I interviewed a real Burnout Hero for my episode number 13. If you want to know who deserves this title I can give you some clues. He has a lot of work experience and he (this hero is a he-ro not a she-ro) climbed the ladder of success becoming a manager with many responsibilities and a high amount of stress. Hopping from job to job to find the ideal place to work, he found himself successful, wealthy but stressed, lonely and depressed with a life that lacked meaning. So he embraced his depression and touched the bottom to be able to climb out of it. From his ashes he transformed into what he calls a CEO (Chief Empathy Officer) and started using his own strategies to adapt himself to the professional world. He has found peace with his Professional Me (PM) and now he helps others to achieve the same because many of us won’t be free of it in a short term.
So have you ever thought why do you jump from one job to another just to find out after a few months that you (again) feel unhappy? What is it that fails every time? Is it your colleagues or your boss or what you do for a living?
I learn always so much from my guests and BH remembered me how important it is to think about the environment at work. How difficult it can be to find meaning in what we do and value the (mostly) superficial relations we have with people at work. His strategies to visualize work as a Shakespeare play are hilarious but very powerful and I am convinced they work. Because we and our colleagues don’t have a friendship with each other but we share -supposedly- a common goal or goals. So we dress up every day a we play a play and hope we become who we play but BH discovered that we should better identify us as “actors”. This is because we can’t be completely ourselves at work.
So if someone tells you he or she lost his/her job, you say: Well…congratulations! What about that? Because everytime we lose a job we get an opportunity from life to look for a better one to earn money having more fun and fulfillment. It is a new start to create who we want to be. It won’t be easy but please don’t get stressed about it! That is all the opposite I want you to do and this won’t help you in any way to find a new job or to start your own business. The best place to start is by being honest with yourself about what you really love to do that can give you financial solvency. It is possible that this won’t give you as much as your old job and this is the first bad guy a BH has to defeat. This villain is called Status and it feeds the ego so much that without Status the ego almost disappears and this is scary for anyone even for the bravest BH.
Do you have a professional title that took you years to hang it on the wall and now you would like to do something completely different? Did you say: “Yoga teacher?” Did you say: “Podcaster”? Why not? Does your spouse thinks you are out of your mind? Finding ourselves implies often big changes in life. Just embrace them. Make a list of those things that make you happy and those that make you happy because they give you status and it can be anything from your Tesla car to your title. Train to see yourself without them and you will find out more about who you really are and what matters to you. From there, it is easier to start anything in life.
Then think about the kind of persons you can connect with… Are they a bunch of introverts? Or are they outgoing and talkative? Do you feel like a fish in the water surrounded by formalities and protocols? Or do you prefer to be alone? When you see yourself getting along with them do you feel good about it or do you think you have to be someone else? If you were an actor what kind of play would you like to play? I guess many people will try to play the role that is more like they are but remember that chances are big that it will be never be completely you. Start creating your Professional Me with integrity and when you think it has become someone completely different from you then you have to take it back and scrutinize it. It can’t never betray your values. Good luck!