive community. Folks feel isolated and disconnected, but you’re not stuck with that if that’s where you currently are. You can build a supportive community and you can even have a good time doing it.
Sharing what you appreciate about others and asking what they appreciate about you is one way to kick this effort off, but it’s not the only way. If connecting via appreciation doesn’t suit you or you’re looking for something else, there are lots of other ways. Whatever way connecting feels good to you, set aside time to do it.
And then you actually need to do it. It’s not just enough to set aside the time, we have to actually do the thing. It doesn’t have to be huge though. It could be five minutes a day. Tiny interactions build connectedness over time. As social mammals, this kind of connection is really important to your wellbeing, but it doesn’t have to be rocket science to build community.
A little bit of talking, a little bit of listening done over time creates a bond and a sense of belonging. And the tool of perspective is really powerful here too, especially if building community feels hard or vulnerable.
When trying to build community, many people find themselves criticizing themselves or talking down to themselves, saying things like, it’s so pathetic. You don’t have friends. Don’t do that. That will make you feel bad and it will make it hard to keep going. Instead, try telling yourself how brave and impressive it is that you’re doing this work.
And just remember, depending on which stats you look at 30 to 60% of people in North America feel lonely. And probably a lot of people in other areas of the world as well. I realize not all of you listeners are in North America.
But chances are if you’re making bids for connection, the other person is craving community too. And even if not everyone you talk to is interested, you’ll probably find many who are. Building community is like getting a new job. It might take multiple attempts to find a good fit. And some of it might feel awkward. Some of it might have you hanging out for a little bit with people you don’t like so much, but if you keep going, you’re going to find people and places that are a good match for you.
Okay, the next factor is kind of a doozy. It’s a big one. Lack of fairness. There is so much unfairness in the world. So much injustice. Like how do we handle this? How do we handle this without being eaten alive and burned out by it?
I think one question here is how do we cultivate more fairness? And the second question is how do we navigate existing unfairness in a way that feels good to us? Because the world at large is deeply unfair, you will likely not be able to completely escape from unfairness, even if you change jobs or move cities, stuff like that.
But you may be able to make changes that move you further away from particularly unfair environments or changes that make environments feel more hospitable for you, even if they’re kind of not a great fit but you’re choosing not to leave for some reason, because sometimes when you choose not to leave. A lot of people I coach who don’t like their work environment are choosing to stay for a certain period of time. So when we do that, owning our choice and then finding ways to make it work for us is really helpful.
Instead of looking at an example of unfairness, like from a workplace, let’s consider unfairness in the way household chores are handled in the family unit. Like how could we cultivate more fairness there? Could there be a conversation leading to a new set of agreements about division of labor? Like what could bring you closer to something that feels fair?
And you know, there’s also the question of is there enough working in this system, whether it’s an organization or a relationship, that you’re interested in making the changes and having the hard conversations and setting the boundaries and setting the limits, or does it make more sense for you to exit?
That’s something only you can know. Although I do think that is the kind of thing, if you wanted to talk through with a coach, someone like me or a therapist, that can be helpful too because sometimes it can feel really hard to know whether we want to stay or go. But talking it out with someone else, especially someone who can help you kind of organize your thoughts and see what’s in there can be really useful and help you figure out that you actually do know how you want to move forward.
So overall with fairness, you get to decide what fairness looks like and what is fair enough for you. And there’s a lot you can change when you’re willing to have difficult conversations, share what’s real for you and ask for what you need, but also given the whole of society, many things may not become fair in our lifetime.
So when engaging with larger social structures and organizational or institutional unfairness, like then what? What do you need to move forward towards fairness or to care for yourself in a world that is often deeply unfair? As with the workload piece, it is not fair, obviously, or okay that this often falls on the individual or marginalized groups.
I crave bigger changes that address fairness at a more fundamental level, but there are things that can be done individually and in small groups that can help us have better experiences, even as we demand accountability on a larger scale.
Also as with the workload piece, it’s important not to overload yourself with work or stress here. Overworking will not necessarily get you there faster. And most of the time will simply lead to burnout and needing to step away from the work instead, which may actually slow things down.
So for me and many of my clients, it can be helpful here to remind ourselves that unfairness is not okay. It’s not preferred. And yet there are still ways to add value and live a good life, even with it. The tool of perspective is powerful here as well. How you think about the unfairness will determine whether it feels unwieldy and insurmountable or ultimately changeable if also deeply unfortunate.
This leads us to our final burnout factor mismatched skills and value. In a capitalist society, many of us may experience a mismatch between our values and the skills that we use to earn a living. You may feel upset about the way the world of work operates in some ways. You may be upset about the kinds of labor that are valued and rewarded with pay.
You may find yourself doing work you don’t prefer because that’s what is available and pays money you need in order to survive and care for yourself. Or you may find that you like your work, but chafe against other elements of work culture, like the hours or the politics.
There’s a lot you could feel mismatched about, basically. I think the question here, as with unfairness, is how do you make the changes you’d like to see and also navigate the day-to-day in a way that feels good to you? Do you need to renegotiate your role within the organization to something that matches your values more? Do you need to re-skill? Do you need to set limits and boundaries so that you can work and do well without over-giving?
What is needed for you to bring things more into balance? And how do you care for yourself in the gap between what you want and what you have? And what kind of perspectives will be most useful to you? What will help you feel engaged, empowered, and satisfied even in this imperfect world and our imperfect workplaces, families, relationships, et cetera?
Like the other factors, this is about both making changes and also finding ways to feel good in situations that are neither perfect nor entirely within our control. But even in imperfect situations, we can find ways to leap or inch closer to our ideal, and we can find ways to have fun along the way.
So now that we’ve talked about each factor, let’s review. Unsustainable workload, find ways to work less. You can still do plenty of good work this way. What could be done by someone else, done later, not done at all, or done to a lower standard?
Lack of control, find and use the control you do have, including the control of a powerful perspective. Insufficient rewards for effort, increase rewards and or reduce effort. Ask for more from others and create more for yourself. Remember, rewards do not have to cost a lot. What feels most rewarding to you?
Lack of supportive community, build the community you crave bit by bit, day by day, connection by connection. Lack of fairness, seek, create, and access more fairness in whatever ways feel best to you. Care for yourself and your community in the unfairness, knowing that it might not all be solved in your lifetime.
Mismatched values and skills, make whatever changes feel good to you to make to bring those more into alignment. Market well to yourself about the things you choose to keep doing, even if you are choosing to stick with something that isn’t a great match for some reason. And you’re allowed to because you’re in charge.
So now that we’ve covered the six factors, I want to talk about one more thing, and that’s satisfaction. So satisfaction may seem like it’s the furthest thing from burnout, but that’s exactly the point. Where we cultivate satisfaction we find meaning, purpose, joy, and a sense of wellbeing. The factors we’ve just walked through are going to give you lots to think about as far as how to prevent and treat burnout as it shows up in your life and career.
And I also want to invite you to consider using satisfaction as an additional tool. This is going to interlock with all the six factors as each is an area of your life and work where you could likely cultivate more satisfaction. And here are some questions I want you to take forward as you consider the six factors and literally everything else that will come up and demand your energy and attention.
What feels good about this to me? What could be more satisfying? What’s the most dissatisfying element of this? What changes need to be made? What perspectives will create the most satisfaction in relation to this situation?
Satisfaction is a feeling, but it’s also a habit. The more you practice satisfaction, the more you look for where it already exists and allow it to inform your decisions, the more it will show up in your life, career relationships and more.
And the more you orient towards what could be satisfying, the more you’ll be able to navigate your workload, navigate the control you do and don’t have, navigate, making sure you feel sufficiently rewarded, navigate creating a supportive community, navigate handling the unfairness of the world and navigate bringing your values and skills into alignment.
Am I saying this will be easy? No, I am not. But is it doable? Yes. And with the tools we talked about today, you can create this shift and find a way to enjoy the journey of change.
In addition to everything we talked through today in this podcast, I also have a special present for you. I have my Satisfied AF workbook to share with you. It’s going to help you think through what would be most satisfying and least satisfying in each area of your life currently. And you can also think through it in relation to the things you learned about, like what creates burnout or like what are the contributing factors of burnout? And then how we flip those factors around to become things that can help us prevent and recover from burnout.
People always say this workbook actually makes them feel really good as it reveals what’s already working, and it’s super enjoyable to notice that. It also helps you create a map for the changes you’d like to make so that you can feel better, avoid burnout or recover from it, cultivate more satisfaction and just create a wildly delicious life.
So in order to get a copy of that, you’re going to go to korilinn.com/learnmore, and you’re going to sign up for my email newsletter, which is called Satisfaction and Delight. And when you get the welcome email to that, there is a link to the Satisfied AF audit.
Also, I just want to say, I loved getting to do my talk recently about the six factors contributing to burnout. And if you are looking for a speaker for an event or for your organization, I would love to be considered. I love giving talks and doing Q&A and stuff like that, so keep me in mind.
All right, that’s what I have for y’all this week. Thank you so much and I’ll talk to you next time.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. If you are ready to create a wildly delicious life and have way more fun than you ever thought possible, visit www.korilinn.com to see how I can help. See you next week.
The Satisfied AF podcast is the place to learn how to create a life and career that’s wildly delicious. Want a steamier sex life? We’ve got you. Want a more satisfying career? We’ll cover that too. And you can be sure we’ll spend lots of time talking about how to build connected, fun relationships that can handle life’s ups and downs. No matter what goals you’re working on, this show will help you create a one of a kind life that is just right for you. Join me, life and career coach Kori Linn and each week I’ll give you lots of practical tips, tools, and proven strategies to help you create all the satisfaction your heart desires.
Hello, hello, hello. Happy Wednesday. I have a great episode for you here today. So I recently was invited to give a talk, and even though it’s been a long time since I’ve spoken about burnout, this person who invited me found me by Googling burnout and coach.
And even though a lot of my work these days focuses on satisfaction and delight, this person wanted to know if I could speak to those through the lens of burnout. And so I said, yes. And in writing the talk, I did some research. I got very excited and I really love the new content I came up with. So I wanted to share it with you today too.
So one of my very first podcast episodes was on burnout. And I think that that episode probably has valuable insights in it. And as with everything else, like things change, things evolve. And my understanding of burnout has evolved a lot. And the first time I talked about burnout, I talked about it through very much a coaching lens. And this time I’m talking about it through a different lens.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a coach, so it’ll still be a coaching lens. But it’s also related to some research I read about burnout. So it’s a different take on a new topic several years later. And I think you are going to find a lot of value from this podcast and it’s really going to help.
First things first, even though this episode is going to be helpful and give you skills and shifts you can use right away, it’s also essential to point out that some things will be beyond the scope of this podcast episode. Sometimes when you’re experiencing burnout, you need personalized support to move through it. This might be medical support, therapy, a leave of absence, working with a coach like me or someone else or something else entirely.
But it’s important to mention that there are many different kinds and degrees of burnout, and they might require different kinds and levels of support. That being said, let’s take a look at the basics of burnout and what you can do to, one, preferably prevent it or, two, make your way through it. If you happen to find yourself there.
So according to research done by Christina Maslach of the University of California, Berkeley, Susan E. Jackson of Rutgers and Michael Leiter of Deakin University, there are six factors that cause burnout. Unsustainable workload, perceived lack of control, insufficient rewards for effort, lack of a supportive community, lack of fairness and mismatch of values and skills.
To say this a different way, burnout happens when you try to give more than you have the capacity to give, often over and over. Burnout happens when there is no clear end point to your workload and you feel constantly under pressure to do more. Burnout happens when you hold yourself personally accountable for solving big systemic problems and force yourself to overwork in order to compensate for issues that are way beyond the scope of your job.
Burnout happens when what you get out of your work doesn’t match what you put in. Burnout happens when you feel alone in your work, your community, or the larger world. Burnout happens when you work with organizations and cultures that aren’t a good fit for you without any kind of buffers in place to protect yourself or your values. And burnout happens when you witness on large and small scales, the many, many ways that our world and its systems are deeply unfair, often by design.
So I’m guessing you have experienced one or more of these, I know I have. Living in our world at all puts you in contact with at least one of these, and chances are you’ve probably encountered most of them, possibly all within the last week. But when we look at the list of burnout factors, inside of each factor are the clues as to how we can prevent, handle and recover from burnout.
So I’m going to take you through each of the factors one by one, but we’re going to spend extra time on the first one because in many ways it’s the basis for everything else.
The first factor to review was unsustainable workload. This makes sense. By definition an unsustainable workload is too much work to keep up with. And while you may have an unsustainable workload at your job, you may also face this issue in other areas of your life too. Showing up fully for your partner or for your effort to find a partner. Parenting and other family responsibilities. Keeping up with friendships. Keeping up with health. Tackling your finances. Even hobbies can feel unsustainable.
So many people are facing extremely large amounts of work in one or more areas of their personal lives in addition to their careers. And sometimes it’s just the collection of so many different pieces. Like maybe you have different pieces of your life where each thing feels sustainable, but then you add them all up together and it’s the collection that feels unsustainable.
So what’s the clue hidden within this factor? The clue is workloads must be sustainable. Now, I get that this might sound impossible. If there’s too much work, there’s too much work. Trying to do all the work may seem like the only option, but it’s not. Y’all, it can’t be.
In order to avoid and recover from burnout, you have to decline the unsustainable workload, which means you have to prioritize. You have to pick things to do, and yes, you have to pick things to not do. Everyone hates this part, but without this, there is no moving forward.
If you’re drowning in work in one or more areas of your life, there’s no way for you to find the time or energy to make the changes that so desperately need to be made. And even if everything else changed, if you’re drowning in work, you are probably going to feel burned out.
So the first change is, and has to be, you reclaim some of your time and energy. You pick things to delegate. You pick things to do worse. You pick things to simply not do. You place limits on what can be done, and then you have to also honor those limits.
The good news is you already have limits. The bad news is they’re probably not in the right place yet. The limits you have, if you’re like most people, are probably at the very edge of your capacity and maybe even past the edge, which means you do as much as you can do and then you do a little bit more than that.
This would be like spending every dollar in your budget and then putting an extra hundred bucks on a credit card. I get the temptation, but it will put you deeper and deeper into the red every month. In order to prevent and recover from burnout, you need to come out of the red, which means you need to spend less of your time, energy, and attention.
You need to retain some of that capacity and put it into essentially like a savings account instead of spending it all. You need to be mindful of what can be spent and what needs to be set aside for future needs. You may wonder how to do this or what it looks like.
Here are some examples. It looks like saying no or pushing back on requests and deadlines before you’re overwhelmed and underwater. It looks like only allowing your calendar to book up 80% and saving the other 20% for emergencies and oh shit moments. It looks like picking between two tasks that are super important because you can actually only do one and still have enough time and energy left over to not be completely wiped out. Sometimes it looks like letting other people be disappointed with you because they’re used to you saving the day.
But the better you get at this, the more it looks like negotiating ahead of time and people getting used to your new boundaries and you doing work without completely depleting yourself. Then it looks like you having energy for yourself after work and on the weekends. Then it looks like resting while knowing that your sweetie is handling the laundry that needs to be done, or your kid is making dinner that night.
First, you will need to make a shift in how you show up and what you say yes to and what you say no to. But once you do that, you’re going to reap so many rewards, which is to say this is worth the discomfort of learning to do things differently.
Now, it would be great if someone else would set these limits for you. In some places around the world there are rules about how much can be asked of you and when people are or are not allowed to contact you outside of work hours. These kinds of norms and regulations are important and I hope to see more of them. But for most of the people I coach, these external limits don’t exist yet. So it’s an important skill to know how to create them on your side.
Is that fair and okay? Abso-fucking-lutely not, but I’m also not trying to wait for you to feel better until all of those things are in place. In addition to that, here’s something I’ve seen again and again and again as a coach. Many people have an internal drive to overwork. Maybe that’s you. I know for sure sometimes it’s been me.
Now, you probably weren’t born with this drive. I’ve never met any babies who were like, I need to be really productive. This, if you have it, was probably socialized into you as a child or a young adult, maybe in the way you were parented around school or other kinds of achievement.
But by the time you’re a burnt out adult or semi burnt out or soon to be burnt out adult, the drive to always do more may feel like who you are or just how you do things. It may feel like more of an internal pressure than an external pressure or cue you receive from like other people in your workplace.
And if this is you, one thing to note is that you need to be setting boundaries with yourself as much as, or maybe even more than with others. For a lot of people, this is the hardest part. They’ll start out worried about what others will think if they set limits, but ultimately it comes down to what they’ll think of themselves, which is to say what you’ll think of yourself.
So again, this is why, or this is another reason why it’s essential to learn to solve this problem on the individual level, as well as addressing it at the level of regulations or organizational cultures. You have to be able to stop working before you’ve given every inch of time and energy you have available. You have to be able to not just create, but tolerate a sustainable workload and protect it against all demands and invitations to do more.
And when I say tolerate, you might think like, that’s a really weird thing to say, Kori. Why would I have to tolerate a sustainable workload? But for people who are used to overworking, or if you get your sense of worthiness from overworking, or if you get your sense of importance at your office from overworking, and again, this can happen at home too.
So like if you get your sense of importance in your household from over-efforting, it may feel very uncomfortable. You may feel guilty. It might feel scary to step away from being the one who does it all. That’s why you have to learn to tolerate a sustainable workload. It might not feel good at first, even if it is ultimately where you want to wind up.
A lot of times when we’re changing where our limits are, when we’re learning to set new boundaries, things like that, it doesn’t feel comfortable at first. And at first, it almost feels like we’re doing something wrong because we’re no longer following the old rules we used to live by. And so we have to be able to tolerate that transition in order to get to the part where this feels good and we feel happy and energized.
So I don’t recommend doing this in a cold turkey way. I think it’s much easier to make little tiny baby shifts until you get to a place that feels more sustainable.
That being said, if you like to do things cold turkey and that works for you, I’m not here to tell you that’s wrong. I just see that generally when people are changing habits, it’s easiest and most sustainable to do it bit by bit and to help give the nervous system time to adjust to the new levels because sometimes when you make a big change, it can feel kind of unsettling or scary or like too much, too fast and you might revert back to the old way of being.
So let’s look at some examples of baby shifts. If you’re working more hours than feels sustainable, like if you’re working way more than 40 hours a week, this might look like doing 15 minutes less work each day until you’ve scaled back to eight hours.
If your calendar is frequently crammed to the gills, it might look like beginning to say no/not on that timeline to the least important requests and then expanding what you say no/not on that timeline to until your calendar is gloriously prioritized with lots of space blocked out for your important heads down work. Because a complaint I get from clients a lot is they’re in meetings all day and then they have a bunch of heads down work they have to do.
So when that’s the case, like we have to begin to say no to something because there’s a limited amount of hours in a day and a limited amount of time for us to get things done. So usually we have to set limits and say no to some things to create space for the things that truly matter.
Here’s another thing you need to know. This doesn’t just come down to what you choose to do. It also comes down to how you talk to yourself or what I’m going to call marketing.
I like calling this marketing because I think it makes it a little easier to understand, right? Like mindset is essentially how you are marketing from yourself to yourself, and also to other people. For instance, you need to market this shift to yourself and to those around you. Like you need to know this is not you being lazy or slacking off. If that’s the marketing you present, doing this is going to feel terrible and you’re probably going to stop.
But if you market to yourself like, hey, this is me performing well in a sustainable way, that marketing that you’re doing to yourself is going to help you make this change. So if you think that you have to give 150% to be doing enough, that marketing is going to make it very difficult to step away from an unsustainable workload. It’s going to make you overwork instead. So that would probably lead to burnout if it hasn’t already.
And I think it’s worth pointing out that that’s a poor outcome in its own right. Like it feels terrible. And it’s also a poor outcome for others. Like you working sustainably, it’s actually much better, not just for you, but also for stakeholders, colleagues, clients, your family, it’s better for everybody. Like no one actually benefits when you overwork and burn out. It’s not great in the long term. So let’s not do it.
Once you shift your workload from unsustainable to sustainable, you’re going to feel a lot better. You will be able to do good work on the work you choose to prioritize. You’re going to have more time and energy and headspace. And you’ll be able to look at the other factors of burnout and make some additional shifts.
So now that we’ve covered factor one and the way it opens up space for other changes, let’s move on to the other factors. And I probably should have said this at the beginning, but this podcast is probably going to be a little bit longer than they normally are because we’re covering the six factors here. So take it in pieces if you need to. If you need to digest each piece, that’s okay. You don’t have to listen to it all at one time.
The next factor is perceived lack of control. Now, here’s the thing. A lot of stuff is actually outside of your control. And it can be really good to admit that. If you’re running around trying to control everything, that will be very exhausting in its own right.
So I think the question here is where do you have control and how can you exert it? And then the next question is how do you proceed with the things you don’t have any control over? One interesting thing to note about control is it can be very easy to think everyone else has more than you.
At every level you have some control and there’s some you don’t have. So I think it’s useful to make peace with having some control, but not all the control because that’s pretty much all of life. As much control as you could gather, there will always be other humans. And even if you have some kind of power over them, like institutional power, guess what? They have free will. You can’t control them.
And likewise you have free will. So sometimes other people will have institutional power over you, but you still have free will. Now, of course there may be consequences for certain choices you could make, but that doesn’t actually mean you don’t have the option of making them.
So that gives me a lot of comfort. Like if I’m in a situation I don’t like where I’m like, okay, here are my options. I do have choices. I might not like the choices I have, but I do have choices.
Now, the other piece of control that you always have is your perspective. No matter what’s going on in the outside world, you get to choose how to think about it. You get to choose whether to think this workload is insane and will never get better or whether to think, okay, this is an opportunity to get really good at boundaries, even if I wish I didn’t have to do that.
You get to choose whether to think, if I don’t do this work, someone is going to suffer, or whether to think my job is to do what I can do sustainably. And no amount of work I could do would eliminate all suffering.
Perspective is free in that it won’t cost you money. Perspective is completely within your power because no one can control how you think about things. But it’s also important to note that most perspective is habitual. That means the way you think is the way you’ve been thinking. Usually, you’ll just keep thinking that way unless something comes and interrupts it.
And choosing a new way of thinking about things may feel weird or require practice. This doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. It means that it’s work like everything else. And it’s also so worth doing. It will fuel everything else. Changing how you think will enable you to shift your workload, like we talked about in factor one.
It will help you use the control you do have and navigate the situations where your control is limited. And it will also help with all the other factors of burnout, which is to say it will help you create more rewards for your effort. It will help you build a supportive community. It will help you create a fairer world and navigate the unfairness of our world. And it will help you create more balance between your skills and your values.
Do not sleep on this one, my friends. In my experience in my own life and coaching literally hundreds, maybe thousands of people, this is the number one most impactful change you can make. And it will support you in changing everything else that needs changing.
Okay, that leads us to our next factor, insufficient rewards for effort. First of all, just existing in the world is a lot of effort. Trying to be a good person, do good work, these things are a lot of work. And on top of that, I’m inviting you to make some changes that may feel difficult to make, like saying no to some of your unsustainable workload.
And when you make changes and do hard things, do you know what that means? You need sufficient rewards for your effort. Now, by rewards I don’t necessarily mean like cash prizes, although those are lovely. Rewards can be anything. They can be things you ask for from others, such as requesting additional compensation from a work organization. They can also be things you give to yourself to care for yourself or celebrate your achievements.
Don’t get me wrong, I love being praised and celebrated by other people as much as the next person. But if others aren’t doing it, you can give this to yourself. And if you really want it from others, you can use your words and ask for it.
There are so many ways to tap into reward energy. You can save up money and buy yourself something wonderful. You can start adding more micro moments of joy to your life, like a yummy hot drink or a cupcake or 10 minutes of silent reading in a cozy chair.
Another way to create a sense of reward for yourself is to collect positive feedback and revisit it from time to time. Chances are folks may already be sending you messages of gratitude. When we collect those in one place and review them periodically, it can help us feel more satisfied and appreciated. And if folks aren’t sending you messages like that, like I said before, you can ask directly.
Be mindful that if you ask for feedback, you may get positive and constructive feedback. If you want to know only what you’re doing well, I would tell people that. You can say something like, hey, I’m working really hard at X. Can you tell me what I’m doing well in this area? Maybe we can talk about my opportunities for growth later, but right now I really want to celebrate myself and bolster the effort I’ve put in.
I think sometimes we think we have to be open to constructive feedback and it might be really freeing for you to consider that no, you don’t. You’re allowed to just ask for praise sometimes and just revel in that praise. And then you can always circle back to improve later, if you want to. It’s also not required, which I think is a relief in its own right.
Like I grew up just thinking I had to be good at everything. And then anything I wasn’t good at, I had to get better at. And even things I was good at, I had to get better at. You don’t. You don’t. And there’s so much freedom when you embrace that it’s okay to not be perfect at everything.
So take a moment to think about it, what kind of rewards do you like? What kind of encouragement or celebrations delight you? How can you add more of them to your life, both day to day and over the long haul? Thinking this through may also inspire you to ask what feels rewarding to others.
You may decide you want to share with folks what they’re doing well and what you appreciate about them. You may find yourself buying a cup of coffee for a friend or throwing a party for your colleague’s big achievement. This kind of engagement with others feels really good, and it may also help you build a more supportive community, which is great because that’s the next topic on our list.
The fourth burnout factor is lack of supportive community. Folks feel isolated and disconnected, but you’re not stuck with that if that’s where you currently are. You can build a supportive community and you can even have a good time doing it.
Sharing what you appreciate about others and asking what they appreciate about you is one way to kick this effort off, but it’s not the only way. If connecting via appreciation doesn’t suit you or you’re looking for something else, there are lots of other ways. Whatever way connecting feels good to you, set aside time to do it.
And then you actually need to do it. It’s not just enough to set aside the time, we have to actually do the thing. It doesn’t have to be huge though. It could be five minutes a day. Tiny interactions build connectedness over time. As social mammals, this kind of connection is really important to your wellbeing, but it doesn’t have to be rocket science to build community.
A little bit of talking, a little bit of listening done over time creates a bond and a sense of belonging. And the tool of perspective is really powerful here too, especially if building community feels hard or vulnerable.
When trying to build community, many people find themselves criticizing themselves or talking down to themselves, saying things like, it’s so pathetic. You don’t have friends. Don’t do that. That will make you feel bad and it will make it hard to keep going. Instead, try telling yourself how brave and impressive it is that you’re doing this work.
And just remember, depending on which stats you look at 30 to 60% of people in North America feel lonely. And probably a lot of people in other areas of the world as well. I realize not all of you listeners are in North America.
But chances are if you’re making bids for connection, the other person is craving community too. And even if not everyone you talk to is interested, you’ll probably find many who are. Building community is like getting a new job. It might take multiple attempts to find a good fit. And some of it might feel awkward. Some of it might have you hanging out for a little bit with people you don’t like so much, but if you keep going, you’re going to find people and places that are a good match for you.
Okay, the next factor is kind of a doozy. It’s a big one. Lack of fairness. There is so much unfairness in the world. So much injustice. Like how do we handle this? How do we handle this without being eaten alive and burned out by it?
I think one question here is how do we cultivate more fairness? And the second question is how do we navigate existing unfairness in a way that feels good to us? Because the world at large is deeply unfair, you will likely not be able to completely escape from unfairness, even if you change jobs or move cities, stuff like that.
But you may be able to make changes that move you further away from particularly unfair environments or changes that make environments feel more hospitable for you, even if they’re kind of not a great fit but you’re choosing not to leave for some reason, because sometimes when you choose not to leave. A lot of people I coach who don’t like their work environment are choosing to stay for a certain period of time. So when we do that, owning our choice and then finding ways to make it work for us is really helpful.
Instead of looking at an example of unfairness, like from a workplace, let’s consider unfairness in the way household chores are handled in the family unit. Like how could we cultivate more fairness there? Could there be a conversation leading to a new set of agreements about division of labor? Like what could bring you closer to something that feels fair?
And you know, there’s also the question of is there enough working in this system, whether it’s an organization or a relationship, that you’re interested in making the changes and having the hard conversations and setting the boundaries and setting the limits, or does it make more sense for you to exit?
That’s something only you can know. Although I do think that is the kind of thing, if you wanted to talk through with a coach, someone like me or a therapist, that can be helpful too because sometimes it can feel really hard to know whether we want to stay or go. But talking it out with someone else, especially someone who can help you kind of organize your thoughts and see what’s in there can be really useful and help you figure out that you actually do know how you want to move forward.
So overall with fairness, you get to decide what fairness looks like and what is fair enough for you. And there’s a lot you can change when you’re willing to have difficult conversations, share what’s real for you and ask for what you need, but also given the whole of society, many things may not become fair in our lifetime.
So when engaging with larger social structures and organizational or institutional unfairness, like then what? What do you need to move forward towards fairness or to care for yourself in a world that is often deeply unfair? As with the workload piece, it is not fair, obviously, or okay that this often falls on the individual or marginalized groups.
I crave bigger changes that address fairness at a more fundamental level, but there are things that can be done individually and in small groups that can help us have better experiences, even as we demand accountability on a larger scale.
Also as with the workload piece, it’s important not to overload yourself with work or stress here. Overworking will not necessarily get you there faster. And most of the time will simply lead to burnout and needing to step away from the work instead, which may actually slow things down.
So for me and many of my clients, it can be helpful here to remind ourselves that unfairness is not okay. It’s not preferred. And yet there are still ways to add value and live a good life, even with it. The tool of perspective is powerful here as well. How you think about the unfairness will determine whether it feels unwieldy and insurmountable or ultimately changeable if also deeply unfortunate.
This leads us to our final burnout factor mismatched skills and value. In a capitalist society, many of us may experience a mismatch between our values and the skills that we use to earn a living. You may feel upset about the way the world of work operates in some ways. You may be upset about the kinds of labor that are valued and rewarded with pay.
You may find yourself doing work you don’t prefer because that’s what is available and pays money you need in order to survive and care for yourself. Or you may find that you like your work, but chafe against other elements of work culture, like the hours or the politics.
There’s a lot you could feel mismatched about, basically. I think the question here, as with unfairness, is how do you make the changes you’d like to see and also navigate the day-to-day in a way that feels good to you? Do you need to renegotiate your role within the organization to something that matches your values more? Do you need to re-skill? Do you need to set limits and boundaries so that you can work and do well without over-giving?
What is needed for you to bring things more into balance? And how do you care for yourself in the gap between what you want and what you have? And what kind of perspectives will be most useful to you? What will help you feel engaged, empowered, and satisfied even in this imperfect world and our imperfect workplaces, families, relationships, et cetera?
Like the other factors, this is about both making changes and also finding ways to feel good in situations that are neither perfect nor entirely within our control. But even in imperfect situations, we can find ways to leap or inch closer to our ideal, and we can find ways to have fun along the way.
So now that we’ve talked about each factor, let’s review. Unsustainable workload, find ways to work less. You can still do plenty of good work this way. What could be done by someone else, done later, not done at all, or done to a lower standard?
Lack of control, find and use the control you do have, including the control of a powerful perspective. Insufficient rewards for effort, increase rewards and or reduce effort. Ask for more from others and create more for yourself. Remember, rewards do not have to cost a lot. What feels most rewarding to you?
Lack of supportive community, build the community you crave bit by bit, day by day, connection by connection. Lack of fairness, seek, create, and access more fairness in whatever ways feel best to you. Care for yourself and your community in the unfairness, knowing that it might not all be solved in your lifetime.
Mismatched values and skills, make whatever changes feel good to you to make to bring those more into alignment. Market well to yourself about the things you choose to keep doing, even if you are choosing to stick with something that isn’t a great match for some reason. And you’re allowed to because you’re in charge.
So now that we’ve covered the six factors, I want to talk about one more thing, and that’s satisfaction. So satisfaction may seem like it’s the furthest thing from burnout, but that’s exactly the point. Where we cultivate satisfaction we find meaning, purpose, joy, and a sense of wellbeing. The factors we’ve just walked through are going to give you lots to think about as far as how to prevent and treat burnout as it shows up in your life and career.
And I also want to invite you to consider using satisfaction as an additional tool. This is going to interlock with all the six factors as each is an area of your life and work where you could likely cultivate more satisfaction. And here are some questions I want you to take forward as you consider the six factors and literally everything else that will come up and demand your energy and attention.
What feels good about this to me? What could be more satisfying? What’s the most dissatisfying element of this? What changes need to be made? What perspectives will create the most satisfaction in relation to this situation?
Satisfaction is a feeling, but it’s also a habit. The more you practice satisfaction, the more you look for where it already exists and allow it to inform your decisions, the more it will show up in your life, career relationships and more.
And the more you orient towards what could be satisfying, the more you’ll be able to navigate your workload, navigate the control you do and don’t have, navigate, making sure you feel sufficiently rewarded, navigate creating a supportive community, navigate handling the unfairness of the world and navigate bringing your values and skills into alignment.
Am I saying this will be easy? No, I am not. But is it doable? Yes. And with the tools we talked about today, you can create this shift and find a way to enjoy the journey of change.
In addition to everything we talked through today in this podcast, I also have a special present for you. I have my Satisfied AF workbook to share with you. It’s going to help you think through what would be most satisfying and least satisfying in each area of your life currently. And you can also think through it in relation to the things you learned about, like what creates burnout or like what are the contributing factors of burnout? And then how we flip those factors around to become things that can help us prevent and recover from burnout.
People always say this workbook actually makes them feel really good as it reveals what’s already working, and it’s super enjoyable to notice that. It also helps you create a map for the changes you’d like to make so that you can feel better, avoid burnout or recover from it, cultivate more satisfaction and just create a wildly delicious life.
So in order to get a copy of that, you’re going to go to korilinn.com/learnmore, and you’re going to sign up for my email newsletter, which is called Satisfaction and Delight. And when you get the welcome email to that, there is a link to the Satisfied AF audit.
Also, I just want to say, I loved getting to do my talk recently about the six factors contributing to burnout. And if you are looking for a speaker for an event or for your organization, I would love to be considered. I love giving talks and doing Q&A and stuff like that, so keep me in mind.
All right, that’s what I have for y’all this week. Thank you so much and I’ll talk to you next time.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. If you are ready to create a wildly delicious life and have way more fun than you ever thought possible, visit www.korilinn.com to see how I can help. See you next week.
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