Hey my friends, we're gonna jump into the episode in one minute, but I wanted to let you know before we do that, I am doing a free class on April 23rd at 3:00 PM Pacific Standard called Stop Staying Stuck. The number one thing I hear from people all the time is that I'm stuck. I feel so stuck in this job, in this relationship where I'm at in my life. I should be somewhere different, but I have no idea how to get there.
And I promise you that it is not true, that you are not stuck. And I'm gonna give you a guide on how to make these difficult decisions to get out of that stuckness and get moving towards whatever decision you wanna go towards. Figuring out what you do for your career, ending a relationship, it all applies the same way. So if you wanna join me, go to quitterclub.com/stuck and get it on the waitlist. You will get a link to where the class is. You will also get a replay if you can't make it live, so that you can stop staying stuck and get on with it. Figure out what you want and go after it. Okay? Go to twitter club.com/stuck and join me for that class. Hello my friends and welcome to another episode. I'm so excited you are here. This is episode 300.
That's Wild . I've been saying hello my friends. Well, welcome to another episode. 300 times I, I can't even explain how insane that is to me. When I started the podcast, there was this goal I had because there's this like common statistic I guess in podcasting called Pod Fade, where most podcasts, I think it's like some absurd number, like 80% of podcasts don't make it past the seventh episode. Now that's for a lot of reasons. Some people try it and they're like, I don't actually like this. Which you know, I'm all about quitting things that don't work. So no shade to people that have done podcasts and stopped after seven or eight. But a lot of it is because it's hard and it takes work and you don't see results quickly at all. And I remember thinking, okay, I wanna get to 50 episodes. That would be a year.
Basically give or take a couple weeks. I wanna commit to doing it for a year and then we'll see where it goes. If I don't wanna do it after a year, that's totally fine. It'll be a fun project I did. It'll be something that you know I can look back on. But I really committed to a year and even that I was like, I wonder if I'll do it. I wonder if I can be consistent every single week. Do I have enough to talk about? In the beginning, I was interviewing people, I was wondering if I could get enough guests. There was a lot of fears, I was terrified to put it out. I was terrified of what people would think. I was terrified of all the things. And to look back and think that there's 300 episodes is mind blowing. Um, I am super grateful for everybody that listens, that kind of gives me this space to be able to work through my own thoughts, to be able to talk about things that are important to me.
I'm so grateful for so many of you who have been with me from the beginning who tell me that you've listened for like three or four years now. It's still crazy to me. And so I just figured I'd acknowledge 300. It's kind of a big one. I guess I have a hard time really slowing down and stopping and celebrating things. I always feel like, all right, it's not that big of a deal. So I'm sort of forcing myself to be like, yeah, 300 is a lot and I have, I don't know, over 500,000 downloads now and all these amazing things that came from just wanting to talk about something and not knowing where it was gonna go. Um, so I'm super grateful to all of you. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for rocking with me. Thank you for all of it. I can't wait to see what else comes in the next a hundred episodes to see where this takes me and how I let it grow and change.
And I just appreciate you being here for the journey. So I figured what better topic to talk about on episode 300 than burnout. 'cause the struggle is real, my friends, I realize this isn't topic that I've talked about specifically that, I mean, I've talked about various aspects of it and I know it is something that affects a lot of us. And so what better episode and to talk about how hard things can be and how much work it takes and how it can grind us into the ground. And we're gonna talk all about burnout today and how I want you to think about it, how I want you to assess whether you're kind of struggling with it and what I want you to do about it if you are struggling with burnout. Okay, so let's jump in. What is it that's like the first question I think we have to really address because it is kind of a buzzword at this point, right?
Everything is burnout. Everyone is burned out, which I actually don't disagree with. I do think we all have various degrees of burnout, but it's hard to tell what it is. And I'm not gonna talk about it from like the clinical definition. I mean there is a clinical definition for like when to know when you're completely burned out. I think you know, the dictionary definition is physical or mental collapse caused by overwork or stress. I think a lot of us sort of relate to that. I do think there's some argument about like, you know, for a lot of people when we say when it's like clinically burned out, you truly cannot function. Oftentimes you really can't get outta bed, you can't get your body to do what you want it to do anymore. And it's after years and years and decades and decades of pushing yourself to the point where you really become mentally depleted and there's no will or motivation to really get anything done.
For a lot of us, we're not in that level of burnout, thankfully. And if you are, then this podcast episode is probably not the thing that's gonna help. Maybe it'll give you some tips and tricks, but that really requires you to make some very serious changes for a very long time. And it requires you to get professional help. Often that could be coaching therapy, medical intervention. You will need a lot more than a weekend or a week for all of us to like just rest and be okay. It's not how it works. And so if you find yourself in that place where it's really hard to even get out of bed where you have zero motivation to get to work where you can't get yourself to do the things you're supposed to do, I would highly recommend getting professional help and getting yourself out of that very severe fight or flight mode that you're in.
But for the rest of us, which is sort of where this topic is, I wouldn't say that this is the clinical aspect of burnout where you really have to just shut things down for a while. I talk about it kind of in the colloquial wheel term. Colloquial. Colloquial, I dunno, I can't say that word way that we say burnout, which we all kind of know where it's like we've just used up too much of the gas. Like we have had our foot on the gas pedal and we are drained. And I wanna talk about how to really examine that for yourself and what you should do if you find yourself in that situation. So I think most of us are in burnout in some stage of it. And I wanna talk about this first, I want you to think about it in this way. It's not like all or nothing.
It's not black or white. It's not like you're burned out or you're not. It is a spectrum. It is a scale, right? And you can be on various parts of that scale. Some people obviously more burned out than others. And I think when you think about it this way, it can be easier to kind of still notice the thoughts because I think for a lot of us, we like to believe like, oh no, I'm not burned out because I'm still doing all the things because I'm still managing work and kids and school and a million um, extracurricular activities and the projects and like I'm surviving so you know, I'm tired, but I'm fine. I'm not to the, I'm not as bad as other people. And I want you to really think about it as a scale. I recently, last week was at this presentation, this talk by this doctor and it was about health and it was about, uh, longevity and your physical health.
And one thing that he said that was interesting to me in thinking about this concept, he was talking about certain markers in your blood, in your body. And he was saying that when you go to western medicine, when you go to the doctor, you know, oftentimes they will tell you everything is fine. Like your blood looks good, all the markers look fine. Until you get to a point where let's say you have some kind of condition, you are now diabetic or you're pre-diabetic, you're getting to the point they'll start raising concerns, right? You're pre-diabetic, you now have high blood pressure, your cholesterol's too high or whatnot, right? When the marker gets to that point. But what he was showing us was like there are, you know, green, yellow, red zones of this marker. And when you get to the red zone is where in western medicine we kind of pay attention and it's like we need to have some kind of intervention and we need to give you some kind of medicine and we work to kind of reverse it.
But he was saying that like it takes decades to move yourself up to that red zone, right? There are decades of signs when they will tell you that your markers are healthy, but you are moving in from the green zone to the yellow zone and you are creeping up in that yellow zone and you are getting to that red zone. So we can do things to kind of prevent it or reverse it way before we get to the point where it's debilitating or where it's a really big problem or where we're gonna have to take really extreme interventions. And I was thinking about this with respect to this episode because I think it's the same thing with burnout. I think it's the same thing with all mental health and mental disorders, that there are signs and there are paths that we are taking to a, you know, maybe the clinical definition of burnout.
And if we notice those, then we can make changes. We don't have to wait until it's to the point where I'm debilitated where I can't get outta bed where I, you know, can't function anymore. And for a lot of us, I think we are waiting until like it gets so bad that then I have to do something. Whether that's not even with burnout, you know, we can talk about it with anxiety or depression or other, you know, things that we might be grappling with. I think when we have this thought, it's not that bad, you know? And, and I think that there's a whole host of those thoughts. Other people have it worse. My situation, I should be grateful for it. Whatever those beliefs you have is what's getting you to not actually deal with, well what is it, right? How bad is it? What is it that I can do now so that I don't get there?
You know, beyond the fact that we don't wanna get there and we don't wanna have to deal with that. It's like, so I can actually enjoy my life more. And so I want you to think about it in that sense. Like even if you don't feel like you're burned out, what are things that if I continue down this path for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, like will it lead to that? Is it something that eventually I will not be able to maintain? And if that's the case, then should I be making some changes now? Right? And so I want us to think about the fact that like most of us are in some level of burnout, some level on that scale where we are pushing ourselves in ways that are unnatural for our bodies and not maintainable, right? For so many of us, we have pushed through for decades and decades because that is what we've been taught.
We've been taught to ignore every sign that our body gives us. We've been taught to ignore every need that we have. Like we don't, if you've noticed like none, none of us, a lot of what we've taught, been taught from when we are kids is to ignore the actual natural urges and do things based on, you know, the schedule of school or the schedule of work or the deadline. So it's like it doesn't matter if you're tired or you're hungry or you need to go to the bathroom. Like right now we're doing X, Y, and z. We're sitting here, we're working, we don't have time for lunch, we can't go to to bed yet. We have to stay up late. We do all this stuff and we're reinforcing these ideas that like it doesn't matter what my body needs, it doesn't matter what my body is constantly urging me to do.
I have decided with my prefrontal cortex that like what is most important is this deadline. And so I have to work on this, right? And again, this is a skill that's actually very useful. It's great that we can work with our prefrontal cortex and decide things and stick with them even when our urges kind of flare up. But it's also when we've done it for so long where we no longer really even know what our body needs when we are so uh, wrapped up in these beliefs and these paradigms from society that we constantly have to be productive. We constantly have to be producing, we constantly have to be doing more. We almost like disconnect with our own body. We almost don't know what we need. We almost don't realize like all we're doing is beating ourselves up. Like why can't I have more energy?
Why am I tired all the time? Why don't I have joy anymore? Why am I not happy? I used to be like a happy go lucky person. Why am I not? And we don't realize that it, this isn't something that happened like one day. It's happening over decades and decades of putting our bodies through things that are not natural to us, right? Expecting our bodies to be robots, expecting us to have the same level of output, the same level of energy, the same level of production every day of the year through every season for decades and decades. Like it's absurd. Of course our body doesn't work like that. Nothing in nature does. And yet we get really mad at ourselves like why am I so tired? Maybe 'cause it's winter, maybe 'cause it's dark. Maybe that's what physically happens to your body. But none of us wanna accept that.
We wanna be like every day I have to be able to jump up, get outta bed, do the things I wanna do with the same zeal that I was able to do for 20 years, you know, before when I was younger and why can't I do it now and let me just beat myself up, right? So when you realize like that's what I've been programmed to do, what I've been trained to do and I have to untrain my mind, I have to unlearn that. I have to realize how ridiculous. Just because someone decided that was our system doesn't mean that it was right or that it's natural or that it's what I should be doing, right? And so I want us to first just start with that, like really understanding like what have I put myself through through school, through work, you know, parenthood through whatever, where I have taken on this idea that I should constantly be doing that I'm not allowed to rest.
That I don't wanna be lazy, that there's always things to do that I have to look perfect. All of that stuff. And then as you like, realize that because all of us have doing have done this, what do we do with it? Where do we go from there? For a lot of you, you're gonna be like, yeah, I know I'm burned out. You don't have to convince me. I have very well aware that I'm burned out and I cannot keep going in this environment. So I'm gonna talk about it with respect to work. But you can do this with respect to your home. You can do this with respect to your relationships. Anywhere where you're feeling like I'm really burned out, you can apply the same kind of framework to evaluate and then figure out what you need. Okay? So that's what it is. It's gonna be two parts.
Like the first part is evaluating, which I think a lot of us skip out on. Sometimes it's hard to look at what's not working. It's hard to face it. And sometimes it's just like we, we wanna get to the solution. And so we're like, lemme just fix it. Tell me what I need to do. How many bubble baths do I need to take? Um, the answer is none. Bubble baths are not what's gonna stop you from being burned out. Okay? So we have to start with evaluating first because we have to see like what is the problem here? Where is the problem so I can start taking baby steps to fixing it? Okay? And when you evaluate, when we're in this part of evaluation, I want you to think of two different things. There is you, there is your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, how you show up.
And then there's your environment, there's the circumstances, there's everything outside of you, okay? We have to look at both. Both of those things exist. There's no like one where it's like it's all just in your head. It's all just your thoughts and there's no other words. Like it's all just circumstances and it has nothing to do with how you're thinking. Okay? And so when you're looking at what needs to change, you have to look at both of these things separately. We have to be able to evaluate them separately. And so the first step of that is taking an inventory of really being brutally honest with yourself about each part. Okay? So you can do this however you want. There's no like special way. You can take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle and you know, put yourself on one side and you work on the other.
You can just type it out. It doesn't matter. We'll start with the environment. We're gonna talk about it in the context of your job. I want you to think about where is it my job. And what I mean by that is that things that will not change, that has nothing to do with me. That's just circumstances of jobs. Like the hours, right? Maybe you work a night shift, that's not gonna change. Maybe like that's the job that you have. If you wanna stay here, you're gonna have to work the night shift, okay? That's part of the environment. Maybe it's the commute. Like this is the job I have. There's gonna be a 45 minute commute every morning and every night. The hours are this to this. If for instance, let's say when I was working at a big law firm, there are certain things like the billing, like I have to bill at six minute increments.
It doesn't matter how much that stresses me out or what that's gonna stay, that's something I'm doing. And even within that job it was harder to figure out the hours because there wasn't like a nine to five. But that was part of it that I would have had to accept. Or anybody that works there has to accept that. It's like I get paid a large salary, I get paid a lot because I am on call. So part of the job is when I get an email. Now again, there's a lot of thoughts and feelings that go into this and we can talk about how you can change sort of those expectations. And we have to talk about where is it really the expectation of the job and where is it my own perfectionism? But for the sake of argument, you might say like, okay, this isn't a type of job where I just clock out at five o'clock, right?
This isn't the type of job where I can't not respond. 'cause part of why they're paying me obscene amounts of money is so that I'm available at 10 o'clock at night. If that's the case, fine. That's the environment, that's the job. We have to accept that for a lot of us, we do these jobs and then we're mad the whole time that it's the way that it is, right? We like take the night shift and then we're upset that it's a night shift. Like that's what the job is. Do you wanna do it or not? Right? Then we can manage our mind around it. So there has to be like a understanding of taking inventory of like what is this environment, right? Where is it like I'm not gonna change anything about this. Like this is the way it is. Maybe I'm a doctor and I have to be on call a certain amount of time every month.
That's the job, right? So I want you to write that down. Like what are things that cannot change from this job? Okay? And you're gonna try to figure out if you are okay with it, if you can accept that. And that could be yes, like I am willing to work 80 hours a week because I wanna make this amount of money because I want to save up. Maybe I wanna be here for a couple of years and buy my dream house. Maybe I wanna pay off my debt, maybe I wanna get the experience or I wanna do a night shift because it allows me to be home when my kids come home from school. Okay, great work is not what we're gonna change. The work is what it is. Now you may decide, I can't do this, I cannot work this much, I cannot work a night shift.
Some other people might have different nervous systems and they can handle it. Great. Some people might have a night shift and it doesn't mess up their whole system, but mine does. And so this isn't going to be a job where I will be able to find, you know, a level of balance. Now, I think for the most part, most of us can manage our mind much better than we have ever been taught. And so we can manage a lot of the stress a lot better if you have to stay in that job. I think for most of us, there's very few things that I think you can't do. Um, but it's also okay to just say, I don't want to like, I can spend all that energy managing my mind or I can decide this isn't for me. I think about this a lot with my nervous system.
And when I worked in big law, I realized like I left very quickly compared to my counterparts who stayed for years on end at the firms. And in the beginning I felt some more shame around that. Like why couldn't I hack it? And now I look back and I'm like, thank God I couldn't hack it. Thank God my nervous system and body is a way that truly could not sustain that level of work for a long period of time. That I literally was like, I have to tap out. Like there's no way I can do this. I'm gonna die right now. I was being dramatic and I didn't have a lot of this at these tools and I likely could have stayed, but I realized at the time like the amount of rest that my body needed, like I just physically couldn't do it. And I wasn't willing to do what a lot of people did, which is like taking drugs, taking Adderall and Ritalin and other things to keep you up.
Drinking 10 cups of coffee. It was just too much for my system. And I was like, I can't do that and I can't physically stay up this much. I can't physically work this much. And so something has to give. Like I knew very early on this will not be the environment for me 'cause I will die and I'm not willing to do this. And so it was just a decision like I am, I could, I could manage my mind, I could try to suck it up, I could, you know, do it for a certain period of time. But that's about it. And I mean I think that's the case for a lot of people in big law. I think there's a reason there's such a high attrition rate. Um, I think a lot of people realized I can't handle this level, which is fine, but I want you to really like think about that.
Like if it's it's your environment and you're like, I cannot do this, then you have to start thinking about how to change that environment. And this is hard. It's not easy. It's easy to stay where you're at. It's easier to not make changes, even if not making changes causes a lot of problems. Even if the place that you're at is working you into the ground. For so many of us, it's, you know, better to the devil I know than the devil I don't. And for so many of us it's like I'd rather stay here and make this money 'cause I know I can handle it and be miserable than making a change. And so it requires a lot of courage to say like, you know what? This just isn't it for me. I cannot survive this. I do not wanna do this for decades on end.
I do not wanna live like this. And so I have to change that environment. It's okay to change the environment. I know I teach thought work and I teach you how to change your thoughts and I will teach you that all day long. And I think it's a huge part of this and we're gonna get to it. But I want you to hear this from me. I think it's okay to change your circumstances too. I think it's okay to say I don't wanna work on managing my thoughts all day, every day about this thing. It's okay that this isn't the type of lifestyle I want. That I wanna be in it. Like what is more conducive to me and my body is something that is at a different pace and I'm willing to take the 50 50, right? I might leave this and not have the prestige of big law or not have the income.
I won't make as much money. Am I willing to kind of change the circumstance and be okay with the other 50 50 with the negative 50 that comes from leaving? Is that worth it to me? Right? When I know I'm not gonna leave and everything's gonna be rainbows and butterflies, I'm definitely giving something up. Can I do that? Okay. So I want you to start with there where it's like your first evaluating your environment, okay? And then you are deciding if that environment is something you're gonna change or not. And if you are, I'm not saying you have to change it today, but you have to decide, am I gonna create an exit plan? Am I gonna try to leave in the next year or two? Am I gonna save up so I can leave in three years? What is it like when I start realizing like maybe I can't do it right now, but if I know that this cannot be my future, then I'm ready to leave Right?
Now going back to inventory. So we have the circumstances, we have your environment. This is the harder part you have to get super honest about where it's you, where you are adding to your own burnout, where you are adding to your own misery at your job and we are all doing it. This isn't like a call out of you. Every single one of us does it. And we do it with our negative thought patterns. So many of us who suffer from , perfectionism, people pleasing, imposter syndrome, the need for external validation, anxiety, all of these things we layer on what's already maybe a difficult situation or an intense one or something that we already have to manage our mind around and we add like gas to the fire and we make it so much worse. And I want you to really think about this. If it was just the environment, if it was just the job, everybody would be burned out.
Everybody would be at the same level of burnout as you. But that's not the situation anywhere because there's a lot of people that can handle that job. And that might be because maybe their, again, their nervous system is a different one than yours. Their brain pattern is different. They have different capabilities we all do. They might naturally be more inclined to let's say more intense hours to less sleep. All of those things are true, but there's also people that just, they, I don't know, have different thought patterns. Maybe they were just instilled with different things as children, but they can handle the stress of it in a different way. And it just shows us it's actually good news because it shows us that it's possible, it's possible to think about this job in a different way. To be able to feel a different thing, to be able to not lose our mind every day.
An example I like to give of this that I was thinking about the other day because I was watching, um, there's these tiktoks, it was a doctor that put this tiktoks and they're hilarious. They're like, he puts like quotes that he's overheard or other people have overheard from surgeons during like residency or whatnot and he, you know, he puts it as if it's like an inspirational quote but they're just very cutting and mean sometimes, but hilarious. And it's these surgeons that are, you know, have the reputation of kind of being jerks or being really emotionless. They're basically ribbing on like the uh, resident or uh, the person that they're doing surgery with. And obviously like those tiktoks were jokes, but I was thinking about it 'cause I was thinking about the type of people that likely become really good surgeons, the people that likely excel in those careers.
And there is this stereotype of surgeons kind of being or not being emotionless or kind of not having good bedside manners. And that's probably true because that lends them to be able to do a job that's very highly stressful for a lot of us who maybe are very overly empathetic or have a lot of emotion or are really hard on ourselves or a perfectionist. That kind of a job could crush us. Not because the job itself, but because of our beliefs. Because if as soon as we do something wrong, we're beating ourselves up. As soon as you know, a patient dies, we think it's our fault or whatnot. And so after a while that becomes really difficult to keep up. And so I want my surgeon, if I go into surgery, I want a surgeon that's not constantly like, oh my God, am I gonna mess this up?
Is this gonna be, I don't wanna do this because what if they hate me? You know, I want someone that's very self-assured. I want someone that is overly confident. I want someone that doesn't have as much emotion in it, right? I wouldn't say this, obviously you want the person that you're dealing with to like do their best work, but I want someone that's not overly perfectionistic because then they're, they're not second guessing themselves, which is what leads to more errors, right? It's someone that's assured that's just like, Hey, I'm gonna do my best and it's gonna be fine, right? And I think about that because I think about like, you know, let's say there are some surgeons who likely are burning themselves out, not because the stakes are any higher for them than they are for other surgeons, but simply about how they're thinking about it.
And I, the reason I choose this example is because it is one of the most high stakes, right? For most of us, our jobs are not life or death. It's not like even if we do mess up that it could greatly harm someone. So when you take really the highest stakes job and you think even within that, there are ways to think about it that lowers the stakes for you. That lowers your ability to handle that pressure, that stops this insane belief that like I have to be perfect and I can never make a mistake. Which is impossible to really like having your own back and knowing that you're good and you know, like not fixating on your mistakes. What you want is the person that is able to do those things in these high pressure situations, right? And so when you are really thinking about what you bring to the table, how you are showing up, I want you to really think about like what are the things that you are doing that causes more stress at your job, that causes more stress in your life that is causing this burnout, right?
Are you saying yes to everything even when your plate is full? Are you not going to your managers when you need help? Are you not asking anybody else for help? Are you taking on your coworker's work? Are you beating yourself up as soon as you make a mistake? Are you taking work home even when they've told you that you shouldn't be working after a certain amount of time? Are you thinking about work every night when you're at home? Are you planning on your weekends to like get ahead and you're still working so now you don't have weekends? Have you put aside every type of hobby or passion project or thing that used to bring you joy? Are you not doing those anymore? Right? All of those things are things that are gonna add to your burnout. All of those things are what it's gonna weigh you down, right?
All of those things are what it's gonna take whatever job you have now and make it 10 times harder because you're holding yourself to impossible standards because you're people pleasing and you want everyone to love you because you need everybody's external validation. That's what's gonna burn you out. Like that's what's gonna drive you into the ground regardless of what the job is. And the reason this part is so important is because when you go to another job, you're bringing that same brain with you. When you go to the next job and you're still a people pleaser and a perfectionist and you know, um, a high achiever and an overachiever and a productivity junkie and all these things, it doesn't just magically go away. It doesn't matter if the next job has a really nice boss or that they really tell you to stop working at five.
If you're gonna go home and have anxiety because you didn't get everything on your to-do list done, you're still gonna burn yourself out. And so while I do think environment is important and I think that those things can be things that you wanna change, I think the bulk of it is in how you show up. I think the bulk of it is in how you think about your own tasks. I think about this now, I don't wanna go back to being a lawyer, but I'm like, I sort of sometimes wish, like I wish I got to go back and work in big law with the mindset that I have because I know without a doubt that it would be a completely different experience. I know without a doubt that I would have not even half the stress that I had when I went there. I am actually certain that I would be such a better lawyer.
I would be so much of a better lawyer if I wasn't that in my head, if I wasn't that anxious, if I wasn't that concerned about what everyone thought and I just really got to the work. And so I want you to know that that a lot of your power, I mean all of your power really lies in that portion. Yes, some of your power lies in changing jobs, but again, if you're gonna bring this brain with you, you're gonna just create the same exact issues that you have, right? And so when you start realizing like, okay, this is where I'm having the problems. I want you to think about this in this way. Like once you do this inventory, what do we do with that? It's a great question. You don't have to change everything all at once. It's not going to happen. You're not gonna all of a sudden get rid of your perfectionism and your people blazing and all the other stuff.
And so a lot of times we have like, well it's not gonna make a difference. There's so much to change. This is who I am, which is. Luckily, even though it took you decades to kind of learn these behaviors, it doesn't take you that long to change them. But it does take time. And so the goal isn't like we have to change everything all at once. It's like, can I take small steps? Can I start noticing this and realizing when I'm saying yes to too many things, when I have too many things on my plate, right? I want you to really think about this in three different areas. Like how do I change how I relate to other people, which is you know, boundaries. How do I say no more? How do I let it go? How do I not complain all day about my coworkers?
'cause all that does is make me feel miserable and it doesn't really change anything, right? I have to figure out how do I relate differently to other people? How do I relate to myself? And that's like how do I talk to myself? How do I treat myself when I make a mistake? How do I treat myself if things don't go perfectly? How do I speak to myself every day if I'm constantly beating myself up? If I'm constantly telling myself how terrible I am? I don't have to tell you that like after a while that is going to be the thing that burns you out. That is going to be the thing that becomes exhausting, right? So how do I relate to other people? How do I relate to myself and how do I relate to my life outside of work? And so I want you to really think about what am I doing outside of work?
Am I allowing myself to rest? Am I allowing myself to have fun? Am I allowing myself to have hobbies? Do I do anything outside of work besides veg out? What is it that I like to do? What did I like to do before I got caught into this? Like if you don't create that balance, even in short pockets of time to find the things that bring you joy outside of work, it doesn't matter how much you love your work, eventually it will be the thing that will like swallow you whole. Like you have to figure out how to create joy and fun and adventure and spontaneity and whatever it is, community, connection, love, whatever it is that you need outside of work. And so when you focus on these three things, when you focus on baby steps of these three things, you don't have to do 'em all.
Like how do I start asking for help a little bit at work? How do I talk to myself a little bit nicer when I make a mistake or when I don't get through my to-do list? How do I find one thing that I can do this week that just brings me joy when I start these baby steps? It slowly not only starts bringing joy into your life or making things easier, but it starts showing you the power you have in your life. It starts showing you that like I don't need to change the whole job in order for me to change some things. I'm not this helpless victim here. I'm not at the mercy of corporate America where I have to be burned out all the time. I get to have a say in it. I get to decide that I'm gonna make a change, that I'm gonna try something and do it differently that I get to like change at any point.
Even if I was a doormat this whole time and let everybody walk all over me, I can start saying, no, I can change things. And I promise you, you can start changing things with the smallest of steps. You don't have to change a lot to really see fundamental shifts, fundamental shifts in how you feel, fundamental shifts in how you show up, fundamental shifts in how you work. And as you do that work is how you beat burnout is how you start like pushing back against all of the expectations and society's demands and corporate America and all that stuff. I know this was a lot, I just threw a lot at you. So you can listen to this episode again. But I want you to go through both the evaluation process and figuring out how you wanna tackle each aspect of this, the environment in yourself, how you wanna relate to different things in work, in your life, in your own mind.
And I want you to come get help if this is something that you do struggle with. Burnout is one of the stages that we deal with in the quitter club, right? How to love where you're at, how to love right here, how to learn, how to relate to your job differently. So this is the work that we do constantly and there are so many people in there that are constantly talking about how they learn to say no. How they learn to change that impossible standard, how they learn to talk to themselves differently. If you want a community, if you want guidance, there are videos and worksheets that will walk you through this. I want you to join us in the Quitter Club. It is where we take these concepts deeper and actually apply them to your life and you get the coaching that you need when you inevitably slip, slip up or things don't make sense.
Um, we will be opening doors for a special yearly, like annual price. Do this work for a year and watch how it changes your life. Do this work and see how your work life changes. I want you to join us. You can go to lessons from a quitter.com/quitter club and get on that wait list so that you know when doors open. I would love to do this work. I think really learning how to beat burnout is one of the most important thing skills that you can learn no matter what job you go to, what stage in life you are. It's really how you relate back to yourself and create the life that you want, exactly where you are not needing to change a bunch of things. Um, I hope this was helpful. Thank you again for hanging out with me for 300 episodes and I can't wait for the next 300.
All right, my friends, I'll see you next week.
Hey, if you are looking for more in-depth help with your career, whether that's dealing with all of the stress, worry, and anxiety that's leading to burnout in your current career or figuring out what your dream career is and actually going after it, I want you to join me in the Quitter Club. It is where we quit what is no longer working like perfectionism, people pleasing imposter syndrome, and we start working on what does, and we start taking action towards the career and the life that you actually want. We will take the concepts that we talk about on the podcast and apply them to your life and you will get the coaching tools and support that you need to actually make some real change. So go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitterclub and get on the waitlist. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.