Here is the complete transcript of the podcast
Welcome back to the podcast today, I’m answering a question that has come in from a longtime friend of mine. And now, a listener of the podcast. Let’s go to the question. Here is Andrew.
“Hey, Srini. This is Andrew, a longtime friend, and listener of your podcast. My question today would be your opinions on one how to prevent burnout in the workplace, and to once you feel burnout coming on. How do you help relieve that? So short and quick, but thank you.”
Wonderful question. Andrew, thank you for listening to the podcast. Thank you for taking the time to ask the question means a lot to me personally. As far as the question is concerned, I think I did answer this question in some shape or form not exactly a few months ago. So before recording this episode, I went back into the archives, I was looking for that recording. And not that, I would just say exactly what I said on that podcast recording. But I want you to see that whatever I say here, is a part of your question. I do not want to contradict myself. But I couldn’t find that recording. So I don’t know what happened to it. But anyway, so this question is very dear to me because I have gone through it myself personally. And I know a lot of people who go through this. So this is a wonderful question, even though you said this is shot. I think this is good. It’s amazing. So let’s get into this.
Let’s talk about how you prevent it. And how do you relieve it? If you study the conventional information, or the conventional advice on this specific point of burnout, what you find is most people addressing how to relieve to people say go exercise, go sleep, practice some mindfulness, these are all the things that are going to relieve you from burnout from stress. And there is truth to this. So I’m not here to say that’s not the case, because I do recommend that. But here is where it becomes over-simplistic. If you somehow relieve yourself from the stress, using exercise, sleep, and mindfulness, in a way, you’re also preventing it. But that is not the case. That’s not what I have seen. I’ve seen people come out of stress, anxiety, and all these things, but primarily in the context of burnout, they do come out of burnout, by doing all that stuff. But I don’t think that prevents from it happening. So the traditional information, the answers that you find to this question, do not really address how to prevent it because you get the same answer on how to prevent it, and you get the same answer on how to triage yourself out of it. That’s the right word.
Here is what I have found the answer to how to prevent it has to do a lot with a philosophy that you got to develop. This is the philosophy I developed for myself. When I was working, I was going through the motions of work, sometimes long hours, sometimes situations where you really don’t like to do certain things, but you’re forced by your management to do sometimes the dynamics or incorrect people dynamics and all the godless that is born out. And I was going through this and I tried all this I tried exercising, sleeping, and you know, meditation, yoga, hypnosis, which I talk a lot about on this podcast. And here is here’s something I said many, many months ago on the podcast, I said, an ounce of momentum, or an ounce of movement is better than a pound of meditation. So you cannot overcome a bad situation with meditation, yoga, or hypnosis, you’ve got to really address the situation. So you’re unhappy with the job, you are getting stressed out. There could be more to this.
So you got to address the call. And the addressing of the call has to happen with the philosophy and here’s the philosophy I’ve developed. I’ll tell you one more data point here before I go into the core question or the core answer. I’ll give you something that I encountered which is I once not once more than once. I parked my car in the parking lot. I have I wanted to go to work but I stayed in the parking lot stressed out for like, two-three hours and I left home. I experienced this also at the gym. I go to The gym I sit in the car, I listen to something on in the car, and I’m scrolling stuff on my phone, and I leave, I go home. You call it ADHD, you call it to stress, you call it burnout. But, not only that, on the radio show, I had people call me telling me the same thing we go sit in the parking lot, we go home, we don’t want to go to work.
That led me, of course, to my own experience of me getting stuck in the parking lot. That motivated me to find a solution to this problem. But the solution got strengthened by more and more people trying this and getting a result. Here is the philosophy. First and foremost there are people who do come to work, who have bigger challenges than me. That’s the truth. There are people who are doing my job, who are less skilled than me. There are people who are doing my job who get a lot less than what I get or what I make. There are people who are going through all of these bad job like bad personal situations, bad financial situations, and bad income situations, but they have the same role. Or they have an identical title and identical roles like mine, but they show up and they make people happy. They take all the negative emotions and feelings into themselves, and they make other people around them happy they make the floor happy. Then why am I not doing it? I’m privileged, I have whatever bad there is to this. But there is so much good to this. Why am I with my mindset with my thinking, messing up this incredible opportunity that I have, which I look for? And I think and I don’t respect. I overthink it. I overlook it. And I don’t respect it. But this job is doing incredible things. For me. It’s given me the experience the know-how, of course, the money, of course, the respect, and all that. But why am I overlooking all this? So the core principle in this philosophy is that when I start respecting people, then I become insignificant.
So I put myself below the people. I wrote an affirmation. And I used to read the affirmation before I step into work. I did that for a month or two. And eventually, I never had to do it anymore because my mind shifted completely. So philosophy leading into work every day is a better prevention technique, than practicing zillion different things. Okay, I’m gonna stop here. If I say anything else, if I say anything more, I think I’m overdoing this. Okay. Now, Andrew, I hope I answered your question. If not, let me know. And everybody else who is listening to this podcast, at some point, I will have Andrew come in as a guest on the podcast because Andrew is amazing. He is into fitness. He’s an incredible entrepreneur. He’s doing some crazy things. I think everybody who listens to this podcast, or who listens to everything that I’m saying here will benefit a lot more from listening to Andrew. I think so I’m going to chase him. And I’m going to request him, to come in and be a guest on the podcast. I promise you, you’re going to love this. And I’m going to do that very, very quickly.
Okay, that’s all for now. Hopefully, it’s helpful. If not do let me know. And before you know it, I’ll be here with you tomorrow. And tomorrow. Let’s see what I have on my mind for tomorrow. I did take some notes for tomorrow. Yeah, I think we’ll talk a little bit more about work tomorrow. So stay tuned. It’s gonna be good. Tomorrow. Okay, that’s all bye now.