Burnout is defined as a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. Burnout is common especially in the trying times we are in at the present moment. It is as commonplace as grief and depression.
How does burnout impact our mental health and what can we do about it? The guys talk about some solutions in this episode.
Tune in to see Burnout Through a Therapist’s Eyes!
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Episode #97 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] Hello again, and welcome to Through a Therapist’s Eyes this week. Everyone. I am still Chris Gazdik. He is Craig Graves. I’m a mental health therapist and substance abuse therapist. I have a book available soon, rediscovering the emotions and becoming your best self. Craig has available now, his unbeatable mind coaching assistance for you.
We welcome you to Through a Therapist’s Eyes the podcast, see the world through the lens of a therapist and coach being aware. This is not delivery of therapy services in any way. Check out our website throughatherapistseyes.com. You can get full show transcriptions there. You are what makes us grow.
Put us on automatic downloads that help us be a better business, more accessible so that we get this thing out. We want you to help us grow, please. You do make it go. Craig, this is the human emotional experience. I propose, we figure this thing out together. What says you?
Craig Graves: [00:01:13] I love it. Let’s do it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:15] Alright, so I don’t know, man.
We spent a little bit of time last week on some current events. This show and last show is really designed in my mind to help us all with all the things that are going on in our world today. We listed out a bunch of mental health strategies last week. And today we’re going to talk about burnout and really, you can kind of use last show with this show as a good combination, to really deal with something that you feel is overwhelming you like the world seems to be overwhelming us, Craig, you know,
Craig Graves: [00:01:55] It does, it really does.
Chris Gazdik: [00:01:57] It just doesn’t stop. And I know people went through this in, in 1918 and a little known fact, but that didn’t go away very quick back then. Neither people like to think, Oh yeah, it was a tough year. No, that was a tough three years.
Cause that thing came back with a fury when it went away and it was a similar to what we’re experiencing now. You know, people forget history, they really just live consumed in the moment. Feeling burnt out, if you will, and forget what things really were. And, and we minimize it. We simply forget facts about it.
We glorify things that we went through. I mean, even with politics, man, there were people killing each other about politics back in the beginning, you know, gunshots and stuff against president on president.
Craig Graves: [00:02:53] You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened again today. The current state we’re in it generally not be shocked at all.
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:01] Generally things are not as bad when they seem bad and they’re not as good when they seem good. I like the tried and true, simple thoughts. And that’s one that I’ll offer, you know, for anyone listening to this issue of burnout in this show and in anybody that’s feeling burnt out and stressed out out there.
And I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of us. You know, we tend to forget. We tend to get in the moment when things are rough and people I find do have a struggle in staying power. Staying the course. I love, you know, my favorite life quote. Now you remember Mr. Winston Churchill,
Craig Graves: [00:03:44] let me “Go through hell, keep going.”
Chris Gazdik: [00:03:47] I love it. You know that, and I’m learning a little bit about the English culture, in some ways right now in, they have a really cool, just pull your bootstraps up, man. Let’s go. And they were a big part of winning that war because of that as a cultural component of the way they operate. I don’t know if you know that that was, that was a reflection.
Winston Churchill was a reflection in a regard to their culture, which usually. Truth is everyone out there all worked up about the conventions in the political season. This year, it is a reflection of us and how we are as a people and part of the show’s blowing up stereotypes and myths. And, I’m on the theme a little bit in adding to the show of being helpful.
You know, so that we really can come together, grow as a people and grow together. And meanwhile, I say, let’s figure this thing out together.
Craig Graves: [00:04:44] So expand on that. When you say it’s a reflection of us, what do you mean by that?
Chris Gazdik: [00:04:48] You know, when we’re divided in our Congress, we’re divided on our peoples. When we’re stuck in our spots and don’t get things done.
And our government, I would submit we’re stuck as ourselves, individually, and as a people, when we are argumentative and angry in seats of Congress and from the white house itself, we are generally probably angry and loud as a people. I think there’s a lot of parallels with the media and with our government.
That’s just true thoughts from whatever it’s worth in the moment. To be honest with you.
Craig Graves: [00:05:24] Yeah, media and government, for sure. I think, but most people I know, just want to live their lives and do some stuff they want to do and be economically okay. And have their children be good. And
Chris Gazdik: [00:05:37] a lot of angry people out there.
Craig Graves: [00:05:39] Well, there are, but I think that’s, I think the anger maybe flowing down instead of up, it sounds to me like you’re saying it’s flowing up.
Chris Gazdik: [00:05:48] Yeah, I think so. I do
Craig Graves: [00:05:51] disagree. I think flowing down, I think the political situation and the, and the, the news media situation, I think that all boils down to dividing the people,
Chris Gazdik: [00:06:02] media sells what we want to hear
Craig Graves: [00:06:05] sensationalism in a lot of ways.
Oh yeah, no doubt. I mean, some of the headlines that you, you clicked through to something, the headline, we talked about doing a news fast. Last last time, hopefully all of everybody who heard that in the, in the middle of that, right?
Chris Gazdik: [00:06:19] Yeah. In the middle, you’re in the middle. Keep going, everybody keep going.
Craig Graves: [00:06:22] Hopefully we’re all in the middle of that. But, you know, I think that, you know, some of the headlines are just attention getters. And when you click through to the story, there’s a different, a different story than the headline, you know? And, I just think it flows down, man.
Chris Gazdik: [00:06:38] It’s an interesting.
Back and forth there a little bit. And like I said, that was just genuinely me in the moment, to be honest with you, that is not pre-thought or thought out, but I think there’s a lot of reflection as well. you know we well, let’s move on. I don’t know. Did we ready to move on? I
Craig Graves: [00:06:58] think it’s relevant because talking about burnout, I’m burned out on the situation.
I’m burned out on the political situation. You know, I want my government to work. I’m burned out on all of the protesting and rioting and. Burning down cities and
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:14] enough executive orders, but
Craig Graves: [00:07:16] yeah, it’s all leads to burn out. I’m just burned out on that stuff
Chris Gazdik: [00:07:22] is burnout. I want to start out, we haven’t done this.
Like I said, man, we’ve had a lot of guests and we’ve got guests coming up. I guess that’s part of the, you know, the progression of a, of a show like we do, you know, you start getting known and people start searching us out, Craig and, and, and want to be on and. And that’s, that’s kind of a cool development, but it’s kind of cool to kick it back with you, man, two weeks in a row, just kicking it with you and, you know, kicking these things back and forth.
I told him the last show. I enjoyed that and I’ve been missing that a little bit. So it’s pretty, it’s pretty neat. Well, you know, yeah. I was thinking about this driving over on the way before the mics come on and just trying to get some, some groundedness because I had a stressful day today. you know, we call it in service training.
We call it continuing education. I think you, you come from a more of a business world sector, and I’m curious, I’m curious if you’ve had many trainings on this, what you call them and really what you have gleaned, not as much from your coaching stuff. If you can separate the two more from your just, you know, business mind and really specifically your business trainings and whatnot.
Have you heard much of this throughout your, your career and what is burnout.
Craig Graves: [00:08:33] Excuse me, you know, I haven’t heard much about burnout from, from organizations that I’ve been a part of apart from, apart from people who were burned out, you know, see a lot of companies they’re cutting back or cutting staff, but there’s still that same amount of work.
So a lot of the people that work in larger companies who are going through these kinds of processes, tasks would more and more stuff to do. So you have people working 50, 60 hours a week. They burn out. But I don’t have much experience with seeing organizations come in and say, here’s what to do. If you’re burned out or, or
Chris Gazdik: [00:09:12] That’s surprising to me, no professional development, no team building those types of things, where
Craig Graves: [00:09:19] Not around the topic of burnout.
No.
Chris Gazdik: [00:09:21] Wow. That’s unfortunate.
Craig Graves: [00:09:24] Yeah. It is unfortunate, but it’s just not my experience. And I, and there may be others out there who disagree with that, or have a different experience, but that’s just,
Chris Gazdik: [00:09:32] well, maybe not, because I think. See, it’s part of why I like you on the show and, and why we have it set up the way that we do.
Because I mean, in my therapy world, dude, we have, we call it compassion fatigue is the most recent phrase that, you know, a lot of therapists out there will know, go to trainings on, you know, because you have to take care of yourself as a therapist. If you don’t, you’re not really good for, you know, a lot of other people.
So, that really applies in banking and in energy department sectors. And, you know, in all of that kind of stuff, you know, is, you know, we have EAPs employee assistance programs and yeah, you would think that, you know, good leadership is going to care about their employees to engage them on that level.
Craig Graves: [00:10:20] I think that the employee assistance programs, EAP, those kinds of things they’re available. And I think that. They’re probably mentioned, but not in the context of burnout, you know, are you having family issues? Are you, you got something else going on, but Hey man, you look burned out. Take a few days off
Chris Gazdik: [00:10:41] Wow right.
Craig Graves: [00:10:42] Advantage of the EAP. You’re working 60 hours a week.
Chris Gazdik: [00:10:44] Right?
Craig Graves: [00:10:45] Take a break. I’m not hearing much of that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:10:47] No, you know, I have begotten to know through my publishing company Mr. Tom Dutta . He, he’s followed us a man. Thank you, sir. He was one of the, one of the people as you were as well to endorse, you know, my writing project and, dude, we were going to have him hopefully on the show to talk about him, his TEDx talk that he did, man.
And he talked about it from a corporate perspective, burnout. Oh, okay. Mental health.
Craig Graves: [00:11:15] Oh, I’m interested to hear that. I have to go watch that Ted talk.
Chris Gazdik: [00:11:17] Oh yeah, absolutely. Man. He likes to say he’s living this stigma and he was a big CEO. And, he took, he had to take that into his life or he was going to be done for in a lot of ways.
And I don’t, I don’t, you know, I don’t want to give too much away, but that’s, that’s one of the things coming up, you know, in the future for us, because he, he talks about it from a CEO perspective and a it’s a very powerful TEDx talk. So what is burnout? I like to start out with definitions for a reason.
We oftentimes do that, my sense of burnout and what I came up with, just thinking off the top of my head is when we begin to feel overwhelmed with tasks needing tended to simple and put is that Google likes to say it is in a state of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress occurs when you feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained and unable to meet constant demands. I interestingly saw five stages, says Google honeymoon phase winning, undertake a new task. We often start by experiencing high job satisfaction and commitment and energy and creativity, but then the onset of stress and then chronic stress and then burnout, and then habitual burnout.
Craig Graves: [00:12:39] What do you, what do you think? What is the definition of chronic stress?
Chris Gazdik: [00:12:44] You know, I think that’s your 60 hour work week. I think that’s, you know, having home/life balance, out of whack, I think that’s not taking care of yourself. I think that’s a lack of self care. I think that’s, trying to take care of others before you take care of yourself.
I think that’s, you know, I mean, that’s a pretty good list that just comes to my mind on the spot.
Craig Graves: [00:13:08] Okay, that’s good. And habitual burnout versus just burnout. What is the, what? Where are you going there?
Chris Gazdik: [00:13:14] Chronic stress leads to burning out and habitual burnout. To me, that’s bad. That’s, that’s, that’s really bad when you’re chronically and habitually in a state where you, you get to the point, honestly, where you can’t function, you really get to a point where you’re a mom and you’re depressed and you’re not doing parenting you’re in, you know, in a bad state. You’re a guy who, you know, gets agoraphobic and, and isn’t able to, you know, work. You, you take a disability leaves. We’re going to talk about that today. You know, it’s habitual, that’s bad.
Craig Graves: [00:13:58] Habitual burnout probably leads to other diagnosable kind of anxiety, depression,
Chris Gazdik: [00:14:05] actually, I believe in reverse.
Okay. Yeah. I believe actually in reverse.
Craig Graves: [00:14:09] So you believe that you experienced the other things first and then habitual burnout.
Chris Gazdik: [00:14:13] I think the other experience that somebody might be having it as a mental health factor is on top of the job related stress actually Craig. If you remember that, talk about the tale of two tapes.
Yeah. Overview of mental health. Yeah. It’s a crucial thing. And it comes up in my therapy office all the time. On the right side, here is biological factors and that’s the genetics. That’s the anxiety, that’s the brain, that’s the exercise and the nutrition, the biological realities drive, how we feel. But on the left side, we have social and emotional pressure, stresses and strains.
We have daily stress and grind. We have primary relationships and primary life experiences, this biologic, social and emotional, totally blend together to create what we’re experiencing. So if you don’t have much of the biological side, a lot of people don’t, but you might have a lot of the social and emotional side and you can actually get burnt out then kind of hard to get to habitual burnout.
I might say boy, when you’re already got biological stuff going on as genetic realities are a big part of mental health, and you’ve got a lot on this other side, man, that’s a heck of a combo. There really is a heck of a combo.
Craig Graves: [00:15:21] Interesting. Do you know what I see at work and maybe both ways they increase because I really see the habitual burnout leading to those things.
Chris Gazdik: [00:15:28] Right. Probably so,
Craig Graves: [00:15:29] you know, I’m happy. I got this great job, man. I’m doing good. All good grief. I’m working 60 hours a week. I don’t see my kids, you know, it’s really stinks. I’m working on Saturdays. Oh, golly. It’s just a chronic stress then it’s finally, it’s like, Oh man, this is just terrible. And then the depression.
Anxiety set in after, you know, you’re on this high of having this new gig, and then you just kind of led down this path,
Chris Gazdik: [00:15:52] you know, getting out of balance for one reason or the other you’re you’re probably right.
Craig Graves: [00:15:56] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:15:57] For one reason or the other, it goes one direction and then the other, and boy, but my, I think my big point there is when they’re both really clipping eek, that’s a rough spot.
Craig Graves: [00:16:08] This is, this is good that we’ve done. These two shows together. You were right. Cause this last show, if you guys didn’t hear it, A lot of the tools we talked about, you can use to combat this burnout. I’m sure you’re heading that way at some point. All right. We’ll hold off. No,
Chris Gazdik: [00:16:22] go, go ahead actually
Craig Graves: [00:16:24] to say, but a lot of the tools we talk, breathing and visualization and journaling and exercise, you know, and if you’re eating healthy, hopefully it is going to kind of.
Get you out of this burnout mode or prevents you from getting there in the first place.
Chris Gazdik: [00:16:38] Right. And I’m going to list out some things that are actually more specific to burn out that I think are helpful in the end and, and the, you know, the short yeah. Take the list from last week and apply it to this.
And I got other things that are specific to, to burn out that I brainstormed. So yeah. You know, how does this happen? We were just talking about that a little bit. And I mentioned that, you know, mental health factors are a big factor and I’m going to, we’re going to, we’re going to do a little segment on that for sure.
In a bit, but yeah. You know, it is easy to say, Oh yeah. You know what a lack of self care. That’s it. That is a big factor. No doubt about it. If you’re not taking breaks, if you’re not just distancing yourself from the stress around you, it’s the cornerstone of mental health in my view for a really important reason, but on a closer look, you know what.
Sometimes that other side of the tale of two tapes life hits
Craig Graves: [00:17:31] it does.
Chris Gazdik: [00:17:32] And he can hit hard. It depends depending upon what your circumstances might be. You might get a cancer diagnosis. Okay. You might get a spouse that, that just up and leaves we found out, you know, about like, you know, the Donaldson’s did recently have some, some dramatic new news about your partner.
Craig Graves: [00:17:50] Yeah. There could be a pandemic.
Chris Gazdik: [00:17:53] yeah. And you’re
Craig Graves: [00:17:54] working from home and homeschooling your kids at the same time.
Chris Gazdik: [00:17:57] How do you, right. It’s hitting hard now.
Craig Graves: [00:18:00] Yeah,
Chris Gazdik: [00:18:00] we are getting hit hard as a people. Right. You know? And so when all that social and emotional stress is buzzing, that’s not really a lack of self care, you know, that’s just life.
And honestly, man, I’m not so sure that I can say generally, people do a good job at handling their emotions. Is that a fair statement?
Craig Graves: [00:18:22] That’s a fair statement. Isn’t it? No, scroll through your Facebook feed. I’m sure. You’ll see something,
Chris Gazdik: [00:18:28] you know. Well, excuse me. When things get tough, do the tough get going? We like to think, well, America’s handled tough times in the past and will do so now what we will and we have, and that is a true statement.
And I have faith. I’ve said that on the show before. Things generally aren’t as bad when they’re bad and generally not as good when they’re good, but, but you know, I’m not so sure that we’ve got this thing licked in so far as handling our internal insecurities, our internal sense of fear, our internal sense of doubt, our internal sense of shame, our internal emotions, man.
I think we kind of suck at it. I think that that’s something that. Yeah, I’m kind of steering our ourselves a little bit. Craig, you know, I’ve mentioned it before. I want to be helpful with that. So on we go with being helpful towards that. you know, this is a brand new thought that I have and I’m excited about it.
In so far as adding to a therapy theme that I’ve often thought about. So, you know, I like to take a teaching mode, Craig, right? Like I like to get into things and, and understand them. I love the use of metaphors. I think that, understanding ourselves is a big piece. All therapists out there, all therapists, I think need to understand taking teaching role is a really important part of what we do.
Super important. I start out a lot of times with that. And so when I’m kind of helping people understand depression, right? We’ve did a show in depression. Remember? And I probably said it on there, but I didn’t say this new thought on there. What I said on there was grief and loss. If you think about it is a very, very good way to understand when somebody is in a state of depression.
Because all of the things really overlap a lot. Now you’ve had people die in life and things that you’ve lost and stuff. Right. I mean, what are some of the things you experienced when you’re, when you’re grieving
Craig Graves: [00:20:28] sadness, right? Yeah. maybe despair,
Chris Gazdik: [00:20:31] right?
Craig Graves: [00:20:33] Lack of hope. Maybe sometimes, you know,
Chris Gazdik: [00:20:35] absolutely
Craig Graves: [00:20:36] people could experience that.
Just the bad feeling of emptiness
Chris Gazdik: [00:20:43] empty, inability to sleep
Craig Graves: [00:20:46] that, yeah, that could be one, one of this, one of the things
Chris Gazdik: [00:20:48] Weeping. Yeah. Right. How’s your appetite.
Craig Graves: [00:20:52] Yeah. It’s sometimes it goes away.
Chris Gazdik: [00:20:53] Just can’t eat when your dog dies.
Craig Graves: [00:20:55] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:20:56] You know, that is depression. I mean, every one of those things that you listed, interestingly, maybe not as much despair, but that’s redundant with feeling, you know, sad.
That’s depression. Well, you know what occurred to me? Literally, I met somebody new and that’s what triggered this thought. I actually told them I’m going to do a show on that, man. And so I’m following up with my word buddy out there. And burnout is the same as grief with the symptoms of depression,
Craig Graves: [00:21:26] Burnout, it’s the same as grief with symptoms of depression.
Chris Gazdik: [00:21:30] Yep. Right. If you are trying to understand burnout and you don’t really know what to look for and you don’t really have a sense of depression. You can look towards when you have gone through grief and loss, that’s what you look for when you’re assessing.
Am I burning out? If you understand depression, but you haven’t gone through a lot of losses, you can understand what somebody’s going through when they share a loss with you. And they say they’re burnt out. I think a lot of times people are not used to looking and inside themselves. Am I burned out? Am I, well, you know what.
Do you feel like you just had a grief experience? Are you losing sleep? Are you feeling hopeless? Are you feeling helpless? Do you feel stuck in a rut? These are specific things we look for with depression. Do you even feel tearful and weepy is your energy gone? Is your, is your, is your interests not seeming interesting that when you get burnout, dude, you don’t want to continue.
Craig Graves: [00:22:25] So is burnout like a diagnosable thing? Isn’t it? Yeah. It’s not in the manual.
Chris Gazdik: [00:22:28] No, not really. Not. Ironically, neither is grief. Really. Yeah. Yeah. We have a concept of complicated grief and that is when some sort of timeframe rolls along. People kind of suggest, well, you know, you wanna, you want to go through this and in a certain timeframe, I mean, if you’re still grieving some loss five years later.
Yeah. You, you know, but there’s no real timeframe with, with depression or with grief rather. Right. Great.
Craig Graves: [00:22:54] So if I come into your office and I’m experiencing all these symptoms and you nail it down to burnout, I mean, what do you do you just, what do you do? Can you talk about the things we talked about last time?
How do you help somebody through that burnout?
Chris Gazdik: [00:23:07] Essentially? Yeah, well there’s a lot that we get into doing, we look at the. You know, there’s a big biological factors are the things that we need to get into there. We look at the life experiences. We look at what other life stresses are going on, because you might be thinking you’re burnt out with your job.
You know what? You’re managing elderly parents, and they’re really stressing you out by going over there every day, being a full time caretaker. That’s a life event. That makes sense,
Craig Graves: [00:23:32] right?
Chris Gazdik: [00:23:32] Yeah. So there’s multiple things that’s going on individually. That, which by the way, if you are feeling a lot of questions, coaching is a great way to go to it.
It really is. but get, that’s a reason to get help. It really is a reason to reach out because you can really get stuck in this stuff. And it’s nasty if you get to the habitual burnout stuff. Like I said before, it’s terrible. Absolutely terrible.
Craig Graves: [00:23:57] So somebody comes in, you know, you, you talk about some stuff, they got their 50 hours a week.
They got elderly parents, they got little kids they’re parenting, you know, but you don’t see it as anxiety or depression or anything like that. So as a therapist do you just work through some things that they can do in their life to kind of maybe alleviate some of that stuff and get back to a self care situation.
What do you.
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:25] Yeah. You know, I think, yeah, I think that’s a good start. You know, the cornerstone is a good start. You know, you look at what are you doing with your emotions, how you managing it. I think as we talk about, you know, towards the end of year more, you know, solutions and how do you get out of this?
And a lot of last show stuff is absolutely effective, but here though, by the way, I don’t even know if I made this clear on last episode that those are strategies. Those are skills. Craig, what do you think has to happen with a set of skills?
Craig Graves: [00:24:55] Well, you got to use them.
Chris Gazdik: [00:24:56] And what happens when you use them, right?
Craig Graves: [00:24:59] Hopefully they work and you get better.
Chris Gazdik: [00:25:02] Do you, do you sit down and become an excellent journaler the first time that you used those skills.
Craig Graves: [00:25:08] Oh no, no, absolutely not. You don’t know what you’re doing and that’s what I said. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:25:12] This sucks. This isn’t helpful. This isn’t effective. And I think I lose people sometimes in therapy when I don’t help them see that point.
Yeah. You’re not going to listen to visualization.
Craig Graves: [00:25:20] Right
Chris Gazdik: [00:25:20] skills and say, Hey, I got it. That was helpful. But no, the first time he tried to do visualization, just your monkey brain. If you will, as you talk about, it’s going to be bouncing all around. You’re not even going to get with the visualization. You’re not going to be able to understand what you see.
It’s like, you’re going to be distracted. You’re not going to be mindful.
Craig Graves: [00:25:36] Same thing with breathing. That’s why I said, don’t start out with 20 minutes. Cause if you’re just starting out and you sit down for 20 minutes, you’re gonna quit immediately. Yeah. He might just do one session and be done. Yes, let’s start, start small and realize that they are skills that have to be practiced.
Chris Gazdik: [00:25:53] And when you get good at skills, that’s why that was a little bit of a new thought. Again, I propose, you know, can we say, just choose one of these. And do it for a few months. What did you say? It takes, how many times do something before it comes to habit?
Craig Graves: [00:26:08] 21, 21 times. I’m hearing. Yeah. And I, with 20 with the breathing practice, man, I bet that does wonders.
I mean,
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:16] do something 21 times, any one of these things and you’re going to be very, you’re going to be much better off. You really are going to be much more proficient at managing internal emotions and burnout for sure. yeah, I alluded to this, you know, mental health playing into this, let let’s listen.
Let’s needle into that for a second. You know, I mentioned it with a tale of two tapes and I think this is a lot of unfortunate, stuck spots that people get into. We did a show on that before, too, right. Stock spots.
Craig Graves: [00:26:52] We did,
Chris Gazdik: [00:26:53] you know, How do you, how do you get out of him when we talked about that? There will, you know, you, you can get stuck if you have mental health things going on and don’t know it.
And I find that happening all the time and it’s unfortunate. It, it frustrates me because if people can kind of know what’s going on and it’s getting so much better in our society, you know, people are giving mental health, their due and paying attention to it and doing something about it a whole lot more than we used to.
But do you know, we’ve, we’ve talked about anxiety is a big one, right? I don’t know how much you remember about, you know, the volcano metaphor and the different types of anxiety we got out there. How anxiety really works. I mean, do you remember any of that?
Craig Graves: [00:27:37] Don’t Chris really? I think it’s volcano metaphor and I can’t think of what
Chris Gazdik: [00:27:41] Got a blank.
Yeah. Okay. Well, real quick, you got the different layers of the earth. Never. You got top soil rock. Groundwater think of molten rock lava that represents anxiety and the types of anxiety that we have blow out in volcanoes around the world.
Craig Graves: [00:27:59] So you’re saying eventually it’s
Chris Gazdik: [00:28:01] right, right. So you usually have one major active volcano, but it’s funny thing with anxiety you’ll have a light eruption or smoke in another room or the third one, but because it all comes from the same source, essentially, that’s the metaphor.
And the different types of anxiety that we have, the different types of volcanoes. If you will, OCD, generalized anxiety disorder, you know, phobias specific phobias, social phobia, fear of, you know, social environments and people and avoiding places. OCD. Does it say that one panic disorder where you have panic attacks, separation anxiety, all the times with kids, but in adolescents and young adults to, to freaking out when you’re not connected to loved ones or close relationships, there’s, there’s these different types of anxieties, but when you have one, you generally have a little bit of another one.
So that’s the, that’s the brief on that. And. But, but think about it. I mean, if you’ve got generalized anxiety disorder, for instance, you worry, worry, worry, you make mountains out of molehills. Well, if that’s a general biological brain oriented thing, that’s going on, how is that going to impact the way you feel?
Burnout, definition, feeling overwhelmed with tasks that need tended to, to go with my simple definition.
Craig Graves: [00:29:15] Yeah. Pretty much worse, right? Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:29:18] If you’re already geared like neurologically, biologically in your thought process, with elevated hormones and chemicals in your brain that trigger, you know, intense frustrations and worry.
Well, golly, man. Yeah. You’re going to be over overwhelmed pretty easily. Yeah. Depression. When your brain is not producing very well, the chemical serotonin, or the neurotransmitter in your body, and you feel all those lists of symptoms that we listed a little bit ago, like you’re going to feel pretty overwhelmed.
You’re not going to handle regular stress and difficult relationships. Well, so I think that mental health is a big, big piece of what’s going on along these lines. You remember codependency at all as another example. Remember anything about codependency?
Craig Graves: [00:30:14] Maybe a little. Yeah. Yeah. And refresh my brain with where you’re going with that
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:18] codependency is just serve another, you know, mental health characteristic where, you know, you tend to very much take care of other people before you take care of yourself.
Right. Right. Yeah. You know, the, if the other person is well than I am well, so my goal is to make the other person well, so that I am well, that’s actually a chapter in my book. Right. It’s a big issue when you’re codependent and you have those tendencies, dude, you’re trying to do something it’s gets impossible.
Right? You realize that, right? Yes. Someone else. Well,
Craig Graves: [00:30:52] yeah, you can’t change somebody else. Folks,
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:55] you can try,
Craig Graves: [00:30:56] you can try
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:56] and people live a lifetime and
Craig Graves: [00:30:58] you probably get habitual burnout if you trial.
Chris Gazdik: [00:30:59] That’s exactly it. It really is. It really is. So, you know, interestingly, you know, I talk a lot about abandonment and engulfment, you know, other mental health tendencies, such that we see in a struggling marriage.
That’s a big mental health factor. In fact. One of the big or ones, you know, engulfment does tend to fall into traps of taking other people’s first. Cause they want to make peace. They just don’t want any conflicts. They don’t want any problems. So they’re not going to speak out. They’re not going to speak up.
They tend to just be internalized, right? And I’m going to tell you, what, what do you think happens when you try to make peace at all costs
Craig Graves: [00:31:40] you eventually get burned out,
Chris Gazdik: [00:31:41] right? Here’s a quote might be in my book somewhere. If it’s not probably needs to be Peace at all cost is no peace at all.
Craig Graves: [00:31:48] Right. You just bottling stuff up.
Right. And eventually it’s going to be a volcano.
Chris Gazdik: [00:31:54] It can turn into anxiety. Absolutely abandonment people believing that false belief that others don’t appreciate you or don’t care about you. They devalue you. They’re going to leave you. These are all lies, but abandonment people fall very much into it.
Well, if you’re working so hard, whether you realize it or not to make people happy with you, so they don’t leave you, where do you think that’s going to lead? You know? Yeah. That’s going to wear you out,
Craig Graves: [00:32:21] it is going to be very taxing.
Chris Gazdik: [00:32:23] So, you know, with these issues we see in marriage and these behavior patterns with, you know, depression and anxiety and other mental health factors, the idea like codependency I’ve, I made a case that mental health can absolutely lead you to chronic horrifying, terrifying, habitual burnout.
It’s a big risk factor. I would argue the people with a mental health, biological reality are going to burn out. I don’t know, 10 times easier when they’re faced with, with stress. It might be a little tip. I mean, if you’re looking at different stages of your life and you realize like, man really sunk at that point in my life.
And then at that point in my life, I also did, at that point, I liked my also did like, why is this dog in me? I’m feeling that way for the fourth period of in my life. You know what you may have missed a mental health component. There’s a lot of people do they don’t, they just live with it even when they constantly get to that place.
Well, there’s probably something there and that’s just kind of fresh in the moment in a way I’m thinking about this. So let’s, let’s kind of spend a little bit of time on another big factor, Craig, that I think. And I dodged it a little bit last show and we’re coming back to it. do you remember when you asked me to talk about that, Chris, when you said, go, go a little more on the one, five and 10 year plan, you were kind of like, I want to hear more about what a purpose does for you.
Right. You remember that? What do you know about, what’s what’s his name? Warren, Rick Warren, pastor Rick Warren,
Craig Graves: [00:34:04] famous for the purpose driven books, preoperative in life. I think he had some other purpose driven theme books, if you will even marriage or something like that. I think, I think he did do wrong there, but maybe
Chris Gazdik: [00:34:16] it was just perfect.
That was the big hit that he had.
Craig Graves: [00:34:19] And that was the big one. Yeah, that was definitely the big one.
Chris Gazdik: [00:34:21] And what do you know about the Purpose Driven Life? Did you ever
Craig Graves: [00:34:25] hear her read a ton of self health books, but that’s not one of them. Yeah. I’ve never read that one.
Chris Gazdik: [00:34:29] Oh, wow. Yeah, that was big.
Craig Graves: [00:34:30] I don’t know much about that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:34:32] Okay. Just think about your thoughts on your own about purpose. And I want to just go through what I did was then there’s the Amazon link to cause it’s a big book. It’s a cool book. I haven’t read it either. I will be honest, but I’ve heard a lot about it. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about it. So in the sense that I feel like, you know, I have it, she’s got the cliff notes, right?
I get the cliff notes. Exactly. which I do a lot. I’m a listener by the way. I learn a lot by, by listening to people. I always learned that in school, man, I was locked on. To whatever the professor was talking, lectures were a big deal to me. Like I’m right there. Cause I don’t, I don’t learn greatly by reading.
You got to know yourself and how you progress and reading is just, I don’t know. I’m not wired that way. I’m just not so. It’s why I love conferences because I learned there so much as I
Craig Graves: [00:35:20] complain about them.
Chris Gazdik: [00:35:22] I did in the beginning of this show. And I don’t do that no more because
Craig Graves: [00:35:25] it’s kind of shifted a bit.
Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:35:29] Getting ready to go to a big one here in a couple of few weeks. We’ll get, we get a lot from that. I’m sure. So, this is just their description. so I’m going to read through this actually real quick, and this is their description of what it is. And I want you to think about Craig and give me some back and forth on let’s stay here for a little bit, this, this segment.
What does a purpose do for you? Okay. Cause it’s really important. So in a purpose driven life, you’ll find answers to three of life’s most important questions to questions of existence. Why am I alive? The question of significance? Does my life matter? The question of purpose? What am I on earth?
You know, why am I even here? So living out the purpose you were created for moves you beyond survival or success to a life of significance, the life you were meant to live. Okay. You’ll discover the five benefits of knowing your purpose. It’ll explain the meaning of your life. It’ll explain it. Simplify your life.
It’ll focus your life. It will increase your motivation. It will prepare you for eternity. And that’s a big statement. Right. That’s kind of the description they give of what he’s trying to do. And so let’s, let’s dissect that for a minute because that was a big, fancy, big hitter. Lot of people loved this material.
So what do you think about what is, what does having a purpose do in preventing us from staying in or even entering into various stages and States of burnout having a purpose?
Craig Graves: [00:36:59] So you want me to tie that to burn out?
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:01] Yeah. Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:37:04] I’m not sure I can tie it to burn out man, but I think that having a purpose really gives us a reason or a meaning to our lives.
We’re just, if we’re just here floating through, then that kind of leads me to a state of hopelessness or despair. If you will, you know, why am I here? What is my purpose? And my experience is a lot of people have never thought about that. You know, what is my purpose? And it might,
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:33] or don’t focus on it as a focus point.
Craig Graves: [00:37:35] They don’t focus on it as a focus point, or I’ve never even thought about it. I was just having a conversation today. Hey, with a lady that, that’s also an unbeatable mind coach and she has taken this thing we use called the three P’s and one thing, what’s your personal passion, purpose and principles.
And then
Chris Gazdik: [00:37:55] we got sounds. That’s all right.
Craig Graves: [00:37:58] And, and most of the folks in her group that she’s introduced this concept to had never thought about this, interestingly, they don’t know, they’ve never even had these thoughts. So, I mean, as a listener, have you ever thought about what your purpose is in life?
And I’m thinking a lot of folks are gonna say, no, they haven’t thought about that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:38:18] Yeah, it’s a shame. And it’s unfortunate because it’s an important part of getting through tough times. It’s I don’t know. I think I’m good. Go ahead. If he had more than
Craig Graves: [00:38:29] I didn’t really have more, but I think that that, that having a purpose gives us a reason to be here.
And some people look for this grand, big purpose, you know, this, this deep meaning thing. But, but your purpose may be anything. It could change throughout life. I mean, if you have, if you have children, then your purpose could be to, to raise those children into, into adulthood. And then when they become adults, then your purpose would change to something else.
So purposes could vary, but they kind of give us a meaning and a reason for our existence. If you will. And I think that there’s some comfort in that maybe you as a therapist can agree or disagree, but I think it, it gives us a something to strive for. We’re not just floating through, if you will
Chris Gazdik: [00:39:19] think about it this way.
This is something I think I said on last show, actually. did I, did I talk about last show on the mix? about a longterm perspective. Yeah, it was during the one, five, and ten year plan. Right? Listen, I feel like a lot of that is steeped in this stuff and I, whether he realized it or not, I think what, what.
Pastor Warren tapped into with this is, is developing the persistence with this longterm perspective. There’s a lot of what you just talked about there, Craig, if you will, I feel like having a purpose and understanding your, your vision and going after a big perspective, you know, when things suck now, and I know where I’m trying to go, what I want to be.
In the big picture. What do you say in coaching? You know, embrace the suck.
Craig Graves: [00:40:18] Yeah, right? Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:40:20] I can’t embrace the suck if I’m in the moment. Only and by that, I mean, short term, thinking this sucks, this is gonna result in bad outcomes for me. This is not good. I can’t see beyond this suck, you know, that that doesn’t help you now.
Don’t, don’t, don’t get confused. I understand that a, you know, Take one step at a time and be mindful in the moment and just, you know, take, take small steps. I mean, I get all of that because you get a lot of little rewards I’m talking about why am I doing these little rewards in this tough spot through life?
Craig Graves: [00:41:01] Yeah. You gotta have a why you definitely have to have a why. You know, Victor Frankl, was in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany called the man’s search for meaning. And I’m not sure if it was Frankel, Frankel or a, was it Nietzsche? I can never pronounce the name. I have no idea.
The quote is “You can endure any how, if you have a strong enough why.”
Chris Gazdik: [00:41:24] There you go, love it.
Craig Graves: [00:41:25] So you can get through any situation. This guy went through absolute hell on earth, and there was probably some luck and maybe some divine intervention involved too. But his purpose was to get out of this concentration camp and find his wife who he, unbeknownst to him had already perished. And then finish this book.
He was working on, he was this, he was also a psychotherapist and he had this work that he wanted to get completed. And that was his. Why is to get out of the camp, complete this work that he was going to give to the world and people who didn’t have this purpose who had nothing to live for died. They died.
Yeah. Absolutely died.
Chris Gazdik: [00:42:04] That’s a big time perspective. That’s a longterm perspective is what I meant to say. Right? Like that, that gets you through the suck. I don’t want to embrace the suck. I I’m struggling with that is great. We’ve talked, you know, through the last year and whatnot, and with your unbeatable mind program, it sounds horrible to me.
Craig Graves: [00:42:26] I think embracing the suck is really about. You know, being put in a bad situation, knowing you’re going to get through it. Right. And you’re going to be better on the other side of it. So I’m going to embrace the suck of this ice bath or these burpees or this tough conversation or. You know this concentration camp, if you will.
Because when I get on the other side of that, I’ve got something to offer. Let’s take this experience. It’s going to make me better because of it.
Chris Gazdik: [00:42:54] Let’s take a simple thing like we do in financial peace university. I know you know that material well, it applies right there. Well, why would I want to really worry about going through the difficulty of paying down this debt?
I get nothing fun. I get a crappy car. I don’t really get anything. Nice. I got crappy clothes. I have to cancel my freaking NFL football package. Why am I going to do that?
Craig Graves: [00:43:15] Yeah, because, because it’s taking you to a better place, you know, Dave Ramsey says is his big, his big quote. It is a live it’s like no one else.
So you can live like no one else. Right. What he means by that is most people aren’t budgeting and paying off debt and working these jobs to do that. So you’re living like nobody else. But when you get to the other side of that, You’re going to have no debt. You can pay to pay cash for whatever you want.
You know, you’re gonna have investments you’re it works. So, so in the, in the moments where you’re eating beans and rice and working three jobs, you’re embracing that suck to get to the other side. Right. So I, I disagree. I do believe you embrace the suck in the moment.
Chris Gazdik: [00:43:56] Oh, I didn’t say, I said I don’t like it.
What I said, what I said is I don’t like it. Meaning it’s hard. Yeah, it’s hard if you don’t have a longterm perspective, but when you have a longer term perspective it’s worth it.
Craig Graves: [00:44:09] Oh, okay. I missed that second part, but I do agree with what you’re saying there.
Chris Gazdik: [00:44:12] Yeah. Worth it. It’s like, what I said is I hate the idea when you just think of the simple phrase, embrace the suck, embrace the difficulty, you know, rejoice in your pain.
Come on. You, your stuff like that. You’re like, no, man. Stop preaching to me about pains. Good for me. Yeah, I don’t want to be trimmed and primmed and
Craig Graves: [00:44:32] yeah. And I think you do have to have that. Why you have to have that longterm perspective. I mean, why am I going to do a hundred burpees? Those, those are the mean burpees suck, right?
Because I’m going to lose 30 pounds. Yeah. You know, because I’m going to be in better health. Yeah. Because I’m going to be able to play with my kids because I’m worth it. And not be out of breath. Yeah. Yeah. So you have to have that longterm vision to, in order to take the short term pain,
Chris Gazdik: [00:44:55] I would submit to you people that worked out at some point in their life earlier on in life, got out of shape and got lost with it.
Have a much easier time getting back to it because they’ve been there before and remember what it feels like to be well. Right. And I know where I’m going,
Craig Graves: [00:45:10] right. I’m
Chris Gazdik: [00:45:11] going back to actually where I was.
Craig Graves: [00:45:13] That’s a very good point.
Chris Gazdik: [00:45:14] Somebody who has never experienced that. It’s really hard to see. And so I spent a little bit of time with this segment and I think we did a good job on the idea of understanding a purpose driven life, whether you realize it or not.
And I bet he did, you know, when you have good God, think about the faith traditions of our world, right? Whether it’s Muslim or Jewish or whatever you want to talk about, if you realize really like I’m going to eternity in a peace state. Where there is no hurt and pain I put up with this crap. No problem.
Right? Yeah. I mean, that’s a powerful faith driven reality and it fits right along with this mental health.
Craig Graves: [00:46:00] Yeah, it is. It does, you
Chris Gazdik: [00:46:02] know, so let’s go. Where, where are we at here? Yeah. So, so we’re going to really spend a little bit of time on this next segment as well with. All right, man. So you got this chronic burnout, you got this habitual burnout, let’s just apply it to their right.
How do you get out of it, man? What do you do to avoid this even better? They are the same. How do I avoid it? How do I get out of it? You know, what do we, what do we really do? I’m glad that this, this, this brainstorm that I had started out with this one, cause I didn’t, I didn’t get a chance to go deeper in, on it with, you know, the, the strategy show last week.
And this actually comes from something you taught me, fairly recently. Right. you remember when you were talking about retirement?
Craig Graves: [00:46:43] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:46:44] Alright. Well, I had the same kind of concepts about vacation and actually I took what you were talking about with retirement. Do that again for our audience. And I’ll tell you how I took that in relationship to vacations.
Craig Graves: [00:46:56] Well, what I said in that, Conversation was that retirement is fairly as a, is a fairly new concept. And you know, my argument there is why retire. If you still have value to add to the world and to society, then why would you stop doing it? There is that you’re doing, why not keep, why not keep going?
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:17] Yup. You
Craig Graves: [00:47:17] know, why not keep going?
Chris Gazdik: [00:47:20] And, and, and it was an interesting part of that, that you talked about, you know, the retirement age was arbitrarily set somewhere around the new deal, right. Where we’re gonna, we’re going to give you social security and we’re gonna, we’re going to help you out when you’re older and you can’t function.
And all that kind of stuff
Craig Graves: [00:47:34] is one of the things, retirement, retirement, I think started at age 62. Yeah. And the average lifespan at that point was 58. Right? So weren’t the social security system was set up such that a lot of folks never live to get it right. And now people are living 20 years past and that’s one of the problems with social security.
It is, you know, People are a way limit would have been way, much longer than I did when it was first implemented,
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:01] which has actually helped me to kind of think, you know, yeah. Raising the social security. I used to be like, yo man, come on, man. Stop. It makes sense.
Craig Graves: [00:48:09] It does.
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:10] It really does. If you think about it that way.
My, what I did is I took that kind of conceptual thinking and I’ve turned that around with vacations. You know, I hear people say, man, I need a vacation from my vacation. You’re probably let yourself get too burned out before you get on a vacation. And then you have all this stress with vacation that you missed the point of vacations.
You supposed to be taking a break y’all
Craig Graves: [00:48:34] right. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:48:36] I really feel like, and I, the truth is I just suck at planning things, anybody that knows me, I’m kinda more in the moment. Like, don’t ask me what I’m doing next weekend. I had no idea. Maybe I’ll be available for dinner. Maybe I won’t. You want to go golfing later in the week?
I don’t know. Maybe let’s you check me out on Friday about Saturday. It’s kind of the way I roll and it sucks for. For, for relationships in some way. And I’m sorry to anybody out there, he gets annoyed by that. That knows me, but it is, it is a problem that I try to deal with. So then part that’s probably the bigger reason, but I also really do believe in like, you know, shorter, vacations, if you will.
I love the concept of long weekends or stay vacations, stay vacation. What’s it called? Stay home. What is it called? Stay-cation.
Craig Graves: [00:49:20] It is stay-cation. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:49:21] I mean, that’s great. May just take a day off. In a mental health day. That’s what it’s called. Right. Do that every now and again. I don’t want to get myself so worn out.
So rundown that I feel like I have to have a vacation. No, man, I don’t want to get under the bar ever. And what I mean is when I start getting wore out, when I start getting wore down, that tells me just like it does with thirst. Okay. Do you know, you know this, I know, you know this because you talk about fluid and water all the time.
Right. When he’s, when are supposed to drink fluids
Craig Graves: [00:49:58] before you’re thirsty way before.
Chris Gazdik: [00:50:00] Yeah. If you’re thirsty, you have done
Craig Graves: [00:50:02] ways too long,
Chris Gazdik: [00:50:03] way too long. And that I’ve always remembered that. I don’t know if you gave me that when I learned that from you or not, but that’s what I mean by vacations. Don’t get thirsty.
Don’t you let yourself get run down, take those smaller breaks. I think that’s a
Craig Graves: [00:50:18] great idea. I like that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:50:19] Yeah. Yeah, I think it was a big part of prevention with burnout.
Craig Graves: [00:50:22] Yeah. And you can take it, you know, if you’ve got three or four weeks of vacation, you can take one of those weeks and just plan out some long weekends here and there.
That’s a great idea.
Chris Gazdik: [00:50:30] Like every month I love it every month. Yeah. There’s nothing wrong with
Craig Graves: [00:50:34] least once every two months, you know, take a long weekend.
Chris Gazdik: [00:50:38] Cause I don’t know about you, man. When I go away for a week, I come home, my voicemail is tore up. My email is like overwhelming. Like my task lists.
I’ve got five things I need to do with my company. Oh my
Craig Graves: [00:50:50] God would probably say do some of those little mini vacations in addition to a longer one, maybe with your family. But, but I like the idea of having the little ones in between there.
Chris Gazdik: [00:50:59] Correct? Because there is also the idea of a sabbatical. Right now.
I don’t know what that’s gotta be like, but a month or two or three off those guys go. Yeah.
Craig Graves: [00:51:09] Yeah. That’d be pretty cool. Right.
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:12] You and I need a sabbatical, Mr. Graves to go do some, some slot canyoning.
Craig Graves: [00:51:16] It’d be pretty cool to call Janice.
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:19] Ms. Booth, we’ll go slot canyoning out there. I mean that
By the way reference, the very last show for a much longer list. Right?
Craig Graves: [00:51:35] Yeah, we had a long, we had a long list last time, just to, you want to do a quick review, it’s
Chris Gazdik: [00:51:40] going to help you. It’s I don’t know somewhere else, you know, but it’s on there and it’s, and it’s a lot of the things that you would think of and, that’s all gonna help with burnout.
No doubt about it, but moving on, right. Sometimes short term disability, you know what that is? Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people don’t realize that their supervisor will be like, Hey Jane, you really had a hard time. You got some, you just got a baby. yeah, maybe he came back too early or, you know, John, you seem like you’ve lost your zeal for the job.
You, you know, you’re not really getting your reports done on time. Like, you know, I’m really concerned about you and he’s like, yeah, I really been having a hard time, to be honest with you, man. My kid’s doing this and my wife’s doing that. And the supervisor will say, Hey. Yeah, we do have a program it’s called short term disability.
And I’ll tell you what Craig, a lot of times, people I have in therapy that are on short term disability had no idea what it is
Craig Graves: [00:52:32] really their boss recommended it
Chris Gazdik: [00:52:33] it.
Craig Graves: [00:52:33] Yes. Wow. I never heard of that before
Chris Gazdik: [00:52:36] it happens.
Craig Graves: [00:52:37] I know people need to use that for various reasons, but I’ve never heard anybody say, Hey, you know what?
It’s
Chris Gazdik: [00:52:42] like you’re burned out. It has
Craig Graves: [00:52:43] short term disability.
Chris Gazdik: [00:52:45] Well, and anybody who wants to learn a little bit about leading people or having leadership or being a good supervisor, you gotta know your people, you gotta be in touch with your people a hundred percent agree with them. Right. And it’s good to say, listen, I want you to be a good employee.
I want you to be well too. Right. But I want you to be a good employee and you ain’t no good to me if you’re like on the floor.
Craig Graves: [00:53:06] Yeah. I agree with that. A hundred percent.
Chris Gazdik: [00:53:07] You’re not productive. You’re you’re turning out a poor product. Yeah. I don’t. I want you to be well, so selfishly you do well for what I’m trying to gear you towards.
So sometimes particularly with the, chronic habitual burnout, man disability is, is a really, it’s a helpful tool now, probably a lot of times, to maybe I stand corrected a little bit. I definitely have had people many times, I would say earlier several times, at least. Where their boss initiated family care providers do a lot of that too.
Know your family doctor. Yeah. They’re going to say, Hey, you know,
Craig Graves: [00:53:43] doctors saying that is boss or manager. I’m like, wow. It’s happened. Yeah. It’s interesting. Yeah. I haven’t heard
Chris Gazdik: [00:53:51] that
Job change occurs to me when you’re, when you’re really burned out. You know, we have a lot of teachers out there, man, and they’re burning out.
I hope they don’t run away from policing also, by the way. Boy, they’re running out the door and that sucks. So I don’t want to say that, Hey, you’re stressed out with your job. You don’t like what’s going on. You don’t like the direction you got a bad review or something. Just leave. That is not what I’m talking.
I’m not trying to contradict myself with a longterm persistent attitude perspective on thinking how you’re going to be. But I am saying that sometimes it really is. If that’s a core problem in your life, a lot of people who Dan Miller that’s his main gig,
Craig Graves: [00:54:33] yeah. I was going to bring that up. Sometimes that is the answer.
Sometimes it’s sometimes you do need a job change. You know, you start digging into that purpose. We talked about, then you made, you may decide that you’re misaligned in your career and you may decide to go there, do something different, you know, and that’s okay.
Chris Gazdik: [00:54:48] Nothing wrong with that.
Craig Graves: [00:54:49] Nothing wrong with that at all.
You know, so couple of examples, we talk about the unbeatable mind. So. You know, Mark Devine when he was 20, 24 years old, 25 years old was a CPA wall street, you know, and they sort of feel an unaligned. Yeah. We’re talking about that’s when he joined Seal teams. Okay. And Dan Miller talks about an example of a dentist, you know, who was making 300 K a year.
This guy’s making bank as a dentist, right? He was so miserable. He was, he was considered suicide. So after meeting with Dan, I think, I think Dan. Coached him through that work. Yeah. He realized that he was not really a dentist and he ended up with a social worker, tight job.
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:31] Didn’t make any money
Craig Graves: [00:55:32] making like 30 K a year, but he was happy as be never happier in his whole life.
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:36] Right.
Craig Graves: [00:55:37] Yeah. So sometimes a job change is, is the answer
Chris Gazdik: [00:55:40] you wouldn’t think of that on an emotional management strategy list. But it can be absolutely something to look for. You have to have a purpose, you have to have a passion. That’s another word, passion. I should’ve had that on this list. Yeah. Having passion for what you do, whether it’s parenting, whether it’s financial planning, whether there’s, you know, managing the garbage, what yeah.
You know, serving your community. That’s passion, man. You know, you, you come across those people that really care about their job. And I appreciate a plumber who really gives a crap about what he’s doing. He is there
Craig Graves: [00:56:13] to help me plumber. He gives a crap
Chris Gazdik: [00:56:20] we’re going to get crack at. It’s pretty good. That’s pretty good. That’s pretty good. You know, what I was going to say is really like, you can tell those people that care about their job, they care about their gifts, their gifts, they care about what they’re doing. And it is when you can tell the people that just don’t give a rip to, I don’t want to hire them back.
And I’ve had plenty of those. Self-talk on this list. Vacations, as we talked about referencing the long list, last show, short term disability sometimes is an option. Hope we gave a good understanding on that is because a lot of people don’t even know really.
Craig Graves: [00:56:52] I think you did good. And if you don’t know, then talk to your HR department about
Chris Gazdik: [00:56:55] that.
Yeah. Job change. Sometimes self-talk listen, if you don’t value yourself. You don’t speak highly of yourself inside yourself about what you do, do not expect somebody else to do that right,
Craig Graves: [00:57:16] right on. Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [00:57:16] Why would you expect somebody else to talk highly of you if you don’t think highly of yourself? I don’t, I don’t, I don’t understand that about people.
You know, I heard some people at Morgan James publishing, I’m honored to be with their group and somebody was talking about on their like, you know, author struggle. They. They’re like, Oh, you know, it’s intimidating to put your thoughts out to the world. I’m not going to lie that the date March, 2021 is a little bit of an intimidating day for me.
Like, yo, it’s
Craig Graves: [00:57:42] weird saying that. I understand that you’ve got imposter syndrome and you’ve got people critical trolls and haters. I got a friend who’s a great artist. Fantastic. This guy has got more talent in his little finger and you and I have combined in our whole bodies. And he posts his art on Instagram and some troll the other
Chris Gazdik: [00:58:02] day I
Craig Graves: [00:58:03] was out there bashing my friends, my friends, and it’s like, you know, it’s so yeah, it’s putting yourself out there like that.
Chris Gazdik: [00:58:12] You really are. And I tell you the guy or the people, wherever whoever’s having a conversation, it was like, you know, authors should be out there screaming like, Hey, I got a good idea. Listen to what I’m saying. This is good stuff. They shouldn’t
Craig Graves: [00:58:25] be, you know,
Chris Gazdik: [00:58:27] and I said, I’m intimidated about March 21st, but I’m also really excited because I think that it might help more than one person because there’s some really cool concepts in there.
I’ve crafted them over a long period of time in my career. And I mean, I’m proud of it.
Craig Graves: [00:58:40] Yeah. I’m sure there’s, I’m sure there’s tons of good stuff, you know? It’s
Chris Gazdik: [00:58:44] yeah, it’s absolutely cool. so, so the value yourself, I mean, if somebody puts something on you like, Hey dude, your art sucks. No it doesn’t. I know it doesn’t.
I know that right. Self-talk is a huge part of managing burnout value. What you do, life planning. We talked about that I’m not going to, well, actually, you know, long take a longterm perspective. I had it on my list. I forgot courage. You know, when there’s something going on, it’s wearing you out. You might have a good idea for your supervisor that might be controversial or put your idea out there.
Like we just said about being an author or whatever, in a vulnerable way, we talked about with Ms. Janice Booth recently, how to build courage, use that courage and speak, speak up on it. I think that’s a very valuable ability to be able to ward off. If you’re feeling rough in this situation, probably chances are your coworker or colleague or your neighbor, your next door neighbor with a neighborhood battle that’s going on.
Right? Probably somebody else’s feeling pretty stressed out about that too.
Craig Graves: [00:59:54] Yeah. Would you say communication goes along with that too. Sure.
Chris Gazdik: [00:59:58] Yeah. That would be the delivery mechanism. Yeah. So
Craig Graves: [01:00:01] if I am feeling burned down and indeed communicate that to my boss or my therapist or somebody, right.
Chris Gazdik: [01:00:06] Express totally should be on my list. It wasn’t you’re right. Yeah. Express the fact that it’s there. So not only do you identify, you do have to tell someone that’s really excellent.
Craig Graves: [01:00:18] I think it goes along with the courage though. The courage to speak up and communicate is key.
Chris Gazdik: [01:00:23] Pretty, pretty similar get relationships, right.
I, you know, there are a lot of types of relationships that we have out there. And, I said it during the betrayal show with Marc and Cortney, who I know are friend of the show and they’ll listen to this. And I, I’m so grateful for them being on talking about that because when your relationships ain’t right, man, you struggle.
Matter of fact, when you’re going through the question of, will my marriage continue or will my marriage end. I’m going to submit to you. Just chances are you’re burnt out right there. No other questions.
Craig Graves: [01:01:02] If you get to that point, you’d probably right,
Chris Gazdik: [01:01:04] right. Yeah. You know, if you’re doubtful, whether or not my marriage will continue.
And I don’t mean like the, the impulsive thought, I think that’s actually a much more common thought than people think it is. Yeah. People question whether or not I want to stay married and you know, those are natural, but I’m talking about now, like the day has come here. We are never thought I’d get here.
Right when you’re there, you’re burnt out.
Craig Graves: [01:01:25] You’re overwhelmed.
Chris Gazdik: [01:01:26] Right? so get your relationships, right? Right. You know, budget with your spouse, job performance and expectations with your boss, parenting strategies with your kids, marriage stability. I wrote in all bold. You see there on the show notes. All bold
Craig Graves: [01:01:39] have friends, man.
Chris Gazdik: [01:01:40] Huge. Don’t go through depression alone. Oh, how about this right enemy number one for depression is isolation. Quote unquote. Enemy number one for depression is isolation. Well, what did we say? That burnout is a lot like depression. So if you’re having burnout, honestly, that probably ought to be at the top of my list.
I didn’t think about that till now.
Craig Graves: [01:02:07] That was good though. Would you say enemy number one for depression is isolation.
Chris Gazdik: [01:02:10] Yes. Right. That is something I’ve said to hundreds of times, if not thousands in the fact of the matter is it’s occurring to me in a moment just talking about this, right? Like. Okay. If you’re burnt out, is that enemy number one for burnout?
Craig Graves: [01:02:24] That’s good, man. Let’s make some memes with you on them
Chris Gazdik: [01:02:28] Memes. What’s a meme quotes kind of scares me as the quotes.
Craig Graves: [01:02:32] Make me in a meme. You don’t have friends. We talked about your quote. Last time it was, what did we say? It was. The antidote for loneliness is friendship
Chris Gazdik: [01:02:41] Friendship is the antidote to loneliness. Yes.
Friendship is the answer. Most importantly maybe. Hm. What is most importantly, maybe for preventing or getting out of burnout?
Craig Graves: [01:02:56] Well, back to that cornerstone man, to be a good self care,
Chris Gazdik: [01:03:01] right? Get the relationship right with ourselves. If, if you’re not well with yourself, the doubts and the shame, the points of guilt, the points of insecurities, you know, to thine own self, be true, known, be true.
I screwed it up. What is it to thine own self, be true to the heart. What is it again
Craig Graves: [01:03:25] To thine own self be true,
Chris Gazdik: [01:03:27] right? That is having a very healthy relationship with yourself. Listen, people can withstand a lot of stress. We don’t know it. People can do a lot of things that they never thought they can accomplish.
If you unleash what you believe you can do, you can’t be stopped. Yeah. Example. Right. I love the example of the mile time. How fast can people now run a mile or for centuries? Eon’s we’ve been running the Olympics. And when did we finally get to the point where we can run? What is a five minute mile?
Always forget the numbers.
Craig Graves: [01:04:09] A four minute,
Chris Gazdik: [01:04:09] four minute mile could not be broken. They would say in 1800, 1700, 1600, we got all smart in 1900. You cannot biologically run a mile under four minutes. Right.
Craig Graves: [01:04:23] Yup. Doctor said that your heart would explode.
Chris Gazdik: [01:04:26] Did they say that?
Craig Graves: [01:04:27] Yeah. Yeah. It was physically impossible for a man to run that fast.
Chris Gazdik: [01:04:30] Now you suck if you don’t without dying.
Craig Graves: [01:04:33] Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: [01:04:33] Yeah. You suck. If you don’t, you’ve got to believe in yourself. You’ve got to know yourself. You’ve got to value what is inside you and when you get those things right. When you get those things straight. Yeah. You can embrace the suck cause you know where you’re going.
It’s okay. So you can do it, you know, and a lot of people stressed out out there these days, a lot of things going on to burn us out. There’s a lot of social and emotional pressures, but Craig, I believe we as a nation, I believe you as a person out there listening, you know, I got a friend of mine, a very dear friend of mine and he reminds me from time to time, you can do it.
And that’s true. What do you thinking sir sum us up? Get us out of here. Don’t know where we’re going next. I’ve got some ideas, but I’m not ready to announce them.
Craig Graves: [01:05:30] Oh yeah. When those guests come in,
Chris Gazdik: [01:05:33] we’ve got a lot of they’re lining up. We’ll line them up.
Craig Graves: [01:05:36] Good. Good. You can find out more about our show at, throughatherapistseyes.com.
We have a new guy on our team who has made some great updates to our website. You can find entries for each show they’re on the website. We’re trying to transcribe those too. So there’ll be transcriptions there. We’ve got share buttons on the post now, so you can easily share those with your social, with your friends on social media.
You can also find links to our social media on the website. Chris has given away the first chapter, I believe it’s on fear, of his book, if you sign up for our email list, so please go take advantage of that. And, I think that covers it. Chris
Chris Gazdik: [01:06:13] Stay well, have a good week.