From my Thrive Global series....

Have you ever felt stuck? Or like your life was on auto-pilot? Did you feel bored with the trajectory of your life? Why we’re feeling stuck can be caused by any number of situations. We might be uninspired. We might be overstimulated. We might not feel accomplished. We might be afraid. We might be overly stressed. We may also have everything we want & need and we’re not used to it. There’s many routes to the same outcome. Interestingly Dr. Sandi Mann, an Organizational Psychologist who specializes in boredom, suggests that it has an evolutionary function. The fact that our brain automates our actions until they become second nature, allows us to be attentive to new stimulus. Imagine if everything you did every day felt new & exciting; like a mystery to solve and conquer? It would be hard to evolve past that specific state. So boredom exists both to allow for the automation of daily tasks, but to also create the stimulus for evolution. Because when we’re bored/stuck, our brain actively searches for something new. In some situations we may go for giant upheavals. We may leave our jobs, our career paths, our cities, even our spouses. This is guaranteed to bring a whole lot of change, which can solve the issue in the short term. Of course in any new situation, we inevitably develop another set of patterns, or habits, and then we’re back where we started. To stop feeling stuck , you don't have to uproot your whole life. To keep our brain from settling into full auto-pilot mode, there are small steps we can take that can help us satisfy our craving for the novel. The phrase “step out of your comfort zone” is basically the recipe. Meaning that you want to intentionally create time to do things differently, even be uncomfortable. Here’s a list of ways you can bring excitement to your mind, without having to undo your life. 1. Take a class Learning has been found to promote neurogenesis. This means that the brain creates new neurons which make new connections. You literally expand the network in your brain. Using neural-pathways that are different & creating new ones, “shakes” up your brain. Not to mention that this expands your thinking, and - depending on the class - can add valuable skills to your tool belts. In a research paper I did on stress management tools, I discovered that skills are a fundamental key to improving self-esteem. Improved self-esteem and skill confidence shows up as positive changes in your life & at work. 2. Take a new route to work When we do the same route everyday, our brain essentially falls asleep during the process . We’re trained to a path and we rarely stray from it. Taking a new route forces your brain to wake up. Pay attention to your surroundings and embrace the trip as an adventure. Are there new restaurants, stores, parks that you could try in the future? This search is what your brain needs to feel refreshed. 3. Cook something for the first time. Experiment with different cuisines. This feeds into learning as well, but you can also get additional dopamine hits (the feel good hormone) in the planning phase, the preparing phase, and eating/sharing phase. As long as you don’t put a perfection burden on yourself, this process of creativity and discovery can create hours, even weeks, of feeling good and rejuvenated. Studies have also shown that cooking as a group is great for a sense of belonging, positive emotions, self-esteem and an increased sense of quality of life. 4. Research a destination for a vacation There’s scientific evidence that PLANNING experiences is one of the best ways to reduce stress and improve our mood. Simply the anticipation of places we could go to is enough of a mood booster to make you feel rejuvenated. 5. Rearrange the furniture on occasion We all know the Kondo joy of decluttering, but just moving pieces around in your space can make your entire environment feel brand new. This can spark your creativity and may give way to other projects or ideas - but surely a sense of newness. Remember it will feel uncomfortable. That’s the point. Anytime you do something new, it is uncomfortable to the brain. Your own thoughts may even try to talk you out of it. But if you’re trying to break out of being stuck in autopilot living, discomfort is natural.  Lean into your sense of creativity - in whatever form it comes to you - as this is the path straight out of stuck.

I’m going to start this article with a very personal story that happened to me this year. My mother has always been a character. She had me when she was 21, so she’s always been a young mom. Feisty, fun and full of life…. She still lives in Manhattan and I’m in Milan so we speak mostly through video chats, particularly during Covid. I had noticed, towards the end of Covid, that my mother was starting to not look well. She was constantly tired, her speaking was slowed, but there was also something in her face that alarmed me. So I headed to NY. What I saw shocked me. My usually strong-headed, enthusiastic mother was walking with the assistance of a cane due to a knee injury and seemed to be showing signs of Parkinsons. Neither of which she had ever mentioned on the phone. When I asked what was going on, she mentioned that she had been to a doctor and he could find nothing wrong with her and he had no intention of digging any further. She seemed resigned to this diagnosis, but I wasn’t. I pushed for her to get another doctor’s opinion and even scheduled for her to come to Italy to be seen by doctors here (this post is not about the issues in the US Healthcare…although it could/should be. That’s for another time). After finding an excellent doctor in NY who ran a thorough set of labs, it was discovered that my mother was just now having side effects to a medication she had been taking for many years. The doctor offered another medication, but my mother refused. Now that she knew it wasn't Parkinson's she felt confident she could live with the symptoms. Here’s the amazing part: with no changes in her routine/medication etc - she started to feel better. Simply KNOWING that she was not imminently dying was enough for her to stop feeling sick. She had assumed the worst in the situation and her body was giving her that. When she started feeling optimistic, everything about her changed. Her face, her energy, her walk, and her mobility. She still has the same physical symptoms, but the way she’s living is different. Nothing changed except the information in her hands. When she stopped thinking about being progressively ill, she stopped giving up on life. While we can say that this is a psychological issue, and it is in part, it is also scientifically demonstrated that our thoughts are the command center for the reactions in our bodies. To be clear, I'm not saying she is able to think her way out of the physical issues, but by no longer thinking she was dying she started living again. How you think about what is happening to you changes the way you experience it. Actually the impact the mind can have on healing is an interesting area of new scientific study that you can read more about in this Scientific American article here . The brain spends most of its time making predictions about the future . Because we are all born with inherited ancestral programming through evolution, we all have a negativity bias . This means that when future circumstances are unknown or unclear, our default judgement tends to be that things aren’t going to work out the way we want to. It isn’t until we see concrete proof that things MAY go in our favor that we allow ourselves to believe in the best possible outcome. What we may not know is that these subconscious beliefs pilot our action. We can call it self-sabotage, but it’s really the brain actively looking for proof that the negative is true. Which means it can be very hard to get yourself on board with believing that you can do/be/have/feel what you want. This is why I say that your thoughts are your superpower, because they can be make or break. Self-talk has been strongly associated with performance. Students who told themselves they weren't going to do well - actually did worse . Athletes who practice positive self-talk have been shown to perform better Does this mean you have to be positive all the time? Certainly not. That causes its own set of challenges. The key is to remain objective at the very least. We want to avoid feeding our negativity bias and working hard to keep our thoughts neutral or positive. As in the case of my mother, it may just give you your life back.

I’ve been working from the beach for the last couple of months. One of the added benefits of being here is that we have a foot path that runs along the sea connecting one town to another. Not surprising it is packed in the morning with joggers, speed walkers, and people from every age getting in some exercise while enjoying the exceptional view. At the very least the landscape is beautiful and so it’s a great place to marvel at nature. I’m an observer so I like to watch my fellow walkers. You learn a lot about people from the simplest things. For example, the people who walk in a group and don’t move when others are coming from another direction, what the etiquette is when passing someone in front of you, what side of the path you should be on depending on which direction you’re walking, and where to place yourself when a dog is coming. Most people have these unspoken rules innately in them, as part of our foundational social conditioning, but every now and then someone can surprise you. For worse but also for the better. And today I’d like to focus on the better.

Social media has impacted multiple areas of our lives. Your employees skills are the latest frontier.

We're currently living in a time that's been dubbed “the Continuous Traumatic Stressors Era” and it's probably taking more of a toll on your employees than you might be aware of.

Whether you are personally affected by what’s going on in Ukraine or not, reading a lot of the language on the internet surrounding the situation is going to send panic triggers to your brain. Given that we’re just coming off of years of having our nervous systems triggered on a daily basis, this will not help at all. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for your own health - physical and mental - to keep your mind in a healthy, safe, and serene space. It is so important to be able to stay in the now and focus on what you have in front of you. While it may sound easier said than done, here’s 8 different ways you can help to keep your thoughts and body feeling calm: 1. Stay away from the news. If you are someone who is anxiety prone then it is best to avoid all forms of news until you feel centered and strong enough to deal with it. If there’s something to know it will find you, but there is no need to dive into the details of what’s happening. It will only trigger you, making you less capable of finding the peace that you need. 2. Connect. Reach out to friends and family. Go see people. Talk to people at the water cooler. Connecting with others reminds us that we have a support system and increases our sense of psychological safety 3. Use this anxiety attack video/audio. If you feel an anxiety attack starting to flare up watch this video or download this audio . Use it as frequently as you need. It may sound like just a regular audio/meditation file but it has several different evidence based techniques to de-fuse your rising anxiety. 4. Dance. At home by yourself, or wherever you can, put your favorite music on and let yourself go. This technique releases pent up energy and helps induce a state of euphoria (which will help with #7 below).

Moodally Matters Pocast: How Burning Out From an Award Winning Job Improved My Life with Erika Ferszt - Episode 1, Season 1

Millions of Americans are returning back to work after being home during the pandemic. While this has been exciting for many, some are feeling burned out by their work. What do you do if you are feeling burned out by your work? How do you reverse it? How can you “get your mojo back”? What can employers do to help their staff reverse burnout? In this interview series called “Beating Burnout: 5 Things You Should Do If You Are Experiencing Work Burnout,” we are talking to successful business leaders, HR leaders, and mental health leaders who can share insights from their experience about how we can “Beat Burnout.”. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Erika Ferszt. Erika Ferszt is the founder of Moodally, helping organizations and employees turn mood into a competitive advantage by improving well-being, performance, and EI skills. After having suffered a stress-related vision loss burnout incident in 2015, that forced her to leave her role as Global Advertising, Media & Digital Director at Ray-Ban, Erika returned to school to study the effects of stress on the mind, body & brain. She completed a Post-Graduate program in the Neuroscience of Mental Health and an MSc in Organizational Psychology. Erika is singularly focused on creating better workplaces, one mood at a time through guest speaking, employee training/coaching, and her own ground-breaking app that helps employees shift their moods in real-time. Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory? I grew up in New York City in the 1980s in a rather off-beat family. We lived in the East Village, which, at the time, was an artistic, but “grungy” neighborhood. We were a long way away from the more gentrified version you might see today. I spent my days, however, on Park Avenue where I had the tremendous fortune to go to Dalton, a fantastic school on the Upper East Side. Having such stark realities between my days and nights taught me to see situations from multiple perspectives. Living in New York, in that particular context, taught me independence, resilience and gave me a Ph.D. in street smarts. My childhood was very unusual, but certainly provided me with many of the skills that I need and use every day What or who inspired you to pursue your career? We’d love to hear the story. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have many guardian angels along my career path; there hasn’t been one single person, but rather a team of people. I’ve had a major career pivot in the last few years, however, and there was a very specific incident that convinced me to pursue my current path. I had the opportunity to collaborate with Matt Irwin, a fantastic fashion/culture photographer, while I was at Ray-Ban. We became instant friends the day we met. He was an incredibly sweet soul who struggled to find his place in the world, in fashion, and in his own body. Unfortunately, in 2016 Matt took his own life, after battling with depression for many years. He left a final letter and there were a couple of sentences in there that just grabbed me and shook me awake. His words convinced me to spend my time, energy, and talent on helping people get a better grip on their human experience. I went back to school the next year and it put me on the path I’m on now. None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Was there a particular person who you feel gave you the most help or encouragement to be who you are today? Can you share a story about that? As I mentioned I’ve had so many people be the person I need when I needed them that it would be unfair to single anyone out. I can say, though, that sometimes you find the encouragement you need in opposition. I had a friend who absolutely meant well but was worried for me as I was changing professional paths. I had been very successful in advertising/communications and they were concerned for my financial well-being as I worked towards a more entrepreneurial path. They were frequently calling me, warning me of what was ahead, reminding me of the greatness that I was leaving behind, and generally trying to discourage me from taking the step I was taking. To this day they’re still not particularly supportive, even though they mean well. However, I find that their not believing in what I am doing gives me an extra pinch of motivation and conviction that I need on those off days. Can you share the funniest or most interesting mistake that occurred to you in the course of your career? What lesson or takeaway did you learn from that? This story isn’t a career mistake, but it is directly related to burnout so I thought it would be funny and appropriate. This was many years ago when I was still running advertising at Ray-Ban. It was probably at the peak of my busyness, and I was constantly trying to make my life as efficient as possible. My daughter was very young so I was condensing my travel as much as I could and limiting my personal free time so that I could be available to be with her. If I saw a shirt, pants, shoes, etc. that I liked I would frequently just buy the item in a couple of colors, so I didn’t have to spend too much time shopping or thinking about clothes. I had just come back from one of my whirlwind business trips, where I did 3 countries in APAC in 3 days, round trip, I was exhausted and horribly jetlagged. I had a weekend to recover before leaving again to shoot in LA. My flight was leaving very early in the morning, so I left my clothes out so as not to bother my husband or daughter while getting ready. But I realized that I had forgotten to leave out my shoes. I tiptoed into the bedroom where my husband was sleeping and — in the pitch dark — grabbed a pair of knee-high boots and headed out the door. It was 5AM so it was pitch dark everywhere. I get to the airport and I check-in and the woman asks me to load my luggage and as I look down I realize that I’ve got one brown boot and one black boot on. They were the same model, but two different colors. After laughing most of the 11-hour flight to LA, it made me start to wonder if my lifestyle wasn’t starting to get a bit over the top and perhaps some changes needed to be made. Although…that didn’t happen until much later when I had no choice but to make changes. Can you share your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Why does that resonate with you so much? I have a bunch that I resonate with differently in different periods of my life. One saying that I absolutely love right now is “What’s yours will find you.” I think sometimes we — especially me — can obsess about making things happen for ourselves. We push and push and if we don’t get the results we get mad, we get more determined, we get anxious…I’ve spent so many days of my life trying to make things happen that I realized, months or years later, weren’t really right for me. Sometimes life doesn’t give you what you want because it isn’t good for you. So I love the idea that what’s yours will find you because it lets me set intentions, goals, and objectives but it also allows me to let go of things when I need to and trust that I’m always exactly where I am supposed to be. What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people? I’ve actually been working quite a bit with a gigantic bank, which has been a wonderful surprise. It didn’t surprise me that this bank would hire me, because they are very forward-thinking and really have excellence as a mission, so they actively seek out new and innovative solutions. What surprised me was the response that I get from the people who participate in my talks, use my app, or read my articles, because so much of the great feedback that I get comes from men. Women, statistically speaking, tend to be more open about seeking solutions to emotion-based challenges, like stress or bad moods. There’s a ton of evidence that men are equally affected, if not more so, by stress and dealing with the fallout from their moods, but they are less open to seeking assistance. A lot of it comes from social conditioning around how men are supposed to act and behave in the world, but some of it is also that there aren’t a lot of solutions that keep men in mind when they’re being designed. So I am very happy every time I get an email from a senior-level male banker that tells me how impacted they were by my work because I really set out to make a solution that would reach people who might not have gone looking for it on their own. That was really the inspiration that came from my friend Matt. You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each? First, I feel like I should caveat my answers. The three I’m going to give you are the ones that are helping me on my current path, but certainly were not the ones that I was using in my previous professional incarnation. The first trait is to be willing to be wrong. Meaning that if you can’t accept when you’re wrong, you can never get to right. This can set you up for failure. Especially if you’re in an entrepreneurial position. It’s important to be convinced of what you’re doing, especially if you’re doing something new on the market. But you must take the feedback that comes from the people interacting with what you’ve made. Especially if you get recurring feedback on the same issue. If you’re open to not knowing the right answer, it creates the conditions for you to actually find the right answer. The second is patience and anyone who knows me will laugh that I’m saying this. I have historically NOT been a patient person. At all. However, the last few years, where I had to intentionally impose moving slowly on myself, have taught me the importance of taking your time. I know this is the opposite of most trends in the world right now, but time and patience give us the time to thoroughly reflect and not react on a knee-jerk. If I had been in a hurry and pushed things through, my current business would have already failed. The third trait is to be committed to what kind of impact you want to make. I’ve always believed that making money is a byproduct of doing something well, and you do something well when you know where it is that you’re trying to move the needle. When you’re clear on what it is you want to do, you can be open to multiple paths about how you get there. But if you’re committed only to the process, then the outcomes can be many. And not all great. For the benefit of our readers, can you briefly let us know why you are an authority about the topic of burnout? I am living breathing proof that burnout exists and that it can sneak up on you literally overnight. I was a very successful senior manager at one of the most well-known companies in the world and one morning I woke up and couldn’t see out of my right eye. After spending more than a week in the hospital, the doctors gave me a clean bill of health as they were not able to find any correlated illnesses. They ultimately determined that what had happened to me was likely because of my lifestyle; trying to burn the candle at both ends, be the best in several different areas of my life, taking no time for myself, and living in a constant state of physiological stress. After that incident happened in 2015 I had an idea I needed to change. Then Matt’s passing happened in 2016 and that was the push I really needed. I went back to school to dig into stress and how it affects us physically and mentally. I completed a post-graduate program in the Neuroscience & Psychology of Mental Health, where we were taught the neural bases and dynamics of stress and burnout. My mind was blown wide open. There is SO much that we don’t know that we need to know. There are so many behaviors we partake in every day that make our stress worse. This affects both how we feel and our state of health but also affects how we perform at work. Even a minor stress incident can have us showing up to work with reduced mental capacity. I felt almost guilty keeping this information to myself. After that, I was very committed to bringing this information to people like me, who needed it most but didn’t know they did. I went on to complete a Masters of Science in Behavioral & Organizational Psychology and today my full-time work is dedicated to helping employees and organizations combat stress and burnout by dealing with their thoughts, moods, and reactions in real-time. Ok, thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview about beating burnout. Let’s begin with a basic definition of terms so that all of us are on the same page. How do you define a “Burnout”? Can you explain? Burnout is exactly what it sounds like. You literally short circuit. You can switch off, blow out, or slowly fade but what happens is a progressive decrease in physical and emotional energy to face your day-to-day life. That said, I’d like to make two super important points. The first is that there is a tendency to think of burnout as a psychological problem and there is a piece that is psychological, yes. But burnout is very much a physiological issue. The current statistics have 80% of doctor visits as stress-related. This is because stress involves, and impacts, pretty much every system in our body. So there is a domino, or knock-on, effect for well-being. For example, stress has been connected to illnesses such as IBS, diabetes, and Multiple Sclerosis. These are all very different illnesses with very different symptoms and systems. What they have in common is that — through the domino effect of stress — they are secondary effect illnesses that stem from unchecked primary stress responses. Think of it as a faucet being left open. Sooner or later it doesn’t just overflow, it ruins the hardwood floors, the neighbor’s ceilings, and stains the walls. So it is a mistake to think about burnout as someone not being able to hack it anymore. There are real physiological problems that come from not knowing how to effectively manage stress. The second point I would like to make is that burnout doesn’t always happen to people who are angry, sad, or tired of their work. I absolutely adored my job. Probably too much. I pushed myself every day — physically, creatively, mentally, personally, etc and one day my body just said “that’s enough”. In the same way car engines lose power over time through use, if we don’t care for ourselves, in the right way, every day it is entirely possible that one day we wake up and our engine just doesn’t turn on. How would you define or describe the opposite of burnout? I think a lot of people would answer that the opposite of burnout is a flow state, where you’re alive and engaged. But, I don’t know that there is an opposite of burnout. As I mentioned before, you can be very happy in your job, present in your life, and in your work and still suffer burnout. I think of burnout more as a destination, someplace we end up that we did not intend to. It’s more like a couple of wrong turns on our journey forward and we find ourselves in someplace unexpected and unwanted. To me, the opposite of burnout is really a person who is knowledgeable about stress and self-care and has a healthy routine of taking care of their bodies, their energy, their boundaries, their time, and their emotional self-regulation. This might be intuitive to you, but it will be instructive to expressly articulate this. Some skeptics may argue that burnout is a minor annoyance and we should just “soldier on’’ and “grin and bear it.” Can you please share a few reasons why burnout can have long-term impacts on our individual health, as well as the health and productivity of our society? As I mentioned before there is an enormous physiological component to burnout. At the very least, the person is dealing with adrenal fatigue, where the adrenal glands are overworked and at such a high plateau of cortisol that they can’t make enough to give you that push you need to get out of the bed in the morning. This is what is happening when we wake up and we’re still tired and the first thing we say to ourselves is “I don’t know if I can do this”. When someone gets to this stage, pushing more is almost a guarantee that a full-on burnout is around the corner. Not only will this then have an impact on their physical health, their work performance, and their personal life but it takes a long time to recover. We don’t just snap back from burnout. There is no quick fix. The body needs to reset. That takes time. This means that employers can lose great employees simply because they pushed themselves too hard. It took me at least a year until I felt in balance again and at the time it was such a strange sensation because it had been so long since I felt that way. Having been running at maximum speed for so long, the sensation of feeling healthy and normal was no longer real to me. I had gotten used to the overdrive and that felt normal. Until my body let me know in no uncertain terms that it was not. From your experience, perspective, or research, what are the main causes of burnout? I’ve written and spoken extensively about this topic. I dug into the existing research on the topic and there is no smoking gun. There is some evidence that there may be a predisposition based on personality. There are four personality types that can be at a greater risk of being susceptible to burnout. I call them the Type A, The CareGiver, The Emotional Dissonant, and The Emotionally Unaware. There’s a full article on my website that goes into the details of each. Some professions may be at higher risk, such as teaching, nursing, healthcare, and people in the service industries. A Forbes article from August 2020 found that “Knowledge Workers” or rather people whose professional output is dependent on the quality of their thinking may be more at risk for burnout. The truth is that any one of us can burn out. With the right combination of events, behaviors, and context we can all find ourselves having a burnout moment. For some it might take ten years to mature, for others, it could take two. I speak to a lot of young women working in startups and I’m shocked at the pace of life that they’re living. The issue here is also that when we push ourselves to this kind of limit, we have to be careful forever. Think of an athlete with an injury. They may be able to play again, but they’re always going to have to be careful about where they injured themselves. Frequently the injury repeats itself. But back to the original question; what are the behaviors that can lead to burnout? Well, it’s a bit of a perfect storm made up of a mix of any one of the following: lack of emotional intelligence and the ability to identify how you are feeling in the moment; an unhealthy diet; lack of exercise; highly stressful environment; prolonged exposure to stress; lack of sleep; lack of a support system; personal trauma; absence of inspiration; overworking; lack of self-care routine; high external pressure or emotional expectation, and so on. You may have noticed that I used the word lack repeatedly. We burn out because we don’t give ourselves what we need while we take on harmful stress. The equation is that simple. Fantastic. Here is the main question of our discussion. What can an individual do if they are feeling burned out by work? How does one reverse it? How can you “get your mojo back?” Can you please share your “5 Things You Should Do If You Are Experiencing Work Burnout?”. (Please share a story or an example for each.) So again, it depends on the root cause of the burnout and the advice is not a one-size-fits-all. What an “overworker” should do will look very different than what an “uninspired” should do. That said, here are the tips that I took to recover. - Learn to recognize how you are feeling. If you don’t know what feeling good feels like, you can’t know what feeling bad feels like. If you can’t remember what it feels like to be calm and relaxed, it will be difficult to call that feeling up when you need it. So the first step is to start to build a very healthy conversation with your own body and your state of being. When you’re happy, take note of it. Pay attention to how you feel; how does your energy feel, how do your shoulders feel, how does your stomach feel, etc. When you are angry, where does it show up in your body; your face, your hands? When you’re overwhelmed or stressed, how does it show up for you? How does your behavior change while you’re under stress? This ability to identify your state is the absolute first step to being able to shift out of feeling stressed. It has to be acknowledged first. - Know what your triggers are and accept them. We can actively put ourselves into situations that we know are going to cause ourselves stress and we do so without any thought about it. Knowing what situations make us unhappy, cause us anxiety, or threaten our well-being allows us to be able to observe our reactions, but also create a proactive strategy for how to respond when, and if, it happens. If we know we’re inevitably going to be stressed by an interaction with someone, we can prepare ourselves beforehand. We can find explanations for other people’s behaviors before we encounter them. For example, if we know that our boss tends to lash out, we can prepare for it by cognitively reframing our boss’s actions in a way that takes the pressure off of us. We can tell ourselves that it’s more about the boss than about us. This detachment allows our body to react differently. The more we can prepare, the less we’re susceptible to the stress response. - Do things that make you happy. Most of our life is framed in our minds as things we “have” to do. We have to go to work, have to go to a meeting, have to see a friend for dinner, have to go to the family’s this weekend. Thinking about things in this way creates a sensation of being powerless and being at the mercy of the world around us. When we identify things that make us happy….and then actually give ourselves those things, these are pure moments of self-care. But hold on, research shows that, despite what we might think, retail therapy is not a thing. You may feel happy at the moment of purchase, but it will be short-lived. Experiences, conversations, going somewhere you want, reaching out to people you care about, or even simply time alone (hello…long shower) can offer more prolonged feelings of satisfaction. The ideal is researching something you want to do, making a plan to make it happen, and then going through with that plan. This little recipe offers three different levels of personal joy that have all been scientifically proven as best practices to make us happy and reduce stress. As a disclaimer here, it’s best to leave alcohol out of these moments of self-care as alcohol tampers with our mood systems and hormone regulation, so our emotional response, and the benefits we get from it, isn’t as genuine as it would be if we were drug/alcohol-free. - As boring as it may sound: eat healthily, exercise, avoid caffeine & alcohol, and get good sleep. It’s so banal and yet it’s the absolute best advice I can give. What you eat directly impacts your mood state and the way your body functions. Eating healthy allows the body to function at its best. In the battle against stress, it’s the difference between sending a soldier out with shoddy armor or making sure they’re able to fight at their best. Exercise helps directly metabolize cortisol, which helps reduce stress levels and staves off some of those secondary collateral illnesses. Caffeine and alcohol mess with the body’s systems and can cause hormonal imbalances. The liver metabolizes alcohol first because it’s a toxin. This means that cortisol and other hormonal metabolization moves to the back of the line. This directly impacts your mood states and how the body functions…including weight management. Finally sleep is absolutely crucial. A poor night’s sleep can cause us to work as if we had 5–8 points less IQ. It also causes us to be in foul moods which makes us more susceptible to stress and more reactionary in our responses. - Learn to say no. The people in our lives don’t really love it when we start putting up boundaries and enforcing them, but this is one of the most important things you can do to stave off burnout. Don’t want to go out? Don’t go. Don’t want to have brunch with the family? Don’t go. Need to leave work but someone has asked you to stay later? Say no. Learning to draw boundaries that respect your energetic and emotional state will give you the time and space to refuel. The more your body gets what it needs, the better you’ll feel. What can concerned friends, colleagues, and life partners do to help someone they care about reverse burnout? Put as little pressure on the person as possible. Calling 100 times to check in on them may be making situations worse. Throwing problems on to the person will only increase their stress. A burnout person needs a support system, on their own time. Trying to force assistance will cause more harm than good. This doesn’t mean that you can’t offer, it means that you have to let the burnout person decide. I recently had a friend who I sensed was nearing burnout. I asked her how she felt about a spa weekend away from work, family, and routine. We went for 2 days to a nearby town and just walked, talked, ate, and relaxed. While 48 hours like this isn’t enough to heal the person, it is enough to give them a breath of oxygen and space. Sometimes burnout can feel like you’re suffocating and just a moment of being able to breathe, free of external pressures, provides a well-needed change of scenery. What can employers do to help their staff reverse burnout? The best employers understand that this is a systemic issue. Yes, it’s great to provide employees access to vital learning about stress and emotion regulations skills, but the pressure of healing burnout cannot be entirely on the employee’s shoulders. The employer must also look at the environment and make changes and interventions at the root. I’ve seen companies lose great employees because the environment was unhealthy. Finding great talent these days is no easy feat. There is ample evidence that shows that it’s very costly to replace any employee. In the case of a stellar employee, it could be priceless. Making simple, but necessary, changes to a work environment may seem impossible or challenging right now, but it will absolutely be demanded in the future. The incoming generations don’t see it as a benefit, they see it as a baseline. Employers should be looking into job flexibility, in terms of time and location of work. They should be looking into giving employees some degree of freedom or power on how their job unfolds every day. Employers should also be training their managers in stress and emotion regulation. There’s evidence that the managers set the tone for many people. When managers learn how to emotionally self-regulate, improvement is seen throughout their entire team; both in terms of productivity and morale. Too often managers are put into positions without receiving adequate training on how to manage people; meaning how to inspire, how to handle conflict, how to avoid communication issues, etc. These are absolutely fundamental skills in keeping the morale of a team high and yet very few managers are actively trained in these skills. In a study I did for my own company, one of the top reasons people left their job was because of the environment. That’s 100% fixable with the right tools and the right formation. These ideas are wonderful, but sadly they are not yet commonplace. What strategies would you suggest to raise awareness about the importance of supporting the mental wellness of employees? Learning. Plain and simple. If you don’t know how the pieces of the car work, you’re always going to have to rely on external intervention. Until we all learn how our body’s stress response works, where we make things worse, how to stop it in real-time, and how to be able to stay centered in stressful situations in a healthy way then we’re just putting band-aids on the problem. Organizations need to start talking about these topics. Making people aware of the intricacies of how mental health works. This will not only help to destigmatize wellbeing but also help us to both proactively avoid stress and know how to deal with it efficiently and healthily when it comes up. What are a few of the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they try to reverse burnout in themselves or others? What can they do to avoid those mistakes? They think that it’s a quick fix. “I just need a weekend and then I’ll be good as new.” It took months/years to get where you are, it takes about that to undo it. So people need patience and constancy in self-care behaviors to come back from burnout. Ok, we are nearly done. You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. This might sound banal, but I’m doing it. I genuinely believe that the more that people understand how their stress response works the faster we can work to tackle the burnout epidemic. It’s not a hard thing to avoid, but you have to know what you’re looking for. Right now, so many of us willingly, but unwittingly, take part in seemingly simple behaviors that are actually making us more unwell every day. I also believe that this kind of information — the dynamics of emotions and stress and how to emotionally self-regulate — should be taught in school from an early age. We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we both tag them :-) Yes, I would love to have lunch with Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett from Northeastern University. She has done some groundbreaking work on the connection between the brain and emotions and I would feel like a kid in a candy shop just to get to discuss that with her. How can our readers further follow your work online? They can check out Moodally at www.moodally.com, on Facebook or Instagram at moodally.wellness, or find both Moodally and myself on LinkedIn. Thank you for these really excellent insights, and we greatly appreciate the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!