How To Deal With Burnout
Welcome to the one day at a time podcast where we forget about yesterday. We don't worry about tomorrow. It's what are we gonna do today that's all the matters because you've only ever had or will ever have the fantastic twenty four hours a day you're about to embark on. So hopefully this episode is gonna give you some daily dose of wisdom that you can take action on today to improve your life. And remember, all it takes is one day at a time.
Speaker 1:Friday is here, Cobra Kai's. Last night's book session was class, decent turnout, lot of conversation. The book covers so many different angles that the conversation go from one end to the other. And some really good points were raised and I'm gonna try and recap them now. So for you that didn't listen, just take away.
Speaker 1:So when it comes to the practice of meditation, we found out that Billy, for example, does his meditation whilst running to music, active meditation. If he doesn't have the music, he can't get into that state. Then we have Sophia who said that she can only do it when there's no music and you go on a run and walk in nature. So the opposite, different, right? Some people using meditation apps like Calm and Headspace and stuff like that and some like active meditation walking.
Speaker 1:But meditation doesn't have to be the sitting near some wall, it just needs to be you being able to let your mind wander without basically attaching any like labels and things to the thoughts that can fly around your mind. Just let your mind be free, don't judge, right? Don't try and fight against the thoughts and letting it become just fluid. And they talk about this in the book and it's called choiceless awareness or it's called bear attention where you don't label anything and if any thought comes to your mind, acknowledge like you can acknowledge the thoughts, don't label them, you don't say this is bad, this is good, you just let them flow. So I looked into this right, there's a study done, a recent study done on, in Finland on 162 women and 40 men aged 25 to 60, So good age range, mostly women which is great.
Speaker 1:So the study wanted to find out from 02/2002 employees who had burnout. So they found two zero two employees who had burnout and what I mean by burnout is like irritation, don't want to do workout and I'll go more into that in a minute but they looked at them and said they had one group so that one group did the standard treatments for burnout but no mindfulness training. The other group did the standard treatment but they did mindfulness training, they did eight weeks worth of mindfulness classes twice a week, six days a week, for ten to fifteen minutes each time. So twice a day you can say wake up in the morning ten minutes of mindfulness meditation then at the end of the day maybe you do it right. So they brought mindfulness into their daily activity.
Speaker 1:That's the important thing. So what the study found was the mindfulness group helped all their burnout symptoms were improved beyond the standard treatment alone. So it was way better than just standard treatment for burnout. But what they found was the most important thing out of the five mindfulness skills the only one, only one of those skills that helped continue counteracting burnout and exhaustion after the study was the non judging part of mindfulness, right. This is the thing that stops people burning out.
Speaker 1:Think about it, it's obvious if you're always judging your thoughts, you're always in conflict in your mind, you're always judging what people are saying to you, you're always in conflict with what they're saying, you're always in conflict back home, you're reading stuff online, you're always in conflict, you hate reading about, you know, you come across politics, across stupid posts on Twitter, you're raging all the time and you're judging and you're arguing and you're just building a stress up. You're always fighting, right, leave it go, let go and it doesn't mean to let go who you are, it's more so don't keep reacting, you need to respond, try not to let yourself judge things so much because it does lead to exhaustion and all this type of stuff. So that's an important thing is like that's the main thing from a study right. So what are the signs of burnout in case you wanted to know It's complaining of exhaustion saying I'm snowed under, I'm sore and down, sounding very cynical, like making comments like who cares? I don't know why I bother.
Speaker 1:Oh, I hate them, like all this stuff. And then lacking confidence like it's impossible for me to do this, it's impossible for me to do that. So see if you've got any of these signs of burnout because if you do, you need to add mindfulness, daily mindfulness to your days, right? Other things, everything hurts, you got fogged over, you keep getting sick, you struggle with your weight, you're not in the mood for anything ever. Right?
Speaker 1:But here's the important part of the study. Talking about relaxation techniques can make some burnout clients feel even more overwhelmed. Let's talk about doing this and that. So you have to realize it's a daily practice, one day at a time practice, you can do it once a day, twice a day, try different things out, app, running, walking, music on, music off, and just try not to judge any of your thoughts whilst doing this, all it takes, right? They give other examples like washing the dishes is a good way.
Speaker 1:Jeff Bezos of Amazon finishes every day by washing his dishes because he finds it meditating, he finds it amazing, he clears his mind, he gets ideas and thoughts in his mind and he just focuses on cleaning the dishes, right? Not the richest man in the world. Eating by slowing down and noticing every nuance of the meals flavors another way really sit there, this helps not just with burnout but helps with the way you handle, you know, your nutrition. This has been shown to help that if you slow, if you eat slower and not in front of the TV, you become fuller, the satiety response is better, right? So make sure you eat slowly and just like, you know, what's this and like really pay attention and just don't judge stuff, right?
Speaker 1:And then walking is the other one, which is of course the importance of walking. It's really important. And you know, I went for a walk today, freezing, knobbling. I don't know if you know that word, but it was absolutely knobbling outside, right? But after the walk felt amazing.
Speaker 1:Class, loved it. So that's it for today really is to and I'll send the worksheet on how to do this. There's another technique they call the mind body scan. So you basically go through like you find a quiet place with no distractions, you start at the top of your head and slowly go down to your toes and if you did the Christmas challenges as mentioned in here's Q and A, Then you ask a question like, what are you feeling physically? What am I feeling physically?
Speaker 1:What am I feeling emotionally? What am I thinking? Based on this scan, can you learn anything about yourself today? Maybe like, you know, I'm really tense. And Donald speaks about this, right?
Speaker 1:He said, if you're really tense, muscular, with, well, I think it was lacklustre walk about it maybe. When you're really tense muscularly, that tension then can go to your mind and when people take muscle relaxants they automatically feel better like I feel less anxious now because the muscles are relaxed. So do analyze yourself. Are you really tense right now? Relax the shoulders, relax your face, are you frowning, relax everything, breathe, become like realize the tension you've got, just let yourself flow like water, just release the tension, right?
Speaker 1:So mindfulness, think of something, let's get this six weeks out the way in terms of let's find out over the six week period about you know, we're reading this book, we're doing the yoga, we're the martial arts, what can we do in these six weeks to find our optimum mindfulness thing and let's incorporate it into our daily lives. Okay, it could be walking wherever and then we're going to be better off for it and then stop judging your thoughts to reduce burnout. Okay. And that's it for today, focus on what you're to do today. Go for a walk track your macros what's your one big thing maybe it's martial arts finish off the week learning some martial arts it's more of a physical lesson tonight and yeah if we do we finish off here what if your one big thing is to see me in the dojo and I shall see you in the dojo tonight.
Speaker 1:Enjoy yourself, and I'll see you understood something I said. I hope that some wisdom kind of distilled through into your mind, and I want you to now action it today. I don't want you to think about tomorrow. I don't want you to think about yesterday. I don't want you to think about leaving a review on this podcast.
Speaker 1:I don't want you to think about going to another website. What I want you to do is as soon as this podcast ends, you will take action and make the most of today. Ground yourself today. Follow the one day at a time philosophy, and your life will change.
