{Myth} Your Burnout DOES NOT Come from Your Boss … But From Your Teens!
I wanna ask you something...
where do you think your burnout habits come from?
My guess would be that you’d say something along the lines of my bosses or managers. A lot of think that the reason we burnout and the reason we do the things we do that lead to our burnout are the result of the position we hold and the companies we work for…
But I don’t think that’s true…
Not anymore!
You see, I had a bit of an epiphany the other day. That epiphany? That we burnout because these are behaviors that have been validated and therefore that we’ve been engaging in since we were teenagers…
I didn't start to realize this until one of my students found herself jamming her schedule with extracurriculars, saying "yes" to every obligation, until the point where she took her first mental health day. At 16!
I didn't think about it until one of my students said something along the lines of:
“I’m stressed so much now that, honestly, I just don’t even notice it anymore…”
It’s been two weeks of fielding students that are just at wit’s end. But, hell, when I really think about it, it’s been almost 3 years of it since I started this job.
These are 15 to 17-year-olds we’re talking about here, and they might as well be my corporate millennial clients
Jam-packed schedules
Struggling with boundary-setting
Stacking accomplishments
Constantly trying to prove their worth through their achievements
Constantly fighting to be the best
Deprioritizing themselves and their self-care
Ignoring the necessity of rest
I joke now about the fact that I've burned out in just about every major chapter of my life, but it's true.
You see, it all started as an overscheduled teenager. At 15 and 16, my schedule was jam-packed with sports, music lessons, a full AP schedule, and more.
And it’s easy to reflect back and say “why did I do that to myself?” But, actually, that’s a simple answer too. All that effort wasn’t just something I did for no reason. Oh no. It came with…
🙌🏻Praise
😎Validation
🏢The Promise of Success
Literally, I can’t tell you how many times I was told how “impressive” it was. Even now, a full schedule is rewarded with praise and that praise is so damn validating for an achiever personality like mine—and like yours!
Our entire childhoods we were told that our extracurriculars, ability to juggle a busy schedules, our effort to get into the best schools was going to help us be successful in life—and, let’s be honest, “successful” is all any millennial was ever told to be…
So, with these behaviors already firmly taking hold, I kept at it in college and continued my overscheduling tendencies.
I was in intramurals—sometimes multiple teams.
I started a part-time job a month into school by “accident.”
I signed up as a College of Science ambassador.
I took senior year Biochem my sophomore year—seriously while my classmates went to the bar during their experiments, I worked on homework.
I was in the Honors college.
It’s like I was in a pageant to the be the world’s most perfect overachiever.
Hell, my relationship in my senior year of college ended partially because of the fact that I was taking 4 400 level science classes, TAing an intro microbiology class, working 20 hours a week in the lab finishing my thesis, and volunteering as an assistant soccer coach...
You'd think that would've been a red flag for me and where my life was going, but it wasn't…
In my first year of grad school, I played intramurals, had a bustling social life, decided to pursue a Master and PhD simultaneously, joined a sketch comedy group...oh, and at the end of the year, I started as a side hustle with an NLM...
I honestly didn't even REALIZE how bad it was until I started typing it out…
Since I was 14 years old, I’ve overscheduled, struggled to rest, and felt guilt for taking breaks. I still have a natural tendency to celebrate productivity and doing, even now and you best believe I kept that pattern up in my adult life.
And I’d be willing to bet you did, too, right?
But with this comes a massive AHA that I think we need to all take into consideration…
🤯To overcome our burnout—and the habits that lead to it—we need to undo 20 years of habits 🤯
It’s not our corporate careers. It’s not our job titles or professions.
Our burnout and the habits that have created it have come from decades of validation-seeking and praise for our overachievement…praise and validation that we still value!
That’s why it’s so hard to change.
Because even though we know what to do, even though we know we should set boundaries, we should sleep, we should rest, we should close our laptops and take time off, our entire lifetime’s worth of habits is the devil on our shoulder saying “yes, but…”
That’s where our burnout comes from. And it’s an important realization to make because it’s easy to see that if it took 20 years to create, it’s not going to be easy to destroy. So, we can have compassion for the challenge and the difficult and the fact that we take two steps backward and one step foward.
We’re not going to be able to fix this in a week or in a month.
We’re not going to be able to succeed the first time, even!
This process—if we’re really dedicated to it and really want to achieve it—is going to require patience and compassion. It’s going to require us to be at our very best…
