The Real Cause of Burnout and Why It's Not Your Fault

Burnout isn’t just about working too hard, forgetting self-care, or not getting enough sleep. The real cause runs deeper — much deeper. Centuries in the making deeper.

In this episode, we unpack the cultural pressures that push us to measure our worth by constant productivity, status, and achievement. We talk about burnout through a psychological lens, exploring the tension between the real self and the idealized self and what happens when we’re forced out of alignment. Instead of the self-blame so many of us default to, you’ll discover how societal expectations fuel exhaustion and disconnection — and why true healing begins with awareness and making the individual choice to unsubscribe to this rule book.

This conversation invites you to see rebellion as an act of love — choosing authenticity, shining a light on harmful patterns, and creating space for a more aligned, fulfilling life.

You’ll learn:

• Why burnout is not your personal failure (and why self-blame keeps you stuck).
• How hustle culture and unrealistic expectations pull you away from your real self.
• The role of emotions in the burnout cycle.
• Why reclaiming alignment is an act of light — for yourself and others.

If you’ve ever felt like no matter how hard you work, it’s never enough, this episode is a reminder that it's the system that's broken, not you. By reclaiming your energy and your identity, you can find freedom, purpose, and joy again.

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Find me instagram at @jesscallahan_

For burnout tools (coming soon!) and burnout coaching, visit my website www.jesscallahan.com. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Hey there, I'm Jess Callahan and this is The Becoming You Project. This is a podcast about reinvention and finding your voice and your purpose. It's about redefining success on your terms and small acts of rebellion against the systems that keep us overwhelmed. Because your path to becoming you has ripple effects that shift the world around you. So let's dive in. Hey guys, welcome back. I'm recording from my car again I think that this is just going to be a thing. It's quiet in here and I don't know. I can like think without the distractions. The only thing is we are getting some much needed rain. It's sprinkling a little bit here. So I'm hoping it doesn't get too loud, but we will see. So, okay. Last week I talked about burnout and I... Okay, so I'm starting like a burnout series, but I don't know if it's just going to be a series. After last week's episode, I was like, no, I really like, I really want to keep talking about this. And so I don't know if it's a series. I don't know if it's forever. We'll see. It's funny. I like love signs. I ask the universe for signs all the time. I look for signs from the universe all the time. I really enjoyed this idea. of like spotting signs so when you spot signs i see it as like it could be a symbol that you're already really familiar with that just like shows up and sort of stands out to you in a meaningful way or it could just be like coming across lyrics or something that somebody says or um you know anything that just like makes you really like stop and think about it is um you know i don't know it that's how i see signs and that's how they interact in my life so But anyway, so I kept saying to the universe, like as I've been just seeking direction in a couple of different things in my life, direction and clarity, like I would just say, universe, please just use me for love and light. Use me for my best possible good and, you know, show me signs on that way. And I might set it as like an intention during a meditation or just like an intention for the day. And like then the next thing that I would hear it was like crazy because I would say this like use me for love and light like and then like the next song that would come on would be like Tracy Chapman's like talking about a revolution or my daughter would hop in the car and she'd be like talking about this song she heard and she really wants to understand what it means and it's a song called like Victoria's Secret and so for those of you who don't know the song Victoria's Secret it's all about how like basically Victoria secret created body image issues in an entire generation and at the end of the day like it wasn't even like the women creating these like body image issues for themselves it was like created by some dude in Ohio and like I don't know I don't know the actual like backstory but you know it's just about like body image and shining a light on like these like systems and conditioning that have shaped our lives in a lot of ways I I did this just like a small meditation of intention the one day before yoga. I was really just like seeking some clarity. Same thing. Use me for love and light. And I get into yoga class and an instructor that I adore, the owner of my studio, comes in and says, well, guys, the name of the playlist today is Fuck the Rules. And I was like, oh, my gosh, like this is just a theme. And then I go on to my like voxer later that day. And I have a friend who's like, I don't know why, but I felt like pulling an Oracle card while you were talking. And this whole idea of like rebellion in your life keeps coming up. And I'm like, okay, universe, I hear you. I hear you. But like, that's, that doesn't really feel like love and light to me. So like, yeah, I don't know. It was kind of just like a funny moment, but definitely a moment that made me think. And I think what I realized is this, like my mission here is to help people reconnect with themselves and all of the parts of themselves that they've lost along the way. And I want to do that so people can live in purpose and meaning because I think that we can really experience life when we're connected deeply to ourselves and to our meaning and it helps us strip away some of the negative self-talk, some of the confusion, a lot of the burnout. A lot of it is really just about like connecting, reconnecting with ourselves and in community, I think that there's this collective shift that's starting to happen. People are starting to wake up. Women are really starting to wake up to all of the ways that we've disconnected from ourselves. And there's this reclamation of who we are and what's available to us. And you know, we're starting to see that we've been subscribing to this rulebook that was literally never meant to see us thrive. It was meant to keep us exhausted and burnt out, repressing our voices and our true selves so that we can be more palatable for other people, so we don't disrupt their sense of comfort, or so we don't offend them. But in the process, we are burning out We're losing ourselves. And I guess if I want to get really direct about it, we're slowly killing ourselves. I'll be the first to say it. I mean, I burnt out to the extent that I completely disrupted my nervous system and I came away with a fibromyalgia diagnosis. And like if we think that taking time to rest is disruptive, like you know what else is really disruptive? Like physically not being able to work anymore because your nervous system has gotten so dysregulated that you can't make it through a day without a two-hour nap or like a short-term memory that no longer has the ability to retain anything new. Like difficulty conveying thoughts, having conversations, not only because like the brain is functioning really slowly, but also because it's like literally difficult to form words and not to mention the pain that comes with something like a fibromyalgia diagnosis. And, you know, I don't mean to say that like that this journey is any harder than anyone else's journey, right? We all walk a different road. And I think one of the best things that we can do is have compassion with ourselves and with each other, knowing that each of our roads is different and means something different too. each of us but i say that to say like i i literally had no idea how disruptive like uncontrolled unchecked burnout could actually be i had no clue that the stakes could be so high burnout and stress are directly linked and stress is linked to cardiovascular disease anxiety depression chronic fatigue chronic pain like ibs the list goes on and on and on and so as i really like contemplate Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And even though there are a lot of really brave and incredible people doing hard work to disrupt these systems, we're not solving burnout anytime soon on a systemic level. So I think at this point, it's an individual choice. Healing your burnout or preventing it from happening in the first place, that has to happen at an individual level. And it starts with an individual choice to say, I'm no longer subscribing to this rulebook. It's not going to get better when the kids get a little bit older, when you get through the next work milestone or find a new job. The damage... to all of us is already in process. And until we take time to heal and make a choice to do something differently, and it doesn't mean that you have to uproot your entire lives. It doesn't mean you have to tear everything down and start over. There's really meaningful ways that you can disrupt these cycles on a really small scale on a day-to-day basis. And I want to get into those, but I first want to talk about the systems because to be honest, there are systems that are really, really hard to spot it But once you see them, they're really, really hard to unsee. And once you see how they're showing up in your life on a day to day basis and the ways that you're subconsciously making choices for your life or the stories that you're telling yourself that are shaping your actions, you know, you can make small changes to to shift this. And it doesn't mean that you have to tear everything down. It doesn't mean that you have to walk away from everything and start over or start from scratch. It just means like they're really small changes. small changes that can make a huge impact. But you have to make a commitment to like making the small changes. And so I think that helping people spot these systems and disrupt these systems so that they can live free of burnout, like break all of the cycles that are keeping us exhausted and disconnected from ourselves, especially through sharing my own story. I think that that is love and light for me. I think that the most loving thing that I can do through my work is to help other people heal their burnout or prevent burnout in the first place so that people can avoid making the same mistakes that I made. So that's where I'm going with today's episode. I originally started this podcast around the idea of like rest as a rebellion and I did some pretty like deep research into the idea of rest and and so I have a I want to share not just about rest, but about the different ways that we can incorporate rest and I guess just like the things that we can do differently to interrupt these burnout cycles with rest being one of them. But I think as I was like planning out this episode, I was realizing how much information I'm really trying to pack in. And so I think we'll be talking about rest next week or in one of the next few episodes. And I'll dive deep into her book and into some of the other ways that you can start to interrupt the burnout. Today, I think what I really just want to do is start to shine a light on some of these systems so that anyone who's here and listening can start to just turn inward a little bit and think about how some of these things are showing up in their life. And then when we come back, we can have another conversation about what some of the ways are that we can really start to commit to change. Okay, so... I don't know And so I'm not going to claim to cover it from from all angles. I'm going to I'm taking kind of like a high level perspective. And, you know, I've done my research into the ways that it does impact all of us. And I hope to sort of infuse that information sort of like on the background so that it's it's relatable to more groups of people. But yeah. Yeah, I guess I just wanted to like add that caveat before I start. So, okay, so there are a lot of different systems that we've been operating from. And each of them contribute differently. So some of the systems are capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and individualism. So I'll also start by saying this is something that I've like toyed with a lot, like hearing some of those words, especially if like, if you're not somebody that really thinks about these systems often, some of these words can sound really jarring. And honestly, like some of them can feel too deep. It's like they're like those things that you're like, you know, again, I'm not touching that one with a 10 foot pole. Like, I don't want to be pulled into this. Like, this is too much for me right now. And so if you're feeling a little bit of that, when I say words like capitalism and patriarchy, I just challenge you to get a little bit curious. And, you know, what happens if you move through the aversion to hearing some of those words and feeling like threatened by them or like you're doing something wrong? These are systems that hurt all of us. And all of us perpetuate these cycles because it's been what we've taught and it's sort of just been like passed down and so there's a lot of ways that they show up in our lives that we might not even realize and like we never agreed to like the damage that they're causing and we might not even be able to spot it it really just takes that moment of turning inward and evaluating how they show up in your life to decide if if you want to do something different i think one other really important note to make is that like throughout this, I have some research around like how burnout shows up differently because of capitalism, especially as it relates to like men and women. And I'm not intentionally like not speaking to like fringe groups or marginalized groups. I think that there's a lot of nuance that goes into this. And, you know, maybe that's the subject of another podcast, but I will say that there are marginalized groups that burnout impacts disproportionately. That's not a topic that I'm going to cover extensively today, but I just want to name that before we go on. So, okay. Anyway, capitalism. What is capitalism? We all know we live in a capitalist society, and I'm going to do my best to keep this like... High level and not like nerd out on the details, because I think that this is it's just a really important thing to hear. And it's one of those topics that people are like, oh, that's uncomfortable and I don't want to hear it because we're we are like as a society afraid of like going inward and just like facing whatever is within us. And like once you do it, you're like, oh, that wasn't a big deal. Or like once you spot these systems, it's not a big deal. Right. But like stay the course if you're here, if you've made it this far. Stay with me. Okay, let's start like super, super high level with the question, what is capitalism? And I want to keep this like, I don't want this like podcast to be super technical. I'm going to just like go quickly over some of the definitions. I just want to make sure we're all on the same page. So capitalism means that like in the United States specifically, I'll come at that at us through this lens. Like it's, we're an advanced capitalist system built on private ownership of business. And the idea is is that it gives us freedom and flexibility, for example, to choose our career path, to start a business. And the idea is that it will drive innovation and economic growth. But there are some serious and significant disadvantages with a capitalist system, especially the system that has sort of run unchecked for centuries. So one of them is the exploitation of workers and how a lot of these big businesses value profit over people. It's crazy. There are Yeah, absolutely. Like just constantly putting money into the system. The idea is just really to get us to keep buying and buying and buying more. It's like every holiday requires a basket of toys or gifts for the kids. Every new season requires a new wardrobe or look.

UNKNOWN: 18:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 18:06

Yeah, just this idea that we have to buy everything new and we have to do it all the time. So how does this relate to burnout? That's where we're really going with this. Let's start with a quick refresher on what burnout is. So burnout is, okay, it's a factor of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive stress. So it happens when... Excessive stress is coursing through our bodies nonstop. And again, you know, we don't have mechanisms in place to release this stress or to reduce the factors that are causing the stress in the first place. So we basically let it just course through our bodies. And ultimately, it creates emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion. All right. And then there are three key characteristics of burnout. So those three characteristics are emotional So I'm going to go through them one by one with a little bit more info. So, okay, emotional exhaustion. There's so much that contributes to this. Are... culture, like we have not been taught to feel or process emotions. I mean, think about it. Women are told that expressing emotion is irrational. Anything outside of just like a neutral amount of emotion, pure joy or like actual anger, rage. These are emotions that really just aren't acceptable to express freely. They make other people comfortable. They make other people uncomfortable. They make us uncomfortable. when we express them because we're just, we're not used to it. We're not told that that's normal or even necessary. And men, you know, in these systems, they're taught that any expression of emotion is unhealthy. And it's really normal to feel big emotions. It's really normal to feel all emotions. You just, we need a healthy way to express them, but we've never been taught that. So instead we repress them and repressed emotion lives in your body still and it manifests it has like toxic manifestations it shows up in like really unhelpful ways think about so think about this like you have an argument with your spouse in the morning and it sets the tone for the rest of the day you basically have like a dark cloud hanging over you all day because you're just sort of like down about this argument that you got in or you have a situation with like at work or with a friend that left you feeling uneasy or unresolved Like you're in you're in a bad mood right you're in a bad mood for the whole day or you just have this like unsettled feeling that's that's emotion that's like stuck in your body that's like stuck energy living in your body that you haven't figured out how to like process out of your body. And then you know add on top of that like especially like a generation of people who were never taught to like feel or process emotion coupled with like the heavy emotional labor that we're doing. It's putting extra stress. It's taxing our bodies in, like, really significant ways because, you know, we're basically, a lot of us are learning how to do that if we're even starting to learn how to do it. And then we're, like, expected to pass on these emotional tools to our children who don't know how to do it. really need that from us. And it's great that we have access to all of these extra tools through social media and the internet that if you're my generation, you didn't grow up with. But at the same time, there's just all this extra pressure to show up for your kids in a way that is really emotionally healthy. But we have to just backstop the things that we never learned. And so there's just an extra weight that comes with Okay, the next characteristic is depersonalization. And what this means is feeling disconnected from yourself. It can feel at times like almost like watching your life happen from the outside. And it happens when the mask that you're wearing or your outward expression into the world isn't in alignment with your inner truth. When that happens, your real self retreats. Through the psychology lens, actually, I just finished a semester doing a really deep dive on just how early psychologists view the self and expression of the self and identity. And the idea is that you're in really great psychological health, or you can be in great psychological health, when your real self, your core essence, who you are at the very deepest parts of you, and the outward expression of yourself are in alignment. So, you know, there's an idea that like the self is a process. We're constantly shifting and changing. And as we go deeper within ourselves, we change. And we also change through our lived experiences and our relationships. But that all of us have within us this drive to reach our fullest potential, to use like our gifts and our magic and our capabilities to, you know, the best of our abilities. Carl Jung would call this individuation. And if you're familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, he would call it self-actualization. So it's sort of like this pinnacle, this point where you are living in alignment with who you are at your core. But the that's when we can start to feel really like a really deep divide. And, you know, that can cause like inner tension and dissonance. It can cause anxiety and depression. There's a lot of just like friction that happens when we're not living in alignment. And, you know, in the in reference, like within this conversation, if we're talking about capitalism, the problem, the problem here is that capitalism tells us what we're supposed to value. And it's through this whole like hustle culture this idea that like we are supposed to constantly work harder do more achieve more climb the corporate ladder that we just stay totally exhausted we're constantly striving for the next thing or we're always falling short of something or we start to associate you know things that other people have with what we want or who we are So it teaches us really that we measure our value and our worth and our identity by the things we own, the things we want, the things that other people have, the way that we fit in or the way that we contribute to this system. So our identity we might associate with our job title or how productive we are. We might associate it with how much we make or the possessions we have that serve as like status symbols. If you look at identity through like a healthy lens psychologically I might say like like I'm Jess and I'm someone who is curious creative and committed to growth and some of the things that I value are authenticity impact and connection and even though I know that my external roles are always changing my sense of self is rooted in being being someone who learns and creates and helps other people feel more connected with themselves and each other. So that sort of like names several of the different like core parts of me, how I show up in the world and honors the fact that we're constantly changing, that I'm constantly changing and shifting and, you know, makes room for growth. And I'm not cornering myself or narrowing myself into some specific role that, you know, say I have a job change, I don't totally lose my sense of identity because identity is really rooted from like deep within. But, you know, under these systems and these rule books, we disconnect from ourselves, we lose our connection to our why, our purpose, our meaning, and all of those little parts of us that make us who we are. And so I think a lot of times that we really question identity and you know who we are and what our place is in the world especially around this like mid-ish lifetime or whatever reinvention era you're living in right now those are the moments that we question identity the most and you know it is it's it's completely linked to burnout when we repress our authenticity when we repress who we are at our core we lose our why we disconnect from purpose and meaning and ultimately we lose ourselves completely okay the last of those three characteristics is reduced accomplishment and like this isn't actually about accomplishing less it's about losing the belief that anything that you're doing is actually like amounting to anything so it might feel like you're always behind no matter how much you cross off your list it's always like just filling right back up sometimes even more quickly than you can keep up with it might mean working harder but just not seeing the returns adding up and maybe like doubting the impact that you're making in your work in your world could feel like you know like things something that once felt easy now feels really overwhelming and that you have to work a lot harder just to get to that like same point or maybe it's like a comparison failure so even when something feels like a win you pull up social media and see that someone else is accomplishing something bigger and better. And so that feeling of accomplishment is devalued almost immediately. And all of this makes sense because the system is really built on scarcity. It thrives on scarcity. It keeps people feeling like they're falling behind so that they'll keep working and producing. You know that feeling when you finally have some time to sit down and put your feet up or like maybe you're not even telling yourself that you have time, but maybe something deep within you is really calling for rest, is calling for the opportunity to put your feet up. But you don't because you feel guilty. You feel guilty resting. You feel like you should be doing something else. You feel like rest is not a productive use of your time. You have work to do. or laundry to do or you could be I don't know organizing something or checking off that like never ending to-do list at home or in whatever part of your life is calling and it's just like this cycle that teaches us that rest is weakness or laziness and that like when we're not producing doing something checking off our list that we're not doing enough and that we should be doing more and we can't carry a lot of guilt around that. That's a really, really hard cycle to interrupt and definitely one that we're going to dive into deeper. Like in the system, the goalposts keep moving. So there really isn't any such thing as accomplishment because there's always another goal or another benchmark right behind like each one. When you like accomplish something, the next one pops right back up. So like accomplishment itself is never enough. There's always just like a new goal before you even accomplish the celebration. It's like you got a raise or a new job title. Like, what are you striving for next? Yeah, it just keeps us feeling like we're always falling short. There are other, you know, contributing factors, but it's sort of like the chicken or the egg that, you know, the burnout happens as a product of the systems, but the burnout ultimately perpetuates the systems. Like think about pink collar jobs, for example. So these are jobs that are historically held by women. Many are caretaking roles. So maybe nursing, teaching, child care, social work. Burnout rates are like a lot higher in these fields. And, you know, some of the things that come to mind, lack of support and resources for people in these fields. So when you are constantly expected to work, you to do emotional work that's something that doesn't just like free flow out of us it's you know when you're when you're doing emotional work but you are totally like empty you have no fuel left in you that's that's uh that's a stressor right and so insufficient access to like mental health resources or resources that help us just learn to process the stress these are also these positions are also systemically devalued the position to are underpaid and undervalued compared to many of the more like male dominant industries like why are we undervaluing essential health and caretaking like how our kids are being raised and um you know the people they're becoming like someday the world will be in their hands um but we're paying like finance and tech really well and you know the focus there is innovation and advancement and like yeah it's completely really really important and we should be but But also like taking care of our sick and our children and taking care of the people who have already worked really freaking hard and are now, you know, elderly and aging or educating our kids. Like, why are these the roles that are underpaid? I think another factor that leads to a higher rate of burnout in these industries is that, you know, these like people in these like more like caretaking roles are, as I said, like if they're not, you know, like full if they haven't like if they're not in a place that they're like balanced and you know rested and not freaking exhausted like expected to pour into other people like emotionally they still then a lot of them have to come home and they have like a second shift where they go home and they continue caretaking for like children or elderly parents in their own lives and you know often they're carrying an unequal distribution of labor at home women still carry most of the domestic and the emotional labor. You know, sometimes they're carrying all of it, like most of the single households, 80% of single households, single parent households are headed by a mother. So, you know, it's just like, again, this like vicious cycle that leads to burnout in a higher rate, especially among, you know, other industries. And if we're talking about work and burnout, like, okay, think about the nine to five workday, and how that how the idea of the nine to five workday just sets us up for burnout. failure. Interestingly, the nine to five workday was developed through like protests and activism in the late 1800s. Like people were working, you know, in farms and factories and they were working 10 to 16 hour days. And there was this huge campaign to have eight hour workdays. And the slogan was eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep and eight hours for what we want. And like when you say that now, it feels kind of like a joke, but that's that is what they campaigned on. And So, back then, though, there was a lot of friction in normalizing this eight-hour workday. Henry Ford was actually the one, you know, Ford normalized the eight-hour workday, and there were others definitely that contributed to this, but they basically, like, established a firm boundary where it was an eight-hour workday, 40-hour workweek, and that was one of the contributing factors that really helped. 8 HOURS TO WORK this system was built to benefit men. And so like that was actually really possible for them and it worked for them. The workforce was overwhelmingly male and, you know, a lot of them had a wife at home who was cooking and cleaning and raising the kids, handling all the domestic labor. And I mean, basically like subsidizing this like nine to five, like eight hour workday by doing full-time and unpaid work at home. But for the a man who was working, this like nine to five workday really worked because when the whistle blew at the end of the day, the workday was over. They had no emails or text messages or slack to like check in on. And so they were able to come home and put their feet up or, you know, do what it is that they wanted to do because it was also at that time a lot more realistic to just live off of one income. And today, like this just isn't possible Not only because women are no longer just agreeing to subsidize this eight-hour workday by staying home and doing all of the unpaid labor. Some women are choosing to stay home and some women are choosing to work, but women want the choice to work or stay home. It's not about being told where to spend time so that a husband or man can just continue to like work this eight hour workday. But also like, I mean, the cost of living, it's not really possible in many cases to live off of one income anymore. And so now the nine to five workday, just like, it's not realistic. It's not set up to benefit like the family unit as it is, or, you know, any type of family unit really. Like it just doesn't conform to, it doesn't support the type of work that we're doing. It doesn't and support us as just like whole human beings. If nobody's home doing the domestic labor, like all of that stuff still has to be done later. Like maybe the kids are in school or there's like daycare in place, but everything else still has to be done at the end of the day. And even if there is a caretaker home full-time with the kids, like that person needs a freaking break at the end of the day. Like I am not equipped to be a full-time stay-at-home parent. It's really, really hard. And so that person who's now been home Yeah, absolutely. at a time. But like the economy, we live in like a knowledge economy now, right? Like where a lot of the work that we do is based on knowledge and inspiration and emotional. There's a lot of emotional work too. So knowledge work really depends on like focus, creativity, complex problem solving. And this type of work needs to be done in bursts, like where there are cycles of energy in and energy out. Most people only have like a maximum of two to four like peak cognitive output hours a day and so when you're forcing somebody to work eight hours a day those those work hours outside of like the that really like peak cognitive output time frame the expenditure is like much greater and like emotional work like therapy coaching teaching caregiving emotional availability is like a cornerstone of this work you can't just like switch it on for eight hours at a time and so you know these things like these are massive shifts like As we've talked about this idea of how capitalism contributes to burnout today, this is a system that is expansive and there are layers upon layers upon layers that make it so complex and difficult to interrupt. Again, this isn't being fixed on a systemic level anytime soon, but I think change really starts to happen when we in individually start to spot like how the system shows up and just like reclaim who we are reclaim what it is that we want in life you know what what is it that like defines our worth and what is it that like how are we sourcing our identity and how are we processing emotions how are we feeling emotions um i think like as we talk about all of this in within the complexity of like a capitalist system. We know it's insanely complex and expansive and there are so many layers and it runs so deep through like just the cultural fabric that we like live and operate within. It's not an easy fix. It's not being fixed on a system like wide level anytime soon, but real change starts to happen at the individual level. It starts to happen when we start to just like spot these spot how these systems are showing up in our lives and figuring out how we can like fill in some of these like gaps for ourselves and reconnect with ourselves so that we can like deconstruct the rulebook and rewrite it in a way that just like is a better fit for us i mean that that fits with our own energy and our motives and um our why purpose meaning like all I mean, if you think about emotions, like, you know, if we go back to those three, like core pillars, like the three, the three characteristics of burnout, um, you know, emotional exhaustion. Some of the ways that we can fill in those gaps is by expanding our emotional capacity, improving our EQ, learning how to feel emotions more deeply. You know, they say, like, if there are any emotions that you're not feeling, like, we're all experiencing a range of emotions all the time. But if you're not consciously feeling these emotions, you're repressing them. And so, you know, think about some of the emotions that Yeah. Spend some time reconnecting with your why. Journal about your identity, who you are at your core, and what are the masks that you're wearing in the world? Do they align with who you are at your core? How aligned is that idealized self or the outward expression of yourself that you're projecting into the world with who you are? Yeah. in the deepest parts of you. And reduced accomplishment. I don't know. The next time that you feel the call to bypass rest or the next time you have an accomplishment that you're really proud of, take some time to revel in that. And before you set a new goal or think about the next thing that you want to work towards, ask yourself why. Are you the one that's imposing the this next goal? Is it what you really want? Do you really want to be able to afford the next designer bag or, I don't know, luxury vehicle or whatever it is? Is that what you want or is there something deeper? And take some time to reconnect to whatever it is that's deeper because I think we all just default to thinking that we're supposed to want to make gobs of money and have you know positions with impact and power and sway and like but like is that what you actually want and if it is that's great but like you'll just know you're in alignment when you know that like at your core that is literally what you're like what you're striving for over the coming weeks I really want to break down like the ways that we can combat stress the ways that we can rebel against Thank you so much. But meaningful ways that we can. Like you have to make these massive changes that are just unattainable and overwhelming to even like consider in the first place. So, okay, I think I will leave you with that today. This podcast was a little bit longer than I usually like to go, but hopefully you learned something new. If you have questions, I love to talk about this stuff. I'd love to hear from you. Find me on Instagram. I have on my website, I'm launching a suite of burnout tools So keep an eye out for that. And if you learn something new, if you like the podcast, I would be so grateful if you would subscribe or leave a review or share with a friend. And I look forward to connecting next week. Bye guys.