How to Recover from Burnout

And if you look at pro athletes, they have it down now much more so than they did before. Like, you look at LeBron James, he's played basketball for 22 years and still one of the top 5 guys in the game, right? Tom Brady won his— won a Super Bowl at age 43, his 7th Super Bowl, okay? And, and he could still play another couple years. He could be playing this year at age 46 if he wanted. How to recover from burnout. If you are on the edge of burnout, it is probably one of the scariest moments of your life because guess what? You have lost the zest for life. You're probably teetering on that edge of just losing the motivation and the drive, and you're just slogging through the day. And if you're there, I'm gonna give you these 6 quick steps that if you do them faithfully and you keep testing and experimenting— because there's no perfect recipe, you got to test and experiment because everyone's biochemistry, everyone's lifestyle, everyone's demands are different— but if you do them faithfully, I promise you, in 2 weeks you will notice a lift in energy, a lift in drive, a lift in motivation. So let's dive in and I'll break down each of these 6 steps today. So burnout. So many of my leaders I've seen struggle with burnout and not even realize it oftentimes. And if you think you might be struggling with burnout, go watch those— that video that I recorded with 11 signs of burnout. Okay, so that's going to be linked here below, but you definitely want to take a look at that. And if you have more than, say, 5 or 6 of those, you're probably significantly favor— or significantly struggling with burnout. So let me break down the 6 core steps on how to reverse burnout. And oftentimes even some of my worst or most difficult cases, if they follow these step by step and faithfully, it's really 6 core ingredients. If they find the right mix, guess what? In 2 weeks or less, they will start noticing a difference in their energy and their zest and their motivation and their drive and their spark in life will start coming back. Okay, so let me tell you a story. One of my clients, David, David is the CEO of a film company, and he had at the time about 15 employees. He was doing almost $10 million in revenue, and his company had just had a record year. But as he stepped in and we started our first half-day session, guess what? He was on the edge of burnout and he didn't know it. And I figured it out pretty quickly, about an hour and a half in. I was like, David, let me guess. And he didn't tell me this. I was like, let me guess. You are looking for a way out of this business. You're dreading work every day and you are just hating it even though you just had a record year and you made more money than you ever— you've ever made, aren't you? Like, Mike, how'd you know that? And then I started breaking it down and I looked at his life patterns. Life patterns were not supporting his gifting, were not supporting his energy, were not supporting the type of life he wanted to live, and he was just cratering further and further away from his deepest, truest passion and his purpose and his gift that he had to offer his business. Secondly, I could also tell he was battling with some depression. And I asked him, so David, let me also guess, you're probably battling some depression, aren't you? And he's like, well, actually, I just started an antidepressant last month. I was like, yeah. And then we started breaking down and we started optimizing certain things in his life. And sure enough, a month later, he came back more fired up in his next session as we implemented the changes that we broke down, came back more fired up and inspired than he'd been in 2 years in his business. And then we worked together for a total of 6 months, and he was just on fire. And he's— I still see him about once every 3 or 4 months, and he's in a great position, and his business is thriving and better than ever. Okay, so you can shift some of these things pretty fast. I'm going to break down the first one in just a second, but I want you to know that wherever you're at, you're not stuck. Okay, and it's— you're just out of energy. And when you're out of energy, guess what? You're gonna feel it. All right, it's not gonna be a great sign, a great feeling when you're out of energy. So the first thing that you want to do if you're on the edge of burnout, usually you've overexerted yourself. Okay, so let's think about it this way. If you overexert, that means you don't have enough fuel in the tank. You've expended all your fuel. And it could be emotional fuel, relational fuel, physical fuel, mental fuel, spiritual fuel, where you're lifting everyone up, but no one's lifting you up. And that's where you just gotta have healthier boundaries. You gotta take better care of yourself. So that's just the overarching principle of life is about exertion and then renewal. Exert and then renew. Renewal is a major, major piece that we forget about. And before I break down all 6 of these principles, I want you to understand how key renewal is. And if you look at pro athletes, they have it down now much more so than they did before. Like, you look at LeBron James, he's played basketball for 22 years and still one of the top 5 guys in the game, right? Tom Brady won his— won a Super Bowl at age 43, his 7th Super Bowl, okay? And, and he could still play another couple years. He could be playing this year at age 46 if he wanted. So you got to look at renewal. What did they do differently? Is they had a huge emphasis on renewal. LeBron sleeps 10 hours a day. He spends about $1 million a year on his body. He has all sorts of body workers helping him reboot his body after a game, and that's created more longevity or sustainable success. Okay, and this was really emphasized and started being incorporated into Western athletes after the Olympics in the 1950s when the USSR, or the Soviets, won the Olympics, or just crushed the Olympics if I remember correctly, but they had their Olympic team and the training team surged forward and they won so many medals because they had a huge emphasis on renewal that Western athletes didn't. And so if you look at ourselves, if we start looking at ourselves as an athlete, then it makes more sense that we're not a human machine, we're not a human doing, we're a human being, which means we gotta exert and then renew. So that's the overarching principle of everything here, is most of us are under-renewed and over-exerted. Under-renewed and over-exerted. All right, and I want you to test and see and examine yourself. Are you under-renewed and over-exerted, especially in 4 main energy quadrants? The first is physical. All right, that's where you're burning yourself out. You're just boom, just going hard, going hard, going hard physically. Maybe you're eating poorly, not getting exercise. That could also be it. Poor sleep, just working 11 hours a day, 7 days a week. And so you're burning the candle at both ends, literally, and your adrenals are burning out. Or you're overcaffeinated. I have a client today I talked to, she's taking almost 600 milligrams of caffeine day, all right? And just even more than 200 is an issue. Ideally, you want to stay under 150, as an example, because it will burn out— start burning out your adrenals, where your energy, your natural energy production, will start suffering. And hers is definitely suffering. So, um, so the physical is the first one. Then emotional. Emotional is like, all right, um, am I running out of gas? If I have no creative energy, no burst, no joy, no presence, well, I'm probably out of emotional energy. And I need to be around people that love me, that are joyful, that are fun. I need to go play. I need to unwind. I need to just fuel myself back up with emotional energy. And then the third one is mental energy. Sometimes we can be underexerted. So it's also finding that right balance. Like if you're not stretching yourself mentally, then your mental energy is also going to be low. It's like someone who never works out, guess what? They have low physical energy. Someone who eats fried foods or eats like crap or is undernourished, is going to have low physical energy. Same thing on mental. You need to have— not be overstretched, but you're not— if you're understretched, that's also a problem. Okay, so finding ways to grow mentally but not overexert. And then the fourth thing is spiritual or purpose. If you are in a role in your work where you just under-challenge or challenge appropriately but you don't believe in the purpose of the organization, guess what? You're going to struggle with that. And that is going to lower your spiritual energy and drive to be great in that role. Okay, so you got to look at all 4 of those. And my favorite book that breaks this down is The Power of Full Engagement. And it's so good. You got to pick that up if you haven't. It's usually one of the best books I recommend for people, for my high performers. And it teaches the principles from a sports psychologist standpoint of how to get yourself to peak energy and focus on peak energy. Because when you're in peak energy, you have a chance to get in flow state and perform at your best. So let's talk about how do we actually treat burnout. 6 core steps or 6 core major ingredients. First one, the first one is healthy connection with others. We need healthy connection. We need that emotional ping and pong, and especially in person. Zoom is great and it's better than nothing. Phone calls are great, but we need elements of that on a daily or weekly basis. Okay, if you're in a hermit all day long for 7 days a week, guess what? You're going to miss out on the social connection that fuels you. But also, if you're around toxic people or draining people or people that you're always lifting up but they're not lifting you up and they're not giving to you and you're just giving and giving and giving, you overgive, guess what? You're going to struggle and your resilience is going to drop and drop and drop. So you got to have healthy people. Around you, and you got to have healthy, loving, mutual supportive connection. Okay, so that's the first one. Second one is rest, real rest, meaning you unplug from your phone, you unplug from social media, you unplug from obligations and rest. You know, that's why if you look at the Ten Commandments, one of the major Ten Commandments was to keep a Sabbath. Well, that sounds really harsh, But God was like, you're no longer a slave. And if you look at the natural world, for example, polar bears, if they're on display at a zoo 7 days a week, guess what happens to their coat? You'll literally see it. Their paws start turning yellow. It's because they're overstressed. They don't have downtime. So if they're overstressed and they don't have downtime, guess what? You're the same thing. You are an animal. At the base. Yes, you're an evolved animal, you're a human, but if you overexert and you don't have rest and renewal— true rest and renewal where you don't check your work email, you go on real vacations, you don't, um, always take phone calls and work, and you know, you're not worried about putting out every fire— and if you're a parent, then you also need rest and renewal away from your kids. Sometimes you need to rest and renew away from your spouse. Sometimes you need it away from your work or your family. That's okay. Whatever you need, you need to get, because you got to prioritize your needs so you can get your fuel up above empty. Okay, a car running on empty does not go. You do not go running on empty. You will be out of gas and stuck and stranded if you run out of fuel, and sadly a lot of people do. Okay, so you gotta prioritize your needs and make them non-negotiable. Okay, so Thinking again, exert and renew, exert and renew. So maybe taking some downtime on a weekend where you're— maybe it's sleep in, maybe it's a little more play. Okay, so you just figure out whatever you need for rest and renewal and then have boundaries, real boundaries. Hey, after 7 or after 6 or after 5 or, you know, nothing before 7 or whatever your work rhythms are. Maybe you work early from 4 to 5 to 7, you get some critical work done, and then you have family time and you're focused and present, not divided focus. All right, and then you unwind, you truly unwind and give your full presence to your kids in the evening, or your wife or spouse or whatever, right? So that's a big component. So the second one is rest, and the third one is movement. So some of my clients, they are overexerting on the movement. Like, I have people that are in CrossFit hardcore workouts and exercise, and they've got too much cortisol going through their body. So they— so what I'll actually advise them to do is, you know, if they're on the edge of burnout, they don't need more cortisol. They need cortisol to go down. So then we're getting movement, we're getting positive movement that doesn't stress them out. What we need— they might go on a bike ride in the park with their significant other, or they might do yoga, or Pilates or something that is non-cortisol inducing. But some of us, most Americans, are actually under-moving. They're not getting enough exercise. They're not moving enough. So guess what? You need to exert and move more to get your, your metabolism functioning right. You need to get more sunlight. You need to get outdoors and enjoy and be nourished in your, uh, in your body. You need feel good in your body, okay? If you don't, guess what? You're going to suffer and you're going to always be at a depleted state or a deficient state from where you could really operate. The fourth one is supplementation, okay? And supplementation, it can involve things like this. This is my favorite supplement for boosting up metabolic energy or metabolic function. It's NAD. NAD is used in 500 cellular processes. This is the brand I use, is from Jinfinity. It's their Vitality Boost. It's the most effective one I've ever used. And you can go to their website, I have the link down below. Use the code RESTORE20 and you get 20% off. But it's so freaking effective. All my clients, when they start using it, they notice their energy come up. And you've heard guys like Tony Robbins Dave Asprey, biohackers talk about it a lot, pro athletes use it a lot, Justin Bieber even famously used it. Also helps with mental health, by the way. So I highly, highly recommend that. That's one of the most important supplements. But you got to start thinking about other supplements as well, like, uh, ancestral supplements has some great supplements like these adrenals, helps boost your adrenals. Colostrum helps boost your gut health. Okay, so you look at things like that. I also love these vitamin Bs and these cortisol balancers. So things like this are really helpful balancing your cortisol. So if I'm— if I've got too much cortisol, I need to supplement to bring it down. And this is from Dr. Nigma Talib's brand here, really good. And then also Tulsi. I love Tulsi teas. This has turmeric and as well as Tulsi, which also brings your, your inflammation down. So you want to think about what are the things that I want to do, like if I need more inflammation reduction, which most Americans could use, you want to get things like that. Turmeric is really good, golden milk. I love Organifi's. I don't have a bottle of it with me, but Organifi's golden milk or green juices from brands like Organifi or some other brands on Amazon are really good for reducing inflammation and boosting your energy up naturally. The fifth one, okay, after supplementation, and then really before supplementation in many regards because it should be the foundation, is eating really well. And some of the things that you want to reduce or cut out significantly: alcohol, dairy, sugar, um, and what else, fried foods. So cut, reduce, or cut out those almost entirely. And you'll see, you'll see your energy go up. So as you eat well and you start replacing with more greens, with more veggies, with more fish, with more smoothies, reducing the dairy, going to almond milk, less inflammatory type foods, then guess what? And you add some fermented foods as well, by the way, then your gut health starts coming up, which reduces your fatigue. Because so much of your energy is produced in your gut. So eating well is the fifth one. Now for the sixth and final one, you want to work on your mindset. Your mindset is so important, and that also goes to your heart set or how you feel about yourself. So if you have PTSD, if you have trauma that is undealt with, guess what? That's going to be affecting your burnout. Okay, and in fact, you're 226% more likely to get an autoimmune disease if you have undealt with trauma or PTSD. Okay, and that's from research. I've got the article link here that you can find. But if you don't treat your trauma, you don't work through it and get through the other side— and I deeply believe you can get through the other side, and you can see, um, more info on that, on how I help people and high performers get to the other side, my video on how a private MDMA session can help you, and that's in the link below as well. But it's, it's a radical difference and allows your nervous system to start resetting. And a lot of people on the edge of burnout have repressed or suppressed trauma that they haven't dealt with, or some sort of lingering flashbacks and pain and suffering that they're carrying with them for years and years and years longer than they should. So hopefully you've enjoyed this. I want you guys to— I want you to take advantage of all 6 steps and work on the perfect formula for you. Reach out with any questions and let me know how you like this video. Definitely give it a like or subscribe and share it with someone else that also might be struggling with some burnout. I'd love to help them, and I'd love to help you make a difference in your life and get that edge and get that energy back that you deserve. So thanks for watching, and I'll see you soon.