Transforming Stress with Dr. Ash

Stress at Work

• Dr. Ashish Kumar with Dr. Dike Drummond • Season 1 • Episode 1

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In this episode, Dr. Ash Kumar sits down with guest Dr. Dike Drummond, CEO of TheHappyMD.com, physician coach, and healthcare speaker, to share practical strategies for managing stress and preventing burnout—especially for those in high-stress professions.

Dr. Ash opens up about his journey from burnout to resilience and introduces his workbook, The Boiling Frog, filled with actionable tools for stress relief. Together, they discuss the importance of self-awareness, discovering purpose, and taking proactive steps to recognize and combat burnout, fostering resilience for long-term well-being.


Tune in to learn about:

  • The impact of stress on health and happiness in the healthcare profession
  • Personal experiences and journeys of overcoming burnout
  • Strategies for transforming stress into a tool for growth and resilience
  • The concept of the "boiling frog" as an analogy for chronic stress
  • The prevalence of burnout across various high-stress professions, not just healthcare
  • The importance of finding purpose and alignment in one's work to combat burnout
  • The role of self-awareness and self-management in preventing burnout



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You can get The Boiling Frog Workbook by Dr. Ashish Kumar here.


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Ready to transform stress into strength? The journey starts here. 

Introduction

SPEAKER_00

Hello friends, and a very warm welcome to Transforming Stress with Dr. Ash. Are you ready to turn stress into your comfort? For over 30 years now, Dr. Ash has worked and gained education across three continents India, the United Kingdom, and the United States in healthcare. He's witnessed firsthand how stress can impact our health and cause our happiness. But here's the exciting part. He's here to help you transform your stress into a powerful tool for growth and resilience. Each week he'll share practical tools and life-changing insights from his books, including The Boiling Frog, to help you manage your stress, find balance, and live a life of purpose. Please join us every Friday at 5 p.m. and let's start turning stress into strength together. Now let's dive into today's episode.

SPEAKER_01

Hello, friends. Welcome to the Transforming Stress with Dr. Ash podcast. Today we have got a physician executive, Dyke Drummond. Dyke,

Meet the Guest

SPEAKER_01

I would like you to introduce yourself to the listeners.

SPEAKER_02

Sure, my name is Dike Drummond. I'm a family doc. And also in 2010, I started my physician coaching practice at a website I called thehappymd.com. And uh I am an ICF certified coach and a trainer and a consultant with regards to helping people prevent physician burnout. And I actually met Dr. Ash in 2014 for the first time at the last of the American Academy for Family Practice Scientific Assembly Conventions. I actually had a main stage program I delivered there to 3,000 people, a huge hall of people, the biggest hall of people I've ever trained. And I met Ash at the book signing where I signed a copy of my book. And he's one of my oldest and most favorite coaching clients. And at the time, where did you live at the time, Ash?

SPEAKER_01

At that time I was in England, Dyke.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And now Ash tells me, and I've known this for a while, that he's written a book, not just a book, a book, and a workbook about boiling amphibians. I don't know what that's all about.

SPEAKER_01

I am happy to talk about that, Dyke. But uh to your introduction, I would like to add one more thing that you are a leading voice both in the United States and globally in the field of physician well-being uh and uh physician burnout. So, really, I would like to thank you for the amazing work you have done. You have definitely transformed my life from the time we first met in Washington, DC. It's coming to a decade actually this month. And when I attended uh that, it was as far as I remember, a full day or three-fourths of a day long workshop on physician well-being and stress management.

Signs of Burnout

SPEAKER_01

And when I attended that, what I realized that I was having these signs of exhaustion and burnout many times. And the most paradoxical thing was that I wasn't aware of it.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, you were definitely down in it though, weren't you?

SPEAKER_01

Yes. Of course, that was coming, uh that was coming with the background of four or five years of really high-level challenges uh in the work environment. And I was, I would say, resilient enough to survive and come to the other side. Many people did not. Uh, and then uh I met you. And from that time, it's been an upward, I would say an upward journey, upward spiral, and we have not looked back. And I couldn't, I can also say that I've had my cake and eaten it too.

SPEAKER_02

Well, and I would say that your case, and part of the reason you didn't recognize you were burned out originally, is because you were surviving a distinctly hostile culture and bullies as your bosses. And one of the things that a survivor will do is they'll make sure that they don't they don't give up in the face of that bullying. You were resisting their negative influences, and that would let that's what let you keep going and going and going without recognizing the toll it was taking.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, it was an interesting time in my life.

Impact of Hostile Work Environments

SPEAKER_01

And when I met you, what I learned in that workshop, and then of course I worked with you for a year from there, and then in 2015, I also went to Harvard to study the work environment. And also, you mentioned the hostile environments, the trauma. It's not only happens in the work environment, it happens in the context of refugee trauma, uh, work-related situation, child abuse. Wherever there is a power differential, there is a possibility of this kind of trauma happening.

Post-Traumatic Growth

SPEAKER_01

And one can one what I learned in the Harvard program that we can have two choices. Either we go to the victim mode and uh suffer with stress, PTSD, post-traumatic stress and depression, anxiety, mental health issues, or we embrace post-traumatic growth, PTG, which is even beyond resilience. Because in resilience, you bounce back from where you start, you come back to the same level. But in post-traumatic growth, you go beyond resilience. There's a new normal. So I, with the principles I learned at Harvard, I realized that I wanted to embrace post-traumatic growth. And that was a beautiful journey. And that 2015, I was continuing to work with you for the entire year in 2015. So it kind of complemented each other. And the very next year, I started working as a consultant in general internal medicine. And my career from that time has been upwards. And uh 2017, I went to the University of Tennessee to do a leadership program, a year-long uh MBA. And uh, we got you invited as a guest to uh for all the physician colleagues and uh had a full yeah. So that was the journey coming. Uh uh.

SPEAKER_02

Well, and let me let's just clear let's just clarify something for your listeners because your experience is so international. So we've mentioned Washington, D.C., we've mentioned Harvard, and we've mentioned Tennessee, but you didn't work in any of those places.

Dr. Ash Kumar's Work Experience

SPEAKER_02

Tell everybody where your jobs were. When we first met, where were you working?

SPEAKER_01

So when we first uh met, I was working in the midlands of England.

SPEAKER_02

In England, yes.

SPEAKER_01

So I have been in the in the United Kingdom for the last 22 years now as uh working as a physician, predominantly in hospital medicine, but some part of it has been in the ER, accident and emergency, and a little bit part in the primary care of our family medicine. And before that, I had a decade before that in India.

SPEAKER_02

So you've worked in India, you've worked in England, you've worked in Ireland, you've worked in Scotland. I know these things all to be true, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yes, yes. So 22 years.

SPEAKER_02

Hang on a second, hang on a second, Ash. I want to just out one more thing about you, dear listeners. You may not be aware of this, but as part of his recovery, Dr. Ash is actually a competitive tango dancer. And he would go to tango tournaments before COVID, would go to tango tournaments all around Europe, and he would go, he would go without a partner. So he would find his partner at the tournament and they would partner up and dance in these tango tournaments.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so that is uh beautiful. Tango has been a good part of healing, and uh it's a beautiful dance.

SPEAKER_02

It's about

The Boiling Frog Analogy

SPEAKER_02

so it's the boiling dancing frog.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I I I think rather than using boiling word there, I would call a jacuzzi, but I will come to talk about the boiling frog. I know you asked me that question, it slipped my mind. Uh, but uh first thing uh in the last three, four years, uh Dyke, I've become untangled because COVID came, Tango was dead, and after that I started working on the book projects. So I am pretty untangled now. Now, you had asked me the question earlier about the boiling frog, the amphibians. What is this boiling frog? So, about the time I met you in Washington, DC, I read an article which compared the healthcare environment to a boiling frog environment to a boiling frog uh environment. The boiling frog. It was published in the Royal College, uh it was published in the British Journal of GPs, which is a family medicine journal of UK, saying that British journal practice is a boiling frog environment. And the analogy goes like this if you throw a frog into hot water, it will jump out. But it will, if you throw it into cold water and if you slowly increase the temperature, it will keep adapting and slowly and slowly it will lose the capability and it will boil or char to death. Chronic stress has a similar effect to us. Now, when I realized that I was boiling, it was not a pleasant realization because generally we are in denial uh when these things are happening. When I realized that I don't want to be a boiling frog and die, so I started my journey to how to temper down the temperature, and I created the jacuzzi effect over the next five, six years of my learning, growth, education, development, developing new skills. Uh, that is where I took it to.

SPEAKER_02

Right on. So turn a boiling pot into a jacuzzi. Absolutely. And actually, if you're if you're watching this on video, you can see Dr. Ash up in the top. He's right there in his jacuzzi with the frog. Right

The Jacuzzi Effect: Focusing on Positive Factors in Stressful Environments

SPEAKER_02

on.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I I would love to share what is the meaning of jacuzzi.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

So a part of it, Dike, I learned with you to see what positive factors are there in the environment, like all the time. Things we can control, things we can put our focus. And that happens with mindfulness. We learn the squeegee, squeegee breath. We learn going out of the spiral. Your spiral, you remember your spiral, the downward. Einstein's definition of sanity. So what I learned that, and that is this is a basic law of physics and a universal law that in every environment, positive factors or negative factors are equally balanced by the positive factor. This insight came to me more, or rather, rather, I should rather I should put it as it came to my understanding deeply when I was reading the book Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. And Victor Frankel talks about even in the worst environments of the Holocaust, how people are able to choose their response, even in the worst of human conditions, even in the worst of tortures, in every environment, even if it is a Holocaust, definitely the healthcare is not a Holocaust. It is much better environment. You can choose gratitude, you can choose meaning, you can choose humor, you can choose compassion, you can choose connection, you can choose kindness. There are so many factors, and what you focus on becomes your reality. And I'm not naive to say that there are no toxicities in the healthcare environment.

Statistics on Burnout

SPEAKER_01

We know, and you you have already quoted several times that last five, six, or even more year studies show that nearly 60% of the healthcare population is burnt out. Am I right? Statistically there, Dike?

SPEAKER_02

Yes, back in uh 2021, there was a survey in the USA showed 63%. And if you look at the individual uh specialty surveys that come out of magazines like Medical Economics and Medscape, you'll see people like emergency room doctor in the 60s still. And what that means is they're suffering from at least one symptom of burnout on the day that the survey was taken.

Workplace Culture and Burnout

SPEAKER_02

And the most common symptom of burnout is exhaustion. It's a special kind of exhaustion. It's where the little voice in your head says something like, I'm not sure how much longer I can keep going like that.

SPEAKER_01

I was there in 2014.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And one of the things I'll say is that a bullying toxic culture is just a little bit different than being burned out simply by overwork and exhaust. A bullying toxic culture, you will steal yourself to be able to resist the bully and stay in that situation much longer than it's just exhaustion. So you are a fighter, you're a lion. You weren't gonna let somebody take you down, though you were being viciously bullied, as I remember when we first met, and that allowed you to continue to resist. And when you did eventually wake up, you were way down the rat hole in terms of it. You had never given up, you'd never surrendered, you won the battle, but it took a great toll. And now you took a business. Now you realize that by choosing a better work environment, by having an ideal job description and choosing where you want to work and how you want to work, you don't have to have your workplace be a battle.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely, absolutely. No, like you recall very you you have a very sharp memory. Uh that I was a fighter, and to shut up Dr. Ash, you need to put some lead into his head. And that's why you you you call me Tiger Ash for quite some time. So, yes, I fight, I fought the battle, but uh it is sometimes you realize that you've got to choose your battles, and because uh uh it is just uh uh a battle which is not worth it, or let's put it like this that you used to we one has to use these situations as ammonitions to move further and forward in life rather than hold them like a as a baggage. But uh of course, I was able to do that because I felt uh that I was blessed to find teachers and mentors like you and what I did at Harvard and the right team of coaches. And uh, I mean, I was a physician, so I have a very analytical uh mindset. I got the right people in my team to fight my corner, I lawyered up, I did the right things. I kept my emotions away when I had to deal with that. But that's a separate uh discussion uh for a separate day. But today, what we are discussing here, how we this is a this is a boiling frog environment, and not only in healthcare diet, but the Gallup study shows Gallup is an organization which does studies in all the continents, and Gallup says 43% of people all around the world in continents are burnt out at any point of time. Uh this is this is 2023, and they say that 50 to 75 percent people are either quiet quitting or loud quitting. So this is not only in healthcare, this is in IT, this is in multinationals, this is in other caring professions, like uh firefighters, like ambulance services, uh, like the legal profession. And uh I have been a physician in for three decades, type, and uh uh been a physician for three decades in three three continents, I can say India, the United Kingdom, and the United States. And India now has become the burnout nation in the world. Earlier it used to be Japan. In Japan, there is a world word for over suicide by overwork. Right. Keroshi. Uh unfortunately,

The Number One Burnout Capital in the World

SPEAKER_01

India now has become the number one burnout capital in the world.

SPEAKER_02

So this is not only if I can just add a little bit of context. If you look back at the original burnout surveys that were done on physicians in 2011, 2014, and 2017, those studies were actually designed to measure physician burnout compared to the general non-physician population. And over the course of those first three studies, they had a physician group and they had a control group that was not physicians. They were just generic employees in the economy. And back then, the background rate of burnout in the non-physician environment was steady for three surveys in a row at 27%. You're saying now it's back the background rate of burnout across all professions is 43%.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's what that's what the survey says in 2023. This is the last year's survey.

SPEAKER_02

So

Choosing Better Work Environments

SPEAKER_02

one of the things that I would say, just off the top of my head about that observation, is to the extent that you can, to the extent that you can, when you take a job, and not everybody can do this, but to the extent that you can take a job that is in harmony with your values and gives you some sense of purpose that will keep you on a steadier path in your employee experience. If you're doing it just for the money or because you have no other choices, that's going to be something that's much easier for you out on. And most of the time when I'm talking to doctors and nurses, they've actually gone into healthcare for a reason. They want to be a helper and a healer and make a difference in the world. And hopefully you can find a way a work site where you are able to practice your craft to the benefit of your patients and feel some sense of belonging and purpose in what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01

I completely agree with you, Dyke. Purpose is a huge driver. Uh, we have a full section in the book on value management. I also call it the lighthouse effect. Our inner lighthouse, which are which is your own one's own hierarchy of values, and your purpose is the light shining from the lighthouse. And that helps you navigate all the storms of your life, including including the most challenging of the of the workplace environments.

The Boiling Frog Workbook

SPEAKER_02

Well, and let's talk for just a second because you're a burnout survivor, so am I. Twice.

SPEAKER_01

Twice.

SPEAKER_02

Twice, me too. And you've also worked in England and America and in India and all over the place. And here you are, you wrote this book, The Boiling Frog. Who's it for?

SPEAKER_01

So uh it will be a little long-winded answer to this dike. To be very honest, when I was writing this book initially, it was for doctors, was coming from the healthier environment. And it was to teach the doctors that you don't need to be burnt out. I can teach them the jacuzzi effect that, in spite of the most challenging environment, they can temper down the temperature and enjoy the environment. And Dyke, uh, if you want to take a rough estimate, how much money an American doctor would have taken to the train right from the college till the time they complete the residency. Would you say half a million, more, less? You mean to pay for your tuition and all of that? Everything included. What is the cost of the entire life's education till the time you finish residency?

SPEAKER_02

I would say it's an absolute minimum, a couple hundred thousand.

SPEAKER_01

It can be a lot more than it will be several hundred thousand, maybe even half a million or more. But the point I'm trying to drive here, Dai, if at the end of it you are unhappy, miserable, burnt out, you have paid a high price to be burnt out and miserable. Rather, rather, you could have done something else. So I said, I don't need to, I don't need to feel these emotions. I need to change this, or I gotta get out of here and do something else or recreate myself. I continue to recreate myself, but I kept enjoying medicine. And you have been, you and me have been associated in the last decade. I don't think you might have seen me miserable uh or unhappy anytime. We have continued to grow and taken all challenges as opportunities for growth, and we have continued to move forward and upward. Now, coming back to your question, initially this was uh for doctors, but as I was seeing patients in my day-to-day life, as an internist, as a hospital consultant, as a primary care physician, I saw a lot of burnout in my patients. In the ER, I saw a young heart attack of 35, 36 years old. I've seen young stroke. I was doing rheumatology at Cambridge, and I used to see a lot many people with autoimmune disorders. And the common denominator in all these patients, by and large, used to be stress. Chronic, unregulated, toxic levels of stress. Whether it is coming from the work environment or it is coming from a personal life situation, relationship situation, the common denominator was stress. So I thought that combining my three decades of experience as a physician and all the three primary specialities, I should write a book for doctors, IT professionals, high stress professions to give them a big, a generic idea of what is stress, what is good stress, what is you stress, what is toxic stress, what is chronic stress. The first thing is being aware of those stresses. And who's the better person to speak about than somebody who's practiced medicine for several decades? Both in internal medicine and the primary care. So this book is for physicians, healthcare professionals, IT professionals, or professionals in any high-level challenging environments. Of course, there are environmental factors which are unique to every environment. And then we have to tailor make the certain things. But keep in mind, Dyke, one thing is very important that human beings are one human being. Their physiology is the same across all the all the all the races, all the culture, all the cultures. It is the same adrenaline, it is the same cortisol which is released in anybody who's white or black or Asian or Indian or Pakistani. Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

Because I anybody across any part of the world with severe levels of stress, we have seen unfortunately young strokes, heart attacks, all different manifestations of stress. So my purpose, my mission is to transform stress in high stress professionals.

SPEAKER_02

Well, and you also, to make it even more practical, don't have just a book. You got a workbook too.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. The purpose of getting the workbook first, Dai, was that when people are stressed, they are living at the lower centers of the brain, the amygdala, the limbic system. You might have heard of the limbic hijack or amygdala hijack. Now, what happens that the frontal, the the left front, left frontal lobe, which is the CEO of the brain, it is difficult to be accessed. I'm talking to a physician, but I'm also speaking to the listeners. Now, people are not able to access the left brain because they are living at the lower centers. Whereas the right side of the brain is awareness, imagery, intuition. In my workbook, I've got 26 world-class illustrations which directly hit you, and you get a penny drops for you. And like if you see something, then you cannot unsee it. You get the impression, okay. Suddenly I show you a picture of an overloaded donkey, and you are able to connect to it. Oh, I'm feeling like an overworked donkey. Then you cannot unsee that insight and that realization when it hits by one of this, one of one of the ways is this. The other way is stories by creative stories. I've got stories coming in the book. We have got 20 stories of people who have been in this situation. Then you can use the left hemisphere of the brain for getting into action. What do I need to do to move from here after having taken a stock of the situation?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I hear you.

SPEAKER_01

That was the rationale of writing the book and the workbook. And another thing is that when I was burnt out, you can get a lot of books, but you don't have the energy to you don't have the energy to read extensively. Whereas the workbook, you can go through, you can see all the pictures, you can read about the illustrations and find out where you are at that particular point of time. And then we can take it from there. So it's kind of a like one of my friends who has gone through the book and said, This is a journal, it's a self-awareness journal. It is a coach yourself journal.

SPEAKER_02

Gotcha. And and where would your dear listeners be able to get a copy?

SPEAKER_01

Uh it is uh available in all the book book book stores. It is available on Amazon, which is the easiest to get.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01

If you order it on Amazon Prime, you can get it the next day delivery as well.

SPEAKER_02

Right on. And that's that's in America and in other countries.

SPEAKER_01

Uh America, UK, Europe, several countries. I I I've recently some of my uh some of my clients have got it in Australia as well. So definitely these countries are already there. There are some other places we are trying to make it more available. Uh, we have just launched the book last month. So I am new to this landscape, but my my vision, Dike, is that I want this book to be available in all the countries of the world because stress, especially toxic stress, is a very common condition. I want people to be involved. I want people to be empowered to know that no religion, no scriptures say that the human beings have to be burnt

Burnout Recognized as an Occupational Phenomenon by WHO

SPEAKER_01

out or burnout. Now, burnout has been included by WHO, the ICD, as an occupational phenomena. Recently, a few years earlier, it is uh the ICD, uh, I'm forgetting the number. Uh, I can quickly have a look at the book and tell you the exact uh citation of this, uh, helpful for my uh readers, that uh worth noting that burnout has been officially recognized as an occupational phenomena in the international classification of disease, World Health Organization, underscoring its significance and impact on individuals and the society as a whole.

SPEAKER_02

Now, the scriptures it's also important to note that it's not a mental illness.

SPEAKER_01

It's not a mental illness, it's not a mental illness. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

What I say is that burnout is a normal reaction to overwhelm in a light worker, in a light worker, in somebody who's chosen to be a helper and a healer and make a difference in the world when you become overwhelmed in the way that you give and overwhelmed by the conditions of your job site, burnout is a result. It has symptoms, exhaustion, cynical, and sarcastic. What's the use? It has an ICD nine cone associated with it, but it's not a mental.

SPEAKER_01

I fully agree with you. I it's a normal response to chronic, pervasive, toxic levels of stress. And uh light yeah, light workers absolutely, but other professions also are equally affected. All of them.

SPEAKER_02

Any time where you say to yourself, I'll do pretty much anything for my clients. So for instance, all parents are at all teachers are at risk, all doctors and nurses, and anybody who works in healthcare. My wife is a speech therapist, and to adults that have strokes and Parkinson's disease and brain injury, definitely for her. So anybody who puts the patient first, puts their students first, puts their kids first, you're at risk for now. There are complications of burnout that are mental, including suicide. So, but that those are complications. Burnout itself is a normal reaction to overwhelming somebody who puts their which is like you said, half of humanity. Absolutely and the world doesn't get any easier as time goes by. For us or any other species, welcome to life. Yeah, on this plan is pointing down.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, we can only we

Recognizing and Managing Burnout

SPEAKER_01

can only learn the skills to recognize it and manage it. Those are the two primary things we are uh we as physicians do we diagnose something and we manage, we become aware of something and we manage.

SPEAKER_02

No, the way that you become aware of it in many cases is by looking in the mirror. Yeah. Because it's always harder. Burnout is one of those things, like so many of so many things that you see. Burnout is one of those things that's so much easier to recognize in somebody else than it is of, oh, he's burned out. But then you don't look at yourself in the mirror in the same way and you don't see this, which is why fortunately you woke up at that family practice conference and we met, and that's what began the journey that you're on. And you really are a tiger, tiger Ash for sure. And now you've put it into a workbook and a book, and I encourage anybody who's listening right now to grab your copy because there are things on Ash's journey that I think he is probably the world's best teacher to convey to you that can turn your boiling pot in potentially.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you, Dyke. I'm really humbled and honored by uh your uh reflection. And really, you have been a partner in my journey. I've learned a lot from you, all the scientific principles, and I've been able to apply it. It's not just the knowledge, it's then going ahead and executing them and uh consistently. And I have uh shared this with my colleagues uh about your work in the last 10 years, and they have been transformed. I mean, nobody, uh none of the healthcare professionals uh are go to work to get burnt out. Most of the people most of our colleagues are highly conscientious, highly conscientious, uh compassionate, lovely people. I think that's the kind of people who are who are uh naturally selected to be this profession. But the environment, if you don't understand it, it can have an effect. But that is life, isn't it? I mean, there can be hurry call hurricanes, storms, and all kinds of things happening. If you don't know how to manage that, then it is tough. So in the book, I have talked about self-management, I've talked about resilience, how to have a thicker skin. Then how do you temper down the temperature, which is the environmental management? And finally, it is the value management. But I like what you said once, which reinforces what you just said. The resilience alone is a con word because you keep the increasing that increasing the temperature of the environment, uh, the environment becomes more and more and more and more toxic. At one point of time, you're going to give up. And it's like the cannery going to the coal mines. Am I right in saying that?

SPEAKER_02

Well, what I say is that resilience is absolutely necessary, but it's always insufficient because I can always make a coal mine that will kill even the strongest. And one of the other things is, and I'm glad that you wrote the workbook to go with the book. One of the things that doctors and nurses tend to do because we're we're academics at heart. We come up to academic medical centers, we learn research, we're scientists, we like to understand things, we're highly intellectual, but your results in life have nothing to do with what you understand. Your results in life have to do with what you do with that understanding. And that's why when we talk about Einstein's insanity trap, which is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. People hear that like it's some sort of fluffy thing, like it's like it's junk science or something. Einstein's insanity trap is as powerful as the second law of thermodynamics. It's like gravity, okay? The only way for you to get new results is to take new action. So the workbook is essential because it's about taking knowledge and turning it in. If you always do what you've always done, you can only get what you've already got. And so it takes changes and actions to make the changes in your results. And that's why the workbook is so important to take you from understanding, which is where most academics stop, to action. It's the bridge to a new absolutely, Dike.

SPEAKER_01

Uh absolutely, Dyke. That's what the workbook is for. It is for transformation. It is not just information because information is available everywhere. It is for it is for transformation. Now, Dyke, I'm aware that we are coming to the top of the hour. Before we finish, can we share some top nuggets uh of how what are the what say what are the top three, four things to manage and deal with the burnout? You maybe use uh uh add two points, and I will uh tell my top two uh for my for our listeners to take home.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, my number one is always where I start with every one of my coaching clients and where I started with you too. It's always about most people come to me when they're burned out, knowing really clearly what they don't want, what they want to avoid, what they want to escape. And they want to tell me all about how terrible it is. And what I always say is the same thing. Look, I do want to hear about what's going on. I just don't want to hear it first. Because what I'd really like to know is not what do you want to run away from. What I'd really like to know is what would you run towards if it was available? And what I mean when I say that is what is your ideal job description? If you had a magic wand and if you could create your own job description, what would that look like? And here's why you need an ideal job description. I encourage you to write it down on paper, put a date next to it so you know when this was. But you can avoid everything you don't want, and you still won't get what you want because the only way to get what you want is to figure out what that is and go get it. And I know for a fact, I've never met a doctor or a nurse who had a written ideal job description unless I had already been their coach. But what happens when you get clear on what you really want is it becomes a target. Think of it as a spiritual archery ray. It becomes a target you can aim yourself at, and you know exactly where the bullseye is. It enables you to make changes in your current environment that will get you closer to the bullseye. And it also enables you to go on a job search if you need to and find a much better match for your eye. So that's always the target that I help people generate first. And everything else follows from clarity.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely true. I found that I found that myself to be very, very helpful.

SPEAKER_02

And by the way, just real quick, an ideal job description is a moving target because you change, your life changes, the profession changes. So you don't do it once and stop. You take a look at that ideal job description at least every quarter and update it to make sure it's still correct.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. I I I talk about this in the value management section of the book, and it's very, very important.

Self-Management Techniques

SPEAKER_01

But I the thing I have found very important uh one is self-management, especially to cultivate self-awareness by regular self-reflection. Now, self-reflection one can do alone with journaling practices, meditation, mindfulness, or working with a coach. Facilitated self-reflection is much better. And the second thing which I found very useful is to find out what are the positive factors in your environment. Joy, gratitude, meaning, humor, connection, and that is everywhere in any environment. Find that, of course, one has to cultivate higher levels of awareness for that, and that then put your attention to that because where attention goes, where energy where attention goes, energy flows there. And that becomes your reality, even in the most challenging of the environments. But it's uh it's a journey, it's not uh uh it's not just one switch on, switch off. Slowly and slowly, one can temper down the temperature and be in a comfortable, uh, comfortable environment.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I had a teacher a long time ago. The way he phrased it was this what you focus on, expand. Absolutely. So you and I both said the same thing. I say focus on your ideal job description, not the things you want to run away from. And let me just make

Stepping Out of the Whirlwind

SPEAKER_02

one more point. Maybe this is our last point, you tell me. Self-reflection, and you say guided self-reflection with a coach. What those are are those are situations where you've stepped out of your practice, you've stepped away from the whirlwind of your day-to-day practice to look at your practice from a different perspective, from the outside looking in. When you're inside the whirlwind of your practice, all you see is the inside walls of the whirlwind. And it's really tough to figure out what's really going on and what you might change. But if you step out of that to work on your practice, not just in it, you step out to work on your practice, not just in it. You can see things, patterns. You can see things that you can't see from inside the whirlwind. You can see things you would change. You can plan to do things differently when you go back in. And that working on your practice rather than in the practice should be ideally a regular rhythm of something we do quite often. And a coach will be there with you if you use a coach when you're at it. But Einstein has another phrase that he uses, says, No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. So you have to step out of the whirlwind to establish a new viewpoint, vantage point, level of consciousness to be able to see the issues that you affect to improve your work and your absolutely, absolutely.

Closing Remarks

SPEAKER_01

Well, Dyke, you have summed it, uh summed it up very, very well, really hitting uh the nail on the head. And it's been a real pleasure and a privilege to have you on Transforming Stress with Dr. Ash podcast. Thank you for joining me today. Uh, thank you, listeners, uh, for listening to us.

SPEAKER_02

And uh it's been a pleasure to be your coach and your friend for over a decade.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you, Nike.

SPEAKER_02

Congratulations on the book.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you very much. Thank you for tuning in to Transforming Stress with Dr. Ash. If you enjoyed today's episode, we'd greatly appreciate it if you could leave a five-star review, a like, or subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Your support helps us reach more people looking to transform their stress into new comfort. We'd love to hear your thoughts, so don't forget to comment and share. For more tips and updates, please be sure to check out our social media links in the description box below. We can't wait to have you with us next time as we continue this journey towards turning stress into resilience. Remember, it's not the stress itself, but how we rise above it that defines our strength. So stay resilient and keep thriving, and we will see you next time.