Unstressable with Katie Maycock - Reclaim Your Passion by Overcoming Burnout

32:26I'm getting quite frustrated in this conversation. Let's figure out what's frustrating me in this conversation and go down that way. Then you can kind of have a constructive conversation, if that makes sense. Yeah, I was writing about that yesterday, believe it or not, you know, in my very mathematical way. If your response is disproportionate to the event that triggers it, then your response is a response to the event plus your trauma. Yes. Okay, so there is, you know, if I tell you, hey, long hair suits you, and you respond in a way that is like, don't judge me by my hair. It's not because I said long hair suits you.

33:01It's because you have a trauma somewhere that, you know, you don't want to be judged by your appearance, right? And it's quite interesting. If you become aware of this, you would take the opportunity when your emotions are heightened to immediately tell yourself, hold on, what's triggering this? It's not like he really kicked me in the eye. He didn't do that. I don't need to attack him that much or I don't need to attack her that much. I think my biggest teacher on the topic, you can have a bite of cake now, is my daughter. For a very long time, actually. maybe until her mid-20s, was convinced somehow that I don't want her to express her emotions.

33:45And then we went through a very interesting hypnotherapy of some sort. And it was a moment when she was five or six, where if I remember correctly, we were driving and then an insect flew into the car. And so I stopped the car on the side. And then I captured the insect in a tissue paper, right? And just because I'm an annoying man, really, I am. I don't know why I did this. I did a practical joke. And I said, baby, it's okay. It's just an insect. And then I took another tissue paper and pretended to eat it. Okay. And I exploded crying. Okay. And so I attempted to explain. And I kept saying, baby, it's okay.

34:31I swear it's in the other one. This was just a joke this was just a joke you know there's no need for you to cry and she took at that age there is no need for you to cry as literal as as no inside her and when she explained that to me after that session i was blown away because inside her as a child she felt that there was a reason to cry there was a very big reason to cry but that daddy is saying don't cry and so they are not matching right and and somehow you know you you would start to get that feeling that daddy doesn't want to know what you're feeling right and i of course you know not not to take the blame off me of course i'm a very busy business executive my whole life i don't have time for emotions i want logic i want things to progress and so on so i didn't always give this space but our our relationship got so much closer i always loved her more than life itself but it but you you can easily visibly see how much closer we became since I said, hold on, no, no, no.

35:36I want to hear everything. Right. And the more she shares her emotions with me, the more, the closer we get. And, you know, the less any tension in the relationship at all happens. You know what I mean? No, absolutely. And I think that's something that, you know, a lot of people have got to understand. And I remember, you know, this is when we come back to the belief systems, right? We create our belief systems at a really young age and it can be really little things like parents create our beliefs, teachers create our beliefs, community, society, you know, social media now, unfortunately, but that is what it is.

36:10And we create these beliefs. And if we can hear one thing when we're really little and we take it literal because kids are literal. I'm somehow still literal myself. Did I ever grow up? No. And we take that and then we personify that into the rest of our life. Like dad doesn't want to see my emotions. That's just one little thing. And that's how easy it can be to create a belief from one thing. And you can tell your parent that as an adult and they go, oh, that's not what I meant though. It's like when I was five, I've been doing this for 30 odd years. So I think, and there's something whenever I, whenever I get really angry, because I don't get angry.

36:50And if I am really angry, it's like something's really like pissed me off and I have to break it down. And usually it's because I've brought some baggage in. I'm like, oh, no, I'm bringing baggage in. And that's what I say to Wolverine. I'm like, oh, no, sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm bringing some baggage in. That's not fair. Let me leave that at the door and let's have the conversation of what's actually happening. And I think a lot of people just don't recognize that. And I think that is something that I wish people just would be able to have that ability to take a step back, start listening to the words that they're saying and kind of go, where did that come from?

37:24I'm like, why do I think like that? Like, where's that? Rather than just sort of doing what I would do is just be dismissive. Like, I don't have to deal with that. I know what I know. It is my truth. And, you know, you have to look with it. You know, I always talk about that I'm queen of compartmentalization. And I'm still good at it. But what I would do is I'd compartmentalize anything that I didn't want to deal with. Yeah. And put it somewhere. I'm like, I don't want to deal with that. So I don't know where you're going to go. Where's the attic? Where's the attic? Yeah, yeah. You stay there.

37:50So I would do that. And then what I learned was, you know, over, it could be months, it could be years, I would explode. Yeah. I would explode. And that was a big reason on my burnout as well. I didn't deal with things. That's so important. Yeah. And I think a lot of people do that or they discredit how big those things are. That was something that I also used to do. And a lot of my clients do that. Something really big would have happened. And maybe at that time I didn't get the response of like, that was a really big thing that happened. So I'd be like, okay, it wasn't a big thing. so don't don't talk about it you don't need to let anyone know so i'd file it away but it was obviously really important to me and i just was like put it to the side good and bad things i would do that with yeah i i had a very unusual experience a few mid last year i started to get a very strange infection in my gum in a tooth that i had treated with root canal like 15 years before and uh i go to the dentist and it was a very big thing and it was endless pain like i had three weeks of endless pain.

38:51I couldn't sleep. And eventually, this incredible dentist finds a way to reopen the root canal, which is a very sensitive thing to do, and clean it. And then eventually, he tells me, do you know why all of that happened? And I said, no, why? And he said, because there was a tiny cotton that was left in that root canal, but you keep that tiny cotton for 15 years, right and all hell breaks loose right so so those little things they could be tiny really you know don't make any difference but if you leave them over time they just build up until you explode and you know when you talk about burnout you say it's the prolonged presence of stress i also say it's the repetitive presence of stress so alice would would write about that in the book the idea that it's just your wake-up alarm.

39:42If it's annoying and too loud and it jolts you out of bed every morning and you keep doing that every morning, every morning, it's a tiny bit of stress. On its own, if life was amazing and after that alarm you went and sat on a beach and it was a beautiful island and you were surrounded by amazing lovers that really treated you like a king or a queen or whatever, and pineapples, that's always part of that image, then the alarm wouldn't be a problem but you add that alarm to the commute to the this to the that and then you know it just blows up well it's the all the i would say more often than not people burn out because of all the little things over time right yes there can be those big things right it's always the little things right but i would say the real true like we've you know we can talk about carer burnout we can talk about parent burnout which is obviously that is can be big things right like being a carer for somebody that's you know in their final stages of life Most people that go through that, they're going to be burnt out.

40:43But we're talking when I, the people that I work with, there's no, we can't look back at one pivotal moment in time where they're like, it was that stress that caused me to burn out. It's the beliefs that they've created, the behaviors that they've then created from those beliefs, their actions that they started doing, the outcomes that they're working towards. and it's just this consistent thing that they've either, it's all the little things that they do so that, you know, not getting as much sleep, okay, that's, you know, I didn't get as much sleep tonight but that's okay. You know, I overworked out at the gym or didn't work out at all or I didn't see my family and it's all these little things that then change your behaviour which then is going to change how you perceive the world which is then going to change the outcome which is going to have such a profound impact on your physical wellbeing, right?

41:27Stress is, I mean, I would say stress, the best way to understand if you're not coping well with stress is just physically look how you're doing. Go inwards. That's the first sign. That's a very clear first sign. That's a clear first sign. But I think what happens is, what do we do when we don't feel well? We go to the doctors, right? Just diagnose me with something. It's not my problem. I'm not doing anything wrong. Just fix me. Yeah, give me some meds. You know, make me feel better. and if you the doctors can do that they can give you antibiotics they can give you medicine whatever they think might help you or what they you think might help you you know you do you kind of thing but if you don't deal with the root cause which is that stress you're never going to physically get better so your physical health issues will just progressively get worse and worse and worse and you'll get more and more vague health issues and this is what we're seeing so I actually started my career as a nutritionist and I ended up being a gut health specialist because every I would say 80%, maybe 85 % of my clients that came to see me had gut health issues.

42:28Yeah. So IBS, allergies, intolerances, that was my life. Like I had all those gut health issues too. And emphasizing my business is called Get Your Shit Together, literally and figuratively.

42:41But, you know, it was always, it was one of those things, you know, you think about your gut, you think about, not everyone who burns out has gut health issues, but that was just something that I was seeing at the time. And when I was speaking to these people, they were like, you know, I just got IBS, it's all this. And when you look at what IBS is, it's doctors going, I actually don't know what's wrong with you, so I'm just going to diagnose you with irritable bowel syndrome, right? Yeah. And one of the medications that they give you to solve, to solve, to, you know, help you treat. There we go.

43:07Thank you for the word. Treat IBS is anti-anxiety medication. No way. Yeah. I didn't even know that. So, but if you look at, so many people like how, but I always look at like, well, why? Like, what's happening with your gut? Now, it was really embarrassing. Like, I burnt out twice. and I had a double degree in nutrition and physiology. So I actually technically should have known what was going on, but I still ignored it. But I think a lot of people forget that. But when I was looking at these gut health issues that people were having, like allergies and tolerances, like people having Crohn's disease, like more than we've ever seen, ulcerative colitis, all these health issues.

43:42And like, you know, you go back 15 years ago, that's when we started seeing people going like, oh, I can't eat wheat, I can't eat dairy, I can't, I have all these allergies and tolerances, whatever it is. And when you look at stress and what it does just solely to the gut, like we can look at immunity and inflammation as well. But if we look solely just what it does to the gut, if you are constantly under stress, your body is going to go, you know, we've got the fight or flight response, which is an automatic physiological response to a perceived threat or to a perceived stress. Your body is going to go, well, I'm going to dictate what's important, what's not important.

44:14Digesting food isn't overly that important right now. And, you know, it takes a lot of blood flow to digest food. So I'm going to actually need that blood flow to my arms, my legs, my brain, so I can keep functioning. And so if you're not digesting food properly, what do you think is going to happen? IBS, allergies, all of these, you know, gut health issues. So when people talk about the gut-brain axis, like there's a massive conversation to have around that. And that's just gut health. So that's how I got into doing what I'm doing, was just solely working with people with their guts and realizing stress is pretty much the number one thing that you all have in common.

44:49That's very true, actually. It's so true. It is so true that, so Alice, when she writes about this, she basically says, you would not try to digest your food if you were about to become food, right? So originally the whole stress response is basically a tiger is attacking you, right? Yes. So, you know, if you're about to become a steak, you don't digest your steak. It's as simple as that, right? And so what ends up happening, of course, if you do that for the fight or flight response, the original design of the fight or flight response is it was going to be 10 minutes and then you're either food or you lived.

45:23Yeah. And then you calm down, you look at animals and how they behave. After that, a gazelle will shake its body and then move on as if nothing has happened. Right. We don't do that. We don't do that. Yeah. We stay stressed for weeks on end, months on end. Years on end. Years on end. And, you know, going back to how this, I'm not going to turn around. um then what happens so you know we've we're living like this for a long period of time we normalize these health issues as well right yeah we accept them yeah we accept them we normalize them and then what happens is they start getting worse and then we keep going to the doctor find you know find out these reasons and then what do we do well i'm stressed out because i don't feel well not actually oh i don't feel well because i'm stressed but it it feeds on itself it feeds on itself and so people are you know i say that there's six stages to burnout and you know fourth stages, what I call illness and anxiety, because they seem to go together, you're at stage four.

46:17There's three stages before you got to that. What are they? The sixth stage? The first stage is excitement. So normally what happens with the excitement stage is, let's say you've got a new job or you've started a new project or something really good is happening. You get really, really excited. So you are working really well. You're working really well under the pressure performance curve. You're able to work those long hours. You're probably putting in some more hours there. But the biggest change in that area is probably your behaviors and your habits. So maybe you're not getting as much sleep as you were.

46:46Maybe you're missing out on exercise. Maybe you're not eating as healthy as you were. You're creating new habits that are unsustainable, but you don't realize because you've tied working like that and success because you're probably getting positive reinforcement, recognition, all that kind of stuff. So then you kind of go to the second phase of burnout, which is you just have to work a little bit harder. So things aren't coming as easy to you. You're not thinking as clearly.

47:12Physically, you're just a bit tired. Emotionally, you're doing okay, but mentally, that's what's really happening. You're making a couple of really simple mistakes, tiny bit more forgetful, just not as focused as you might have been before. Hold on. Is that the result of you keeping? The bad habits. Well, I would say unsustainable habits, right? We can call them bad good, but I would just say the unsustainable habits. So what do you do? you have to mentally and physically put more effort in to get the same results that you were getting in stage one that again creates more unsustainable habits and so then you go into stage three which is frustration because now what's happening is your performance is now dipping because you can't maintain that level of work because it was unsustainable right so this is when people are starting to notice there's a bit of a change in you maybe you've gone from cool calm collected to being outwardly frustrated and aggressive or maybe you've gone from being really bubbly, really outgoing to being really withdrawn or a mixture of the mixture of the two, right?

48:11Physically, you're quite exhausted. Mentally, you're really struggling to just sort of make information make sense, if that makes sense. And so you've got that, you're putting all this pressure on, but you go, I have to get back to where I was at stage one instead of actually slowing down and recognizing, all right, obviously this isn't sustainable. I need to get a good night's sleep i need to get back into a good routine i need to you know cut my hours down at work to make this more sustained sustainable you do the opposite because you're trying to just be more successful and because your performance is dipped you're getting pressure whether it's from yourself if you run your own business pressure from maybe a manager whoever right and that's when you then get stage four which is the illness and anxiety part where your body's starting to go look I was tired before now I'm really exhausted like I'm exhausted now and your body's going to start giving you some information around like I'm not doing well whether it's gut health issues whether it's really vague health issues and I think it's the vague health issue so you can go to the doctor going I have all these issues and they go well I don't know what that is because there's no real there's nothing really I can see like I remember when I was going to the doctors when I was burnt out you know I wasn't digesting food at all they're like we don't really know why We can see you've got inflammation in your bowels.

49:27We don't know what it is. We can't tell you which disease you've got, but we can see something. But we're just going to tell you have a functioning bowel disease. I'm like, doesn't make sense, but okay. Then you might be like, you know, I was also getting cold sores every second week. They couldn't explain that to me. I was getting swollen joints. I was really struggling. And a lot of my clients get this. They get really vague health issues. For my women, their hormones can absolutely go out the window. So their periods become really different. They might have more painful periods. skipping periods that kind of stuff for my guys it's just they just not feeling great it can just be a general malaise right and then that's when the anxiety can kick in as well at this stage as well so there's a massive amount of research that's going into inflammation and when you're stressed out you have more inflammation talking about depression anxiety and all that kind of stuff yeah but also the fact that you're still want to go back to level one and now you're burdened by all of those yeah you know illnesses or physical symptoms yeah and then you've obviously you've got the outside pressures of maybe you're not performing well, all that kind of stuff.

50:26Then you get to the fifth stage, which is apathy. And that's the scary stage because you've probably gone from somebody that's extremely motivated, extremely driven, somebody that's very goal-orientated. I mean, these are the clients that I work with that, you know, nothing really stands in their way. And then now they just sort of wake up and go, I don't care. Yeah, I don't want this. I don't want this. And it's not because they don't care. And this is the hardest part to try and get across to people. It's not that you don't care. You do care. But we're talking about this apathy. You don't care about yourself.

50:55You don't care about your relationships. You don't care about your work. It's like a general apathy towards everything. But it's not because you don't care. You no longer have the capacity to care because your brain's going, I can't. I just can't. Like, we've cared about so much stuff. We've cared about your health. We've cared about trying to perform better. We've cared about trying to maintain these relationships. I'm tapped out. I can't keep doing this. And then you get to burnout, which is the accumulation of everything, right? You have that apathy. and what I find with people that get burnt out.

51:25So sort of apathy is the mental symptom and burnout is like the complete physical symptom. Physical, mental and emotional. It's all coupled together, like emotionally just, like I talk about the emotional side, like the depression, the anxiety, all that kind of stuff in there that can go with that. And, you know, you've got the mental side, which is you really just can't focus anymore. You can't concentrate. I always say, I always try to explain it like this. So I remember going to a meeting when I was extremely burnt out. And I remember sitting there across from somebody. I could see their mouth moving.

51:58I could hear the noises. But my brain couldn't turn it into anything meaningful. So I'm like, I have no idea what that person just said. I know you're saying something. I just, I just, it sounds like you're speaking a completely different language to me, even though I know you're speaking English. I can't make it out. And I walked out of that meeting just going. Running out of brain cycles, basically. I had nothing. I had nothing same with emails I'd get an email I'm like I get that all the time so no no seriously no seriously when people send me anything longer than four lines anything longer than four lines I immediately go like I don't have the capacity for that oh 100 % I would I remember getting one person asked me one thing I'm like I'm gonna delete that because I'm not gonna do that like it was one thing I'm like if I delete it it'll go away exactly and then come back and the next day I'm like nope delete it again exactly no I mean I mean, it's quite interesting actually, which is unfortunately not the nature of, so when people who have very complex difficulties send me something on Instagram or whatever, they will tend to send it to me in a four pages thing, right?

53:05But the minute it's a four pages thing, I can't do it. I don't have the brain capacity to do it. I don't have the seconds in the day to do it. And in my mind, I start to tell myself, look, if you answer this very long message, you have to understand it thoroughly otherwise you'd you know obviously it's a big topic uh you know you have to really get into it and if you'd really get into it you're going to skip answering 80 other people today which could actually benefit and so my immediate response is oh too long if i if i wait they'll send it again and then i'll ask them can you please make it shorter and then you know yeah yeah i think there's an element though with that i i from now for me personally i have to protect my brain capacity and i have to protect myself which is a limited resource right it's a limited resource right um so if any i'm like you even if i'm not burnt out if someone sends me like a really long email i'm like up here give me the basis of what they're trying to say no i would never do that but i think there is i that's a great idea i could post I could paste it in chat GPT and say summarize it.

54:16Summarize it. Give it to me in two sentences. Oh. I have done that before. I said I haven't, but I have. But it depends on what it is. But again, it comes down to if I don't want to, if I don't have the capacity to deal with it or it's not on my radar for that time being, I just, I can't. And I think that's something that we've got to, we have to protect our brain capacity. I feel like we forget that we're human. so this is gold those six stages i don't go through all of them i know i'm about to burn out for at least a month and a half before i burn out my the challenge with my life obviously is is that i plan a lot earlier like you know we're we're we're filming this in in february and i am fully booked believe it or not until june 20th that's crazy i say by june And you're going to be burnt out.

55:09Absolutely. And I know for a fact that, you know, the book is coming out April 29th and May 9th. And I know for a fact that those three weeks will be quite demanding. And I know that it's coming, but I have, I get pre-booked a very long time before. And so I know that I'm heading there, but I don't get into the anxiety and exhaustion bit. I don't get into - You skip it until you get to the end part. Yeah, because I actually am quite in control of my mental state. Yes. Right. So I keep working with my brain to understand that we're about. But yeah. But then, you know, eventually I end up in burnout, which is my physical stress taking over completely.

55:50You know, it's funny because on unstressable.com, we have this survey that tells you if your stress is emotional, physical, mental or spiritual. We call them the four areas. and you know when Alice does the the survey her results are you know the weakest part of her where she gets stressed most is mental she she thinks about things and that those thoughts would stress her I am like literally in totally in the green in all of them other than physical which literally flipped the tips so you know when when I did the survey back in November last year the physical stress bit all of the symptoms of physical stress was totally red everything's totally green like Like, I'm not mentally stressed about it.

56:31I know that I'm killing my body. But, you know, don't know how to stop it. Yeah, I think that, I mean, it's interesting. It's like you've got this absolute control of the emotional, the mental and the spiritual side. You've got that control because you've done so much work on it. But then the physical side. The thing is with stress, here's what I always say. Regardless if you perceive it as a good stress or a bad stress, right? Your body is not going to know that. 100%. So that's probably what's happening. because for you it's probably like this is all fun. This is great. I get to meet people.

57:01I get to launch a book. I get to do all these really exciting things. So for you, you're filling your cup emotionally, spiritually, and mentally because you're having all these amazing conversations. It doesn't matter though because your body is still like, yeah. It doesn't matter that we don't perceive it as good or bad. It is just what it is. And I think that is so crucial for a lot of people to understand. Obviously my body is like, yeah, we love this. This is amazing. but you haven't worked out for two weeks we haven't eaten anything proper for the last four days you know you're not really taking care of your sleep i need i need that shit man you know like my body will go like i say sleep is the great reset like it usually balances everything else out but if you don't do those things like i'm one of those people i get really excited so i like i can i can see i'm an excitable person so if i've got a project that i want to do I naturally will accidentally fall into not taking care of myself the one thing that I made a really big promise to myself at the last year could have been the last year or the year before I can't quite remember but I promised myself I would never sacrifice my sleep because my sleep was such a massive like I'm somebody that used to have insomnia so what's really interesting when you've had insomnia what you learn very quickly is you can function on very to little to no sleep and you can achieve really amazing things on little to no sleep so i took that and so when i don't sleep well because i do have moments where i don't sleep well sometimes but i said to like i remember to myself i'm like that's when my body will be screaming at me because of the sleep element because i'm pretty good with the diet i'm pretty good with the exercise the sleep has always been my my kryptonite yeah yeah it's interesting because you you you know for a fact that sleep, believe it or not, regardless of how energized you feel, don't be fooled.

58:56I used to sleep four to five hours a day for months on end in the exciting phase when I joined Google, the first time I joined Google. So I think joining Google back in early 2007 for me was the first opportunity I had to actually change the world. Like I really felt I was given superpower. And, you know, my part of Google was what we used to call the next 4 billion users, basically. So I was bringing information, knowledge. We were basically providing democracy of information to people all over the world that before that had nothing but a national censored TV station. And I was so driven and I would sleep four to five hours a day.

59:39I think for the first year and a half, I was sleeping four to five hours a day, fully energized, right? until I sat next to, I remember it was a flight from Dubai to Jeddah. I was spending probably like 14 hours in Jeddah and then flying again. And I wasn't hungry. You know, when you're on hyper alert, you're not hungry. And so I sit there next to an old guy who looks really grumpy, okay? He really looked grumpy. And then he, you know, the hostess is offering lunch. I say, no lunch for me, I'll have a coffee. And then she says, sure, brings me the coffee, brings him his starter then you know she's back with the main course do you want to eat any something i said no i'll have another coffee and then when it's dessert time for him i'm now getting my third coffee and he says one sentence in the entire two and a half hours or four or three hours trip he says this will make your heart stop that's it he didn't say anything else i swear and i'm until now i'm like he must have had a heart attack or something at a point in time because of stress and he's sort of giving me advice but doesn't want to talk too much because is grumpy right anyway i took that very seriously so i dropped which was what was 11 cups of coffee a day at that time i love coffee you guys know that yeah 11 cups of coffee a day i dropped to two and those two were before 10 a.m every day and for around three weeks i slept nine to ten hours a day right and suddenly you just realize that yeah you can rev your body but eventually it will break and by the way feeling energized doesn't mean you're doing the right thing no it's what i call um probably running on adrenaline adrenaline right like you're using adrenaline that's what you were doing essentially is that you were just tapping into the adrenaline the excitement and adrenaline isn't a limitless source right like you will and it has side effects that's why it's not a limitless source right it has massive side effects and i think constant fight or flight uh yeah even though you're perceiving the situation as a positive this is why like my favorite quote is perception is reality i'll never forget the person that told me where i was who told me that and it's stuck with me since i was like the first day that i went into recruitment um my old director of the company he sat me down and he goes katie perception is reality that's all you need to understand about sales so he was coming out from a sales standpoint but i looked at it as like no hold on that's deep that's just that's everything so whenever i'm having an argument with somebody i'm like their perception is completely different to mine what's that why how their reality is vastly different to mine yeah please help me understand your perception so i can understand your reality so i can that i have to do that um but i think that you know when we come to that point where you perceive you stress such positive you even ignore the negative side effects you're like oh i'm a bit tired or whatever or like i've got a bit of a cold whatever small tax to pay yeah yeah yeah or like for me it was like i've had the shingles four times whatever like so interesting i i used to get like six to seven times i would catch the flu every year that's crazy yeah i would go like yeah it's my immunity like you know or my my makeup or maybe because i'm i used to say i'm a warm weather creature and so because i'm traveling the west i'm yeah the excuses that we'll give ourselves i remember when um i was in australia obviously the accent we've obviously we've got that bit so that's when i burnt out the the first um the two times i burnt out is that is it possible at all for an australian to lose that accent try to speak like a brit um why sorry i was actually born in england so i got to get into it because my mom's british and my dad's welsh So I was actually born in the UK.

1:03:27Oh, you're going to make me just feel so embarrassed. That's all right. I can probably do a bit of a British accent. I can do one like this. It's not perfect. Do you know what? This is a funny story. So I lived in Vancouver for 18 months. Oh, I love Vancouver. Beautiful, beautiful place. But when I moved there, so what I didn't realize about the Americas is that they struggle to understand Aussies, Brits, and New Zealanders. Yeah. For very random reasons. One, we actually talk really fast, which I didn't understand until I moved to North America. But also, Aussies and Brits and New Zealanders don't pronounce R.

1:04:05Like we don't do like, so we will say water, not water. So when I moved to Vancouver, I was working in a sales job. Vancouver, not Vancouver. I was living there. and I was doing, I remember taking this, I was working at an Equinox gym, I was opening one of the Equinox gyms up there and I was taking this really fancy man around the gym doing my tour, doing my sales pitch. I get to the end of it, it's been an hour, an hour of this person just go, oh yep, cool, yep, that's great, like giving me the responses I thought were like positive and I sat down, I'm like, sorry, like, you know, these are the memberships, blah, blah, blah.

1:04:46I I'm sure what you've said is amazing. I didn't understand a word you said. Are you Greek? So in that moment, I had to like do this really weird Aussie American accent just so people understood me. I remember my mum came to visit. She's like, why do you have like a weird American twang? She's like, because my fiance is American. And I was like, well, no one in Vancouver understands me. So when I moved to the UK, I got to drop all of that and got to really get back to my Aussie roots. But they say that if you've lived in a country until you were 18, that's your accent. It's really hard to drop it.

1:05:25No. I mean, look at me. I have no accent at all. No. No.

1:05:31But that's what they say. I don't know if it's true. I don't know if it's true, but... Yeah, we love the Australian accent. We were talking about stress. Yes. I don't remember what we were talking about. I was in Australia. I do remember. So I remember going into the doctors. And so I was going to the doctors when I was burnt out. This is 10 years ago. Something that I find really interesting about burnout, though, it's not a new thing. It's been around since the 70s. A guy called Dr. Herbert Freudenberger, I just really like his name, he said, you know, he was going into these corporate companies, seeing these Taipei professionals who were getting sick, having heart attacks, but, like, at the age of 40 and 50.

1:06:10Like, what is going on? Why is this happening? And so he then talked about how burnout was this phenomenon that we're seeing. This is back in the 70s. This is 1974, 1976. He actually wrote a book about burnout back then. So this isn't a new thing. It just didn't become a – the World Health Organization didn't make it a diagnosable syndrome until 2019, like I said before. So 10 years ago, or maybe a bit over 10 years ago now, when I was going to the doctors and I had all these really vague health issues, like gut health issues, cold sores. Like I woke up one day and my left hand was three times the size of itself and I couldn't make a fist for six weeks.

1:06:48I'd be going into the doctors going, this is like my 10th visit. Like what's going on there? Just like really nonchalantly going, you know what? You're just a bit stressed. Just don't stress. And I'm like. Not going to believe that. I'm not going to believe. I'm here. I'm talking to a doctor. Yeah, it was one of those moments where I was like, and I'll never forget it because I was like, yeah, but I run on stress and I've never had a health issue before. But when I looked back, I'm like, yeah, you did. Like even in your teenage years, like I got the shingles the first time when I was 18. I'm like, yeah, you did.

1:07:25I just didn't know. I didn't really understand what was going on. But there was no. 80 some percent of all doctor visits that diagnose you something are caused by stress, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's massive. And the reason for that is it's because stress causes inflammation or it dysregulates your inflammatory system, right? And so if you're not having an appropriate inflammatory reaction, inflammation is at the center of every single disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, all related to inflammation. Joint pain, muscle pain. Absolutely. It's all inflammation. and so I would say majority of health issues that we see today is based on stress young and old but I think what's happened is is that as the years have progressed we're seeing people younger and younger getting sicker from stress which were previously not happening in previous generations and we're seeing a huge influx of it now we're seeing you know like I said gut health issues like all these crazy health issues and I think and that's what made me really want to get into doing like you know when I said get your shit together like six years ago when I set up get your shit together I was like I can't be the only one that has that's been young because we all hear about the 50 to 60 year olds oh they died of stress they had a heart attack because they were so stressed and you always the image that I had in my head it was these like you know 50 60 year old lawyers and doctors these really like important prevalent people and we'd put them on a pedestal and I'm sitting here like well I'm not like them because I'm only 24 and I'm just a recruitment consultant like I'm not some high-flying businessman I'm just trying to make a living in this world kind of thing and I was like I can't be the only person my age or if not a little bit older struggling with the same health issues and and I remember it really pivotally I was like 27 and I remember everyone always said stress is the number one killer and I think we've heard that before everyone's kind of heard that but it never really made any meaning there was no like it wasn't in my DNA at that stage it was just a knowledge I hadn't made it a part of me and I realized at 27 I couldn't walk up and downstairs my knees were swollen my hips were swollen my hand was swollen I had bloody colasors all over my face that made me look like Shreden Baratheon from Game of Thrones I you know I was having like the shingles all the time crazy flus crazy health issues and in that moment I remember sitting there thinking you know I'm 27 I say that my joints hurt because I'm old I don't know why I thought that but I did um I guess I felt old but I remember thinking to myself I'm like if I'm 27 and I'm dealing with all these health issues now and they're progressively getting worse they're not getting better they're progressively getting worse the only time they got better was when I would take six months where I couldn't work it wasn't because I didn't want to I couldn't work I physically couldn't do anything that was the only time I felt better physically I was like I can't live my life like that that's not the way the world works like we love to just lay on a beach all day and do nothing but my brain wouldn't let me do that nor is with society but I remember thinking to myself I'm like I'm gonna be dead by the time I'm 40 or I'm gonna have no quality of life by the age of 40 and I said and I think there's so many people living like that 100 and the problem is we yes stress can be valuable sometimes to produce the wrong result it's not the result we want we don't actually want to live a life where you know you're so successful but you're killing yourself and we never really stop to think about that yeah i think it's just we get taught what success is or we create a perception of what success looks like feels like you know what it means to us but at what cost Everything you do, there's a cost.

1:11:15So you've got to figure out what's worth it. And I remember in that moment, I'm like, it doesn't matter. Nothing is worth my health because what's the point of being successful, in quotation marks, without my health because I can't do anything? So what changes should people do? Okay, there's so much people need to do. I'm joking. The first thing that I would tell people to do, and I think the easiest place to start, and this is where I start with every single one of my clients because it's the tangibles because I've learned a very big lesson with working with the people I work. You have to give them tangibles.

1:11:50Make sure you don't sacrifice your sleep. If there's one thing that you want to walk away today to change, make sure you do sleep. Make sure you get enough sleep, good quality sleep, so seven to nine hours of sleep. That's going to physically, mentally, and emotionally just give you a bit of a reset. But that's not so straightforward, is it? It's not straightforward. so the dilemma with sleep because if you're anxious you can't get to sleep right i would in all honesty i know you said this was a high level um meditation but one thing that i found the most helpful thing for me to manage my insomnia all that was to meditate on my thoughts to clear your mind so i'm i i just recorded my bedtime stories finally people have been asking me for this for years right meditation for sleep basically i just recorded that last week and believe it or not so it's three sections the middle section is about relaxing your mind and relaxing your body and relaxing your mind is entirely around get those thoughts out yeah just put them on paper when they're on paper they're not in your mind anymore just go on yeah and it's and the other thing that i did with that and it's not an overnight fix but it is something that's extremely helpful when I started doing it I would have the same thoughts on repeat and that was really interesting to me I was like yeah yeah 90 % of my thoughts are the exact same thoughts right um and but that's what you have to do I always say like if you struggle to sleep create space for your thoughts so don't distract yourself throughout the whole day because that's what people are doing they're so stressed out they're so anxious that they distract themselves through the whole day they don't even realize they're doing it right I look at the coping mechanisms people have created it's usually to avoid to distract or what i call polishing a turd where they try to turn everything into a positive which that's really dangerous that's extremely dangerous and i think there's this whole i'm going to tangent i'll come back i promise if you're constantly polishing a turd let's say 95 of your world is on fire right what does the world tell you these days just be positive don't be negative focus on the positive don't focus on the negatives there's merit to that but if you can change the negatives and you're not focusing on the actions you can take to remove those negatives and you're just solely focusing on the positive, your world becomes so small that you feel bad if you're focusing on the negatives.

1:14:09You feel guilt focusing on the negatives. When you're actually, look at it like it's a problem to solve, not something to ignore. But what happens is if you, 95 % of your world is on fire, that means 5 % of your world is okay. But that's like looking, your house being on fire, looking outside your window going, well, at least my neighbor's house isn't on fire. that doesn't make any sense yeah you know get your shit together you know that that's how i sort of look at them and i think we've got to be focusing on that so like use your meditation to clear your mind focus on the things that you can work on solve problems all that kind of jazz so you can get those good night's sleeps try to i would say that meditation is really good in the morning and in the afternoon i actually use it as a way to finish off from work to give me that sort of cut like to cut the um you know my work days ended my downtime has now started so to get all the thoughts oh yeah yeah i find that really helpful to help you get a good night's sleep don't drink 11 cups of coffee as mo said limit it to two yeah two before 10 a.m two before 10 a.m decaf for the rest of the day decaf yep limit the amount of alcohol you have before you go to bed Yeah.

1:15:20That's massive. Massive. Massive. Can I ask you a question? Of course you can. Why do people say don't smoke and they don't say don't drink? Okay. I think smoking has more direct health reactions that we can see. So, like, you smoke, you get lung cancer, it's bad, you know, you can't breathe. You have all these, like, really long-term health issues. Drinking is a little bit different. Smoking has also gone from being a really popular thing to do in society to now it's a bit more taboo because people are less – they're smoking less, pardon me. Drinking, on the other hand, it's like very cultural.

1:15:57Like I grew up in Australia. I live in the UK now. It's a really cultural thing to do. I actually have seen in the last couple of years people drinking less though. Gen Z in general is drinking less. Yeah, the millennials and the Gen Z seem to be drinking less. But I think it's because it's culturally accepted. I think that's the only reason that makes it a bit different is that with normalized drinking, it's been a massive part of culture. Yeah. I mean, I don't judge anyone, but because I haven't, I never drank in my whole life. My dad gave me a glass of wine when I was 11. And that did the trick.

1:16:30You know, it was, it was, when I was Cairo, it was, it was August, red wine. I felt like shit. It was like, I never want that ever again in my life, right? So anyway, the thing is, I do occasionally smoke a cigar, like maybe once every two weeks or whatever, or whenever I feel like it really. And it's funny for me because I think you should have probably sort of the same level of only when you enjoy it and only when it's in moderation, right? Yeah. That I think should be the message. So because a lot of my clients that I have, a lot of them are like business owners, founders, CEOs, MDs, and a lot of them like, you know, I drink to help me take the edge off when I get home because it is a depressant so it does help.

1:17:20It does make you feel relaxed. Yeah. It's only the short-term goals, the long-term thing, the long-term problems is there. But one of the biggest things with the alcohol is the impact it has on sleep. Yeah. And I think there's this massive thing where a lot of people have associated, I feel stressed out, I have a glass of wine or I'll have a G &T or whatever it is. But yes, it'll make you feel relaxed in that moment, but it prevents you from having a good night's sleep, which is actually going to exacerbate anxiety the next day. So it's this really vicious cycle that happens. So one thing that I've actually said to all of my clients, whenever you start working with me, I'm always really conscious to say, the first thing that I really want you to focus on is you cannot drink if you're feeling anxious or stressed.

1:18:02We don't want to create that as a habit. We want to break that habit if that is your habit. But if you are feeling stressed or overwhelmed, you can't drink. Like that's just, you know, before I burnt out, I started doing that. Like I got really anxious when I was younger. Always been anxious, but whatever. Like I was a bit anxious and I remember just like, don't drink. And I've taken that through. So if one thing that you take out of this is if you use alcohol as a drug, don't. You know, find other ways to deal with it. So interesting because that also applies to smoking, believe it or not. So smoking is a drug.

1:18:37You know, it's one of the most frequently administered drugs for smokers because you get 24 of it a day or sometimes more. And, you know, one of the best advice I ever heard about quitting smoking is smoke. Just don't smoke any cigarettes you're not going to enjoy. Yeah. OK, so it's all about joy. If you're in a right place with the right people and you're right and you may have three of those a day, but it's not going to be 24. Most of the time when you're smoking, you're really standing outside in the cold weather, avoiding the rain, trying to pull that drug in as quickly as you can. And it's all about the context.

1:19:11If you're using it as a drug, it's not good for you. If you're using it for social connection or joy or whatever form, it works. Okay, keep going. So sleep. I sleep. So that's a massive one. So obviously the meditation piece, don't drink caffeine, all that kind of jazz, but really focus on getting seven to nine hours of good quality sleep. Like that's a focus. Don't stress about it, but do make that a priority if you've made something that's not a priority. I always say to people, at least do exercise 15 minutes, three times a week. Everyone that goes, oh, I'm too busy to exercise. I'm like, you have 15 minutes, three times a week.

1:19:48100%. You can do that. I always tell them if Metallica shows up in town and you're like Metallica, you're going to find two hours to go. Yeah, exactly. So I, you know, add minimum 15 minutes, three days or three times a week. The reason behind that, there is some science behind doing high interval training. So high intense interval training, 15 minutes, three times a week. It boosts, obviously exercise. We've all heard about endorphins. Well, like it makes us feel good. But endorphins also help lower cortisol. So cortisol is a stress hormone that's going to have these negative impacts on the body, right?

1:20:18So if you can just try and do some type of exercise that's going to help reduce that cortisol that has the negative impact on your physical well-being, you're putting yourself in a bit of a better standpoint. Then there's obviously eat healthy. I can't say as a nutritionist at my core, I can't tell you not to eat healthy. And the thing is when I say eat healthy, I think everyone knows. Trust me, when I was a nutritionist, people would come to me and tell me the most perfect diet that they're eating. But realistically, they weren't really doing that. Everyone knows what's healthy. So eating whole grain, like whole, you know, whole foods, all that kind of stuff.

1:20:52If you are really busy and you're like, I really struggle to do that. Just look at it as like four categories, right? Ask yourself, where's my vegetables coming from? Where's my fiber coming from? So vegetables, starchy foods, whole grains, all that kind of stuff. Where's that coming from? Where's a good quality protein coming from? Whether that's animal protein or plant protein, it doesn't matter. Where's your protein coming from? And where's your fat coming from? If you can put in all those meals, like good fats, not, you know, good fats being like omega-3s, so like avocados, avocados and omega-3, but avocados, like all the good fats, things like that, fish oils, whatever, pop that in your meal, you're doing a pretty good job as long as it's not overly processed or that kind of stuff.

1:21:33So they're the physical, tangible things that you can do, right? That's going to put your body in at least some kind of fighting position to make sure that you can manage your stress more effectively. because if you're exhausted and you're tired, you're not exercising, you're not sleeping, you're not eating well, you don't have the energy to manage your stress. And it takes energy to change your beliefs, change your habits, change your actions, change your behaviors, all of that around stress, right? But once you get the physical strength to do it, build up yourself mentally, right? Really spend some time thinking about how do I perceive stress?

1:22:08How do I react to stress? What are my beliefs around stress? And then write a list of everything that you have. Like write a list of every belief that you have, every behavior that you've got, and then put a little mark next to it saying it's limiting me as in it's holding you back, it's not actually making you better, or it's actually bringing you forward. And really look at it again. You're going to have things in there that you think is a positive when you actually, actually that could be a negative. Just be like, you know, call BS on yourself as well. But that would be some of the things that you've got to do.

1:22:39Changing your reaction to stress and changing your perception to stress doesn't happen overnight. It takes a long period of time and you have to work at it. But if you want to be successful for a prolonged period of time and you, without killing yourself, you have to put that at the forefront. You have to do that. You have to change your beliefs around stress, your perceptions, your behaviors, your actions, your habits all around that. And it takes time. Focus on one thing. Don't try and do it all at once as well. That's a massive thing. 100 % Just do one good thing That's going to help you manage your stress I actually get all my clients to do this I always get them to write down A list of anything that can take From 5 minutes to 60 minutes That they can do Every single day that brings them joy Releases, you know, makes them happy Reduces stress, whatever it is Have a list, put it next to your desk And pick one a day And pick one Even if it's 5 minutes It could be as simple as I'm just going to go sit outside with no noise, no children, and I'm enjoying my coffee, do that.

1:23:38Like it doesn't, it's not these big grand things that you can do. It's all the little things, like all the little things that cause you stress. So the little things that can bring, that can de-stress, that can increase happiness, that can increase joy. So it's, I think that the conclusion on this is that it is a choice. Yeah. It is a responsibility. It's a duty. It's something that we can do. I want to close with the most obvious part of this. We're both teaching stress and we both feel stressed, right? There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. What is important is where is your threshold? Where are the resources that you have to deal with that stress?

1:24:14And are you going to take charge? Because if you take charge, then stress turns into just pressure. And really, it is all about how much resources do I have as an individual to deal with the pressure that's applied to me? and if I don't have the resources, can I get the resources or limit the pressure? Yeah. And don't wait until you're in stage six because, hey, you know. Yeah, don't wait until you're falling so far into stress. Look at the resources. So ask yourself, do I have the energy? Do I have the time? Yeah. Skills, support, recognition of finances. How do people find you? So you can find me on LinkedIn.

1:24:54So Katie Maycock, that's the best place so far. I am stepping up my Instagram game. I've been pretty bad with Instagram, but I'm making it a commitment this year to get a bit better at it. So that's getyourshittogether.io. You can catch me if you are a person, like an individual, not a company. If you want some more information, go to getyourshittogether.io. That's the website. If you're a company, I had to be cheeky and I got the B2B side of my business is called GIST, which is the acronym of Get Your Shit Together, but gistwellbeing.com for some more for businesses. All right. All of you, get your shit together.

1:25:34Fine, Katie. And I'm really grateful that you joined me today. This was a wonderful conversation. Thank you for having me. I've enjoyed myself. I really did too. For all of you joining me today, I hope you found this useful. As I said, we're going to run a long mini series on stress with the publication of Unstressable. Pre-order the book for yourself and 20 other people that you love. Keep your pre-order receipts. Come join our webinar for those who pre-order on 28th of April. And yeah, go to unstressable.com to register your receipt and get your invitation, but also to see what we're doing with the membership of Unstressable.

1:26:17And take charge because your stress is not the result of the events that happen in your life. It's the way you deal with them and your responsibility to deal with them. I find this very, very useful today. I found it very useful that we spoke about burnout because burnout is that sneaky part of stress that we let into our life, like Katie said, because of our beliefs. It can change if you really decide to change it. If you liked this, share it with others. Watch it on YouTube if you were listening to it on your commute. Subscribe when you're there. YouTube this channel on YouTube is really growing more about that official and yeah recommend it to others rate it five stars if you are kind enough on your podcast player and come again next week we'll continue our conversation about stress and yeah take a little bit of time to slow down don't burn yourself out I love you all for listening and I will see you next time