Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: People wait until they've hit rock bottom in order to seek help. It's because they didn't notice the time before the rock bottom. So the first thing is emotional numbness does not necessarily mean that you are burnt out or that you're headed to burnout. The first thing that I recommend people do is really a practice in self awareness and attunement.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Hey there billionaire. Yep, I'm talking to you. If you expect to live another 31 years, you're already a billionaire. Not but in the real measure of wealth, time. That's because 31 years is roughly a billion seconds. But most of us waste time in ways we'd never waste money. The currency of time billionaires is micro moments. The 90 second to 15 minute gaps hidden between the structured parts of your day. This podcast is about reclaiming them with quick research backed ideas to help you feel more creative, productive and alive. Welcome to Time Billionaires. Let's make your next micro moment count.
[00:01:07] Speaker C: This is a two part episode. If you want to check out the first part, listen to the previous episode of Time Billionaires. You've talked about this phenomenon, really burnout, of being what you call the most socially acceptable way we talk about mental health in the workplace. If you feel like you're getting to this point, what do you think people should do?
[00:01:26] Speaker A: Okay, well, so the first thing is emotional numbness does not necessarily mean that you are burnt out or that you're headed to burnout. Emotional numbness could be a symptom of any number of things. Mental health and burnout is a really hot topic these days, and rightly so, because it is something that is pervasive. It's an occupational phenomenon specific to work.
Because of that, it is the most socially acceptable way to talk about mental health at work. Because burnout is a work related phenomenon.
It tends to be this catch all term. And in workplaces it's easier to say I'm burnt out than to say I'm anxious or I feel really low or I'm grieving or something in my life is falling apart. And so burnout has become this term that kind of absorbs any time we're not feeling great.
And our managers, our workplaces tend to understand when we go, hey, I'm feeling really burnt out, they'll go, okay. There's a less of a stigma associated with saying that than saying, hey, I'm struggling with feelings of anxiety or I've been diagnosed with clinical depression as an example. Not to say that emotional numbness mean any of those things, just that burnout has a lot of symptoms that overlap with other diagnoses.
That's important to note in terms of burnout in the workplace. The three signs of burnout in the workplace are emotional exhaustion or emotional numbness, cynicism about work or depersonalization at work, and a reduced sense of effectiveness at work. But burnout is remedied by rest from work.
If that does not help your symptoms, it is likely not burnout.
[00:03:29] Speaker C: Hmm, interesting. And it's not just that the type of rest is unfulfilling. I've heard people say you can't just stop working to overcome burnout. You need to have turn right. Sitting on the couch watching Netflix for three months is not going to help.
So if you take this break, what are the signs that you'd be looking for?
[00:03:49] Speaker A: I would always recommend that if someone is experiencing signs of what they think is burnout to experiment with some rest, et cetera, and see how they're feeling.
If they're not sure, though, I always recommend seeking help from either a medical professional or a licensed mental health professional who can help get to the bottom of what you're actually experiencing. Because again, so many people, particularly high achieving people in the workplace, assume that they are experiencing burnout when they are experiencing things like low mood, feelings of anxiety, feelings of detachment. And they might not be burnt out, it might be something else. And there are different treatment protocols for those things. And so it's important to know that, okay, my burnout, if I think that's what it is, isn't getting better.
I want to see what else is going on. There could be biological factors, right? Depending on the stage of life we're in, there can be hormonal factors, there can be unprocessed trauma, there can be all sorts of things. And until you with in partnership with a professional who understands these things, understands what the root of the symptoms are, it's going to be really hard to treat.
[00:05:12] Speaker C: What is depersonalization? To pivot back to that.
[00:05:16] Speaker A: Depersonalization is feeling a detachment or feeling disconnected from the people around you.
[00:05:22] Speaker C: Interesting. Good to know. Yeah. This example was reminding me sort of of this conversation I had with my executive coach. And we spent probably 50 minutes of this hour long session grappling back and forth with all of the thinking behind the factors, the pros, the cons, this way, that way. Sort of like I was at this fork in a road and trying to.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: Decide which way to go down.
[00:05:46] Speaker C: And after 50 minutes she just said, okay, I've heard all this. Close your eyes. What do you feel? You should do. And that answer came in maybe 15 seconds with tons of confidence and conviction that it was right. And so it was like this thinking was clouding the intuitive knowing of, well, this is a decision that I feel is right, which is this four letter F word in a lot of workplaces. But I'm worried that it'll be irreversible if for some reason I decide I regret it or I'm wrong in the future. And so that was sort of the cloudiness of really actually intuiting a better decision by just bombarding it with more thinking thoughts, pros, cons, and sort of this refusal to pick a lane and to walk down one of these forks for fear. Well, what if X, Y, Z, worst case scenario down there makes me wish I had taken that other fork.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, our brains really enjoy jumping in to try and rescue us from our feelings of uncertainty or worrying or anxiety.
Our brains seem to think that they can outthink our anxiety for us, and that's not going to be the case. So cognitive interventions or, you know, thinking through the pros and cons, or evidence for and against, or reframing or all of these things can be effective, but only if we're really calm and regulated.
And so tapping into our feelings and tapping into really understanding what's going on in our bodies and going on in our intuitions is going to be really helpful versus just going, okay, brain, I know you're super smart and I know you've gotten me through a lot of difficult times by thinking our way through.
I want you to just come up with the right answer. Well, particularly in the example that you're giving, it sounds like there was no right answer. It was really about a preferred answer. And it's really hard to find evidence for feelings and preferences.
[00:07:51] Speaker C: Right. And to your point, infinite possibilities could stem from it. So trying to predict which one of the infinite would happen years in the future is just an exercise in staying stuck.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
And our brains are conditioned to just keep processing and processing and processing and processing until it finds an answer. And that is how worrying, which is future focused, or rumination, which is past focused, ends up happening. And then you get trapped into a cycle of anxiety.
[00:08:28] Speaker C: Which feels like a lot of energy going into something that in the moment often feels productive, but it's not. Not being able to sleep because you're playing out these scenarios feels like problem solving, but it's not. It's just creating more problems in ironically making the thing you're worried about probably more likely to have a negative outcome.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: If we're feeling that anxiety, then our brains aren't really going to be as logical as we think they are going to be. They, they tend to cycle, come up with all these different scenarios and sound logical when maybe they're not so logical.
[00:09:03] Speaker C: Is there something small that you think people can do today in just a couple of minutes to either interrupt that anxiety cycle or just feel generally more grounded and more regulated?
Hmm.
[00:09:15] Speaker A: The first thing that I recommend people do is really a practice in self awareness and attunement. It's going to be really hard to break a pattern of anything if we don't even know what we're feeling and what our patterns are.
And so many of us are so incredibly busy, we're going through the motions.
We don't even know that we're not grounded.
We don't even know that we are maybe in a state of anxiety.
And so slowing down for a few minutes, taking a few deep breaths, going, okay, how is my body feeling?
How's my chest feeling? Am I holding any tension anywhere?
Am I actually able to be in the moment while I'm doing this exercise? Or is a part of my brain already in the future?
If the answer is, you know what? No, I can't even be mindful for two minutes to do this exercise, then there's different grounding exercises that can be done to get into the moment. One of my favorite ones is the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 exercise where you identify five things you can see, and then you actively look at them and take them in versus going, oh, I can see that plant, I can see this water bottle. No, no, no. You look at the plant, look at it, really register its green leaves. You look at the water bottle, you register its shape, Four things you can touch, and then touch those things.
So again, very presently, mindfully, so it's not just like, I can touch this pen, it's okay, I'm touching this pen.
I feel that it's smooth on one side and rough on the other. So four things you can touch, three things you can hear. Even if you're in a quiet room, tune into some of the sounds. So I can hear the buzz of my light overhead.
I can hear the hum of my heater, and I can hear the sound of my voice.
Two things you can smell, Same thing you can go, well, there's nothing I can smell. And you can smell the chair that you're sitting on. I'm sure it has some sort of smell or something like that. And then if you have something accessible to taste, something to Taste. What this exercise does is it uses our senses to bring us back into the present.
[00:11:48] Speaker C: I've heard of this exercise and done it the way that you're not supposed to, that I didn't even realize. Yep, I can see my laptop, my notebook, my pen. Check, check, check. Got it. Okay, I did it. And so there's a mindful way of doing really anything I'm hearing. And there's the rushed, mindless way of doing the same thing and not getting that same benefit. And so that just that intention behind it of we're not doing this to check it off and rush through it, but actually to get the full benefits. And revisiting things that I may have thought I understood is really helpful.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: Yeah. And mindfulness in general, there can be a misconception that mindfulness is all about doing a meditation. And mindfulness meditation is a wonderful thing. And one does not need to meditate to practice mindfulness. And so that question of what's one quick thing we can do to break a pattern, ensuring that we're mindful for five minutes a day and mindfully checking in with ourselves, all that means is doing one thing on purpose. One mindedly, non judgmentally. So whether that is washing your hands mindfully, which just means you are focused on the act of washing your hands, of feeling your hands rub together, of smelling the soap, of counting the seconds of how long you want to wash your hands for, that is practicing mindfulness, as is checking in with yourself and going, okay, how is my chest feeling?
How am I feeling?
And then listen to the answer.
You know, there's, there's so much in terms of what we can do, but often that first step is missed. And then people are just kind of implementing random strategies they've seen on Instagram or TikTok that might not yield the results that they want.
[00:13:43] Speaker C: It's so true. Yeah. And the reframe that really helped me when I was first trying mindfulness as I understood it was just to notice something new. So with the hand washing example, noticing words on the soap bottle I may not have looked at before.
You can't not be mindful when you're looking for something new that you haven't noticed. Or the shape of certain leaves on the drive home that you drive past every day. But I didn't realize those tree shaped leaves were different than the ones right behind it. And those are actually two trees. That's inherently mindful and gave me more appreciation for really everything that I was driving past.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Thanks for spending this micro moment with me. If you found it valuable. Share it with a fellow time billionaire and give us a rating to help others discover the power of micro moments. For more ways to reclaim your time, check out timebillionaires.org and follow me. Rebecca Shattucks on LinkedIn.
[00:14:43] Speaker C: See you next time.
