Addicted to Stress? Recognize, Recover, and Reclaim Your Life

Starting the conversation:

The “grind” is glamorized, yet there is more life, joy, and achievement waiting for you on the other side of burnout. Scott Anderson, Burnout Breakthrough by Doubledare Coaching, shares about why self-care isn’t enough and can worsen burnout — and that internal mindset reset is the real burnout gamechanger.

Challenging internal beliefs, especially limiting ones, is scary and difficult. Just asking “What else is possible?” offers you a moment. Just a moment is all you need to lean into those core values and intentionally choose how to show up right now. There is a science-backed fix you can learn to change the trajectory of your life.

In this episode, you will learn that burnout is a stress disorder; how to shift thinking away from zero sum game thinking and prioritize hypervigilance and awareness; and that the human body is built to have stress (which has a beginning, middle, and end). Jess Dewell talks with Scott Anderson, Burnout Breakthrough by Doubledare Coaching, about recognizing burnout as an addition to stress that you can change.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: Scott Anderson

What You Will Hear:

03:15 Burnout is different from stress and has its own symptoms and solutions.

• Burnout isn’t simply stress or depression; it has unique symptoms and recovery methods.
• Entrepreneurs are great problem solvers with external issues but struggle with internal emotional challenges.
• Trying to force burnout away, like not thinking about “pink elephants,” actually worsens it.

11:20 High achievers’ superpowers turn to kryptonite with burnout.

• Hypervigilance, perfectionism, and taking on too much are rewarded early but become unsustainable.
• Overuse of these traits leads to personal and professional consequences — strained relationships, declining health.
• Breakthroughs after burnout allow for greater fulfillment and capability, not just survival.

24:00 Recovery from burnout can happen surprisingly quickly with the right approach.

• Rather than long breaks, five-second “mini vacations” multiple times a day help interrupt stress cycles.
• Recognizing and allowing physical stress to leave is key — rather than analyzing it or making it go away.
• Techniques are designed for busy people who believe they have no time; effectiveness comes from consistent, brief interventions.

33:55 Rediscovering values is essential in recovering from burnout.

• Chronic burnout causes people to lose touch with what they care about and who they are.
• Rebuilding a “guiding principle system” (GPS) helps reestablish personal priorities and decision frameworks.
• Sustainable recovery brings better results — financially, emotionally, and relationally — but first requires overcoming the fear of change.

37:15 Everyone has time to try the five-second “mini vacation” technique.

• Five-second stress-release techniques require only a sliver of the time people already spend on phones.
• Behavioral changes needed for burnout recovery can be implemented in under ten minutes per day.
• Hope begins with trying one small intervention, opening the door for greater transformation.

40:52 It is BOLD to remember who you are and what you love.

Resources

• The Burnout Paradox: Why Your Success Is Secretly Sabotaging You
• Are You Running on Empty? The Executive Energy Crisis No One’s Talking About
• Gallup reports that burnout is worse post COVID.
• Burnout is an occupational phenomenon says WHO
• At Ease USA
• Burnout Assessment
• FastFixCall.com
• R&R Technique
• Scott Anderson on LinkedIn

Transcript

Jess Dewell 0:00
It’s okay to have stress that isn’t hypervigilant.

Scott Anderson 0:05
The problem is that we get into this habit and become almost superstitious about it because it’s worked in the past. The problem for a lot of us is, oh my God, if this doesn’t work, I don’t know what I’m going to do.

Jess Dewell 0:16
I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks for stopping by at the Bold Business Podcast. We are normalizing important conversations.

Yes, there are tips. Yes, there are ways to solve problems. More importantly are going to be what do you need for yourself to be able to solve those problems and make the most of the education, the training, and the programs that you are already using.

This is a supplement to that. It can sit on top of it, fuel your soul, fuel your mind, and most importantly, regardless of where you’re at on your journey, maybe you’re starting out. Maybe you’re ready to scale.

Maybe you’re going through reinvention. The conversations we are having will help you at each of those stages. So hang around, see what’s going on, and I look forward to seeing you engaging with our videos.

Announcer 1:07
You are listening to the Bold Business Podcast, where you will hear firsthand experiences about what it really takes to ensure market relevance and your company’s future.

Jess Dewell 1:20
When was the last time you took a leap of faith on yourself? I’m talking with Scott Anderson today, and we’re talking about this topic. We’re talking about it in a way that you might not recognize offhand because we’re talking about something as common and as elusive as anything else in our business world today.

Burnout. Yeah, I said it. Burnout.

There are three things that you’re going to take away from this conversation that I’m having with Scott today. The first is that burnout is a stress disorder. The second is that knowing the difference between hypervigilant and hyperaware makes the difference between success and the most successful that you could possibly be.

It taps into that full potential. And the third thing that I didn’t know, and it’s very cool to learn today, was that our bodies are built to have stress with a beginning, middle, and an end for different situations. Was that exciting to me or what?

Because we usually talk about business here and us being able to do business and burnout is part of this conversation. So to hear that our bodies want beginning, middle, and an end of stress, I got really excited about. And that is the opportunity for us to show up and be present, interrupt ourselves and see what’s going on, and then take advantage of this conversation to help ourselves not only reduce stress, but also help ourselves have faith and belief in ourselves and remove some of the limiting beliefs that we didn’t know we accepted because they’re the norm of our today.

Scott, who I’m having this conversation with, is a serial entrepreneur, executive coach, and licensed mental health therapist. Remind me how long you were doing work the expected way before you were facing burnout yourself.

Scott Anderson 3:16
It was about 10 years ago. I was running an advertising agency, speaking of advertising agencies. I was having a moment that Bill Murray did in Groundhog Day where I would wake up and Sonny and Cher clock radio would go off at 6 a.m. every morning. It had a very distressing sameness about it day after day. But more than that, I just woke up dead tired and really couldn’t get over it. I would think that if I got a good night’s sleep, I’d wake up refreshed, but I didn’t.

If I took a vacation, got more exercise, did this or that. And what I found was that I was waking up every morning exhausted and really was getting afraid that one day I wouldn’t be able to answer the Groundhog Day alarm clock and wouldn’t be able to get out of bed. I was really afraid that I was at a point where I felt like I was just mailing in my performance in my own company.

And it wouldn’t be too long before either my employees or my clients or both started to notice, this guy’s really slipping. So that was 10 years ago, almost 11 years ago. I really hit the wall hard.

And I, at that point, I had already gone to graduate school. I had a master’s in clinical counseling. I was a licensed mental health therapist.

And so I thought that I should know what to do, but it’s not really depression. It’s not really anxiety. It’s, it’s burnout.

I discovered it’s its own thing with its own symptoms and with a cure that’s very different than what I thought it would be.

Jess Dewell 4:49
It sounds like you tried to pile on self-care and it even got worse.

Scott Anderson 4:53
Yeah, that’s the problem. I tried to do all the things that come to mind to solve the problem and everything you can imagine. And even as a therapist, I was doing everything I could from a clinical standpoint and talking to other therapists and it just wasn’t getting better.

And I couldn’t get in front of it. In fact, the very things that I tried to do made it worse because there is a great way and a quick way actually through burnout, but it’s just not what comes to mind intuitively.

Jess Dewell 5:24
That’s actually really interesting because just the other day, Scott, I was thinking to myself, okay, what else do I let go of so I can bring in more self-care? And I’m using, for those of you listening, I’m actually putting that in air quotes. I do firmly believe in it.

I do know there’s a thing there, but I don’t think it’s what I think it is.

Scott Anderson 5:43
That’s the problem. As entrepreneurs, we’re great problem solvers. That’s, I guess, our superpower.

And so whether it’s changing a tire or splitting the atom, as I like to say, if there’s a real concrete problem, we’re great at solving problems. But burnout is different. Burnout is a situation where one of the key symptoms is that we are thinking about things in a way that we’re having thoughts and emotions that don’t serve us.

And even though we can work to record a lot of podcasts and take time off, for example, that kind of problem we can solve. But when the problem is really a thought you’re having or an emotion you’re having, any attempt to make that either go away or avoid it makes it come back stronger. It’s the old thing about don’t think about pink elephants, don’t think about pink elephants.

So every time I would think about I’ve got to get rid of this burnout, I’ve got to get rid of this exhaustion, I’ve got to get rid of this overwhelmed and defeated feeling, any attempt I made to either fix it or avoid it made it worse. In fact, it tattooed the idea or the thought I was having in my mind. While it works with everything else, especially for high achiever entrepreneurs, it not only doesn’t work with thoughts and emotions, but it actually makes it worse because of this don’t think about pink elephants syndrome.

Jess Dewell 7:06
And is it because it’s the do not and it’s the not piece or is it something else? Water on grease fire instead of baking soda.

Scott Anderson 7:14
Yeah. It’s very much like the not. It’s that our brain here is overwhelmed.

Our brain here is stressed out or burned out. And that’s really what it focuses on. So even if we try to avoid it, even if we go, I’ve had clients that have taken week vacations to very fancy spas or silent retreats.

I’ve done some silent retreats myself and they’re very good, but they aren’t good for burnout because burnout is an inside job. It’s not an outside thing that self-care is really good, but only if we also change the internal monologue. Otherwise it will be groundhogs day after day, no matter what we might do for self-care.

Jess Dewell 7:57
Did you see it when it first came out? I think I first saw groundhog day in my twenties and I wish I had seen it much earlier.

Scott Anderson 8:04
I think I saw it when it first came out and it hit a little close to home. I’ll be honest. I resembled that newscaster that Bill Murray played and those 6 AM mornings were, I thought about that a lot.

Jess Dewell 8:18
You’re talking about this moment of burnout and how you found it and how it’s different. And we talk about burnout. That’s like talking about burnout is fairly normalized.

Talking about the internal work, whether it’s internal and external work, self-care inside or self-care outside, whatever that is, that’s normalized. My experience just in our little bit of time talking together is even though it’s normal, are we like quarterback couch quarterbacks when we’re actually talking about doing it? We know what to do, but we’re not.

Scott Anderson 8:50
I think it’s more a question of we don’t know what to do. All the things that seem like they would work like a vacation or a sabbatical or getting to bed earlier or whatever, all the things that seem like they would work simply don’t work. The reason is because what we’re talking about and what burnout really is a stress disorder.

And it’s a real thing. The World Health Organization has defined it as a bonafide condition or illness. The Gallup people, I live in Omaha, Nebraska, where Gallup is headquartered, tell us that at least 40% of the American workforce feels mostly or always burned out.

And even though a lot of people, including me, predicted that statistic would improve post-COVID, it’s actually gotten worse post-COVID. More Americans now report that they feel exhausted, stressed out, irritable in a way that they can’t seem to get over than ever before in American workforce history. So the problem is it is absolutely a real thing.

And although we talk about it a lot, what we don’t have are clinically proven ways until recently, and I was happy to discover some, but now fortunately we really do. It’s just that what works is counterintuitive. For example, I like to use sometimes the experience of being in a near miss car accident.

What happens in that moment of real stress and real danger is that all of our stress chemicals in our body, all the stress hormones and so forth, jump into action. So cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine, et cetera, all in an instant flood our body and make us capable of dealing with a potential dangerous situation. And in that moment, time slows down.

Our senses are heightened. Our reflexes are heightened. We’re able to use our body in ways that we can’t normally.

And let’s say in this example that we somehow steer out of the near miss car accident and it doesn’t happen. 90 seconds after the accident doesn’t happen approximately, it’s different for most people, but in a matter of a couple of minutes, all of those chemicals and hormones go back to a normal state. So our body knows that when we are in a genuinely dangerous situation or a genuinely critical situation, these chemicals rise to the fore.

And when they’re no longer needed, they go back to normal. The problem that most of us who are burned out find is that we’ve become, I’ll use the word addicted to our own chemicals. And what we found is that to be in that state of hypervigilance or hyperalert, first of all, is really helps people succeed.

If you’re in that state all the time, especially early in our careers, and we’re working harder than anybody else, we’re taking on more responsibility than anybody else, we’re willing to accept more pressure and deadlines than anybody else. You’ll be rewarded in America. You will be really rewarded for that.

And you’ll move faster and farther in your career or in your business than you would if you didn’t do that. The problem is that we get stuck in that situation that simulates a near miss car accident. But the fact is there are only a couple of times during the day, usually, where we have to be in a hypervigilant state.

Most of the time, we don’t have to be in that state. But it’s very what happens to what happened to me was I got stuck in that sort of disaster state. And it felt as though if I were anything less than hypervigilant all the time, and a perfectionist all the time, and someone with no boundaries all the time, that I would risk financial failure or career failure.

That’s unfortunately, our culture really does reward us for staying in that state. But it’s just not scalable. It’s not sustainable.

We simply cannot do it. So the it begs the question, what do we do then? What is the solution?

Jess Dewell 12:50
Share your thoughts and questions in the comments below. I thrive on your feedback and engagement. You’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast.

I’m your host, Jess Dewell. This is your program for strategizing long term success while diving deep into what the right work is for your business right now.

Announcer 13:10
You’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast hosted by Jess Dewell, a nationally recognized strategic growth consultant. She works with business owners and executives to integrate just two elements that guide business through the ups and downs of growth. Number one, know what work is necessary. Number two, do all the work possible. Schedule a complimentary consultation to find out more at reddirection.com.

Jess Dewell 13:39
Some of the things that you are talking about, which by the way, this is great. This is great to see the difference between just regular stress. I actually wrote this down because I’ve never heard this before.

And I thought it was very interesting that we can become addicted to our own chemicals, right? Seeking that all the time. And in a world where we have complete access and everything at our fingertips, it makes it easier than ever before.

Where I really, what I’m curious about though, is so some of these things that, that hypervigilance, it’s interesting because there are aspects of other trauma, like maybe an accident, car accident. And then the next one is a near miss. So it takes us longer or that have something that has happened to you in some way.

And so, you know what that is? And that hypervigilance of just whatever it was for the trauma seeps in. Have you seen that also be like a hit?

Scott Anderson 14:31
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. In fact, I started at a nonprofit organization called At Ease USA, and it’s dedicated to helping military families recover from post-traumatic stress disorder.

There are a lot of parallels between burnout and post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s obviously not of the same severity, let’s say, but there are lots of things about both burnout and PTSD that are similar. And one of them is hypervigilance.

Hypervigilance is this state that we get into where we feel as though we are safer, especially if we’ve been through previous stress, or you could say previous trauma. One of the ways that we feel safe is by maintaining a state of hypervigilance, which means you’re ready. You can’t predict when the near-miss car accident is going to happen, or in work, you can’t predict when your best customer is going to have an emergency.

Without knowing it, we don’t do this consciously, we get in a state of hypervigilance so that we’re always ready. And our minds and bodies are actually trying to keep us safe and in a backhanded way to keep us calm by feeling safe. Unfortunately, the way of feeling safe is to feel prepared, is to have hypervigilance, which means that we pre-experience, we’re always in a state of crisis, even though we’re not really experiencing a crisis in the moment.

But our body feels safer and more prepared for whatever comes if we’re in this hypervigilance state. And it’s not the same as military PTSD or combat PTSD, but there is that similarity.

Jess Dewell 16:08
It’s interesting that there is a common thread of understanding because I actually, I’m really glad we’re putting names around these things that maybe we haven’t had, but we also were never really willing to talk about before. And you were just talking about 10 years ago, and I’m like, I was working 10 years ago. I was in my professional career 10 years ago, and this is not a subject that we would have ever talked about.

So to just say, even in this 10 years ago, look at the progress that has been made yet. I’m wondering if it’s, we’ve come up the mountain a little, right? We’ve got that exponential piece, but it’s the very top that we have to get to for us to make real change, to break through and have, I’m going to even go so far as to say a societal change to embrace and normalize.

It’s okay to have stress that isn’t hypervigilant as across all of the places that I hear you’re working.

Scott Anderson 17:07
That’s quite accurate. The problem is that a lot of people, a lot of clients and a lot of people like me that we work with have an attitude that really dismisses things like burnout. And it says, I ought to be able to handle this, or I have to handle this.

And when we are younger in our twenties, we compensate for a lack of experience in our careers with a surplus of hard work and willingness to take on more and more responsibility, never saying no. And perfectionism, of course, is always good. All of those things are really good to distinguish yourself early in your career, whether you’re working for somebody or starting your own business.

The problem is when I see most of our clients, they begin to have symptoms in their mid to late thirties, sometimes early forties when they have achieved a lot, but now they also have significant others or partners. They may have children, have assets like homes and cars, and life is a lot more complicated. Plus because of all the work they’ve done, they’re now at levels of responsibility where even if you had the time and energy to work 20 hours a day, you’ve outgrown that time in your life and the level of work that where 20, where extra work by itself is going to solve the problem.

The problem is that we get into this habit and become almost superstitious about it because it’s worked in the past. It’s like a magic wand that it really used to work. The problem for a lot of us is, oh my God, if this doesn’t work, I don’t know what I’m going to do.

And this is also where I found that the good can be the enemy of the best because we can achieve a lot of success, both personally and professionally, and attain a lot of things and achieve a lot of goals. But most of us, by the time we’re in our late thirties, early forties, somewhere in there, we begin to experience diminishing returns. I had a client say to me once, it feels like this is a zero sum game.

Either I succeed at work or I succeed at home, but I can’t have both. I have to pick one. And that’s when the good really is the enemy of the best.

Sacrifice something. And one of the things that’s been a great discovery for me and for our company is that breaking through burnout can actually take you to a place where you don’t have to make a decision like that and where it’s really possible to not live in a state of constant stress and overwhelm, but achieve way more than you did before. So many people are afraid.

Well, yeah, I don’t want to get divorced, let’s say, but I also don’t want to give up on my ambition, my goals and my drive. The feeling is that it’s a zero sum game. You can only have one.

But the reality is what we’ve seen with people as they break through burnout and get to the other side of it beyond burnout is that there actually is a huge freedom and also the capability to do so much more when you’re not constantly stressed out and where you can use your superpowers when they are needed, but not 24-7 because they’re not needed 24-7. We don’t have to be in high gear 24 hours a day.

Jess Dewell 20:22
You’re saying all of us could be our own version of Michael Jordan?

Scott Anderson 20:26
Kind of, yeah. Michael Jordan, the only guy who you want to have the basketball in the last minute of the NBA championship is Michael Jordan because he knew how to be in a state he described as a flow state where the basketball hoop looked like it was three feet wide. In that moment, time slowed down.

He was certainly hyper-attuned and aligned to what was happening, but he wasn’t like that 24 hours a day. He didn’t need to be. So he had the ability to put himself in a state when he needed, but to not be in that state 24-7 because he would have burned out too.

The main thing is that instead of being motivated by fear and pressure and the fear of failure in particular, instead what, and I think this would be true for Michael Jordan, what he was motivated by were his own values. And that’s the shift that we ask our clients to make. So instead of being bullied by a fear of not succeeding or a fear of failing at home or at work, a fear of being passed up for a promotion, fear of whatever it is, for entrepreneurs, the fear is often the fear of going broke.

Instead of being driven by that fear and being in a perpetual state of crisis, instead what we ask our clients to do is to think about what they really love, what their values are. And in this case, not in the sense of moral value so much, but values in the sense of what they really value, what they really love and have to have in their lives. And I think that was the power.

Michael Jordan talks about it. What he did was to put himself in his, to be his very best self, basically in the service of achieving his goals. But he was in charge of it.

It wasn’t in charge of him. And that’s what burnout is that our darkest fears are bullying us into working an unreasonable amount and in an unreasonable way that’s not sustainable.

Jess Dewell 22:24
And it’s because we don’t know any better.

Scott Anderson 22:26
We’re not even aware we’re doing it.

Jess Dewell 22:28
And it also sounds like it’s this, like, it’s so slow that these habits that we’re forming, we don’t even know. And then it’s almost too much. And it’s like a train that’s speeding up or slowing down. Takes a long time to speed up. That’s what I’m hearing from you.

Scott Anderson 22:43
Unfortunately, a lot of folks that we work with get into a situation where their health is suffering, both their physical health and their mental health, their relationships, both at work and at home are suffering. I had this sort of moment of truth with my wife who said to me, you’re here, but you’re not present. Your body is here, but your spirit and your mind and yourself and who we used to know as you is not here.

If anybody tells you that you’re in real trouble, I was getting that kind of feedback, both at work and at home. It wasn’t, I could show up bodily, but I wasn’t showing up as my best self, let’s say. And by the time you reach that point, you really are in trouble sometimes with genuine health, physical health problems, and with also behavioral health problems.

For most of us, we really have to hit the wall hard to even consider making a change because again, all of these things used to work really well. And now it’s our superpowers turned to kryptonite. Now, what happens?

What do I do now? And that’s exactly the place that most people that we work with find themselves. And it’s only then really that they’re willing to consider, I’m willing to do whatever it takes, including something different.

The good news is though, and to go with your train analogy is that actually people can recover remarkably quickly, much more quickly than they think. In a matter of two or three weeks, people in our burnout breakthrough program are reporting feeling significantly better. And we start out, one of the first things that we do is instead of taking a two-week vacation or a six-month sabbatical, we teach people a technique that lets them take five-second mini vacations multiple times a day.

And it turns out that when you think about the way that our bodies react to stress and about our nervous systems and how they respond to stress, it’s a five-second mini vacation where you actually and completely disconnect from the stress for just five seconds is way more effective than a five-week vacation. So we teach our client, and in fact, for the show notes, I’ll send you a video you can share with your clients, your listeners. But yeah, this R&R technique just takes five seconds to do because one of the things we know about our clients is we would tell them we would encourage them to meditate, but we know they won’t do it.

I love that. So instead, we prescribe this five-second mini vacation, and it really works. We ask people to do this five times a day, but all you have to do, take five seconds and notice that you’re stressed.

And when we say notice, we don’t mean try to figure out why, but rather just to scan your body and notice what you’re feeling physically. Because otherwise, we’ll go into this whole rabbit hole of don’t think about pink elephants if we try to figure out why, and then we just make the problem worse. But if we just look at how we’re experiencing it physically, typically in the stomach or the chest and the shoulders, people notice a twinge, a pain, a stiffness, something, a tingling.

And all we ask them to do is just notice it, not figure it out, not make it go away because that will make it worse, but rather just to notice it. Then we ask them to take a deep breath in through their nose, to exhale deeply through their mouths, and imagine a door opening over whatever part of your body feels the stress. And just allow the stress to leave and not force it, not make it, just allow it to leave.

Because it’s very much like the near-miss car accident. Your body wants there to be a beginning and a middle and an end to the stress cycle. That’s what our bodies are designed to do.

We’re not designed to be perpetually in a stress state. So what this R&R technique does in just five seconds is help train our body, first of all, to actually release stress, which is the key, but also to train our bodies to recognize that, oh, I am feeling stressed right now. And the best time to release stress is right when you’re feeling it.

The other thing that we know from research is that one of the things that’s really important is to completely release it. And so we often ask our clients to get out of their chairs behind their desks and walk around their office, whether at home or a real office. If they have time, walk outside for five minutes.

And the objective is part of what the science of burnout tells us is that the key is to be completely disconnected, if only for five seconds at a time, but to really drop it completely. And because if we don’t interrupt the cycle, and we recommend interrupting it multiple times a day, then we’re not going to get ahead of it. We’re going to stay in this state.

But if we can break it up, even with a technique that takes five seconds, multiple times a day, we found people that in a couple of weeks time, using this technique and others like it, will report that their burnout is mostly or completely gone. That exhaustion and that feeling of impending doom is gone in a very short amount of time. It does take time to get into the state, but it takes a remarkably short amount of time to get out of it, if you know what to do.

Jess Dewell 28:06
I’m so impressed. And I’m excited because some of the core work that I have been doing over the last five years or so is about creating endings in business, even if it’s an implementation. Some of it, most of the time, we think about implementation as you get it going, you do all of the steps, and then you just keep doing all of the steps into infinitum.

What if there’s a better way once you get there? What if you found a better way along without having an ending or an interruption of some sort? We never know.

So we’re adding on this extra level of stuff to do, this extra thing that has to happen that takes up our heart, brain, and gut space. And what I’m hearing you say is that our stress is actually doing some of the same things, and we can intentionally make change quick. And then what I hear you then saying is coming back to being able to let it go and seeing that change really quickly is just a capacity to be present in more than one state, in more than one place, in a day.

Scott Anderson 29:08
Until people experience completely letting go of stress, they tell me often, you can’t do that. That’s the whole problem. My stress switch is stuck in the on position.

That’s the way that it feels. But it really isn’t. And there are some very simple, powerful, practical ways to break through that feeling that the switch is permanently in the on position.

But a lot of the recovery we found comes from having an actual, practical, personal experience with noticing, first of all, where is the stress? And is it possible to give it permission to leave? And one of the things also that helps a lot of our clients is to know that our bodies are really designed for stress to have a beginning, middle, end, and end.

And when it’s gone and when it’s served its purpose, it should be gone. They have an off switch. They really do.

And it takes a while and a little bit of practice to learn how to use it. But once you do, you can, just as you said, Jess, that was so well said, that we in our own ways can be the Michael Jordan in our area of life, being in the zone or the flow whatever when we need to be. But we don’t stay stuck in this on position because that will burn us out.

Jess Dewell 30:27
I’m your host, Jess Dewell and we’re getting down to business on the Bold Business Podcast. This is where we’re tackling the challenges that matter most to you with actionable and achievable advice to get real results that lead to your success. Don’t forget, press that bell icon so you never miss a program. And it’s time to subscribe as well.

Announcer 30:51
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Jess Dewell 31:07
So there’s so many analogies and actual real life situations that I’m guessing you’ve had, I’ve had. This is what it actually looks like in your real life. And not only is it danger, you might’ve already passed the sign that said road is ending.

Scott Anderson 31:21
Yes.

Jess Dewell 31:21
And we’re not really ready to commit to do what it takes until there is something bigger. And that’s not true. I can’t imagine because I thought everything was stressful, but then this other thing shows up that makes the stress that I’ve had seem like the tiniest problem in the whole world compared to this new one.

And I’m always constantly reminded that I have that choice to see whatever it is. And if I thought everything was big, of course, I’m going to be challenged with something bigger because apparently I can handle it all. And that’s the other thing.

I think we attract more of what we’re doing. It’s not necessarily the attracting of the things that we want, is it?

Scott Anderson 32:02
That’s the whole problem is that when we’re younger and don’t know as much about the world of work or life itself, it feels like compensating for lack of experience by saying yes to whatever comes up works. And it really does work. And we get recognized and singled out and rewarded.

And this happens in school. A lot of people we work with are A plus students and nothing less than that would do that kind of perfectionism. So we learn this at a young age and it has its rewards.

The problem is that it’s a strategy that needs to evolve and needs to transform with us as we go through changes in life. But because it works so well and because so many of us are driven by fear of failure, it just feels like I can’t let go of this magic wand. It’s always worked before and it ought to work again now.

Jess Dewell 32:52
One of my big stress moments was it showed up in my back and I was unable to walk. My husband actually had to control medicine that I was getting because it wasn’t helping and I was trying to take too much, which can cause a big problem. So what can I do?

I’m going to do whatever it takes. And I found this kind of chiropractic care and I think this chiropractor said to me, how much do you actually love yourself? That was a pretty big wake-up call too.

It was a two-parter of not only is what’s going on and how is it manifesting in your world emotionally, physically, but also, so what is that actually doing to who you are and how you see yourself and your point of view?

Scott Anderson 33:32
One of the things that our clients report, and I went through this exactly myself, was that I had pushed what I wanted or what I valued across the table. I’ve pushed everything across the table in the service of, in this instance, succeeding in running this company. And I’d really lost track of what do I care about?

This is why we values establishing, we call it a guiding principle system or GPS. Why that’s so important is because that by the time people reach burnout, most of them report that they don’t even remember, they don’t even know, what do I like? What is important to me?

Because we’ve been willing to sacrifice almost everything, our health, physical and mental, family relationships, the relationships that are closest to us, relationships with coworkers, business partners, we’ve sacrificed everything. And we get to a point where we can’t even conjure up what do I care about? What do I love?

Who do I love? That’s the darkest point of burnout. But the road back and rebuilding that GPS and having principles at your disposal, at your fingertips, so that you can make healthy decisions, allows people to not only succeed in the way that they were before, but usually much farther.

We’ve had clients that we work with folks that are inherently very successful people, but their lives post burnout, beyond burnout, are always significantly better in every way, financially, emotionally, spiritually, in every way. But it feels like we get so addicted, I don’t know, we become so superstitious about our ideas and how we should run our lives, that we’re afraid that if you change a single thing, the whole house of cards will fall down. So it definitely takes a leap of faith or a lot of pain, just like you experienced with your back.

Jess Dewell 35:30
As I’m listening to you say that, I’m like, oh, okay, there’s so much. And it makes me think about, I’m like, I have not had a chance to peruse your book, You’re Not Toast Yet, but I’m guessing some of the themes we’re talking about are in it.

Scott Anderson 35:44
We just published You’re Not Toast, and it is a complete guide to the burnout breakthrough recovery system that we’ve created. It tells you exactly what to do. It contains not just the R&R technique, but lots of others that are related to the same thing.

The GPS process, exactly how you refine your values and change your guidance system. Every detail of how to recover from burnout is included in that book.

Jess Dewell 36:12
I really think it’s important that we understand what burnout is separate from everything else and recognize the stat that you were sharing at the beginning. I know you will tell me now.

Scott Anderson 36:21
40% of the American workforce.

Jess Dewell 36:24
So this is the other thing I want to talk about and bring out, is that we are conditioned, we have allowed whatever this normal is, which means we can decide to change. We can disrupt in our own way for our better, best selves and our better, best next. Just like the people who came before us wanted to create the path for us to have our best.

It is our job to create the best for who comes after us. And this is something that I don’t know if anybody has ever had to deal with just because of the amount of technology that brings us together. We’re in two different places, at least we’re in the United States, but we have conversations with people probably all over the world.

And we can do that eye to eye, which is the coolest thing ever. I can talk to you at any time of the day. If you’re online at any time of the day, I am not.

So you won’t talk to me in the middle of the night.

Scott Anderson 37:15
Technology is definitely a piece of this. The use of smartphones peaked during COVID and the average American spends 2.7 hours a day. Social media are on their phones.

And in fact, that’s the highest it’s ever been. It hasn’t gone down post COVID. The average person is still at 2.7 hours. The good news with that statistic, however, is that our clients often tell me, I don’t have time for a five second vacation, but you have 2.7 hours a day to work with every single, even if you spend, let’s say an hour a day looking at your smartphones. And most people, if they really kept track would be frightened at how much time they spend, but you easily- There are tools to do that, everybody.

Jess Dewell 37:57
That might be your challenge of the day. Are you part of the stat or are you a variant of it?

Scott Anderson 38:03
But the fact is that all of us spend time on our smartphones and therefore all of us have the time that’s necessary in this instance to burn out. The strategies and the system that we’ve created doesn’t require a lot of time because we know that our clients either have no time or believe they have no time. So they’re designed to be very bite-sized and practical.

Everybody spends at least an hour on their phone a day.

Jess Dewell 38:30
Seconds of one minute of those 60 minutes.

Scott Anderson 38:32
That’s it. That’s all we’re asking.

Jess Dewell 38:34
Once you can get in and get out of this awesome mini vacation, you might not want to leave. Hello, you said five seconds, five times a day. That’s 25 seconds.

So even if you added 30 seconds each time, that’s still what? Five minutes-ish to, okay, I’m going to do this now and whatever you’re going to do to get in it and then sit back on your day at five minutes of 60.

Scott Anderson 38:54
The mini vacation by itself is not enough to break through burnout for most people, but what it does do, it’s a training exercise that puts you in a position where you can. It’s one of many very quick, practical exercises that we teach our clients about. What it does do is give you a real experience with the fact that you really don’t have to be all the time.

And once your mind acknowledges that once you as a person see it’s the on switch is not stuck on it, it creates a sliver of light of hope. And I hope that’s the main thing. I guess I would want to leave people with today is that you absolutely, there absolutely is hope.

You absolutely can break through burnout. You don’t have to take a sabbatical. You don’t have to quit your job, get divorced, sell your business.

As a lot of my clients felt that they did at one point, you don’t have to do any of that. But what you do have to do is just change your behavior to the tune of maybe five or 10 minutes a day. And if you can do that, I was able to recover quickly and it’s never come back.

It’s 11 years later and I’ve never had any recurrence of any of it. So it really is possible. And all it really requires is just to change your mind slightly and at least be willing to try some new things.

Jess Dewell 40:14
And most of our listeners are, this is really what it’s for. So it sounds like it’s a, you can not be stressed. You can use this as an interruption, maybe just one time in your day, because guess what?

If it worked, there’s more where that came from. And there are better tools that will help you move along.

Scott Anderson 40:32
That’s right. Most of us need to be, to begin with is just some hope that change is possible. And for me in my own recovery, the first thing that I bumped into was this R&R technique.

And what it did for me was to give me some relief, but also it made me a believer that there is a way out of this. And frankly, I was pretty hopeless prior to that.

Jess Dewell 40:52
What makes it bold to remember who you are and what you love in this world?

Scott Anderson 40:58
In our culture, particularly in social media, grinding is glorified. The idea is that if we grind like various social media people, then we’ll have a private chat in a Rolls Royce or whatever, or we’ll be happy. It’s true, but only as far as it goes.

I think the bold thing is just to ask, what else is possible? That’s what we ask our clients to do. Not to believe necessarily overnight that this is the answer to everything, but just consider trying and we’ll give you links to some of these techniques.

Or if you want to get the book, you can do that, but it really describes the entire process. All we’re asking is just try it. And it may not sound like a lot, but for people who are in burnout, a five second vacation is a leap of faith.

And as small as it seems, it can have huge impact. It may not sound all that bold. So much of this is we have these limiting beliefs that say, I can’t get out of this.

I have to pay all of my bills. I have to continue to work like this. I have to stress out like this.

And until people really try a small intervention, it’s hard to believe there’s an alternative, but there really is.

Jess Dewell 42:11
Every single time I have a conversation, I take away something that I want to share with 25 people. I know when you’re listening to this podcast, you’re also listening for that and we’ll have something that you want to share. In the comments, I would like for you to engage with us.

What is that thing that you want to tell 25 people from this program? Here’s why it’s important. It’s important because yeah, there are going to be how to’s. Yes. There are going to be steps. Yes. You’re going to be like, Oh, I wish I wrote that down. I wish I wasn’t doing this. And I could actually take action on that right now. But guess what? You’re not. So engage right now because that one thing you want to share with others will be the thing that you can figure out how to incorporate in your business, in your workflow, in your style tomorrow.

Announcer 43:01
Jess hosts the Bold Business Podcast to provide insights for building a resilient, profitable business by deeply understanding your growth strategy, ensuring market relevance and your company’s future. It is bold to deeply understand your growth strategy with your host, Jess Dewell.

Get more information about how to drive solutions and reset your growth mindset at reddirection.com. Thank you for joining us and special thanks to our post-production team at The Scott Treatment.