Breaking Up With Burnout: How 30 Seconds Changed Everything

From eye-rolling skeptic to daily practitioner, my mindfulness journey wasn't sparked by spiritual awakening but by necessity when burnout finally caught up with me. After years of dismissing mindfulness as fluffy self-indulgence for those who had the luxury of sitting still, I reluctantly gave it a try—starting with just 30 seconds while brushing my teeth.

The science ultimately convinced me. Research from Harvard and Stanford shows that even brief mindful moments (1-3 minutes) reduce stress hormones and rewire how our brains respond to triggers. This isn't mystical mumbo-jumbo; it's your nervous system recalibrating and your brain taking a break from autopilot. And contrary to what I'd always believed, there's nothing weak about choosing presence. Mindfulness doesn't eliminate difficulties—it builds your capacity to face them without immediately reacting.

Most days my mind still races like "a toddler on red cordial," but the difference is tangible. When someone cuts me off in traffic or life throws me sideways, I don't immediately go from zero to one hundred. For fellow skeptics, my advice is simple: don't make time—use time. Incorporate mindfulness into activities you already do. Focus on one sense. Notice resistance but stay anyway. You don't need candles, chanting, or even calmness to practice mindfulness—you just need willingness. What beliefs about mindfulness are holding you back? Where in your life do you push through instead of pausing? What's one way you could try mindfulness on your terms this week? Join the conversation and share your experience.

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Chapters

• 0:18 My Skepticism About Mindfulness
• 1:00 Hitting The Wall
• 2:25 What Science Reveals About Mindfulness
• 3:21 From Struggle To Control
• 4:59 Three Practical Mindfulness Tips
• 6:01 Mindfulness On Your Terms

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:18

Welcome back to another edition of GDW, unspoken, where we discuss stuff we don't typically talk about but probably should. And we're here with Season 10, episode 3. I didn't believe in mindfulness either, and so here's what's changed. I'm not going to lie to you, I didn't believe in it. I actually didn't believe at all. I thought it was fluffy, a bit self-indulgent. But the spiritual crowd for people who, I guess, just like to sit still and I am definitely that person If you've ever met me, I'm not the person who can just or likes to sit still, and I've never been that person.

Speaker 1: 0:50

So today or tonight, I want to take you back into my before, before I saw mindfulness as a tool and before I understood the science, before I stopped rolling my eyes and started breathing on purpose. Because here's the truth I used to think mindfulness was a waste of time. I was too busy and I was too results-driven and too focused on productivity. And part of me maybe a really big part said I didn't want it to work, because if it did work, it meant I'd have to stop, I'd have to slow down, it meant I couldn't outrun the stuff I didn't want to feel and I'd build an identity around myself just pushing through and getting through the hard stuff and, I guess, building some kind of identity about that. I don't know about you, but does that sound familiar? We live in a world now where we're rewarded for performance, not presence. So when someone told me to just breathe or be still, I thought, yeah, that must be nice. But behind that sarcasm was burnout. I was fatigued. I actually had a nervous system that was screaming for a circuit breaker. I was actually wound up, cooked, struggling, and so what changed me wasn't some spiritual awakening, it was silence, it was stress, it was survival. I hit a wall and what I had the pushing, the powering through it wasn't enough anymore.

Speaker 1: 2:05

So, reluctantly, I actually gave it a go, and I think I've mentioned it before in a podcast, because I saw a couple of athletes who were doing it and they were telling their testimonials about how it helped them. So I didn't have a crack for 30 minutes, or with candles, or with chanting or anything like that, I just gave myself 30 seconds. I picked one moment I think I was brushing my teeth at the time and I told myself, okay, just be here, just notice the feeling, just the sound, even the change in my breathing, and it felt so weird, I felt so resistant, but I did notice something subtle. I didn't rush off to the next moment because I wasn't going quite so fast, so I kept going with it. And then I read the research about it because I wanted to know the science behind it. And when I researched it, especially recently, it says that from Harvard and Stanford they show that even short moments of mindful attention, like 1-3 minutes, can reduce stress hormones, improve focus and rewire how our brain responds to emotional triggers.

Speaker 1: 3:01

So what does that mean? It means it's not magic, it's your nervous system coming back online. Means it's not magic. It's your nervous system coming back online. It's your body remembering it's safe. It's your brain taking off autopilot, even just for a minute.

Speaker 1: 3:15

And here's the kicker and the thing that most of us don't want to admit. Sometimes we'd rather struggle than soften, because pausing feels vulnerable, because rest feels unproductive. We've been conditioned to equate stillness with weakness. We've been conditioned to say that if you work harder and put that constipated, look on our face. We look busy, we're struggling and we walk past people with this cranky face that makes us look like we are maybe more important than others, because it looks like we're busy in our face, past people with this cranky face that makes look like we are no-transcript. It's supposed to say that you must be a hard worker, you must be under stress, you must be doing hard things, but here's what I've learned, and this is the hard way. There's nothing weak about choosing presence, there's nothing passive about facing what you've been out running. Mindfulness doesn't make the hard stuff disappear, it just makes you strong enough to stay with it, to face it, and that, my friends, that's actually power man.

Speaker 1: 4:16

That was a change in mindset, though, for me, and don't get me wrong, I don't still have a board of statue or anything like that. I still have days when my brain is a toddler on red cordial, in fact, most days it still is. But when someone cuts me off in traffic or life throws me sideways, I don't go from zero to 100, I actually take a breath. Now, sometimes I still react, sure, but I come back a lot quicker. And mindfulness didn't turn me into a chilled out monk. It did give me more control over my reactions and that's what I loved. It had me having more compassion for my humanness than just blowing up deluxe because I was fully wired up. So if you're aware where I was skepticalceptical, busy, emotionally allergic to sitting still.

Speaker 1: 4:58

Here's some things I suggest. Number one pick a moment. You already have Morning coffee shower waiting for the kettle. Don't make time, use time. Number two anchor into one sense, just one. What do you feel in your hands, what do you smell, what do you hear? And number three notice the resistance and stay anyway. Mindfulness is not about enjoying it, it's about not leaving yourself. That's it no pressure, no affection, just presence, and identify the things that you're feeling, hearing, smelling, touching, all those things which we use with our senses. So look, here's three general prompts. We always talk about writing them down, and this is especially for my fellow skeptics out there, because that was me.

Speaker 1: 5:48

Number one what was your initial belief about mindfulness and where did that belief come from? Was it cultural? Was it personality-based? Was it a fear of slowing down, like me? What was your belief about it? What is it at the moment?

Speaker 1: 6:04

Number two where in your life do you just push through instead of pausing, and how's it actually costing you? And you might say, oh, don't worry, I'm a high pressure job or I need to get stuff done, so I just do it and I don't have time for this. Are you burning people along the way? Are your relationships still good when you're doing that? Are you actually present around people and having those authentic connections with people around you? Or are you just busy being busy? And if you are, and you have pride in that, that's fine. But what's your plan with that? Have you got two, five, ten of your plan doing that? Is that a good life for you? I 10 year plan doing that. Is that a good life for you? I don't know. Be honest, where are you forcing what needs space? And number three, what's one way you can try mindfulness this week and do it on your terms? So no pressure, no apps, just something real. Just something real.

Speaker 1: 6:51

As I said before, my style of cleaning the teeth Now it's coming downstairs early in the morning before going to teaching and boiling a jug and getting the grinder going and just smelling that coffee. That first smell of the beans being broken up in the grinder just allows me to be present, walking out, letting the dogs out of the cage and giving them a pat, coming back in washing hands, getting the coffee on, setting up a laptop for the morning, going through my goals. This podcast isn't talking a lot about me, but I'm trying to get you to think about how's it going for you, what are the routines you currently do that you can just be present in that moment where I think, okay, this coffee, dogs, shower, laptop, just be present in what you're doing, be mindful of actually what you're doing right there, and then you know you don't have to become someone else to practice mindfulness. You don't have to be calm or spiritual or in the mood, you just have to be willing. I'm Gary, thank you for coming on to the show and I look forward to your company in our next episode to the show and I look forward to your company and except so,