Page 9 - BusinessWest December 12, 2022

out spectrum who might be dealing with one or two of those symptoms, but not all three.” With that broad definition, and that list of
symptoms, which a great many individuals in business can relate to, how does one go about defeating burnout and put it behind them?
It starts, as Young said, with admitting that
“I lived on the burnout spectrum for five
to seven years, and I floated through differ-
ent aspects of it,” he explained. “I didn’t know it when I was in it until I looked back at it and remember not wanting to get out of bed and go to work in the morning. I felt like I was mov- ing in wet cement as I was trying to get things
“There’s a ton of practical advice that you can Google; it will talk about exercise, it will talk about diet, it will talk about shifting your work schedule and maybe even changing jobs. Those are all valid things to do; however, they’re just putting Band-Aids on symptoms. They’re not actually getting to the root cause.”
there is a problem, something he finally did, and then doing something about it rather than trying (almost always unsuccessfully) to tough it out, which is what ‘tough’ guys usually try to do.
For this issue, BusinessWest talked with Young about burnout, his new book, and that concept of expansive intimacy, which, in his view, is the only way to get at the root of this problem.
When the Heat Is On
When asked how people know, or should know, if they are burned out, Young said that he — and probably many others — don’t actually know in the moment.
done.
“To me, a lot of it is the felt sense of it, but
also, how are people around me responding
to me?” he went on. “And if I could be honest with myself, I would ask people, ‘hey, was I dif- ficult to be around? Was I less effective than I was before? Did I come across as someone who never had something positive to say?’ We’re feeling like we’re not getting things done that we’re capable of. That’s the best answer for me when it comes to knowing when we’re burned out. There are assessments we can take, but I always come back to how we’re feeling and get- ting some perspective from other people on
Burnout
Continued on page 11
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