On March 21, 2021, we are hosting the inaugural (and virtual)…
Art of Coaching Communication and Leadership Strategy Summit!
Hear leaders from a range of professions share essential tactics and strategies for navigating communication challenges in our new normal. After all, the future belongs to those who learn diverse skills and combine them in creative ways.
Now for today’s episode:
“Those who burn the brightest amongst us are the most susceptible to having their flame put out…”
When I was 28, I woke up one morning and didn’t want to go to work. Confused and frustrated, I couldn’t figure out why. I still loved coaching but the days, routine and process had become tedious.
As it turns out, I was dealing with burnout.
Misunderstood and misinterpreted, the term “burnout” might be thrown around casually or referred to as “pop psychology”, but there are 50+ years of research detailing this psychological syndrome and how it afflicts the most dedicated among us.
Whether or not you’ve dealt with burnout (or overwhelm), my hope is that today’s episode helps you identify, deal with and eventually eradicate it.
We’ll dive deep into the research, covering:
- Causes and predictors (The Succumbing 6)
- Signs and manifestations (emotional, physical and work related)
- Solutions and remedies (FIRE model)
- The importance of “fit” between employer and employee
If you want to dive deeper on all things burnout or have access to the resources mentioned in today’s episode (like the workplace RPE or FIRE assessment), be sure to check out our course VALUED. I created this resource to help professionals of all kinds create career viability and longevity.
Other resources related to this episode:
TRANSCRIPTION
Brett Bartholomew 0:01
Hey there, first let me say happy holidays, wherever you are in the world. Or if you’re listening to this after the holidays, welcome to The Art of coaching podcast, I’m certainly happy to have you. Holidays are an interesting time now all of 2020 has been really, and even if you are listening to this and 2052, or whenever, no doubt, you’ve had some interesting challenges thrown at you. That’s life. There are countless small blessings many of us take for granted without question, right, we can always find a positive in the negative no matter what’s going on. But there are also times where it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, angry, frustrated, burnout cynical.
And there are a lot of times where you might be in a profession to where it’s anathema to even admit that or talk about that. I know that was certainly the case, and is certainly the case in strength and conditioning, where I started out my career is, you know, if you talk about yourself or your wants or needs, oftentimes, at least when I came up in it, you are made out to be selfish, and you’re made out to look like you’re not really in this for the right field. And there’s a lot of fields like that, especially in the medical profession, and nursing, you know, in all these things, where people feel like service or servitude is a big piece.
And that’s really the core of the episode today, how to manage overwhelm, and burnout. Even if you’re somebody that feels these things and doesn’t really want to talk about it or is worried you’ll be blacklisted, or just as worried about being judged. But you’re trying to work your way through this. I remember the first time I really felt it. I was 28 or 29. And I woke up, and I loved where I worked. You know, there’s a lot of great things about it. But I didn’t want to go to work one day, and that was very uncharacteristic of me very uncharacteristic. And I thought, well, I know I love coaching. So it’s not that I don’t want to do that. What is it and it was just the tediousness of the process.
I felt like, well, coaching was going great. And I was making progress in that. And I love doing it. I love the interactions. It was just something about my days and the work schedule, and everything had just kind of been bland. And I don’t know, there was nothing really that you can explain a lot of times in burnout, you just don’t feel it. And it starts to become this chronic thing that we’ll dive into, or certainly dive into the research. But it makes you feel awful. Again, you feel like well, there’s so many things I should be grateful for I have a job. I’m working at this great place. But that’s not really what it’s about. And that’s what we’re going to dive into today.
Because there’s a lot of things that are misunderstood and misinterpreted about overwhelm, and burnout. So we’re going to talk about what these things mean, what are the signs more importantly, what you can do about it, because it really isn’t about your desire or gratitude. It’s not an age thing. It’s not an intelligence thing. It’s not a selfishness thing, we’re going to dive deeply into that we’ve really gone into about 50 years of research of burnout, it’s definitely it’s a sample of one of our online courses valued where we talk about a lot of career struggles that people face like this. So we’re not getting philosophical, we are actually going to dive into the research, and then give you some really practical things as well.
Now before we get into that, there are some things to note on March 21 2021, we are hosting the inaugural that’s always a weird word to say, art of coaching, communication and leadership strategy Summit. It is for people in every field, one of the biggest things that I’ve really tried to combat and we really tried to do at art of coaching is we try to again, cross pollinate our understanding. we’re firm believers that the future belongs to people who can take information and skill sets and combine them in really creative ways. Again, many of you may be in specialized fields, I know me having been a strength coach most of my career, we were always going to strengthing, auditioning clinics, sports science, clinics, things like that.
And, you know, I really took a step forward, when I started advancing the ambit of what kind of clinics and workshops we did. It’s a big reason for our live clinics, our apprenticeship workshops, and what have you. They’re open to every profession, and they are not about a singular topic meeting strengthen conditioning or science or what have you. It’s all about communication, the role of dealing with chaos and ambiguity and evaluating how we lead during uncertain times, which now I mean, we live in the age of change, that’s the new normal is changed. So, you know, this communication and leadership strategy Summit is going to be very cool. It features professionals from military, medical, and we’re going to be tackling some of the toughest social issues, strategic communication tactics and real leadership problems that again, we all face, but people don’t always want to talk about.
So it’s not your traditional collection of dry PowerPoints. It is virtual, you don’t have to worry about traveling. So no matter where you’re at with the whole COVID thing, you can do this virtually, these are going to be real conversations with world class experts offering essential and applicable communication tactics to maneuver our new reality. So it doesn’t matter if you’re a coach that is having trouble with a colleague or an egotistical Sport Coach, it doesn’t matter if you’re in finance, and you’re having your own issues. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the FBI, and we’ve had somebody in our workshop that had trouble communicating sciences or his superiors, it does not matter if you deal with people and you have communication or behavior change related issues, we will have something for you.
So set yourself apart broaden your perspective. Like I said the future belongs to those who have diverse skills and combine them in creative ways. You can register at artofcoaching.com/summit artofcoaching.com/summit, and you’ll get all the up to date details. earlybird signups what have you, we’re also creating something for the Underdogs amongst us. If you followed me for most of my career, you know that that’s very much how I identify right? I was hospitalized for a year in my life. There are a lot of times in my career where I remember when I left one job, because I was moving into the private sector, I was told I’d be blacklisted, there was just always some very interesting, unique obstacles.
And it never really felt like I had all the resources and support that I needed, especially when writing conscious coaching my first book, you know, even that was something where we dove into our savings. And I was told, Oh, nobody’s gonna want to read a book by a strength coach about communication. Now, apparently, people will read books about Navy Seals and that kind of stuff, but not strength coaches, right, there’s nothing you can learn, or the business world can learn from working with world class athletes and dealing with aspects of coaching. And thankfully, they were wrong. And that’s not something that I take pride on, or I’m like, screw the haters, but the books continue to do well. And that’s because of your guys’s support.
And many of you have these things as well, you might feel like, you know what, I don’t have many followers, I don’t have a platform, and I don’t really maybe even want those things. But I do want to make a difference. So if that’s you, or even if you do want to have a following and build a platform, the bottom line is if you want to create change, provide value to others and do more of what you love on your terms. You’re going to want to check this out, right? Because value isn’t about the followers you have rather the usefulness and practicality of the knowledge you share. Man, you can go to artofcoaching.com/blindspot. It’s all one word artofcoaching.com/blindspot to stay up to date on that we’re really excited about these things.
I’ve been working on this stuff for sensitive beginning of 2020. And it’s been tireless, and we’ve had help along the way, which leads me to some thank yous. And again, we’ll get right into it. I want to thank just because again, I think it’s important to give credit where credit’s due. And we always try to do this, but I want to get out in front of it. And do it at the beginning of the episode. Because I think that we all know what it’s like to feel like we’ve done work, but maybe we don’t feel appreciated. And I’ve never wanted anybody that I ever work or collaborate with or anybody that even supports us to do that. I never want you guys to feel that way. So I can’t do this every episode, we are going to do it on this, it’ll take three seconds.
So just listen in, Nate Fischer, I want to thank you so much for everything you do to help make this podcast rule. For those of you that don’t know, and again to solidify my underdog status. I record this out of my closet, I don’t have a soundproof Studio, you know, some camera, but a huge digital team. We record this in a closet that is surrounded, it’s carpeted, it’s surrounded by clothes that allows for a great, relatively soundproof environment. It protects me from my baby crying when he wakes up. So we have a good setup. But Nate goes behind the scenes, and he really checks for any inaccuracies or inconsistencies with the sound. And he helps post it. So Nate Fisher, thank you so much for the attention to detail.
You guys may not know this, but we had worked with somebody once in the past, that we were having some issues with quality control early on in the podcast, and I respectfully reached out and just said, Hey, you know, these things can’t continue. I know that your time is valuable. And we pay you for that. But like, we take this serious and I remember I’ll never forget it. They said dude, it’s not like you’re Joe Rogan or Tim Ferriss. And, you know, I think about when people do things like that, and they misunderstand the point, right? Like when you do something to try to provide value to people. It doesn’t matter if you have that kind of platform. And who knows some of you listening, you may not have that kind of platform now, but you might write Joe Rogan and Tim Ferriss, we’re not always Joe Rogan and Tim Ferriss, so do the thing that you’re going to do as if you’re gonna be that or at least that you care about it.
And I knew right then or there, that wasn’t a fit. I have no grandiose self image of myself. But you know, we take a lot of pride in this and Nate, you’ve never once you know that you’ve never once treated it like a hobby. You’ve never once you know, just treated it casually and I appreciate that about you so much. Because we want to touch people’s lives and this medium helps us do it. Ali Kershner you guys have heard me mentioned her numerous times. She’s responsible for all the free podcast reflections, everything you can get literally we’re really big on on making sure nobody passively consumes anything here and I don’t know if you guys have done the podcast reflections yet. But if you haven’t you and your staff are you and your friends are you and your family or whatever need to be doing these.
It’s very simple. They’re free. You just go to artofcoaching.com/podcastreflections. Ali has volunteered her time. She always creates questions. She always creates a conversation starters. So thank you, Ali for doing that. Adam crook, somebody who’s asked numerous times not to be mentioned, Adam is a consumer of our content every now and then just send some nice graphics that we can share on social media. Again, I don’t have a team that like, does that stuff. So Adam, does it never expect anything in return? He never wants his name cited, whatever. But I want you to know, Adam, correct. We see we appreciate you. And we love you for that.
John Christie, my best friend, the first person that ever really stuck by me when I got out of the hospital, right when everybody else literally, in terms of my friends had abandoned me, nobody checked in on me, this was the first person that came up and talk to me when I was trying to get my life back together as a teenager. He’s a brother, he’s the family I chose. And he gives me great advice. And also, if you’re on our newsletter, you saw the design of our self reflection manual, that was content that myself and Ali and put together and created. But John is really responsible for the design of that thing.
And we take what we give you guys really seriously, if you’re not on the newsletter, guys get on it, I have better things to do than spam you, I hate email, I’m going to respect you. But there’s going to be things that you’re going to get that you’re not going to get if you just listen to the podcast and on social media, we send out like two to three emails, maybe a month, right. And it’s only more than that if we have a release or a launch, but you’re gonna get some cool stuff. And John, you have a skill set that is unbelievable, man. You’re one of the most special human beings I know.
Atlanta Ash, somebody that reached out to our joint our team page a long time ago, and the patients you’ve shown, we’re a small company, we’re growing and we have to grow slowly, especially during a pandemic, and she’s reached out to help. And Elena, I want you to know that we appreciate you, we value you. The times that we go between contact is not indicative of how much we value it’s that we’re not going to bring other folks on until we can give them consistent work and we have all of our wheels turning and we’re in the process of some changes. So we see you, we will bring you on. Thank you for your loving desire.
A couple more guys. Jordan Krumholz. Jordan is my executive assistant. She’s been with the team for a while she’s got a baby due in February. And it was scary for me to hire an executive assistant I had to in the past one lied on their timesheet. One wasn’t very consistent. Jordan has had ups and downs in her life just like anybody else. But she helps me manage my emails, she helps us as a small company. And, you know, we’re grateful for the time we have with you, Jordan, we never know how long because people always come and go. But I want you to know that you’re you’re a critical member, and anybody that’s interacted with Jordan knows how special she is.
My wife, right? Who is our project manager, not even a year ago, she left a job that paid her $70,000 a year. And she got to work with some of the top doctors in Beverly Hills, and was a former strength coach herself. And she took a risk, right? She’s a part of this family business. So when you guys support the podcast, you know, you’re really supporting a small business, when you support art of coaching. It’s a small business every day, she helps me write notes every day, she helps me manage things. So thank you for that. I love you.
And then everybody who applies to our join our team page, again, we see you timing is everything we value you if you don’t hear from us, it’s never a lack of appreciation. We’re a growing company, right? We’re working on these processes, man, we don’t have an unlimited budget. So we want to respect you and your time. But more importantly, we just love that you guys want to support us and when the time is right, and if the fit is right, you will hear from us, I promise. All right. Now let’s get into the meat of what you guys came for. And I’m going to try to keep this tight. I’m going to try to keep it tight. But there is a lot of detail, burnout.
Now, why discuss burnout? Well, it’s an aspect of mental health, right? Burnout, it as the research shows, is one of the hallmark afflictions of the most dedicated amongst us. Now think about that for a minute, no matter what the real no matter what people think, Oh, you’re burnout, you’re not committed. That has been shown not only to be false, but to be completely and utterly inaccurate. At the highest level, burnout always affects people in communities and in professions who give their most their best. So that’s why it’s called burnout. Because literally Christina mas lock and some of the people that have championed this research say it is literally those who burn the brightest who are most likely to be afflicted by it.
And it’s the bedrock of emotions such as stress, anxiety, and even depression. At first, it’s very easy to write it off as something that only affects the ungrateful or unworthy. We’ve talked about that. And it’s just not true for the reasons I mentioned. And the research makes that clear. Now, interestingly enough, when burnout was first brought into the public light, it was previously derided by academics, who kind of lived in these ivory towers as a non scholarly pop psychology. Now, there’s nearly 50 years of research on the topic, and more than that now, probably closer to 60 at the time of this recording, so that’s over a half century.
Originally, it had its roots in health care, but now it’s rapidly spreading to other vocations. Why are simple do due to the changing nature of the modern workplace, right, there’s lower average levels of long term commitment between employers and employees, we certainly see this in sports performance, the average contract can be like one to three years, and you can do your job at the highest level as a strength coach or sports scientist or physical therapist or what have you. And if the team isn’t winning, or as a sport coach, for that matter, you’re gone, you’re just gone.
Man, I know, it’s easy for those of you that are listening from the performance space to think that’s just us. It’s not right. There are many people that deal with this tons of professions that deal with this. And that’s why you know, so much of burnout really relates to the importance of job fit, and really understanding your values and what jobs you’re chasing, and what you’re trying to do and why you’re trying to do it. So when we think about it, and I want to define it for you, because just like anything, we can’t solve a problem without understanding the definition and origin. The actual empirical definition is it is a psychological syndrome, developed in response to chronic and that’s a key word chronic chronic chronic. And I’m not talking Dr. Dre 2001, to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job.
So for those of you again, in performance terms, this is akin to the concept of a load as as measured by the combination of sport and non sport stressors, right? It’s cumulative. It includes work responsibilities, family responsibilities, relationship, stressors, the pressure you put on yourself. So if you’re highly perfectionistic, and type A, you’re gonna feel it, financial stressors, all these kinds of things. So one thing we talked about, and apologies for those of you not in the performance space for a little bit of jargon here, but just as external load for performance is the stimulus applied to an athlete via physical work.
So like Sprint’s the weights, they live the distance they run, what have you, external load here is like your job duties or role conflicts, a good friend of mine is is a renowned performance coach. And she is made to do a lot of menial things. And it’s not like, oh, it’s above, sweeping the sheds like the All Blacks, we all have to do little things, right. I own my own business. And I do menial things. But it’s the fact that she’s always looked at, almost as if she’s maintenance, to do these kinds of things. And I don’t mean maintenance to derive that. I just mean that’s how far outside the scope of her duty, she’ll be asked to do things.
And it’s just expected, right? There’s never anything there. And it’s just kind of like it’s a profession, or a position that’s looked down upon outside of context. But in her context, it’s a very coveted role, and lack of support or a competitive climate, you know, you look at folks in med school, or people go into law school, and what have you, supremely competitive climate and internal load for performance is like the emotional or psychological and one’s physiological response to stressors, right? This manifests itself as fear and anxiety and aggression. So we feel that I mean, you don’t know if your job is secure during the pandemic, or if you’re in a highly competitive workspace, you might be a naturally anxious person, or you might be aggressive, right.
And these things are dangerous. So whether you’re in the performance space or not, you can appreciate there is the impetus of things right again, role conflict, personality conflicts, job, your job, job insecurity. And then there’s the impact that has emotionally psychologically, everybody deals with these things differently, you can literally put two different people in the same situation, one is going to be more adept at handling that stress in that conflict, it’s not going to have quite the internal load. And another one, it could crumble. And that has to do with their level of exposure, how they internalize things, how they perceive things, there’s people that can be trauma surgeons who can see somebody come in with five gunshots and be completely calm, and another person that would drive up the wall, right?
We all have that understanding. So again, burnout defined, a psychological syndrome characterized by overwhelming exhaustion, feelings of cynicism, and even detachment from the job. And its hallmarked, especially by a sense of ineffectiveness or a lack of accomplishment, something I know I felt a lot. I you know, a friend asked me recently, do you do you ever stop and appreciate the influence you have? And I said, really? No, I don’t allow myself to believe in it. Because there’s constant reminders of things that I’m doing wrong or not well enough, or what have you. So well, I’m grateful for people that share and like and send messages and I am working at getting better accepting compliments. I’m very bad at that because extreme humility was kind of beaten into me a lot and not beaten, like physically right, but just beaten into me in terms of the profession that I’ve been in for a long time.
That you know, I just didn’t allow myself to internalize those things. And that’s toxic guys. Like people need to realize humility is yes, of course better than hubris. But you can also be proud nightfall and your humility, which a lot of people become, or you can be just ignorant to the fact that when somebody gives you a compliment, or you did something good. If you don’t accept that you’re actually it’s rude to them, you know. So when somebody reaches out and does say we do something great or an episode hit with them or connected, if I see that message, one of the first things I tried to say is like, Thank you, like, I want them to understand I received it, and then I have to work on that.
But a lot of people in high level professions, or a lot of people that expect a lot of themselves, really have this issue with a sense of ineffectiveness and a lack of accomplishment. So getting into that more, let’s talk about what those things mean, especially emotional exhaustion, cynicism, or detachment and efficacy, because these are the primary dimensions of burnout. And again, not making this up. This gives credit to and I apologize if I butcher their name, Maslach, Shelf Lee and Litre 2000. And again, Christina Maslach is the go to person for all things burnout. So emotional exhaustion really refers to feelings of being overextended and depleted of your emotional and physical resources.
Right, it is really the central quality of burnout. And you can think of it as almost like compassion fatigue, right? Like you’re giving so much of yourself that you just crave a little bit of a wait time. And I know for me as somebody that is probably more introverted than extroverted, you know, when I get done recording these podcasts, I kind of self isolate, I might go for a walk around the block, I do something where I don’t talk for a while. And it’s the same when I speak, you guys have heard me mentioned this before, if you’re a frequent listener, right, and so imagine doing that, and then answering emails and then doing your job and then answering more things.
And at first, that’s fine, you look at like, this is why we got into the job. But year after year, decade after decade, if you’re not careful about detaching a little bit. And if you’re not careful about you know, just refilling that tank, it adds up. So when people describe themselves as feeling burnout, this is typically what they feel like they’re experiencing this emotional exhaustion, they need some time away, it’s like you have no gas in your legs. You know, even if you’re well trained, and you’re going out for a run, or you’re cycling or you’re lifting, it’s feeling like this weight should not be as heavy as it is, or the resistance or the training session shouldn’t be as exhausting.
But man, is it taking a toll. And that is because we’ve depleted some physiological resource or psychological at a rate where we haven’t restored it right, there’s not that super compensation, cynicism and detachment really represents the inter personal dimension of burnout. So this is kind of the onset of a negative attitude, a callous attitude, or just being easily detached about the job feeling like well, what does it matter, you know, or it’s not going to do any good anyway, right?
It manifests itself as sort of this depersonalization or a cognitive distancing, right? And you’re not quite going through the motions, but you’re on that track, right? Because you just feel like, what does it matter, they’re gonna deny this anyway, or I’m gonna write this, or I’m gonna build this and nobody’s gonna give a crap anyway, they’re just gonna toss it in the basket, right?
Like, or, yeah, I could apply this, and I could try what this person is telling me to try. But it’s not going to matter. Because this person’s, you know, stubborn and stuck in their ways when you start getting down that route. That is a lot of cynicism. In efficacy. It’s about the self evaluation. And again, I talked about if you’re on our newsletter, you got a free, I think it’s like an eight page branded self evaluation, self appraisal form. But this is that dimension of burnout. And it refers to this incompetence, or a lack of validation uncertainty, really can stem from a lack of buy in feeling like others aren’t seeing the value you contribute, right?
If you’re in a role or a situation, or just in life, when you could be posting stuff and feel like oh, man, it’s not making any traction, nobody cares what I have to say. Or maybe you’re a nurse, and you’re so giving, and you’re so loving, and but it just feels like it’s a never ending case and patient load. And you start looking at things like no matter how many people I treat and help, there’s just so many I can never impact, right, and it starts to weigh on you and you feel like you’re never doing enough. There are people that are tremendous givers. And you know, it almost becomes a compulsion. Because they feel like they’re, they can never do enough. They can’t have idle hands and what have you.
And a lot of this comes from the fact that we know that we’re not in complete control of our outcomes, right work or just in life in general. And so it feels like hard work sometimes. And the commitment we show can go unrequited. And you can think of this even in a relationship, maybe you’ve worked so hard and so long to make a certain relationship work. And it just seems like you take one step forward and two steps back. So there’s these dimensions again, emotional exhaustion, cynicism or detachment and in efficacy that really Hallmark this stuff. And what you have to be cognizant of is it doesn’t have To be big things that bring this on. It doesn’t have to be a pandemic. It doesn’t have to be a failed relationship. It doesn’t have to be a job that you lost.
It’s very much like Muhammad Ali said, it’s not the mountains ahead, that you have to climb that wear you out. But the pebbles in your shoe. Again, it’s not the mountains ahead that you have to climb that wear you out. But it’s the pebbles in your shoe. So again, what are the pebbles? It can be your pride, ego and patience, negativity, you being passive. You never really making the change. You need to make naivete, indecisiveness, fear, envy. insecurity, information overload man, do we get that a lot? You know, I’ll post something on Instagram and somebody will be like, can you tell me more? Can you tell me more? Can you tell me more?
And then, you know, we try to direct them to one of our resources, not to sell them on stuff. But anybody that you know, has gone into your DMS understands that it’s not really easy. I mean, imagine if I was going to cover this topic in a DM. You can’t just do that. Right. But we’ll get those questions. Hey, I feel burnout. What can I do? Oh, here’s a podcast on burnout. Yeah, but can you just tell me like, No, you know, I can’t, and, but some people will go down the rabbit hole. And it’s never enough. Your financial obligations, your family obligations, you know, it’s very easy to get swallowed by family.
It is, you know, they say, blood is thicker than water. But man, you can drown in both. There are a lot of folks out there. And I think everybody can relate. You love your family, you’ll do anything for them. But you can easily get pulled into the family drama wheel. And then it just feels like it’s never enough. I’ve had athletes that get out of poor socio economic situations. They bought their mom a house, they’ve done this, they’ve done that. Yet the minute they take a vacation, that family is calling them selfish, and oh, you need to do more for us or what have you. And they think, hey, wait a minute. I went through this journey. And yeah, you supported me and yeah, you gave me life. And yeah, you did these things. And I love you. And I show you I love you. But when does it end?
Right. And I again, I’m transparent is all get out guys. I’ve felt like this I have had situations. And boohoo Poor me. I’m not asking for sympathy. I’m just being honest. Right? Like, what’s the point of using other examples and not getting personal with you? I you know, there were times where I wrote conscious coaching in 2017. Now, this is a 300 page book that I wrote, that gives my best advice at the time on coaching, right? Or like leadership in the context of coaching? Because I’ve talked about it before. Yes, I wrote it as a strength coach, but it applies to anything because it’s talking about different personalities and how to deal with this. So I made that in 2017, I made a follow up online course it was immersive in 2018, a whole course in 2019, how to help people who feel stuck in their careers, and what have you. It’s called Valued.
I made a whole course about how to ethically brand yourself, you know, just manage the murkiness of how to get into a career field that’s hyper competitive. And there’s not always a blueprint, we did that. We create podcasts. I mean, we’re on episode 150 something. And there were times where I just felt like, you know, then you’d get a request, Hey, man, can you send me a book for free? Or hey, can you do this? Or hey, can you do that? And then you tell them, we’ll check this out, actually, or this resource might help. And they don’t want to do it, that I’ve looked at my wife. And I’m like, you know, I might go away for a while. Like, it gets to the point where people get so expectant, that when you have a YouTube channel, a podcast, or book courses, a newsletter, all this.
Yeah, they want you to answer their question in their way, the way that they want it, which a lot of times they’re just looking for affirmation, instead of education, that I felt like, you know what, I may just stop for a while because I don’t want to spoon feed, you know, because even if I spoon fed somebody, you’d still have to figure out how to swallow it. Right? So that’s where I felt those kinds of things. I don’t know about you guys. But I know that there’s other folks that feel like that.
So let’s put some phrases to it. And these are people that we actually interviewed, these are people that we’ve interviewed from a wide variety of fields. Because if you feel like, Hey, I think maybe I have some burnout. But I don’t know, what’s that conversation with myself sound like, right, so we’re thinking about emotional exhaustion. Here are some quotes. And I’m not going to give the names to protect the privacy. My love for the field remains, but my body is literally breaking down. And it’s becoming harder and harder for me to see the point and continually putting my family through this long hours moves average to slightly above average pay. But if you look at it, I’m making far less than minimum wage, even though I’m giving my all.
I didn’t get into this for the money. But at some point I’d like to be able to provide for my family without glorifying some kind of grind. Another one, the job doesn’t exhaust me as much as the ego and politics within it does that’s draining. Coaches are supposed to be able to be competitive, but they shouldn’t have to be cutthroat. Here’s another one. I love everything about my field, but I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to support my family given our financial situation. I feel guilty that my passion is bankrupting us. And I’ll do one more. I believe in everything I do as a, and I’ll leave this one blank. Well, I guess it doesn’t give anything as a nurse, I sacrifice family time, my health, my finances, yet I often find myself depleted and doubting that I’ll ever be able to retire.
Right. So these are not people that are lazy guys. You know, these are people that feel real stuff. Now let’s talk about cynicism and detachment. I’ve been at three different universities with my job. And regardless of how strong or fast we got the kids, I found myself and my staff on the chopping block, simply because the Sport Coach didn’t win enough games. Another one, I got into pro sport and thought I’d be working with the best in the world, in terms of colleagues and other professionals. Instead, it often seems like everybody is more worried with protecting their own job instead of doing what’s best for others.
And we had a very similar one from somebody in a highly competitive law firm in Virginia. Another one is I’m frustrated with the community that I’m a part of, there is poor quality of leadership. And the fact that social media and flashy solutions is what seems to attract and receive the most praise really brings me to feel like good work doesn’t matter anymore. Those are some comments that you feel on cynicism. And let’s talk about inefficacy. I feel like there’s no clear path forward, it’s very frustrating to see others get jobs they want. While I’m terrified of having to leave my field or that I have to advertise myself for my services to the highest extent to even get my work notice.
It just seems like there are no opportunities, and I feel constant uncertainty and what I do another, I rarely see anybody from the top, meaning leadership around and if I do, they essentially write me off as support staff, they have no idea what I actually do, nor do they actually even care. Right. So we start to see these kinds of things. Here’s one more from the world of sport, I begin to accept the reality that very few coaches or athletes seem to even care about the level of expertise, I spent 10s of 1000s of dollars, getting degrees, certifications, licenses, everything that I needed to do, but people just want something that seems harder looks cool.
This is examples. These are examples of emotional exhaustion and cynicism and efficacy and their normal things. Right. So let’s break this down even further. If you’re still kind of going down this checklist or maybe you work with somebody or your spouse, I’m gonna break it into really three pieces. There’s emotional signs, there’s physical signs, and then there’s work related. And this has been adapted from research of Lombardo from 2001, where they talk about compassion, fatigue and nursing in particular. So emotional signs of burnout can be mood swings, restlessness, anxiety, again, detachmen, irritability, loss of objectivity and focus, short term recall memory degradation, all those pieces.
Physical can be decreased physical strength, because so much of when you’re stressed out, right, we have hormones in the body that can literally be catabolic. Or if for those of you not familiar with the nomenclature, just cannibalizing in nature, they break you down. Sleep disturbances increase resting heart rate, it can give you digestive issues, right, you get this and this isn’t like one of those commercials where the like, pay attention for side effects, right where they show somebody enjoying their best life. Now that they’re on a medication, but then it goes into may cause bleeding death, diarrhea, right? I think you guys understand what I’m talking about with that
The work related pieces, avoidance, reduce compassionate work, you might get overly sensitive, you feel like you’re teaching methods, whatever you’re doing whatever you’re leading, there’s a depersonalization. Again, you’re just going through the words, you’re stating everything that you should, but there’s no personal touch to that. You have these pendulum like swings in the intensity or focus you bring to work, a decrease in accountability, because you just start detaching these are all huge pieces. So in conclusion of those, that aspect of the dimensions of burnout, understand that it’s situational.
It is an individual experience that is specific to work context, not everybody is going to experience the same symptoms, not everybody is going to feel like they have that kind of stress and that kind of situation. It just tends to impact more highly impact. Those who are the hardest workers, biggest thinkers most committed, very common in medical, very common in firefighters, very common and EMTs. And also those who have high expectations of themselves. I think I’ve made that point clear, hopefully.
So and customer service as well. If you’re in a customer service field, or a field that’s very social, relational technical in nature, right? These are where you start to feel these things. So one thing that amplifies it as well as the culture of that profession, what is the culture I’ll never forget, one of the first books I was given in my profession was first in last out lessons of the New York Fire Department and great book for many reasons. But the message and the pretense in which I was given, it was clear that essentially, you’re expected to be here at all times, you’re expected to sacrifice nearly everything for this. And if you don’t get in another field, and that’s fine in certain parts, guys
Like I’d be lying to you, if I told you that I didn’t live breathe, die for that kind of lifestyle for a certain period of time. But again, there becomes a point where you can’t confuse just being somewhere for being productive. Don’t confuse added activity for productivity, right? There’s this glorification of busy because people are trying to prove their value. It’s a type of value signaling when you’re somebody that is constantly Well, I’m there to turn the lights on, and I’m there to turn the lights off. Now. That’s how it has to be great. If you’re a small business owner, you’re a janitor, you’re something like that. And you do that awesome, right?
But I’m talking about the people that take pictures of themselves waking up at 4 30 in the morning, talking about how the wolves eat the sheep and the lions eat the cats or whatever the hell people are eating and animals are digesting what good has ever come from glorifying the grind. It’s looked at and there’s a term for it on social media now as hustle porn. Literally everybody just virtue signaling how hard they work, how hard they do this, and it’s all a show. It’s all this show. There’s no memorials for fallen nurses, strength coaches, EMTs firefighters, and there’s gonna be somebody it’s like, well, actually, there is I’m talking about there’s not something where your name is etched in stone, because you accumulated more hours on your feet than somebody else.
That’s just not how that works. And you people that don’t understand that just blow past these warning signs, where they think, Well, I’m not committed enough and I’m just not passionate enough or you can be in a profession to where they use this guilt or pressure on you. This is what we’d call a literally a pressure tactic. If you’re in our bot, in course, you look at this where people that are in charge of the jobs of folks like this, often use guilt or pressure tactics to make you question your own commitment. If you haven’t listened to, we had an episode. It was called the weaponization of guilt, and I’m going to look it up for you in terms of what episode it was, because I want you to go back if you understand this and listen to it.
It’s episode 56, the weaponization of guilt and not being a sucker, Episode 56 of our podcasts, art of coaching podcast. And this is stuff when when people try saying, oh, you know, if you’re really committed, you do this, or I’ve had people that asked me to come speak for free. And when I tell them, hey, I mean, the economics of that doesn’t work. I have a family, a business, a staff, what have you. I’ve literally had people say, well, we just thought speaking for this organization, or this university would be great exposure for you and your brand. Literally, I’ve had people tell me that people that I mean names, you’d recognize if you’re in the strength and conditioning field, and companies, you’d recognize if you’re in other fields
But what I have realized is the people that are the most serious about bringing great content to their folks, they pay and they never, they never question that once. Right, they understand that value is something you pay for. So just be aware of that the more somebody starts to question your commitment or passion, if you’re not the first one and the last one out, if you’re not literally burning yourself to the ground and all that stuff. And make no mistake, that is not an excuse to be lazy.
So if you’re an intern, and you’re like, Well, you know, I shouldn’t have to do this, or what have you, you absolutely are gonna have in any field, you’re gonna have to pay your dues to a degree. Now it means different things to different people. And it’s beyond the scope of this podcast. But I am certainly not saying that because you don’t need to be first in last out your entire life, that you should also be the guy or gal looking for the easy road. Alright, I’m not going to go through. I know we live in like a time of like canceled culture where you have to say like the right thing for people not to get mad and argue it. I’m not playing that game.
Let’s talk a little bit more about this. Right? If you think about commitment, because there is this unique thing where we’re talking about if people will try to leverage your commitment, or your sense of commitment against you, it’s important to know the definition of that. Because there is a difference between commitment and naivete. I’ve worked with people who think what they’re doing is showing how committed they are. But really, they’re just showing how naive they are. They’re showing their bosses or superiors like oh, he or she will pretty much do whatever, like why should we pay them more.
They’re just, they’re happy to be here. And you know, they’re doing this to kind of Prop themselves up and make it look like they’re a grinder they’re, why pay more, right? That’s why I always think it’s funny when people are like, Oh, I’m not in it for the money. And they let people proudly know that whatever profession there and I’m like, congratulations. You’re letting people know who hire you that like you will literally work nonstop for barely any cash like hope. Hope that’s awesome, right? And again, that’s a form of value signaling and design. honesty and people kind of bragging and marketing themselves while trying to make it look like they’re not bragging or marketing themselves. I’m not in it for the money.
They’re appealing to moral integrity. So when we look at commitment, it there’s three parts of this. And we referenced this in the weaponization of guilt, but it’s worth repeating. Commitment is a social act, that specifically refers to the attachment of one person to certain values related to organizational goals. And that’s from erosion act 2013. I’ll say it again, commitment is a social act, that specifically refers to the attachment of one person, whether it’s a coach, a nurse, a firefighter, a tech person, what have you to certain values related to organizational goals, and there’s three aspects of commitment. And follow this, I’m gonna break it down for you. There’s affective commitment, right? This is if you want to stay, let’s imagine somebody’s working for an organization. And they’re really burnout, there’s so burnout, but they’re not sure if they should leave or they’re in a field that they’re burnout on. And they’re not sure if they should leave, they appreciate it, but they’re trying to evolve in their career.
This is if you want to stay with an organization or in a field, due to some kind of emotional attachment to it, you have a personal identification with it. And I’ll give examples in a minute. Just let me get through this, right. So if you feel like, yeah, let me go on, normative is, you feel like you have a moral obligation to say, Oh, I, you know, I couldn’t leave them right now it’s a pandemic, or they were the first ones to really take a chance on me like I couldn’t possibly leave, right. It’s very much influenced by social norms or social comparison. I have had people that talked to me about wanting to leave top tier positions. But they feel like if they do, that their peers will look down on them that they’ll lose that social status. And we’ll talk about where that fits categorically in a moment.
But with normative commitment, it’s a lot about how committed you think you should be. And there’s a lot of self comparison of how committed others seem to be and you know, you don’t really see the true self a lot of times when you’re watching others. And that’s not just a social media thing. That’s a live thing. If you’re not familiar with Impression management, definitely, definitely go back and listen to that episode of the podcast, we try to make this podcast an ecosystem. So that it’s never one episode, right? You can go to one episode and learn more about this in another episode, because we feel like that’s the most effective way to teach in the context of the podcast, as opposed to trying to cram everything into one.
If you want to know about impression management and how people wear different masks and different faces. That’s episode 117. All right, back to this. And the third category is continuance, hey, I feel stuck. And I’m staying because it’s just too costly to leave. My wife or my husband’s got a great job certainly couldn’t uproot them. My kids have a great school, right? Or I just, maybe sometimes people just aren’t confident. And they’re freaked out that if they leave, that they may not get another job. So to break this down, think of it simply like this, okay? People tend to stay with organizations or in certain fields, because of Affective reasons, meaning they want to, yeah, I identify as this, this is what I feel like I want to do and, and I love it. And I’m all about this and, and this is what I want to do.
I’m in civil service, or I’m a civil servant. And I love giving or I’m a nurse, and I love helping this or I’m a doctor and I want to save lives, or I’m a strength coach, and I love guiding kids and showing them the value of hard work and discipline. Normative reasons is you feel like you ought to.I can’t leave, they took a chance on me, we already talked about this, right? They took a chance on me it was my first job or I’d put them in a tough spot. It’s a small business, and continuances feeling like you have to want to ought to and have to. Now it’s also influenced by option value. Within if you’re working within an organization, do they provide a lot of opportunities for growth and what have you but the point is, guys is like all decisions. Commitment is a choice led by both rational and emotional elements of decision making.
A lot of times if people feel like the normative side they ought to or continuance they have to, they’re really making up some reasons there that aren’t true. But as many of you know, especially if you’ve read my book or gone through my course, the literature shows that we tend to make decisions emotionally first, and then we back it through rationalization or information and stats and facts. So that’s a little bit of this crossroad between commitment and naivete, and the most committed will also tend to fall victim to this sunk cost fallacy.
We talked about this in a webinar. It’s completely free. You guys can download right? It’s artofcoaching.com/unstuck, artofcoaching.com/unstuck. We talk about a lot of this stuff, especially if you’re a strength coach. It’s not just for strength coaches, but if you are a strength coach, you need to watch it because our industry has been in a lot of these fluxes, it’s free, you get slides, no excuses, I don’t want to hear it. But the sunk cost fallacy can be really, really dangerous where, you know, this idea that somebody is likely to continuous something, if you’ve already invested a lot of time, money or effort, oh, I’ve done this for so long. If I switch now, you know, I’m going to be in this position, or this bad thing is going to happen or what have you know, guys, you can’t think like that.
So, let’s get to some solutions. And I’ll and I’ll breeze through this. But I still want to give you something when we look at what we call it art of coaching the predictors of burnout. We talked about it as the succumbing six, right, the succumbing six, like the number six, there’s workload, there’s your sense of control. There’s the reward you receive for the work you do, the community, you’re a part of this concept of fairness and values. And I’m going to give a brief overview. And if you like this stuff, we’ll dive deeper into it, right.
And if you really like it, and you’re like, Man, I want the slides and I want this, this is all part of our Valued course. It’s all package. It’s all in Valued. And again, I’ve said this till my face is blue. Yes, I talk about strength and conditioning in athletes, because that’s what I was doing at the time I made the course. But it applies to everybody you get look at the books on your bookshelf, have you read something by a doctor and academic somebody in the military? Are you those things? No. So check it out, you can go to valuedcourse.com.
But workload is one big piece. And it’s not necessarily the most important predictor of burnout. But it is definitely in the big three. This if you feel like you have too much to do and not enough time and not enough resources. So don’t think of workload, as in just the direct sense of hours you work or it’s a lot of it is the demands and the time constraints and the lack or availability of resources, right? Think about it’s all the ancillary tasks you have to do in addition to your job, what do you have to do from an admin standpoint? What about a research standpoint? Do you have to do recruiting? Do you have to do additional marketing and management?
Those of you that are small business owners, you understand this. And I have to do this a lot of my job is this in addition to the coaching of athletes and coaching of executives, the education we do, helping with somebody run for mayor this year, all those things, we got to do a lot of research to help people with these things. And then there’s admin and websites go down, you get it. Right. So even feelings of information overload if there’s a tiny you have to learn to do your job, well can be a part of that. That is the workload part of the succumbing six, control.
Control is all about the degree of autonomy you have in your job or your position or your life. Do you have discretion over not just what you do, but how you do it? Right now that creative freedom so to speak, do you feel micromanage? Do you feel like you’re asked to perform unethical tasks, that’s a factor of control. Because you might feel like you have resistance, right? You’re asked to do unethical things, or maybe ethical things, but the way somebody asked you to do it is super unethical, and it puts you in an uncomfortable situation.
If you feel like you just have no control over these things. And yyou are micromanaged to the fullest and pressured into situations that may be less than we’ll just say, stellar. That’s a control aspect of the burnout predictor. I mean, I know that there were times as a strength coach, I was asked to punish athletes. And it was beyond punishment that made sense it was borderline punitive. And you kind of go along with it at one point in your career, but then you look and you’re like, no, like, I’m not not doing that. And I’ll do something else. And there were times where I had to, you know, kind of trick that had Sport Coach to make them think I was going to do that.
But really, I’d switch up the quote unquote, punishment, to make sure that my point got across or the point that they were trying to get across, get across, but it wasn’t going to harm them, or injure them. But there’s a lot of people that are put in situations where they have to do some pretty weird things, because hey, gotta keep my job, right? Gotta keep my job. Rewards. Now, this isn’t what you may think this isn’t so much about salary and benefits. But social rewards, guys, it’s a reason why I wanted to give recognition to the individuals I mentioned the beginning, right, John and Allie and Nate and Jordan and Atlanta. And if you hear this 10 years from now, maybe some of these people aren’t even with us anymore, that doesn’t matter.
What matters is that you recognize and you appreciate them for the work they did do. Right? And it doesn’t mean you gotta go hug everybody and pull up a couch. You guys know what this means? We should be beyond the point where I have to disclaim these things. If you’re that kind of person listening and you’re like. Just are people recognizing your value. Do they recognize your contributions? Do they recognize your skill? You know, do they see you there are so many people that they’ll grind themselves into the ground just because they want to be seen as a true coach or a true professional? Well, whose definition of that? Are you trying to meet really?
I found out a lot of times I was trying to meet my own unattainable definition. And if I was trying to always meet because I’m not really competitive with other folks. I’m very competitive with myself. I see this alter ego of me that, you know, he does all these things, and yada, yada yada. But like, I also had to realize that this alter ego lives an impossible reality. You know, and I can’t compare myself to past versions of myself, either. Because he wasn’t married, he didn’t have a kid. He didn’t have a book and a speaking career. He was just a coach, and he had to do this. And so that gets really dangerous, right? But you have to just decide are your efforts going completely unrequited? Because if so, that’s an issue.
But you also have to have realistic expectations at every single time. You can’t be thanked or applauded or what have you. Right. And, and I know ally, if you’re listening to this, or even you know, my wife or Adam, they would never expect it. Hey, every episode, I’m gonna say this and what have you that I mean, if somebody needs that, that’s a level of dependence. So it does go both ways, right? It goes both ways that people feel like they always have to have they want, they always have to have recognition. Three more.
Another part of the succumbing six is this sense of community. Right? How are your relationships in the workplace and across the field, we found in the research that relationships with other coaches, is one of the primary stressors of coaches. They so badly want the respect of other top coaches or other coaches that it’s just a stressor. And we see this in medical as well, with doctors and surgeons, we see this in the legal side of things, we see this in politics, we see this and again, this isn’t unique to one field, the relationships you have with other people that you respect in your field, or the people that you feel like you’re competitive with or what have you, how you’re perceived, that’s a huge internal stressor.
You know, what your social capital, like, you have bridging and bonding capital meaning and there’s a whole episode on this, I’m not trying to use esoteric terms to impress you. I’m also just trying to balance talking to new listeners and old listeners, this idea of how diverse is your network? Is your network replete with just you know, people you can reach out to that, you know, kind of, or the kind of people that would bring you chicken soup or or help you out? If you were sick? Or had an emergency? What’s the ratio there because you have to have a diverse aspect of social capital, and all networks aren’t created equal. So the community you feel is huge.
And the last two, one is fairness. And this is a tricky term. I don’t always like the term fairness. Because you can’t have fairness to everybody at all times, right? There can be fairness in terms of opportunities to a degree, but there’s not always going to be fairness and outcomes, because some people don’t always do the work. But this is more about in the context of your job, not life. How much do you feel just gate kept, or this feeling like you’re running into glass ceilings, wherever you go? There’s a lot of examples of this, you could just feel like maybe there’s an award your profession gives out that you’re not able to attain because you’re not in the right position, or you’re not in the right kind of sector, whether it’s team or private.
Or maybe it’s something that’s given to only people of a certain specialty and or maybe only people that whatever the reason, maybe you have a glass ceiling, we’ve seen gender related issues to this policies, practices, the opportunities, are they actually fair functioning or outdated. I remember one time, I was told, Hey, if you want to grow, if you want to make some more money, and you can help grow this NFL program, and at the time, it was anemic, and you know, myself and the efforts of other people were able to grow up pretty substantially. And I got a kicker or I got a bonus for doing that.
But then when it came time for next year’s goals, and what have you, they set a number so ridiculously high that there was no way I was going to reach it. And they basically said, Well, hey, well, if you can do it there, you know, in this situation, you should be able to double it now that you’ve got some momentum. And that just didn’t make sense, because I still wasn’t given any marketing support. I wasn’t you know, a lot of this was like word of mouth, I was getting people into the program, because you provided them with an excellent service, and they tell a friend and tell a friend and tell a friend.
And then even when we would grow it, I had to argue over essentially two and a half percent commission, it was just kind of ridiculous. There were so many different hoops to jump through. And the hoops weren’t based off sound math, it was based off just this impossibility of well, let’s see how far we can use this carrot stick mentality to get somebody to jump right. It’s silly. If you guys are in strength and conditioning, you get this like a private sector coach, even though there may be somebody right now who’s 45 has trained 1000s of athletes, small facility, maybe even out of their garage, you can never be awarded a master strength coach designation
That is only awarded to people in the collegiate setting or there’s other designations for the team setting. So literally, even if you’re a great coach and has had to bootstrap it, you don’t have all the tools, tech and toys and the budget. You can never ever ever be designated as a master strength coach. I always think that’s ridiculous. That’s ridiculous. You can’t have that. And those things may not matter to people and they shouldn’t you know, but it’s also reasonable if it does upset you because there are some people that they dedicate themselves to a certain craft and whether it’s acting or what have you, and they’d like to be recognized for that there’s nothing wrong with fair expectations of that to a degree as long as it doesn’t turn into entitlement.
And then finally it’s talked about values, this can be a huge predictor of burnout. Why are you there? And what do you care about in the first place? Right? Is this place even ethical? Are you doing it for the right reasons? Are you there just to kind of prop yourself up? What’s the expectation of why you even got into that job? Why did you take that role? Why did you seek that opportunity? Because that may not make a whole lot of sense. So in essence, like the argument that’s been going on in burnout research for a long time is is the person is it the position? Is it the situation? Is it their perception, it’s none of the above and singularity.
Rather, it’s about finding the fit between the person their values and the work to be done. You have got to become better, you a collective, we actually always have to be better at identifying and acting upon mismatches if you’re taking jobs just because of status, or money. Or maybe it’s an ideal location, you have to look at what else are you sacrificing? And what level of ambiguity are you going into? And are you comfortable with that. You have to look at these asymmetries. It is not about who you are, it’s also about who you’re trying to support, the work you’re doing. And all these pieces, notice that the word balance wasn’t used. Because work life balance doesn’t really exist.
That’s one thing we’re not talking about here. Because really, guy’s when it comes to burnout, and work life balance, and all these things you have to understand it’s not about balance, it’s about seasons, there are times in your life, where you’re going to be able to see your family more, there are times in your life, we’re gonna have to see them less if you want to be one of the best at what you do. There are times where like, like anything, there are times if you’re trying to get in shape, it makes more sense to partake in a rigorous regimen. And then there are times where it doesn’t, right, like you’re not going to start the hardest training or diet nutrition program that you’ve ever tried in the world during the holidays.
And if you do, just a little silly, right, like think of other times a year where that may line up with your schedule better. But we have these expectations of balance in all things. And that’s not how that works. That best we find a job or a situation that’s a fit or a fusion if you prefer that term, between our work our life and our values. And even if you do again, understand that it’s gonna go in seasons, there’s gonna be times where there’s an offseason, there’s an end season, there’s all these pieces. So again, my strength coaches, just like volumes and intensities scale across the spectrum. For our athletes, the same things gonna happen in your life.
It is like if you’re in the corporate world, when you launch a new product, what are you looking at here, my one of my good neighbors or good friends who’s my neighbor in the tech space. And there are times where I didn’t see this guy for like a month. And he barely saw his family Well, other than the fact that he’s in the pandemic, but locked in a room because they had to do a big launch. And but when they when they’re done with that they maximize the time. So to take advantage of the seasons, maximize your downtime, set limits, communicate, plan with your loved ones get off the grid, I tried to go up to this place, about 90 minutes north of here, I get off the grid.
My goal one day is to be in a financial position where I can buy our family a cabin, it’s in Blue Ridge, Georgia, if you’ve ever been, that’s a goal of mine, that’s a huge I need that solitude sometimes. And you need to learn to say no, not just other people, but your perfectionism. Chill out, chill out, right? Learn how to delegate, you don’t have to do everything. If you’re habitually too busy, for family, then you’re failing. That’s what you need to understand. Right? So if you want to put out the fire, that’s a huge part of those things. You’ve got to identify those mismatches in demand overload, jobs and secure like how much security is your job going to provide you?
It’s a big reason why I believe in entrepreneurship. There are a lot of people in my field strengthing conditioning that thought I was a sellout by starting a small business and becoming an entrepreneur. Nonsense. I just don’t want people I’ve been in positions where I was employed. And people were owning my intellectual property people could fire me at will all these things. I wanted to decrease that and I wanted to it’s no different than a again, if you’re a hip hop fan, or you know a music fan in general, you understand that Prince owned his own masters, Jay Z does the same thing. People start their own record labels, this is common, right? So understand these things.
And one thing, and again, it might be beyond the scope. We’ll do a second episode if you guys want it, but we’ve created a model. We’ve created a model for this that can help you with this. We call it the FIRE model. And yeah, I know, we all love these acronyms. But you know FIRE really stands for filter, identify, relate and evaluate, right filter, identify, relate and evaluate. And filter is all about you know, if you’re familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, you tend to see that physiological needs are at the bottom things like air, water, food, shelter, sleep, safety needs our next love belonging, self esteem, self actualization.
Well, what we propose with this filter model, we call it the five S filter, really at the bottom and it’s more of like a funnel. Like let’s start at the top at the top. You’ve got to understand self awareness. If you don’t understand yourself, your values your drives, what you’re willing to say no to adverse Be willing to kind of take on, then you’re really going to be screwed guys, you’re gonna get burnout a lot. Because you don’t really even know what you’re chasing, you’re all over the place, you’ve got to have self awareness, you’ve got to it’s why in my book conscious coaching, one of the first chapters is the three stages of self identification.
But everybody’s so quick to flip past that to the 16 archetypes to learn about all the personalities, you know, they may deal with in life and how they can coach or overcome or navigate those things. They skip right past the self awareness piece. I’m sorry, you can’t do it. It’s also why we have that what drives you quiz at artofcoaching.com/whatdrivesyou, like take these things, they’re little pieces, their conversation starters you want to have with yourself. And so I’d really, really, really urge you to check it out. Again, that’s artofcoaching.com/whatdrivesyou, or if you have my book, conscious coaching, go back through some of the three stages of internal identification.
Next, and I’m gonna get some hate mail for this is selfishness. Guys, you have to be selfish in life, you can’t be selfless. If you’re not selfish, you need to put your mask on first in an airplane to be able to help somebody else. Right? You can’t pour water from an empty bucket, how many analogies you want me to use. But you’ve got to be able to manage your health, your family, your finances, your friendships, all those things? And then it goes to social agility, right? Like, how effectively can you communicate? If you cannot effectively communicate and assert yourself, you’re gonna have a lot of issues with burnout. That is why that’s all we do it art of coaching, right?
As we focus on communication, behavior, change and influence. Because if you can’t communicate well, and you generally, all of us think we communicate better than we do. But I’d ask you this, how are you evaluated, really like, if you’ve gone and you’ve had a coach, like tell you, you’re a really good communicator, or you just think because people listen to you that you’re a great communicator, I’m sorry, there’s a lot of people that listen to what people say, and they don’t really believe in them, or they’re not always loyal to them. And then finally, service to others in scaling your impact.
But this filter, which is really the first type of that FIRE model, will help you understand how we’ve got to flip this, right. We’ve talked about the second part of the fire model identifying you have to be able to understand these weaknesses. That’s great that you have a hunger for knowledge. But that can lead to high end indigestion. You can get into curiosity can turn into overconsumption, you have to identify where you kind of have this mania, right? Where you’re maybe not backing off enough. And you always feel like you’re trying to be as productive as possible. Think about it this like what do you really need to know for the now and again, we can get into this later on, I want to get you guys on your way.
R, right, this is relate. A lot of times people don’t ask for help. It’s okay guys, like ask for help, the things we struggle with are the same things we don’t want to talk about. We have a coalition group, a mastermind at art of coaching. And this isn’t for like people in the billionaire boys club or 10x, your impact, or you got to have half a million dollars to join. We have coaches and leaders from all over that talk about things from maybe they want to start their own speaking career, maybe they’re just having trouble with their family, maybe they have issues with their spouse, maybe, you know, they’re trying to get into a new field, maybe they’re trying to whatever like but we invite everybody to come in because we realize that we don’t really live in a time where it’s easy to talk about the things that we struggle with, then none of its kumbaya shed a lot of its accountability.
But the bottom line is we provide a diverse opportunity for people to talk about things, right. And you can find all that on our coaching as well. But you have the relating is all about how what’s your social connectivity like? How prideful Are you in terms of, you know, not asking for help and what have you because you’ve got to understand the aspect that if you’re scared to leverage and lean on those within your community, that’s a long term losing pattern, and then evaluate. So again, you’ve got to be able to evaluate these things. We have this thing in our online course Valued. And again, you can perceive this as sales tactics.
It’s not I just can’t show you these things on the podcast guys again, but we created this kind of workplace RPE, this perceived exertion that you can scale and score, hey, what Yeah, where do I feel in terms of the workload, I have the lack of control, or maybe the control, I have the reward socially, that I get the level of community fairness and values, we have a whole worksheet there. So you can check that out. But if you collectively, if you look at this FIRE model of saying you can avoid burnout, by learning how to filter, some of the things that intrude in your life, your thoughts, your emotions, what have you identify the patterns of behavior you have that keep you going down this path, right? Your perfectionism or your desire to give, give, give, give, give, without, you know, giving yourself your ability to ask for help, right? The relating part and your ability to actually have a tool that helps you evaluate, you’re going to be in trouble, guys, you’re going to be in trouble.
So listen, this has been a super in depth episode. It’s one that I’ve wanted to do for a while, but I just want you to understand these things. So in summary, burnout is real. It has over a half century of research to support it. And it’s claiming more world class professionals every single day, especially And the era that we live in now, it just is what started out. As and you know, you deal with it if what started out as something important and meaningful and challenging for you has now become slightly unpleasant or it’s starting to feel unfulfilling or meaningless and you know, you love what you do. Or maybe you don’t anymore. But let’s say maybe you know, you love what you do.
But man, it just seems like something is getting sucked out something is awry. And you don’t know what that something is. When that energy is turning into exhaustion, involvement turns into cynicism, and you feel ineffective, you’re on that path. You can’t be prideful in your humility, learn the predictors, choose jobs based on fit, use that fire model, monitor your load weekly, see where you’re at, and addressing it. And focusing on yourself is not selfish. Ignoring it is because if you don’t address it, you’re gonna give people and frankly, I’m sorry, but shit tear, you’re gonna give them crap quality, you’re not going to be your best.
So like, the more prideful about this you are, the less you’re helping people. So even if you aren’t law, I’m committed to the craft. Or I want to help and yatta yatta. Like you’re not helping if you deny it. And even if you try to deny it, the people you work with are going to see it. And they’re going to perceive that they will know it’s perceived. So you will fit on the research supports this as well. Those of you who are stubborn strength coaches, I go back to you because other professions are more open to this. But let me give you some research price and Weiss, right show that burnout is perceived by athletes.
And when coaches are burnout, athletes perceive their coaches to be less skilled in teaching techniques. And in the strategies. They feel like there’s a reduced level of difficulty in their training and practice also pricing wise, that they feel like those coaches that are burnout have less care or concern for their team. And this is universal. So by not taking care of yourself, you’re negatively impacting those around you. I’m not telling you to be non competitive with yourself, I’m not telling you to go on some kumbaya retreat, whatever I am telling you to be aware. I’m telling you to be aware and be accountable.
If you guys want more on this. And online courses are your thing. And again, you want slides and downloads and you want to see all this stuff. And there’s so much information here again, go to valuedcourse.com. It’s for everybody, right? There’s payment plans. There’s all these things, it’s straightforward or just listen to this episode. Again, feel free to fill out the podcast reflections if courses aren’t for you. That’s okay. And when things return back to normal, we’re going to do workshops on this as well. So make sure you’re on our newsletter artofcoaching.com/begin. If there are if this is already something you’re listening to in the pandemic’s past, and again, it’s the future, it’s the future, reach out to info@artofcoaching.com and ask when our next seminar this is going to be
But the best way just to be on the newsletter, guys, and you won’t have to worry about it. I appreciate all of you. I do hope you have a happy holiday season or I hope you have a great day whenever you’re listening to this. And if you guys want to support the podcast, please leave an iTunes review. We’re trying our best. We’re not perfect. We’re not sponsored by some huge company. I’m not a celebrity. Clearly, this is a podcast for underdogs. It’s a podcast for you guys. It’s a podcast where we want people to take action and actually put these things to use in a meaningful way. Brett Bartholomew, signing off
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