Latest / Forged In The Dark / A Life You Don't Need to Escape
Transcript
- Forged In The Dark: Burnout is real. What to do when it happens, but also things you can add to your life now to avoid or reduce it. Welcome to Forged in the Dark. I'm your host, Jamie. Let's dig in. Now you've heard about it or you've experienced it. The crash, the inevitable burnout. If you are creating, building, growing, healing anything important, you do put yourself at risk of hitting the wall. So my question straight out of the gate is what do you do when you hit that wall? And what can you do? In advance to avoid it. And I say this very seriously, and I have stories here today. it is incredibly common for me to have very similar conversations with multiple people in the same week. And last week's topic was burnout. insert friend number one. He is an ultra high performer in every category of his life. And although he does not believe in the grind, he believes in catching the waves of momentum and riding them all the way to the crash. His theory suggests that when the momentum is going, you must take full advantage of it. When you are in a place where you don't need to rely on willpower or motivation or talking yourself into doing anything, when you are excited to sit down and make the next move, that's that's a strike while the iron's hot moment. And You ride it till the crash. Okay, if you are going to ride this crazy train all the way off the cliff, what do you do when you're at the bottom of the ravine? To story number two. She is very driven. She is very much a high performer. She embraces the grind and grinds through lunch. She grinds through her workout time. She grinds all the way up until she has nothing left to give. And she looked at me the other day and she said, Jamie, I feel like I'm walking a tightrope. I feel like I am always on the verge of burnout. And the danger here is the straw that breaks the camel's back. There could be something completely unrelated to work that lands in her lap and sends her to bed for a couple of days. And this whole thing came up because she's trying to rearrange her schedule to fit in a last minute vacation. Okay, so we have story one and story two. Now let's bring in what I think about this. I I have been burnt out. I have hit the wall. I have hit the wall for surprising reasons, not just the grind. And the last time I hit the wall, I got. Really honest with myself about what avoiding burnout actually looks like. What it could potentially look like to either avoid that crash altogether or recover faster. And the process is so simple, but you must implement it. So basically, my theory is that you build recovery into your day every single day. Your recovery starts with preemptive measures, preemptive tools that prime you for your day, for your week, for your task. It is the very things that you do before you get out of bed in the morning. It is a gratitude practice, intentional breath work, prayer, meditation. It is setting your intention for the day before you get out of bed. It is having pit stops throughout the day where you sit down and you have meals and you have quiet time, mindfulness tools, breath work, intention setting, gratitude, meditation, prayer. my goodness, could practicing these simple tools every single day allow you the space to expand your capacity? And all of a sudden, I have this image of an overflowing cup in my head. When you want to add something to your cup. Is there room in your cup to hold it? Do you need to dump some of that stuff out of your cup to make room for what else wants to come in? You know, the piece that the piece that I'm trying to avoid today is the crash from the good. Because that's been probably probably one of the most discouraging types of crashes I've ever had. And and you may know this well. Imagine yourself soaring like an eagle, blinking and hitting the mountain and ending up on the floor. But Everything was going so well. Everything was so good. That type of crash. Is showing you your capacity to hold the good. The other types of crashes are showing you how well you manage and reduce stress. It is showing you how efficiently and effectively you work. It is showing you where your boundaries are. And I'm talking about the boundaries you have. With yourself. I have one friend that is that every single time will grind until burnout. And I have another friend who walks the line of burnout every single day and knows it. Friend number one has a recovery plan in place. So when the burnout that he inevitably expects happens, he has protocols to go to to bring himself back. Friend number two, when she feels herself getting to that point, that point of no return, she scrubs her calendar to find time for a vacation. That is working against her. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my intention to inspire you to create a life with less burnout, to create a life that you don't need to escape. To plan vacations that you go on and thoroughly enjoy instead of simply recovering. And this topic of burnout, much like everything else, isn't it so interesting how you can have so many perspectives and some of them cross over, and some of them are similar. But what if? Meditation and prayer and gratitude and breath work are literally the missing piece. Working these tools into your everyday, operating from a place of more equilibrium, right? Working, following the momentum. And not allowing yourself to work not not allowing yourself to burn out. Sometimes you must prioritize one task over another. There may be something on your list that is such a high-priority item, you must finish it, whether you are feeling The symptoms of burnout or not. And when I say feeling, I mean the physical sensations in the body. The fatigue. the the mental load just got too much. Your brain isn't even thinking straight. You have nothing left to give anyone. What if? Adding simple mindfulness practices to your day every day not only helps you reduce the occurrence, the amount of times you burn out, but it there they're also the same tools that are going to help you recover if and when you burn out. If you go order a bunch of fast food and go to bed, how does that help your body, mind, Soul, soul rejuvenate, recover, restore. Do you have a plan in place for when you crash? And what are you doing every single day to not get to the crash? It takes an insane amount of self-awareness to feel the subtle shifts in the body and stop and take a break. Before you crash, and I promise you, it is all possible. Take some time today. Think about who you are in this story. Are you the one that rides the momentum to the crash? Are you the one that is on the tightrope, like secretly praying? Please don't tip, please don't tip. Or are you the one that is adding mindfulness tools to your day every single day to help you avoid the crash, to help you recover faster when you do crash. Okay, that's what I have for you today. Until next time.