Fostering Well-Being in Times of Mental Fatigue – The Authentic Way

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Brenda is a project manager at a large financial services company. For the past year, she has been leading a team tasked with developing a new product line on a tight deadline. She’s been working 60-70 hours/week, constantly juggling demands from her team, executive, and her clients. She has had to make numerous high-stake decisions under immense pressure. And she is a parent of three school age children.

She now feels completely drained, both mentally and physically. She’s having trouble concentrating and remembering key details. Simple tasks that were once easy now seem overwhelming. She’s getting cynical and detached from her work. She’s getting irritable with both her team and her family and lashes out at them over minor issues. Her sleep has been almost non-existent, and she relies on caffeine and energy drinks to get her through the day. And she’s on prescription muscle relaxants and pain medication for her headaches.

She’s starting to dread going into the office each morning and has considered quitting her job entirely, despite having worked so hard on this project. While this is likely an extreme case of chronic overwork, I hear versions of this story from many people these days.

What’s going on, and what can we do about it?

With fatigue and burnout, we see symptoms such as difficulty concentrating, impaired judgement and decision-making, increased forgetfulness, irritability, decreased motivation, increased mistakes, headaches, cynicism, changes in sleep patterns (e.g. insomnia), and increased absenteeism. I suggest five strategies for dealing with it:

  1.  Recognize. It takes courage to step up and be accountable. However, don’t confuse courage with the temptation of martyrdom. It takes humility – a true evaluation of conditions as they are – to truly be strong. Honestly acknowledge if you have gone from a healthy sense of tiredness that you recover from on the weekend, to real exhaustion. There’s no shame in recognizing that you are burned out. It can happen to anyone who is conscientious and loses touch with their values. Remember: self-centered, lazy sloths don’t get exhausted.
  2. Reach Out. Carrying other’s responsibilities often comes with accountable people. However, it’s not sustainable. The lone-warrior model of leadership is, in the words of Ronald Heifetz, heroic suicide. Each of us have blind spots that require the vision of others. Reach out for help from a guide.
  3. Relate. This may sound strange, but you can make friends with your exhaustion. It’s not your enemy. It’s here to teach you. If you stop long enough to get your bearings – away from the demands of the world – you can befriend your exhaustion and ask it, like you would a friend, what advice it would give you. Write down the guidance you get. It’s possible to create a relationship with, and learn from, your exhaustion.
  4. Reflect. Exhaustion means you have lost connection with your values by allowing yourself to be suffocated by the expectations of others. Getting your bearings includes reconnecting with your values. Make a list of things that are important to you. Now arrange the items in descending order of their importance. Notice where you’ve placed inner peace, well-being, or whatever you want to call it. How important is this to you? What comes before it on the list? Many responsible people don’t make themselves a priority. The way you see yourself is reflected in how you treat yourself.
  5. Renew. You don’t have to change yourself. Living authentically means simply coming home to yourself. It’s that simple and it’s that complex. The healing journey isn’t an overnight venture, but it does start with a single step. Ask yourself, “What do I need to STOP, START, and CONTINUE doing to live a life that is aligned with what truly matters to me?” “What one small decision would make all the difference?” Reflect on how you can make yourself a priority – so that your caring and commitment to others comes from overflow, not emptiness. What agreements will you make? What actions are needed? What support do you require?

Self-Care Is Not an Option Or A Luxury. Self-Care Is a Responsibility.

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We all understand the reason flight attendants tell us to, in the event of an emergency, “put your own oxygen mask on first.” We are truly no good to anyone else if we don’t look after ourselves. One of the accountabilities that comes with leadership is your responsibility to take care of yourself—and no situation or person can justify neglecting this duty.

But what exactly is self-care?

  1. Self-Care is not the same as Self-Centered. We take care of ourselves so we can take care of the world we serve. Self-Centered means we take care of ourselves so we can take care of ourselves.
  2. Self-Care is not comfortable. In the words of Brianna West, “True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake. True self-care is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.”
  3. Self-Care is knowing what your values are and establishing non-negotiable daily habits that are in alignment with these values – not because it’s easy but because you made a promise to yourself to ensure that what matters most, matters most.
  4. Self-Care means accepting being an imperfect human. We can’t be all things to anyone. We can only be who we are. Self-care means that we understand that we can say no, so people will trust our yes.
  5. Self-Care means understanding the difference between loving and pleasing. Loving comes from overflow. Pleasing comes from emptiness. Loving comes from strength. Pleasing comes from insecurity. Loving gives us energy. Pleasing depletes us.

Boundaries and Bravery

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Boundaries are healthy and important, but can the idea of a boundary give us an easy out and prevent us from being brave and stretching ourselves?

Years ago, in a family counselling session, parents were complaining that their 25-year-old son living in their basement wasn’t employed or contributing to the family in any way. The parents wanted me “talk to him to get him motivated.”
These parents eventually learned that this wasn’t a motivation problem. It was a boundary problem. Motivation eventually followed when they set clear boundaries. Reality is a great motivator.

Here are five principles for healthy boundaries:

  1. Boundaries keep us healthy. Just as the immune system says no to unwanted bacteria and viruses, saying no to unwanted demands on our time keeps us healthy. Caring about others while suppressing our own needs, contributes to illness.
  2. Boundaries are about self-care. There’s a difference between self-care and self-centeredness. Self-care says that we take care of ourselves so we can be strong and better take care of those we love and serve. Self-centeredness says we take care of ourselves so we can take care of ourselves. Boundaries remind us that we are responsible TO others, not FOR others.
  3. When we take care of ourselves, we ultimately take care of others. Rescuing people from the natural consequences of their behavior weakens them. Saying no may risk disappointing another, but in the long run it helps them make necessary changes to improve their life.
  4. Boundaries are not an excuse. Boundaries used as an excuse to take the easy road are not boundaries at all – they are excuses. Boundaries are firm but not rigid. It takes bravery to set clear boundaries, not brutality.
  5. All life, to be sustainable, requires boundaries. I grew up in an age when you had a phone on your office desk that was wired into the wall. When you were done work you went home. The boundary between work and home was clear. Then we were promised that computers would simplify this. Now in a 24/7 world, establishing boundaries has never been more of a challenge. But without boundaries you have no clear priorities or focus. Everything is important and nothing is important. We all need boundaried time for uninterrupted, focused work or play that requires our full attention to what matters.

How To Find Security In A World Filled With Uncertainty

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“Circumstances do not determine a person; they reveal a person”

Reality has always been filled with uncertainty, but I’ve never had more uncertainty in my life than now. Here are just a few of the questions that have been on my mind recently:
• Will we ever get back to relating comfortably with each other again?
• Will my daughter be able to come home for Christmas? When will I see my grandkids (who live in the US) again?
• What if I unknowingly pass Covid on to someone else? If I contract Covid, what impact will it have on me? How about on my family?
• What will the impact of zoom meetings and remote working conditions have on my business long term?
• Will this pandemic ever actually be “over?” And what will the new reality look like? And how will we even know it is “over?”
With my sensitive nervous system and propensity toward worry, I struggle to find strength and peace of mind. Here are seven ways I have found security and inner well-being in the midst of the uncertainty:
1. Separate Security From Safety. Safety is a condition of being protected from harm in order to achieve an acceptable standard of risk. Safety comes from your environment. In its simplest terms, your workplace or relationship is either physically safe or it is physically unsafe. Psychologically, it is either safe for interpersonal risk-taking or it isn’t safe. Security, on the other hand, is a state of confidence that arises from one’s capacity to face the demands of reality. Security comes from within. “Security,” Helen Keller said once, “is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” It is the organization’s responsibility to ensure a safe work environment, but it is an employee’s job to be secure within that environment. The best companies create loyalty through great leadership and culture, not through the illusion of job security. Job security comes from one’s employability, one’s capacity to be employed. Like an employer, it is the responsibility of our public health system to create a safe society. However, the path of security, in the world of a pandemic, is to take responsibility for our own health and well-being – so we’ll have the strongest immune system possible. No one else is going to do that for us.
2. Become Stronger. My father used to say to me, “Don’t pray for life to get easier. Pray, instead, for you to get stronger.” To quote American author, Van Jones, “I don’t want you to be safe, ideologically. I don’t want you to be safe, emotionally. I want you to be strong. That’s different. I’m not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity. I’m not going to take all the weights out of the gym; that’s the whole point of the gym. This is the gym.” I find it strengthening to regularly workout on the weights and hit the bag. While sustaining and growing physical strength is helpful, what it does to strengthen my mind is even better. You get stronger by doing something difficult. What are you doing every day that’s hard, but you do it anyway? We’ve all heard that self-care is important. But self-care usually isn’t comfortable or easy or painless. Self-care is what you don’t want to do but you know you need to do because of how you feel after you do it. Becoming stronger can be as simple as making your bed every morning. Strength is not about velocity; it’s about direction. What direction are you headed?
3. Build Community. Through this pandemic, I’ve never felt more isolated, and I’ve never felt more connected. We are all in this together. No one is unscathed from the impact of COVID-19. Every day I reach out and deepen my relationship with my community – my handful of trusted confidants. Not only am I using this time to get stronger physically and mentally, I’m using this time to strengthen my relationships with the important people in my life. Every day I share something with someone about my fears, my doubts, my insecurities, and my dreams. I talk about my losses and my grief, my anxiety and my worry, my vision and my intentions. It doesn’t need to go on Facebook, but it does need to be shared with the people who matter most. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
4. Replace Optimism With A Firm Resolve. Admiral Jim Stockdale, who Jim Collins referred to in his classic book, Good To Great, was held captive in a prison camp in Vietnam for seven years. When asked how he did not allow his oppressive circumstances to beat him down, he talked about facing the honest truth of one’s situation. “You have to understand, it was never depressing. Because despite all those circumstances, I never ever wavered in my absolute faith that not only would I prevail – get out of this – but I would also prevail by turning it into the defining event of my life that would make me a stronger and better person…” He also commented on who didn’t make it out of those circumstances: “It was the optimists. They were the ones who always said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ Christmas would come and it would go. And there would be another Christmas. And they died of a broken heart…. You must never, ever, ever confuse the need for absolute, unwavering faith that you can prevail despite those constraints, with the need for the discipline to begin by confronting the brutal facts, whatever they are. We’re not getting out of here by Christmas.” There’s no end in sight to the pandemic and we don’t even know what the end will look like. What we do know is that strength lies in staying present in the present moment and power comes from a firm resolve we will get through this and will be better for it. “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so to all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
5. Choose Service over Self-Interest. In my book, Caring Is Everything: Getting To The Heart of Humanity, Leadership, and Life, I discuss the value of expressing our innate generosity as an antidote to most of what ails us. At times, caring happens as a reflex. It isn’t something we think about or “try” to do. It’s the instinctive response of an open heart. Someone slips, our arm goes out. The car in front of us is in an accident and we stop to help. A colleague feels down, and we buy them a cup of coffee. It all seems natural and appropriate. Through caring naturally for one another, we can glimpse an essential quality of our being. We may be sitting alone, lost in self-pity, feeling sorry for ourselves, when the phone rings with a call from a friend who is really depressed. Instinctively, we come out of ourselves and are there for another. It doesn’t matter what is said, but when a little comfort is shared, we hang up and feel a little more content with ourselves. We’re reminded of who we really are and what we can offer one another.
6. Practice Gratitude. In The Hiding Place, Corrie Ten Boom tells of her involvement in the Dutch resistance during World War II, and how she managed to survive Hitler’s concentration camps and afterward travel the world as a public speaker. “Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives, is the perfect preparation for the future only He can see.” The practice of gratitude carried her through the years of torture and the death of her family members. At one point, she even practiced gratitude for the fleas, for they were a part of “all circumstances.” She was a courageous woman who brought to life the precious perspective of seeking the gift in everything. I’ve learned to always make your gratitude bigger than your circumstances. Here’s a quick exercise to try that proves that gratitude can change your outlook. Pick any person you know and ask yourself, what do I appreciate about this person? Try to write down at least ten things. Now observe how your attitude toward that person has shifted. You can even take it a step further and let the person know what’s on your list. Gratitude changes everything. What you appreciate appreciates. Gratitude is like a muscle. Just as it is strengthening, so it has to also be strengthened. It has to be practiced.
7. Find Strength From Within. Whether you call it faith or inner well-being, security ultimately must come from within. I’ve learned this in my work with addictions for the past two decades. To get well, drug addicts and alcoholics have to find some kind of strength beyond their own capacity. They have to come to grips with the brutal facts that there is no security outside of themselves. Alcohol won’t do it. Drugs won’t do it. Food won’t do it. Order and control won’t do it. Fame and money and notoriety won’t do it. Security is an inside job. There is simply not enough stuff in the world to fill the emptiness inside of us. It’s an inside job. William Stafford’s journey with words began most mornings before sunrise. This simple poem, “The Way It Is,” written 26 days before he passed, expresses brilliantly what it means to find an inner place of calm and steadiness in the midst of the vicissitudes of life.

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

Uncertainty is integral to life. Without uncertainty there would be no room for new possibility. In our willingness to accept uncertainty, solutions will spontaneously emerge out of the problem, out of the confusion, disorder, and chaos. The more uncertain things seem to be, the more secure you can feel, because accepting uncertainty is the path to freedom. In the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from knowing, from the prison of past conditioning. Through the willingness to step wholeheartedly and fully into the unknown, we step into the field of possibility. When we discover both inner well-being and wisdom amid the uncertainty, we find security.

HOW TO RECOVER THE HUMAN ELEMENT

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The students of a Hasidic rabbi approached their spiritual leader with a complaint about the prevalence of evil in the world. Intent upon driving out the forces of darkness, they requested the rabbi to counsel them. The rabbi suggested they take brooms and attempt to sweep the darkness from a cellar. The bewildered disciples applied themselves to sweeping out the darkness, but to no avail. The rabbi then advised them to take sticks and beat vigorously at the dark to drive out the evil. When this also failed, he counseled them to go down again in the cellar, and to protest violently against the darkness. When this failed too, he counseled his followers to meet the challenge of darkness by lighting a lamp.
Here are four ways, we, as authentic leaders, can light a lamp in the darkness of the incivility, inhumanity, and disconnection that we may be experiencing during these trying times:
1)    Be diligent about self-care so you can care for others. Self care isn’t always comfortable. On the farm growing up, we had no central heating. It was my job to stoke the potbelly stove to heat the house in the morning. It was a ritual before starting my day. Just as stoking the fire takes some effort, if we are going to be a strong source of light in the world, I find the first hour of the day to be critical for stoking that light. My ritual, in the first hour of my day, includes meditation, reading inspirational literature, and walking with the dogs. To keep my lamp strong throughout the day, I pay careful attention to what I eat, how much rest and exercise I get, and how I connect with my community. These aren’t just habits of the body; they are habits of the heart. Bringing a strong lamp into the world starts with being good to myself.
2)    Be real. Yesterday I received a call from a friend I hadn’t heard from in months. “How are you?” she asked. I responded with my usual upbeat spiel about how we are adjusting to the new reality, getting our material online, learning how to use zoom and present live-streaming events, etc.
After a couple of minutes she asked, “How are you, really? We’re on the phone, so we don’t need our masks.” After a pause we both became emotional.
“I don’t miss the traveling and the airports and the hotels… But I miss the connections. This has been one of the most challenging years I have ever faced. My business is based on being face-to-face with people and is built on hugs and handshakes; creating an environment for human connection. It’s what makes my business thrive. My strength is human touch, and I miss not being able to express this fully. We are, after all, social creatures. Even us introverts long for the symphony and the concerts and the hockey games.”
If you can’t be real you can’t stay connected.
3)    Be still – and smile. In Vietnam, when the boat people left the country in small boats, they were often caught in rough seas or storms, and if people panicked, boats would sink. But if even one person aboard remained calm, lucid, knowing what to do and what not to do, they could help the occupants survive. By communicating, through face and voice, clarity and calmness that comes from trust in ourselves and in the resources available to us, we earn trust from others. One such person can save the lives of many. I know it is hard to show you are smiling when you are wearing a mask. I learned from a great photographer once that you can smile with your eyes. Try it. It’s a great way to connect.
4)    Be clear, focused, and committed to human values. Most of the world functions under the belief that business and people are separate, that business is all about KPIs and numbers and financial results. They don’t have to be. You can drive the bottom line by integrating the human experience into business processes. This pandemic has created an opportunity for all of us to slow down, get our bearings, and examine more carefully and more deeply, how we are living and how we are leading. It’s a time for self-reflection and careful investigation of what we mean by success. Don’t confuse wealth with money or success with meaning. To paraphrase the words of the great Zig Ziglar, money will buy you a house, but not a home; a companion but not a friend; a bed but not a good night’s sleep. Money will buy you sustenance, but it won’t buy you substance; it will buy you clothes, but it won’t buy you class; it will buy you a car, but it won’t buy you character; it will buy you information, but it won’t buy you wisdom.
If these ideas resonate with you and you want to step away from the tyranny of the urgent, renew your perspective on life and leadership, and join a community of like-minded leaders, we are hosting a masterclass in authentic leadership practice where participants heighten their leadership capacity in ways that will powerfully impact their lives. https://ally-stone-9892.mindmint.com/irvinestone
It is an experience that takes you deeply into the work of authentic leadership and offers you sustaining principles, insights, and practical tools for inspiring trust, engaging talent, embracing change, and ensuring accountability. Are you ready to take the journey? I hope you will join us for this exciting adventure.