Channeling Passion and Avoiding Burnout – S02 E07

Channeling Passion and Avoiding Burnout Transcript S02 E07

Outline

Passion leads to burnout through excessive work and neglect of personal time.

• Passion can lead to burnout when not balanced with self-care.
• I discuss how passion can lead to burnout when it becomes an all-consuming obsession.
• Obsessive passion can manifest as compulsion, anxiety, and an emphasis on external validation.

Passion types (obsessive vs. harmonious) and their impact on motivation and fulfillment.

• Passion can be harmonious (fuels joy, fulfillment, creativity) or obsessive (causes negative consequences).
• Laura Noel shares her experiences with passion and burnout, emphasizing the difference between harmonious and obsessive passion.
• Researchers find that obsessive passion can lead to burnout, while harmonious passion fosters motivation and engagement.

Passion fatigue and burnout in workplaces, with tips for maintaining sustainable passion.

• Passion can lead to increased effort and neglect of personal needs, leading to energy depletion and burnout.
• Highly passionate employees may neglect recovery and overlook their needs, leading to energy depletion and burnout.
• Prioritize recovery and control your passion to prevent burnout.
• Laura Noel shares insights on passion and burnout, emphasizing the importance of setting boundaries and maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
• Noel encourages listeners to take action to overcome burnout, such as taking breaks, reconnecting with others, and seeking support from leaders and coaches.

Transcript 

Welcome back to another episode of Rat Race Reboot. If you've been sticking with us over the past five episodes, we've been delving into burnout. It's so prevalent these days, and you probably know somebody, if not yourself, who's experienced burnout. I know I have. And we're going to talk about a twist on the topic of burnout, where our passion can overtake our skills when it comes to self-care or unplugging. And those passions can consume us to the point where we can experience burnout. 

I know I also experienced that when I started my business and started working on everything to get it up and running. I didn't have a team supporting me in my business. I was doing everything myself, even though I was excited about my business and about learning the tech, understanding the email sequences, giving and delivering value to people in unique ways, connecting with people on sales calls and just connecting with people and teaching classes, all of those things, I was doing way too much. And even though I loved what I was doing, I was approaching burnout. 

You know, sometimes we can get so caught up in our work that we enjoy it. And we can forget to eat, or forget, you know, it's like 8 pm, and we've gone, you know, straight from early morning till, you know, long past dinnertime and, you know, we're not unplugging and connecting with people who energize us. And so that's, you know, that's the rub, we can get caught up in burnout, even when we're self-imposing it through our passions. So, passion can create and be a source of burnout. Passion can breed over work, right? Like you love what you do. But the lines between work and leisure can sort of get blurred. I know. I love everything: neuroscience, everything, leadership. 

So I'm doing this as my work. But in my off-work time, I'm reading journals. I'm connecting and having conversations about statistics and analyses. And I love all of that. But I also have to know and be aware that those lines can blur, and if that's all I'm doing, that can make life a bit dull, right? I can start to feel like something's missing in my life. So that's something for you. If you're listening today or haven't noticed that in yourself, it's just something to be aware of. But we can, overall, certainly neglect ourselves and our personal time. 

And so we can take something where we're obsessed in a good way with our work. And we can look at it in a couple of different ways, you know, obsessive passion versus harmonious passion. And when I'm thinking about that obsessive passion, it's where we feel like our work or the thing we're passionate about is starting to take control over us. It's driven by a need to engage in the activity. It's almost like it becomes a compulsion. Then, you can start to feel like the activity starts to control you rather than you controlling it. Another sign that we might be experiencing that obsessive type of passion and not harmonious kind of passion is that maybe we can start to develop negative emotions around this thing that once excited us. So, obsessive passion can lead to anxiety, guilt, and shame. If we can't participate in that activity full-on, I know I was caught up in this trap. 

I had this all-or-nothing mentality, and I would feel guilty. If I wasn't pursuing that passion or my work. Just working hard, or, you know, just, I was looking for perfection. And that started to become a source of burnout for me. Another way that we can start to realize and experience that obsessive passion is when we're so focused on the outcomes as opposed to the journey. 

The emphasis is on achievement only and external validation. So, you might be overly concerned with external measures like success, awards, and recognition. And I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with those things or desiring those things. But when they start to run you and control you instead of you controlling your life, then that can be problematic. And then, if you find yourself pursuing these passions with just this rigid kind of persistence, even if the activity is causing negative consequences, you might find it difficult to step away or take breaks. And you're just very rigid in your thinking. So that's obsessive passion. But we can have harmonious passion, which fuels innovation, creativity, joy, fulfillment, and all those wonderful things that come along with it. 

And so when we're experiencing harmonious passion, we might start to experience this internal intrinsic drive, sort of like this autonomous drive. And that passion stems from genuine interest, enjoyment, and excitement about that activity. You participate in it because it's extreme or intrinsically rewarding, right? That's why you're participating in it. You could be experiencing harmonious passion. When you're experiencing positive emotions when you're engaging in that activity or that work. I'm not saying that you're not going to be faced with challenges, setbacks, or disappointments. But those things aren't really setbacks because they just feel your desire to be better. And it feels good. And it's exciting. When I actually had every step of my business. I feel like I had this sense of renewal, like I'm starting the next leg of my journey, and I feel positive about it. I see the growth. I can look back and see where I've come from. And so it's exciting to me. 

So, harmonious passion is the fuel that brings feelings of joy and fulfillment, even in that state of flow, right? We're absorbed in the present moment. And it's a beautiful thing. We can also experience that harmonious passion when we're focused on the process. So, the emphasis is on the experience of doing the activity rather than the end result. And oh, my gosh, I can think back to times in my life when I was doing something new, and I wanted to experience the journey, like doing the Kona Half Ironman, but I was so fixated on a time, a time hack that I wanted to reach that even when I finished that race, it took me like eight hours. It was super hot that day as if it were running on the surface of the sun. 

When I finished the race, my husband and my friends were there, and they were happy for me. All I could say was Yeah, but I wanted to do it in seven hours. What? That's crazy. That was an obsessive passion. It was not that harmonious passion where we were focused on the journey. I can remember when I first started doing the triathlons. How I would just be thinking to myself, I can't believe I'm here, like in the middle of a bike ride or in the middle of the run part, or Wow, that swim was so beautiful. I was experiencing the joy of the moment and still pushing myself, but the feeling was a lot different, and the end result at the end of the race felt joyful. I was fulfilled. I could enjoy myself and celebrate myself. 

Another way of knowing that you're in harmony or experiencing harmonious passion is you are experiencing flexibility in the process; you know, you can come back, take a break, and come back to that activity without feeling guilty or like you withdrawal having withdrawal symptoms, right? So, think about passion, which is like a fire. And harmonious passion is that warm glow, those controlled flames that provide light and warmth, and it keeps you motivated and engaged. And obsessive passion is like that out-of-control Inferno; it may burn bright for a while and be really impressive. But it can also consume you and leave nothing but ashes in its wake. So be mindful, understand, you know, and ask yourself, am I experiencing this obsessive kind of passion or harmonious passion?

So it's interesting because there was an article recently published in HBr entitled, don't let your passion lead to burnout on your team. The researchers also conducted surveys with over 700 full-time US-based employees across various industries. And they provided daily responses about their levels of passion and feelings of burnout at the beginning and at the end of each workday. AndTheudy revealed an interesting pattern where high passion led to increased exertion but also greater burnout the following day. 

Then, they did a follow-up study with some tech employees and found out that those who were particularly passionate about their work were less likely to take breaks. I've experienced that, right? Even when explicitly asked to do so, suggesting a risk of long-term burnout. And I can remember serving in the military, having people on the team who loved what they did, truly, but they just wouldn't take their leave, they wouldn't take their vacation time, they were banking it up and experiencing burnout as a result. So it's interesting because that study suggested a process flow in how passion can transmute into burnout. So, I want you to be aware of these steps. And notice where you are in this process. One is you have this project or this initiative that you're moving toward, and you start to experience that initial enthusiasm for this activity or this work. 

And so, maybe a passionate employee starts with a high level of enthusiasm and dedication, and they go above and beyond in their work. That might be you, right? So that's the initial stage, and then the next stage is increased effort. So that enthusiasm leads to investing more time and energy into work. And sometimes at the expense of personal time. I've experienced that and know a lot of people who have, and it can be like a high. I was riding that wave. And there were other people with me. It was the culture, right, that was expected. And we were, you know, enjoying ourselves to an extent, but we were neglecting other facets of our individual selves, and then we started to neglect recovery. 

So, in the pursuit of their passion, these individuals might neglect the necessary rest and recovery and often overlook their own needs. And the next step is energy depletion. Now it's starting to catch up with us, right? Our continuous over-exertion without adequate recovery gradually depletes our energy levels. And it makes it hard to sustain the initial enthusiasm. 

And then the last piece of this is burnout. We find ourselves in burnout. This cycle of overwork and insufficient rest ultimately leads to exhaustion and burnout, and that diminishes our overall passion; it becomes a burden, and it's no longer a passion, nothing that brings us joy. So, according to this research, the solution to this is really in our teams and in ourselves, which is to encourage this idea of sustainable passion for both yourself and your team. 

And there are a few things that you can do to have, you know, little stops along the way. You're putting on the brakes so that you can have a breather, right? And so this passion fatigue, I'm gonna, I'm gonna coined that term passion fatigue, it doesn't get the best of you, it doesn't turn into burnout. One, and you've heard me talk about this so many times, is to prioritize recovery. You know, just like athletes, passionate individuals should prioritize taking breaks and resting. 

This helps us recharge. It helps us maintain long-term performance. The other thing is control. Rein in that passion, right? Set boundaries around your passion to prevent it from overwhelming you and taking control, and you stay in control of yourself. So this involves managing how much time and energy you devote to your passions, and really making a conscious and concerted effort to put your paws on and do something else, spending time with people who energize you, engaging in other hobby hobbies, resting and relaxing, there's nothing wrong with doing nothing ideating there, you know, take the time to do that. And then if you are in a workspace where you know, you're working for your leadership, and you're trying to kind of dial this in a bit, you know, consider that leaders and managers should play a role in this to sustaining passion by monitoring workloads, by checking in with your folks to see how they're managing their stress levels and their work by ensuring that people are taking their time off and holding people to that, being aware of the signs of emotional exhaustion, and promoting and modeling this sort of healthy work-life balance, I realized that work-life might not be perfectly balanced all the time, but understanding, you know, what are your boundaries? Are you holding yourself to your own boundaries? What are you modeling for your people? 

So, I hope this has been eye-opening for you, just considering how passion can also fuel and lead to burnout. It can breed overwork. Consider the types of passion, that obsessive kind of passion versus that harmonious kind of passion, that you want to bring passion to your work. But if it's overtaking you, and you're no longer in control, it can be rather harmful. There are steps that you can take to get back on track: put the pause on, take a breather, set some time out for yourself to do other things, and reconnect with others in different ways. And, then, you're in control of yourself, no matter the circumstance. I hope this has been helpful for you again; if you haven't listened to our previous episodes on the topic of burnout, definitely tune in to those. Next week, we're going to come up with another topic based on this idea of burnout and its many facets. And if you enjoy today's episode, if it's been helpful for you, I want you to leave us a note to leave us a five-star review. 

Give us your comments on whatever platform you listen to your podcasts on. And if you go to rat race reboot.com and subscribe, make sure you don't miss another episode. And you'll get some freebies along with that. If you have questions or if you need support overcoming or mitigating the effects of burnout, you and your team are welcome to contact us. Reach out. There are many ways that I could support you as an executive coach or as a consultant within your teams to help you overcome this and find some balance in your lives and more fulfilled, healthy, and wonderful people on your teams who are excited to be at work each and every day. But thanks again for listening. And remember, everything is created twice. First in your imagination in your mind and then in physical form. We'll see you next week.