Feeling stuck, drained, or like you're just going through the motions? Burnout can sneak up on anyone especially when your work no longer aligns with your purpose. This episode breaks down the real causes of burnout, how to recognize it, and why it often signals personal growth rather than failure.
You'll hear relatable examples of burnout in everyday life, why pushing through isn’t always the answer, and how to reset by making intentional career or life adjustments. Whether you're hitting a wall or just curious about staying aligned with your goals, this quick episode offers insight and clarity.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:01 - What Causes Burnout
00:44 - Symptoms of Burnout
01:43 - Common Scenarios
03:00 - Emotional Impact
04:20 - Why Career Breakthroughs Help
06:22 - Ignoring Burnout Makes It Worse
07:50 - You Change, Your Job Might Not
09:14 - Solutions & Adjustments
10:51 - Growth Is Natural
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] All right. So I've got a lot of good questions from questions at chalmers wellness.com. One of them was about burnout and what to do, uh, and how to deal with it. The, the big thing that I'll just, yeah, easy answer on that one. Uh, the top three things I would do for burnout would be, um, a career breakthrough, like an NLP career breakthrough. Uh, you can, you stretch that with NLP. Uh, and the third one would be probably psychotherapy or counseling. I'm sitting and talking about it. The thing is, is that you're probably not gonna find the answer to your burnout questions, sitting and thinking about it by yourself. You're gonna want somebody to kind of help or walk you through the process. Most of the time, what we're seeing is that when you're facing burnout, the thing is that you've been either grinding against your purpose or you promised yourself you'd do something for a little while and that little while has gone on for a long, long time. For those of you who aren't familiar with the term burnout, I assume most people are, but basically what we're looking at when we're talking about burnout is where you feel like you're waking up every day doing the same thing, spinning your wheels, you're not making progress in your life, you're getting where you're supposed to go. And basically you have this not really sense of dread, but just this sense of what am I doing? Am I going anywhere? Like, what is this leading to? A lot of people refer to this as midlife crisis, the stereotypical guy wakes up one day, he goes by as a Corvette and decides that. You know, that's what that that's how life is going to be.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:43] The, the big thing about what we're, what we've seen with us a lot is the lack of direction, the lack of function. So what ends up happening is you've been working in a job to say sales. This happens a lot with sales. It happens a lot with, uh, people who are in, you know, management where they've been doing the same thing every day all day, uh and you know most of the time this fits in the category of, you know they're making ends meet, you know, they're clicking along. They're collecting, you know, enough to survive and maybe save a little bit. Maybe even invest a little bit, but it's the same thing every single day and people just don't feel like there's purpose or there's reason or there's, um, but they're not, they just feel like they're like going anywhere. Like, is this what life is? Is this what I'm doing for the rest of my life? There's no, nothing new, nothing exciting, nothing challenging them. Nothing growing. It's just kind of, in a lot of certain senses, been become boring. Um, or they don't see the purpose and the drive and the reason that you keep going along with what they're doing, they're not trying to kill themselves or just like, what am I doing? There's wake up one day and like, is this, is this the rest of my life? Um, this happens a lot with a, with a lot of people, especially if they have something pushing back against it.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:59] So for instance, they have kids and they're like, you know, I'm working so I can feed my kids and put my kids in school and blah, blah, but you know, they don't feel it. They don't personally fulfilled and personally validated that what they're doing is worth doing anything. This is a serious issue. It happens with lots and lots of people. It leads to a pretty significant depression because if you wake up every day and you have to wonder why it is you do what you do and then you start to kind of, usually what happens is you start a question what you're doing. Then you start to think of all the things you don't like about what you're doing. Uh, and then you started hating what you were doing and then you feel like you're trapped in a prison and you don't know what to do about it. Um, lots of people don't start asking questions till they get closer to this trapped in prison piece, but it's a really important thing to kind of sit down and kind of go through and kind of figure out where am I going? What am I doing? Um, you know, and that's one of those things where sitting down and actually going through and figuring out what it is about your life that you're missing. And that the quality, you know, the, the values, the struggles, the things that you are actually purpose driven to bid to do. So that's where the career breakthroughs are so good because it usually takes, you know career breakthrough is really, really condensed. You're looking at, you know, a couple, like usually a two call beforehand. So two hours beforehand, then a two day intensive, usually five, six hours, you know, between four and six hours each day to get everything else all done. Uh, and at the end of it, you have a much better idea of who you are and where you're trying to go.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:37] And the problem with that is I will tell you is that once you figure out where you, where you want to go and who you are, and the things that drive you might be one of those things where you're like, I'm not going to do what I do anymore. I'm going to go find something else to do, or I'm gonna, I'm a pivot. I'm to take my career, my path in a different direction. But the thing is, is that the reason that's a great thing to do while it's going to shake up what you're doing, uh, that might be what you need. Um, a lot of times when we start having burnout, it's cause our body's like, look, you know, you've done this, it'S time to move on. You've grown as a person or, you know, You've done enough to figure out this isn't who you are and this isn't where you want to go. So it's an important thing to evaluate that system and try to figure out, you, know, is this where I need to be? Do I need do something different? Because most of the time you do so, or you do the same thing in a different way or you sit down and you realize, you know, I am actually really good at this. I enjoy it. We need to do more or do it in a different way. So it's a great thing to kind of end up breaking through. Uh, a lot of people are like, you know, Hey, I'm feeling burnt out. I feel like, this isn't what I want to do anymore. You know, how do I, how do I not feel that way? Well, if you've been working on that for a long time, Usually it's not that what you're doing, your daily function, which you do on a regular basis, it's not that that thing isn't. It's that it's not working for you anymore. And the problem is, is that you can, you know, sit down and think of things and you can pray about things and you could do stuff and you can get yourself remotivated to do the same thing you're doing. And that'll work a couple of times, you know, usually two or three. And then you get to the point where it's just worse.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:22] So when you kick that can down the road, you're like, Hey, I'm not going to evaluate myself. I'm going to value it. My situation. I'm just going to read a book and re motivate myself to do the same things my body's my mind's telling me. That I'm done with, or I need to change the, it ends up coming back and hitting you twice as hard the next time. And then twice so hard again, the third time. So what I would highly recommend is that you sit down and you actually break down and kind of go through what's going on, not break down yourself, but break down kind of what's. Uh, and try to figure out where it is that you're wanting to go. A lot of times you have what's, you know, in the NLP world, we call it values levels shift. So The things that interest you, the things that are important to you, um, evolve and they become, you know, some things you've got, okay, this is more important to me. So this value comes up. Usually that's a family thing. That's a, that's personal thing. Anyway, these things come up and the things I used to care about a lot come down. So for instance, you know, one of the things that, you know, easy call for me was, yeah, I used to want, you know, the Bentleys and the cars and stuff like that. And then after I had kids, it was one of those things where, you Thinking about the, the toys and the cars and the stuff like that. I was thinking about, you know, what I would do for my kids and like, you know, instead of saving up for cars and you know trips and stuff like that, it was college and those types of things. I was, I was happier thinking about providing for my kids than I was for providing myself with a new vehicle.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:50] So those types shifts happen. And the idea that your career, your job, or what you do on a daily basis stays static while you start to change your values and your priorities and the things that are important to you. That's where a lot of this rub comes from. Uh, and so what ends up happening is that you've already started to change yourself just because life changes you. And the thing is, is that your daily function is static. So it doesn't change how, but however you've changed. So you're now a square peg that used to fit in the round hole, but not anymore, and that's where all of this stuff comes from, so sitting down and going through it and kind of figuring out, okay, who am I now? What is important to me now? Where do I know what fulfills me now. And either figuring out how your job with little tweaks can now fulfill you and your goals and your mindset and are the things that you've now evolved into or figuring out this is a great job for me five years ago, but it's not gonna be a good job for two, three, five years from now. You can start to kind of come up with ways of altering where you're going, altering what you're doing, maybe in the same, you know, venue. So you go from being a salesperson to being a manager or a manager to a sales person. Or you go and you start teaching people how to do it, which is similar to management, but not really. You know, those are the types of things that you can start to figure out, okay, this is where I wanna go and this is what I wanna do from here.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:14] So, I will tell you that if you ignore the burnout thing, it'll start to become a major, major issue. I've worked with people a lot who are just done and they get to the point where they're just like, you know, the quiet quitting thing. Where they just give less and less and less effort until things just completely fall apart. That's a part that's oftentimes not always, but oftentimes a product of burnout. So before everything falls apart, I would spend some time. If you're feeling that way, if you're feeling like you don't, you're not motivated to do the things you used to do. You don't care as much about the job. You feel like the job no longer fits who you are. Um, or you're just wondering why the hell are you waking up and doing the same thing every day? I would start getting with somebody. I mean, like, look before everything falls apart. I need to figure out what's going on. Uh, that's why I like the breakthrough thing. Cause it's, it's the fastest way of doing it. You can sit down and kind of get to the end of it. And, you know, I think all said and done, you know, the way that we do it, you're looking at. You know, you could get kind of a lot of that stuff dealt with in a month and kind of figure out, you know, Hey, here, here are the core values that drive me. Now here's how they apply to my life. Here's how I apply to the job. Here's all I apply too. All my, my family, my function, the whole deal and see if they're still in alignment. And if you're not start trying to figure out a way to bring your career function into alignment with who you now are, who you've grown into, um, and this shouldn't be surprising to you, to anyone. That people get burnt out because one of the major things that you will do, hopefully, is you will grow and you will change.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:10:51] You will become, you know, you know as you start seeing different things, if you have children, I don't know how you don't grow and change as an individual because your children, as they grow, you have to adapt to then provide the care they require. So when they're babies and they're just kind of doing this super easy, just make sure that they're warm and they are fed. You're usually good. As they start having a personality, start asking questions, You have to kind of change who you are to one, be more patient and kind of deal with them. And as you start changing to deal with that, everything in your life is going to start look, you're going to start looking at everything with a different viewpoint. And as start doing that, you gonna start recognizing that maybe the career that was great for you before you had kids or when you were 20 or whatever doesn't suit you now or doesn't, doesn't fulfill you now. Uh, and as soon as you started recognizing that, that's when you I'm gonna start. Looking at it, not once you get to the point where you're like, I don't care about this anymore. Because once you hit the point, where you don't care about it anymore, you're, youre in a position where things can start going sideways pretty quickly. Uh, but regardless, I would get that stuff knocked out as soon as you can to figure out what it is about this feeling, this burnout, this, I don' want to do this anymore, I don't need, I didn't want to go any, you know, to this job, to this thing. I don't want this, this career part of my life anymore.
Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:12:08] So as you start feeling that way, I would immediately start trying to figure out what is exactly. That you're trying to figure out how to, you know, how are you now the square peg in the round hole? Um, that'd be the thing I would, I would start leaning into real heavy and try to figure that out. Uh, the reason I like the NLP thing is because you get to interact directly with the subconscious and you get, to find things out that you might not have been on the surface thinking of, uh, I just feel like it's substantially faster and more efficient than sitting down and going through standard talk therapy. Where you go through and find things that bother you in your life and you dwell on them forever. Like, you know, you can spend six, seven sessions doing something you could figure out in five or 10 minutes with NLP. Uh, so I would 100% recommend that you do one of those three things, either the NLP, uh, career breakthrough or the, you know, the longer, like, you know, twice a month, take an NLP thing, or just go ahead and take the long route and do the, uh. Do the psychotherapy and sit down and just talk about You know, your past and all the things that bother you and see if you can hopefully find a way out, but those are the things I would get on. Like once you start feeling the burnout, you can shake it off once or twice, but it's not going to last if it's real burnout. So I would try to figure out, you know, who you are, where you're going and how to break through it. That would be the, uh, the number one thing I'd recommend for you guys. Uh, I get this question a decent amount, but I want to make sure that we went through it, you guys have any questions to this up questions at chalmerswellness.com or drop them in the, in the comments. Thanks for your time.
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Dr. Matt Chalmers
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