Digitasku OÜ (01:10)
Welcome to the Relancer podcast where we talk about talent acquisition topics. I'm Eero, the co -founder of Relancer, the platform where employers connect with freelancer recruiters Today we have James and we will be talking about mental health and burnout in talent acquisition. Welcome James. Hey, Eero, how are you doing? Good to be here. Thanks for inviting me and yeah, looking forward to it. So I think we, we first met

in like 2020 when COVID started or something, because we started Relancer about that time. So basically before COVID and back then I think you were still in talent acquisition. Exactly. Yes. I think around that sort of time, I was just doing some work for Octopus ventures and helping out some of their portfolio companies and working with a couple of their startups. So I was doing that. And then...

Obviously when COVID hit, then I ended up joining Meta and was there ultimately until last year. So pretty much three years in the scaling from predominantly on research science, AI and machine learning stuff. So yeah, it was super interesting.

And now you're in a new journey. So what's your experience with mental health? I guess in a way it's relatively new to a certain extent. Time flies quite quickly. But yeah, Back in 2017, I didn't really have a lot of awareness around mental health, if I'm honest. I just was getting on with life, thinking everything was fine.

And then things change. Sometimes you get a massive, it could be a curve ball, it could be, I particularly call them like graduation events of life, which take you off in a different direction. And yeah, I was just saying, I was, I obviously went through a loss of a dad, then a loss of a son. And they came very, very quickly together and I obviously didn't have any tool set then. And then I actually was then accused of a crime I hadn't done.

So really very quickly in six months from everything going, looking quite rosy, I suddenly sat in a police cell. And... But I had no tool set, hadn't done any real, no, hadn't really looked into mental health or even really thought about it. And the challenge of that is when you go from that situation with no tool set, you instantly go to the lowest common denominator, which is suicide really. Cause there's, you haven't, you haven't, you have no concept of really what's happening.

So I spent a lot of time in that mindset, in that place, because I didn't have the particular tool set. And it was only really as I started to get a little bit more knowledge and starting to look into this a little bit more and start working with people. And I instantly called the Samaritans, which is a mental health charity here in the UK. There's other ones, but that was from particularly I called.

Then I got a counselor, then I went to therapy, then I did all these, and then you kind of progress, then you understand tools, and then you start putting practices into place. And that's how kind of my journey evolved into now, you know, going through that, you know, 2020, -21, and actually get being a certified coach and, you know, helping people from a, you know, from a, from a life coaching mindset, transformational type perspective. And so yeah, it's, that's kind of my journey through the mental health.

you know, coming from it, from a very low place, not having any awareness to suddenly being in this position where I'm trying to help people who are encountering similar challenges. You have been in a way, of course, I have never been so low in my life. I have experienced like burnout. I think I had it also like in 2017, quite early, like I think when I did my first startup.

Basically, when I did my first startup, of course, there is like, there is a very interesting thing, I think, about mental health in general or success or something like when somebody starts to like, sets a goal to fly high, let's say. Of course, you don't have to do big things to burn out and so on. But what I experienced myself was that it's...

there is a lot of information out there that is in a way misguiding. And maybe it works for somebody, but I can give you an example. So when I started, I would listen to a lot of motivational stuff and then, and then like, I would listen to, for example, Arnold Schwarzenegger, like he would say like, sleep faster. And then I would, I would experiment how I can sleep less and do more. And for me, it never worked.

It never worked. And then until I got to the point when I read this book that it's called Why Do We Sleep? And then a sleep scientist will explain what sleep is and why it's essential and so on. And basically, there is like less than one percent in the world who can basically operate on less than seven and eight hours of sleep. So for me, like I probably don't have the gene to have less.

And for me to try to have less sleep, which is the fundamental of life to recover, it would never work out. But I was like, OK, Arnold said, sleep faster, so sleep less, work more. And I was like, OK, I'm going to do that because he's super successful. And I'm going to try to copy that. But actually, that never has worked for me. So it can be misguiding. And then...

Maybe something that works for somebody can work for them, but you have to in the end figure out what works the best for you. Exactly. We're all human, we're all different and brought up in certain different environments, all at different sort of ages as well. And some key things happen in certain areas. I mean, I think generally the fundamental things about sleep is paramount, you know, and that could be six hours, it could be seven hours, it could be eight hours. Some people obviously, you know, venture between those. It's the quality of sleep.

Sometimes it's the actual quality of sleep. That's one thing I took into it is I probably sometimes sleep around about sort of six hours, sometimes even between five to six hours, which can be seen as less, but I track my sleep and I actually go into a very deep, deep, deep, deep sleep and I track it. So I understand that even though it is only five or six hours, it's actually such a deep level that I am really sort of helping my body.

Where some people can sleep for seven, eight hours, but actually it's quite a light sleep. It's actually the quality is not that good. And then obviously, you know, that just doesn't, there's many determining factors as well. I mean, things, the food you eat, if you're drinking alcohol, all these types of things will impact your sleep. So I would, that's one of the things I do recommend people is to actually track their quality of sleep and see how well they actually, you know, how deep, you know, they are going.

And how quickly they can fall asleep as well. I think that's also a key thing. But as you say, there's a lot of information out there. And we live in the information age now, you know, with a touch of a button, we have access to so much knowledge now. But the challenge, obviously, what I found with that is that people are, you know, overwhelmed with information, but very much crying out for transformation. And it's very difficult sometimes to get that

because everyone's sort of saying, do this, do this, and there's many different views. And we're all, we're each, you know, we're all different, you know, from a human perspective. So I always, I think the biggest changes I ever had in my journey was when I actually was working with someone individually, because then they can kind of, you know, point you in the right direction. You can follow you on a particular path. It is very difficult

doing it on your own, even though we do live in so much information and YouTube and all this type of stuff that you can get a great, a lot of great knowledge. Coming back to talent acquisition. So what do you think are the main factors that contribute to burnout specifically in this profession? Yeah, I mean, personally... I always always try to speak from personal perspective. So I think obviously this is high pressure, isn't it? I mean, I, you know, depending on where you are, there's so many,

you know, know, roles that need to be filled, especially on the technical. I mean, I'm very much come from the technical perspective. So the challenging positions when you're dealing with, you know, head of engineering roles or architectural roles or data, you know, machine learning type positions or research science type roles, which I was kind of was doing. But I do remember when I was out in our partner at Seed, I used to work with many different sort of startups at any one time. And so I had like,

know, potentially two, three or four hiring plans. I was working with the founders. I had three or four Slack groups. I had, you know, three or four emails. So I had a lot going on. I kind of wore a bit of a badge of honor that I was able to multitask quickly and fill roles and all this type of stuff. But I had no real awareness of burnout or mental health at that particular stage. And I had massive anxiety, but I didn't realize it because I just didn't have the awareness.

What I understand now is that you know, it is paramount to have a personal regime of how you are actually feeling in those particular, you know, particular times when you're feeling, you know, you can generally kind of feel that, you know, the stress, the anxiety, the over leading, there's a lot of pressure and what tool sets can you implement, you know, throughout that.

That those particular processes, so you can kind of calm, ultimately it's like calming a nervous system. I work with on brain waves predominantly, because when you're able to lower your brain waves through things like breath work and meditation, you open up more of a creative thinking. And a lot of the time, if you're always operating in a high beta brain wave, which you are generally, if you are, you know, burnout, it's like, it's like a car.

If you're sitting in a car and you're just hitting the... revving the engine, that's like your body. And that's burnt. And obviously, if you do that on a car, you're going to burn it out and it's the same as you as your body. How can you lower your brainwaves? And a lot of this comes back to stuff around meditation and breath work and taking some time out because then you can actually critically, you can creatively think better. And that's obviously going to help you in the job you've got when you've got multiple roles to fill and pressure,

you know, to fill those positions or people or to get people into the pipeline. So I think it's always about, you know, how do you feel having tool sets in place, but secondly, prioritizing what needs to be done, you know, not, I used to just be very, be very reactive for like stuff coming in, just, you know, dipping into certain things at any one time, whereas actually, it's better to have some sort of structure in place. So what I'm going to focus on this role for the first two hours of my morning.

And then once that's done, I'm going to then move on to this one and I'm going to do that for two hours and kind of have a priority, like a, you know, traffic light system of what you want, three things you're going to do, say what three roles you're going to work on and then kind of stick to that really. And sometimes you have to be reactive where things come in and there might be different priorities, but it's trying to have some sort of structure in play and also having some time out, I think, throughout the, throughout your day to...

you know, go for a walk or if you're at home or if you're in the office, go out for a walk or, and even take some time for yourself to regulate your breathing and stuff like that, because it's only going to help. Even though sometimes it feels counterintuitive when you've got a lot of work on. I think you touch upon like two things. One is there is a lot of roles to fill usually.

So very often, at least for me, what I have experienced is like, if you have to switch between different topics, so it can be roles that are super different, it takes like a toll on the mental. For example, I used to work on two businesses at the same time, and then I would do like half day one business, and then I would do half day the second business, and then...

that actually was super exhausting because the switching was so different. So switching from one thing to another can be mentally exhausting. And the other thing what I think in recruitment specifically is always there is like this time essence. So it's always, when do you need that new person? Yesterday. And it's always like that, I think. So there is like a quite big pressure on talent acquisition because everybody else is

pushing them and they can see probably like if they can't get the people in, their own people are struggling, they might be overworking because of that. So there is in a way it has to be fast. There is time pressure and then there is a lot of roles. So it's cognitively quite exhaustive. So at least this is how I see it. Like if something comes into my mind, why it's so stressful or why recruiters can burn out.

Yeah, I know very much so. I mean, having different experiences. So like, for example, when I was obviously like previously at Meta, you know, obviously with the nature of the business and the size of it, then there was, there was like, you know, this different, even though the roles are very challenging and harder to fill, there was different levels. So obviously you have people who are applying for the roles. So you got, you know, people coming in that way. You're getting referrals in a lot of the time.

Now I'm not saying the quality is fantastic, but you have those options coming in. And then obviously you have yourself doing an outreach perspective as well. So, you know, the use you have, there's sort of three sort of avenues or where people are coming in and you can kind of obviously dip in on, you know, and prioritize each one on those particular perspectives. And obviously they have a, and obviously again, the size of the business had a huge database.

And so you can obviously search through their search through previous jobs. And so there was that there so there was it was definitely it was difficult, but there was elements of it being also a little bit more easier. But I've worked in like series A startups, where they obviously they have no database, you know, they haven't really they haven't got really referral strategy with no particularly in place at the moment. No one's really applying because they're not really they're not really heard of the business. So a lot of the pressure is on

headhunting and actually being, you know, being out there. But it's just sometimes it's super attractive business to come in something which is a start, you've just had funding. So there's different pressures in different nature of the businesses you're working in. But yes, I think working with, specifically with, you know, on the startups face, it is, it's very, you know, being in that environment is, you know, it is predominantly very stressful, especially if you're working and you have to.

You know, work with different businesses. As you said, you worked with one, you worked with two, and then we did one in the morning, one in the evening, or one in the afternoon. But then you obviously, you have, you know, the business is different. You know, you could be going from a product related startup to a crypto business, you know, very, very different and very different skills, look for very different types of people. And it's about in those moments or in your day is about saying, right, you know, as you say, it's going to be...

you know, it's going to be like, I'm going to do this for the morning and this for the evening or this for the afternoon. And then it's balancing it really to say, well, you know, if you, if you do get a couple of people in the pipeline and they're going to interview stage and you can say, well, I can park that and then you can switch. And it's just about being able, it is that kind of balancing perspective and you can never change... Ultimately, you can't change what's happening. Like, you know, this, you know, from a out...

outer perspective, there's work to be done, there's jobs to fill, there's clients to work with and manage. But the only thing you can do is manage yourself internally. So it's about prioritizing what that looks like for you. It could be working for head down for 50 minutes and then it's taking that 10 minute break and it's going for a walk outside or it's sitting and doing a little bit of breath work or it's...

you know, reading a book and then it's coming back, re -incentivized. But naturally that is counterintuitive because if we're busy, we'll just sometimes sit at our desk for hours on end. But that's actually really not that productive because mind's burning out and stuff like that. And it's at that point where you go, right, I'm going to take 10, 15 minutes and then I'm going to come back again. And it's about putting those things in place because You can't...

really change what's coming in from a business perspective and the priorities and the needing to obviously find people. But what you can control is you and how you feel. And it's about having things in place throughout your day. You're doing something you enjoy, you're reading a book, whatever that is, and then you're coming back in and you're replenishing yourself internally. I know I never did that, you know, so, because I didn't have that awareness then.

And I just used to sit on my computer for hours on end. But I used it as a badge of honor. I thought it was good. People used to praise me. I remember the clients used to always come back to me and say, well, you're so reactive and this is great. And you're, you know, you're responsive on Slack and you're always responsive on email and you know, you're finding great candidates. So it was great from their perspective, but actually internally, even though I had no awareness, even though I thought I'm, you know, this is good.

I actually had massive high anxiety, but I didn't have that awareness then. You know, I had massively high function anxiety. Like I, I couldn't switch off. I was on it all the time, but the challenge of that is, which I didn't realize again at the time is I used to obviously look after my son and stuff like that, but I was never present with him because I was always doing stuff. I was always on my phone. I was always sat at a computer and I see that today with people, you know,

And it's when you go through a certain situation, you suddenly realize, well, what was it, you know, that's not worth it because you're not present with some of the loved ones. You're not present with, you know, with life. You can really have a disempowering perspective on your relationships with, you know, with loved ones and life really.

Because you're training yourself to be very reactive. You're training yourself to operate at a certain level. And even though certain people may think that's great. For you and mentally it's actually, you know, it's actually not good at all. Yeah. I have a story about that. So when I had this first small burnout, so I got to the point that I couldn't like work more than three or four hours a day, maybe less like, so there was a period I could

focus and then it got quite bad. And then basically I took one month off and I went to India. I went to Vipassana meditation. So it's basically 10 days meditation. And one of the things what I wanted to do is to be more present. Of course, today we have these smartphones and stuff like that. So it makes it a lot harder because you can easily get always this...

dopamine rush with videos and stuff like that. And also the other thing I want to learn a little bit patience or something like that. So I always feel that I'm... So, I'm I'm very persistent, but in a way I feel I'm not very patient. So it's in a way they are very different things. So it's weird that no patience, but a lot of persistence. What I learned in the

Vipassana part, so it's 10 days, you don't have any phone, you can write, you can talk with anybody. And then you're there, it's super hard. But at some point you will start to see the small things and you will start to see like ants on the trees and then you will start to see all the small details. It's super cool. And then after that, I had, I think, the most productive time of my life.

So just a thing that you can maybe do if somebody wants to try it out. That go... Meditate for 10 days. If you want to learn to be more into the present. It's super powerful. Yeah. I've been looking into doing that again, because yeah, I mean, this place in the UK, obviously I'm talking to you, I know you're not, but, and I say this place is like Ashram's in India and stuff like that. But yeah, it's having those times where you can actually take out and do something like that. You can, you know, it's hard to do. I mean,

It's harder to do at home. I've done it at certain times at home as well. Like for the weekend, I've just like, you know, completely taken myself off from any electronic devices. It's harder because the temptation is bigger. When you do have that solitude and you have no external stimuli coming in, it does become very powerful because we all have some sort of this fog, stroke layer over us.

Most people are sleeping awake, you know, they're just ran by certain patterns of behavior and they're automated. And they're just running through those. And so that's why a lot of the day's the same. And sometimes, you know, life is very similar because it's just, it's just running on this sort of treadmill really, but in this sort of malaise. And it's only really when you kind of take yourself off that and you go to, you know, one of those treatments or Vipassana or...

or, you know, where you can kind of, you can kind of start to shed a lot of that. And that's why they are very important because yeah, we unfortunately, we live in an age now where we're all connected and people expect you to be connected as well. You know, again, sometimes people use it as badge of honor I know I did, but again, you know, I remember when I was on holiday once in Dubai, but I was still working, you know.

I was still, I was on the beach and I was speaking to candidates and I was closing people and all that type of thought. And everyone was like, that's amazing. And I remember thinking, this is, yeah, this is really good. But I wasn't present. Did I have a good time? I don't really know. It's all about being present. for the people you, you know, you want to spend time with. Unfortunately, if, no things can happen in life, and you can't get that time back. I already talked about

what I had in my experience that for some point of time, I couldn't focus that much anymore. So three, four hours a day. So what are the early maybe signs of burnout for maybe somebody to see in themselves or in their teammates? Different people look at it different type of ways really, but it's being able to, you can generally...

I mean, like now for me, because I've had an awareness, then you can generally spot people, you know, quite a lot quicker, like their energy or how they are interacting, like even their speech, really, you know, because sometimes when people are operating, you know, especially at a burnout or high stress, their speech is very... higher, it's a lot more, you know, it's a lot more fast. So you can see certain things you can spot, but you say it only really comes from an internal perspective. So internally, the challenge,

is when you are in very high certain high brain waves like high beta or beta. It's hard to have creative thinking in those particular moments. So for people to understand is, you know, how do they feel? Do they, are they reacting to things, you know, certain ways, you know, are they, when they have to have, how many tabs do they actually have open, you know, on their laptop or desktop? Are they flicking through those very, very quickly?

Are they always picking up their phone? Are they always checking notifications? These kind of very... Things, which are quite normal for people to do, but you ultimately you're training yourself to be reactive. You're training your mind to be like a monkey mind. Like it's, it's instantly craving instant gratification. It's wanting to know what the next thing is. It's checking emails. It's checking notifications. It's checking...

You know, you're training, but you're training yourself to be like that. And obviously it's when you can realize that you're, you're doing that. I always say to people, you know,  only have a couple of tabs open, which you're going to be working on. It could be, you know, it could be obviously, you know, I'd predominantly closed down email because, there's no point having that open because it's, cause you can let, that can... that can  be closed for an hour or two. But just have obviously,

you know, the tab you're working on, maybe, you know, the next one you're working on. So it could be, you know, it could be LinkedIn, for example, and it could be the, the ATS system you're on. And then you have, don't have your phone near you. You know, your phone is, you know, ideally, if you're at home, then it's in a different room or it's in your desk drawer and you're just focused on what you need to do. And you're not, you know, you're not reacting to certain things.

And all I say to people is like, do that in sort of 20 minute, half an hour slots. So it's like, you're, you know, it's kind of intense work or intense focus for a certain period of time and then take some time, like five minutes out, could be getting water, could be getting a coffee, could be speaking to someone and then it's coming back and doing it again. But you're training yourself. And if you do have that urge to pick up, pick up your phone or to check...

You know, Facebook or to check Instagram or Twitter or X or all this type of stuff. Always be a pause and say what am I doing? What is the what is the goal of this? And if it's a goal to you know to check the news whenever or check what's come through then fine have that as a goal but then say well I'm going to log out within five minutes. Always set yourself like don't be reacting just to pick up stuff and do stuff because,

you're just training yourself to be burnt out and overwhelmed, you know, really. So it's about having that pause. I always introduced what I can choose to clients is PBTA – pause, breathe, think, act, and just have them write that on their journal each day PBTA. So they're just pausing, they're breathing, they're thinking "Is this the right thing I need to do?" And then acting, that's the off the putting a stop there. It stops people,

you know, stops them just reacting to things. Because that's really what causes burnout is that it's over intense. You're just training yourself to be overstimulated. So what I have noticed, of course, some of that is my own experience. I have, of course, I know people around me, like it's quite common thing, I think, the burnout thing or experience it somehow. And then maybe it's now it's...

talked more about. Some of the things that I have seen is one is like you mentioned, you can't switch off anymore. Your workday is over, but in the evenings, you're still thinking about work or you're maybe checking still the email. You were talking about the vacations, still doing work basically. You can't switch off anymore. That usually affects sleep quality. It's harder to fall asleep. It does.

If sleep quality goes down then you're gonna have like other effects you will have like less energy to do stuff, you will have... it's gonna be harder to concentrate. I really well know when I haven't slept well like I will start searching for words in my mind I can't find them like I can't get them like then I actually know that okay I'm not probably like

sleeping very well. So this concentration part is definitely a thing. Like I mentioned for me, a few hours I could do like that. That was already a sign that, okay, something is off here. Like, and, and then like, if it goes for a long time, then you can get to like a depression part. That means basically you will have like no emotions, that you don't feel anything about stuff. But before that, it probably is that, with, with,

basically with less of sleep, you will have swings of emotions, meaning you're very happy at some point and then you're super sad. Before I think comes swings and then the next step from there can be that you just don't give a shit anymore. You just don't feel anything. I think these are some of the examples that at least I have seen that are either signs or maybe you're already...

into that burnout. What is really important is to set yourself up morning and evening really. It can be somewhat basic, but in actual fact, a lot of people, predominantly people don't do this. So like in the evening as an example, so say you go to bed at let's say 10 or 11 o 'clock,

then at nine, the hour before you're gonna go to bed, then obviously electronic items away. So you're not checking your phone, you're not checking your phone, your desktop, you're not on you, anything like that. And then that hour beforehand, it's that kind of wind down. And then whatever that looks like for you, it could be, you know, it could be, I mean, I used, you know, don't do it as much as I used to, but I used to then do like 20 minutes of stretching.

You to do like, you know, get out and do some stretching exercises because there's an app and just go, just go like, so do some like sort of yoga type stretching, breathing. Okay. So that was like 20 minutes. Then I would then I'd be sit and do, you know, like a five or 10 minutes sort of meditation. And then I'll just start reading, get a book and just start reading for, you know, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, it could be half an hour. And then it would be kind of a lights off. So it was kind of a real,

will wind down of going in, you know, going into sleep. Obviously, the worst thing you can do is to be checking your phone or all this type of stuff and then or watching TV, like being overstimulated, like it's the worst thing to do before going to bed. And that's why people generally do have poor sleep. So having a setting yourself up to win before going to bed, it could even be writing your to -do list the next day. It could say, right, finish here, right, tomorrow I'm going to do these, these are my three things I'm going to do tomorrow.

People have sometimes have like this massive list of what they want to do. And it's just overwhelming because they're never going to complete it. Actually, what you want to do is build confidence. So you want to set yourself like two or three things that you're going to do, which you can kind of know you're going to do. You may after a while, you may, you might have a stretch target, but in general, you want to set up, you want to set yourself up to build that confidence. So you want to set three things, which you know, you can, you know, you know, you can do. And you say, and so you're trying to setting up your next day, the night before.

But then obviously when you do wake up in the morning, whatever that time that is, you know, you're not waking up and you're on your alarm and then you're, you know, you're having to, you know, you're rushing around, like you're dashing around doing that. That's again, super not the way to do it. It's about sort of saying, right, this is what I need to do tomorrow morning. So I'm going to like set my alarm an hour beforehand. And so when I do wake up,

And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to do like a little bit of gratitude and be grateful for, you know, really for, you know, for waking up or, you know, whatever that may be, you know, you can, you can, we can be grateful for anything from, you know, from breathing to living, having a roof over our head, anything like that. Touching into gratitude, you know, as quickly as possible, maybe reading some in something inspirational could be, you know, book, it could be, you know, could be an audio.

Could be a, you know, could be a meditation as well. So that first hour was quite gentle. You know, it's getting into the day because it was always say to people, you know, even if you work at home, but instantly, once you open your laptop, you turn on your phone, you check your notifications, you walk out your front door, you're reacting then, like life is then going to come at you. And there's going to be an email, which may be throw you off track or there's going to be a notification, which you don't like.

Or like maybe in talent acquisition, a candidate's pulled out for the interview or a candidate's rejected an offer, you know, like that. But, and if you're instantly starting your day seeing that, it's really, it's a really bad way. And I used to do that. And the first thing I used to do is check up my check, check my phone and see what's come through, see if there's any emails come through overnight or that type of thing. I had no real, but it was this training yourself to be, you know, to be high, high anxiety, high burnout.

Whereas actually, if you can put something in the night before and the morning before, then when you do open up, you're just setting yourself up to win. So when that thing does come in, you see it at a completely different level. You're not reacting to stuff. You don't think it's a bad thing because you think, you know, you've done the hard graft in the morning by lowering those brainwaves, being in a calm state. And so I think for me personally,

is to really have an evening routine and a morning routine, like at least an hour buffer. And before you, you know, a evening shutting down all electronic items and in the morning, not even looking at electronic items until, you know, you've gone through a set process. It could be an hour, could be even two hours if you include exercise as well. So when you do see stuff,

you're looking at it from a different perspective. Whereas if you're just waking up, instantly picking up your phone, looking to see what's come through. I mean, you're programming yourself because you're still awake subconsciously and you're just programming yourself to a bad day ultimately. Yeah. One interesting thing you mentioned was the alarm clock. So actually I haven't used the alarm clock for years. And of course, one of the things is that...

if you have a good sleep and waking up routine, you will... If you go to the bed at the same time, then you basically wake up the same time most of the times, unless you do something, I don't know, something exhaustive, run a marathon, for example, maybe then you sleep more. But what's the benefit of that is that I used to have this that maybe in a sleeping cycle the alarm clock would...

like basically start and then of course, you should probably have something mild, but I would have something too, too, too. And my heart would start beating super high, like because I would wake up at middle of like sleep and then my heart would be beating and that's not very good way to start the day. You wake up and your heart is like, your pulse is already up.

It's like you're shocking your system. And again, people think, that's a good thing. And I need that, you know, that real do, do, do, do, 

at all, or even again, or even for, you know, it's going to be pro. Ultimately, I always say, like, as humans, we're programmable by design. You know, that's just where nature of nature of you, you put yourself into any environment, it will it will adapt. Like if you, if you want to go and eat McDonald's every day, like your body doesn't care. It's gonna it's gonna adapt, you know, it's not going to adapt to what you want it to be, but it's going to adapt. It's like if you put it in the gym, it's going to adapt. But it's the same as

your mind, you know, you're programming every day through the content you watch, through the TV you consume, to anything you're doing. So you have to understand that, you know, if you're checking your phone before bed, picking up your phone in the morning, you know, even throughout the night you wake up and you check your phone, people done that, I've done that, so it's not, so you're just programming yourself to be in that state. And it's very easy to do.

When I personally like when I went obviously getting in this space, I get fascinated by it. And I always like testing things out. And back in 2022, I was going through, I was going to do it like a Navy SEALs Hell Week, which is a 50 hour Hell Week. So six months beforehand, I was doing a lot of training, like a lot of training. I was very regimented, you know, morning and sleep and exercise and breath work and

yoga exercise, all these types of things. I was putting a, I had a massive process in place for six months beforehand. Did the event, completed the event, did the 50 hours. Then I just wanted to see, because I was in the States, how... Obviously with the time difference. So what I was, when  I had finished that, I had a couple of days out before I came back to the UK. And that's what I did. I know I kind of was checking my phone before bed. I was picking up my phone at night time.

Because of the time, eight hour time difference and looking at stuff back here in the UK. I was looking at my phone in the morning and very quickly I fell into a habit. I remember getting back in the UK and I was back into that type of habit. So it just shows how quickly things fall away if you're not disciplined enough. So it's being able to really have a process in place because again, We're programming ourselves every day for how we want to be internally.

So you want to program yourself to an empowering perspective. What are some good strategies or tools that help you basically or would help somebody manage stress and prevent burnout? So again, looking at it, it would be, you know, having some sort of structure in place morning and evening. You know, that's really, that's going to be really powerful for, you know, for you to do that because you, you know, you want to be setting yourself up. So you are having the right, you know, you know,

good rest. You don't want interrupted sleep or what or checking your phone or anything like this or being on your laptop, you know, and at least an hour before bed. And then obviously in the morning when you wake up, you want that hour buffer personally, to be able to have a calmness. So when you wake up, like you know, you're not rushing, you're not suddenly dashing out of bed and you dashing in the shower and then grabbing some breakfast and running out because you're late. You want to have that calmer,

natural introduction to your day. They're having something in place where, you know, it's, you know, it's an hour beforehand, right? Breathwork, meditation, some reading, maybe implement just one or two of those strategies. And then throughout the day, it's being able to, you know, be monitor how you're operating, you know, are you reacting to things? Are you, you know, I do have loads of tabs open on your desktop. Are you flicking between things? Are you always checking your phone?

Monitor yourself because this is you programming yourself to be reactive, to burn out, to operate in a kind of a high stress, high anxiety, which ultimately leads to burnout because your brainwaves are operating at such a high level. So how can you lower that? Well, you lower it by having some breath. I say to people, just take some time out and monitor the breath. There's loads of different breath work, no regimes out there, but all you need to do is literally you can do this

sat at your desk, you don't have to do anything. And you just breathe in through the nose for five seconds. So your belly's slightly going in. And then you breathe out for five seconds through the nose. That's one. And you do that 10 times. And so it's just literally just.

It's not like, and there's loads of different breath work. And obviously you can't do, it's hard to do that in an office environment. And people will feel obviously self, you know, self aware or if they're doing that, but you can actually just sit and just literally at your desk and you just moving through the nerves for five out, that's one and do that 10 times. That's a really powerful way, just calming your nervous system down, which is really important, lowering cortisol

in the bloodstream, very important. And so that's a really important way. And then I always say, yeah, you know, take some time, especially at maybe at lunchtime, or when you have some time in your day with be at home or in office, it's just, literally sit and just close your eyes, and then just, just follow your breath, like concentrate or where your breath it could be. So it could, I like doing it on my nose, because you can feel the air coming in and out. And then usually I just like sit there

and I just put my attention on my nose and the air coming in and out. And I sit there for, yeah, you know, five, 10 minutes, eyes closed. Again, very powerful way, lowering the brainwaves, lowering, you know, calming the nervous system. Because this is really what prevents, this is what really causes burnout when your high brainwaves and your nervous system is just highly string, highly strung. So you're very reactive to things. And it's about how you can calm that.

And obviously the easiest way to do it is breath work really, and having some time out just to meditate, making sure you think this is one of the things, making sure you're drinking enough water, because that really flushes through the system. And again, most people don't drink enough, like maybe drink a lot of coffee, which is fine. But be careful not to drink sugary drinks. Are you powering yourself up on Red Bulls and fizzy drinks? Not really great.

Try to, you know, obviously coffee's fine. Some people will say, no, but I don't club coffee. So I would never say that. But water is very important as well. And I think what, you know, and again, a lot of it goes down to diet, like what are you eating? You know, are you eating, you know, fast sugars? Are you eating stuff which gives you that instant boost, but gives you that real high, but then that real low?

That plays an important part. So it's about monitoring what you eat as well. Are you eating kind of nutritious, healthy food? Because again, sometimes when we're at work, we're grabbing the easiest thing to eat. At dinner time, we're maybe just, you know, we obviously we live in an age now with things like Deliveroo and Uber Eats and these types of things that people getting, you know, fast food and,

because it's easy because if you've got work to do or you're feeling, you know, you're feeling like stress and you've got stuff to do that you're not, it's easier to open an app and order some food and that comes in, what, half an hour than maybe spending some time out and actually, you know, making a meal for yourself, which is again, can be very therapeutic, some people, you know, to do that. So everyone's different, but I'd monitor for sure like what your...

what you're eating and drinking on a daily basis because that will play an important part as well. I think one of the things that is super important is creating these good habits. So you're setting yourself for success, like you said, better morning habits, better evening habits. And also there is what can happen usually is like if there's more work or something, you would... So basically, we have like a circle of life. So there is...

essential things that are important. It's like our mental, our physical, our social life. So everything in a way is important. But usually, at least I have seen what starts to happen is like if you have more work or you're working more, you would start to take it away from other parts. And in the end that will start to basically affect everything. So it's in a way if you have these good habits, maintaining like a physical movement, you can exercise or you can just go for a walk.

Having social life and then so on. So if those things start to go away, then you will have also problems. But for example, if I would have a bigger problem, usually the unknown is the hard part. So for me, what works is if something bad happens in work, for example, I need to make a plan. So if I have a plan, it's fine. It's bad, but I have a plan, so I know what I'm going to try to basically...

overcome it. So making a plan is definitely important for me. And then also, I think you mentioned one of the things that you can do if you have a lot of things on the table, prioritization is super important. So for me also, if I have too much things on my plate, I will get anxiety, I get stressed. So what I would do, I would just move the, okay, I would take my to -do list and I would see, okay, what is important? Like...

Basically, there is a good book also, there is... The One Thing I think it was called. So it basically says like, what is one thing that you can do that will make everything else better or irrelevant? So you in a way try to understand what is important because you can't do everything like so. So definitely prioritization.

Yeah, I think it's always important to set yourself up to win. I think sometimes when people, what I noticed with people is they put so much on their plate that they can never achieve it. And ultimately through that, you start losing confidence. And even if you're the most confident person in the world, like we can, you know, you see it in sports teams, you see it with sports stars and stuff like that, you know, they quickly can lose confidence if things don't go the their way. Confidence is so important in so many things. And when you build that momentum,

then it's sometimes like a train, once it's once it's left the station, once it's moving in the right direction, as long as you don't stop it, then it obviously picks up speed, picks up speed. And as you see it with momentum with, again, with certain things or certain people or sports teams and stuff, once they get in a winning habit and then winning becomes a lot easier. And so that's what I say to people is that, you know, once you're once you kind of on that train and it's left the station, so you, you want to keep it moving. So if you do, you know, so...

If you, once you kind of have got your top priorities, you know, down, it could be one, it could be two, three, you know, then once you've, you're hitting them consistently and you're building confidence, you're going in the right direction, then you go, okay, then you may add another one, or you might have a like slightly stretch, but, and you're just building and building, where sometimes if people start with so much of a big list, it's never achievable.

And they're finishing the day thinking, I didn't do this thinking that they're thinking more of lack or more in disempowering or more negative because it didn't achieve what they wanted to achieve. And then they go to the next day and they're catching the tail and suddenly that, and that causes again, again, stress burnout that, you know, that, that cycle will definitely lead that way. So I think it's about starting small and building, building that momentum. So I think if you kind of used, not used to doing this, then yeah, just set yourself one or two key tasks to do and then,

as you continue to build upon those, then maybe start adding a little bit more, maybe start stretching yourself when you feel you can. And what I also tell people is, you know, have scenes, scenes in your day. So for example, if you get the train to work or you drive to work or you get the tube, whatever, obviously living in London, they've done that tube journey, you know, a lot. And sometimes that can be very stressful, especially if it's late and tubes don't turn up.

And then sometimes then we go into work and we're stressed because we had a bad journey into work and it kind of impacts the whole day a little bit. What I do say to people is have a scene. So for example, if you do, you know, what, you know, that journey, whatever happens on that journey, before you actually step into work, you take that sort of, it could be a couple of minutes just to like calm yourself, breathe. And so that's one, the journey to work is one scene. Then when you step into work, that's another scene. So you've

you've part... You've forgotten what the morning was you're not going in to work based on the fact of a bad journey to work, then you in work. And if things happen in work, things don't go to plan, you take some time out, and you come back to your desk, and you move on type stuff, you don't let it move too fast. And it's again, getting home in the evening, whether you drive, whether you get the train, whether you get to whatever like that. And if that's not a great journey, and then before you go into your house,

especially if you live on your own or if you have family or whatever, then that's another scene. So you don't take your day into home with you. And then again, if you do have to work at home, for example, and you go to your office or whatever that looks like, and then once you then reconnect with your family again, that's another scene. So before you leave your office or before you shut your thing down for the evening, whatever's happened in that,

you know, that time, you're not taking it into interaction, you know, with your, with your loved one. So it's about having these scenes and everyone, each scene is finishing before you start the next one. So I've been now working remote for a while and then, and every now and then I have to go somewhere and then there is traffic and you're being late. I will have a like this high anxiety. So...

Basically, if you're going every day to the office and then you have a, let's say a meeting and then there is like traffic or whatever and you're stuck and that can affect that. But maybe one other thing I would like to also go over is basically, so I've been going to therapy for a while now, a year or so or something like that. And then something I have learned is that basically stress has to go somewhere. So, and, and...

You in a way don't want the stress to go to your family. Meaning it doesn't have to go to your children, to your wife, to your partner, or let's say you're a manager, so your employees or subordinates. You don't want the stress to go there. In a way, basically one is that you can of course regulate stress, like you mentioned meditation. What I have also done is sometimes if the anxiety or stress is high, then I would just go into my bed,

put like there is this app called Headspace and like I just put the track like 15 minutes on, eyes closed, listen and breathe and whatever they tell you to do. And then it's like magic, it's gone. Basically you basically get your cortisol low and done, like you said, your nervous system. So that can work well, but also like you have to have this like social system like... In the therapy.

The theory is that your stress should go to your parents. But I think a lot of people don't have close relationships with their parents. And at some point, of course, they will be gone. So the next step probably can be that maybe you have some very good close... It can be maybe your partner, your wife or your husband. Or you have some very good friends where you can basically go and ventilate and get the stress off.

And the next next step can be that you have a professional like a therapist or somebody. So a place where you basically can unload the stress because otherwise it can like over the years or over the time it can get super big. I... very interesting thing. I met one person quite recently who was able to basically usually like people when they burn out.

They recover in six months or one year or something like that. But he was able to basically be in the high stress environment for like 20 years. And then eventually he burned out. And then I asked, have you recovered? He said, no. And it has been like over three years. So if you basically prolong it for a very long time, some people can maintain it for a super long time. But then the recovery will be super long.

Yeah, because in a lot of ways, you're burning out your adrenal system. And this is where people obviously, as you mentioned, can't have a difficulty feeling certain things or feel quite numb inside. Or if you say, introduce gratitude practice to them and they say, I can't feel grateful all the time. Because again, they've programmed themselves to be a certain way. And it's very difficult to change that. Ultimately, you've burnt out your adrenal system and it's going to take a little bit of time for that to readjust really.

And so it is really important to have these things in place because it impacts, as you say, it impacts you and the future of how your life is going to take. But also it does impact people around you as well. Sometimes you don't have that benefit, you know, that knowledge really. And sometimes you get to a certain stage where your relationships aren't very good or you don't have great friendships and you suddenly look like, why is this the case or why is this happening? And a lot of it,

when we have to understand is that a lot of it's all ours, we have to take 100% responsibility for our lives. So if we don't have the life we want, it's really down to ourselves really. And that can be a challenging thing because mostly in society, we're programmed another way that, you know, it's this or it's that, or it's, you know, all people, you know, naturally empathize with certain things, which can be very good and having that

compassion, but sometimes we do need someone to say: "Hang on a minute, you're causing this by the way you're acting on your thoughts, your thinking and the way you're being." And some people don't, you know, it's very hard for people sometimes to have that honesty. And so I think it's, it can be difficult if you're relying on a partner or your parents, because they'll look at it from their lens a little bit. I think the biggest change I ever had was when I worked with someone who was completely neutral.

Like didn't know anything about me, had no, no, there was no connection because they're not coming with any prehistory. And I think that can be the challenge with certain things is if you're relying on like a parent who have known you for a certain period of time, they might say, they might just say certain things, I'll get over it or do this or don't worry about that. Or they'll have so much self empathy and compassion because they love you so much, which is great. But they're not then going to push you to change.

They're going to kind of let you run out this habit because they maybe don't have that strong to say, you know, this is happening because of this, this and this. And a partner sometimes, yeah, it's difficult really, because obviously, you know, you want them to be your partner, not sort of be your therapist, right? So I think it can be difficult if, you know, it's great having a support network and friends and stuff like that, but...

I think sometimes personally anyway, the biggest change I had is when there was someone who was completely neutral, had no history around, around yourself, because I think friends are the same. I mean, I'm sure, I mean, every, every, every, every group of friends is different. It's great to chat to people, but I know growing up and the friends I have, you know, they wouldn't have had the tool set or the knowledge really, they would, it would be...

I grew up in a time like, I guess the 80s type stuff, there's stiff upper lip, get on with it, whatever, you know, man up, whatever. And so they wouldn't have had really the tool set to be able to cope with certain situations. And, and, or you'd be like, drink, drink through it, right? No, drink more alcohol and have a laugh and go partying or do this. That's kind of the thing, what it was, it was like, let's go clubbing or let's do that. Which is, which is good at a certain point in time, but,

at a certain time, that's only going to lead you down another slippery slope. So I think it's being aware in certain situations really, that actually getting some external help, someone who's completely neutral to the whole situation and to your life can be very beneficial. I have a funny, I don't know if it's funny, but how I see alcohol or at some point like so.

I think from 25 or so. I used to also do this, that weekend comes, you go party and do stuff like, so basically this is one of the ways to cope with life. But at some point for me, it felt like escaping the reality. So I go party, I get drunk and then for a while, for some time I can be somebody else or be somewhere else. And...

And I have heard some other people saying about it. It's in a way like escaping the reality. And of course, every now and then I do take a drink and then have some fun, but, but not like in a weekly basis. So in certain instances and all that type of stuff, it's completely fine to do. I mean, I personally don't, I don't drink anymore, but that is just a personal choice. And it's just down to the fact that I really enjoy exercise and really enjoy...

feeling good. And obviously, when you know, naturally, when you sort of, you know, drink, you know, you don't feel as good. But yes, I think, you know, there's nothing wrong with it. But ultimately, if you are having real, you know, how having difficulties and escapism is...

alcohol, then he has to say it helps in the moment, maybe helps in that evening. Obviously, the next day is terrible, and it just feel worse. And even even then, you know, you probably even feel even worse than you did even before. Because obviously, you're a bit of a hangover, or you're massively dehydrated, or you just feel awful, can't leave the house, can't leave my sofa, whatever. And it's a little because you're not actually changing anything, like you're not changing anything internally. And it's the same with...

It's same a little bit with things like antidepressants and stuff like that. They help in the moment. They help to stop you having a little easy access to negative thoughts. But the challenge is with it, is it's not changing anything. It's actually fundamentally not changing anything. You're just putting like a plaster on it and it's helping because you're not having these easy access. But the challenge then, and I've seen it so many times with people,

is that then they spend like 15, 20 years on antidepressants and they get to the strongest ones and they don't work anymore because... And then the very difficult thing, get off those because I've never actually changed anything in reality. They've just, it's just, it just helped in that moment. So you always, I always say, if you're reliant on anything outside of yourself to help yourself, you're always at a disadvantage. Yeah. One thing I want to add on top of that, like,

getting the stress off. So sometimes you need somebody just to listen. You understand what you're going through, so you need empathy and then so on but if you you basically want to make a change and then there is something that is basically causing all the things that you have in your life and usually there's like you should you you take a pill or whatever it basically cures the symptoms, but it doesn't cure what what is basically making it

happen. So, so definitely going to a professional, it can be coach, it can be a therapist, it can be whatever, like maybe there's some other ways. So somebody professional who has the tools and who can help you figure out what is causing those behaviors that you have. Yeah, it is important because I think, you know, listening is such a, it's such a great skill to have and not people don't have it. People like listen to respond and you see it a lot, you know, people, you know, if you say something, people will...

are instantly thinking in their head, like, how can I respond to this? How does this...? How does my experience...? What could I offer this conversation? So they're already thinking in their head, they're not presently listening to someone, they're thinking, what is my, what's my next question or what's my answer or what have I done, which can say, can I come back on? So someone could say,

yeah, I've just done this ultra marathon, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you can say, I did the ultra marathon, blah, blah, blah. So you're instantly responding because you had experience doing something similar. Whereas you're actually not really listening to that person. You're listening to respond. And a lot of people don't have that skill. It is actually a very rare, someone who actually can listen and actually is present with you is a very, is a very unique skill and not a lot of people have it at all. And so, and you really do need that someone who is actually just gonna...

listen to you, but not listening then adding their layer onto the response. And that's what most people do. If you, you know, if you speak to a certain person, you know, a good bit of loved one who are close to you, they're listening to respond or they're listening to give you advice. And sometimes you know, that's not what you need. All you need is someone just to, to listen because sometimes the most powerful thing is you're listening because when someone speaks,

and speaks openly, vulnerably, they sometimes have their own realizations, their own cognitions, when they're actually speaking to someone. And that's really powerful. Sometimes they speak enough and no one really says anything back, but they're speaking and speaking. And then suddenly they have this real cognition to think, because they've got it out of their head and they're speaking to someone who's just being present and listening. It's a very powerful thing. There is, again, some people will...

say something and then they'll want, then they'll respond and you have this sort of more two -way dialogue. And it can be very beneficial, but sometimes actually being with someone who's just listening, you can sometimes come to your own realizations and cognitions that way. Yeah, definitely. Listening is hard. I'm trying to learn it also because there is this intention to give advice and then solve

people's problem actually they don't want or need to solving, they they need listening, so... what are the essential steps to recover from burnout? So if somebody wasn't able to prevent it and they're in the spot that they actually are burned out. So yeah, so what I do say to people in these situations is, yeah, as you kind of mentioned a little bit earlier, like a lot of it is because you're, you know, you're, you're operating at such a high 

level, your brainwaves are such a high beta level. So you can't creatively think so you need to start lowering your brainwaves, you need to start calming your nervous system. So again, I use the car analogy, because we all know that if you sit in the car and you just press and accelerate and you're revving the engine, then then it's a high stress on the engine. And it's the same as your body, like you've just you've just

you put it to a certain extent, but when you're living or lived in that state for such a long period of time, yeah, you've ultimately burnt out your, you know, burnt out your adrenals. So how can you start to, you know, to change that? Well, again, it's a lot around is to the, like a gratitude type practice is very, you know, is very key. How can you start calming your nervous system, get out of that fight or flight response?

And so, yeah, so breathing exercises, I think really important, which I've spoken about, you know, that's sort of, you know, five seconds in, five seconds out, all through the nose. Do that 10 times, again, lowering your brainwaves, lowering, you know, calming your nervous system. I think having some positive self -talk, I think is very key. This is one of the problems I see with people is that they're actually, the way they speak to themselves or their internal dialogue is so negative, is so disempowering.

how can they stop that? So I say to people like, have some strong I am statements, because I am is a very powerful statement. So it could be, you know, "I am confident", or "I am the best", or "I am powerful", or "I am content", or "I am peaceful", "I am blissful", "I am joyful", all these types of things, whatever it is for you. But having these kind of I am statements along with the breath work is very good.

Meditation, yeah, you know, that's another key thing is to be able to have that silence, you know, there's apps out there, as you say, Headspace, one, Calms, another one. Obviously, we're in YouTube, but sometimes, actually, you don't need any of that, you know, you're sometimes actually is what I mentioned, if you just sit and focus, you can focus on somewhere in the body, sometimes you can, I always like focus on my nose at the end of the tip. So because obviously, when the breath, when the air comes in, it's, you know, you have that.

sort of cool sensation and out is a warmer sensation. And so you just focus there. Sometimes you could be focusing on your belly because it moves in and out. You have to set a focus of what it is. And it's come, it can be, you know, obviously naturally challenging, but they set that focus. And even if you just like, yeah, and just focus on your breath and just close your eyes and breathing, you can do that for like 20, if you can do that for like 20 minutes, that's quite a hard thing to do at the beginning. But if you just like five or 10 minutes, you know, two times a day, that's really powerful.

Getting out in nature, I think is important. Of course, you live in the city, then maybe a park, but getting amongst nature is very important. Looking, I always say to people, look above that, your, your eyeline. Cause sometimes people, especially if they, you know, are feeling down about themselves, then they may just to generally look down, you know, we, we, we're more gravitational.

Whereas I always say to people to look up, you know, look at the buildings or look at the trees and look upwards. That's a very, that really helps. And then journaling, you know, being able to just journal your feelings, journal your thoughts. And you want to feel, though, I always say to people, you want to feel your feelings. You want to acknowledge your feelings, but you don't want to accept them. But you want to acknowledge them. Don't want to suppress them. You don't want to feel wrong for feeling a certain way because it's ...

You want to feel those feelings and you want to acknowledge those, but you don't want to accept them. So it's about deconstructing that whole older narrative of living in a fearful type state. Because what we do have to understand, what I do say to my clients is that we do have a two million old brain. We're wired for fear, we're wired for survival because that's what we grew up from our ancestors. If we...

You know, we lived in an age of saber -toothed tigers and dinosaurs and stuff like that. So we could be eaten. So we were always constantly, the brain was already, and the amygdala was always constantly, you know, scanning for things that could go wrong. Obviously we don't live in that era now, but what is the threat? Well, the threat is, you know, is generally, it could be a credit card bill. It could be a bank balance. It could be, yeah, an overwhelm with work, you know.

Requirements to fill, people to find. And so we're instantly, you know, we're fearful of what could happen. We're actually not being in the present thinking creatively of how we can deal with that particular thing at the time. So those are the kind of the key things to look for. So I'd always say to people, there's actually three basic things you need to do to have a positive life. It's how well you eat.

So what you eat and what you put into your body is so important. How well you breathe, which I've discussed today, but how often you laugh, which people generally forget about. They don't do it often enough. Like, you know, you want to, I always say to people, introduce laughter into your day. You know, you could be watching something on YouTube, you could be watching some standup on TV. Sometimes it's just laughing. You know, sometimes I do it at that McClarence of the day. I was...

You know, I just told him about laughing and I literally just started like laughing out loud and it's contagious. They just started laughing. We had nothing to laugh about, but it was just contagious. And that's the real thing. Again, it just gets you into the present and you just know, releases those positive chemicals, energies. You know, there's a powerful book out there. I can't remember what it's called now, but it was a guy and he was diagnosed with stage four cancer.

So he didn't really have long to live. And so what he said is he's just going to laugh his way to, you know, to the end game really. And did it, introduced laughter, laughter, laughter, laughter. And he ended up being in remission because he changed the body state, like a lot of the body state, you know, internally is quite acidic. And a lot of people have quite a lot of acidity

in their body, whereas you actually can get it to more of an alkaline state neutrality, no disease can grow there. So it's important. So they're eating, breathing, laughing are three things that are actually very basic. If you actually introduce those into your day, make a massive difference. It's super common, I think, to take some time off, if it's possible. Of course, yeah, that's kind of obviously...

Yeah, kind of mandatory really. I mean, I think, I think, I mean, I don't know, obviously as much now, but obviously I, my previous work was at Meta. So, but I think in general businesses now, you know, they, you know, they have a lot in place, you know, where it won the times off or, you know, certain days which you can take off or mental health type days. There's a lot in there. There's a lot now around what, which companies offer. So definitely always look to maximize those and have those, those times out.

And, and look, we know that sometimes in days are going to be busier than others, or sometimes we may have to work a weekend or we may have to do a Saturday or we may have to do a Sunday. That's the nature of, you know, it's where sometimes life can be, but it's not getting into a habit or pattern that that becomes consistent. Or if you do say, right, I'm going to, you know, it depends if you work for yourself or, or you work for an employer, but if you do work.

Or have to work on a Sunday to catch up on certain things, that's fine. But then just set, if it's then take the Monday off, if you can do that, if you can't do that, then just be very regimented, say, right, two hours today, like I used to do it in the evenings on a Sunday when you say, well, I'm gonna block out six till eight and I'm gonna work and do what I need to do, but that's my cutoff, eight o 'clock, finish, and you know, that's it, I'm done.

I'm not going to suddenly spend, it's nine o 'clock. no, it's 10 o 'clock. No, it'd be very regimented with what you do. Because yeah, we all know life happened and sometimes the best plans don't always work out. And it's being flexible as well, you know, as well to that. Yeah. So what I wanted to mention about this, like, of course, if you can take more time off, it's in a way easier, but sometimes for whatever reason, maybe you can't.

So even if you can take maybe a month or a few weeks off, that can help to maybe get some stress lower. So you need to lower your stress. And then I think it's building the habits that help you and then maintaining those habits. For me, definitely exercise is one of the things. So I very often, when I'm in a  -

bad spot I started to do like these marathons and stuff like that. Because there is this effect that of course it's yeah, it of course the health gets better, you get more energy, but also you're in a way like getting to that point that you're starting to increase your like mental fatigue. So in the beginning, of course you have to start low and going step by step, you can't go

super big after you have burned out but slowly like building those habits, building those and maintaining those habits actually in like six months can have a like quite big effect. I can give my own example actually last year I had a super hard year and I was I think very close to burnout or I already  was burnt out so in December I almost have... took the whole December off.

And then I started to slowly like, because I couldn't even exercise anymore. I would get sick and then I couldn't anymore push hard. But now basically it's May. And then last Saturday, I ran 21 kilometers, like half marathon. So I'm training for the Ironman. Awesome. That's great. So like five months ago, I was like...

I can't do anything. I'm so exhausted, but then I took some time off and I started to build my habits again and getting my health back and getting my energy back and then slowly building. Just doing a little bit more every week and then now I'm in a quite good spot again. I have these small wins that you can achieve so you can build your confidence and in the long -term you can actually achieve a lot.

Yeah, exactly. And it's very important. It's very interesting what you say there because yeah, I think it's about, obviously, the confidence is very important. And that's why you want to set yourself, I always say to say you want to set yourself up to win and everyone's win is different. So if you're seeing someone doing X, Y and Z, like for example, like running a marathon, you can't even do 5k, then they're at a different level of their journey. Everyone's different and everyone's doing different things. And it's not about comparing or, you know, someone else in their journey, because you don't really know what they're doing behind the scenes.

Those are some of the signs if you do like to exercise, but you're struggling to get out of bed or you're having low energy, then there's something there. You know, that's what I would call feedback. You know, we live in a human body, we have a human body, which is giving us feedback all the time, but most people ignore it. And that's the thing. Then you obviously, you get these different warnings throughout the day.

throughout that process and then eventually you'll get to a stage where, you know, it's a hospitalization type situation because you've got to a certain point, but you've missed the warning signs. It doesn't really go from here to here. You've just missed all the warning signs you've been given. And so, and this is saying, if you get into a point where you'd enjoyed exercise, but then suddenly you can't do this, you can't do this, can't do this, can't do this, and then eventually you can't do anything. Yeah, you've ultimately, you know, that's the burnout side because you've just, as you say, you've...

operate at such a level, your systems just burn out, you burn out the adrenals. And it's very difficult because you lack motivation, you lack, you lack energy, we're energy beings, humans, we're just energy beings. And so, and that's super important. But there's warning, there's warning signs before it gets to that stage. But sometimes you just miss them, or you just ignore them. It's like what I say to some people, I use the analogy, like, if you're driving down the freeway of life or the motorway,

you have these things called the rumble strips down the side. So you don't veer off to, you know, down the verge or anything like that. So when we hit those rumble strips, we quickly turn back. And it's there because of that, you know, for us to do that. But we go down the freeway of life, we hit a rumble strip. It could be a mild heart attack, it could be a loss of a relationship, it could be a loss of a job, it could be all these different things. And what do we do? We just, we're either

a drink of alcohol, we'll continue to eat the food, we'll just ignore it, we'll turn up the music and we'll just keep going down that path and eventually you'll get another warning sign, another warning sign and suddenly bang, your body will give up and say no, enough's enough. But you've missed the warning signs, that's all. So it's about catching those warning signs earlier. So that's it for the episode 11 of the Relancer Podcast. If you like this episode, feel free to subscribe and share it. Thank you for tuning in and...

Hope to see you next time.