2. The Truth About Burnout
Burnout is something that plagues a lot of us, especially in the year of COVID-19. I definitely struggled with it in my own career, and I’m so excited to share the tools and resources I’ve picked up along the way to help you move forward and start feeling more revitalized and energized in your work and personal life.
We’re focusing on emotional burnout today, which can take many different shapes. My experience of it has varied in symptoms, so I know how exhausting and depleting it can feel. So many of you believe you’re burned out because you work too much or too hard, or because your environment is toxic, but today, I want to show you the true reason you’re actually burned out and how to solve it.
Listen in as I show you what burnout is and why it happens. If you’re succeeding in your job right now but feel consistently awful, this episode is for you. I’m offering one simple practice that will help you start the process of fixing burnout so you can feel great, even if none of your circumstances change.
To celebrate the launch of the show, I’m going to be giving away 3 deep-dive strategy sessions with yours truly! These are 90-minute sessions where we come up with a plan to get you where you want to go.
To enter, leave a rating and review of the show on Apple Podcasts. You can find all the details on entering the giveaway here. I can’t wait to announce the winners!
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
What burnout actually is.
Why burnout happens and why we need to solve it.
The different ways in which burnout can present itself.
Why we think we have to be hard on ourselves to reach our goals.
How to stop feeling burned out.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
FEATURED ON THE SHOW:
Leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts to be entered into my giveaway of 3 deep-dive strategy sessions!
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week, we’re talking about what professional burnout actually is and why we need to solve burnout brain before we leave the job we’re in.
You are listening to Love Your Job (Before You Leave It), the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving womxn who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y’all. I’m so excited to talk to you about burnout today. And that might sound funny because burnout usually isn’t something that we’re excited to talk about, but I am because I just think that burnout is plaguing so many people.
And I think it already was before COVID, but especially now with the pandemic, with all the stuff that’s been going on in 2020, people are just experiencing burnout at new levels, and I know that coaching tools can really help with that and I’m so excited to talk to you about them.
I have experienced my own burnout in my career and in my personal life, and I know what it’s like to just be so overwhelmed and to not know what to do and to think that nothing can really be solved. So I’m pretty excited to talk to you about some ways you can move forward and get a better handle on things, whatever those things are for you.
And I'm also really excited to revisit this material because this year has been such a wild ride for me in my own business. As many of you know, I left my corporate career a little over two years ago to launch this business and it’s been so much fun and so challenging and taught me so many things.
But this year, especially in the past six months, not only has there been COVID and the quarantine and all of that, but my business has really taken off, which has been beautiful and wonderful and I love being able to serve my clients with the tools I have during this time when people are struggling so much, and I’ve also been having to revisit my own material about burnout because when we go through exponential growth, it’s so important that we are organizing ourselves properly and using the tools that we have because when things change really fast, the brain sometimes wants to revert back to its old habits and patterns and tendencies.
So I just love this work and I love that it works at so many levels, even when you’ve already studied it, like I have. So without further ado, let’s get into it. Okay, let’s start with a good old-fashioned definition.
According to Merriam-Webster, burnout is exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation, usually as a result of prolonged stress or frustration. For the purposes of this podcast, I am talking about emotional burnout, which is not the same as physical burnout. And the tools and teaching I’m going to offer are incredibly helpful, but of course they don’t replace proper sleep, nutrition, et cetera, all that stuff that you need to keep yourself functioning well at the physical level. That being said, emotional burnout can take many shapes, even when you’re getting eight hours of sleep and maybe exercising, eating really well, you can experience emotional burnout that feels like exhaustion. I know I have.
Other times, it might look like emotional volatility, or isolation, or let’s be honest, even an edgy fury brought on by any kind of obligation or expectation. It could be a headache, it could be stomach distress that comes and goes but never really resolves, or just a sadness you can’t seem to shake.
And as you can maybe tell from this list, these symptoms can overlap with a lot of other stuff too, but this is just a collection of things that I have personally experienced and seen other people experience, even just from the emotional burnout.
But that’s just how burnout presents. To really understand what burnout is, we need to look at why it happens. When I ask people why they’re burned out, specially why they’re burned out about work, they usually say it’s because they’re working too much, or they’re working too hard, or their manager has ridiculous expectations, or they’re just experiencing too much stress, or company culture is toxic, or their industry is just bananas.
But the reality is burnout isn’t about any of these things. This is why some people can work for 12 hours and end the day feeling energized, but other people can work for 20 minutes and feel completely exhausted. I know I’ve been there. Maybe some of y’all have too.
Here’s what’s up though, the work doesn’t create the burnout. The boss doesn’t create the burnout. The company culture or the industry norms, those don’t create the burnout. So what does cause burnout? Burnout actually isn’t a work issue. It’s a fuel issue. Because burnout is what happens when you try to fuel excellent work performance with negative thoughts and feelings. What does this mean?
This means trying to use feelings like shame, anxiety, and guilt to get yourself to take productive action and do good work. Now I want to be really clear that it makes total sense that so many of us try to do things like this because that’s how most of us were taught to do things by our families, by our parents, by our teachers, and by culture at large.
We’ve been taught that the way we get ourselves to do things is to yell at ourselves and discipline ourselves and tell ourselves how terrible we are if we don’t do them. Even though fueling yourself with negative feelings doesn’t feel good, most of us are terrified to stop doing things this way.
We secretly think that being hard on ourselves is the only way we can do the big things that we so want to do. We think it’s how we get shit done and that if we stop, everything we’ve worked so hard for will fall apart. The problem is that when you create results with negative fuel, you burn yourself out.
And on top of that, your accomplishments don’t feel good because your brain associates them with all the negative emotion you felt along the way. This is why we can have all the gold stars in the world and yet feel uncomfortable and unworthy every time we look at them. To us, they’re not symbols of triumph. They’re symbols of anxiety and guilt and shame. We look at our accomplishments and feel like imposters. We think if we were really truly good at what we do, then we’d be able to enjoy our accomplishments.
But y’all, we have that backwards. The reason we can’t enjoy them isn’t because we’re not good enough. It’s because we’ve conditioned ourselves to associate our efforts and our accomplishments with feelings that feel terrible.
Stop and think about this. How many accomplishments do you have that when you think about them, you feel like guilt or shame or anxiety? For me, this used to be pretty much all my accomplishments. I’d look at things I’d done, even if I’d succeeded, and I’d feel awful. My brain would say yeah, you did that, but it could have been better, you didn’t actually apply yourself, so-and-sos was really good, et cetera, et cetera. So if the work isn’t the problem and it’s all about the thoughts and feelings we use to fuel our work, then what’s the solution?
I know that’s what y’all want. We want the solution. I know my people, we’re action oriented. We’re like, well, let’s just fix it already. Alright, let’s fix it, I’m going to tell you about it. The solution is changing the fuel we use. Burnout happens, like I said, when we use anxiety, shame, guilt, and other negative feelings as fuel. It’s like burning coal. You can get results but there are side effects.
Instead, we want to shift to a more sustainable energy source. This will look a little bit different for each person, but here are some fuel sources that I have used and seen others use to great success. Commitment, courage, integrity, joy, and curiosity.
Sustainable fuel doesn’t have to feel amazing. Sometimes operating from integrity or courage can also feel a little scary. But it’s a different kind of fear than what we get with anxiety. Anxiety says I have to do it, or something bad will happen. Integrity says I want to do it because it’s what I believe in, even if I’m also scared. So I know y’all are wondering, how do we use these feelings as fuel? The shortcut to doing that is we change the story we’re telling. We go from a story of anxiety, guilt, or shame, to a story of commitment, courage, et cetera.
Here’s what’s interesting. What we do, the actions we take might be the exact same thing. Sometimes it’s not, but often it is, and yet it will feel totally different. When we take action in our lives and careers from integrity, for instance, for whom we want to be at work, no matter how everyone else is acting, that feels good. It feels empowering. It makes us want to keep taking action and keep showing up. It doesn’t deplete us and it doesn’t leave us feeling worn out and resentful.
Here are some examples. Guilt says I should keep working on this, even though I’m tired. Switching to commitment says I will do 30 more minutes of work on this and then I will ship whatever I have at that point and trust that it’s good enough.
Anxiety says I have to go to that meeting or they’ll think I’m not working, but courage says I’m willing to feel some discomfort and say no to the meeting because I know it’s not the best use of my time and I care about using my time at work well.
Shame says don’t tell them you don’t understand what they just said, but curiosity says what if I can do a better job by being willing to ask no matter what anyone thinks about me when I do? While most of us were raised to believe that feelings are fluffy, they are not. They are the key to doing killer work without burning out. Even if you’re rolling your eyes right now, and it’s okay if you are, just try this shit. Try changing the story. See what happens. You’re going to be amazed.
And learning to do this before you change jobs is key because when we change jobs to get away from burnout, we just bring our burnout thought patterns and feeling patterns with us because we keep trying to perform using the same shitty fuel.
We just experience burnout in the new job, and it’s even more painful because we counted on changing jobs to fix the problem. Many of you have already experienced this and know that changing the job or the industry or the boss you work for doesn’t solve the burnout. But changing the way you think about your work and the way you fuel your effort does.
To review, burnout is not a work issue. It’s a fuel issue. When you try to fuel good work with negative feelings, you will create burnout. We solve burnout by shifting to better fuel. Better fuel looks different for different people, but some fuel feelings that I’ve seen be highly effective are commitment, courage, curiosity, joy, and integrity.
If you’re at a loss, ask yourself, what are the reasons I want to do this? You’ll either find some positive fuel or you’ll find an opportunity to create more alignment. Alright y’all, that’s what I have for you. I want you to go out and try this today. I want you to go out and try fueling your work with intentional feelings and see how different it feels.
I’m telling you, if you do this, you will see real results and you will probably see them right away. Also, to celebrate the launch of the podcast, I’m going to be doing a giveaway of a few deep dive strategy sessions with yours truly. And I want to be very clear that these are not consult calls. These are not even coaching calls.
These are 90-minute sessions where we unpack exactly what’s going on with you and your current career, and then we come up with a point-by-point plan for how to get you to where you want to go in the future with your career. I know exactly what it’s like to leave an amazing job with a cozy 401K and great benefits, and go out on my own and launch a six-figure business, and I can walk you through what that might look like for you.
And if you’re not interested in launching a business, we can focus on your particular career objectives such as getting a raise, getting a promotion, getting that flexible schedule you want so bad, or whatever your heart desires, all while learning the skill of loving your work.
I’m going to be giving away just three of these sessions. In order to be eligible, all you need to do is subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts. It doesn’t even have to be a five-star review, although I of course hope you love the show. What I really want is your honest feedback so I can create something that blows your mind and help you change your life.
Visit korilinn.com/podcastlaunch to learn more about the contest and how to enter. That’s korilinn.com/podcastlaunch. I will be announcing the winners on the show in an upcoming episode. Alright y’all, have a great week. I’ll talk to you later.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilynn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job (Before You Leave It), the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving womxn who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y’all. I’m so excited to talk to you about burnout today. And that might sound funny because burnout usually isn’t something that we’re excited to talk about, but I am because I just think that burnout is plaguing so many people.
And I think it already was before COVID, but especially now with the pandemic, with all the stuff that’s been going on in 2020, people are just experiencing burnout at new levels, and I know that coaching tools can really help with that and I’m so excited to talk to you about them.
I have experienced my own burnout in my career and in my personal life, and I know what it’s like to just be so overwhelmed and to not know what to do and to think that nothing can really be solved. So I’m pretty excited to talk to you about some ways you can move forward and get a better handle on things, whatever those things are for you.
And I'm also really excited to revisit this material because this year has been such a wild ride for me in my own business. As many of you know, I left my corporate career a little over two years ago to launch this business and it’s been so much fun and so challenging and taught me so many things.
But this year, especially in the past six months, not only has there been COVID and the quarantine and all of that, but my business has really taken off, which has been beautiful and wonderful and I love being able to serve my clients with the tools I have during this time when people are struggling so much, and I’ve also been having to revisit my own material about burnout because when we go through exponential growth, it’s so important that we are organizing ourselves properly and using the tools that we have because when things change really fast, the brain sometimes wants to revert back to its old habits and patterns and tendencies.
So I just love this work and I love that it works at so many levels, even when you’ve already studied it, like I have. So without further ado, let’s get into it. Okay, let’s start with a good old-fashioned definition.
According to Merriam-Webster, burnout is exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation, usually as a result of prolonged stress or frustration. For the purposes of this podcast, I am talking about emotional burnout, which is not the same as physical burnout. And the tools and teaching I’m going to offer are incredibly helpful, but of course they don’t replace proper sleep, nutrition, et cetera, all that stuff that you need to keep yourself functioning well at the physical level. That being said, emotional burnout can take many shapes, even when you’re getting eight hours of sleep and maybe exercising, eating really well, you can experience emotional burnout that feels like exhaustion. I know I have.
Other times, it might look like emotional volatility, or isolation, or let’s be honest, even an edgy fury brought on by any kind of obligation or expectation. It could be a headache, it could be stomach distress that comes and goes but never really resolves, or just a sadness you can’t seem to shake.
And as you can maybe tell from this list, these symptoms can overlap with a lot of other stuff too, but this is just a collection of things that I have personally experienced and seen other people experience, even just from the emotional burnout.
But that’s just how burnout presents. To really understand what burnout is, we need to look at why it happens. When I ask people why they’re burned out, specially why they’re burned out about work, they usually say it’s because they’re working too much, or they’re working too hard, or their manager has ridiculous expectations, or they’re just experiencing too much stress, or company culture is toxic, or their industry is just bananas.
But the reality is burnout isn’t about any of these things. This is why some people can work for 12 hours and end the day feeling energized, but other people can work for 20 minutes and feel completely exhausted. I know I’ve been there. Maybe some of y’all have too.
Here’s what’s up though, the work doesn’t create the burnout. The boss doesn’t create the burnout. The company culture or the industry norms, those don’t create the burnout. So what does cause burnout? Burnout actually isn’t a work issue. It’s a fuel issue. Because burnout is what happens when you try to fuel excellent work performance with negative thoughts and feelings. What does this mean?
This means trying to use feelings like shame, anxiety, and guilt to get yourself to take productive action and do good work. Now I want to be really clear that it makes total sense that so many of us try to do things like this because that’s how most of us were taught to do things by our families, by our parents, by our teachers, and by culture at large.
We’ve been taught that the way we get ourselves to do things is to yell at ourselves and discipline ourselves and tell ourselves how terrible we are if we don’t do them. Even though fueling yourself with negative feelings doesn’t feel good, most of us are terrified to stop doing things this way.
We secretly think that being hard on ourselves is the only way we can do the big things that we so want to do. We think it’s how we get shit done and that if we stop, everything we’ve worked so hard for will fall apart. The problem is that when you create results with negative fuel, you burn yourself out.
And on top of that, your accomplishments don’t feel good because your brain associates them with all the negative emotion you felt along the way. This is why we can have all the gold stars in the world and yet feel uncomfortable and unworthy every time we look at them. To us, they’re not symbols of triumph. They’re symbols of anxiety and guilt and shame. We look at our accomplishments and feel like imposters. We think if we were really truly good at what we do, then we’d be able to enjoy our accomplishments.
But y’all, we have that backwards. The reason we can’t enjoy them isn’t because we’re not good enough. It’s because we’ve conditioned ourselves to associate our efforts and our accomplishments with feelings that feel terrible.
Stop and think about this. How many accomplishments do you have that when you think about them, you feel like guilt or shame or anxiety? For me, this used to be pretty much all my accomplishments. I’d look at things I’d done, even if I’d succeeded, and I’d feel awful. My brain would say yeah, you did that, but it could have been better, you didn’t actually apply yourself, so-and-sos was really good, et cetera, et cetera. So if the work isn’t the problem and it’s all about the thoughts and feelings we use to fuel our work, then what’s the solution?
I know that’s what y’all want. We want the solution. I know my people, we’re action oriented. We’re like, well, let’s just fix it already. Alright, let’s fix it, I’m going to tell you about it. The solution is changing the fuel we use. Burnout happens, like I said, when we use anxiety, shame, guilt, and other negative feelings as fuel. It’s like burning coal. You can get results but there are side effects.
Instead, we want to shift to a more sustainable energy source. This will look a little bit different for each person, but here are some fuel sources that I have used and seen others use to great success. Commitment, courage, integrity, joy, and curiosity.
Sustainable fuel doesn’t have to feel amazing. Sometimes operating from integrity or courage can also feel a little scary. But it’s a different kind of fear than what we get with anxiety. Anxiety says I have to do it, or something bad will happen. Integrity says I want to do it because it’s what I believe in, even if I’m also scared. So I know y’all are wondering, how do we use these feelings as fuel? The shortcut to doing that is we change the story we’re telling. We go from a story of anxiety, guilt, or shame, to a story of commitment, courage, et cetera.
Here’s what’s interesting. What we do, the actions we take might be the exact same thing. Sometimes it’s not, but often it is, and yet it will feel totally different. When we take action in our lives and careers from integrity, for instance, for whom we want to be at work, no matter how everyone else is acting, that feels good. It feels empowering. It makes us want to keep taking action and keep showing up. It doesn’t deplete us and it doesn’t leave us feeling worn out and resentful.
Here are some examples. Guilt says I should keep working on this, even though I’m tired. Switching to commitment says I will do 30 more minutes of work on this and then I will ship whatever I have at that point and trust that it’s good enough.
Anxiety says I have to go to that meeting or they’ll think I’m not working, but courage says I’m willing to feel some discomfort and say no to the meeting because I know it’s not the best use of my time and I care about using my time at work well.
Shame says don’t tell them you don’t understand what they just said, but curiosity says what if I can do a better job by being willing to ask no matter what anyone thinks about me when I do? While most of us were raised to believe that feelings are fluffy, they are not. They are the key to doing killer work without burning out. Even if you’re rolling your eyes right now, and it’s okay if you are, just try this shit. Try changing the story. See what happens. You’re going to be amazed.
And learning to do this before you change jobs is key because when we change jobs to get away from burnout, we just bring our burnout thought patterns and feeling patterns with us because we keep trying to perform using the same shitty fuel.
We just experience burnout in the new job, and it’s even more painful because we counted on changing jobs to fix the problem. Many of you have already experienced this and know that changing the job or the industry or the boss you work for doesn’t solve the burnout. But changing the way you think about your work and the way you fuel your effort does.
To review, burnout is not a work issue. It’s a fuel issue. When you try to fuel good work with negative feelings, you will create burnout. We solve burnout by shifting to better fuel. Better fuel looks different for different people, but some fuel feelings that I’ve seen be highly effective are commitment, courage, curiosity, joy, and integrity.
If you’re at a loss, ask yourself, what are the reasons I want to do this? You’ll either find some positive fuel or you’ll find an opportunity to create more alignment. Alright y’all, that’s what I have for you. I want you to go out and try this today. I want you to go out and try fueling your work with intentional feelings and see how different it feels.
I’m telling you, if you do this, you will see real results and you will probably see them right away. Also, to celebrate the launch of the podcast, I’m going to be doing a giveaway of a few deep dive strategy sessions with yours truly. And I want to be very clear that these are not consult calls. These are not even coaching calls.
These are 90-minute sessions where we unpack exactly what’s going on with you and your current career, and then we come up with a point-by-point plan for how to get you to where you want to go in the future with your career. I know exactly what it’s like to leave an amazing job with a cozy 401K and great benefits, and go out on my own and launch a six-figure business, and I can walk you through what that might look like for you.
And if you’re not interested in launching a business, we can focus on your particular career objectives such as getting a raise, getting a promotion, getting that flexible schedule you want so bad, or whatever your heart desires, all while learning the skill of loving your work.
I’m going to be giving away just three of these sessions. In order to be eligible, all you need to do is subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts. It doesn’t even have to be a five-star review, although I of course hope you love the show. What I really want is your honest feedback so I can create something that blows your mind and help you change your life.
Visit korilinn.com/podcastlaunch to learn more about the contest and how to enter. That’s korilinn.com/podcastlaunch. I will be announcing the winners on the show in an upcoming episode. Alright y’all, have a great week. I’ll talk to you later.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilynn.com for more guidance and resources.
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