Running on Empty

In today's episode of MaryLayo Talks, I’m with guest, Fola Oyeleye, to talk about his experience of burnout. We discuss what led to the burnout, what's changed to prevent it from happening again, and what helped to build up his spiritual life.

The conversation includes:

• What is burnout?
• What are the signs and symptoms of burnout?
• How many times have you experienced burnout?
• What activities caused your burnout?
• How did you get to a better place and recover from burnout?
• What do you do differently to help you from burning out again?
• What tips and advice would you give to someone who is experiencing burnout now?
• Bible verses for burnout.

Take a moment to delve into what may be 'beyond the smile' - listen in to the conversation.

Guest details:

Fola Oyeleye is a project manager, serves as a trustee and a consultant for charities and leads an online community group for Christians from various churches.

Guest's Instagram: Fola_Oyeleye

MaryLayo's spiritual wellbeing tip: Meditate on the bible scripture Philippians 4:6-7

Research links: The Burnout definition was from Mental Health UK

Related resources: Check out podcast Episode 8: Helping the Helpers & Episode 15: All Work, No Play also.

Connect with MaryLayo:

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For help in dealing with mental health related matters, please seek specialist advice and support if needed.

Welcome to Marylayo Talks, a podcast that discusses mental health and

spiritual wellbeing.

Before we jump in, there may be episodes that

are particularly sensitive to some listeners, and if that applies, then I hope you'll be

able to join me whenever you feel ready and able.

You.

Today's guest is someone I've known for many years, fola Oyeleye.

He experienced burnout some years ago.

Now, Follah is a trustee and church consultant

and also leads an online group that I'm involved in transforming community.

And I started off by asking Fola, what's burnout?

Thank you so much, Mary, for having me.

Some of the symptoms that anyone that has

experienced burnout or is experiencing it would have experienced includes that feeling

of feeling hopeless, that feeling of feeling as though there's no way out, that feeling of

tiredness.

And also perhaps you find yourself snapping on

people on matters which ordinarily you wouldn't have done so otherwise.

And so I find myself when I've bunt out in the past, somebody might ask me a question, the

answer I'll give them is a no, as opposed to a no. Because there was that sense in which I

just wasn't open to dialogue, open to conversation.

There's also a sense in which one might feel cynical about things, feeling as though

expecting the worst of situations, rather than being optimistic, maybe feeling lonely or

alone from people around you.

But in my case, the feelings or the symptoms

was physical tiredness, mental tiredness, mental exhaustion, just that sense in which I

was no longer interested in the activities I would normally be interested in.

And so those are the sort of physical symptoms that are all emotional symptoms that I

experienced with burnout.

Okay. How many times have you experienced burnout?

Is it once, or is there been more occasions?

So I would say it's been once, but recently there was a strong feeling of, am I

going to experience what I experienced, let's say four years ago?

Again, so four years ago, what did you have on your plate?

I was working as operations manager for my local church.

I was also pursuing a part time bachelor's degree in theology.

Now, the job normally is five days a week.

Now my study is one day a week, but to allow

me to do both, I was given a time off during the week to go to studies.

But as a way of making sure I still do the five days, I opted to serve on a Sunday as

well.

And so as part of the full time work, I was

also leading a live stream team on a Sunday as part of the Sunday service.

Outside of that, I was leading a discipleship group of about twelve to 16 people.

Yeah, these were the key activities I was involved in.

Okay, so it became a lot.

At what point did you actually start

experiencing the symptoms that you mentioned earlier?

Because I was in this constant routine of Monday to Friday, working out of that one

of those days I was studying.

And as you know, getting a degree is not just

about going to classes.

You need to also do the work or the coursework

or the essays that you give in.

And so my weekends, for example, my Saturdays,

I spent that sometimes in the library on a Thursday or Friday night.

That was when the discipleship group happened.

And of course on a Sunday, that's when I was

serving or leading the team that was doing the live stream.

And what brought her on the bra now was the fact that all these activities were piecing

themselves regularly and there was no outlet to take time off.

So even though I might take time off work, the time of work was spent in the library or

studying.

The repetitiveness of this activities just

meant that I wasn't having enough rest.

I wasn't cultivating the Christian habits of

praying, I wasn't cultivating the Christian habits of fasting, of reading the scriptures,

that sense in which getting a lot of inputs wasn't really there.

And on top of that as well, I think I was also going through mental health related

challenges.

I just felt helmed in mentally the way it

expressed itself was feeling tired all the time, not interested in a lot of things I was

doing, even though some of those things, I pioneered them, brought everything to a halt.

Okay, so when it came to a halt, what led to a change?

Yeah, so the group that I was leading, I noticed that the numbers dropped.

I just felt that the level of energy that I was bringing to the group was no longer there.

Even you as a leader, you feel like you're just going through the motions.

So the first thing that came to an end was the small group I was leading.

And in my mind I just thought, you know what, I'm going to pause this because I don't have

the energy to keep doing it.

Now the same time, also coincidentally up

until coincide with the same time in which I left that role with my local church.

Okay.

Now when I resigned from the role, my general desire to even volunteer with the

church kind of ended as well.

So I remember our senior minister then asking

me, are there any activities that you'd like to get involved in?

And my answer was no. Just thinking about the no. I didn't even give him a good reason for

the no. I just gave it as a flat no. No, I don't want to get involved in anything.

And that was just because internally I felt I'd given everything I could, not as the fault

of the church, but just personally I didn't manage myself and so I didn't get involved in

any activities with the local church.

So that was a second one.

Okay, so things dropped off.

In terms of activities you're involved in, how

did you or did you get to a better place in terms of how you felt getting interest back in

being involved in stuff? What did you do to get you to a better place?

The lack of activity actually helped.

Not doing anything was one of the best things

ever.

Find that in that period of not doing

anything, I started to have desires to do things again.

Okay.

The things I used to do, the desires came back.

I started to find that actually, there's so many things I really want to do that I used to

do again.

I set up a new small group.

And so that was one of the things that started as a result of just having that six to eight

months of not doing anything, I was able to hear my own voice in the period of I rest, I

was able to come to that place of feeling energized again, to move forward with things.

Given that you had that experience burnout, and then you started getting more

involved in other activities, did you put anything in place so that you wouldn't

experience that burnout again?

So in starting up a lot of those activities again, things just unraveled by

themselves, just because the activity wasn't as demanding.

And also my level of involvement wasn't necessarily the same as it used to be.

Okay, so let's fast forward to now, because I know you as very much as an ideas

person, and you're very driven and you're very ambitious.

So from then to now, things have grown in terms of activities that you're involved in.

So you now lead this online community group.

And I know that you got more of a leadership

role in your local church.

You've got your, let's call it your nine to

five job.

And I know you do consultancy at the side.

Is there anything else? Actually, you've got the trustee sorry, I'm

smiling cheekily at Follow because he's very quiet and I'm wondering why.

And you've got that trustee position for local charity.

Am I missing anything else?

You've said it all.

I wish the way you've said it is the way it

reflects on my time in the sense of you've said it very quickly, which I'm just hoping

that it translates into the way the time I spend on all those things actually happens.

Okay, so you've got those activities.

There's quite a lot there.

And I think it reflects what I mentioned

earlier about you being ambitious.

You've been quite driven, having ideas, being

very involved in activity.

So what did you learn from the first time

being going out that you implemented or have or started to implement up to now?

So compared to the first situation, and I've also reflect on this myself what has

changed from, let's say, four to five years ago and now?

I feel that the big change is one of the things I've learned, at least from that

initial experience, is the need for rest.

And so now I've implemented, at least I've put

this into my routine, regular periods of rest.

So on a Monday, for example, I go on this ten

K walk, and I do religiously, even though I have things staring at me on my to do list,

I'm like, no, you need to go on this walk because if you don't take this out, the things

that are staring at you, you can actually do them.

So that's one of the idea of resting for breaks and rest in my day to day routine.

And also feel that I've grown as a person.

Okay, compare my schedule now to the schedule

that I had four years ago.

I actually do a lot more compared to what I

did previously.

I mean, more positions of leadership than I

used to be back.

I've grown as an individual.

Okay, basically it's the walks that you've introduced and then also the fact that

you feel like you've grown as a person to be able to manage that mode of work.

Is there anything else that you've learned from before that you've introduced?

Not so much learning from that previous experience.

I think it's other things I've learned along the way.

I think that the rest aspect is something I've learned from before.

Yeah.

So some of the things I've had to implement,

which I've learned is the need to delegate.

And what that means is, say, for example, the

cleaning of a house.

I've had to ask someone to help with that,

especially you've got a cleanup.

In other words.

Yes, I have a cleaner now.

That's one aspect.

And then I've had to get a personal assistant, someone to help me with some of the things

that I have on my plate that others can do.

I remember once I had a physio appointment,

which I couldn't make.

I got them to call the physio to reschedule

that appointment.

Things, ideas that I've earned that I would

like to spend time researching.

So things like that, I've had to delegate it

to them to do the research for me.

Powering others to do things that is not

unique to me is something else that I've learned to implement into my daily routine.

And I'm learning also to say no, maybe not say no flat outs without an explanation.

Somebody might say, oh, let's hang out this week.

I would say, you know what, I really want to hang out, but I can't do that this week.

And so I might propose some other times in future to make it happen.

And so that I find that that's helping me, rather than trying to get everything done in

one week, I'm having to delay some things too much later.

And I know you mentioned this stuff about being ambitious and something a friend was

mentioned, he said, Follow up, just write your ideas down.

And so that's something I do now.

So I've got a software called Trailer, as well

as Microsoft Planner and so whenever I have new ideas, I tend to just write it down on

those.

Platforms, jot them down.

That's a good way of someone like you, who's

very driven, you've got ideas popping left, right and center, and it helps you, I guess,

to put those somewhere and maybe think about what you can do with those ideas and when to

move forward with those ideas.

Because, yeah, there's a quite a conflict in

terms of your nature in terms of ideas and wanting to run with it and being ambitious and

driven.

And then the practical side of things is

there's only so many hours in a day and there's only so much you can do.

And yeah, just being realistic about these kind of things.

One thing you haven't mentioned, though, is, I don't know, just leisure time.

And I'm not talking just about the walks, like spending time with people or sharing,

communicating with friends, because I'm just mindful of having that balanced life.

So not just being busy in all those activities and pursuing those activities, which is all

well and good, but also really spending quality time with people, people you love,

people that you like to be around, people that you can share and communicate what's going on.

So do you incorporate any of that, even to an extent?

I was wishing you never asked me that question, Mary, because now it's making me to

think that actually you don't have anything that you do socially.

Yeah. And I know you're a social bee.

That's one thing I know about you.

You're actually a social bee or an extrovert.

So it's like I'm just noticing as we're talking that, okay, very busy in one sense,

and you're putting in place things to create space and have that break.

But when it comes to socializing and just sharing or maybe even offloading, yeah.

It'S an interesting one because if you hadn't brought this up, it wouldn't have

occurred to me to actually realize I haven't done a lot of these things in a while.

Okay.

In terms of social activities, it's actually significantly decreased, actually.

So, as you said, the social be like to be around people.

My love language is quality time with people.

But one thing I've realized is I haven't done

it as much as I would like to.

And I think part of it is also because once

I've finished all my to do list, there isn't much energy left to pursue all that.

I'm not surprised.

I know, but so now that you mentioned it, I think I probably have to make sure it

comes back into things.

But that said, and this can sound very

selfish, so now if, let's say, for example, I want to go to the cinema, I don't even bother

to reach out to anyone to say, Would you like to go to the cinema?

So I just go by myself.

And one of the reasons why I do it by myself

is because I don't want to go through that process of no more trying to convince someone

to come along or reschedule another time because they can't do this, fine, I just do

it.

And even this recently, I went to Prague for

about a week.

That was just me part of this idea of resting,

bringing into place.

Now, I'm mindful that I haven't actually

answered any of your questions, but that social aspect, I would have to say it's taken

the backseat at the moment.

One of your skill sets has been very organized.

It's just interesting about how you've got a strength in terms of admin stuff and

organization.

And you've also got a strength, I would say,

in terms of being able to multitask because you've got a lot on your plate.

And so it's just interesting.

I'm very intrigued in terms of how you manage

that and you bring that balance.

For me, it's highlighted.

The social aspect has kind of dipped, but it's work in progress.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And it's interesting also that on Instagram for the transforming community, I

did a bio and I was boasting about how I had three barbecues last summer and how I intend

to pull up the same fit this summer.

And as I was typing that bio, I thought to

myself, have you been serious? Can you actually do this again this year?

I do recognize that need for recreation, and it's good that you actually brought it to my

memory now.

So thank you so much.

It's something I'll definitely look into, making sure I do more recreational activities.

But yes, I think the social life has kind of dipped, as you said.

I guess mentally, because you are like even that example you've just given about

having or hosted three barbecues last year, wanting to do the same this year, that's that

ambitious side of you that can very easily contrast.

So is there anything mentally that you I know you mentioned about putting ideas down.

Is there anything that you do to almost, like, remind yourself that follow up, there you go

again.

Is this right?

Is there anything that you do to almost like retrain yourself, your mind, your thinking,

just to get you to have that reality check?

Yeah. So prayer is something I'm prioritizing more now than before, to allow

myself to align myself with God's purposes and also making sure I do the right thing.

And I guess does that feed into when opportunities or ideas that you have come and

say no? Or is that what kind of backs up that

response?

So there's an aspect of prayer that allows me to know what I should be doing.

Okay, so that's one aspect.

And there's the other aspect of prayer as

well, which allows me, surprisingly, to not be anxious when things are not done.

Okay.

There's this famous text that says, do not be anxious for anything.

But with prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, make your needs to God and when

things are not done, I remind myself that I'm not the one in control, or at least life

doesn't depend on me.

So that anxiety of, oh, I've not been able to

do everything on my to do list comes off me because I know everything doesn't necessarily

depend on me doing everything, if you see what I mean.

Two ways in which prayers featured.

So knowing what to do, but also taking it with

an anxiety of, if I don't do this, it's not the end of the world.

God is still in control.

Before I was born, life moved on as it was.

Long after I've gone, life was to continue to move on.

And so let's just let God be in control.

So, yeah, prayer has been one of the practical

things I've started to do more often.

The other one is also practicing stillness,

which feels very similar to prayer.

But this time around, I'm actually not saying

anything and is actually just to sit down sometimes with a cup of tea or cup of water

and just sit and not do anything, just be still.

And how long do you do that for?

So it's meant to be like on the Nova circumstance.

I'm being ambitious, but this ambition hasn't actually materialized.

Right?

But when I've done it recently, it could be like 15 minutes.

But I find that even in that 15 minutes, so many things are flooding my mind to, oh, I

need to do this, I need to do that.

But that's something I'm practicing more where

I try.

I use the word try.

Not because I do it regular the league, but try not to hold on to any mobile device at

that time and just sit still.

There's a text in the Book of Psalms that

talks about be still and know that I am God.

And in other traditions, people might call it

meditation, they might call it mindfulness, but I would just call it being steal, just not

doing anything.

And that is helping me to just be on track

when it comes to some of the things that we've talked about.

So if you could give yourself advice, or if you could give advice to someone

who's experiencing burnout now, what are the key things, and I know you've kind of

highlighted them along the way, what are the key things that you would emphasize?

Rest is probably one of them.

So rest can involve sleep.

Rest can involve being still.

As I mentioned, rest can involve not doing

anything.

Yeah.

And it's interesting that you've asked me this question because I remember once I asked you,

mary, can you please do this? Can you please do that?

And in my mind, I was like, oh, Mary boy, you're free.

You've got all this free slots.

Put something else in.

And I remember your response to me was, just because I'm free, doesn't mean, I guess the

mind is not necessarily not thinking about things or it's not processing things outside

of those active moments.

At least that's the way I paraphrased what you

said.

I can't remember exactly what you said, but

that's the interpretation of what you gave to me.

And I also got the sense in which you said back to me that just because I haven't got a

fixed activity, it doesn't mean I have to fill it up with an activity that sounds like me.

Ever since that conversation, it's made me to also reflect just because there's a free slot

here doesn't mean we need.

To fill it up.

Yeah, just be and so if there's one advice is rest.

And of course, rest takes different forms.

Rest could be sleeping.

Rest can be being still.

Rest could be not doing anything.

Rest could be just going for a walk.

But rest is important.

If I think about a soil, if it's not cultivated, if you just leave the ground by

itself, you find that after some time things will start to grow in it.

And sometimes that's what rest does to us.

That when we don't do anything and we just

relax in, things naturally have a way of coming to life as a result of that time.

So if there's one thing that would be one thing that I would recommend.

Rest is important.

It's very key.

Well, follow.

Thank you for the tips and the advice and

sharing your story.

And to those of you who are listening, I hope

there's something that you've also been able to take away.

Do keep well.

And thank you for joining me on Marylayo

Talks.

Here�s a spiritual wellness tip that you can meditate on.

One of the scriptures Fola mentioned was Philippians, chapter four, verses six to

seven.

And it reads, don't worry about anything.

Instead, pray about everything.

Tell God what you need and thank him for all

he has done.

Then you will experience God's peace, which

exceeds anything we can understand here.

Peace will guard your hearts and minds as you

live in Christ Jesus.

Thank you for listening.

Do follow and join me again next time on Marylayo Talks beyond the Smile.