Excellence Without Burnout

You can strive for excellence without burning out in your life. A big part of burning out is habits. And when you think of someone that gets into a new job, it gets into a new situation, and some people thrive and other people's struggle, what's the difference? And it's habits, right? And if you don't fix your habits, you'll eventually hit burnout. And, and burnout in my definition is not taking care of yourself, so impacting your health and not properly taking care of your relationships. So the more responsibility that we have, the more bandwidth that it requires. But again, based on your habits, you can do more with that bandwidth than you originally thought. So I'm Sean Butner, certified high performance coach, and we're talking about how you can achieve excellence without burnout today. Now, if you are able to successfully and sustainably push yourself 100%, serve with more joy, with more impact, with more growth, then you're able to grow your capability to, to grow that bandwidth. And when you don't, that's when, again, you damage your health, you damage relationships, and, and you're not able to achieve it as much over time, right? If you have these bumps where you're super productive and then you crash and you're not able to work for a little bit of time, so it looks like a peak, then over time, you're not going to be doing as well as someone that can slowly ramp up what they're doing to higher, higher levels without anything dropping off. And that was me in my first job as a software engineer. You know, back in 2007, I started at Walmart corporate in ISD. You know, all my ISD people shout out to y'. All. And it was a really great learning experience because being the new kid on the block, having a little bit of imposter syndrome from not going through a formal computer science program and being in software engineering, I decided that I was going to do all the things that everyone else was going to say no to. So I was saying yes to everything. And what ended up happening in a very short time, I learned really quickly, is I started to dread going to work. You know, I didn't want to get out of bed. I always felt stressed. I always felt grumpy. I had a mountain of stuff that I was assigned to, you know, anyways. And then I would take on more and more and more to the point where, like, it was stretched so thin, nothing was really getting done effectively. And then I was freaking out even more. So I'd say yes to more things to try to compensate and that spiraled out into really having a crisis moment where I felt like I was going to have a panic attack. And I'm like, this is not sustainable. And so how did, how do you get out of that? Right. Well, for me in that particular time, it was learning how to say no gracefully, being a little bit more communicative of what's going on with my manager. There was, you know, if you keep saying yes to everything your manager doesn't know and they dump more stuff on you, that's the recipe for disaster. And so there's also dialing in my health habits. Right. And then when you're in burnout, when you feel exhausted all the time, you feel stressed out all the time, you can see it seems counterintuitive to add more working out or add more things to your already busy schedule. Especially when I just said you should. You know, part of my learning was saying no, but it's saying no to the wrong things and saying yes to the things that are going to make an impact. And for me, that was training for a marathon. And, you know, dealing and getting a lot of that stress out helped free me up to think about my situation and start to make better decisions. So, you know, we need to very strategically always be thinking like, am I working on the right things for my aspirations in life? Are those aligned with my organizations and family and groups that I'm part of? And how long can I keep doing this before I have to tap out? So that's what I offer for you. Now I want to also address in burnout that there are a couple of things that are just out of your control. Right. So sometimes burnout is due to a bad environment. Right. If you are constantly in an organization that is short staffed, right. It's the environment of you're doing the job of seven people when it should have been one person. Eventually something's gonna break and it's probably gon be you. So, you know, there's a, there are a whole lot of things like that out in the world where the economy contracts or there's. So there's economic forces that can contribute to people feeling stressed or taking on more work than they're capable of. And that I want to highlight that too, that it's not that you're being assigned work, it's that you're not capable of doing it. That's another formula for, for burnout. But if you're in that type of environment, you can either switch environments or wait for it to change. But outside those two things happening, it's not. You might need to just move on if you're going to fix that problem. But yeah, your environment will impact how successful you can be in managing, you know, keeping yourself healthy and your relationships clear and fun. Second thing is that there are people in your life that can contribute to burnout. So it could be expectations from parents or your boss or expectations you put on yourself. And so being aware, if those are things that are factoring in that it's not, any amount of habits can help mitigate it, but it's not really going to help you. Third thing is that burnout is really just constant stress and exhaustion over time. So knowing, and the main point here that I want to be stating is that we all will experience times of stress and times when you're not sure is like, do I need to be resilient here? Do I have to figure out a way to serve with greater efficacy and joy and abundance and I can do this for a short time and things will correct itself? Or is this something that's grinding me down over time? And that's a very hard thing to figure out sometimes. But if you are just always feeling burnt out because anything that stresses you burns you out, that's not going to be really helpful for your long term success. So, and the fourth thing to address on this is that again, there's a also a difference from not wanting to do the tough thing and knowing that you're in the murky middle of a project. And the murky middle is that time when you've been working on something where kind of just be like, the nature of it becomes a slog. It's the middle of writing a big code project. It's the middle of, you know, construction. You know, you're renovating your kitchen and you're about three fourths of the way in and you're just like, will they not get out of my house so I can cook dinner for my family or dinner for myself or use the kitchen? You know, so every project, there are times in our lives where it's just like, I just have to grind. And taking a rest is going to slow you down. And there's an art to figuring that out. But we need to know the difference of, oh, I need to rest and recuperate, recuperate here, or I need to grind it out, right? I just got to keep going and being consistent will get me through it. So with those types of things in mind, as we're talking about burnout, I got four things for you that I think can really help you maintain that level of excellence and service and mission in purpose without having you hurt your health and relationships. And the first thing we have to do and we have to know is our challenge line, right? Where's that line where you could continually work and you feel a little bit challenged on your ability or your capacity or your energy to continue to go forward. So it looks like this in running, it's that line where. That pace where you're out on the road, hopefully with a friend, where you can hold a conversation, right? So. And you're sweating, right? So you're getting the workout, your body is feeling the work, and you're able to maintain talking without, you know, really kind of huffing it. If you are unable to breathe, you're pushing yourself too much, and it's going to be a harder recovery. Not to say you can't do that for a couple minutes and then back off, but really it's knowing where is that line where you can be in work, in flow, pushing the limits of your ability, delivering your 100% and sustain that for forever right at work. It could be that flow state when you are like, I'll talk about coding, where you're doing lines of code, time melts away, you know? You know, you're forcing yourself to get up and stretch so your body doesn't, like, start to hurt and prevent you from sitting at the desk, you know, just to do some things to mitigate that. But that's what we're looking for in your life. And so what I'd love for you to do is to, in a journal right now, think about when was a time in your life where you felt that flow state or you felt like you were at the limit of your ability but still progressing forward? Was that doing math homework? Was that sometime somewhere in your health? Was it someplace in your career? Was it a relationship where you're doing the work, hashing out something with your spouse or friend, and you could feel that you were at the limit of your communication. Maybe, you know, what's a. An event like that in your life? And then how did that work for you? How did that make you feel? How did you navigate that feeling? And how long were you able to keep it before something got out of whack? Right? I think sometimes in human nature, I do this all the time where I think I'm good at, where I'm sustaining, and then I find out that at the end of the week, I'm just completely wiped. And it's because I wasn't doing my next step number two, which is focusing on recovery, right? If you're always pushing yourself at that line of excellence to demand again, that of yourself, to serve again with greater jeu de vivre. If you're not working in the social time you need to recover, the physical time you need to recover, the mental time you need to recover, it's unintentionable, right? And so nobody can give a hundred percent, 100% of the time, you think, and it's a rule of nature, right? You don't walk around constantly tensing every single one of your muscles. Like you go to sleep and things tend to relax a little bit, a bit more. But you can't run and you can't sprint at your top speed for forever, right? Eventually your body is going to slow down and you're going to fall over and, you know, have a bad experience again. So, you know, what do you need to recovery? So that's the question for you here is what do you do to recover your mental fortitude, your physical fortitude, your spiritual fortitude, emotional, all of those things. What are the habits you have in your life that are planned on your calendar, right? If we looked at the last two weeks of your calendar, do you have time again to socialize, to do the things that you love, like hobbies, to, you know, just reflect? Do you have reflection practice? Do you have meditation practice? Those types of things, you know, what are you doing? If you take a look at the last two weeks and one, could you double down on the things that really work? So if, you know, oh, I have a meditation meditate, 20 minutes every day, like, could you do that for 40 minutes and I'll push you there a little bit? Or if you're like, I don't have many habits, you know, could you schedule a daily walk? Could you schedule a daily meditation? Could you make sure that your workouts are on the calendar so they get done? You know, those types of things I think you'll find in my life, like, like from that story it was working out, that got me out of feeling burnt out and overwhelmed and allowed me to have the higher capacity and bandwidth to figure out everything I needed to and not feel as exhausted overall. Again, counterintuitive. But also when we're talking about burnout, a lot of times when you're exhausted, that's when you start to settle and you're like, oh, this is enough. Instead of, this is 100%. And. And that every time that happens in my life and anytime I see that in my coaching clients, it's an alarm to be like, okay, we need to make a shift here, right? If you are starting to be like, I did enough today, I can pick it up tomorrow, that, that attitude, that. That mindset of enough is not. That performance edge is not going to, one, help you deliver the results that you need to in your job enough, or two, really serve you in growing your capacity. Right? And it's my job as your high performance coach to make sure you're developing a higher capacity to do the things you need to do. So never settle for less than your best or enough. You always want to be, am I giving this my all? Right. And that's different from giving it your all and being like, I gave 100% for today and I just got nothing left in the tank. Right? So there's a subtle difference there too. And sometimes that's why it's. It's helpful to hire a coach, you know, to help check you and make sure and help hold you accountable to, am I doing the best with my gifts, with my skills, with my knowledge and capabilities, or am I holding back a little bit? Because sometimes that's our blind spot. Isn't that true? So, all right. The fourth idea I have for you to achieve excellence without burnout is to learn the power of no. Like, early on in my career, again, I would say yes to everything. And at the end of the day, I had a million things to do, not enough time to do it. And I always felt like I was behind the ball. And it's really hard to feel hopeful or to feel like you have any control of your life when you have responsibilities and obligations to a hundred different people or teams or whatever the situation is. So how do you say no? Right? It's a little bit of reflection on, am I at the edge of my capability? It's a little bit of knowing and understanding your workload. It's a little bit of knowing your goals, right? So sometimes it's really easy to say no if it's not aligned to what you want for your career, what you want for your life, what you want for your family, what you want for your business. If you don't have a clear picture of what you want in the world, it's way easier to be like, yeah, I'll help you out. Especially if you are, you know, you love people. You know, I have that problem where if I like you, I will try to help you as much as possible. And it's not always the best thing for me. It's not always the best thing for you too. Because if I say yes and I can't deliver in a timely matter like that. You're up, alert. I feel bad. It causes a lot of stress. It's a bad scene. So knowing when to be like, yes, I can help you or I can't help you. Now let's get it on the schedule, let's get it planned. You know, these types of time management and priority management skills are very essential. So I'll ask this question of you. Where in your life, where do that you, where in your life do you need to say no? Is there something that you've said yes to that you wish you would have said? Bro, that's a good place to start if nothing's coming to mind. But there are places in your life, in your career, is there a particular person on a team that you deal with that that's always asking you to do more work or assigning you tasks that you know you can't handle or not your responsibility to handle or, you know, whatever the reason is. And how could you craft a conversation where you sat him down, you said, hey, like I got too much on my plate or I can't do these things that I agree to, what's the timeline? And have that conversation to either punt it, get it off your plate, or schedule it up for future time. And I think that'll help you feel like you have a little bit more control over your life and there's a lot of power in that feeling of agency and you'll feel energized. Right? So those are my four ideas to help you achieve excellence without burnout. It's to know your challenge line. It's to focus on recovery. It's to never settle for less than your best and to look out for enough. And it's to learn the power of no. So if any of these really spoke to you, I'd love to hear them in the comments below this video or you can reply to the email from the newsletter if you're getting the newsletter. Also, I want to share that I offer a free one hour strategy call for anyone who's interested in learning about high performance coaching or might need to learn anything we talked about. If you're feeling burnt out and you don't know what the next steps are, talking to a coach can help, right? Especially a high performance coach. One of the things that I'm specialized in is helping people get clarity in their life on who they are, what they want and how to get there. So if you're struggling with that, if you're overwhelmed because of burnout, if you're like I know there's something different but I don't know what. Go click on the link below and sign up for a free one hour strategy session and so you'll apply for it you'll go through a questionnaire. This helps me custom tailor that one hour session to you, to your life, to the situations, the things that you're struggling, the things that you're going after so we can lock in the particular strategies and habits to help you excel even more. So if you are interested hit that link below. I'd love to to talk with you and you know we'll go from there. So with that said this is Shawn Bottner saying live with more joy, growth and impact and we'll see you guys next week. Also if you liked this video you might like this video over here where I'm talking about my beliefs and how I think about coaching. So check it out and we'll see you in that video. Take care.