Michael Levitt's Blog, page 132

We Have Forgotten How To Relax

Photo by @clemono2

Today I want to talk about a subject that actually was discussed by a previous guest on the Breakfast Leadership Show. We're talking about relaxation. If you've read my book 369 days how to survive a year of worst case scenarios you'll remember that before my cardiac event (spoiler alert if you haven't read the book) that I discuss visiting the library, you'll recall that I had forgotten how to relax and that is scary for all of us. I'm seeing a lot of people have forgotten how to relax, with their constant connectivity to emails, smartphones, Netflix, Disney plus you name it.

There is no shortage of things that can eat up our attention and we say that we're relaxing when we're watching TV, but many times we see that people are on their phones watching a television show, as well as on their computers during something else. We're trying to do three or four things instead of staring at a wall or looking out the window. If we go for a walk in nature, our smartphones are either in our hands, or in our pocket. Maybe we should leave the phone at home. I know that's scary walking outside without your smartphone The horror!

We have forgotten how to relax.

We've forgotten how to just take downtime and not do anything. A lot of people say well if I do that then I'm losing opportunity to work on things they need to work on. But relaxation allows your body to get to a resting state. And when your body's in a resting state then clarity will actually show up. If you have clarity, peace and relaxation in your life then there's a good chance that your mind will be clear enough to start thinking about things that would be beneficial to you. If you're in a business maybe some new ideas will happen, or maybe a breakthrough something that you've been struggling with for a period of time maybe new perspective on a situation that hasn't "gone your way."

One of the things I hammer home when I talk with people is they should seek to understand seek to understand the point of view of another person or situations you're dealing with. Seek to understand yourself. I find so many people have no idea who they are. They don't know what they stand for or they don't know what their goals are. They don't know what their mission in life is. They don't know what brings them fulfillment and peace, because having fulfillment and inner peace you know you end up with freedom. We're all chasing freedom.

As Kain Ramsay likes to say Freedom is within your grasp. We have to choose it. It's your choice. Are you going to relax or are you going to continue to grind, not take time off to just be?

I'm taking vacation days towards the end of this month. I've been on a social media sabbatical for several weeks, and I don't miss it. It's been enlightening to say the least and I will definitely have an post talking about that as well sometime in January.

So my tip for you over the next few weeks is strive to relax find some downtime and actually. Don't do anything.

Just relax.

Sit in the easy chair go for a walk. Just listen to nature listen to cars drive by I don't care what you do, but please do whatever you can do to relax.

 Follow me on Twitter @bfastleadership, Facebook Breakfast Leadership, and on Instagram @bfastleadership. 

I help people recover from or prevent burnout in their lives.  Schedule a 20 minute chat to discuss your stress and/or burnout with me.

Why Leaders Gossip Sets A Bad Example For Everyone

Photo by Yui Mok/The Associated Press

In this era of toxic media, accusations from every angle, bullying and harassment in the workplace, and toxic workplaces, leaders are responsible for the culture of their organizations.

Gossip doesn’t benefit anyone. Gossip that is mean-spirited to mock, or make fun of someone that is not present in the conversation is wrong. It’s a form of harassment and many organizations struggle with this on a daily basis.

Leaders are supposed to set the tone of their organization, and provide a culture of fairness, openness, and collaboration to serve their clients/customers/etc.

What happens when the leaders of organizations are the ones spreading gossip? Leaders set the tone of how they want their company’s culture to behave.

What happens if those leaders are leaders of a country?

We saw that in action this week at the NATO summit, when several world leaders were recorded gossiping about the US President.

Like the US President or not, gossip doesn’t set a good example of your leadership style, and there are several leaders that failed to set a good example this week.

Leaders need to be transparent in what they feel. If the leaders are upset with a fellow leader about an issue, then approach them directly, not gossip behind their back.

If the conversation is confidential, then keep it that way between the two parties. Don’t bring in your “buddies” to pile on the person you’re gossiping about.

I expected better from our world leaders to behave, especially when these leaders are allies to each other.

Why Bad Managers Lead To Burnout

photo by @icons8

In my role as a burnout advisor and coach, I hear countless stories of people’s struggle with burnout, and one aspect I am seeing quite a spike in the cause of their burnout, is the environment where they work.

Work demands are getting worse, and it’s been this way since the last recession of 2008/09. If you have forgotten that time period, let me open up an old wound for you.

After the recession took out many companies and downsized tons of organizations, those that survived and kept their jobs discovered a new world of more work responsibilities and less coworkers.

In the past, as companies recovered from economic downturns, they would bring on more staff.

This edition of post recession didn’t film that scene.

As work demands kept increasing, with extended work access (aka constantly getting emails and texts from the boss), our work days are longer than before.

When the state of New York has to create legislation to restrict email access to employees after normal working hours, you know there’s a problem.

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Bill-Would-Make-it-Illegal-for-New-Yorkers-to-Respond-to-Emails-During-Non-Work-Hours-477737223.html

Accessing employee when they should be living their life instead of working is bad enough. However, there’s a bigger problem that’s happening across organizations around the world.

Toxic management.

Bad managers are everywhere. If you’re reading this and you’re nodding, my hunch is that you have a bad manager in your world.

These managers often are poster child narcissists, pointing the finger at employees for mistakes, when they don’t let employees breathe or ask questions for clarification.

57% of employees surveyed state they don’t get clear direction from their management.

No wonder the employees are making mistakes.

Companies that make mistakes make inferior products and services. This could be dangerous to consumers.

Again, management is the cause.

Why are these managers so bad? Why are they praising employees in one breath, and then listing 6 things the employees are screwing up?

Besides being narcissistic morons, these managers were likely never trained how to be a manager.

Would you get on an airplane if the pilot wasn’t trained on how to be a pilot?

Then why do companies put people into leadership roles without any training?

It’s asinine, and it needs to stop.

How do we fix this growing epidemic of bad management, that leads to burnout in companies?

Train the managers how to manage. There’s no shortage of companies that can help. PreEmptive Strike Consulting (PESC) is one that does a great job (shameless plug)

Be crystal clear to the manager they (currently) aren’t good, but you want to help them. If they don’t agree, fire them right then. Your bottom line is being impacted by bad managers.

Fire bad managers. Don’t string them along, don’t try to fix them by having team meetings to “clear the air”. If HR knows the manager sucks, dehire that manager now.

Seek feedback from employees. Robust surveys such as the free PESC resource will give organizations clarity on what’s really going on in your company.

When employees have to suffer from bad management for prolonged periods of time, chronic stress and burnout will occur.

Burnout ruins relationships, your health and well being. It can be prevented.

If you need help with burnout recovery or prevention , schedule a free call with someone that had significant burnout, lost it all, and rebuilt his life.

A Result of burnout? 1 in 5 employees would prefer five extra PTO days rather than a 10% raise

 We’re all guilty of overworking, but how many of us are missing out on a work-life balance?

 

Although being focused on work can be a great thing, ensuring we take a vacation is important for our overall health, work performance, and minimizing work burnout.

 

In a recent study conducted by Celebrity Cruises, over 1,200 employees were surveyed, yet only 750 had paid time off, and some reported leaving six to 10 days unused last year.

 

Twenty percent of employees with PTO left at least six days unused last year, and nearly 1 in 10 reporting leaving at least 11 days unused. Overall, 47% of employees left paid vacation time unused, and 21% admitted they had been denied a vacation request last year.

 

Aside from unused time, the study looked at which industries offer the least amount of paid vacation days.

 

It turns out that the hotel, food services, and hospitality industry offered the least amount of paid vacation time (a median of 11 days). No wonder nearly 1 in 5 employees would prefer five extra paid vacation days to a 10% raise.

 

Some industries offered quite generous PTO packages, but employees felt compelled to work extra hours to make up for vacation time. Although the finance, technology, and medical industries all offered at least 14 days of PTO, employees in these industries were the most likely to work extra hours before vacation.

 

Overall, 62% of employees admitted working extra hours the week before vacation, with 50% of women reported being “more stressed” the week before vacation.

 

As burnout continues to be an issue in the workforce, vacations have become increasingly necessary. But it’s up to employees to take advantage of workplace benefits, while employers need to identify employee needs and understand when they may need some time off. 

 

I help people recover from and prevent burnout. Feel free to reach out to me about a way out of your burnout. I’m always happy to chat.

 

Book a call

 

How to Prepare for Your Vacation like a BOSS

I’ve reversed my summer and fall schedules this year. Historically speaking my autumns have been jam packed with conferences, travel, holidaze, etc. My summers have normally been more laid back, quiet, enjoy patio season, etc.

For 2019 I switched my seasons. I have 2 vacations in the fall, and a mini trip back home to see a particular end of a Saga with my brother.

My summer was filled with podcast interviews, meetings, calls, work, etc.

How did I do a role reversal on my schedule?

I scheduled it that way. I planned for my year to be this way.

You control your schedule. Don’t delegate this.

Vacations do help with the prevention of burnout, but they’re not the complete solution to burnout symptoms.

If you’re on the verge (or deep in) of burnout, reach out to me. Happy to have a chat to guide you out of your own burnout saga.

Book a call

In the meantime, check out this awesome post from Abby Quillen on how to prepare for your vacation.

 Follow me on Twitter @bfastleadership, Facebook Breakfast Leadership, and on Instagram @bfastleadership. 

I help people recover from or prevent burnout in their lives.  Schedule a 20 minute chat to discuss your stress and/or burnout with me.

8 Ways To Reduce Stress In The Workplace

This is a guest post from Adam from Crams Online.

Stress causes a lot of problems if left unchecked and can have a severe detrimental impact on employee wellbeing, motivation and overall productivity. For that reason, reducing stress in the workplace is essential when it comes to remaining happy and efficient at work.

Knowing exactly how to mitigate work-related pressure, though, is easier said than done. That’s why in this article we’ll be running through eight methods you can use to reduce your stress levels as an employee, enabling you to continue to love your job without harming your mental health.

Stress left unchecked can have a severe impact on employee wellbeing

THE IMPACT OF STRESS IN THE WORKPLACE

Without a doubt, stress can be one of the most daunting and destructive obstacles to employee engagement in the modern-day workplace. According to a 2017/18 Labour Force Survey (LFS), a total of 15.4 million working days have been lost due to work-related stress, depression or anxiety.

Considering that employees usually get paid for sick days, the financial loss as a result of stress-related issues is enormous. Moreover, it appears that such issues are on the rise, too, with approximately 1,700 people per 100,000 workers reported to be suffering from stress, depression or anxiety in 2017/18, compared to an estimated 1,400 in 2005/06.

Source: Mental Health First Aid England

It has also been reported that stress, depression and anxiety are more prevalent in public health service industries such as education, health and social care, and public administration and defence.

The main work factors cited by survey respondents as causing work-related stress were workload pressures (including tight deadlines), too much responsibility and the absence of managerial support.

There are countless statistics relating to workplace stress that could be referenced, but the point is clear. Stress, in any form, can dramatically impact your wellbeing as an employee and harm the efficiency of the organisation you work for. Learning how to reduce it is vital.

8 WAYS TO REDUCE STRESS IN THE WORKPLACE

Thankfully, stress in the workplace isn’t something we’re forced to accept. There are measures that can be taken to reduce work-related stress and even enhance your ability to do your job.

1. RECOGNISE THE SIGNS OF STRESS

Before being able to reduce your stress levels, it’s important that you’re aware of the key symptoms of stress and anxiety.

Stress impacts employees in all industries and workplace environments

Thankfully, leading mental health charity, Mind, provides a comprehensive list of all of the telltale signs of stress. Mind separates these symptoms into feelings, behaviours and physical sensations.

Feeling…

irritable, aggressive, impatient or wound up;

overburdened;

anxious, nervous or afraid;

like your thoughts are racing and you can’t switch off; or

unable to enjoy yourself.

Behaviours

Finding it hard to make decisions.

Constantly worrying.

Avoiding situations that are troubling you.

Snapping at people.

Biting your nails.

Picking at your skin.

Physical sensations

Shallow breathing or hyperventilating.

You might have a panic attack.

Muscle tension.

Blurred eyesight or sore eyes.

Problems getting to sleep, staying asleep or having nightmares.

Sexual problems, such as losing interest in sex or being unable to enjoy sex.

If you recognise any of the above symptoms in yourself, you may be exhibiting signs of workplace stress.

2. IDENTIFY THE CAUSE OF YOUR STRESS

After recognising the signs that you’re feeling stressed, the next step is to identify the root cause of your emotions. What exactly is it that’s causing you to feel troubled at work?

For many of us, it’s the workload we’re expected to take care of. We feel that there’s just too much responsibility on our shoulders and that we’re being stretched too thin to cope. For others, it might be a demanding boss or unkind colleagues that are making us feel as though it’s all getting too much. 

Source: LinkedIn

Whatever it is, just make a mental note of it. Become familiar with the cause of your stress. Understanding your emotions is crucial to being able to deal with them effectively.

3. SET BOUNDARIES

Countless employees find themselves feeling stressed and overburdened as a result of too much pressure at work. In an attempt to appease the demands of your superiors and advance your career it can be tempting to bite off more than you can chew – especially in a busy, understaffed environment.

A simple yet effective solution is to set boundaries. What exactly is a boundary, though?

Personal boundaries are guidelines, rules or limits that a person creates to identify reasonable, safe and permissible ways for other people to behave towards them and how they will respond when someone passes those limits.

Wikipedia

In the context of the workplace, a boundary lets your employers know what they can and can’t expect from you. If you tell them categorically that you can’t work weekends, a firm boundary will ensure that they don’t ask you to. It’s important to set boundaries to ensure that, whatever the demands of the company you work for, they know that you have needs to be met, too.

Spend some time considering what kind of boundaries would suit your working life. Which boundaries could you put in place in order to reduce your stress levels? Which ones, if put in place, would improve your mental wellbeing?

Once you’ve decided, have a conversation with your management team about putting those boundaries into action. Be honest, friendly and open about it. They should understand your concerns and take measures to make things easier for you.

4. CONSIDER HOW YOU SPEND YOUR TIME OUTSIDE OF WORK

Work shouldn’t be your life. It’s a part of your life, but there’s more to life than simply working all of the time. That being said, it’s a good idea to consider how you spend your time when you’re not at work.

Your morning routine, for instance, will have a profound effect on your emotional health throughout the rest of your day. If you sleep in late, eat an unhealthy breakfast and leave yourself having to rush to work with no time, you’re likely to feel stressed before you even make it to work.

Practising yoga can help relieve stress after a long day at work

Instead of maintaining unhealthy habits, think about some ways in which you can incorporate stress-reducing activities into your time at home. Yoga, for instance, is a great way to de-stress after a long day’s work whilst also improving joint health and preventing the spinal damage associated with desk jobs.

5. PRACTICE MINDFULNESS

Mindfulness has been scientifically proven to provide a wide range of benefits, ranging from stress reduction to neural recomposition. Incorporating it into your working life can help to bring peace, clarity and more enjoyment into your day-to-day routine.

Although most of us have heard of mindfulness, not everybody knows exactly what it is. Mindfulness, simply put, is the act of being present. Instead of losing yourself in your thoughts or worrying about your deadlines, being mindful is about focusing on one thing and one thing only. That is, right now.

Work-related stress is often chained to fears about the past or the future. We might worry that yesterday we didn’t meet the demands of our manager, and that tomorrow we have a twelve-hour shift to complete.

Mindfulness can reduce stress and increase clarity of thought

When those worrisome thoughts arise, just become aware of them. Notice that they’re pulling your focus away from the present moment and then reconnect to the things going on around you right now. Soon, your anxious mind will begin to quieten and your stress levels will lessen in intensity.

6. CONNECT WITH OTHER PEOPLE

As Professor Cary Cooper, an occupational health expert at the University of Lancaster, puts it:

If you don’t connect with people, you won’t have support to turn to when you need help.

Having a strong support network of colleagues, friends and family members will enable you to rest assured knowing that you always have other people to lean on when the weight becomes too heavy. Of course, it doesn’t need to get to that point, but being a lone ranger will only make you feel more stressed in the long-run.

Talking things through with a friend will also help you find solutions to your problems.

Professor Cary Cooper

The activities that we engage in with friends can help us to relax. Whether it’s going for a meal, catching up over a coffee or doing something active, simply spending quality time with loved ones can help to reduce stress exponentially.

7. AVOID UNHEALTHY HABITS

Caffeine is a stimulate that can impact stress levels negatively

Unhealthy habits such as excessive alcohol consumption, smoking, eating junk food and not exercising will all impact your stress levels negatively. Even caffeine is a stimulant that can magnify underlying stress – so make that catch-up coffee a decaf. While these things might appear to help in the short-term, they’ll only create more stress for you in the future by harming your physical health.

Instead of relying on such habits as coping mechanisms, seek to replace them with healthy activities like exercise or meditation. Doing so will not only arm you with far more effective methods than those listed above, but also improve your overall health, wellbeing and peace of mind.

8. WORK SMARTER, NOT HARDER

At work, we place a lot of pressure on ourselves to work harder in an attempt to be as productive as possible within the time constraints we’re given. Ironically, it’s often the case that the harder we work, the less productive we become.

It’s far more effective to focus not on working harder, but on working smarter. That is, to find ways in which we can get more done without having to ramp up our working hours higher than we can bear.

Take single-tasking, for instance. Single-tasking involves directing all of your energy into one task at a time rather than bouncing between tasks in an attempt to complete them all at once. Multitasking might sound like a good idea, but attempting to juggle too many balls will only increase our chances of dropping them.

Instead, taking care of one task at a time and giving one-hundred percent of our focus to it will ensure that we work to our maximum potentially without stressing ourselves out.

Working smart is about prioritising your work in terms of importance, navigating one task at a time before moving onto the next. By doing so, you’ll be able to work both more efficiently and serenely.

Source: Syntax IT Support

WHY EMPLOYERS SHOULD TRY TO REDUCE STRESS IN THEIR WORKPLACES

Reducing stress in the workplace isn’t just essential to the mental health and efficiency of employees, but it’s critical to the functioning of the company as a whole. Taking measures to mitigate tension at work will ensure that members of staff remain happy, motivated and pleased to work for the company they’re a part of.

Placing rigid requirements on employees and expecting them to work long hours at unsociable times is only likely to cause them unnecessary stress. Striking a balance between meeting both your organisation’s demands and the capabilities of your staff is one of many ways that employers can protect the mental wellbeing of their employees.

If your company model enables employees to have more flexibility, like the choice to work from home, for instance, then give them option. Even if it’s only for a couple of days each month, that opportunity could work wonders on their stress levels and overall happiness at work.

Source: Public Health England

No workplace should feel like a prison cell. Understanding your employee’s needs and working to accommodate them whilst moving your company in the right direction will ensure that your staff remain happy, healthy and productive.

As well as that, hosting social events outside of work, expressing sincere appreciation to your employees and investing time and money into reducing stress in the workplace are all ways that employers can boost morale and improve mental health amongst staff members.

SUMMARY

There’s no doubt that stress is an unwelcome guest in the workplace. Whether from the perspective of the employee or employer, excess pressure isn’t good for anything and will only detract from the happiness, healthiness and overall efficiency of members of staff.

By making use of the measures outlined above, reducing workplace stress is something that’s within all of our capabilities. Let’s start with learning how to recognise the symptoms of stress, then move on to identifying the root cause of the problem before finally taking action to address it. If this approach is embraced by all employees and supported by their employers, it could go some way to stamping out work-related stress once and for all.

Follow me on Twitter @bfastleadership, Facebook Breakfast Leadership, and on Instagram @bfastleadership. 

I help people recover from or prevent burnout in their lives.  Schedule a 20 minute chat to discuss your stress and/or burnout with me.

Lack of Motivation? Here are Seven Causes and Seven Cures

This is a featured post from the INLP Center.

Lack of motivation may be in the top three problems life coaches encounter with their clients. It’s so common! Does lack of motivation – or no motivation – prevent you from doing what you want?

Most lack of motivation comes from subconscious mental strategies, many of which are intended to motivate you. These are ineffective strategies learned long ago when you had no idea what was going on.

Maybe your parents tried to “motivate” you by yelling at you and criticizing you. Now, you do the same thing in your own mind. It probably didn’t work out well back then and still doesn’t work. Yet, that’s what you learned to do. You need a new self-motivation method and to let go of the old one.

This is an important point: You do have a current inner motivation strategy. You’re trying! Right? There are two problems with your current strategy that result in lack of motivation:

Problem #1: You are not aware of it or don’t recognize what’s going on in your mind as an attempt to motivate yourself.

Problem #2: It’s a bad motivation strategy. It backfires, leaving you less motivated than ever.

If you’re in agreement so far, you’ll find the following seven causes and cures for lack of motivation enlightening. They’re based on Neuro-Linguistic Programming, of course. Which one applies most to you?

Seven Causes and Cures for Lack of Motivation1. Self-dictatorship = no motivation

No one likes to be ordered around. Interestingly, you may attempt to self-motivate drill sergeant style. Essentially, you yell at yourself:

Get off your butt!
If you don’t get moving, you’re going to pay!
You’re so frickin’ lazy!
You must do this NOW!

When you order yourself around, something predictable happens: you rebel against your own orders and refuse to get moving.

Many of us have a parent’s voice in our head speaking to us rudely, trying to get us to cooperate with their agenda. This only fills you with resentment and makes you want to do less than ever. Self-dictatorship (yes, the voice in your head is yours, not your actual parents’) is set up to fail.

The cure for this lack of motivation style is to speak to yourself as you would a good friend. Invite yourself to do things you really want to do. Be pleasant with yourself.

Sadly, some people have a hard time imagining this possibility. Even so, it is possible to develop a relationship with yourself based on self-respect, not self-punishment.

2. Overwhelm – kills your mojo

Feeling overwhelmed is another big contributor to lack of motivation. Interestingly, it doesn’t take much for some of us to get overwhelmed and feel helplessly frustrated. Staring at a sink full of dirty dishes is often enough to do the trick.

Overwhelm happens for two reasons:

1. You haven’t learned the habit of breaking tasks down into manageable chunks.

2. At some point early in life, you became accustomed to a feeling of helplessness and are now struggling with that psychological attachment.

If you’ve been reading this site long, you understand that attachments are all-too-familiar feelings of negativity that we subconsciously return to again and again. Helplessness is a common theme for so many people and getting overwhelmed in the face of things to do is an outlet for the repressed helplessness.

Self-motivation is the opposite of helplessness, so those who are very used to feeling helpless need to train themselves to tolerate their personal power.

The cure for overwhelm is: 1) Consciously break tasks down into small enough chunks. Picture each small chunk in your mind clearly. 2) Trace your feelings of helplessness back to their origins until you see the pattern of helplessness throughout your life. At some point, and perhaps with the help of an outside perspective, you will be able to decide it is time to let it go.

3. Chronic people pleasing – a trap!

How does chronic people pleasing create a lack of motivation within you? It’s a simple concept. Before you can be motivated, you must know what you want. If you are overly focused on pleasing others, you will end up with NO IDEA what you want or even who you are, when it comes down to it.

This is where self-motivation turns into motivation according to the expectations of others. Amazingly, your perception of other’s expectations may be WAY off.

The cure for this brand of lack of motivation is to learn to be aware of your individual needs and balance them with the needs of other people. This solution is a journey of self-discovery.

It may be hard to justify focusing more on yourself, especially if you’ve been brainwashed to believe it’s wrong.

Being aware of your own needs and desires is NOT wrong, however. In fact, knowing who you are helps others connect with you. If you neglect your needs in favor of servitude, you will end up resenting people, which is a disservice to them and a form is disrespect.

It’s all about balance.

4. Task focus = no motivation (sometimes)

Most of us need to complete tasks that we do not enjoy. Cleaning the bedroom, doing the dishes, balancing the checkbook and exercising are common drudgeries that a lot of people tend to avoid because it just isn’t fun.

When you think about a task that you need to complete, how do you think about it? Do you imagine yourself doing the task and go, “Ugh! I hate it. I’ll do it later.” Not gonna work.

People who tend to get unpleasant tasks done quickly use their imagination differently. Rather than picturing themselves doing the task, they picture the task done.

Instead of thinking about doing dishes, imagine a clean kitchen. Instead of seeing yourself suffering on a treadmill, picture yourself feeling great after you have exercised.

Picturing the positive results and good feelings of having completed something gives you something to move toward that you want.

5. Motivation by disaster

For some, motivation only comes at the last possible moment, when delaying further would result in disastrous consequences.

There you are, lying in bed. You’ve hit snooze for the 7th time. Suddenly, you realize that if you don’t get up RIGHT NOW, you’ll be late for work again, possibly lose your job and end up living under a bridge. You spring from your bed with a rush of anxiety.

It works. In fact, some people actually perform better under extreme pressure. The problem is, it takes an incredible toll on your mind and body.

At the heart of this form of motivation is inner passivity. You lolligag around until outside circumstances dictate that you absolutely must act or else.

The cure for this form of passivity is to internalize your motivation. Internal motivation is based on self-respect and personal responsibility. When you respect yourself (and others) enough to act when you need to act, then you give up the childish feeling that the world is controlling you.

Then, you are free to realize that you are in charge and no longer need to wait for the outside world to pressure you into action.

6. Self-deprivation attachments

At the heart of motivation woes is an attachment to self-deprivation.

If you were 100% motivated, you’d accomplish more and experience a ton of fulfillment in life. So many of us, however are not comfortable with fulfillment. Because you haven’t experienced a lot of happiness in life, you don’t trust it. More familiar is a chronic feeling of lack, emptiness and discouragement.

Clients often tell me, “I’m not happy, but this is what I know. I get scared when I think of living a different life.”

This is the nature of psychological attachments. We cling to what’s familiar and even make the negativity strangely pleasurable. Becoming super motivated, in this case, only leads to unfamiliar territory and is intimidating.

This is why we created the AHA Solution. Letting go of negative attachments is the deepest cure possible. Imagine if there were no conflict within you that prevented you from moving consistently and confidently toward your goals. Imagine seeing obstacles in life for what they are – negotiable – and not as black holes that suck you in and dispose of your plans.

Living without attachments is the freedom you seek and the AHA Solution can get you there, one step and a time.

7. Contentment (or no motivation heaven)

At last, a pleasant lack of motivation! Contentment with life may deter you from climbing another mountain. If so, congratulations. Enjoy the peace that you have earned and stop thinking you have more to prove.

Beware of false contentment, however. False contentment is a self-deception that coaxes you into believing everything is just fine when things are NOT fine. Lots of lazy, unmotivated people are overly content.

So, if you’re past middle age and have worked hard to create a stable life, by all means, revel in contentment.

If you are 27 years old, live with your parents and are happy to play video games all day while mom does your laundry, I hope you find a way to lose that false contentment and make something of yourself. In this case, a healthy dose of discontent would be a gift.

Burnout Series: T is For Time

Photo by Jon Tyson

Last on the BURNOUT acronym series is the letter T, and that's for time. 

 One of the biggest challenges that many people face is they say that they don't have enough time. Last time I checked, everyone gets the same amount of time every day. It's how we choose to spend our time. The key is really to know how you choose to spend your time.  

Too often we say we don't have time to do this or this or that. We don't have time to make our own food. That's why we ordered fast food. We don't have time to exercise, although we'll spend six hours on our iPhones or Android devices or five hours watching Netflix. I’m not asking you to work out for five hours or go to the gym for that long, carve out 15, 20 minutes. If you're not going to the gym at all, literally carve out five minutes. Go to the gym. Go in there for five minutes and then leave. I guarantee you will feel weird leaving after 5 minutes. You're going to ask yourself why am I leaving? I might as well stay a little bit longer. 

I'm a big fan of energy. I'm a big fan of matching your workloads to your energy. I have resources on how to track how your energy and your workloads, so they can match up better. I tend to be a morning person, so I tend to have my mornings scheduled with tasks, and in the afternoons scheduled follow-ups and other things. Sometimes it bleeds over and I have to do tasks in the afternoon or follow-ups in the morning. If you can somehow structure your days to be a little bit more consistent, your body will get into a rhythm. And we've already talked about rhythm how routines will help you use your time better. 

I think that's what we really want to see here, is to help you get back to spending our time the way that we want to, so we feel that we're in a little bit more control than we were before. 

As I've said throughout this series, it's important for you to be able to address your burnout. If any of these posts resonate with you, and you feel you are burned out, reach out to me. Let’s work together to get you past burnout once and for all.

 Be well!

 Follow me on Twitter @bfastleadership, Facebook Breakfast Leadership, and on Instagram @bfastleadership. 

I help people recover from or prevent burnout in their lives.  Schedule a 20 minute chat to discuss your stress and/or burnout with me.

Burnout Series: O is For Offside

Source: TheConversation.com

Next up in the Burnout acronym is the letter O for offside. 

 I'm a huge sports fan.  I wasn't very good at it playing. I played basketball and baseball as a kid, but my asthma and body size as a youth was a barrier (self-imposed) to pursue a career in sports.

 I could have made changes. I could have taken better care of myself as a child. I could have chosen to be a little bit more athletic and practice. Yes, A.I., I said practice. We're talking about practice. 

 You can improve yourself and you can actually stay in the game and be in balance. When you're burned out in the game of life. You're offside. You're out of bounds. You're not doing the things that you need to do because you're too busy fighting this burned out state. Your body is in a constant state of flux, pedal to the floor constantly, which has your body's using all its energy to repair the damage that burnout causes. 

 When you're off sides or out of bounds, you're not in the game. You're not in the game of life. You're not doing the things that you want to do because you're too damn tired to do it, because your body is using all of its energy to fight the damage that you're doing to yourself with the burnout.  

Burnout is a choice. 

OK, I know that may not be popular, but you chose to be burned out. The path you chose created the situation. You say, well, I'm working too many hours. My boss is a jerk. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All true. I don't know your boss, but I'm guessing what you're saying is true. You haven't given me a reason to say that it's not, but don’t forget you chose to work there.

You continue to work there at the time of this recording. Jobs are still plentiful. Now, that may change. We do have economic ups and downs in life. So take that into consideration. But in this world of opportunities, there are the things you can do. Yes, I know there's other factors. You may have a mortgage payment that requires you to earn a certain level of income. Again, a choice. No one sign that lease agreement or that mortgage document for you. You did.

 You chose that. You chose where you live. You chose what you eat. You chose your partner. You chose your job. You chose the car you drive. You chose the clothes you wear.

 You chose to subscribe to Netflix. Instead of going to a gym, you are choosing these things, your choice, and your life. You do what you want. However, your choice is have an impact on your life. What you choose today impacts your life down the road. 

 Sometimes it might be even shorter than that, but your choices create these situations. If you're burned out, it's a choice. You chose to be out of bounds with your life. You can also choose to get back into the game, and that's crucial. And my hope for you is that you are making that choice. 

 Next up in the BURNOUT series will be the letter U.

 Follow me on Twitter @bfastleadership, Facebook Breakfast Leadership, and on Instagram @bfastleadership. 

I help people recover from or prevent burnout in their lives.  Schedule a 20 minute chat to discuss your stress and/or burnout with me.

Burnout Series: U is For Upheaval

Photo by Joe Pizzio

Next up in the BURNOUT acronym is the letter U for upheaval. 

 Burnout can create a situation where your life is completely upside down, and create upheaval all of your life. When I had my burnout in 2009/10, you can say that my life was upside down and an upheaval took place. For those of you that are not familiar with my over a period of time over 369 days, I had a heart attack that should have killed me. I lost my job during an economic recession. The family vehicle was repossessed. And then finally our home was foreclosed.  All in a year. I don't want anybody to go through that. It was not fun for my family or myself to experience those losses. But we did. And as I said in an earlier post, burnout is a choice.

 I chose that path. The decisions and choices I made led up to those 369 days of worst-case scenarios.  No one wants to lose his or her health. No one wants to lose his or her job. Having their family car towed away is not a pleasant sight. And going up to your house and opening up a screen door and seeing the hugest padlock in your life with a foreclosure sign on the door is not pleasant. It wasn't fun, but I'll tell you what, I'm thankful for all of those things because it woke me up. 

Many people are asleep at the wheel when they make these choices that lead to their burnout and they think, OK, this is where I am. And they don't give themselves permission to change that. You chose burnout. You can choose a different path your life. You can do what you want. You should choose not to be burned out, Yes, there are external factors, but you put yourself in those situations. 

Now, I'm not about to tell you that you should believe this instead of that or change your faith or anything like that. That's not that's not what this is about. Your life is in upheaval and you made choices that created this situation. Did you choose to be burned out? I say that the burnout is a choice, and that's the outcome of your choices.

 Would you say, “you know what I want to do? Next year, I think I'm going to burnout.”?

 Nobody does that. But the choices you do make can lead to it. So you have to make better choices and you can get out of burnout. I talked to a lot of people and they say, oh, I've had burnout a couple times. And my first reaction to that is it once is enough. Why twice? They obviously applied some Band-Aid approaches to deal with their burnout, which didn't eliminate it, but basically they numbed the pain as a good way to describe it, but it was still there festering and then it flared up again and then they dealt with it again. And my hunch is unless they did some deep-rooted work to figure out why the burned out in the first place. Spoiler alert, it's gonna come back. 

 My goal and when I work with people is to identify the root causes of why they burned out so we can address those issues to prevent it from happening again. 

 Burnout once in your life is definitely enough. I don't want another 369 Days ever again. I don't want anybody to go through that. And it's preventable. But the key is you have to choose that.

 So is your life in upheaval or are you offside as mentioned in an earlier post? Are you in balance? Are you living the life you choose to live?

 The final letter in the BURNOUT acronym is the letter T.

 Follow me on Twitter @bfastleadership, Facebook Breakfast Leadership, and on Instagram @bfastleadership. 

I help people recover from or prevent burnout in their lives.  Schedule a 20 minute chat to discuss your stress and/or burnout with me.