There are a lot of people talking about burnout, but most of them are actually only teaching basic stress management strategies.  Today’s guest, Cait Donovan calls bulshit on most of what is being called burnout prevention and recovery.  A licensed acupuncturist and Chinese Medicine practitioner turned keynote speaker, author,  trauma informed burnout recovery coach and host of the wildly popular podcast, “Fried: The Burnout Podcast” has become a good friend over the past couple of years. 

I have so much respect for her no-BS approach, that blends personal experience and scientific inquiry, with a passion for addressing burnout on both individual and societal levels.  The reality is that burnout is not a character defect, nor it is a badge of honor. We live in a culture that puts all of us at risk for burnout and the women who listen to this podcast are at an even higher risk than most, for reasons that Cait and I will get into in this interview.   Here are a few of the highlights before we dig right in: 

1️⃣ Burnout prevention ≠ burnout recovery: Cait Donovan challenges the traditional notion of burnout prevention, arguing that it focuses too much on stress management practices. Instead, she emphasizes the importance of burnout recovery, which requires understanding and addressing individual factors that contribute to burnout.

2️⃣ Unique protection factors: Every individual has their own set of burnout protection factors. These factors could range from having a strong support system, regular vacations, engaging in hobbies, to even embracing change. Identifying and incorporating these factors into our lives is crucial in preventing burnout.

3️⃣ Burnout is not solely caused by workplace factors. Other aspects such as cultural, health, family history, and environmental factors can also contribute to burnout risk. By recognizing and addressing these underlying factors, we can mitigate burnout and improve our overall well-being.

Want to get more of Cait into your life?  Check out her podcast:

Fried: The Burnout Podcast: https://www.friedtheburnoutpodcast.com/

Here is a visual representation of what we discussed in this episode:

Cait Donovan’s A Holistic View of Burnout Framework https://bit.ly/3R9Bj3L 

Also mentioned by our guest in this episode:

• Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire for Adults: https://bit.ly/41a0zeS
• Burnout Research by Maslach & Leiter https://bit.ly/414LUSd
• Ruth Rathblott https://ruthrathblott.com/ (she’s our next guest interview) 
• Butcher Box subscription: https://www.butcherbox.com/

If you are ready to shift your business from doing what you’re used to doing to what is aligned with your purpose, my Boss Up Breakthrough framework is a great place to start.  We take a look at what is working and what no longer is, where you need to Boss Up your boundaries, your offers, your pricing, or your marketing strategy and start implementing the changes that move the needle.  

We will also make sure you are including self-care in your business plan so that you’re not just successful on the outside, but aligned with your values, and priorities on the inside, and have some burnout prevention factors built right into your business model.  

Want to know more?  Schedule a free consultation here: https://bit.ly/calendly-free-consultation

Not quite ready to work with me, but wonder what it would be like? Grab my private podcast,  “Show Up Like a Boss”.  It’s free, and you listen to it in the same podcast player where you hear this show.  It’s kind of like a backstage pass to working with me, includes 10 clips of me coaching actual clients and how to apply the strategies to your own business and life.  Check it out:  https://bit.ly/show-up-like-a-boss

Want to apply the insights from this episode to your own life?  Start here:

• Have you ever experienced burnout? If so, how did you know you were burnt out and what steps did you take to recover?
• Having someone who sees, knows, and accepts you is a critical burnout protection factor. Do you have someone in your life who fulfills this role? How does their support impact your well-being?
• Sleep is highlighted as a crucial factor in burnout prevention and recovery. How much importance do you currently place on getting enough restorative sleep? What steps could you take to improve your sleep patterns?
• Cait suggests that conforming to the status quo may put individuals at higher risk of burnout. Do you agree? How do you balance conforming to societal expectations with staying true to yourself and your well-being?

H: So I am here today with my good friend, Cait Donovan, to talk about one of my very favorite subjects, and that's burnout. Now Cait is in the midst of preparing a brand new keynote talk on the topic of burnout based on everything that she has been learning by giving keynote speeches and intervening with companies and their people on burnout. So let's unpack this, I follow your lead, where do we start?

G: I think the first place we start is that burnout prevention and burnout recovery are not the same thing. This is point number 1, we can dig into that in a moment, but I think the point number 2 that comes right after is more important, is that for the majority of the 7 years that I've been doing this work, I kind of think can I swear?

H: Yes, please.

G: I kind of think that most burnout prevention is bullshit.

H: That's a good place to start, so let's kick it off there.

G:. Those of us that have a tendency to burnout, we have very high levels of self awareness in some places and extremely low levels of self awareness in other places. And so when we are going in our lives and we're in go, right, where we are pre burnout or on our way to burnout, we're in go, and we're in 5th gear, gas pedal all the way down, and we're listening to something about burnout to help other people.

H: I feel so seen right now, Cait.

G: We're helping other we don't need this for us, we're learning this because we are therapists. We are acupuncturists, we are people who need to help other people through burnout. But this is not, the idea that what we're listening to or learning or reading could be about us is, like, completely foreign. And it isn't until we hit the wall going full speed, have some sort of awakening moment that this is burnout. I've interviewed hundreds of people at this point and everybody has this, like, come to burnout Jesus moment.

H: I don't think you're gonna be able to form a burnout Jesus cult, but hey, I may be wrong about that.

G: Listen, people have done funkier things.

H: It's true.

G: So I think there's this like, the moment happened for me, I was reading an article on burnout. I didn't really know what it was, and I kept going tick tick tick tick oooooh, shit. Oh, shit, this is what's going on.

H: The rude awakening.

G: And once you have the rude awakening, you are already burnt out. So the people that need the burnout quote unquote prevention measures the most are not looking for anything around burnout until they're already burnt out. And burnout prevention measures, this is controversial.

H: Love it.

G: Burnout prevention measures are simply stress management practices. That's it.

H: Okay, full stop. So you're saying, we are either in burn out or we are approaching burn out. But up until the moment of our rude awakening, we think of ourselves as just stressed.

G: Yes, and the stress management piece of burnout prevention is the same as the stress management in anywhere else. It's get enough sleep, eat good food, do some breathing exercises, maybe meditate, maybe yoga, maybe tai chi, talk to a friend, get a therapist, too you know, like but you set some boundaries right? You're probably not even going that far as in to set some boundaries because you're not stressed enough to think that it's actually a problem. So why are you working on stress management before you know that stress is a problem. Most people are not, I'm not doing cancer prevention work right now because I don't have any signs or symptoms that that might be happening to me. So if you look at the research, especially when it does come to cancer, this is an interesting sort of way to look at it. 33% of cancers on average, all types, everything combined, maybe could have been prevented by lifestyle changes. 67%, the remainder, would not have been prevented from lifestyle changes.

H: That's heavy.

G: I think burnout is kind of similar, because the some of the lifestyle changes that you are gonna implement are Band Aids to the real problems that are deeper than the ones that we're actually talking about. And if you don't manage those deeper problems, if you don't get to a hard enough, dark enough, bottom pit enough point, you're not gonna deal with those things that you have to deal with to recover from burnout properly.

H: Not only not only, Cait, so many of the people that you and I both work with, it's actually a point of pride and a big part of their identity that they have such a stressful life, that they are so, quote, good at stress, that they thrive under pressure. It's really hard to get that person to realize you're so much further along this continuum than you realize, and it isn't gonna be until you are flat on the ground that you realize, oh, shit, maybe I was ignoring some of the warning signs.

G: Well, and this is why all of my work from the very first day I started doing it has focused on burnout recovery. And I have all these I think burnout prevention, the people who should be focusing on burnout prevention are the companies and the cultures that create environments where burnout can thrive.

H: Toxic cultures.

G: Yeah. So burnout prevention work is systemic work, burnout recovery work is not. Because you have to does it require other people? For sure it's not a totally individual thing right? Your nervous system needs attention when you're burnt out, and nobody can do that for you. People can do that with you. You can coregulate right? Like, people can do it with you. Healers can help. Coaches can help. Therapists can help. Absolutely but you are the core of that conversation. You are not the core of the conversation of the fact that your workplace has a toxic culture. Burnout prevention is on companies and even if they do it perfectly, this is another controversial statement coming at you from Cait Donovan.

Even if you, as a company, do it perfectly and create as burnout proof of culture as you possibly can with plenty of fairness in psychological safety and positive feedback and adequate workloads and adequate challenge and great community, and you do all those things. I, Cait Donovan, might enter your workplace as an employee with a history of trauma that you know nothing about, and I bring to that space my perfectionism, my people pleasing, my lack of boundaries, my family history, my fear of money, my fear of success, my fear of lack of success, my all the bag of things that I carry around with me. And you tell me that I don't have to work that hard, and I'm gonna do it anyway. So I believe that the burnout prevention work mostly should be happening on a company level. And I need us to recognize as a wider culture and system that even in perfect systems, people are still gonna have some trouble. There are gonna be people that burn out.

H: Some people will have trauma well, whenever we're talking about trauma. Everybody doesn't have the same threshold no for triggering a traumatic response, and not everybody it's really variable person to person. So what is traumatizing? No matter what, it's what's traumatizing to 1 person might actually be stimulating growth in another person.

G: Yes. Exactly, so we do an exercise in one of my keynotes, and this is what started developing this new one. We do this exercise, if anybody that's studied any sort of deeper chronic health issues has heard of in epidemiology of this idea called a web of causation. And a web of causation basically means most of the time when they're when you're studying in school, what they're talking about is type 2 diabetes. Because, the things that affect type 2 diabetes, everybody wants to say it's just diet, but it's not. It's diet. It's previous trauma. It's access to food. It's poverty. It's ability to cook, its cultural, cultural expectations, cultural food, habits. It's, you know, all the things and so this web of causation idea really hit me when I was learning about it because this fits in really well with Chinese medicine, which is my background, and it fits in really well with burnout.

Burnout has a web of causative factor but the only factors we're really talking about are the ones that have been researched heavily by researchers that only talk about burnout. So we have this there's a list, Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter, and, you know, researchers that we stand on the shoulder of these giants when we do this work. Their work has been critical and crucial and is absolutely necessary. The core of their work comes down to there are these 6 workplace factors that create burnout vulnerability. I'm so glad that that exists, so grateful for their work and I have another five buckets and about at least 40 other things that could be on your burnout web of causation.

H: I'm glad you're calling it a web because it's a matrix, and all of the factors may have interplay with other factors. So determining any one individual's burnout risk, it's complicated.

G: It's very complicated, and what we have to recognize is that within the risk, this was the mistake that I made and why the new keynote is coming. So this is born out of a failure on my side. These risk factors, I wanted people to understand so much because I want people to eliminate senses of self judgment and self blame and guilt around getting to burnout because there's so many of these factors that you do not control. Outside of the 6 workplace factors that you definitely don't control, there's I'm looking at my little chart that I sent you before right, there's culture things that have nothing to do with you. If you're a 1st generation immigrant, then you have 2 sets of culture things to deal with, which can be really complicated.

There's health things that you didn't control that might have an effect. There's family history and intergenerational trauma and as crazy as this might sound, there's being in a room you don't like every day. If you don't like the color of the walls of the room that you sleep in, that adds to your burnout vulnerability. Is it the biggest factor, no. But does it matter, absolutely. What I was not giving people in this burnout risk factor keynote was the fact that there are also protective factors. So I've started calling them BPFs, like SPF and I want you to slather on your BPFs.

H: Girl, you're so fucking clever, I can hardly stand it sometimes.

G: Isn't it so silly? I just crack myself up.

H: No, I love it. You crack me up like, we're just having a party here. But what's so awesome about it, you know, I love me some clever. But what I really love about it is that it's memorable because if it's not memorable, Cait, like, you're talking into the wind. And we need people to take this stuff seriously, make it personal, and really understand what they can change and what they need to accept and work with.

G: And I wanted to give people a way to look at their web of causation and all the things that might be weighing it down and understands that there are also some things picking it up. There are also some things unwinding it in the background. So when you read through adverse childhood experiences research, right, that this is called ACEs, this is basically trauma during childhood. It can have something to do with, any sort of physical trauma. It could be sexual trauma. It can be emotional trauma. It can be neglect. It can be living with an addict. It can be living with someone with a chronic illness. It can be witnessing violence. It can be growing up in poverty. It can be there's a whole list of factors, there's quizzes available online.

You can go find them and take them. It's called ACEs, A C E, big letters, s is a small letter, ACEs. And when you look at that research enough, what you start to see is there are papers that are written that are called positive childhood experiences. This is where the BPFs are coming from and so you maybe you grew up in abject poverty, and that's a, you know, a big hanging spider on your web. But you had an aunt who really loved the heck out of you, sat with you and read with you a lot, really paid attention as best she could. Maybe she didn't have a lot to give other than books from the library that were free, but she cared for you and poured into you in a way that allowed you to get a scholarship to a private high school. That one person can outweigh almost all, if you read the research, almost all of the effects of poverty.

H: Isn't that fascinating?

G: Wild, and it they didn't do it with money, they did it with love and attention. So a big burnout protection factor, and one that is really still can be tough for me is allowing people to love you.

H: We're gonna have to do a 12 step group after this for the two of us.

G: I know right? Allowing people to love you and being honest enough about who you are, that the love that they share with you, you feel like is honest because you're not hiding anything from them. Well, a good friend of mine, Ruth Rathblott, she's incredible.

H: You’ve talked about her.

G: Yeah, she's wonderful and she has this, process that she calls unhiding. And when I first talked to her about it, I was expecting to get, like, a list of things you do to unhide that are you know, that you do all by yourself. Because in this world of coaching and self improvement, it's like you go do this thing by yourself right? But the 2nd step in her unhiding is find somebody who will love you just as you are that you can reveal yourself to. Find somebody that sees you and loves you anyway. This is really hard for me, personally.

H: I think it's hard for a lot of recovering perfectionist, people pleasers, you know, good girls, because it means acknowledging that you're an actual human who makes mistakes, who has flaws and shortcomings. I know, you're just getting all tingly all over here. But that there's so many places where that is not only unsafe but you'll be gaslit for doing it. So, I’m just thinking about the different interplay of the different factors, the personal, the environmental, the genetic loading, like all of that. And yet, I know you're going to share some things that are maybe not universal, but everyone would benefit from cultivating.

G: And the ability to choose a person to be safe with that will see you is one of them. There is not a human on this planet that would not be healthier and stronger and more fulfilled if they were truly and honestly seen, heard, validated, and loved, and understood.

H: I feel that.

G: There's not one human.

H: That's a big dose of, slathering there right?

G: That's a huge slather, this is the most important slather. This is why I think that when you're burnt out, working with someone is so important. And this is not me selling my services, hire whoever the hell you want, I don't care. But you should work with someone because learning how to let someone see you is part of the work, and you can't do that work by yourself. You can't do it by it's not actually possible because it requires an outside voice. And there's a lot of noise in the interwebs that tell you if you just love yourself enough, nothing else matters. But that's not actually how communities or humans or nervous systems work. There is an actual part of your brain that lights up a certain way only when you get very specific praise and feedback and you need it for survival.

H: We have mirror neurons for a reason.

G: We have mirror neurons for a reason.

H: And it's not so we can take selfies.

G: Yeah. So one thing is letting someone love you on this, like, deep level. An earlier thing, a smaller step, another sort of burnout protection factor, but maybe this is like a BPF 10 instead of a BPF 50. BPF 10 is not throwing away compliments so this might not be someone loving every single part of you, but this is not and I do this all the time. Just so no judgment here, people, I'm right on board with needing to learn this. But this is someone saying, Hey, I love your glasses without saying, oh my god. I got them for, like, $27.

H: With that just that nasally voice too.

G: You have to be from LA.

H: Or I love your glasses but, you know, I'm almost legally blind.

G: Yeah. Not necessary. Don't talk about it as possible, but anything.

H: No. Yeah. Deflect, deflect, deflect. No, we gotta stop doing that.

G: We have to stop deflecting. We have to let in because a lot of people I talk to are like, I never get any praise for anything. I'm like, is that actually true or are you just not listening for praise and therefore not accepting it.

H: Or you're so freaking guarded that nobody would dare try to throw a compliment in your direction.

G: Or maybe they've tried so many times and you've deflected so many times that they just gave up. So when we receiving allowing ourselves to receive. Yes, another burnout protection factor I think the biggest ones are people related, community related. But in your own space, another burnout protection factor is understanding that your job is not your identity.

H: Yikes.

G: I know, these are rough, aren't they?

H: The hell, I'm starting to think this wasn't such a good idea. Joking, joking, of course, it is.

G: So when you have wrapped your worth up in performance in a very particular area of your life that you believe on some level you have total control over, you don't. That you believe that you have total control over. You're gonna disappoint yourself regularly for things that are not even your fault. This is a really hard one, and something that comes up with every single person I've ever worked with and everyone I've ever interviewed for Fried. I've never had anyone go through burnout and not have to go through an identity crisis. Letting go of doing acupuncture…

H: That was a death for you like, you had to kill that part of yourself that you so carefully constructed and fought for.

G: Yes, and fought for. First, I fought for it financially because I couldn't afford to do the schooling. So it took me only 10 years to pay for it after I graduated, so I felt like I still owed it something. And people don't always believe in acupuncture, so I had been fighting for my worthiness as a medical professional for 15 years and then I was gonna not do it anymore?

H: That's like a freaking crusade, girl, you're like Joan of Arc.

G: However, my worth is no longer tied to what I do. I love burnout work. I don't see it changing anytime soon, but if it changed tomorrow, I would be okay. Somebody said to me last year, I don't know that this burnout thing is gonna be around much longer, you might wanna, like, up your keynotes and be ready for something different. I was like, first of all, I disagree. But I was like, I'm not actually worried about that, I think my job is to eradicate burnout. So if I do that successfully, believe me, I'll have something to talk about.

H: And celebrate.

G: Yeah. Like, I'll have plenty to talk about, and I have a lot of opinions on a lot of things. So I will talk about something else like, I will read the research until my ears fall off, and then talk about something different. I'm not worried about that but I used to be worried about that.

H: Well, you had to deconstruct your identity which requires confronting ego and that's terrifying for most humans. Always has been, always will be. It's awful but necessary.

G: But necessary and a part of that, like, my fighting around the acupuncture thing, that also became part of the identity. Like, I was someone who was willing to do this alternative thing that maybe you don't believe in, but I know works. And so there was also like a sense of, if I'm gonna be totally honest and vulnerable right now, sense of, like, slight moral superiority. Like, oh, you think that surgery is the only option, okay, i'll get rid of your fibroid in 3 months, you know, like, there was this, like, I know a secret that you don't know. And you might not believe that..

H: I know something you don’t know. Oh, god, did you ever have that song when you were a kid?

G: Anything you can do, I can do. I can do better.

H: Oh, my god. I can do anything better than you. Hey, people, did you even fact, you are gonna get some off key singing like, we aim to please here. But the truth is you are what I call an ambitious outlier. So a part of your identity is doing something that's not conforming to the norm. That's not the status quo. That's not the rank and file and I bet you're just about to tell me, because I'm giving you such a good opener, that people who think like that. People like you and I are actually at greater risk of burnout than people who don't need to stand apart from the crowd so much.

G: Hmmm, I never really thought about it. I'm not sure, I haven't really thought about it.

H: Maybe that’s a future keynote, you're welcome.

G: Yeah, thank you. But when well, my first thought process is, I think that there are 2 different sets of people on the on the other side of the equation. So, like, if you have the nonconformers and the conformers, within the conformers, there are content conformers and constrained conformers.

H: Fair.

G: And the constrained conformers are gonna burn out terribly. I've always been jealous of the content conformers. I by the way, you guys, I am just making this up right now. I've never thought about this before in my life. I'm making this up as I go.

H: You it is an unfair advantage that you are so freaking good at alliteration, I can hardly stand it. But you're right, people who are conforming to the norm because they feel compelled to do so. They're coerced. They have no choice. They're going to be freaking miserable. But people were like, man, I am as happy as a clam in a mudbank, I could do this all day and into the night.

G: This life just works for me.

H: Envy. I wish.

G: Yes, I wish I've had this conversation a lot over my life because I have never lived in one place since I left my parents' house when I was 17. I haven't lived in one place for more than 5 years, 6 years, I guess, technically. I haven't lived anywhere longer than that because I get antsy, and I need to change things. The only thing I haven't changed long term is my husband. He's like, he's doing the one that sticks out.

H: I bet he's feeling damn lucky for that. But you're making me think of something I'm yeah curious about. Is a person who is able to change more easily as a person who actually seeks change, thrives on change, gets restless if they don't have their minimum threshold for change. Is that a burnout risk factor, or is that a burnout protection factor?

G: I think it depends on the culture and the support. So for me, parts of moving were parts of my burnout factors because I was living in a foreign country, speaking a foreign language, and speaking in a different language all day every day is exhausting. So and on top of that, some of the countries I've lived in have been more aligned with who I am as a person, and some of the countries have been less aligned with who I am as a person. So that's not me in change, but me within a different environment and whether or not I fit. On top of that, my family has I'm very close to my parents and my sister, and they have always been incredibly supportive of whatever hair brained idea I came up with next. And I also have a massive, massive net underneath me of big family.

So my father is one of 9, my mother is one of 7. I have 36 cousins, you know, like, we have this I have this huge number of safe places to fall back on should everything fall to shit. So there's a certain level of safety within my daringness. I wouldn't wanna use most of the options to be frank but they exist. So I think that for me, not going along with those changes that I so desire and not, like, chasing things and having newness would lead to burnout. Because I have the support in place to make things okay but if I was this person and I didn't have those supports, I'm not sure how that would play out.

H: Yeah. It might be reckless to allow yourself to.

G: Exactly. And so I think this is why when we get back if we go back to this web of causation idea, that's why we have to understand that each of these things that you might put on your web of causation, it's heavy workload, you know, intergenerational trauma, crappy environment, like culture-isms, whatever it is your any of those things that are adding to your web of causation. The things that are just detracting from that web of causation are also gonna be different for each person, except for some of those main ones like being loved for who you are. Like, that's gonna be for everybody but the other ones are gonna be dependent on who you are as a person. So it is a burnout protection factor for me to be married to someone who also likes change. That helps me because one of us gets antsy the other one's like, oh, what should we do?

H: Where do we go next?

G: What's go what's next? What's happening? Remember there and like that, that's a really special thing because if one of us didn't have that, we wouldn't have lasted. Because we're not people that are not gonna get itchy. We're gonna get itchy, it's gonna happen. So the protection factors that you need. If you're listening to this, you're like, what are the what the hell are the rest of my BPFs? They might be different for you and me and I haven't worked all of them out quite yet but I do know that.

H: We have a we have a couple universal. Also, we'll recap just a little bit like, having somebody who sees you, knows you, and accepts you, number 1, and your ability to allow that. Because to me, that's like 2 different things, obviously, interrelated but there are many people who are surrounded by love and support. They don't see it. They don't perceive it. They don't receive it and so they don't benefit from it.

G: Exactly, and then we get to some of the things that live on the burnout prevention list. That are still BPFs, and to help you recover from burnout. One of them, hate to talk about it, so annoying. We talked about this recently when you came on Fried, regular sleep patterns. And there's somebody out there that said, you said it's different for everybody. I hate having a regular sleep pattern, maybe you do. And, also, the research is very, very, very clear that falling asleep and getting up within a sort of 30ish minute window as often as possible makes your entire system stronger, makes your physical body healthier, flat out. Because your body has enough time and consistent time to basically run its garbage trucks. That's what your body is doing at night. It's cleaning out all the shit you did to it all day long.

H: And consolidating memory and new learning that occurred that day. This has probably been one of the things that I've been most effective at sharing with clients who hardcore resist me on regular sleep patterns. When I'm dealing with a person who loves learning, and a lot of my clients are gifted, so they love learning. And when I tell them, okay, but here's the thing, you love learning so much, and you literally learn new stuff every day. If you're not getting an adequate amount of restorative sleep on the regular, you are not going to be able to retain all of that in the form of memory and recall. Oh, oh, well, in that case

G: Right and so we are garbage trucking. We are consolidating, and we're rebuilding. So things that got broken down during the day get repaired at night. So if you don't have this time, you are simply deteriorating faster than you need to.

H: Uncomfortable truth.

G: It's just that this is a basic BPF is good sleep. And that do I sleep the exact same hours, hell no. I'm not saying I'm perfect at it, but I do aim for the majority of the time, to be within those windows. And if I have a flight, I fly a lot for work right? I do keynotes all over the place so if I have to fly for work and the flight at 6 AM is $400 cheaper than the flight at 8 PM. I'm not gonna be like, oh my god, my sleep pattern. Oh, no, I'm saving, frugality will rule. My frugality will win. So it's I'm not saying be perfect, but aim towards getting closer to even, and your body will be grateful to you longer term. You will be more resilient in the face of stress because you will do more repair at night, so your body will be stronger when you wake up in the morning. It's very simple process, but I know you know all this.

H: I have to use your word because I'm such a fan. You'll have more bounce back ability.

G: Exactly. Sleep is literally what builds your bounce back ability. You can bounce back when you've had enough time for your body to do all the things it needs to do to restore itself from all the shit you do to it all day. That being said, if we wanted to do an extra good job, it needs to be well fueled, both in water and nutrition, so these are two BPFs. Getting enough water half of you with brain fog are simply dehydrated. Cheers.

H: Cheers, let's have a sip.

G: Yes. Half of you with brain fog are just dehydrated. I think it's actually up to 80% of reported brain fog. I think I read that somewhere, I don't remember where, is due to dehydration.

H: Yes, I don't remember what the reference is, Cait, but I remember, I think my heart literally stopped beating for a second. I know my brain froze up big time when I realized that dehydration is the leading cause of fatigue. So if you're getting that adequate restorative sleep, like we're both encouraging you to do, and you're freaking dehydrated, it's not enough. Gotta drink water. You gotta water.

G: And unfortunately, I am a coffee lover. I am not using your coffee, but caffeine, both in tea and in coffee, does drain water out of you, so you need to drink more of it if you're drinking caffeinated beverages and bubbles are better than nothing. But no bubbles is better than bubbles.

H: Okay, I get you now. So if the only way you can get yourself to drink water is to drink bubbly or, spindrift or whatever. If that's the way you're gonna get it in you because it's not gonna happen any other way than just you're gonna be belching and farting a lot more, but hey, do it. But you're better off without the bubbly, why is that?

G: I honestly don't remember. Okay, to be honest I don't remember the science behind it, but I know that is true. Okay and then we go back to the basic nutrition. This is a really tough one in the country that we live in because our food is so garbage. So you do have to be really careful about the things that you're eating. Like, I don't I'm not a, like carb or anti carb. I think most I actually think that the amount of low carb that we're doing is detrimental to people in burnout because when you're burnt out, you need that extra fuel in the form of good quality carbohydrates so that your brain can function at its highest level. Your brain eats carbs, people, your brain doesn't want chicken breast. Like, it wants a sweet potato so understanding that you can make things easier on your body and on your brain, and increase your stress resilience by eating better food, whatever you can afford, whenever you can't.

Listen, I had Gluten free boxed mac and cheese last night. I'm not telling you that that is the ideal meal. Some days, that's what you're gonna get, and that's gonna be whatever it is. Again, just like with sleep, the more you can bake into your life higher quality foods. If you can't afford everything organic, like, get the strawberries. Look at the dirty twelve list or how it's probably dirty forty at this point. But look at the dirty list of veg, and find the ones that are really important to be organic, and buy the ones that you can. And then buy as many fruit and veg otherwise that you can muster and eat those like, keep it simple.

H: And sustainable because if we make this shit too hard, people are gonna be like, you know what, I'd rather just go with the burnout because this sounds exhausting, all this prevention stuff.

G: Right. Exactly. Exactly. And so and one of the things that I do because I can't I believe in eating meat because I feel terrible when I don't eat it. So I can't I'm not a vegetarian. I'm never gonna be, it's not gonna happen. I understand eating less is important. I also understand where you get it is important. So I have a ButcherBox subscription because that means I don't have to think about that anymore. That's one of the ways that I make it easier for myself. I know that everything that I eat that is meat and fish related is very high quality, is resourced properly. Is treated properly, I know that because that's the only thing I buy and it's on repeat and I don't have to think about it.

H: So decision fatigue, you've just dialed down on that risk factor by doing enough research to satisfy that this is gonna meet my needs, and I don't have to think about it anymore. Done.

G: Done. So a lot of these burnout protection factors are the simple things and then the rest of them are the tough things. We started with the tough things today right? They require some work, sometimes some therapy, sometimes some help, always another person. But what I want you to understand is that you can have a whole host of burnout risk factors, and never get close to burnout because your protection factors are in place. I met someone recently that, and this is one of the reasons it came up. I did a keynote, we talked about these risk factors, I had them do this web of causation exercise. I give out stickers, They put, you know, there are risk factors on the thing, and I say, well, there's no number into, like, what makes it risky.

Just look at it, does it look overwhelming to you, like, that's a good enough indication. And he was like, you know, I had a whole bunch of them, but I don't feel burnt out, and he started telling me about his life. He was like, I've been married for 43 years. My wife and I are really close, our children live close to home, and our grandchildren are nearby. You know, we go on vacation every 3 months, and we do like, when I'm on vacation, I don't work at all. I leave everything at home. I really love golfing and sailing, and I'm do you know like, we went through this whole thing and I said, but listen, you've built in all the burnout protection factors. He was like, yeah but we didn't talk about that and I was like, oh, shit.

H: The balance sheet is balanced because maybe he had a lot on the aces, but he's got a lot of the BPFs now that are balancing the scales for him and reducing his burnout risk dramatically. Okay, I have a question for you. I know my dogs are barking like crazy, I was really hoping we were gonna be able to finish this interview before it happened, but here we are. I'm not gonna cut this off because they're acting fools out there. Do you think that burnout is in a way inevitable in our modern culture?

G: For some people, yes.

H: Even if they're slathering on the SPFs and for some trying to set the things that have happened in the past that have ramped up the risk.

G: Well, I think if you know what you're offsetting, then you can do a better job. But a lot of people aren't even aware of what all the risks are, which is why that's what I was focusing on in the 1st place. If you don't if you're not aware of all the different ways that your risk can increase then you're not doing anything to mitigate those risks because why would you? And one of the things that took me a really long time was admitting that I had any sort of trauma background. But like I said earlier, I get along with my family really well, we're very close. I call my mother almost every day like, the I just we are a unit. And there was some sideways shit going around when I was a kid that I thought that if I admitted to, It would mean that I was rejecting my family on some level or blaming my parents for something, and I didn't wanna blame them.

And I had a situation that was, you know, worse than some and better than some, and my family always taught us to focus on the better than some part of it. So were we close to the poverty line, yes. Was my father an addict and an alcoholic, sure. Did we often was I afraid to say that I needed a new pair of shoes because I knew we didn't have the budget, absolutely. You know and we were always dressed cleanly and our hair was done properly. We always had food to take to school. My mother made us lunches every single day. My grandparents were nearby, they took care of us when we were sick. And, you know, like, there's all these other beautiful pieces.

So I had a really hard time diving into the fact that the things that went wrong could still be affecting my behavior today. That was hard for me to wrap my head around. So I couldn't have done the burnout protection factors for those things because I didn't know or admit to them for a long time. And as far as being seen and being loved, oh God, that was awful. My best friend in the world said to me one day, you know you know everything about me. I almost I know almost nothing about you. I was like, nothing, I've told you every story I have she said, yeah, wrapped up in nice, neat little bows. And I was like

H: And your masterful skills at storytelling.

G: I was like, oh, shit. She said there's just so much shame between me and you, I can't get to you through that shame.

H: Girl, that had to land hard.

G: Oh, I was furious, not at her.

H: No. But you know what, that was a necessary truth for you to hear. And I know I think so much of what I'm taking away from this conversation today, Cait, is that we can't do anything about things that we don't know exist, and we can't do anything about things we don't take seriously. And oftentimes, we don't take things seriously until they are, like, dire, beyond serious. So what I want people to hear and take away from this is Cait's given us some very good simple, sustainable, repeatable suggestions that we can incorporate into our lifestyles based on the assumption that we're human. I know who listens to this show, you're overachievers, ambitious outliers, over deliverers, over giver.

So let's just be honest, we're all at risk and since that's true, why don't we start making a serious commitment to bringing in a lot of these burnout prevention and protection factors into our lives, whether we think we need them or not. Just assume you do. Just assume you do even if you don't find the evidence to be readily available. Even if your ego is so wrapped up in being a baddie, because I know mine is. Just assume that you just need to slather stuff on like you would sunblock. Even though you don't think you can get burned. You'll get burned. You will for sure get burned.

G: Well and if you've reached 40 plus, you know that all those days you didn't put sunblock on when you were a teenager, now is when they're taking that shit off your forehead that you're like, oh they're like, did you ever get sunburned? You're like every single day between 10 and 17, you know, like, this is the kind of stuff that is not visible for a very long time, and then when it starts to be visible is actually really dangerous.

H: Yep. Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear and you've had plenty of time to accumulate a toll. And it does add up so even if you don't see it, even if you don't feel it, even if you don't have a wonderful friend like Cait had to say, you got some shit to deal with, take this podcast interview as your sign to start slathering up, you won't regret it.

G: And know that no matter where you are, no matter what you've done, no matter how you look, how tall you are, what how smart you are, what job you have, you are loved.

H: I'm gonna stop right there because it's enough.