Ep 74:Burned Out Or Just Bored
Welcome fellow confidence crusaders, neuro nerds and success equalizers. This is your podcast, Real Confidence. I'm your host, Alyssa Dver, and I'll be sharing a bit of basic brain science, some surprising social secrets and a touch of tough love. Why? Because I believe confidence is everyone's fundamental right and choice. So, let's get to it.
Alyssa Dver:
I have a little pet peeve. And I say a little and, not something that riles me. But it does annoy me, which is when we give as a society a name to something, a syndrome, a condition and then we all make that an excuse for why we're feeling a certain way. Back, I guess it was in the 80s or so, chronic fatigue syndrome, everyone was so tired have chronic fatigue syndrome. And it becomes an excuse, right? It's like, I got this problem. And I therefore don't need to do anything about it because now I know what it is. Well, now here we are roll forward, right, and impostor syndrome and burnout is our new syndrome. And so, we're tired and we blame it on that and subsequently, it's everybody else's fault that we got this way. And we don't take that ownership, that agency to say, hey, you know what, maybe I need to change something in my life, change the way I do things, change some habits change my mindset. No, no, I got burned out. It's my employer’s fault.
So that's my pet peeve, full transparency. But I also do realize that life is hard. And I don't mean, you know, traumatic hard, because, of course, it is for some people, but I mean, in general, it takes a lot of neuro energy, it takes a lot of cognitive wherewithal to get through a day, I don't care who you are the number of decisions 30,000 as it's often reported, that we make a day, you know, it can be exhausting. Just exhausting to get up and decide what to eat, what to wear, who to text. And one of my very good friends says it's a great day if nobody pisses him off. But you know what, the day that somebody does piss you off. That takes a lot of cognitive fuel away from you, too, right? So needless to say, being tired itself isn't something that's new. I don't think it's something that's necessarily going to go away. But I think there's a bigger issue here. Now, I've referenced in other podcasts that my husband is a fifth-grade teacher and my son, a guidance counselor. So, we talk a lot about student related issues, particularly in the elementary school age. And what has been clear over the last several years has been the diminishment of their focus diminishment. Is not a word it is now. Their inability to focus, the lack of stamina they have whether it's taking a test or reading a passage, and they being the students, and again, elementary, so you're talking about kids, you know, anywhere under the age of 10/11, that, you know, over the years have gotten less patient less able to learn. And that's terrifying to me.
Anyway. Back in 2020, when I did my first TED talk, I said at the end, you know, we are facing the reality of devolution, which is the opposite of evolution that our brains are so filled with gunk, you know, we are constantly inundated with information and data if you watch the television like regular television, the number of different screens, the scroll bars and the sidebars. You know, the you're seeing three five things at a time, of course, social media being the ultimate devil in this but you know, the amount of information that's hitting us that we're being asked to at least decide if we even want to read it, absorb it, watch it and subsequently do we even process what's being put into our heads is another question. But all of that the volume, the quantity of it. And in some cases, the depth of it. I don't think our brains are ready to for it. I'm pretty sure it's not and again, knowing the conversations that I have with my husband and son, it's showing up now in the classrooms that we are going in the reverse direction in terms of our neurological evolution. We are devolving and unable to process all of this. And how does this play in the bigger picture? Well, you know, that's probably a podcast for another day. But suffice to say, if you're feeling tired, it's because you got a lot of stuff going on. Even if you're not doing a lot of stuff, just reading the feeds on your phone probably is exhausting. And so, is that burnout? Or maybe it's just a level of overwhelm. Maybe it's even gotten to a point where things just wash over you and you're kind of bored, you're like, nothing's really grabbing your attention, because there's so much that you've kind of desensitized or depersonalized from all of it and you're not alone.
In fact, I'm questioning that for myself these days. I am particularly tired. And I say particularly I call it pregnancy tired. I remember when I was pregnant, and I could blame it on the hormones perhaps then we're so tired that literally could fall asleep while I was stopped at a stoplight in the car, take a snooze until somebody honked. And then you know, that would be alarm clock, that kind of tired to the point where can't focus, can't get work done, can't find motivation. And even trying to appreciate something to be great gracious to find joy is almost too much of an effort. And I know myself well enough, I like to believe that I also know that I get bored very easily that I need novelty that I like challenge that I like to be in that zone of discomfort that I keep saying to myself, maybe that's what it is maybe I've just fallen into too much of a routine or too much of the same old, same old.
So, my first tactic was to say let's do some new things. I joined a choir a couple of weeks ago and the music is very challenging music and it's kind of dusting off my high school neurons where I was in the choir, they are but I love choir music always have and listen to it. And whenever I have a chance, and just I love the harmonies and find it just fascinating. So, joining a choir made a lot of sense to me to kind of try something relatively comfortable in terms of knowing I could do it, but you know, I haven't done a long time. So, it was a little scary. And with new people, of course, new kinds of music. And it's been interesting, it's been good. I can't say it's fun yet, but it definitely made me feel like I tried something that was novel. I got a new puppy. That's not necessarily again, something that's completely out of the zone of new but it is definitely kept us on a toes new puppy new routine new personality in the house, new energy. Again, I thought, let's bring that in. We needed that; we lost our dog a couple of months ago to old age and some degenerative disease. And we were really sad. And so, I thought, well, maybe that's part of it. Well, we'll bring the puppy energy in the darkness back into our lives, which has been great. I started working on a new book course, can't not be working on a new book, but I actually want to write another confidence book. So, I'm going to start working on that a little bit. Never know maybe another TED Talk, who knows, put it out in the universe made some really good travel plans. In fact, we're really, we're really excited. We were really excited to go to Cuba and long story short, there was a Greenpeace protest over this particular trip, we were gonna go with somebody relatively famous, and it became a fiasco. So, the trip had to be canceled, and now we are planning to go somewhere else. And I know that having a trip to look forward to can really help in my well-being my mojo gives me kind of that, you know, light at the end of the tunnel. But needless to say, we're working on that too. So, all these things. A bunch of other things that I do like going back and learning some more Italian learning some more French keeping those neurons active. You know, I thought let's not be quote, bored, at least will rule that out of the mix. And they're helping.
I will definitely say they're helping, but it doesn't explain why I'm sleeping so much. Right? I feel like I can't sleep enough. And many people often say to me, you know, do you sleep with all that you do? I do. I do. I do. I'm an eight-hour girl. On a normal day Sunday is even more sleeping. But needless to say, I'm feeling tired a lot. So, I'm listening to my body. I'm listening to what it needs. I'm communicating with my doctor to make sure that there's not some sign or other things that could be physiologically wrong. But I think it goes back to the initial premise is if I listen to burnout, if I Listen to just having this sense of purposelessness. It's a cop out. It's a cop out. So, I want to invite you to think before we go to our sponsor break. How are you feeling? A feeling bored? You feeling burned out. And when we come back, maybe we can answer that question together.
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Alyssa Dver:
Well, thanks for coming back. And as we continue to think about this syndrome of being burned out, you know, the question again, is, are you really burned out? Are you exhausted? Because life has been too hard work has been pounding you asking you to do so much too much. Are you bored? Are you just needing a change? And the real question, I suppose, is not so much what it is, but what are you going to do about it? You know, I can't say that tell you to all rush out and get a puppy, a lot of work. I don't even think that you should necessarily write a book, I think the question becomes, Alright, where are you in this situation? And what do you want to do about it? And I would invite you to really take some time, some scheduled time, put it in your calendar, you don't necessarily have to walk to some beautiful place or be in a scenic beach or anything like that, but put an hour or two or half a day in your calendar, and go somewhere that is not your typical typical, it could be a Starbucks in another town or maybe it's some beautiful spot that you can just park with a notebook and really sketch out the things that your that are making you feel good and some of the things that are really drudgery. You know, I really don't like x, I don't want to do y and see if there's patterns. See if it's maybe a time of day, if it's a type of task, if it's something that you've been doing for a long time. Because when you start to identify, well, maybe I just need to change the time I do that thing. Or maybe I need to find somebody to get some help to do that thing for me that in and of itself could lift those burdens off your neuro shoulders, right? But we don't take the time to think through what's the nag because it's not all bad. It's just that there's certain things or maybe certain situations that a really weighing on us. Now, if it is something like, and I had this conversation with a friend of mine last night, because we share this, you know, maybe we're taking care of parents, and it's really hard. It's emotionally draining, its physically time draining, maybe putting some boundaries around that. Maybe it is getting woken up by the dog at 5:30 in the morning to go out and you got to figure out a way to share the burden with other people in your household. But sitting down and really figuring out what's exhausting you, what's making you bored, what's making you frustrated. It's a hell of a way to get started, right? But you got to do it consciously. So, find the time to do that. Find the patterns, find the things that are really sticking out from that page that you go, Oh, okay, here's the problem.
Now for me as an example, watching or reading the news was really draining me. And so, watching it at night kept me up, watch it in the morning, ruin my day. And so many years ago, in fact, I decided you know what I'm not going to do either. I am going to read it at the end of the week. There's a magazine I recall the week it's great by then when I read it, it's history so it's not as emotional. And I told my husband on Like, look, you know what you're gonna read the news, if there's an apocalypse, just let me know, all right. Or if there's some really, really important news, let me know. And so, by that way, I minimize that emotional drain. I also don't do New Year's resolutions; I do that exercise I just told you about going someplace every winter. It's kind of like doing a review of your business books, I do a review of my mental books. And subsequently really go and think, where is their waste, where's their things that are draining my emotional, or mental battery that I can change, I can do something differently. So, I'm inviting you to give it a chance to get you to give it a try. And if you think that that exercise works for you, if you want to do it more than that one time, go for it. But it made a huge difference for me. And I'll give you some examples. There are people in my life that were draining me. And I started to realize, you know what, I gotta spend less time with them or give them less of my energy makes a huge difference. I know that I wasn't working out as much, because you know, at the end of the day, all I want to do is sit down and have glass of wine. And I felt guilty about that. But you know what, if I exercise in the morning, that glass of wine is well deserved, not instead of exercising. So again, I think that those are simple things that you can figure out and change but only if you give yourself a little space and time to do it.
Now, here's my offer. And it's a big one is that if you will send me an email [email protected]. It’ll get to me. And you tell me what the change is that you want to make I will be your accountabilabuddy. I'll hit you up in a couple of weeks from then and say how you are doing at least once. So, feel free to drop that email. If you want me Alyssa Dver to be your coach on that. All right, and that's all it takes is I'm going to hit you back and say how you doing on that change? How you feeling? Because you know what it can be that easy. So, my friends, thank you for joining again. Stay tuned. I'm working on my burnout, boredom, whatever you want to call it, but I'm working as I look into the future and say you know what? There's a lot I have to give, a lot I want to do and not being motivated not being energized. That's not an option. Talk to you again soon. Thanks for watching.
Before we totally wrap up, I want to let you know that full transcripts and show notes for this and other real confidence episodes can be found on www.AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com/podcast. I also want to remind you once again that the best way to get confidence is to give it to others and you can do it just by liking and sharing this episode on your preferred podcast and social media channels. You can even give me some confidence by noting topics you'd like me to consider for the future. So, for now, this is Alyssa Dver. Thank you for helping to bring more confidence to the world.
Master editing done by Ben Weinstein with original music performed and composed by Jeff Mitchell. Real Confidence is a production of American Confidence Institute. All rights reserved.
