Bunny Young, a former stunt woman and therapist, argues that burnout stems from chasing external validation rather than building inner peace. She draws on Viktor Frankl's work to show how taking ownership of your choices, setting boundaries, and committing to daily mental care can break the cycle.
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I'm gonna slow that down and say it again. No amount of external results is going to result in that internal piece. We have normalized walking around as zombies and feeling burnout to some extent in society. This could be the most controversial thing that I say on this podcast. Welcome back to another episode of the yes and Podcast. I am your host and stunt woman turned serial entrepreneur, Bunny Young. Having 14 companies over the past 15 years and sold most of them, I'm here to help you get those results while also not missing out on this incredible thing called life. So you get to enjoy both an incredible business and an incredible life time with your family, freedom, travel, all of that. And I'm here not only to tell you that is possible, but also to give you these steps along the way for you to follow or make your own steps, but have the inspiration and the accountability through this podcast and through our connections in the corner of the Internet, whether it's on social or on the email list. You can click the link below if you want either of those. And today, I'm bringing you behind the scenes into a client conversation that I had with one of my individual clients about a little thing called burnout. That's not anything that anybody listening to this podcast has ever dealt with or I've dealt with personally. Right. Here's the part where we insert the cricket noises. And this is something that as a retired therapist and now a business there. Business therapist, wow. Try to say that through three times fast. I have coached huge corporations. You're Talking like Fortune 100 corporations on burnout. And then during COVID and coming out of COVID especially, there was a lot of talk around burnout. And I think, I don't think that Covid necessarily caused a lot of burnout, but it caused a perspective shift for a lot of people to know this feeling that they were feeling was not normal. And normal is setting on a washing machine. But I specifically had this conversation, conversation with a client who is a retired executive that has gone into consulting. And they were just frustrated with their results and frustrated with feeling like their actions weren't getting them anywhere. And they were focused again on external metrics. And this is something that is a really big indicator of burnout is if you think if you just, you know, work until you get to the vacation or if you just close one more sale, everything will get better. Like anytime that you're focused on external results for internal peace, it's not going to work. No amount of external results will give you inner peace. And I'm going to slow that down and say it again, no amount of external results is going to result in that internal peace. And it's actually, for me, in my experience, the opposite is true. And so when you can get to that internal peace, no matter what your external world looks like, that's where a lot of the results are. And a really big example of this is, and I'll put the link below in the show notes if you want to read this book, but it's a book called Man's Search for meaning by Dr. Viktor Frankl. And when you're reading this, the situation that he's in seems like a situation that if any human being was in, we would give up. And what my big takeaway was from the book, and I'd love to know what your takeaways are as well, if you choose to read it or if you already have read it, is that you can do whatever you want to my body, but you can't. You do not get to make the choice on whether or not you get to my mind. That is my choice and my choice alone. So you can imprison my body, but you can't imprison my mind. And I had a really big personal experience with this when I was about 18, 19 years old and went through a sexual assault. And I remember working with a therapist over years and it ended up getting to a point where my perspective shifted from that happened to my body, it didn't happen to me. And in reading Viktor Frankl's book, I was like, wow, this is something that on whatever scale it is, obviously mine was pretty traumatic, as a lot of individuals experience these giant traumatic episodes. And how it relates to burnout is because we're looking at, we're getting our bodies and our minds to a place where it's like we are dependent on an external result in order to feel better. And if we take a step back and we're like, no, actually, the opposite is true. On a daily basis, I'm going to commit the same way I commit to my physical health. I'm going to commit to my mental and my emotional health. And I'm not going to be dependent on a vacation. I'm not going to be dependent on a work culture. I'm not going to be dependent on whether or not I receive help in order to be okay. I'm going to choose to be okay right now because I've coached so many people who have quit out of corporate and gone into entrepreneurship or gone into another job because they thought that was going to be the solution that bring the exact same problems and the exact same mindset into that new position, into that new opportunity. I've seen it in relationships where people divorce and end up marrying the same person, just different name, because we don't necessarily learn the lessons, we don't heal. We're not giving ourselves the internal peace in order to be able to achieve all of the external results. And in fact, even when we do accomplish the external results, we don't enjoy them because of the burnout, because it's the set point that we have. And it's difficult to see when you're standing in the frame. This is like an analogy that was given to me by one of my coaches. It's difficult to see the picture when you're standing in the frame. And I think that's why Covid gave us a lot of perspective on what life could look like and what life may look like when we're not just waking up and doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results or expecting to feel differently. And your body, your mind and your emotions are giving you these cues. And so, like, this could be the most controversial thing that I say on this podcast, but what if burnout's a choice? What if that's something that you're perpetuating by being dependent on these external results to impact your internal shifts? And your nervous system has so much to do with this. If I took you on a one month vacation to Bali, your nervous system would start to detox eventually. However, if your mind is still stuck in work and stuck in the to do list and thinking about the things that are mounting up while you're gone, you're not really recovering, you're not really healing. That is all on you. Last year at our Hawaii retreat, I had a couple that came and the wife just shared this with me recently. She's like, you know, two and a half days in, my husband got really sick at the retreat. And obviously I knew because I was there. And she's like, it wasn't a bug. It wasn't anything like that. It was detoxing from not having his phone and not being in contact with his team every single day. And like, that is a really powerful thing to think about. And so I just want you to know, however you're feeling right now, that it starts with the awareness that this is internal out. Now. If there are things in your environment that are perpetuating this burnout, I'm not saying that you can't make shifts in your environment, but don't be dependent on the external really stop and think and take ownership of your internal metrics and where you are right now and where you want to be and take that extreme ownership. That's one of our core values in a better place consulting. But take that extreme ownership over the state that you want to be and then start to operate out of that state. And if you can't fully do it today, and that's not my expectation, but what's one thing that you can do to start to heal this? And I think it's probably going to start on your perspective and your mindset and maybe a little bit of work on boundaries as well and who you're surrounding yourself with because this is a huge thing. Like we have normalized walking around as zombies and feeling burnout to some extent in society. And so who you are looking to to hold that mirror for you as well. I hope from your friendly business therapist that this episode was a little bit of a different take on burnout. And I would encourage you to read the book. I'd encourage you to take a moment and kind of take an inventory of where you are currently internally and just remember that no amount of external results is ever going to give you that inner peace, that internal peace that you deserve. So I will see you on our next episode of the yes and Podcast. As always, it means the world to me for you to like and comment, share, subscribe to these episodes. That is why I am doing it is to move the needle in your life and get you even closer to that yes and lifestyle that I hope you are already living but living even further into it. I love it when we connect on social hebunnyoung on Instagram and you can find all the links below. We made it really easy for you and I will see you in the next episode of the yes and Podcast. Have an incredible yes and Life.
