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Always Rushing? How Hustle Culture Fuels Stress and Workplace Burnout · Hustle Rebels: Burnout Recovery for Over-Achievers

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: But have you ever just had a day where you're just like, I can't fucking breathe all day long.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Just go, go, go.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was talking to a guy who had to leave to go pick up his son and then rush somewhere else after that, and he had just joked, there's just no time to breathe.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: And we laughed because we knew exactly what he had meant.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: But think about that sentence.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: We have built days where breathing just feels like something we don't have time for.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is Hustle Rebels, the podcast for people who still want to win and have ambition, but just aren't willing to continue burning themselves to the ground for it.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Renee Mansfield, Burnout Recovery and Leadership Development Coach.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And if you love conversations like this, subscribe, like, share, and follow along for more.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let's hop back into it.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I went to a Chamber of Commerce event where we had talked about the art of pause.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: And afterwards is when I had that conversation with that guy.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he wasn't describing some once-in-a-lifetime emergency.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: He had to pick up his son, go to the next thing, and just continue to keep moving.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Just a regular normal day.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: How many of us are doing that exact same thing?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're finishing a conversation, but you're already calculating whether you can make it across town, especially in traffic.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: You're driving to pick someone up while mentally rearranging the rest of your evening.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you walk through the door, somebody immediately asks you, What's for dinner?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you feel your entire body go, Are you fucking kidding me?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: But all they did was ask about dinner.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: You just heard another demand.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because you've just been trying to keep up literally just since the moment you've opened your eyes.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And when someone asks how you are, what do you say?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, busy.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a crazy week.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just running around.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Same answer as last week.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Probably the same answer as next week.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: At what point do you just stop calling it a crazy week?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And just admit that this is the pace that we're living at.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: So what does rushing around actually look like?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you recognize this.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: You have to read an email three times because your mind just keeps jumping to what you need to do afterwards.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: You send a response too quickly, then you have to send another one because you missed the actual question.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: You forgot something on the way out, so you have to go back in, and now you're even more pissed off because you're later than you were thirty seconds ago.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: You miss your turn and now you're in more traffic.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: You interrupt someone because you're just trying to get them to get to the fucking point.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: You make a mistake doing something that you already know how to do, and your response is, oh my fucking goodness, get it together, people.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: So now you're rushing, frustrated, criticizing yourself while trying to fix the thing you already rushed through.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: You can be good at your job and still make a mistake when your attention is pulled in a million different directions.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can also love your family and still snap when another perfectly normal request lands on top of everything else and is just the straw that breaks the camel's back.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: That deserves more attention than another lecture about managing your time.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes the calendar technically works, I honestly used to pride myself in thinking that I could puzzle piece my schedule together.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Everything fits perfectly.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Or so I thought.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: But you have to race from one thing to the next thing in order to make that happen.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's no room for traffic, no room for conversation to run long, no room for your kid to have a hard day.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: No room for you to have a hard day.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And apparently, no room to breathe.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: The rush doesn't even end when you arrive.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the part that we end up missing.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: You make it to the next place, you sit down, but have you actually stopped?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Or is your leg bouncing under the table?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: I know I usually do that.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Are your shoulders still lifted?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Is your jaw super tight?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Are you listening to the person in front of you, or are you thinking about when you need to leave?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Checking your watch a million times.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: You got there, but your attention is still on its way somewhere else.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of us recognize the stress in our bodies long before we acknowledge what the day is asking of us.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: We rub our neck, we unclench our jaw, we take that big sigh, and then we look at the clock and we keep on going.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're waiting for the day to calm down.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: But who's building any space into it?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: So at that chamber event, someone else also brought up smoke breaks.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: How people could go outside for a cigarette, and that was an understood reason to step away.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it made me think in some workplaces you could just say, hey, I'm going out for a smoke.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody would question it.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: But say, I need to step outside and clear my head, and suddenly you feel like you need to have a defense.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what's wrong with you?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can't handle the stress?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: How the hell did the cigarette become the acceptable explanation for needing five minutes to step away?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how often do we give ourselves the same attitude?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: You notice you're getting irritated, you notice you're struggling to focus, but you tell yourself to just keep pushing through because stopping would mean you can't handle it.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: But then you make a mistake, and you decide that the answer is to try harder.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: How many times are we going to run through that same experiment?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And leaders, look at how this plays out on your team.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Someone responds immediately so we call them responsible or dependable, reliable, whatever interchangeable word you want to call it.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: But then someone stays late and we call them committed.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Someone looks frantic and we assume, oh, they must be doing a lot.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: But are they doing good work?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Are they catching all the details?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Are they listening clearly?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Do they have time to ask the question that could prevent a true problem?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or are they afraid that asking will slow everyone down?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know that message you sent that took 10 seconds?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: That one that said, Can you get to this ASAP?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Your employee might abandon something else to handle that.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now a different deadline slips.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Someone else is now waiting.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Another person has to chase a different answer.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Did you actually need that one immediately?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Or did you pass along the urgency that you were feeling without checking what the task required?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because the pace that you set becomes something other people have to organize their day around.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if you keep rewarding the person who absorbs every interruption, eventually everyone learns that being available matters more than being able to concentrate.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then we're just surprised when things get missed and overlooked.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: We ask people to hurry, interrupt them while they're working, and question why they aren't more careful or reprimand them.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's a conversation worth having.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is why I want to talk about pausing before next week's conversation with Mel.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because if your whole day is spent trying to get to the next thing, even taking care of yourself can get shoved into that same pattern.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: So things like meditation, done, journaling, done, breath work done.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: How quickly can I get this over with so I can get back to everything else?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Everything just becomes task-driven.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Mel described realizing that she was getting more satisfaction from checking off her morning routine than actually from experiencing it.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then I thought, hmm, there it is.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: We can turn the very thing intended to help us slow down into yet another thing that we rush through.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: So before we add another tool, I want us to recognize the moment that we're in, the email that we're barely reading, the person that we're barely even hearing, the tension that we just keep brushing off, and the joke that we keep making.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: There's no time to breathe.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: What would need to change for that sentence to stop describing your ordinary Tuesday?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: So this week, catch yourself in the rush.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: When you reread that same sentence three times, when you notice that your jaw is clenched, when someone asks you a reasonable question but you're ready to bite their head off, before you tell yourself to get your shit together, ask, what pace am I trying to keep up with?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And what is it costing me?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if you lead people, ask, what pace are you expecting from them?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or what are you expecting of yourself?
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Next week, Mel joins me to talk about why understanding your patterns doesn't always change them, and how even personal growth can become another damn assignment.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's also going to be a breathwork experience at the end, so you can actually explore something instead of just listening to us talk about it.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure that you follow or subscribe so that you don't miss that.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you're on YouTube, hit like wherever you're listening, leave a comment or a review because it truly helps keep these conversations rolling.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And like I usually say, I'm a nosy neighbor.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: I want to know what's going on in your life.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: So feel free to hit a comment down below.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: What does there's no time to breathe look like in a day for you?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Share this with a person who's always rushing around, never giving them time or space.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or the leader who just keeps asking everyone to move faster.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: As always, the first week of Burn the Blueprint Identity Reset is free.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: The link is down below.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Go take a minute before your body has to demand one.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll see you guys next week.