How to Avoid Burnout in Your Career

 

50 year old speaker says to 25 year old speaker: “I’m not sure how much longer I can do this, I am burning out, I’m just tired of it – the road, the gigs, the commitment, the grind – I can’t take it anymore.” 

25 year old speaker thinks: “I will trade you all of your problems to have this problem right now…” 

 

Burnout is the real deal for anyone in any profession or industry, especially when you have accomplished the highest levels, been acknowledged in the Hall of Fame, gone through the ups and downs that comes with a lengthy career.

For us as Speakers, Performers, Actors, Singers, Entertainers, as we live our dreams on stages the world over, we also come up against this weird feeling over time where, after a while, the joy of stage becomes a burden…even an inconvenience.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, just wait, you will. 

I hit a wall once I turned 30.  My body was starting to give out.  Thousands of Jim Carrey prat falls and raptor leaps off stages too high to consider and my body was begging for a break.  Physical therapy and traction lasted a year just to keep me from laying in bed all day with ice on 4 different sections of my body at once.

30 years old!  I wasn’t a professional athlete, but I was doing things athletes experience, PLUS I traveled on redeye flights, never got massages, ate sporadically, and was in the midst of having our 3rd child in 26 months.

Home life and professional life were exhausting and painful.

At 35 I was told my voice would be gone, destroyed, completely hashed by 50 if I kept doing what I was doing to it vocally.  Coughing up blood after a standing ovation really is a killjoy.

I hit 40 a month ago.  I feel much better now than I have since my early 20’s when I began my career.

This list may not work for everyone but it has for me, hope it gives you an idea as to how you can avoid burning out before it’s too late (and if it is too late, let’s talk – seriously, text me and we’ll set up a time, because you can still salvage this 801-674-3668).

1. Learn How to Sleep – I used to average 3 hours per night.  I pulled an all-nighter weekly…for 15 years.  Sure, I got a lot done, I was also a zombie for over a decade.  Here’s what changed:
   1. Turn off electronics 2 hours before bed, put them in another room, including TV
   2. Make sleep your Number 1 priority.  If I can be completely transparent, physical intimacy, as well as my work / creativity that arrived between 11 PM-2 AM each night, used to really be my Number 1 & 2 when it came to nighttime.  Now sleep is Number 1.  For the past 2 years I have worked on this.
   3. Live in your current Time Zone.  Don’t play what time is it back home?  Do your routine on the road.
2. Change Your Career – After-Dinner corporate shows were killing my spirit.  I came off stage hating myself.  Money was amazing, I was top of my game, and I hated life.  Here’s what changed:
   1. My focus became Mission driven.  Meaning I realized JOY for attendees was the intention, rather than the paycheck as the driving force.  That helped a ton.  Moving away from Public Ticketed Events (where the pressure was on me to get people in the seats), Fairs (where I was like a donkey doing a circus act), and Schools (where I felt abused with each assembly) made a stark choice that corporate was better than the others for me.
   2. Morphed into Speaker.  Yes, this has taken me YEARS and still at it, but having that as my main objective has given me the ability to get through the painful events I didn’t want to do, knowing it was buying me stage time and experience to experiment on stage and create off of it.
   3. Do Less Events.  I was mostly mad because I hated being away from family.  At one point I would bring a child to every gig and every trip.  This was great, but also added such an element of challenge to keep them occupied that I couldn’t handle it and service the client as needed.  So I upped my fee and sat on it, only taking the ones I really needed or wanted.  Made less money by doing less volume, but once the introduction to stage happened I was ready and excited to go out there.
3. Write in a Journal – This will avert years and tens of thousands of dollars in therapy if you can make this an honest practice.  You can also re-read it and see if you’re progressing or regressing.  Few therapists can recall your therapy like a well worn Journal.
4. Give Yourself Breathing Room – We are surrounded by, and are considered, the great motivators and accomplishment peak performers.  However, you can run a horse until it dies.  Here’s what changed:
   1. Forgive Yourself – You will land in the hotel room, great expectations to accomplish many things, sometimes you will be Superman, but mostly you will fail yourself and be gobbled up by landing at your neutral, base self.  I am writing a book about this, the Hotel Room as The Devil’s Playground.  This place will consume your soul.  Forgive yourself and keep your head up, perfection is unattainable, just do your best.
   2. Go Outside – It would be cool of me to say, “Put on those running shorts and hit the streets, bro for a huge killer work out!” but that’s not what this is.  Just go outside.  Don’t have anywhere to go.  Just wander.  Look up.  BREATHE.  Enjoy the architecture.  Leave your phone in the room.  See the city you’re in.  Eat the local foods, enjoy, and stop trying to be perfect.  Go walk up a mountain and take way too long.  These practices will heal your soul and be right for your body.
   3. STOP.  Just stop for one minute and think about your breathing.  It’s shallow and it’s killing you.  Breathe in as deep as possible.  Stretch.  Do some push-ups but it’s not a contest, just move.  If you want to hit the weights, swing a kettlebell, run on a treadmill, go ahead.  But breathing is the most important thing you can focus on.  When not doing a physical thing, instead make sure there are huge gaps in your calendar to do whatever you want – like watch a movie in the middle of the day or on a flight, instead of writing that book that is barking at you.  Just stop.
5. Define Your Success – Of everything here, this has been the toughest for me.  People tell me every day, in every setting, what type of success they expected from me.  It still stings, as we always wonder if we’ve become complacent or just lazy, yet defining success for ourselves can help us get into the right space to keep a career going.  Here’s what changed:
   1. Money – Discuss with your Family the amount you really believe you can live on, at the lowest level, and then make just a little more than that.  Don’t worry about becoming a millionaire, most in our industry never will be, and those that have made millions not only lost their families, but their health, happiness, and eventually the money, too.
   2. Investment – Put your money in places other than just you.  Of course, always pay yourself first, save, but equally you must find somewhere other than the entertainment world to put your money – that means: real estate, stocks, angel investing, you name it, you invest it elsewhere that is what will make you feel independently wealthy and successful. What did we do?  We put down our roots, invested in our home to become the house everyone wants to visit and stay at, and we bought an RV, so we can go wherever we want, whenever we want.  This brought much peace and joy in our lives.
   3. Create Legacy Projects – No one will ever buy what I am spending a majority of my time creating these days.  They are for my children, my legacy, what they’ll have when I’m dead.  Morbid?  Maybe.  But I know for a fact no audience I perform for will care for it, even though it is my greatest work, because it isn’t the work they know me for it won’t be anything to them.  I don’t care.  This gives me purpose.  This drives my efforts.  The gigs pay for my freedom to have time to do it.  Thank goodness!

 

Read some good books, the kinds that will help you find a reason to continue on, such as:

The Old Man and the Sea

As a Man Thinketh

Light From Many Lamps

The Big Leap

Essentialism

The War of Art

 

Watch some good movies that will help you appreciate time, here and now:

About Time

Big Fish

Terms of Endearment

The Family Man

Cinderella Man & A Beautiful Mind

Ghandi

 

And the ultimate movie about not giving up:

Darkest Hour

 

I’m here for you.  Let’s talk if you need to.  But you can make it through this.  Just shift a few things in your life.