Surviving the Side Hustle

E111 - From Burnout Cycles to Breaking Free: Garrett Wood's Science of Well-Being

• Coach Rob • Season 1 • Episode 111

Share episode

Send us a text

Ever found yourself grinding away at your side hustle, feeling exhausted but still unable to turn off your racing thoughts at night? You're not alone—and you might be closer to burnout than you realize.

Clinical hypnotherapist Garrett Wood's journey into the world of burnout prevention began with his own crisis. Working 70-80 hour weeks as a corporate leader, he was successful by external measures but failing in his personal life. "I was a jerk to my dog and my partner," he admits candidly. The turning point came when he discovered non-sleep deep rest—a practice that induces a hypnotic state providing profound restoration in just minutes. This single change transformed not just his well-being but his professional performance, relationships, and quality of life.

Contrary to stage performances and Hollywood depictions, hypnosis isn't magical or mysterious—it's a natural state we all experience regularly. "All hypnosis is self-hypnosis," Garrett explains. "You go in and out of hypnosis every time you fall asleep and wake up." Athletes trigger this state with pre-performance rituals, and we sometimes experience it while driving or becoming absorbed in creative work. The power lies in harnessing this state intentionally to reprogram how your nervous system responds to stress.

The most dangerous myth for entrepreneurs? That success comes at the expense of well-being. Garrett's work with executives reveals the opposite truth: sustainable success is built through well-being, not despite it. "The more of it we have, the longer we can work, the healthier we are, the more shots we can take, the more likely we're going to experience success and actually be able to appreciate it." His five-minute assessment not only measures current burnout levels but identifies specific contributing factors and can even predict whether you'll be successful or burned out five years from now.

Ready to transform your relationship with work and success? Take Garrett's free burnout assessment through Gnosis Therapy on LinkedIn and discover what specific factors might be contributing to your burnout risk. Your future self will thank you.

Speaker 1:

What's up, guys and welcome back to another episode of Surviving the Side Hustle. I'm excited today because I am chatting with Garrett Wood and he's an interesting dude. He's the founder of Gnosis Therapy and he helps a lot of high-achieving, high-masking professionals transform burnout into breakouts or breakthroughs, I should say, from anywhere. Garrett is a certified clinical hypnotherapist and a national board certified coach. He specializes in executive leadership and sustainable well-being. He uses clinical hypnotherapy and executive well-being coaching, grounded in the biopsychosocial science of well-being, to help leaders achieve high performance and deep fulfillment without burnout, band-aids or self-sacrifice. Garrett man, I'm excited to kind of dive in. I'm interested to hear what you've got to say. Dude, welcome to the show. I'm excited. Let's dive in Awesome.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for having me, Rob. I'm excited to be here too.

Speaker 1:

Sweet, sweet. So a lot of accolades, a lot of things you've got going on. Would you mind bringing this back to like where did all of this kind of start for you? Where did you decide that you wanted to get into really solving burnout and I guess, everything that you're kind of doing, helping individuals and everything?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, great question. I never thought I'd be a clinical hypnotherapist, or even a coach for that matter. I kind of came by it slowly over time. But every time before I've been a practitioner or a provider I've always been on the other side. So I've been receiving the support and the treatment before I've ever been able to be a provider of it.

Speaker 2:

So with the burnout piece, I worked for a pretty large corporation. We worked with pretty high level executives and they were coming to us. They had all the money and time in the world and they knew their health was slipping and they were looking for performance edge. And after working with them it was pretty wild to see people with large amounts of success professionally, but then personally they were suffering back pain, knee pain, shoulder pain, couldn't sleep at night. Their health and fitness goals were falling off a cliff. They were getting type 2 diabetes kind of like the lifestyle medication stuff that a lot of people are really struggling with, and then they were hitting a wall where they're trying to push through all of that and still achieve like some athletic performance, but then their body was taking the toll and then their mental health was taking the toll and then they would start to eventually see it show up at work, and so it was really fascinating to work with those people, at the beginning on the health and fitness side and then at that organization I had a.

Speaker 2:

It was tough for me. There's a lot of people at seven locations, over a hundred people I was responsible for for six, seven figure dollar budgets, not quarterly but annually, and I was working 70, 80 hours a week. I was a jerk to my dog and my partner. We were doing really well, our team was doing really well. I thought my team liked me enough. They laughed at my jokes. I wasn't the one signing their paychecks but we seemed to have a good enough report.

Speaker 2:

But there was a study that came out at that time about the effect of sleep and it seemed like sleep outperformed what normal people say like move more, eat less and you'll get fit. Then they were saying, oh, abs are made in the kitchen, not in the gym, and what it actually seemed like was happening was success was like from sleep. So people were more likely to get successful if they were sleeping their way to success. If they took the extra half hour to sleep or extra 90 minutes a night, they would get more of the results, even doing less in the gym and even less in the kitchen, and their work life would be better. Their personal relationships would be better. So I looked at that and I was like, okay, let me get into this.

Speaker 2:

I was sleeping maybe five and a half hours a night, so I was like, let me take a nap. That didn't work for me. I woke up even groggier than before. I tried the caffeine nap, where you take a shot of espresso, take a nap, wake up. It was a wreck.

Speaker 2:

So I found that there's something called non-sleep deep rest and it's essentially closing your eyes, taking some deep breaths and just trying to let your mind wander off and come back as many times as you can. And in fact, if it wanders off, it's encouraged and you're not trying to actually problem solve anything, you're just trying to like be there. A lot of people call that like active meditation or transcendental meditation, but it's a little bit less active than that. Even it's more of a passive thing. They're closing your eyes, relax and see if you can feel your body letting your attention come and go, and that was proven to be. Three minutes of that state as effective as a 20 minute nap, and a 20 minute nap was effective as three hours of sleep. So I was like I'm going to do this and I incorporated it.

Speaker 2:

I got some pretty decent results. I felt better. My knee pain, my back pain went away, and so I started looking deeper into what state that is, and it seemed like that was a state that people go into when they're in a hypnotic state or a hypnosis state theta alpha kind of brain waves, and there's a lot of cool things that happen there. So I went and found a clinical hypnotherapist laid down, they walked me through some of their processes and within a quarter, by the next time that, like our reports came out, I was at the top of the leader chart.

Speaker 2:

But my partner and I were closer than ever. We were no longer in couples counseling. My dog and I had a better relationship. Our turnover for our department was less and we were actually doing more revenue than we've ever done before and I was working 20 to 30 hours less a week and I was like I've been the asshole, I've been the bottleneck in my success for so many. Those hundred people are better because I'm less of a jerk. Okay, this is the real deal here, and so that's kind of what kicked me off in my journey from being on the supportive side to actually seeing the value of clinical hypnotherapy and the impact it can have really practically for people trickling down to all your other relationships, whether it's work, personal and so on, and you're just seeing all this stuff.

Speaker 1:

And then where do you go with that? Where do you take that? Now you're all of a sudden. You're like, boom, everyone has to be doing this. Why aren't more people doing that? Because it sounds magical.

Speaker 2:

So I hate to say this, because hypnosis has a history of appearing magical and people even believing it was magic. It's not. It's neuroscientific, which is pretty cool. All hypnosis is self-hypnosis. You go in and out of hypnosis. Every time you fall asleep and wake up. If you've ever driven a car and you're like, show up and you're like I'm here, awesome, I've got here safe, I was totally thinking about it. That's a version of hypnosis. If I was to ask you to like right now to take a breath and like think about a big yellow, sour, juicy lemon and part of your throat starts to like salivate a little bit, that's a state of hypnosis too. So something we all go in and out of. It's totally natural. But harnessing that to like actually improve how you show up and kind of view the world and how your nervous system responds to the stress that it goes through is pretty powerful when you do it right, and so it's pretty. It's not magic, but it might as well be.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so this might be a silly question, but can you define hypnosis for me?

Speaker 2:

So it's a state of consciousness, it's like focused awareness. So the people talk about flow states where, like if you're playing a sport or you're an artist of some kind, or even if you're like an accountant and like you love being an accountant and you get into a flow state when you're doing your like forensic accounting, that type of state is a state of hypnosis. So, and even athletes will trigger that. So like if they're taking a free throw shot, they have their little routine where they bounce the ball twice and then throw it up. No, bounce it twice, then throw it up, they're actually trying to trigger a state of hypnosis where they can drown out that crowd zero in and kind of just tunnel vision on that basket, going that ball going into the basket, and so they're actually trying to do an induction right there in that moment. And so that's sometimes why you see them do it two or three or four times before they actually release the ball.

Speaker 1:

Interesting? Yeah, because I know, yeah, a lot of basketball pitchers, a lot of athletes are at that level, cause I remember watching something or listening to something a couple of years back and they were talking about visualization. Is visualization just the practice of getting into hypnosis?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so visualization is a part of hypnosis, right? Hypnosis would be like an umbrella term and visualization would be part of it, cause you can get into a hypnosis state and or hypnotic state and not necessarily be visualizing anything. In particular, some people don't see things in their mind's eye. They like have a general impression of it. Some people I can ask them to pick, like a picture like red juicy apple, and they'll see like a D dimensional, like almost reach out and grab it version of an apple, and some people will just see like a cartoon version of it or like a stencil of an apple. Some people will just have a memory of an apple that they've had before. All of those are different like types of mentalization and you don't necessarily need to have them to be in a state of hypnosis, cause if you don't have access to that, you still can experience hypnosis. It will just feel different to you versus someone else's experience okay.

Speaker 1:

So have you experienced anybody who can't get into a hypnotic state, like where they just fail to? Is it is it? Is it possible to not be able to get into that? Because that is essentially.

Speaker 2:

It's just a state of consciousness, like you said yeah, so there are some people that are more suggestible and some people that are less suggestible. So there, there's like a range of that. So if you've ever been to like a or ever seen or heard about like a hypnotist show, where it's like a very strange and silly experience, where people are up on stage doing all types of impersonations of like ninjas or chickens or dogs and doing all these strange activities, those people showed up to the show in a state of hypnosis and they're hyper suggestible. And when the stage hypnosis is asking for volunteers, he's weeding out the people that are willing to make a fool of themselves, that enjoy it and that are kind of the class clowns in the life of the party. Those are the volunteers on stage. And then he'll ask them by giving them a suggestion and seeing if they follow it because they're already in or not in a state of hypnosis, and seeing if they follow it because they're already in or not in a state of hypnosis. And the ones that are most suggestible, that are most class clown, hamish kind of people. Those are the ones that you're seeing do all those crazy things. So it's kind of just creating a perfect storm, but he's not doing anything, he's just self-selecting that In my practice with people, hypnosis is part of what we do, it's one of our.

Speaker 2:

We do a bunch of conscious work and we look for all these like positive attributes and then some of these struggles that people are going through.

Speaker 2:

And when we try to tackle it consciously, we kind of get stuck in this, like, oh, I want to do this, but I have this reaction, or I want to do this but I have this feeling, and they're torn because both of those values feel like they can't be satisfied at the same time. That competing goods internally is the problem. It's not like good idea, bad idea, it's like great idea, pretty good idea, uh-oh, which one do I choose? And then there's a little bit of fear attached with both of those, usually based upon painful past learning that they've gone through, and so they're avoiding the pain of going through that. And so when we're working with hypnosis, we're going to try to work with all of the powerful positive attributes of it, mitigate the intensity of the fear response, and do that in a state where those two things don't come into a conscious conflict with each other. And that's something you can do in a state of hypnosis that you can't do outside of it, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1:

Interesting, interesting. And so who are the people that you work mostly with or closely with? Is it still because it's not just athletes anymore, right? Are you working with like more people too? Because I know burnout is an area and I actually. First, can I ask you, how do you personally define burnout? Because I've spoken with a bunch of other experts and over the years and seems like some people have different definitions of it over the years and seems like some people have different definitions of it.

Speaker 2:

So the World Health Organization recognized it in 2019. So, like just before COVID swept the world and they're like man, this is a real thing and here's the definition of it. It's a workplace phenomena, so it's something that happens relative to our employment. So the challenging part is if you're self-employed or like a solo entrepreneur employment. So the challenging part is if you're self-employed or like a solo entrepreneur, it's an every place problem, because your work is in your mind and like your body and your actions and your behavior. It's not something you can tune in and out of that.

Speaker 2:

People that have a nine to five, that aren't really passionate about their work, but then people that do have a nine to five they have a corporate paycheck, they can show up and they'll still get a paycheck for a while, even if they they're not doing work. The passionate people there end up overworking because they care about the outcomes, and so after a while, either their values and the organization's values misalign, and that creates some problems for them, or their ability to get the results that they want versus the resources they have available is not enough and the math isn't mathing and so they put in more effort, get less reward from it, and then that's when all of that personal stuff shows up. So health issues, sleep issues, digestion issues, pain, and then structured relationships.

Speaker 1:

That start falling apart at the seams, both at work and at home. Yeah, so I mean, I've definitely gone through my fair share of burnout spells and I see a lot of individuals who are kind of combating or I guess I could say that they're in denial about it or like the early stages how do you know that someone's getting into burnout or they're close to being burnt out or they're working their way there? What are some like huge indicators that you see?

Speaker 2:

I think the biggest indicator is like closing your eyes at night and not being able to get to sleep. Your mind's just running. That is the first indicator. If you're waking up and you're already thinking about your to-do list and you don't have any downtime, like if anytime you try to like draw your attention away, it's coming back to work and it's coming back to the same problems at work and you're kind of seal yourself, stuck in.

Speaker 2:

That You're not anywhere near burnout, but as long as the longer you stay there, the more burned out you're going to become, because we're really good as humans at handling stress, but we're really good at handling, like, acute bouts of stress. So something bad happens, we respond, we recover. But if we have something bad that happens and it continues to happen and there's no recovery time, that's when we're going to. It doesn't matter what it is. If it doesn't get solved, that's going to create burnout as a result of that. So for solo entrepreneurs it's really challenging because there's a lot of stuff to try to figure out and so if they don't kind of create times where they're going to turn it off or tune it down or turn into something else that gets them to feel relaxed and calm. It's going to happen. It's almost inevitable, so it's challenging.

Speaker 1:

In your experience and studies and such, have you found anything that shows or explains or maybe points to why some people might be able to struggle longer versus others? And people just like kind of bear in it Because I know I used to wear like a badge of honor like, oh, I'm just going to continue, grind and grind, grind, grind, grind, grind. And then I was like, yeah, I did it for like years and years and I'm like, yeah, I'm not burnt out, I could keep going. And then I know some other people who are at least a little more aware and they're like no, I need to chill out. I wrote one email today, kind of thing.

Speaker 2:

So the that's so. Yeah, great question. Sorry, let me click. No, the idea that you can grind forever is true, and there are people that are really resilient, and so sometimes it's natural, it's built into them. So there's kind of two things that I think are really interesting.

Speaker 2:

There are some people that when they're washing the dishes, they are literally just washing the dishes. Their mind is just focused on that task. They're not daydreaming about anything else, and so that's like really powerful to have that type of a mind, because you actually get a lot of downtime in your day. And then there's other people that they're doing the dishes and they're thinking about everything else going on, and that's not necessarily good or bad, it's just could be more stress if the things they're thinking about are distressing to them. And then there's some people that the things they're thinking about are really distressing because, in the way that they've experienced the world, they've grown up always benefiting from assuming the worst.

Speaker 2:

So when they're daydreaming and their mind's wandering doing the dishes, they're literally imagining the worst case scenarios over and over and over again. And so the amount of time under tension, if we think about like working out, they're like picking the heaviest weight up and then holding it in the hardest position. They're not even repping it out, they're just like where's it stuck at? Okay, let me hold it there and like. And they're just there forever. And they're never re-racking that weight, like. That's not healthy, that's you're going to harm yourself, right?

Speaker 2:

Wow, that's a great, and so some people yeah, go ahead Sorry.

Speaker 1:

No, I was just saying that. That's that is great to visualize. Perfect there, Go ahead.

Speaker 2:

I was gonna say so. Some people, when they have that imagination, it can be beneficial because they can imagine how good things could be and they can imagine what it would take to work towards that, and I think anybody who's passionate, caring driven, that's a trait they're going to have Now if they've grown up in an experience where they had to assume the worst and then figure out how to work around it. You got to be able to channel that into really finite things and put some, some really nice big protective blocks around you to be able to protect yourself, and if you don't, you're in trouble. Wow.

Speaker 1:

You are in trouble. Wow, yeah, that's really interesting. I love to kind of think about that, and as you were speaking, it had me kind of thinking about kind of taking those breaks. You were saying and when people are just washing their dishes, they are literally just washing the dishes. That's something that I've kind of noticed with myself.

Speaker 1:

More recently, I was really into meditation and guided meditation specifically, and this I was really good for with it for a while, and then I kind of fell off.

Speaker 1:

And then recently I kind of brought it back and while I'm listening to the guided meditation, there's a specific part at the end where the guy just says okay, now just don't think about anything. And in that time period it's like my brain just literally stops thinking. Or he says go ahead, let your brain think about whatever you want to, and then in that moment I just can't think of anything. And then I have like this clear brain and it like almost tickles my brain. It's such a unique sensation that I like I think it's the weirdest thing ever, but it's just like so refreshing because it just feels like everything is off. And now I can see myself experiencing that and doing that at certain times of the day when I do slow down and focus whether I'm like driving or walking down the road, or if I'm like going outside for a walk or something I can like turn off and feel like nothing's happening. Can you explain what is happening in that situation?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I can try. I mean, I can take my best guess. There's a lot of stories out there and science tells a lot of stories and then five years go by and they tell a bunch of new ones. Now it's like every two years they come out with new stories, which is great because they get better every time, even if they're not 100% accurate time, even if they're not 100% accurate. It's like truth by margin of error. But right now it seems like the most current story is the volume in which your thoughts are coming in at and the state in which your nervous system is in.

Speaker 2:

If you're in a heightened state in your body, your brain is going to tell stories that are heightened stories. So if I'm tired, grumpy, did not sleep well, did not eat well, I'm in a fight with someone in my personal life and someone at work compliments my shirt and says hey, that's a nice shirt. Today, the thought isn't oh, thanks, it would be like I saw you yesterday. You didn't say anything about my shirt yesterday. What the hell's going on? Did I look bad in my shirt yesterday? Is this person a jerk? Is something wrong with my shirt today? Is it sarcasm?

Speaker 2:

But the reason those thoughts are going on is because of the state that their nervous system is in, and so the better balance their nervous system is in, the easier it is to just be present and be like awesome, thank you.

Speaker 2:

And then the closer you have that relationship with yourself and that nervous system and other people in your life with their nervous system, the easier it is to get access to that feeling that you described wonderfully, which is just being present. Right, it's like the old guy in the robe with the stick on the top of the mountain with a long beard, just like zenned out. But here you are, going through your day feeling it, you know, picking butt, taking names and still getting work done, and that feeling is something that people need to have access to, because that is what is like creating resilience for them, and there's a lot of things that get in the way of it for lots of really good reasons, and so most of the work that I do with people is to try to help remove some of those things so they can experience what you're talking about even more.

Speaker 1:

So do you mostly work with individuals on their way to burnout preventing burnout or do you working with people trying to get out or or from burnout?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, all the above. So there's a kind of different strategies. If you're not in burnout or like at the first stages, we can do a lot of cool stuff to prevent it from happening and to make sure you never have to worry about it again. If you're halfway through or like just starting burnout, the strategy we would use for that are completely different too. But if you're in full burnout mode, well, it's a completely different type of work.

Speaker 2:

You can't tell someone to go for a walk because it's good for them if they can't get out of bed. But that's not helpful, right. Like that's actually like not great advice. It's kind of like being a jerk, right? Like oh you're, you're burned out, you're completely broken, cool, so go do this thing that takes like five hours, it's going to be amazing, I swear it's worth it and it might be, but like they're just not in a position to take advantage of that advice. It just doesn't work for them. And so we have to meet them where they're at, what they have going on, what their goals are, and then, even more than that, we have to know what's driving their specific burnout, because it's different for everybody. We have different susceptibilities to the things that get in our way of having that experience that you're talking about, and so that's figuring that out is the fun part, for me at least.

Speaker 1:

So if someone's experiencing burnout, how long does it take to get out of burnout? Can you even get out of burnout? Is that like where you can get fully out? And I mean, I feel like I've kind of escaped from my burnout period of my life, but I don't know if, like, is that going to be coming back soon? Do I have to like worry about that? Like I don't know, like, is that going to be coming back soon? Do I have to like worry about?

Speaker 2:

that, like I don't know, like it's so many questions I have. Yeah, so if you've experienced burnout before, you're more likely the general population to experience it again. If you've experienced it two or three times, you're even more likely. Right Like that correlation continues to scale up. And so if someone's gone through it before, the goal is to figure out what was going on then versus what's going on and that they're out of it, because that actually gives you like a really nice clue of what is the perspective things that they need to no longer have that experience.

Speaker 2:

So for some people it's the ability to experience positive emotion. Some people it's engagement in their work, getting lost in the effort. Some people it's the meaning. Some people it's the type of feeling they get when they're achieving something. Like sometimes people will do phenomenal work, but the more success they have, the further they are away from doing the end goal because they've had so much success.

Speaker 2:

When they first start off as, like a solo entrepreneur, they're the one doing everything and that might feed them with, like newness and novelty.

Speaker 2:

They might get excited and lost in all the details, but then, as they grow, they might have two or three people doing stuff and the one thing they really love doing in the business now is someone else's job and they're stuck doing all the stuff.

Speaker 2:

They hate IRS, taxes and like filing and they're like it's like a headache and so that can be really dangerous for them. The success that they have in their business to be able to bring on more people takes away the thing about the business that they enjoy doing. Work is not the only place they can get that done at, but there are some people like they own a restaurant and they're the maitre d' because they love seeing the faces come in and sitting them down and like getting to know their names. Even though they have five restaurants, they might have a walk-on shift at every single one of them so they can be the maitre d' sitting people down, because that's the only part they really like. The rest of it's kind of a headache for them and so figuring that part out is important. And then obviously like health, movement mindset, making sure your bills are paid. Those are all prerequisites to avoid burnout in the first place.

Speaker 1:

If someone's like kind of working through and they're in a project and you know you got to push forward, to kind of keep going, and you know you're getting pretty burnt out, but you make the decision to kind of keep pushing forward, like can you do that often? Like, or is there like, how do you know where the line is? Like okay, yeah, this is too much. Like now I need to kind of like pump the brakes and I got to tell my boss or I need to chill out on this project or maybe put it on the back burner for the time period. Like, how do you know yourself, like, when you're going to get burnt out?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, my favorite quote, for that is like Hunter S Thompson, the person who knows where the line is is the person who's crossed it one too many times. You know exactly where it is. You can plot it because you're like no, no, no, no, oh, dang way too business for myself. I spoke with both of my dads and they both were like I unfollowed them on LinkedIn and kind of hid. I didn't tell them.

Speaker 2:

I opened a business, I had a pretty decent career, I was doing well, I had a title, it was cool, and we talked about work every time we got together, because these guys are like old school business guys reading the Economist and the Wall Street Journal and that's all that we ever talked about. So I was excited to talk to him about all that stuff. But then when I opened my own business, I was worried that they would be like what are you doing? You're walking away from all this? How could you do that? So it took three months for me to be able to actually tell them that I had walked away from it and opened my own doors, and each one of them was like you know, I had an offer, I could have done this with my buddy and I said no, and I asked them why. And both of them had the exact same answer. They said well, I had too much responsibility. I was a father, I had kids to take care of, I had a house, I had all these things, and I was too scared that if it didn't go well, the stakes were going to be too high and I wouldn't be able to recover from it. And so if we want to know ourselves really well and where that line of burnout is too much or not enough for ourselves, the less responsibility we have, the easier it is to cross that line and come back, and so then the easier it is to know exactly where that line is for you. It does change over time, but you get to know yourself a little bit better over time too. But if you already have high responsibilities, man, this is there's an old, old Sunday school lesson and it like stuck with me, probably from when I was eight years old.

Speaker 2:

So I apologize because this is silly, but they're hiring a Wagoneer leader to be like okay, we're going to go from the East coast to the West coast and we're going to put everybody in a wagon. They're interviewing all the guys that can drive wagons and they hired a guy and they were like how close can you get that wagon wheel to the edge of the cliff? And he was like I can do like probably four inches and they're like okay. They asked the same question. Next guy he's like two inches. Next guy one inch. Last guy, the guy they hired they were like how close? And he's like I don't know.

Speaker 2:

I'm pretty good at this, but I know one thing I'm going to try to keep that wagon wheel as far away from the edge of that cliff as I possibly could. If we have to stop and take apart the wagon and move it so it's safe for everybody, that's what I'm going to do, right? And so there is this idea that we can push harder and we'll get more in the short run. The question is is it worth the expense in the long run?

Speaker 2:

Yes, I'm saying yes to this project right now, this sprint. Am I going to have enough downtime afterwards to fully recover before I have to put that effort in again? Or is it going to be catastrophic? Am I so close to the edge that if I push this once, I'm off the edge of that cliff and do I have enough ability to get back up and start over again, and if we don't have that ability, it's actually probably not the right thing to push forward. Maybe it is right to like hit a break or take pause or calling someone else to carry it for you while you take that break that you need.

Speaker 1:

See, I feel like it requires a lot of awareness for yourself to kind of have that dialogue or conversation with yourself or somebody else. But in like the early days of entrepreneurship and kind of just kicking and starting, you're excited, you lose that conversation with yourself. Do you have any tips for individuals who are like in that situation where like yeah, yeah, I need to check in with myself but it never seems to happen, kind of thing Like how important is that and how do you do it if you don't have like a system or a process set up or you do routinely try and check in with yourself?

Speaker 2:

I think you just said it right there. You got to have a system. You have to process, to check in.

Speaker 2:

People talk about sleep deprivation being just as like terrible for driving outcomes as drinking and driving. Right, and if someone's had like two or three drinks and they're trying to do the math of how much they've had and their body weight and their blood alcohol and what they should drive, call an Uber, right, do the thing. But once we're in that state, we are not sober, we're not rational, we're not reasonable. In fact, the reasoning we're doing in that state is clouded. That's why we have to be able to have people in our life that we can reflect some of those things back to us, that we know.

Speaker 2:

Trust that we may disagree with them, we may be arguing, no, I'm fine to drive, but you'd be wrong. And so making sure you do have a system is really important, because if you're missing out on sleep, you're missing out on meals sure, you can get by, but I would argue that the quality of work is going to suffer. The opportunities that you see and that you can take advantage of as an opportunity as an entrepreneur are also going to suffer. You might be missing really easy shots to take, because you're so delirious and so laser focused on this one thing that you're missing all these other opportunities over here.

Speaker 2:

Because when you set out, it's usually not the first idea you have that becomes successful, it's the fifth, and so, trying to make that first idea work, there's a lot of people that could have jumped over and pivoted sooner and found something that would actually work for them If they had the sobriety that they needed, they had their full capacity to think creatively. But when we get into that state it's like tunnel just the next step, next step, next step and I'm not saying it's bad because it works and for some of us, financially you'll have to do that. But if you have to consistently do that forever, you're in trouble. It's just dangerous.

Speaker 1:

So when you're working with individuals, do you help them kind of create these systems and processes that make sure that they can check in into different strategies and things and like, what does it actually even look like working with you?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so we don't guess, we just assess, right. So I do have an assessment. That's pretty cool. With about five minutes of that assessment, you can tell not only if you're like low on the burnout scale or like fully in it, but also like what is the key contributing factor this time around that's driving your burnout, what's the thing in your life or your well-being that you're missing? That if you had it, it would make it easier, and so that assessment takes five minutes, and now that we've had it for a while, we've been able to see that after those five minutes, not only can we tell if you're recording burnout, if you're in it, if you're out of it, but if you're going to be successful in five years or not, or if you're going to be burned out in five years or not, because we're literally looking at what is going to contribute to your ability to be successful on a long-term scale. What is going to contribute to your ability to be successful on a long-term scale.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that is crazy. That is wild. Where do people like? How do you? How can they take this assessment? Is this something you only do for your clients, or is this like, like, did you?

Speaker 2:

create this assessment yourself.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so it's based upon the science of wellbeing, which is out of Wharton and the school of psychology in Pennsylvania University of Pennsylvania, but we adapted it for leaders and people like entrepreneurs who are trying to create something and they're like, passionate about it and that's the thing that causes them to burn out. And so we're trying to figure out, well, what are the things that make it easier for them to continue their passion but avoid the burnout? And so we used a lot of their good signs for that. What makes a life worth living, what buoys people against burnout and what keeps them out of that cynicism and that overwhelm. And then we looked at heart rate variability. So it's pretty cool. It's a great assessment. If people are interested, they can go to my LinkedIn, which is at Gnosis Therapy, which is G-N-O-S-I-S therapy. The G is silent, so it just sounds like Gnosis, but there's a G there. If you go there, you can see my little bio and there's a click and you can take it. It just asks you a few questions.

Speaker 1:

And it's free to take the assessment.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. My goal for people is just to be able to get them to actually have sustainable success. You asked me how I got into this, and the final straw was my own personal burnout. But it came at the same time that a colleague had been asked to step down. He'd been with the organization for 20 plus years. He was kind of the go-to leader where everybody who was struggling would look to him Like what are you doing to be successful? How do you have such great success? And so when he lost his position, we were kind of all shocked.

Speaker 2:

And then two weeks later I was in a meeting with his replacement, and that's when we got news that he had decided to take his own life. Because after that 20 years he had spent so much of his own energy, attention, identity into the organization, into his relationships, into the team, that there really was nothing left for him without that position, without that title. He looked around and was like this isn't it, this is. There's nothing left over for me. And so that was kind of a really big wake up call for me.

Speaker 2:

So burnout isn't just like man, I can't get out of bed for a couple of days, I feel like crap. It's serious right, and so my goal was to help all these people make sure that they don't end up having that type of fate, myself included. And now I mean, if that assessment one tells you where you are, what you need to do and how you can get started amazing Like. The more people that take it, the better. Share with your friends, do whatever. Share it with your friends, do whatever. There's no cost, just do it. If it helps any one person avoid that fate, then I can go to bed well every night.

Speaker 1:

And it's probably beneficial to take it multiple times in a year.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yes, if you're feeling like you're in a good state and then you're feeling like you're not in a good state, you can check and see what's going on. And anytime there's a transition in your life, whether it's personally or professionally, whether you completed a project or excited to take on a new one those are the times when it's the most fun to kind of take it, because you'll see before and after during what's going on. So pretty cool.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome and you said Gnosis Therapy on LinkedIn is the easiest place to kind of find that and get to it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you'll see a picture of me smiling, and then there'll be a link for the stupid little hyperlink there. You can click on it, it'll take you right to it.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. Yeah, yeah. Well, I can't thank you enough how awesome this episode is. This is some great information. I find it extremely interesting and I love it. So I keep talking forever, but I want to make sure that I'm courteous of your time. I know you've got a lot going on, so I wanted to thank you for hopping on today sharing your experiences and your insights, and this has been powerful. This is great and I really do appreciate you coming on and doing this. But before I let you go, I got to ask you if you were to take everything from those experiences and the life lessons mentors, different conversations, everything you've learned, and if you were to boil it down into one piece of advice for this young entrepreneur, side hustler, solopreneur out there to kind of get that momentum going and hopefully prevent burnout. What would be your piece of advice for them to achieve success?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So success is something that you're not going to experience once. You don't like clock in, do the thing and walk away. It's something you have to show up and continue to do, and so the hard part is is, if you don't know how to care for yourself or you can't care for yourself, you're going to have less shots. You're going to have less time and attention. You're going to have less opportunities. The longer you can care for yourself, the more opportunities you're going to have.

Speaker 2:

So we often think that success is built at the expense of our well-being, but it's not. Success is actually built through our well-being. The more of it we have, the longer we can work for the healthier we are, the more shots we can take, the more likely we're going to experience success and then actually be able to appreciate it. We're like cool, I did it, but I'm not broken and beat up and like hate my life and everyone else at it. They don't all hate me, oh, this is a win.

Speaker 2:

And so I really push back against that idea that like success is built at the expense of your wellbeing. It's not. It's built through it, and so my advice for anybody is to take care of yourself If they want to do one thing to figure out how to take care of themselves, to be really specific about who they are, what they have going on, where they're at in their life. They can take that assessment Because there's so many different things that contribute to your own individual success or failure or burnout or well-being that a blanket statement isn't going to be applicable to everybody. We got to get into the little weeds a little bit and get into the nitty gritty to make it really powerful.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that is some powerful advice and I love that you shared that so eloquently and I love that and anybody listening make sure you go take that assessment ASAP and then take it again later this year so you can test and retest, see how you're doing. And don't forget to share that with somebody else too, someone you care about that you feel that they might be kind of traveling down that burnout trail and Garrett dude. Thank you again so much. This has been an excellent episode. I really appreciate this. Thank you again.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be able to share. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1:

We'll talk again soon. That's all we got today, guys. Peace, peace, peace peace.