Latest / RHYTHMS OF REST℠ Leadership Podcast / Episode 11: If You Feel Like You're Winning at Work and Losing at Home… This Episode Is for You
Transcript
- Kent: You don't need balance, you need the right rhythms. Much like a heart where all four chambers work together, real success depends on four key rhythms working in harmony: relational, emotional, spiritual, which can be faith or a philosophy of life, and tangible rhythms. I'm your host, Kent Muroski, and welcome to season two of the Rhythms of Rest Leadership Podcast, where we build rhythms for sustainable success, the kind that doesn't leave you. Coming home empty. Before we dive in, if you're achieving by every metric that matters and you still feel like something's of something's off, the rhythms of rest assessment will show you exactly which of the four rhythms are out of sync and your highest leverage move this week. It takes less than three minutes and you'll have real clarity. Just go to Kent Moroski forward slash rest dash assessment. Let's go. Well, I don't know about you, but I'm thankful that summer is coming to a close here. you know, I love spending time with my son. He's thirteen, so he's home for the summer. He also gets bored a lot and me and my wife split time with him. She takes him to work some days, at least for the morning. He's here some days. I try to do a laid back schedule. We played pickleball yesterday morning. that's one of the things we do during the week. So it I really enjoy it, but I'm also glad that school is starting again because summer the rhythms are just so different than they are the other nine months of the year. And though I'm grateful, I'm glad that things are going to be going back to normal here in a couple weeks. So let me know how you feel about that. I'd love to hear, you know, your thoughts in the comments on social media or shoot me an email. Love to see what you think about that. I've written about that before. Well, let me open with a story here. I'm excited about today. As the Harvard Business View Review reports, earlier this year, the CEO of a large company paused in mid-conversation. The re the article didn't reveal which CEO it was, but he caught paused mid-conversation in in this talk he was giving on talent. And here's what he said flatly. We have a problem. Burnout is becoming a real Issue. Now I'm saying that with a smile on my face. If you can't see me, if you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I'm smiling because you know, burnout isn't becoming an issue, it's been one for years. Okay. Now, the gut punch detail for this story was that these weren't average performers that he was talking about in this talk. His most experienced, most capable leaders. The ones being counted on for the next level. They were disengaging. They were stalling out. In his words, we're losing momentum at exactly the point we need it most. Beyond that, executives are burning out at record record levels. So many of you listening to this are high capacity leaders. You've scaled hard for the better part of a decade. You're now in your 40s. And the weight of life and leadership may be crushing you. You're wondering how long you can keep this up. How long you can keep all the plates spinning? I've been there before. I know what it feels like. Not pleasant. You know, it manifests in different ways. Like you promise to be home for dinner and you just forgot. Or you're home for dinner, but you're just not really present. You're not really there. or you plan to make the game and you couldn't. Rest might feel impossible. And even when you're supposed to be resting, your mind won't stop working on the problem, right? Or even at eleven at night when you lay down lay down to sleep and you should be sleeping, you're thinking about that problem at work or that next solution or whatever it may be. Your mind is running when it shouldn't be. this is not a productivity problem, okay? This is a rhythm problem. You're operating from the wrong frame, and that's what we're gonna talk about today. Well, I know this because I've lived it twice. you know, after my full blown nervous breakdown at twenty seven years old, when I was nearing forty, I landed right back almost in the same spot. And, you know, how that by then life had gotten a little better, but only incrementally, if I'm honest. I went from a three out of ten when I had that fall down on the floor nervous breakdown to maybe a five out of ten twelve years later. Now, at the time I was leading an organization, I'd started from scratch, it was a church. we at the time we were also planning a grand opening which required a lot of energy, a lot of funds, you know, a lot of leadership that was fun but exhausting. I was working another part-time job at an urban youth center in in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I was trying most of all to be a good husband and father. And the reality was I felt like I was drowning. Now I was at a crossroads. I could keep pushing. and burn out again or I could let go of control and let the chips fall where they may. Now I know that might feel hard and you're asking what does that mean to let go of control? Well, let me share the story with you and then I'll tell you where I'm coming from. It was a normal Wednesday afternoon. I'd blocked out time. This was what year was it? It was around two thousand it was twenty fourteen. So my first initial burnout was two thousand two. So it's a normal Wednesday afternoon. I'd block time for prayer and thought and reflection every Wednesday afternoon. But that day I had a laundry list of urgent matters that I needed clarity on, thus the time of prayer and reflection. Now, as I was working through each each thing on that list prayerfully and and reflecting on what I needed to do, the the anxiety didn't resolve. It actually got worse. and it grew and grew until I felt like I was gonna have another breakdown. Then this thought just hit me out of nowhere. And it changed the whole trajectory of my life and crystallized a lot of things that I'd been carrying over the past twelve years. And here here was the thought that hit me. You don't have to understand or control everything to live from rest. Let me say it once more. You don't have to understand or control everything in your life to live from a place of rest. Immediately I felt this relief and I threw the list to the ground. I laid down on the bed in my guest room where I was, and I just started to let go and release every burden I was grasping so tightly. My heart rate slowed, the weight lifted off my chest. I felt this tangible sense of peace. And rest just kind of wash over me and come over me. Now that epiphany began a new way of living for me. And the breakthrough was not a system. It wasn't more optimization. The breakthrough was a posture that I embraced. It was a posture of rest. You see, I had been trying to fully understand and control everything before I'd let myself rest. Can you resonate with that, leaders? Do you feel like you have to have everything kind of resolved or in order before you let yourself rest. Well, after that point, no more. Now that one insight, like I said, it was a posture, not a system. That became the foundation for everything I teach now in my rhythms of rest framework. This is where relational, emotion emotional, spiritual, and tangible as categories came from. It was after that that paradigm shifting Thought and posture, and I begin to put these pieces together. Now, here's the real issue. To live from rest, you have to give up something that you never really had in the first place. You have to give up control. Now, when I say rest too, I'm not necessarily talking about inactivity when I say live from rest. What I'm talking about is Living from a place of peace, living from a place of settledness, living from a place of replenishment. You see, the only real control that any of us have is self control. And honestly, sometimes we don't even have that, do we? You know, kids are a good example of our illusion of control, I call it. You know, kids, you can try to control them for a while. and you do have to when they're younger. You're literally when they're toddlers, keeping them from dying, right? That's my what my wife said would always say, like, my job right now is to keep my child from dying. Like they do stupid things. They stick their hands in you know, electric sockets and whatever. anyway, that control works for a short time, but then it backfires if we try to hold on to that level of control as they grow. So in the same in a similar way, you don't have control over your employees. In fact, One of the measures of people feeling purpose and fulfillment in their job is that they feel they have a level of autonomy in their role. But you don't have so you don't have control over your employees, you don't have control over the revenue of the company per se, you don't have control over the economy, you don't control the outcomes. That's all an illusion. you know, and it doesn't work. But this is the part that people get wrong. Releasing control. Doesn't mean I'm sorry, releasing control means being intentional about your inputs and holding the outcomes loosely. You do not control outcomes. What it doesn't mean is abdicating responsibility. It's not let's it's not just let's go and see what happens, right? You know, I see this constantly in myself and and executives I work with, that the more we fixate on what we can't control. The more that anxiety compounds and the worse our decisions get, don't they? Releasing control has to become this open-handed posture that we choose again and again. And it's going to be really hard for some of you. It was really hard for me, and I still have to practice it often. Whenever I feel a sense of anxiety, the usually the first question I ask, and it's not that we're never going to experience anxiety, we are. But the first question I ask is, what am I trying to control that I really have no control over? That's the first question I ask. But it's the difference when we let go of control, let go of outcomes. It's the difference between a focused, clear-headed leader and a frazzled, desperate one. It's the difference between a team that waits for your sign-off on everything or one that moves with confidence without you in the room. That's the difference in your leadership. Well, you know, when we look back at where some of this came from. The rise and grind hustle culture kind of had its heyday in the 2010s, right? optimize everything, sleep is for the week, squeeze every second out of the day. I mean, I've been trying to, you know, high ambition ambitious people, high achievers. We often want to do that, but I've been trying to detox f from that for a while. and I still I just try to fit too much stuff into one. Day or one block of time. You know, that works for a while trying to do all that until it doesn't anymore. And so what happens when you move from your 30s or even late 20s to your to closer to 40 or into your 40s is you're not the same person anymore. You're in a different season of life. You're 10 or 12 years older. Maybe you're married with kids now, you have different priorities, you have lower energy. I mean, I remember. My energy as a father, my first child I had at twenty-nine, and my last child, I was thirty-eight. And trust me, I could feel the difference in energy ten years later when I was nearing forty. But that's not all that changes is your physical energy. Your brain power also changes. Arthur Brooks shared this research in his book From Strength to Strength, and he found that professional decline in high skill fields. It often starts between your late 30s and early 50s. So he calls this fluid versus crystallized intelligence. And in plain language, it's this fluid intelligence is like your raw smarts, your intellectual horsepower, your flexible reasoning, solving novel big problems, that type of that type of intelligence. But it starts dropping fast in your 30s and 40s. That's why the most common age for big a big discovery or a big breakthrough is, you know, your thirties, or your late thirties. And so contrast that with crystallized intelligence. It's the crystallized intelligence is the stock of knowledge and experience you've built over years. And it keeps crystallized intelligence keeps climbing through midlife and even into late later adulthood, into your seventies and eighties. And so This just gets better. So that hopefully that encourages you. It shouldn't all be discouraging. But that crystallized intelligence is like a librarian, Brooks says, who knows exactly where to find a book, even if it takes her a minute. Or it's like a wise sage who can draw from their wide swath of knowledge and make connections that a younger person couldn't, right? It's wisdom. So youth comes with raw smarts and age comes with wisdom. I thought it's a great differentiation. Well, part of the issue as you get older is that the priority of work often changes, doesn't it? Or at least it should change. As Megan French Dunbar, author of the book This Isn't Working, says, work is a priority, it is not the priority. What a great dys distinction that is. Work is a priority, it is not the priority. Yet how many of us keep treating it like it's the priority at the expense of other things? So connect it to what's already shifting physically and like we've just mentioned cognitively, and your values are changing too. You stop idolizing short-term wins and you start paying attention to the things that really matter most, your health, your family, and and what's actually sustainable with your work. and fulfilling with your work and energizing with your work. The leaders who get this, the leaders who get this, I think what they do is they build decade long companies, not just five year ones. So when we treat people like adults, when we care about their lives beyond a paycheck, we build a culture that wins and loses together. Let me give you a bit of a case study here. And let me introduce you to Valeria. She's the CEO of Friendsheep and she's a coaching client of mine and gave me permission to to share this. she shared she cared deeply about our people. you know, she has employees here in the US and then also hundreds of women in Nepal that make her sustainable wool products. And so she cares deeply about her work, the people that she employs, all that, but her own pace was becoming unsustainable. And so we identified the faulty narrative that was driving her pace and put two new rhythms in place. Now the shift in the numbers was she was working five to six nights a week because of the time difference in in Nepal. She had to do that. And she went from that to protecting at least two to three nights off. So cutting down from five to six to two to three, and then having a full day of rest each week for 24 hours. Now, her words, her direct quote that she discovered in this season was that rest isn't laziness. It makes me a better leader. And that's hard for us to grapple with because we equate rest. with inactivity and laziness. So her, you know, as as she got into this more of this rhythm, and we we definitely have to revisit these rhythms because they tend to over time, you know, they tend to go by the wayside. But her you know, what she said happened not long after that was she was able to watch a movie on the couch for the first time with her family, without opening her laptop, which was a huge win. Now here's the kicker. In that same stretch, she was also able to scale her company to new levels that she never had before. And that's the advantage of living from rest. and and that's often what happens, though it's not a formula. So I've seen this over and over with executives I coach less effort, more rest, and revenue flows. Why is that the case? Well. I think it's for a a lot of reason. A lot of reasons. You work better when you're more rested. when you have replenishing things in your life, your mind is more clear and focused. Creativity flows when you operate this way. And that's the rested leader advantage. Now I know what you're thinking. The grind, you might say, is just a part of building a company, especially early on. I can't afford to slow down. My competitors won't slow down. And the two times I tried to pull back, revenue dips and things went by the wayside or things went awry. Well, it's probably because you believe what Val once believed: that rest is laziness. Slowing down will cost you growth, or that you have to take care of yourself on your own time. So some of the things that I hear most in coaching is I don't know how to rest, or I I will rest once I dot dot dot. You fill in the blank, sell the company, get the project done, hire the person, whatever it is. In the meantime, we're often sacrificing relationships for success. Physical health is pushed to the backseat. Caffeine-induced energy replaces the replenishing rhythms of sleep and movement. And so that's what often happens. In the process. Now that might be fine if you're single and you're willing to make that trade-off, or you're planning to exit in five years as a shell of a human being. But I don't think that's what any of us want. Or if you're fine building a company that falls apart the moment that you step away. But that's not what's what the most effective, most long lasting companies do. Okay? The leaders who don't figure this out in the next five years, they won't lose their companies outright. What they'll do is lose themselves first. Then they'll lose their best people to the leaders who did understand it and they'll spend years wondering why. Or maybe it's time to admit what was once a season has become a lifestyle. Okay? The most effective, longest-lasting companies are. figure out sustainable rhythms for themselves and their people. All right. Well, it's time to land the ship. Each week when we do this, we're pausing on one of our four rhythms of rest: relational, emotional, spiritual, which is faith or a philosophy of life, and andor tangible. And then we give one action step for you to take in the next 24 to 48 hours and a reflection question to help you go a little deeper. Today's chamber is not the one you think. You might be thinking it's the tangible chamber, because that relates to Our physical bodies, our eat, sleep, our exercise, and our work. but that's not, even though it's the obvious one, we're talking a lot about working too much, burnout, whatever it is, we're gonna talk about the emotional chamber. and and in a way, all the chambers except tangible, because people often mistake this as a problem with their tangible rhythms, but it isn't about working less. It's about using work. to cover up something else hiding in the emotional chamber or one of the other chambers, okay? So here's what I want you to do this week, and I'll give you a couple examples of what I mean by that. I want you to just block on your calendar 30 to 60 minutes. No phone, no laptop, no scrolling, just you and the and your Moleskin journal or whatever type of notebook you use. And think about the things that you're using too much work to cover up for. Or more important things that you're avoiding by working too much. So here's a couple examples. Maybe you feel inadequate at home, and your work tends to feel more validating. That can be an issue for leaders, right? Maybe things aren't good at home and work is a respite, and you're using it to cover up for what really needs attention, or maybe your work is your primary source of identity. In other words, what would you do if you didn't have work anymore? And so we're using it to make up the primary part of our identity when in fact it should not be the primary part of our identity. It's really a sub identity. It's not who you are, it's a part of who you are. here's another question that you could ask. When's the last time you did something fun? That's a big one. For executives, for owners, for leaders. They're often sacrificing fun and hobbies for too much work. And then lastly, what relationships are you neglecting by working so much? Those are the real questions to ask because burnout is rarely about working too much. It's more about the other rhythms that you're not cultivating or you're avoiding because of work. It's not just about working less. I wanna just say this really clearly and in its own spot. It's not just about working less, it's about adding in things that truly replenish you. And this is often more about control than it is about wanting to work all the time. In other words, it's because we can't let go of control of those outcomes that we overcompensate in the area of work. So here's the reflection question: What are you currently trying to control? That was never actually yours to control in the first place. Now, if you want to find out quickly which rhythm is off the most and how to restore that, I'm at I'm just encouraging you to go to the rhythms of rest assessment. Now we've put a lot of work into this lately. We've upgraded it, it's become better, you get a better report with a clear next action step, and everything it seems to be hitting on the right cylinders with the people who take it. So if you'll just go to KentMuroski.com. You'll see buttons all over that homepage that say, take the rhythms of rest assessment. And just click on the button, it will take you less than three minutes. Now, I would love to hear what you land on, how your rest assessment comes out, or how you answer that question. What are you currently trying to control that was never actually yours to control in the first place? Okay, so DM me, shoot me an email if you're on my email list, Tell me what you're setting down in the next 24 to 48 hours. And I can't wait to hear from you. Well, if this resonated with you, you'll love my bi-weekly newsletter. Every other week I send out honest practical insights to help you live and lead from internal rest instead of burnout. No fluff, just simple tools from my Rhythms of Rest framework to help you slow down without losing momentum. So you can just go to Kent Moroski. dot com forward slash newsletter to sign up. It's totally free and you'll be also be the first to hear about exclusive offers and get bonus content. So I'll see you next time or see you in your inbox. Until then.