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Episode Summary: 

Ian explains the importance of dreams, particularly ones indicating burnout. He notes that dramatic, vivid dreams are common when someone is on the verge of or already experiencing burnout.

• Learn how dreams might indicate weariness or burnout.
• Discover how taking a break, such as a vacation, can bring momentary relief but may not address the underlying issue.
• Understand the importance of identifying tasks that are actually significant and aligned with your goals.

About the Host: 

Ian Hawkins, host of "Sport Is Life," is dedicated to showing how sports can transform lives. With extensive experience as an athlete, a coach, PE teacher, community volunteer, and manager at Fox Sports, Ian brings a wealth of knowledge to the podcast. His journey began in his backyard, mentored by his older brother, and has since evolved into coaching elite athletes and business leaders. Ian's commitment to sports and personal development is evident in his roles as a performance coach and active community member. Through "Sport Is Life," Ian shares inspiring stories and valuable lessons to help listeners apply sports principles to all areas of life. 

Check Me Out On: 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ianhawkinscoaching    

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SportIsLife-IanHawkins  

Theme Music Artist: 

One Day Kings  https://www.instagram.com/onedaykings/  

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0:00

Why do you end up having dreams like that? Generally, what is happening is that you are at that place of exhaustion. It's actually what I've found is it's a symptom of burnout. If you're not at burnout, you're on your way there. I'm Ian Hawkins, and this is sport. Is life. The purpose of sport, as I see it, is to see your vision become a reality, find your voice, create strong connections and learn to trust your body.

0:42

You survivors, Have

0:54

you woken up after a maybe a restless night, or maybe you've slept really heavily, but you've had some pretty crazy out there dreams. Maybe you've woken up with a bit of fear or heart racing, or maybe, maybe it was funny, or maybe it gave you a great feeling of well being, of good feeling vibes and thinking about, wow, that was a really cool dream. I know I've had those dreams that have been really positive, then woken up being a bit disappointed, because, oh, what? That didn't actually happen. Now, your subconscious talks to you in many ways, and dreams is one of those ways. And if you take what you remember from your dream literally, then that's when you're going to create the the fear or the worry or or other feelings that aren't helpful, because dreams don't come through literally, and everything that comes through has a meaning as something for you to pay attention to, but if you're taking them literally, you're just going to get yourself confused. Now, why do you end up having dreams like that? Generally, what is happening is that you are at that place of exhaustion. It's actually what I found. It's a symptom of burnout. If you're not at burnout, you're on your way there. You're about to hit that point where the weariness takes over. Physically, you're going to keep pressing on. Mentally, you've got enough to keep going, and you will continue to do so, but there's just that that tiredness that's really hard to explain. It's exhausting, and that's burnout. And the dreams will ramp up when you're either about to hit like some serious burnout, or about to actually hit the wall, which might mean you getting sick, or you've just got to say to people, I can't do anymore. I need a break. I need a holiday. And sometimes you can have a you get sick, and you have a good rest, and you recharge, and then you just continue, continue to do what you're doing before. And it happens again. Maybe you have a holiday, maybe you have a longer holiday. It seems to keep you going, but really end up repeating the same pattern again and again. So what is it that you do about it? Well, how you break burnout is a much longer conversation, and that is something that I'll be continuing to talk about on this podcast and on my other channels. But basically, something I talk about a lot is you're running a pattern there that's continuing. You might find that you you get yourself in a place where you're feeling better about how things are going. I've actually got a bit of a map here and and it's it is something that I'll be talking more about, because it's something that I've lived myself. It's something that I've been able to overcome and change this pattern. It's often that the different stages of this cycle is something I'm coaching someone on, and it's something I want to share more of, because it doesn't have to be that way. So what tends up, tends to happen is when you're at that place of overwhelm and burnout, everything stalls, and so you just stop. And at that point, like I said, one of the things is crazy dreams. Then when everything stops, you feel like a failure. You become angry and frustrated. You might even feel down and depressed. And then you have that thought of, okay, well, I gotta get my shit together. I've got to get myself organized. So you start doing that. You start getting yourself into good habits. Things are going well, but then you start working hard again, and then you hit burnout. Now another thing that happens when you need burnout is your body will let you down, something I talked about in the previous episode just recently, and your body will just stop. You'll get sick, or you'll get injured, and you'll be forced to slow down. So let's turn our attention back to the dreams. What's really going on here? Now, I'm always a fan of like remembering the key parts of the dream, looking up. There's people. There's a lot of people doing really good work around dream interpretation, and they might give you a bit of a tip on what's going on. Yeah. Uh, but rather than getting too carried away with what the meaning is at this point, it's just having that focus that like the crazy dreams are starting to turn up. I'm probably overwhelmed. I've probably got a lot going on, and I'm about to reach burnout. So I always like to do this. Get yourself out a well, I have a separate notebook for this, so my Brain Dump Notebook. You could use your journal, or you could just use your other notebook or paper or whatever, but it's brain dumping everything that's going on at the moment, getting it all out of your head. And this takes a bit of discipline, and it takes a little bit of time, but it's totally worth it for what it's going to free up in you afterwards, you're going to find that the overwhelm starts to fade away, that you start getting clarity on what's most important, and you're able to get yourself back to that place where you Were not so long ago, back into good habits. It it's a shortcut, so you don't have to do that whole loop of feeling like a failure, of feeling angry and frustrated and down and and then have to go through the whole cycle again. Get everything out of your head. Look at what's most important. Look at what you're doing. Am I doing too much? Am I? Am I focusing on too many fires? Have I got too many things on? Do family members have too many things on? Am I tending to fires that aren't even mine? So this is a question of priorities. Have I got my priorities right? Have I got my focus in the right area? Am I building someone else's dreams, or am I focusing on my own improvement so that I can focus on what I want from life? If you look at that brain dump, and you look at all the things you've got on there, how many of them are yours? How many of the someone else's fires, someone else's priorities, and how many of them are things that you shouldn't be focusing time and energy on? There's a great book The one thing that talks about you can only really focus on one thing consciously at once. There are, of course, things in your life that you become automatic at, like the description was, you can stand at the window drinking a cup of coffee, looking out the window at a car driving past. So you're doing a couple of different things. You're observing, you're drinking that all happens automatically, but when you're focusing on something that actually takes logical thought as you go, and takes process. If you're trying to multitask, you're actually just doing a poor job of two things. And it's the same when you've got a lot on, you're trying to pull yourself in all these different directions, and you just get exhausted. That's when the dreams show up. That's when you start getting messages that are confusing. And like I said, I might, might do a bit more on Dream Interpretation another time, but for now, it's just recognizing it as a sign that you're overwhelmed. Get everything out of your head from everything you've brain dumped. What is the one, two or three maximum things from that list that you could be focusing on, and everything else, just leave the day to day. Stuff will take care of itself, because it's a necessity. Some of the other things will fall away because you realize you're not when you don't give them the energy, you know, give it the oxygen, the fire will burn out, or you realize it wasn't your fire to tend to, and you'll be able just to hone in your focus, recharge and get yourself back into those good habits much, much quicker. This is not just one solution that's going to solve everything, but it is a great habit to get into, to be able to be that circuit breaker in that loop you were running and get you back on track so you can focus on the other important elements to your own self improvement. I've been doing this personal growth work on myself for over 13 years now, and there are still more layers to go. This is not about I'm going to give you one solution, and everything's going to be fine. It's a it's looking at where you're up to and going, Okay, what do I need to pay attention to? Now, don't getting too caught in making it too serious, just doing it in a casual way. Okay, what do I need to do next, and then when the solution shows up, or the next thing shows up, of course, you're gonna have to dedicate some seriousness to those moments. But not so it consumes you, not so it's your all of your life, because that will lead to more of that overwhelm and burnout as well. Slow things down. Start with one thing at a time. Um, do this brain dump exercise when you're feeling overwhelmed, when you're feeling like those burnout symptoms are coming, and let me know how you go. I'd love to hear the results. And if you've done that and you've had some improvement, and you want to know what's next, let me know, and I can send you a message back, and also probably send it do an episode on here so everyone else can get that too as well. Speak to zoom. You've taken the time to listen to this whole episode. Now it's time to take action, commit to one thing you've learned today and make it happen, and to avoid any obstructions, join the sport is life movement by clicking on the link in the show notes you

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