The Exhaustion Escape: Ending Burnout

Many people go to work each day feeling tired and unmotivated. In this episode we’ll go over how to identify what’s contributing to your low energy and stress at work—and how to end burnout and be productive with Dr. Sandra Lewis. You will learn:

1.    Why do we push ourselves so hard?

2.    The connection between excellence at work, wellbeing, and productivity?

3.    How can burnout exist in plain sight?

4.    Strategies for them to maintain a healthy work schedule.

5.    Simple solution for reset.

Our guest, Dr. Sandra Y. Lewis, clinical psychologist & Personal Energy Strategist, works with organizations and people who want to relieve burnout and reignite their capacity to make an impact that matters to them. As a Yoga Nidra teacher and Qigong practitioner, Dr. Sandra blends research and ancient wisdom into practical strategies to sustain leadership and impact. She is author of the book, Life in 4-Part Harmony ~ Get Everything in Your Life to Work with Everything Else in Your Life.

You can learn more about Dr. Sandra Lewis at:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandraylewis/

If you liked this episode and would like to learn more about wellness training and workshops offered by 9 to 5 Wellness, email us at info@aeshathair.com

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My passion is helping organizations create a culture of wellness, and I do this by setting up health programs that prioritize the most important asset they've got – their employees. Cheers to a healthier and happier journey ahead!

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Transcript

  Welcome to the nine to five wellness podcast,  a show about corporate wellness solutions with innovators and forward thinking leaders who are at the forefront of the workplace wellness movement.  I'm your host Ayesha Tahir. 

 Hello and welcome to nine to five wellness show. Today I have a very special guest who is going to discuss the exhaustion escape ending burnout for you. . She is Dr. Sandra Lewis. She's a clinical psychologist and personal energy strategist.  Dr. Sandra works with organizations and people who want to relieve burnout and reignite their capacity to make an impact that matters to them.

As a yoga nidra teacher and qigong practitioner, Dr. Sandra blends research and ancient wisdom into practical strategies to sustain leadership and impact. She is also the author of the book, Life in Four Part Harmony, Get Everything in Your Life to Work with Everything Else in Your Life. I am super excited to , discuss the exhaustion escape with Dr.

Sondra today. Welcome to the show, Dr. Sondra. Thank you so much. Ayesha, it's great to be here with you. Great to be here with you. Yeah, I am. I'm really excited about the topic because we are seeing an increase in the burnout rate 

 After COVID 19, but I believe it was there. We just didn't recognize it before. So I'm super excited to really dive into this topic with you.  One of the things that keeps coming up with my. Corporate clients is that  the believe that they have to  work certain number of hours to get the project done.

So in a way, they're putting a lot of pressure on themselves.  Why do you think? We put this pressure on ourselves. Why are we pushing so hard? Yes. So interestingly, I think that there's two parts to that. There's the one thing that came to me when you said the pressure  that often happens when we're already stressed and we don't quite see a way out. 

Now, interestingly, when we're stressed and we don't quite see a way out, we don't think we have the resources to manage something. Then What will we do? We will push harder. We'll just go harder. Can we go even a little bit? If I push harder, I can do this because that's one of the things we learn about work is that the harder you work, right?

If you just if you just push, you'll get it done. So When we're stressed sometimes and we get stuck in that we get stuck in a loop where, oh my God, it's not happening. It's not happening. Let me go harder. Let me go harder. I'm not sure I can do it. Let me go harder. Let me go harder. We can just get stuck right there in that loop.

And we never get to the point. Even if we finish the project, we never actually our body has can't settle because at that point, Our nervous system's so aroused, we settle a little, but we not ever get quite down to that place where it's like, okay, the project's done, I can take a break now.  We're literally so much, so aroused, we actually sometimes just jump into the next thing. 

The other thing that came to my mind as I was listening to you is how we often disconnect productivity from wellness.  Productivity and wellness. often are seen as maybe we treat them like they're competing with each other.  I can't be productive if I'm taking a walk or I can't be productive if I'm meditating.

I need to do these things. I can't, I don't have time to sit.  Truth is that when we, And often, right, we'll see somebody who's very productive and we're think they're great because they're so productive. This is how the higher achiever person or the high performing person can kind of hide. , they're like, you'll miss their burnout because they are doing so many things.

It was just like, this is that sometimes that problem solving person that everybody goes to and they say, Hey, , they always get things done. Let's go to them.  So, but you, when you disconnect  productivity and wellness, then you don't see how these two things actually complement each other.  When you take that time out just to give your brain a break, when you, particularly if you're trying to do some creative work.

You try to give your brain a break  and you step away, you nurture yourself, give yourself some time to recharge. When you come back, you actually have more possibility, right? You have more of your thinking capacity, your emotional capacity, your physical capacity available to involve in this thing. So the pushing. 

I think results from two things. The one is we get stuck in a part of our stress cycle where we feel like things aren't going to work out and we feel like I gotta push harder. The other is that we disconnect productivity from well being and we really want to make them part.  I'm so glad you touched upon the relationship between productivity and well being. 

Then what about excellence though? , all the top athletes and people who are And they're also performing at, ,  top level.  What do you say? , from what I've read, , in the books and research, is that they're putting exponential amount of hours, to gain that excellence.

 How can we connect the two then? And they're also Taking breaks. So, , if somebody is a runner  and depending upon what kind of race they need to run, they're going to be days when they run slower because they want to build stamina. They're going to be days when they run faster because they need to get to the finish line quicker, right?

You know, if you're, you're a hundred, you're a dash runner.   People who excel.  have a rhythm for how to help themselves grow a little excellence a little bit at a time.  If you try to push your body from zero to being at 60 in a short time, your body's going to say, I can't do that. But when you Excel, when you're really in your excellence zone, you've learned where's the edge and where could you give just a little bit more that you would expand a little, you'd but not collapse. 

So there's this rhythm of Exertion and arrest  and literally people who write books about energy management, that's one of the things they talk about is we need recovery time. We need recharge time. So during your day, if you really want to be at your excellence, right? If you want to build excellence, then there has to be space for you to recover and to sort of look at what you're doing and kind of think, what do I need now to get to this next place?

I want to be.  The other thing that comes to my mind is when you said the word excellence,  first book that popped into my head was Power by Feel.  And it's, and literally, they interviewed, right, these authors Claussen and Newberg, interviewed people who they considered Excellence, right in their excellence zone.

These are people who are excelling as surgeons, artists, athletes, all the things that they were doing in the world. And here's one, this is my, my favorite section of the book talks about how  when people ignore how they feel, I'm going to give you two actually favorite sections.  People ignore how they feel.

It's really a formula for mediocrity. They're not paying attention to their energy. They will just do what they have to do to get something done.  And they call that the formula for mediocrity. You can't be in your excellence zone if you're just doing what you have to do to get it done.  What they say is they learned from these athletes and  surgeons and  artists, people from varied walks of life  that  excellence had to do with them. 

Feeling like their work  was more of a noun than a verb actually. Right. And that their work was where they, their work was really like love to everybody else watching them. It looks like work, but if you ask them about it, it feels like love.  Right. What happens when people burn out often is that we've actually lost a connection with what we love about what we do.

And I can tell you that from personal experience, I was like, I'm,  I don't even love my job anymore. I don't want it. I don't want to do it. Right, right. And you, when you, when you get to that place, now you've lost the actual thing that drives excellence, the love for what you do. And that, and it, it's so much of a relationship between you and your work, but now you got this fracture in your relationship with your work.

Yeah. So you can't drive your excellence because you lost the love. Yeah.  Yeah. Yeah. And losing the love is a big deal because  if you're not enjoying it,  you're almost losing your purpose for that job, for that career, , for an athlete, for that sport. And you can't go too long 

  You gave, you gave a good example of being a runner because I'm a runner.  We and yeah, I only train 20 percent of the week  at a hard intensity and the 80 percent is at a moderate to low intensity, like especially  the long runs.

People don't realize that the long runs are at a very low intensity. And I have at least two full days of rest in between. And those rest days are so important because that's what makes for good, productive high intensity running days.  And it's the same for work. I suggest to my corporate clients all the time that you have to take breaks during the day to like, , of course you need a break at the end of the day, which is becoming hard with our hybrid environment.

, if people are working from home, especially the The lines are so blurred now between our personal and work lives that it's becoming hard for my clients to do that. But I, I emphasize that you should still have a time that you actually close your laptop and you don't go back in there. to your home office at all.

 Same thing during the workday, take movement breaks, take breaks that would make you productive so that you come back refreshed. Subconsciously, the work is still going on in the background. Actually, you'll come back with fresher ideas, more productive ideas.   I want to touch upon this hybrid work environment that we have at this time.

I know a lot of companies are calling their employees back.  From my clients, I've heard like a mix of what they feel like, , for going back. So some of my clients feel like, oh, it's really good because you know what? I'm working  14 hours a day. Like I feel like I'm never off. And then. Other half of my clients are like, no, we actually like working from home.

We like this flexibility. We're not really sure about going back. So for them, maybe hybrid  is the environment that they should be working in.  What are some tips or strategies for them to maintain a healthy work schedule and also maintain a boundary?

Mm hmm. Yeah.  When and I would say that even when we are full time at a site, we still have to figure out the boundaries, particularly for people who have careers where they want to make a major impact. They want to do something. They can come home and they still can't turn it off.  So we have to have ways of turning off the work, even if we are full time in our office.

And at the end of the day, we go home. If you then pick up your computer and go back on to work at nine o'clock after you had dinner and maybe put your Children to bed if you're a parent.  Now, you still have never turned off. You haven't literally shifted out of work. You're still at work.  The way people, I would suggest if you are hybrid, right?

And you are working at home part of the time,  depending upon your space, you need a way to say work is over.  For some people, it works to have a very physical way of putting their computer somewhere that they're not going to open it. They shut it down, they turn it off. I've even read articles about families who at a certain time of night, they actually turn off the internet in their home so that they're not accessing any kind of outside.

They're not emailing anything that's going to come. It comes the next morning when the internet comes back on. That's smart. That's very smart. Yeah. Yeah. So you can, you can, if you feel that you need that level of demarcation, there are many ways you can do that in your home.  , we're in the Northeast area and people who live in New York City or maybe live in a small apartment, a studio or something, everything is pretty much almost in the same space.

So how do you start to create some, some differences between space? Sometimes that's just, you got a box. That's your, where are you going to take this and you're going to put, or maybe there's a drawer where you sit to do your work. You take your, your laptop, you put it in a drawer.  Maybe you cover your screen with a cloth, like, okay, screen is closed.

Everything work is closed. Now I'm off to do whatever.  So.  These simple things that help you to say, I've changed from one thing to the other. That's the, that's like the, what in psychology we would call like a discriminative stimulus. Oh, this now means I can go home. Now I'm home. I'm not at work anymore. 

Sometimes we need those things. It's a cue. It's a cue to our physical, like, Almost like when we see a cue. Yeah. Like it's a, a visual cue to our brain. Yeah. That Oh, we are, we are off. Yeah. This is it. , this is the end of the workday. Yeah. And I love that. Yeah. I also suggest changing your clothes, right?

Like even if you've been online all day and you've had on your nice like shirt, right? 'cause nobody can see you except from up. Right. But maybe now you change your shirt.  Maybe now you say, right, you put on actually your, your favorite shirt, your favorite lounge around shirt, or  you also, maybe you leave the house.

You go outside, you walk around. And I'm coming back. I'm coming home right for rest. So we need these different things because somewhere inside of you has to be a shift. The outside has to be a cue to shifting. What is it that you want to feel when you're at rest at home? Now, often people, right, they, they want to feel They leave work, but then it's time to make dinner.

There's all these things that have to happen in the house. So there has to be some transition for you Like i'm a fan of transition yoga nidra teacher fan of transition Fan of the space between things honoring the space That allows you to put one thing down And pick up another one. 

 Space is so important, so important. And all the strategies that you gave to incorporate that space. I'm sure they're super helpful, going to be super helpful for our listeners. And I do it myself too, I just love it. Shut the computer down go out for a walk. It's good for your health and it's good for your mental health to  To create the boundaries.

 So  Okay  There is an expectation from people to do a certain amount of work to put in a certain number of hours at work, or else you're not going to get that next promotion, I've been told by many of my clients. I feel like we have normalized exhaustion in our society. 

What do you think about that? Oh, for sure. We've normalized exhaustion, and many professions normalize it. Just, I mean, the first profession that comes to mind because I've spent so much time working in hospitals and medical and mental health settings  is are those medical? Professions where people can end up with an 80 hour a week and that's just expected that you would do an 80 hour a week. 

I even went once to, this is really funny, but I went to a networking event where the person who was speaking was a woman who was a a C level.  Executive in a company that built Matt that made mattresses. And they were,  they were really talking about how this mattress helps people sleep so well, why it's the right mattress for people, why you're gonna have the best night, , you're gonna have the best rest. 

And she was just talking about how many hours she works a week and how she's so willing to put and I'm, I'm like, so you're literally marketing how to rest well. But you're telling me that your life is this one where you're driving so hard that sometimes you don't sleep yourself.  So the iris, there's an irony, right?

That many of us  No, we need to rest. No, we need to take a break. But there's these there these messages either from our profession or maybe our families or maybe some other issue that says you have to do this thing or even in the company you work in that person who worked the 60 hour week. Got two promotions you're working, , the 45 or 50 hour a week and you haven't gotten one yet So if you go up to 70, you think you'll get it, right?

So  that's a company message This is where we start to say, see, see how  companies and professions can begin to redefine  the norms.  So, and every person could be different. Some people might actually be better working from 10 to 7 PM  than nine to five or eight to four, right? So, right there. So these, the messages have to be, this is where people I think have to negotiate some with their  organizations and say, We need some boundaries around this.

We need some clarity. , it seems that we have this message we can't turn off. If you can't turn off, you end up with a work a team of people who are too highly aroused, right? And we know, right? When you're too highly aroused, you're getting to that point where your body is just going to shut itself down. 

Yeah, so this, this is one of those questions where we as people have to know that we can turn ourselves off. We can take breaks, but we also we have to invite our organizations to  make some decisions about what are their I The expectations that are reasonable.   I think it has to do a lot with the organizational culture, 

the expectations that  we are setting for our employees to perform and maybe, you know, get that next promotion. So,  if we can Be flexible there and also understand that yes, productivity is important, but if we give enough time  to the employees to rest, they're going to be more productive.

I think that that's the key point, right? That we want them to be productive, but not at the cost of their health and well being. . So,  all of this that we talked about, this is like very visible, right?

That the burnout symptoms are visible, people are working hard. I know a few of my clients who would stay at work.  Till like 3 a. m. at night,  right? Like this is visible symptom of somebody who's overworking stressed out and, and, , burnt out.  But you talk about this often that burnout can also hide in plain sight.

 How can burnout happen? When everything seems okay. Yeah, that's one of the ways when you have that person who's like, I have a friend who who's also like a VP at a company. And she  talked about having,  one of her team members, she looked at the email message and the email will send it like one or two o'clock in the morning,  even having come to the office and discovered that this person has stayed there pretty much all night to work.

Yeah. So  that is burnout happening in plain sight.  You know,  what I'm saying? It's like right here is somebody who's adopted a pattern that is not sustainable. So that's one of the ways you watch people adopting patterns that are not sustainable.  If, if they're doing things that are not, nobody can come to work  at eight or nine o'clock in the morning, work all day. 

I don't even know if this person took time off for dinner. We have no idea. And then  sometime at three o'clock in the morning, they're still at their office. It's not a sustainable pattern. So that's burnout happening in plain sight. One of the things to notice is what are the patterns that you see in people's work  and just also something you said a moment ago about how the companies have to, , take some action around setting these boundaries. 

It just  popped into my head as you were talking that. Your company has a mission. Your company has a goal. Yes. There are some impacts you want to make in the industry that you're in or for the customers that you're serving. There's something you want to be different. Yeah. Because of what you offer in the world. 

Yeah. It's really important that you think about how each of the people who are team members are a part of that mission  and how their desires, their  values, their sense of purpose match with this mission.  If you start to match those things, you start to see how these things or how my purpose overlaps with this work,  then you also start to see how valuable I am to your mission.

And you want to cultivate me in a way that is sustainable. That helps me to grow and also helps me to grow the mission.  So there's something that has to happen. That's at this deeper core level value purpose. You mentioned culture, but it's what drives culture has to be something deeper, like values has to be this, this mission, this difference you want to make. 

I don't think that.  Anyone necessarily goes to a job. Sometimes we'll take a job because it was the one we could get at the time. But even in that state,  we know we need the job because we value our family's well being. And this is the best option now for what I want to create for my family. And I can do a good job at this.

Right? I can bring some value here, and this will bring some value to my family.  Many of us choose a career because there is something that is in us that we feel like we can bring through this work. Yeah. If we're in a place where we're not being valued, we're being, it's being suggested that the eight hour a week is what we want out of you.

Yeah. You're not even suggesting that you value me as a person.  You're suggesting you value the things I can get done. Yes. But there's no getting those things done without me.  Wonderful. Yes.  That's it. , that is the gist of it. Yeah.  Aligning the value of your employees and team with your organization's mission.

That's what it comes down to and understanding that  on the other end of the computer screen is a human being who has a family, who has friends, who has relationships outside of the workplace and they have Are also contributing to this person's life.  Are we supporting this person holistically or not? 

Right? So that's what it comes down to.  So Dr. Sondra, what's your one question reset? Like a simple solution for reset. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my. Let me tell you. This is one of my favorite strategies.  Because sometimes when we get stuck in that place where we're just like we're pushing and pushing or we know we like we're feeling so stressed and we can't quite get out of it.

We need one question to ask ourselves in that moment that will help us shift.  Because stuck, right? What's the antidote to stuck? You got to have a little shift, right? Like if your car, like we live in the Northeast, people have gotten their tires stuck. Well, what do they do? They rock the car. So you got to just give it a little nudge and then they'll go.

So, so it's like the one question reset. It's like our little nudge that helps us get out of that, being stuck in that, in that stressful place.  And that could be something as simple as what does the situation need in this moment, what does this situation need? It may not be something I can do. It may be something that someone I could call somebody else and they could actually make something happen.

Yeah. It could be something like I had a mentor who used to say what's mine to do.  Yes,  because so many times we're actually caught up in what we think people want us to do. But what really is ours to do?  Now, my favorite one is, what does this have to do with who I came to the world to be? 

Let's say that again for the listeners. I just love it. Yeah, this is wonderful. Yeah. What does this have to do with who I came to the world to be?  Because, you know, right now I just moved into my purpose, my values. How does this work I'm doing connect with that?  And once I can see that, Then I can say, well, what is the smallest step I can take now to move toward what really matters to me? 

And I give myself permission to take small steps because they can make a big difference. So we don't need to think that we have to do a huge thing. A huge thing comes from small things that get you there.  That's key.  Like you said, is this aligned with my values?

 Is this aligned with my purpose, my purpose of life, ,  and then  finding out that  minute step.  And never discount the minute step that you take because it adds up. You might not see it  in the time being, but in the long run, because we are in it for the   long game, right?

So it's a long game. It's not, it's not a sprint. It's a marathon. Life is a marathon. Living your purpose is a marathon,  every small step adds up and leads to a big result.  And then understanding what can you control and  like you said, can you ask someone for help?  Right? I think it's the hardest thing to do.

It's the hardest thing to do, asking someone for help, but recognizing that you need help. Mm hmm.  And there is someone out there who can help you.  is so powerful. Yeah. And it's, I think the ultimate antidote to, you know, burnout  that we have right now. So Dr. Sandra, I know you help so many busy professionals and corporations to overcome burnout.

Where can Our listeners find you. You can definitely connect with me on LinkedIn and my website is is  life in for the number for part harmony dot com. You can always reach me through there as well. Those are the two easiest ways to get to me.  This was wonderful, Dr. Sandra. I just enjoyed our conversation so, so, so much.

 Thank you. My pleasure. 

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