21. How To Avoid Burnout: A Wild Ride and 3 Tools To Stay Energized

And I had this sickness of disembarkment. It was funny, but very uncomfortable and strange. And again, this relates to when we burn out so much, we just feel like our head's spinning and we can't think, and we can't actually do the thing that we wanted to accomplish. My wife says this intro sounds like a conspiracy mystery. So I'll stop that voice and tell you, this show is for you, to get you on the track you want for your life. I'm gonna share encouraging educational content, hopefully entertaining, that will help you direct your life. Okay, it took me the whole day to get this energy back because I started out slow. Why? Because I was on the cusp of burning out. But I did some good things for myself, and I wanted to share 3 important things that you can do for yourself so you don't burn out. So if you ever feel or are feeling a little burnt out because If you're listening, you're probably an overachiever or even beyond, a high performer, always trying to do more, be better, be stronger. Then I'm sure you've fallen off the track and you've had the old burnout phase. It's not fun and it's crazy. Why do we do this to ourselves? Because we actually care. And sometimes we have to reprioritize and figure out what are we caring about And in which order does it make sense? Before I share these 3 key points that can help you, I wanted to share this quick story that will help you remind yourself not to push your limits too far without recouping so you don't burn out. About 15, 16 years ago, my adventurous friend and I, we both always were seeking crazy adventures. What if we hopped a freight train? What a great idea. It actually was, and it was amazing. One of the Fun, fond moments of my life, and we actually set up these little hammocks, these portable hammocks. I don't even know how we did it somehow inside one of the boxcars, and we were chilling there. But guess what? It was like two hours before that train finally took off. So finally, it takes off, and we're going all the way up the California coast. This is in California. So we go all the way up. We're midday. It's so beautiful. My friend and I actually climb on top of the train car. There's a roof. And little grates, we're holding on for our life. We have bandanas on and glasses 'cause of the wind. We look like 2 bandits out of a movie. It was funny, hilarious. We looked at each other, didn't even say a word for like an hour 'cause it was so breathtaking. So what happened? Hours later into the night, the train still didn't stop and we're starting to get fatigued and, oh man, what do we do? Like, we can't just stay in the hammock all day. We can't walk around, the train's moving, it's all crazy. And finally, about 12 to 1 AM, the train stops, and we don't know where we are. And then this other train comes and stops. And then it picks up again, and it's slow enough where we can hop it, but it's going back where we came from. And my friend, without thinking, just jumps on it, said, hey, let's go! This will take us some miles down the road, then we'll jump off. And I don't wanna leave my friend, so I just jump on without thinking. And now we're going, the train's starting to pick up. And he's getting ready to jump off 'cause we've done 2 or 3 miles, so we didn't have to walk in the night. He said, just a little further. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, are you nuts? This train's getting faster and faster. Do you know how fast we're gonna be going right now and falling? And I say, you know what? Be my guest. You jump first. So finally he's like, all right, this is the good moment, good moment. He jumps out of the train. It was like it was slow motion. I remember it in my mind. He jumps out of the train, hits his feet on the rocks, doesn't even get into a running start, just flips and boom! Hits his head on the rocks on the side of the train, rolls, rolls, rolls, and he stops and he doesn't get up. I'm like, oh dear. And I look, I look. Okay, he's not getting up. I can't leave my friend here. I know we're going faster than before. I better jump off now and just trust I'll make it. 'Cause I gotta, like, help my friend over here, and I don't wanna wait 6 hours and wonder what happened. Uh, let me jump. All right, I'm gonna do this right. I'm gonna dig my heels into the ground. I'm gonna use all my athleticism. So I jump. Slow motion. Boom! I'm running, almost falling. Boom, boom, boom. Foot, foot, foot. I didn't fall. I made it just barely. Oh man, you should have seen the smile on my face. Then I quickly turned back. I ran over to my friend. He was barely getting up. I saw blood running down his head. I was fearing what happened to him. I was concerned. I helped him up. I was checking him. Are you okay? And he was making some funny comment. You know, it hurt him, but he was okay. The real reason I got to that part of the story and reason I'm sharing it is There's, there's 2. And one is don't push so long, so hard, so long without knowing when your breaks are, when you're gonna recover, so that you make a crazy decision to jump off a moving train in the middle of the night and flip around and have blood come down your face. And then 2, learn from others' mistakes. So as much as I respect pioneers, don't be a pioneer when it, when it could risk your life or risk something you're not willing to lose. So don't be a pioneer. Learn from others' mistakes and see what they did and see if you can course correct. And that's what I did. I saw him jump and he happened to jump incorrectly. And, and he was really good at balancing like me, and we were, we're both pretty fit, but He just jumped the wrong way, and I noticed it, and I course corrected, and then I didn't take the hit. So that was important. And oh, I forgot to mention this one thing. There's so many funny memories. There's this phrase called mal de débarquement. It really means sickness of disembarkment. I probably said that wrong, but I looked it up. And what that means is when you're on a train or a boat for so long, and then you go onto real land, You still feel like you're moving, you're swaying. And this relates to being burned out. When you push too much and you do too much in one period of time and you stress out too much in one period of time, you feel like even when you take a break, you're just— your head's moving and you're seeing things and you're just all out of whack. And when we got all the way to San Francisco after being on that train for about 14 hours straight, Once we got back on, we went into this hotel. We had soot on our faces. We looked all ripped up. He had blood left over. My hands are dirty. I go into the shower and I just— I want to sleep for a day. In fact, I did for almost 24 hours. But when I was in the shower, I just felt like I was on the train. It was moving back and forth, and I had this sickness of disembarkment. It was— it It was funny, but very uncomfortable and strange. And again, this relates to when we burn out so much, we just feel like our head's spinning and we can't think, and we can't actually do the thing that we wanted to accomplish. I hope you're taking some notes. I hope you're having fun and hearing this story. If anything comes to mind, aha moments, put it in the comments. I want to read it. And let's get some social learning going on, please. I like to see that in the comments, whether you're listening on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you are. And I'd love to hear your takeaways. So 3, 3 important things you can do so you won't burn out. This literally happens to me all the time. And I usually catch myself— this last week was so amazing. I had a lot of important things, meetings, accomplishments, writings. Doing so many great things that I care about. But number one, to avoid burnout, essentially that just means schedule breaks, transition breaks. Make sure every 50 minutes to an hour you get up and stretch. You close your eyes, you take a walk around the block or something. Put a timer on. I can't stress this enough. This changes the whole— Game for you. And then more specifically, think about what do a kid— what do kids and babies cry about? They cry when they're too tired or they don't have any food, or maybe they're dirty. You know what I mean? And this is just what we have to think like. We have to think like we're little kids, and then we have to also put our other thinking portion of our brain on and Treat ourselves as a parent would, a good parent. Give ourselves naps. Give ourselves naps. I love naps. I used to be a guy that was like, oh, I'm not going to take naps. That's for babies. And I probably sounded like a baby talking about it because I was like, no, high achievers don't need naps, man. We just go, we go. That's how I used to be. And it didn't serve me. So I love me a nap. Get a nap. And prepare some healthy snacks. I'm talking healthy snacks, whole foods, not a Snickers bar. That is not food. And just make sure that you realize, oh, I didn't eat for 5 hours. Like, maybe I need some nuts, healthy protein, healthy fats. And then one of my favorites, after a long day, take a bath, put on a candle, actually give yourself some self-love. Just make sure you're relaxed. Get some aromas. We have so many senses. Are we using them to our advantage? Advantage. That is the truth. So get in that bath. I've taken 2 baths a day when things get really wild. And guess what? Every time I get out of the bath, I'm like, oh, a new day. Here, here's a new day. So sometimes I feel like there's 2 to 3 days in one. It's amazing. I really love that. Okay. You can see I'm getting all wild up here and I love it. And the last 2 things I want to share with you today is the Eisenhower Matrix. If you don't know what this is, it is a 4-quadrant chart. And on the left, one of the corners, it talks about important and urgent things. This is how we need to structure our lives. Make sure you're doing not only the important things, but the things that are really urgent, actually urgent. You Take care of that now, this week. Then there's another quadrant that is just important but not urgent. And when we try to do both of these things, all of these things at the same time, that's when we burn out. That's when we feel like, oh, my head's spinning. That's when I almost felt like, dang, I'm gonna be sick. But I didn't this last week. I almost was feeling that, uh-oh, it's gonna be 4 days of sickness and then I'm really gonna get nothing done. But I caught it quick. I took my naps, took my baths, healthy food, and I am now feeling good. It was a slow recovery this morning because I had a big day yesterday. But what I did, I'll tell you in the next bullet here, it really helped me. But to finish this matrix out, so you have the urgent and important in one, do that now, schedule that this week. Then you have the unimportant and urgent, schedule that ahead. 2 weeks out, a month out. Don't overwhelm yourself because when you're overwhelmed, what it really means is a time thing and you think you have to get it all done now or all hell's gonna break loose, but it's not. And when people say they need something done by Monday and it's Friday, you really need to set your boundaries to say, hey, listen, I've— I'm committed to a lot right now. When is the doomsday Day that this has to be done by, which means if it isn't done by this day, doomsday happens. That's hard to say. Doomsday day. Doomsday day. Okay. I think you understand what I'm saying. So the other quadrant is not important, but urgent. And what is that? That's usually a phone call. Usually the phone call's just, it's not important, but hey, the ringer's gonna stop ringing after 4 times. We have to really, really, really be aware of this. That's when someone knocks on your door and you don't know who it is. That's not important. Most likely it's just urgent. You have to really set up the boundary and say, oh, I'm not going to even look at those texts because I can look at them later and they're probably not important. I could schedule it. I know they're dinging. Oh, that's why they're there. The notification's on. Why is the notifications on? If you know me, you know I haven't had notifications on for like 10 years after my phantom vibration moment. You'd have to check that out. I think I shared that in another episode where I felt vibrations in my body and my phone wasn't even on me. Okay, I digress. So that 4th quadrant, okay, let's just review. The first one's the urgent and important, do it now. The second one is is important, but not urgent, schedule it. The third one is unimportant and urgent. And that means you just have to set your boundaries up and figure that out. The fourth one is unimportant and not urgent, unimportant and not urgent. So what do you do with this? You delegate it. You just throw it away. You eliminate it. Most of the time that all of that combined just makes you burned out. You're just Not able to handle so much. And it doesn't mean you have to hate yourself and wish you were better and all this stuff. You just have to manage and organize more strategically, and this can help you out. Now, the last thing I want to share today about how to not burn out— this is key because we are all our worst critic. And although it is good to criticize yourself a little bit with constructive criticism, you have to watch out. So this key point is self-grace. You really need to remind yourself, hey, you know, I'm going after a lot. I'm doing what others aren't willing to do. And sometimes I, I'm overcommitted. I'm in demand so much that, yeah, I did burn out. And I don't want to get mean to myself about this. I just need to recalibrate. I need to rejuvenate. I need to re-trust myself, set up new boundaries. That's what I need to do. Just be solution-oriented, be proactive, respond. Don't react to yourself. Don't hate on yourself. I mean, listen, if I had to count how many times I've been bad to myself and talked bad and wished I was at this level in my life. And why am I not? Why, why, why, why? Instead of asking how and giving myself time, naps, grace, I'd have a lot of times I could count. And I just think this is such an important thing that isn't ingrained in Many of our schools when we were growing up, you know, they have math and science and all that. Sometimes they have creative arts. That's great, but they need to have some self-grace and self-growth classes so you can develop and actually learn how to navigate yourself, your emotional regulation, and how to make sure you don't burn out, but you still strive for your goals and your dreams. Does this all make sense? Let me know if you love this in the comments. Please rate the show. I'm, I'm curious. I'm trying to grow the show and I will be doing many other episodes. And if you love this stuff, and if you know the value of being held accountable and being reminded about these things, some of the things you, you know, maybe you're not doing, so you don't know them yet, but you love hearing about them. 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Because as a director, a film director, I want my life to be worth watching and I want yours to be worth watching. So think about that. If you have not examined your life deeply yet, you need to do that. Because it's time for you to direct your life. It's time for you to create a vision that's yours. It's time for you to break through the barriers. It is time for you to find your magic. So get out there, direct your life. I would love to see you in the Mastermind. Check it out. Once again, that's creativesunleashed.com/mastermind. And I say this all the time, but I really mean it. Your life is worth living its fullest. So get out there, And direct your life.