KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Reigniting the Fire: How to Overcome Burnout & Reframe Motivation

Episode Date: December 21, 2025

Summary:In the high-stakes world of 2025 real estate, burnout is more than just feeling tired; it’s a business-threatening state of exhaustion that kills productivity and growth. This episode provides a tactical guide for agents to recognize the warning signs of burnout and—more importantly—how to reframe motivation using modern psychology and productivity hacks. Learn how to transition from "hustle culture" to "high-performance flow," ensuring your business thrives without sacrificing your mental health.

Welcome, everyone. It is so great to have you joining me today. In this particular session, it's on the back of having conversations with a number of my clients. And there was a common element that started to, I want to say started to appear. Now, this might actually relate directly to you as well, or it might relate to somebody that you know. So, If you find that this particular session helps you. And I know you're thinking, hey, Stuart, what is a session going to be about? But if the session resonates with you or you know that it's going to help somebody, share it with them. Because this is something that's really key to helping all of us.

So what am I actually talking about? Well, let me ask you this. Have you ever had the situation where you wake up in the morning, but you just don't want to get out of bed? You get into the office, but you just don't want to do any work. You see, you get to a point in your life where that motivation is just totally depleted. And ultimately, what you're actually experiencing is burnout. Burnout is one of those areas that comes at us at almost like a speed train. And when it hits us, we actually don't even know that we're in burnouts.

What we think is, hey, we're actually just tired and we try and push harder. Or I've got the flu and we just push harder. But ultimately, burnout can actually lead to quite a severe, and I would say regression in your particular productivity as you're going forward. You see, at burnout stage, if you feel like you have to push to get some, something done. The chances are you're actually either getting into or you are already in the burnout stage. So how do we overcome that? We all experience it. We all have the barrage of life around us that really expedites us to get into that burnout stage. But how do we get out of it?

You know, it's not like we just take a gloss of water and we throw it over our heads, cool ourselves down and say, right now we're ready to rock and roll and away we go. If it was as easy as that, well, we'd all be doing it. But the truth of it is, there is actually a process that we go through. And what we actually call it is we need to reframe our motivation. You see, burnout takes away our motivation. It doesn't give us that energy. So what we need to do is we need to reframe that motivation into something that we can.

actually take those steps in going forward. So that's what I want to share with you today. And I know that you, either yourself or somebody that you know is probably experiencing this. And I did a bit of research behind this process to see how it can help individuals get out of burnouts and not totally out of burnout, but get out of it so that you can still remain productive. And through all of the little tips and tricks that I'm going to share with you, I'm hoping that it can actually start to reduce that burnout feeling so that you become more in control. And when you wake up in the morning, you have the energy. When you get into the office, you want to actually go ahead and do that productive work as we're going forward.

So there's a couple little pointers that I want to share out with you. And the first one is, when you get into this burnout, way too often, all we say to ourselves is, I'm just busy. I am just so busy. I just don't know what to do. You see, what we don't do is we don't acknowledge that we're actually in burnout. And by not acknowledging it, we're actually just kind of pushing it to one side. We feel that if we say, I'm in burnout, that people are going to look at you and go, wow, you're a weak individual.

You can't do this. No, that's not what it is. You see, when you can actually acknowledge it, that is the very first step. You acknowledge that you're in that burnout. And if you actually accept that you're there, taking the steps forward becomes so much easy. You see, burnout is not about being lazy. It's not about being weak. I want you to just remove all of that. You're a human being. All right. Your body is like a mobile phone battery. It gets depleted. it and it cannot operate anymore until it actually has been recharged. You see, too often people think that if we acknowledge that we're in burnout, that, yes, we might be weak, but we have to actually work harder to try and get out of it. And in order to get out of it, we just got to do more work. Well, it doesn't work like that. So step number one, the very first thing, make sure that if you're feeling like, I just don't have that energy.

Just look at yourself, maybe even look in the mirror and actually ask, am I at that burnout level? Accept where you are right now. That acceptance is the very first part. If you reject it and say, I have not burnt out, and you just carry on pushing and carry on pushing, it'll take a doctor to come to you and say, while you're in hospital, you actually burnt out. So first one, you need to acknowledge it.

It's hard, but just look at yourself. Look at what you're doing. Are you happy? Are you at that point where you're in control of everything around you? So first one is basically to acknowledge and accept where you're at. Once you've actually accepted that, and it's not difficult to accept it. I know for myself personally, I've felt like that. And it is something that was hard.

But once I accepted, it was almost like this whole, load just lifted off my shoulders, I actually acknowledged where I was. Taking the next steps became so much easier. And those are those steps that you can actually do or share with the people around you. You see, the second part is once you've acknowledged is to actually scale down. If you're going out and for instance, you might be doing work that is four hours of work. So using as an example, maybe you're writing a book and you want to write a chapter a day. Or you have this barrage of emails that are coming in and you just want to hit through all 148 emails in one shot. You see, that's a huge load that can actually just eat into you.

So ultimately, what you do is when you start to scale down, you actually say, instead of me wanting to write a whole chapter, let me just write one sentence today. That's all I want to do. I just want to write one sentence or maybe just one paragraph. That's it. Instead of the full chapter, instead of looking at all those emails that are sitting in your mailbox, you know what? I'm just going to look at one email. I'm going to look at one email, respond to one email, and then I just want to say, right,

now I'll take a deep breath. You see, take the tasks that you typically do every single day and bring it all the way down. If it's something where you go out and you lead generate for two hours, lead generate for 20 minutes, just so that you've done the activity. If you typically wanted to phone 20 people, maybe start by phoning just two people. Start small. Take those big activities that you typically do and just start small. Now, now, this is not to say, this is the excuse to move into the future and say, hey, you should have told me, I don't need to do two to three hours of. generating every single day. I can do five minutes. It's once you've acknowledged that you're in

that burnout stage that you start to bring it down because ultimately what you want to do is you want to recover your body. You want to get back to that point where you can go back to doing the two to three hours in control. The third part of it is so once you've acknowledged and now you've started to scale everything down, there's a very important question that you've got to ask yourself and really what this question does is it reconnects you to the reason why and here's the clue the reason why you need to do that particular activity many times we actually forget our purpose we forget our why and this is something that when we forget it we tend to take on everything and we try and complete everything. But at the end of the day, it feels like we

haven't completed anything. So once you've broken everything down to the small task, you just ask yourself the question. If I write just this one sentence or one paragraph, or I just phone two clients, or I just actually respond to one email this morning, why is it so important for me to actually do that and really starting to answer that question when you can identify the purpose the reason why you're doing these activities every single day what it actually does is it starts to put some energy back into your body it starts reminding you of the purpose many times when we forget our purpose when we forget our why we go into burnout extremely because we're doing everything. Going small, understanding and gaining the clarity of why I'm actually

doing that really helps to give you that energy to start looking to move forward. So now you've actually got all of that. You've now got this purpose. You're doing these small little actions and you know why you're actually doing those actions. You then move into the recovery state. And the recovery state is it's building the rest. You see, when we are actually at our highest, at our peak, where we've got all of that energy, we can push four, six hours. Well, we think we can push it.

But we push four to six hours of doing work on an ongoing basis. And we get a lot done. But we go into burnout quite quickly. When we get into this particular burnout stage, We're now doing these small increments. So what do we do once we've written that single sentence or paragraph or responded to that email or maybe made those two phone calls? We take a rest.

We actually take a rest. And in taking a rest, we do things like, just go for a walk. Something that I used to do when I was an agent, I would make my phone calls. I would make five phone calls. In other words, five connected phone calls. Once I've done that for three, phone call. I would get up from my desk. I would walk outside, take a deep breath, walk around, look at the trees, get the sounds of nature into my system. I would do that for about

15 minutes. Once I could actually feel right, I'm back and I can breathe, I'd go back to my desk and I'd make another fire phone calls. And I would do that on an ongoing basis. You've heard of so many different techniques, the Pomodora effect, where you actually push something for 25 minutes, have a five minute break. This is where you need to start pulling this into your actual time blocks. Having a short period where you're doing a small amount of work, completing it and then taking a rest. Now that rest might be walking. It could also be journaling. It's something where you could actually just do a quick little reflection. How did you feel? It could even be something If you like knitting, maybe you do something and you go and pull up the wool and the knitting needles and you go and do a quick little knit to see if you can make a jersey.

You see, these aren't distractions that I'm talking about. What there actually are is there are recharging moments. Think of that mobile phone that I spoke about. It gets depleted, but you still need to make those phone calls through the day. So what do you do? Well, you quickly go into a shop. You know you're going to be there for 20 minutes. You ask the person behind the counter, do you mind if I quickly just charge my phone?

You take a break. You don't make any calls at that time. You just charge it. It goes from 10% to 18%. You take it out. You make a few phone calls, but you don't make a huge amount. You just make maybe one or two. Enough time to get into the car.

You then plug it in again, and then you make those calls again. You see, these little moments of breaks helps to recharge. But what's so important about it is you're still remaining productive. You're not just taking six months off to try and recoup. What you're doing is you're still doing those small purposeful actions. You're taking a break to recharge and then doing some more small purposeful actions. And when you're doing this on an ongoing basis, what you'll actually find is what started out as one sentence, one paragraph, you suddenly found, hey, I've actually got this energy.

I'm actually quite excited. I actually want to do two sentences or two paragraphs. You know, I don't want to just look at one email. Let me do five emails. I don't want to just make two calls. I'm happy to make five calls. You see, you will get to a point where because you've started to re-energize your body, you start getting into that motivation.

And it's that motivation that says, hey, I can do a little bit more. And you start to grow. And it starts to build up as you're going through. Now, having these little rests is so, so important. But there was a saying that I'd heard many, many years ago, nobody succeeds alone. And so too often, as an entrepreneur, we think that we're doing everything alone. And when we try to do it by ourselves, well, that's when we go into burnout. But what we really need to do is we need to get some external.

motivation. We need to have people around us. People that actually support our goal, our friends, our family, maybe it's even our work colleagues. When you work in an environment where there are a number of people that are also doing the small activities and taking a break, you can actually use it as long as it's not distractive where suddenly everything is just more distractions then work, but you've got a supportive goal. Everybody knows what you want to achieve and you start coming together to work together. You see, the energy from others is not about sapping their energy so that you've got all the energy and it's not about saying, hey, now I'm going to give you all of my energy that I don't have. In fact, when you're around supportive people,

people that are like-minded to you, what actually happens, and it's one of the power, of being a human being is we actually start to energize ourselves. It's almost like taking two mobile phones that are sitting at zero percent, putting them next to each other, and just with a miracle, they start charging each other. They start getting up to 5, 10, 15 percent without anything else around them. You see, external motivation is absolutely, absolutely key. But it does go a little bit further. You see, external motivation can also be depleted if the environment is not right. If you're sitting at a desk, that is extremely cluttered. If you're sitting an environment where there's a lot of people that are just moving in and out and really having that distraction and pulling

you out of your environment, if it's an environment that really doesn't work, maybe it's in the middle of summer and someone's turned the aircon on and it's sitting at like 40 degrees and it's just way too hot or maybe in the reverse it's sitting in winter and it's sitting at like minus two degrees and you just can't work because you're so cold you see external motivations is not only with the humans and the people around you but it's also the environment here's something that you can actually do as a tip if you ever feel like is my environment good or bad I want you to stand up. You stand up. And if there's lots of things around you, make sure it's safe, stand on a chair, get a different perspective of where you're actually working. Look down at your

desk. Ask yourself, is this an environment that is supporting the actions and the activities that I'm doing? Or is it actually hindering me? Is the people around supporting it? Or is there too much noise. When you have a different perspective of that in physical environment that you're working in, sometimes that's where a lot of your energy is getting sapped, moving papers out of the way so that you can actually write. I'm trying to find a charger because you forgot to charge your phone and getting into that. Make sure the environment. So this external motivation, the two parts, the people around you, make sure they're like-minded that are supporting you and they're working because they give you energy and make sure that the physical environment is

actually not cluttered. It actually has something to it. You can even, and I've started doing it in my office, I've got background music. You may not hear it, but there is background music that actually plays. It's very relaxing. It's very calming. And as I'm working, I find that that calming effect actually brings me down. It's not heavy metal rock and roll. It's actually something that's rather light, something where sometimes I'll break out into song because I enjoy it. But that just starts to calm me down. And that's what you're ultimately wanting to get through to. You see, the next part of this, and this is an area that we feel, we feel that we've actually got this self-discipline to actually get out of burnout.

We feel that we could wake up in the morning and say, you know what, I can push through it. And as I said right in the beginning, that's when you actually push yourself to the point where it's going to take a doctor while you're sitting in hospital to say, you've burnt out. You need to rest. So ultimately, the next part of it is to be compassionate about yourself. You know, you've got a human body. You've only got one body, by the way. And you want to make sure that you look after that particular.

body when you are in that burnout stage and you are just pushing harder and harder and harder the repercussions is your body is going to take a negative effect so have compassion on your physical body if you find that you're going for a long walk and you are you just can't even take another step but you're pushing yourself to do more and more and more knowing that you need your body tomorrow to do something else you could put yourself in a breakout where you actually your body just collapses so having the compassion and knowing that you have to at sometimes give up i remember many many years i actually went on one of these hiking trails and it was a hiking trail up a volcano it's an old abandoned volcano and as i'm going up

halfway, the gravel was so soft that every step I took, it was almost like I was walking on an escalator that was going backwards. About 100 meters, it took me nearly three hours to walk 100 meters because it was one step forward and I was just sliding back, one step forward and just sliding back. And I got to about 1 o'clock in the morning because it's in the middle of Africa and it's extremely hot. I got about halfway. And I just looked at this and I said, why am I doing this? Why am I pushing myself to get to the top? Do I have any reason to go to the top?

I've already experienced the most amazing parts of the country that I'd been in. But I also knew that I actually had another contract that I had to go to. So halfway up, I actually said to the porter, I'm done. My body has hit its limits. And I actually stayed on the top. It was a while halfway up the actual mountain. I stayed there until about 5 o'clock in the morning until I could actually walk down safely. And most people thought, oh, but you gave up.

I knew that if I pushed myself to the top, I probably would have burnt out even more that the contract that I was actually appointed to go and do, I wouldn't have been able to do that. So when you're looking at your body, make sure that you have the compassion and know when to say no to know when you can actually start to give up and it's not just giving up because well I have to throwing in the towel but it's when your body is saying please please let's just take a break so know when to stop pushing your body beyond its capabilities yes there's certain circumstances where we do push our body to the extreme but in our general life we don't have to push our bodies to the actual extreme.

And then we need to consider, and this is the final point, and these are the larger adjustments that you can actually make in your particular life. And it's adjustments like when you're doing activities, when you're doing your job, is there parts of it that you can delegate to somebody else? Is it something that you have to do everything? Because if you actually look deeper in it,

there's many items. that you can actually pass to someone and say, hey, please, can you actually help me with this? Even if you have to pay them, it will help you. Is there something, and so too often we put ourselves into these deadlines, is it something that we could delay? Could we delay it that we don't have to finish it today? Maybe we can do it next week. Maybe we can do it next month.

Is it that important that it has to be completed today? Many times when you're speaking with a client or maybe it's a supervisor or somebody senior, and you just say, I've just got so much on my plates at the moment. I'm not going to finish this. I am not going to give you the work that is at the highest level of what you're expecting from me. Can we push the deadline? And many times, people will say yes. They'll understand when you're actually in that particular position.

Or maybe it's something that you don't even need to do. Way too often, we take on activities because we feel obliged to take on these activities. But just that little word, no, sometimes is more powerful to get you out of burnout than anything else. So look at those activities. Is there something that you're doing that you could drop altogether and you don't actually put that into your schedule? Another area, and this is something where I've had conversations with a lot of clients, the environment. and we spoke about that environment and the people around you. What is the culture like?

Is there toxicity in that environment that when you're coming in, there's somebody that's hitting you all the time? Is it something that you can address or you cannot address? You see, these toxic environments that we hear, it's a term that goes around so often, or the culture of people where you just don't see eye to eye with everybody in that particular environment, that can actually create a lot of burnout.

Why? Because you're pushing yourself to fit in. You're pushing yourself to try and achieve what they would like to achieve. So look at that environment a little bit lower. I couldn't get a word out there. And then finally, through this particular journey, if you find that your burnout is consistent, you've gone through all the steps that I've shared with you,

but it's just too much on your shoulders. You just cannot take that load off. You're at that point where it actually starts to cross over into levels of possibly anxiety, depression, etc. When you're getting to those particular points, this is when you need to reach out to professional help. And I'm not saying that there's something wrong with you, but it could be something as simple as a coach.

Somebody who you can sit down and talk to, someone that can actually almost unravel what you're doing because you're sitting with all of it in your mind, you're sitting with it inside. And sometimes just talking about it really helps to identify, can I delegate it? Can I actually delay it into the future?

Can I drop it all together? Is it a certain individual? Is it my environment, my desk, that's actually cluttered? Is it that what I'm doing, I need to learn a new skill to help me through this particular journey? Am I doing it at the wrong time of the day or the right time of the day? You see, having that, and we call it professional because it's paid assistance, someone that you can talk to that actually helps you through this particular journey. And why it's so important that I've gone through this particular session is so too often burnout.

leads to a point in your life that you think that there's no return. The truth of it is, there is a return. The truth of it is you are in control of changing it. The challenge that comes in many times is we don't know what to do. We don't know how to actually go through it. And that's why this particular session, how to get yourself out of that burnout, how to motivate yourself forward. There's some very simple steps. And take these steps, put them into your life, share them with people. That's why I said at the beginning, it might sometimes resonate directly with you. Maybe it's somebody that you know. Share this with them to help them through this particular journey. But ultimately, if it's gone to that point, anxiety, the stress is way

too much. Depression is starting to come in. Please, you need to look at professional support. Let's not use the word help, professional support that can give you this guidance to help you as you're going through. You see, burnout, well, it's only temporary. That is a truth. It is only temporary. It becomes permanent when you don't address it. So I want you to address it. out of burnout and then suddenly you're going to see the world around you in such a different manner you're going to see the world around you as a level of excitement you're going to see the world around you as opportunities and when you start seeing these opportunities and you start getting this energy where every morning when you wake up you've got so much energy inside of you

people are looking at you and going where do you get this energy from it's because you can see the opportunities when you actually are going into the office instead of oh i've got to finish this report today you're actually going i cannot wait until this report's finished and i cannot wait to get the next one i want to start the next project as soon as possible you see these excitements that come inside of you it's where you want to be it's where each and every one of you want to get to because when you're there it means that you are in control and when you're in control suddenly everything changes. So that's what I wanted to make sure that you can actually get from a burnout to being in control

in some very simple steps as we're going through. And as I've said, if you've enjoyed this, this actually resonates with you, let me know in the actual comments. I would love to know, did it help you? Did you come out of it? Is it something where you know someone that's having the same struggles? share it with them. Let's make sure that the people around us can actually all be in that positive world. I know it seems like a dream world, but it's this particular world that actually

is going to open up these opportunities and you're going to see how things change. So I want to thank you so much for coming into this. And I cannot wait to see you in the next one. And remember, as I've said in previous, if you've got an idea, a topic that you'd love for me to actually dig deeper in, pop it into the actual comments below because it's those comments that I read and I will actually use to create these sessions that start going forward. So from myself, Stuart, you make sure that you stay productive. You stay positive and you move from that burnout to the life of opportunity. You have a fantastic day further.