Ep#120 Unsticking Yourself

Are you stuck in burnout or career growth?

Let's talk about breaking free from stuckness and overcoming burnout. The origins of stuckness lie in our self-belief and fears, and burnout symptoms prevent us seeing past them.  This is the cycle of exhaustion and frustration, and the behaviors that perpetuate it, including busywork and self-doubt.

Recovery of greatness comes from acts of self-kindness, goal-setting, and redefining success, as well as addressing the impact of childhood experiences on self-perception.

I teach self-support, making peace with failure, and seeking personal approval over external validation. Here is genuine possibility for a joyous life and successful recovery from burnout.

Show Notes:
Ep#35 Championing Yourself
Ep#117 Tending to your Soul 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi everyone, my name's Dex Randall, and this is the Burnout to Leadership podcast, where I teach professional men to recover from burnout and get back to passion and reward at work.

[00:00:22] Hello my friends, Dex here again today and this time I'm really keen to talk to you about if you are stuck in a situation that you don't love. This episode is really a little bit about how to unstick yourself, why you get stuck and how to unstick. Because if you're in burnout that is particularly hard! In fact what you're probably doing then is you're doing a lot of stuff every day and it's very hard and it's frustrating and it's endless and you're exhausted and you're trying to get on top of your workload.

[00:00:54] and your difficulties and your mood, but the tank's pretty empty and you're just stuck like this [00:01:00] hamster in a wheel trying to get through your day in abject misery, but you're trying to do it so that no further disaster strikes, and also so that nobody blames you for anything else they haven't already.

[00:01:13] Does it feel a little bit like that to you? Because that's how it felt to me. But probably for me it was with a lot more added shame that I wasn't doing my job very well. You're full of resentment of other people, your head hits the pillow every night looking for a safe place to lie, but sleep doesn't help you feel rested or better. Is that the kind of thing that's happening for you?

[00:01:35] Because then this is for you. Probably you want change so very badly, so desperately, but somehow you're finding it hard to actually create that change. You feel stuck in a situation that you hate, but paralyzed, not taking any directed action to create the change that you really need. And by the way, for all you coaches listening, the [00:02:00] same is true of many of the coaches that I work with, most of whom are fairly newly trained and trying to start a coaching business.

[00:02:08] Or an entrepreneurial career. And so what's happening there is, and this is in common with people in burnout, is they're rushing around doing a lot of busy work, thrashing around in marketing, social media, business training, and what I call 'almost networking'. It's the kind you do when you agree with yourself to be around people, but never talk about what you really need to talk about.

[00:02:34] Never get too close to the truth of the thing. And all the while feeling a little bit scared, lost, incompetent, doubtful, anxious, pressured, frustrated and stressed out, doing lots of stuff but nothing that really moves the needle of success or contentment. Nothing that really comes home. So this is for all of you who [00:03:00] desire a better life,

[00:03:01] but aren't making that happen and are thinking of yourself as stuck. So if you know what you need to change but you're not changing it, then first ask yourself specifically what would need to change for you to feel better? To feel okay again. Because if you don't define the goal, then it's going to be difficult for you to move towards it.

[00:03:27] So think about that now. What core thing or things need to change for you? I would recommend, in fact, that you journal on this every day, for example, for a week. Really find those core things, because when the core things change, all of the other miseries, all the secondary effects, the side effects are going to fall away by themselves.

[00:03:50] So set yourself that goal. And typically in burnout, it might be about being, and being seen to be, successful at work, or it might simply be about feeling better. [00:04:00] But if you don't currently have what you want, of course you're going to feel a bit flat. As an apparently intelligent, well educated human, previously able to conquer all things, capable of being a go getter in your environment.

[00:04:18] Anything less than that is going to come a bit hard and be very deflating. But as humble as you may be, you probably do inside of you want to be more of a superstar, a person that other people look up to. And if that sounds like you, and I used to think of myself this way too, pre burnout, then mediocrity in your role, or your status, or your results, it's probably going to lack appeal to you.

[00:04:50] So you're likely very ambitious, adventurous, certainly above average, very capable. I don't really see you being happy working in a fish and chip shop unless it's [00:05:00] extremely avant garde and creative. At least a five star fish shop selling caviar and lobster in some funky vintage truck.

[00:05:08] You get what I mean. Mediocrity, for those of us in burnout, it's generally not where we're trying to get to. And when I asked you to set a goal, to look at, okay, what's happening for me? What one thing or a couple of things do I need to improve to feel better? When I asked you that, did that make you wince, even just to hear it?

[00:05:30] Did you wish you didn't have to answer that question? Because if you're stuck and seeing yourself fail in small ways every day, you're probably not being very nice to yourself about that. So be nice. This is the revolution, right? It's come. It's here. Be your own favourite uncle or your mate. Or your grandparent.

[00:05:55] One with no skin in the game. One who cares [00:06:00] about your happiness much more than they care about your status or your wealth . Even though, of course, they want you to have all the good things. It's your happiness that comes first. Be in touch with that kind of person, that kind of thinking.

[00:06:14] I often suggest that people ask their future self, the person who has already overcome their current difficulties and blocks and who is now happy, contented and doing well. Because that future you already knows what to do to get back to thriving. So ask them, listen. There's a way of looking at yourself which needs to shift a little bit.

[00:06:37] So here's how I think about it . That person will come to me and pat me gently on the shoulder and I will ask them what they think needs to change for me to be happy. And no, I'm not asking to be successful per se, because success really is a side effect of being well functioning, being contented, of working in the groove.[00:07:00] 

[00:07:00] So everything is going to come back to flow, ease, to a place with much less strain, once you are contented and happy. And then you'll naturally be performing since you are almost certainly a talented and skilled human being. Success will organically follow a recovery to wellbeing. So I would focus on wellbeing first and success second, because I think if we're in burnout and desperate for success, you can't squeeze that result out of an empty tank, by sheer willpower and bitterness alone, because you've probably tried.

[00:07:38] To create that level of success that you seek and also wellbeing, it takes love and self kindness. A bit like, if you have a six year old and they come home from school and they've been bullied, you don't add more bullying to that. You help that little tiger feel good about himself, or herself.

[00:07:56] Burnout recovery is an act of love, no two [00:08:00] ways about it, and it's a love we don't have access to when we're in the throes of burnout, and that's why we're stuck. We don't believe in ourselves or approve of ourselves. We're not supporting ourselves or being encouraging. We criticize, judge, and blame ourselves for our plight, neglecting our emotional, physical, and social needs.

[00:08:24] And then we descend into fear, shame, and guilt like whipped dogs. I don't know if this is ringing any bells for you, but certainly how I felt. And still, when we're there, we try and force ourselves to outwork the burnout. We're failing, we must try harder. We're barking, like some drill sergeant, orders at ourselves, trying to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps, more or less by intimidation and shame.

[00:08:53] I think you know whether that works or not. It wouldn't work for a six year old. So it won't work for you. [00:09:00] It won't extract you from burnout, or from failing to start a new business or enterprise. Or from being stuck launching a coaching career. It's not going to save you from any of those things, being mean to yourself.

[00:09:14] And it's not going to work because your stuckness is rooted in emotional suffering already. So adding more emotional suffering isn't going to fix anything. So really when things got difficult and you didn't know how to fix them and throwing more firepower at them also didn't fix them.

[00:09:38] And when I say firepower, what I really mean is Energy. Effort. Busy work. Anxiety. Self criticism. Because that's what's really happening when we do that. And when you started telling yourself that you didn't know what to do, and nothing was working, and you were stuck, and you hated the whole thing, and you [00:10:00] wanted to walk away and become a gardener.

[00:10:03] When that cycle happened, I'm guessing it was actually an old pattern for you. And it brought up painful emotions that you probably had in childhood about not being enough. Not being good enough, or clever enough, or successful enough, or athletic enough, or slim enough, or outgoing enough, or studious enough.

[00:10:27] Or contributing enough. It was some lack of enoughness in the past. And when you hit that not enoughness block as an adult, it's a really potent showstopper. It still hurts so bad, right? And that moving forward will be even more painful than where you're stuck now. If you move forward, people are going to see you, call you out, give you more trouble, and your past sins are going to catch up with you, [00:11:00] or more will be expected of you, or you will expose yourself to more flak.

[00:11:06] So you start procrastinating, withdrawing to avoid that extra pain. And how that sometimes looks is your schedule looks really full of useful things. But either you're procrastinating and not doing them, or you're distracted by more urgent things, or each thing takes forever, or you're just playing on your phone, or somehow, time just disappears on you.

[00:11:31] And at the end of the day, you haven't completed anything really that would improve your situation. Because what you've done is you've put off anything that might involve risk or pain. And there's a little teeny tiny part of you that heaves a big sigh of relief at the end of the day because it's glad you're off the hook, that you can stop now.

[00:11:51] You didn't do the things that were going to feel unsafe for you. You might sneak off for a beer or collapse in a chair, hide behind a [00:12:00] movie, lose yourself in more busy work at home, but your brain's gonna be somewhere else. You've got no time or headspace for the family. You're just missing in action by that time.

[00:12:09] So really that's how you get off the hook. It doesn't feel good. So how is this thing that we're so frightened of stopping us from reaching out for success? It tells us we're shit and that we're not capable. Someone would have told us we weren't good enough as kids, and now we believe it hook, line, and sinker.

[00:12:32] Like it's some unwritten law that can't be transgressed. Every time we approach a new adventure or a new creative endeavor or a new solution that would transcend this belief, we flop back in self defeat. We just stop and go backwards. And sometimes it really feels massively unsafe to dare to be someone different.

[00:12:58] To be more successful [00:13:00] than our childhood blueprint. Funny, huh? And the worst thing is when that pops up, when we do get stuck against this roadblock of who we think we can and cannot be, we can't argue ourselves out of it. Rational thought is not effective. Because logic isn't as strong as feelings, and our feelings by this time are very strong.

[00:13:21] They're very preventive, especially the feelings we had as a child about our own worthiness.

[00:13:28] I think, I've been working with people who are stressed and hurting since 2015, about 10 years now, and I now believe That there's no more potent predictor of what you will and will not be able to achieve than how you felt about yourself in childhood and what you believed then that you could or could not do with safety.

[00:13:55] And I've been talking about this in the last few episodes about tending to your mind, body and [00:14:00] soul in order to enjoy your life and flourish. And indeed I talk about it a lot and I think it's very important to recovery. As many ways as I can bring it to people, if they can hear themselves in what I'm saying and something just turns over in their mind, then hopefully that will instigate people to take the journey of burnout recovery or freeing themselves up as coach entrepreneurs.

[00:14:28] So really I'm all about helping people unstick.

[00:14:32] And the other way around of looking at this is if we've had parents who were very attentive, encouraging, present, attuned, supportive, loving, accepting, fault tolerant, and have less fixed expectations about us and who we should be, or maybe if we've had another adult in our lives who fulfilled that role and could give us that.

[00:14:59] We're actually going to [00:15:00] believe in ourselves quite strongly and have a very strong sense of self and it being okay to be ourselves. And that will cause us to be much more resilient as adults. We'll have a lot more courage to be adventurous, exploring not just the world and what's possible out there, but our own inner landscape.

[00:15:20] We won't have a booby trapped sense of self. And I have met such parents, unflappable in the face of the choices that their offspring make. I'm looking at you, Di, frankly, in awe. But I myself didn't have an upbringing like that. And perhaps your parents or carers were not unstintingly supportive of you, and you didn't get that stable base to work from either.

[00:15:46] And of course, as always, no disparagement to those parents who couldn't give us that. Because to a fault, they would have been doing the best that they could, given what they had available to them. [00:16:00] But I think now, with you as an adult, it may be that you find yourself deficient. You see yourself as deficient.

[00:16:08] And maybe you won't go to places that you profitably could or would like to, because your own inner beliefs keep triggering your adrenaline whenever you try and go there. So it's very helpful then to reexamine on purpose, really explicitly, who you think you are and to start making a deal with failure to meet those early expectations of you.

[00:16:38] If you can choose to make a stand that you are a fundamentally good person, and that mistakes or failures or even criticism of any kind are actually okay. They're manageable, they're forgivable, they're just part of life. So if we can turn down the volume on self [00:17:00] judgment, that is so often a prevailing voice in our lives in burnout or when we're stuck, it's super helpful and we can do that by choice.

[00:17:12] So what you'll do is when you learn to reorient that inner voice to be more supportive of you, it creates a bit more space around you, a bit more acceptance for yourself to simply be who you are without reprimand. And it makes a really huge difference. I call this learning to champion yourself.

[00:17:34] And it's what I teach to my clients. So they begin to feel safer in daily life and stop seeing their so called shortcomings everywhere. They notice their own goodness on purpose and they come out of their shells and relax. They live their best life. And work and love more freely. I think when I see this happen in my clients, what I'm really looking at is a get out of [00:18:00] jail moment.

[00:18:03] And we get there by working skillfully with anything and everything that causes them to become stuck and feel not good enough as they move through work and through life. Because that stuckness always arises from fear. Fear of what will happen if they do take steps forward. So if you feel stuck yourself, ask yourself, what am I afraid will happen if I move forward?

[00:18:28] Often, there's a big cascade of thoughts. A really big drama starts to unfold. If we make that speech. Or that social media post. If we wear different clothes. Or admit to not liking football. Or don't go to the parent teacher conference. Then this huge, dramatic, hysterical event will unfold and make a huge mess.

[00:18:52] And give us a lot of emotional pain. I'm only laughing because this human habit of ours to do that is so regrettable, but it's so universal [00:19:00] and I'm not immune to it by any means. But when all that drama thinking comes up after the fact, if we do the thing, if we get brave and do the thing, mostly we don't, but if we did, then generally little or none of that drama would unfold unless we ourselves bring it out to play and orchestrate our own demise.

[00:19:23] Which we often do. Ultimately, the truth is, as long as you're on side with your own decision, and as long as you choose to back yourself on them, then other people's opinions are really not that important, and nowhere near as important as your own. Because the voice in your head is your own, right? If you like and approve of yourself, as your full self, whoever you truly are on the inside, It's going to create the resilience that you've always wished that you had.

[00:19:55] That child inside you who's fearful of moving forward needs to [00:20:00] be held and supported. They need to be approved of and receive unconditional love and care. They need to feel safe on a really deep level, And have released the energy of that resistance, that stuckness and let you move on in your life.

[00:20:18] And I really don't care if you're built like a rugby player. Your inner self is still young and tender and scared and needs your protection and care. Luckily, in the coaching process, as I said, There are techniques to improve your inner rapport, finding ways to love and respect who you actually are on the inside to help you discover your blocks and transform that stuck energy into passion and action in the direction that you want to go.

[00:20:51] Really, you just have to be willing to take that journey. And it might appear to be A frightening journey, but it [00:21:00] isn't anywhere near as frightening as the journey you're already on every day. It's actually a lot more pleasant and there's a lot more fun involved. Because really the whole of burnout recovery coaching is about transforming the quality of your life.

[00:21:14] Learning to live more joyously in your own skin. Because it's okay to be you. Only you can create these great things that you have inside you out in the world. And that journey to enjoying being you is available to you. Even though you may be now stuck. Even though you may be now in burnout or not starting your business.

[00:21:37] And I can teach you all the skills you need to take you on that journey. So if any of that does appeal to you, if you're burnt out and fed up with being stuck, you must come and talk to me about how to recover quickly and sustainably to get back to your best performance, leadership, success, and most of all, enjoyment inside work and out.

[00:21:59] If you'd [00:22:00] like that, you can book an appointment to talk to me at DexRandall.Com. If you enjoyed this episode today, you might also enjoy episode 117 on Tending to Your Soul and episode 36 on How to Champion Yourself. I'm also asking you please to help me reach more people in burnout by rating and reviewing the podcast.

[00:22:24] I really do appreciate your support. And if you know somebody else who's heading towards or in burnout, Please send them the podcast link because it's packed, as with practical tips for burnout recovery. And I recommend that new people listen to the first five episodes to get started. Thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:22:46] I really appreciate you being here.