Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Dr. Neha Sangwan on How You Heal From Spiritual Burnout EP 347

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

Are you experiencing burnout in your life? Join us in this illuminating episode as Dr. Neha Sangwan takes us on a journey to understand and heal a different kind of burnout—spiritual burnout. Dr. Sangwan is the author of "Powered by Me: From Burned Out to Fully Charged at Work and in Life."  Want to learn the 12 philosophies that the most successful people use to create a limitless life? Pre-order John R. Miles’s new book, Passion Struck, which will be released on February 6, 2024. Full show notes and resources can be found here:  https://passionstruck.com/dr-neha-sangwan-on-how-to-heal-spiritual-burnout/  Healing Spiritual Burnout: Dr. Neha Sangwan's Transformational Journey In this thought-provoking episode of the Passion Struck podcast, accompany host John R. Miles as he engages in a deep conversation with the distinguished Dr. Neha Sangwan. Together, they delve into the intricate realm of spiritual burnout and its intricate relationship with our core values and decision-making processes. Dr. Sangwan, a multifaceted professional with a background as a physician, engineer, CEO, communication specialist, and author of the forthcoming book "POWERED BY ME," opens up about her own profound journey – a transformational odyssey from the depths of severe burnout to a path of healing and renewal. Brought to you by OneSkin. Get 15% your order using code Passionstruck at https://www.oneskin.co/#oneskinpod. Brought to you by Indeed: Claim your SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR CREDIT now at Indeed dot com slash PASSIONSTRUCK. Brought to you by Lifeforce: Join me and thousands of others who have transformed their lives through Lifeforce's proactive and personalized approach to healthcare. Visit MyLifeforce.com today to start your membership and receive an exclusive $200 off. Brought to you by Hello Fresh. Use code passion 50 to get 50% off plus free shipping!  --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/DKWvKNiJwYE  --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://youtu.be/QYehiUuX7zs  Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Catch my interview with Dr. Caroline Leaf on Parenting or a Healthy and Confident Mind. Watch the solo episode I did on the topic of Chronic Loneliness: https://youtu.be/aFDRk0kcM40  Want to hear my best interviews from 2023? Check out my interview with Seth Godin on the Song of Significance and my interview with Gretchen Rubin on Life in Five Senses. ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m  Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/  Passion Struck is now on the Brushwood Media Network every Monday and Friday from 5–6 PM. Step 1: Go to TuneIn, Apple Music (or any other app, mobile or computer) Step 2: Search for "Brushwood Media” Network  

Coming up next on Passion Struck. The other thing that's really important to know about burnout is burnout happens over time. And there's three phases. The first phase is the alarm phase, where it almost feels like you're jumping on a treadmill that's going a little too fast. And your heart skips a beat. You might start sweating. It's that adrenaline rush moment. If you just continue on with that faster pace on the treadmill and you don't ever get off of it, you move into the second phase, which is called adaptation, where now your biology has to adapt to that higher pace without the rest. Suddenly,

you're going to find things like a weekend isn't enough time to recover. You're not able to catch up. And that's when that cynicism comes in. Oh, I feel like I'm heavy as bricks. I can barely drag myself through the day. And then you're in this chronic adaptation phase where you're adapting to that faster and faster pace of life. And then one more thing happens. One more thing happens and you go sliding down the slippery slope of exhaustion. So the triad of burnout is physical and emotional exhaustion, cynicism and ineffectiveness. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that

you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guest ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 347 of PassionStruck. Ranked by Apple is one of the top 10 most popular health podcasts. And the number one alternative health podcasts. And thank you to all of you who come back weekly to listen and learn, how to live better, be better, and impact the world. Passion struck is known syndicated radio on the Brushwood Media broadcast. Catch us Monday and Friday during your evening commute from 5 to 6 pm Eastern time on Apple Music tune in or wherever you listen.

If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here. Or you simply want to introduce us to a friend or family member. We have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize, and to convenient topics that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to Spotify, fashionstruck.com, slash starter packs to get started. In case you missed it, last week, my interview, three amazing guests. The first was my friend, Herbert Professor

and number one, New York Times bestselling author, Arthur Brooks. We explore Arthur's new book, Bill the Life You Want, which he co-authored with none other than Oprah Winfrey. In this episode, we invite you to begin a journey towards greater happiness, no matter how challenging your circumstances.

Drong on cutting edge science, and years of helping people translate ideas into action Arthur shows you how to improve your life right now instead of waiting for the outside world to change. The second was with Robin Steinberg, an American lawyer and social justice advocate who is the chief executive officer of the Bale Project. We discussed her book, The Courage of Compassion, The Journey from Judgment to Connection. Lastly, I interviewed Major General Greg Martin, and we delve into a journey of profound significance, one chronicled in his new book, Bipolar General, My Forever War with Mental Illness.

This candid memoir provides a gripping account of General Martin's personal Odyssey with undiagnosed mental illness weaving through the highs and lows of his military ascent. I also wanted to say thank you for your ratings and reviews and if you love today's episodes or any of those others we would so appreciate you giving it a five star review and sharing it with your friends and families. I know we and our guests love to see the comments and questions from our listeners. Now let's discuss today's episode. Work-related burnout is widely discussed but there's another more complex type that often goes unnoticed. Spiritual burnout. In today's episode, I welcome Dr. Nihah Sang-Won,

physician-engineer CEO, communication specialist, and author of the new book, Powered by Me. In her early 30s, Nihah faced ruling reality, juggling 18 critically ill patients daily, surviving on sugar and caffeine during 36 hour shifts and experiencing severe burnout. During her medical leave, she embarked on a profound journey of self-discovery investigating the intricate connection between mind, body, and spirit. Through this introspection, Neha developed a holistic system to address the root causes of burnout, earning her pain into purpose.

Entire to popular belief, burnout is an liability. It's a powerful wake up call. By understanding how to identify and heal burnout, you gain the power to reduce stress, and reconnect with yourself, your colleagues, your community, and the meaning of your work. One significant aspect she explores is when we make decisions that aren't aligned with our values, leading spiritual exhaustion. With over two decades of dedicated research, Dr. Sangwan, uncovers the profound effects of unhealed trauma on burnout and empowers individuals, discover what truly energizes them, provides greater purpose in life.

She explores the scientifically supported concept of vibes and helps us recognize and address disconnection when it occurs. Nihah offers unique insights into the root causes of stress, miscommunication, and interpersonal conflict, even healing chronic conditions, like headaches and insomnia, miscommunication, and interpersonal conflict, even healing chronic conditions like headaches and somnia, anxiety, depression, and burnout. Tune in to this enlightening conversation, as Niha reveals the keys to healing spiritual

burnout, and embracing a more fulfilling and balanced life. Thank you for choosing PassionStrike and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey, creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am so excited to bring on Dr. Neha Sang-Won to Passion Struck. Welcome, Neha. Oh, it's an honor to be here. Well, we are launching this episode the same day, your brand new book launches. So I wanted to give a big shout out to

Howard by me from burned out to fully charged at work and in life. Congratulations. Woohoo! Honestly, more than six years of writing and 20 years of experience trying to recover from burnout myself and really understand it. So this feels like a huge milestone. Congratulations and I can completely relate to you because my own book is coming out in February. They say it takes a village to raise a baby. I call this my book baby because it takes so much to actually get it out until you do it. You don't really understand what it takes. So I know you'll get there. I wanted to start out because I am an engineer and my daughter is currently studying at the

University of Florida School of Engineering to become a chemical engineer, but I understand that you started your career as a mechanical engineer working for Motorola. What led you to initially pursue that and then leave your work as an engineer and go back to medical school to become a doctor? The short answer is I'm a really good Indian child. work as an engineer and go back to medical school to become a doctor. The short answer is I'm a really good Indian child. Not only does our childhood influence us and shape us, it the culture in which we are brought up really matters. And in an Indian family and an Indian community, what was really important was math and science. And I had an aptitude for it. I don't know that it was my most

natural place to be. If you would have just left me alone, I don't know that I would have been building toy engines and things like that. My father, I overheard him one day speaking to a friend when he didn't know I was outside the office. And he said, well, the second one turned out to be a girl too. All I can hope for is that she'll become an engineer. And I think parents don't realize we as sponges as young children, I thought, well, I guess I was supposed to be a boy. I don't know what I can really do about that,

but I certainly can become the engineer because I have an aptitude for science and math. And I think my own people pleasing nature took that on because I've got two other sisters who probably would have left at that comment. They would have been like, yeah, dad, dad, tried for another one or we get married, you'll have a son. But for me, it really struck a really deep chord, which was, I want to make him proud and I want to be what he wants. So I followed, there was a time in high school that I came home one day and I said, Dad, I love Mr. Russo, you never gonna believe that I got a hundred on the my accounting test.

I think I want to become an accountant. And I am telling you without skipping a beat, he just put his arm around my shoulder. And he said, now, nah, huh? Accountants just play with numbers, like they move numbers around. And I'm really proud of you for getting your 100, but my daughter is going to be a mechanical engineer. And those moments, I understand them now because I've slowed down. I've slowed down to reflect on, I've journaled, I've had conversations.

And now I understand that things that seemed like not much in the moment were pivotal, life-changing moments where I went left instead of right. And so now it all makes sense, of course. But back then, I don't think I understood what was happening. So literally back then, it was a written application. He erased accounting and wrote in mechanical engineering. And then I went into school and I found it fascinating. And then I went into school and I found it fascinating. Engineering's amazing. You really start to understand the physical world and how it works.

And even how when you're playing pool, how a ball makes it or doesn't make it into the pocket, how cars crash and you want the car to literally crush so that you don't absorb that energy. It's gonna be you or it's going to be the car. I'd rather that the car crushed. And so I started to really understand a lot about the world in engineering. And I did, yes, go on to become a manufacturing engineer at Motorola.

Back then, my God, we were building the lighting and seating modules for the 1996 Lincoln Town Car. And that was my line. That was the line that I led. It was amazing. So what a great experience. I wouldn't tell you that I left it though. What I would tell you is what makes me different as a doctor, what makes me different as a coach, as a transformational consultant in organizations, is that the engineer in me wants to do two things. I always wanna get to the root of the problem. I'm not into band-aids, I'm not into, let's kick the can down the road, that doesn't work for me,

it's how do we get to the root of this problem? Let's solve it so we can elevate the quality of whatever it is, our life, the product, the culture, whatever it is. And the second thing I'd say is, I can turn almost anything into a five-step experience of how. Because to me, nothing matters if I tell you, hey, you really should draw healthy boundaries, but I can't actually tell you how or be nice to your neighbor or you really should lean into conflict, but I can't help you with the how. So the engineer in me actually has taken my work to a level that I think a lot of people haven't gone because I have the

gift of turning left rather than right. So now I'm pretty grateful. I've had these conversations with my dad, my mom, so when we wanted me to be a doctor, it was her dream that she never was able to do. Her parents back in that day, culturally and otherwise said, if you're going to be a doctor, you're always going to be on call for other people, you're not going to be a good wife and mother. What's that going to do to your family? And so she made a left rather than a right. And her dream, right, the people please do it me once again, was like, these two things aren't mutually exclusive. Why can't I do them both? And so I did.

My partner happens to practice internal medicine. She told me the story that when she first got out of school, she actually worked for a practice that was led by an Indian doctor who was very much of the mind that you had to be extremely efficient because as you don't get much money to do physicals and other things. And so it's causing physicians to have to spend only 15-20 minutes

with patients at times. And I remember her telling me, on her worst days, she was having to see 25-30 and then she would go home and then have to do on her worst days, she was having to see 25 to 30. And then she would go home and then have to do all her charting when she got home because they were so busy. I understand you had something similar happen to you. Can you share more about your personal journey through burnout in the pivotal moment in early 2021 that led you to not only take action, but develop your holistic approach to healing. Sure. I think it's really been for the last 20 years, is what I would say, because my actual

burnout occurred June 17, 2004, so nearly 20 years ago. And that morning, I remember it was the last day of my hospital rotation. So I'm an internal medicine physician, just like your partner. Half of us around the 2000s that became outpatient doctors that saw 25, sometimes 30 patients a day. And then there was a group of us that saw 16 to 18 hospitalized patients and we stayed in the hospital. I became one of those. I was on my fifth day of the rotation

where you do five days on, five days off. It was literally the last day and I had 18 sick patients and when you're on your last day, you got to sign them out to the next person who's going to take them over. So there's a lot more work. Well, it was about 11 a.m. I'd been in for about five hours working and I had only seemed to out of my 18 patients. Now, I was unaware of this. I just thought I kept moving. Okay, what else do we need to do? What lab do I need to check?

And I turned to the nurse and I said, Nina, could you please give 40 million equivalent of IV potassium to the gentleman in 636? And she looked at me and she said, Dr. Sangwon, are you okay? And that was really my first clue that I might not be. And I said, what do you mean? And she said, that is the fourth time

and under five minutes you've asked me that same question and I've answered you every time. And I remember realizing something was very wrong because I wasn't even aware of that. When to the bathroom took, we had phones in our pockets back then. I took out my hospital phone and called a psychiatric colleague and basically said, Roger, hey, when can I see you? And he said, five o'clock today. Great to hear from you, Neha.

I'd be happy right after I'm done with seeing patients. I'm happy to have you stop by. And I just looked in the mirror at my pale, weary face looking back at me. And I said, how about now? And he was like, oh my, come on over, come over right now. So we sat and we talked. And what an illuminating conversation.

I thought I was sidelining a colleague on the DL, right? Oh, let's just see what's going on here. Give me some advice and I'll be back to work. One hour later, I was a patient myself. I was on stress leave. I was standing in line to get a prescription for Prozac. And I started to go down the path of understanding what the traditional medical system can do for me

and where there are gaps in how it can help me. The one thing that it did very well that day was pull me off of a cliff. I could have hurt patients. I could have done something that needed my full awareness and attention, something bad really could have happened. And it didn't thank goodness. But in one hour, I went from running a service

of patients to being a patient myself and being off and being told that I wasn't going to be coming back for a significant period of time. Thank you for sharing that. And your new book has two great forwards. One is by Dr. Mark Heimann, who I've interviewed on this show earlier this year and as a friend of mine. And on our podcast and in his forward in your book, he is very vulnerable about how he experienced tremendous burnout. And I think a lot of times we don't like talking about this. I'm going to talk about it more from my own perspective in a little bit. But I was very glad to see that Mark does that in your forward. I've heard him do it on other podcasts as well.

He writes that despite being trained as a physician, he had no idea how to create health. He says, I went from maintaining my life to total physical and mental collapse and experienced complete full-blown chronic fatigue syndrome. This show is all about intentional behavior change and the importance of the intentional microchois as we make daily. Why, like in the case of Dr. Hyman, is it so important for us to intentionally recognize and change the underlining habits and beliefs that no longer serve us.

Yeah, this is such a great question. If I think big picture about it, I think about us as children or babies. We come into this world and how do we get our needs met? How do we get fed? How do we get picked up? How do we get our diaper changed? We learn very quickly how to get the attention of those around us and how quickly all of those things happen are, how good we are at doing that.

So from the beginning, we start to learn to look outward to figure out what needs to happen. As we grow older, we want our parents love and attention. I gave you an example of that early on for me with both of my parents. Then when we move into our teen years, we're doing it more with our peers and our friends. We care what they're wearing, what they're doing,

more than we even start to care about what our family thinks. And then we go into our work environment and our love lives and we transfer it all there. Now what is so interesting is, my people pleasing didn't stop with my parents and me accomplishing engineering and medicine. I walked into the hospital and any open shift in an chronically understaffed hospital, who do you think was volunteering to be

the superstar? I'll do the 36-hour shift. I know I've worked all day, but I'll do it all night and take on tomorrow too. I decided that in medicine, we are taught in healthcare that it is a badge of honor not to care for ourselves and be so in service to helping other people through crises that we literally think we're superhuman. Except what I learned that day was, oh you're a biological human being just like everybody else and if you think about what we study in medicine, what Mark's telling you is, we spend all this time and energy in pathophysiology. How does everything in the body break down? Because it's our job to be able to diagnose it and treat it. We look at the extremes, right?

We look at big deficiencies in vitamin C and vitamin D causing rickets and scurvy. Everybody's like interested in the extremes. Nobody's interested in what about optimal health? What does it take when you look on the bottles of vitamins? They'll tell you the minimum daily requirement. What about the optimum daily requirement? So it's always the minimum daily requirements so that you don't get sick. So we've grown up and been schooled in a system that has had us preventing ill trying to stay away from illness rather than focusing on true health.

And exactly how Mark broke down with chronic fatigue syndrome, boy, that sent him on a journey of mastering the physical world of optimal health and how it's changed the world because of it. And I feel very similarly about my burnout. When I came back, so on leave, the engineer and me started researching what's at the root of burnout, what does this mean? There was very little on it 20 years ago.

People didn't even acknowledge it. And in fact, if you said it, there was so little on it 20 years ago. People didn't even acknowledge it. And in fact, if you said it, there was so much judgment around it. Must be that you can't handle it. You must be too weak. And I found myself asking myself these questions, gosh, what do my colleagues think of me?

How come if we're all under the same pressure cooker? How come I'm the one that's out on stress leave? Can I just not hack it? And so I started, all the self-doubt really started coming in for me. And what's beautiful about that is when we meet crises in our lives, it really is an opportunity to examine whether the coping mechanisms we've been using, the people pleasing, the relationships we're in, the job were in. If it still serves us, have we outgrown it?

Have we learned the lessons we came to learn? Have I learned my people pleasing lessons? And am I ready to elevate to taking care of me and serving you? Now it's an elevation. And so it's almost the way I see crises. It seems like it's the worst thing in the world, but unequivocally I can tell you probably cracked my heart and my life open to leading the best life I could have dreamt of. Yeah, I called it getting the golden ticket for a second chance to do

things a different way because I too experienced burnout and this full-blown chronic fatigue syndrome. I remember reaching a point in my life where as you describe it, I had this tsunami of overwhelm, but more importantly, I wasn't aligning my own daily choices in accordance with my underlying values. And it led to a collapse for me of mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health. You write that 75% of professionals experience burnout, which is an extremely high number. You say that we ignore the invisible data such as our bodies, physical cues,

our minds, conflicting thoughts, our hearts, painful emotions, and our spirits longing for meaning and purpose. What has your research shown as the reasons we ignore such important information? Well, the short answer is we want to belong to a society that tells us profit over people. Faster is better. Do more with less every year. We look at other people's ideas of success and we adopt that as our own without even asking ourselves if climbing the corporate

ladder or me being a doctor or an engineer would bring me happiness. So the outward focus that I spoke about from when I was young, right, where I'm looking at everyone else and what do they need and what do they want. I think it's a lack of us actually slowing down so we can speed up in our lives. So you've got to slow down and actually know yourself when you're not in your family construct. You need to know yourself when you're not in your circle of friends. What do you believe? What are your highest values? And how are you making decisions that align or don't align with those?

Because you want to fit in, belong. We have the need to belong very fundamentally as part of being a human being. And so if you asked me to simplify it, I would say it was that. Yeah, it's interesting. I've had a number of discussions on the show. A great one was with Dr. Gloria Mark who teaches at University of California Irvine and has a book she wrote this year called Attention Span. And I think it's important to take a step back and look at evolution, because as you write in the book, we've gone from this hunter-gatherer society where our minds were wired in a certain way. We communicated in a certain way, we had this slower tempo through the industrial

revolution, which started to change the whole way that your holder value was evolving away from people to the bottom line, increasing profits, et cetera, to now that information revolution is completely reshaping not only the way we communicate and our intention spans, but nearly every facet of our lives by blurring the boundaries as you've brought up between our biological, digital and social realms. How is this change and how quickly it's impacting us, leading to this rise of burnout that we're seeing? Well, now we've got AI, right? We've got chat GPT. I'm guilty. I have fun. Chat GPT, give me an intro to me. Make it funny. And into seconds, we do what would take me a a day to come up with on my own. And so this idea that we can accelerate our external world

to a degree, I think it's phenomenal. But when we don't take into consideration our own biological rhythms, when we think faster is better all the time and we behave like we're machines, when the truth is your biology and your physiology thrive on exertion and rest. We have to do this every day. There's balance and integration. But what if society really reward us for extremes? If you are the best athlete in the world, right?

There's this whole thing about really tuning inward. And that's really what this book is about. Powered by me is I want you to be able to accomplish what you want to accomplish in your life. And I also want you to tune in because if you try to do it in spite of your body, mind, heart, and spirit, you're gonna end up in a bad place to get a lesson that's gonna be really hard. But what if we could give everybody the tools where

they could get the messages like your heart racing, your stomach turning and not override it with a double latte. But in fact, tune in and say, I wonder what my body's trying to tell me right now. Oh, I'm afraid. Oh, I'm moving out of my comfort zone. If we've gotten here this far by tuning out, there's lots of coping mechanisms. It can be alcohol, drugs, the internet, binge watching TV shows. There's lots of ways that when we get uncomfortable,

we stop listening and we disconnect. Anything that'll slow us down, we've got ways to override it. And what I'm saying here is, maybe it's gotten us this far, I'm not sure it's going to get us where we're going. So it might be a good idea to tune in, really pay attention to you and partner with your body rather than push through it. Yeah, I love that. I released an episode with Dr. Hattendra Wadwa. He has a new book out called Inner Order Outer Mastery.

What led him to going down this path was he started teaching at Columbia Business School, and he found that all the courses that they were teaching were about how do you lead others, but none of them were teaching you how do you lead yourself. And so he developed a course on personal leadership that has become one of the most popular at the school. on personal leadership that has become one of the most popular at the school. And so this whole concept of inner work or inner core is something we're going to talk about a lot more in this episode as well. I think to set a framework or a baseline for the audience, can you go over what the basics of burnout are? Yeah, listen, defining it and acknowledging it has been such a big obstacle to overcome in society. Burnout really is defined as three key pillars.

So there's exhaustion, of course physical, often mental, emotional exhaustion. But if it was that, I think it might be the whole world that's burned out. It goes a little farther than that, which is once that's been going on for a little while, there's these subtle thoughts, these ideas that come into your head that say things like, you know what, it doesn't matter how hard I try, it's not going to make a difference. Anything I do isn't going to work around here. And it's when you cynicism starts creeping in. And then lastly, in effectiveness,

which is what you saw happened with me that day. And so it's a triad. It's a triad of exhaustion, cynicism, and in effectiveness. When you're in the phase of cynicism, you'll start doing things like distancing yourself. So it would be me calling a patient by their room number, not their name, not Mr. Jones, the gentleman in 636. And I'm trying to distance myself not because I don't care about him or like him. I just can't engage in that much energy. I don't have it.

So I start distancing myself to save energy. A lot of times people think that means other people are slacking, like they just don't want to work. No, it's not true. They're actually biologically trying to conserve their energy so that they can continue working. And then the last one was exhaustion. So people say, oh, I was fine this morning

and I was burnt out at night. The other thing that's really important to know about burnout is burnout happens over time. It takes time and there's three phases. The first phase is the alarm phase where it almost feels like you're jumping on a treadmill that's going a little too fast and your heart skips a beat. You might start sweating. It's that adrenaline rush moment. And when your life takes on a moment like that, usually at times of transition, you move from high school to college or a job to another job or relationship, right? You're in a new relationship. You can feel your life like you're taking on a new level of challenge or an issue comes up that you need to deal with. Well, if you just continue on with that faster pace

on the treadmill and you don't ever get off of it, you move into the second phase, which is called adaptation, where now your biology has to adapt to that higher pace without the rest. Suddenly, you're gonna find things like a weekend isn't enough time to recover. You're not able to catch up. A lot of times people say, oh yeah, I'll catch up on sleep on the weekend. That's not how

your body works. So you'll start to notice things that you didn't realize. And that's when that cynicism comes in. Oh, I feel like I'm heavy as bricks. I can barely really drag myself through the day. If I have one more meeting on Zoom, I don't know what I'm going to do. So it's those moments. You're in this chronic adaptation phase where you're adapting to that faster and faster pace of life. And then one more thing happens. One more thing happens and you go sliding down the slippery slope of exhaustion. So, the triad of burnout is physical and emotional exhaustion, cynicism and ineffectiveness. It occurs over time in phases, starts with the alarm phase.

If that continues on, you go to adaptation and if you're in adaptation, which I think a lot of people were before the pandemic, just hanging on, like trying to make it work. One more thing happens, and they go sliding down the slippery slope of exhaustion, thinking, how did this happen to me? It didn't just happen. You've been adapted for a long time. And the way I like to describe it is I slow progressing depression, which ultimately becomes severe depression if you don't deal with it early enough. And I think burnout is the same way.

It's starting to happen. And most people aren't picking up on the early signs of burnout. And I think it's just a compounding thing where it just starts building on top of each other to the point where by the time you recognize it's happening, you're completely overwhelmed starting to feel emotionally numb and just detaching from those who are most important to you along with the inability to feel the empathy and things that you need to communicate effectively with people at work. Do you think that's a common thing that happens with a lot of people?

I do. And you're bringing up a really important point, which is, what's the difference between depression and burnout? And how are they the same? And how are they different? First of all, you always have to look at the entire context of what's happening. Oftentimes in general, what I'd say is burnout has an energy of overwhelm of trying to, wow, there's so many inputs coming in. I don't know which way to go. I don of like a hopeless energy. I just don't know if there's any way out. Like it just feels like you're sinking. It's more stuck of an energy. And so they can intersect absolutely. If you think about the story that I told you how I burned out, I was fully active all the way until I literally hit a wall.

Now, I think you're exactly right. I think I had pushed down some numbing and done a lot of fancy coping mechanisms. I was very good at trying to outsmart my body of sleep and fatigue. So there's a very active energy that's going on there. And with depression, I find it to be a more surrender, a hopeless giving up. Prozac was the prescription that I was given. So when you go to EAP, like the Employee Assistance Program,

let's say at a company, they're probably going to send it to someone like me, or your partner. And let me tell you what we're going to give you. The traditional medical world is going to have taught us to give you some time off 10 days or a month off and give you some cocktail of sleep, anti depression or anti anxiety. So we're going to send you off. And that's good because we probably stopped your bullet train of a world that was going in a direction that you

weren't equipped anymore to be on. We stop it all to get you some rest and try and help you with the symptoms that you're experiencing. But 10 days later, a month later, when you go back into the ring for round two, you have no new awarenesses, you haven't uncovered any patterns that you can now behave differently to end up with a different outcome. So we send you back in the ring for round two and no time, but we haven't helped with the behavior change. And I think that's why your podcast is so important, because it's really about how do we discover what got us here and how we've outgrown it, And how do we then get the tools to do something

that fits for us now? Yeah, it certainly is about helping people learn how to get unstuck so that they can become passion struck in what they want to pursue in life. For me, one of the things that ended up manifesting is I realized that so much of how we perform at our highest levels cognitively in our relationships, et cetera, comes from a myriad of things working in conjunction with each other. It's eating right, it's exercising and making sure that you're getting the stress out of

your life. It's giving yourself time to enjoy life to have the relationships that you want and it's really being very intentional about sleep patterns, circadian rhythms, etc. Out of those, one of the ones that I want to touch on the most because I don't think people at times realize how important it is how much our sleep patterns impact burnout. Is that something you can go into in more detail? You bet. You bet. You know, it's so great about writing a book that every last gap that I have, I need to either go learn it or call someone in to help me. And what I did on the sleep chapter

is I called in Param Dadya. He's a physician, colleague of mine, and he's a sleep expert. And I learned a lot of what I know from Param. So I want to make sure I give him the credit on this. All the more ancient traditions, Ayurveda, and other traditions have always really valued sleep and made it sacred. But our world thinks sleep is a waste of time. If you got to cut out time,

you need more time for something, cut out sleep. People say, oh, it's a waste of time. I say, you're right. If what you're talking about is what's not getting done on your external to-do list. But what most people don't understand is there's an internal to-do list. Your body has a big job to do while you're sleeping. big job to do while you're sleeping. Number one, physical repair of your muscles, if you've worked out your immune system to keep you strong and being able to fight any infection. Number two, memory consolidation. It needs to take in and integrate everything

that has happened that day and put it to memory so you can recall it. And three, emotional processing. Here's the shocker. We need to get seven to nine hours of sleep each day. Seven to nine hours, that's it, that's it, my patients say, what? That's too much time, I don't have that much time.

Well, you go through multiple cycles of sleep. There's different phases, taking care of different to-dos in your inner to-do list. And you want to be able to run through them, at least twice. And in order to do that, your body needs seven to nine hours. Now, that doesn't mean that you don't have to do it directly straight in a row without waking up, not at all. It's quite normal to have these brief moments where you wake up and then you go back to sleep or reposition. But it's really important to understand that if you start cutting yourself short on sleep, which of those three physical repair and immune system memory consolidation

or emotional processing, which one do you think your body is going to prioritize and make first? What's a trick question because I'm asking you. I think it's going to focus on processing the memories of what you did during the day. It actually will prioritize emotions. Why? will prioritize emotions. Why? Right. Emotions are surprising. Stress and it will not work on your immune system, not repair your physical body. Those are lesser priority.

And when I understood that stress causes or exacerbates more than 80% of all illness, our emotional stress is what we push down. That's why we have dreams where things are coming up and we're like, what? What was that about? That's all the emotional processing and make no mistake about it. You cut yourself short on sleep. Your body will prioritize emotional processing before anything else. Well, that's interesting. I think the other thing that's also important as we've seen dimension Alzheimer's on the rise is that it flushes out your amyloid plaques as well.

If you're not getting enough sleep, that doesn't happen, which leads to that build up, which is also a very important thing. Absolutely. And there's another great resource that I read on this. Dr. Sarah Medneck has a sleep expert wrote a book on the power of the down state, which talks about not only is the sleep important, but these down state periods that we give ourselves during the day. So many people neglect to do because we aren't giving ourselves white space are equally important as well.

Yeah, I call those touchstones. What are your touchstones during the day? When people were back at work and in the office, sometimes it was the people who you see them, you, and you're like, oh, so good to see you. And we had these touchstones that sometimes were built in. And maybe it was your three o'clock latte and chocolate chip cookie. I don't know what it was, but we had ways that were routine. And when you take away the structure, we have to build those touch stones ourselves. Otherwise, you're just always sitting in front of a computer and you never really have a break and our body and our biology don't work that way.

I recently did a solo episode a couple of weeks ago on the importance of habit stacking to unlock our greatest potential or success. And in the book, the way it's laid out, you have practical tools to restore energy across physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual aspects, many of which we've been discussing. Can you relate them to healthy habits and why they're so important in making a difference in preventing burnout? We're all trying to achieve something in the world and I mentioned to you that we're balancing our inner selves with the outer world and sometimes those can feel conflicting. The outer world wants excellence and wants us to be the best at what we do to get recognition and belong and get the most likes on social media

or be revered and featured, you have to do the best and you go to an extreme. Most people that are the best at anything have given up some semblance of integration and balance within themselves. I really firmly believe that this book is about grounding us in that experience, showing you that wherever you are on the spectrum for burned out to fully charged, it's about whether you have a net gain or a net drain of energy on a physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual level. And I really practically will ask you some pulse check questions

to get clear on where you might be having a net drain. And so this idea that you're speaking about is really about holding paradoxes. So how can structure in our physical world making sure we're eating healthy and organizing that we have food and getting to bed on time, moving and exerting ourselves while making sure we can rest? How does that structure give us freedom to go out and create and innovate and socialize and all of these things. The concept really that I want people to get is we are in a world that is complex enough now that we have to learn how to hold paradox, which is ourselves and others.

That was a big lesson for me in my life. Neha, you take care of yourself before you can serve others. And I think that's what we're really learning is things get more and more complex. So, in habits, I've always been in early to bed, early to rise person. So, I go to bed around 10, 30, I'm a good sleeper. So, I sleep until about 6, 37 in the morning. So, that works for me. What I've done is I've taken each of these areas and I've just said, how satisfied are you in each of these areas? Let's just take physical. So it would be food, sleep, energy, movement. Ask yourself, not do you do everything perfect and do you eat this food at the right time every day and never eat bad snacks. No, it's more about how satisfied are you with

how you nourish yourself, how satisfied are you with your ability to move joyfully in your body on a regular basis? How satisfied are you with how much sleep you're getting and do you wake up in the morning fully rested? And what about your energy levels? Do you get that three o'clock dip that goes on in the afternoon, or are you someone who feels an even energy throughout the day? And so each person has to personalize this experience, burn out as as personal to every individual listening as your fingerprint. My pathway there was through people pleasing and medicine and being trained and wanting to get an A people pleasing and medicine and being trained and wanting to get an A and

wanting to be the star performer for my parents for my family and in the hospital. That's not how everybody gets there. Everybody has their own way. Really what we're doing here in this book is we demystify burnout. The second thing we do is we personalize it to the reader so that you know where you're having a net gain or a net drain. And then we give you the powerful practical tools to build the habits based on where you're having a net drain or where you think the right area is to focus. And people don't have to be burned out to do this. You can just be feeling like, hey, I'm not really fully charged and I want to figure out how to get back there. And so you may do this once and it may be that your physical energy and emotional energy are drained. You may do it six months later and your world may be very different.

It may be your social energy is drained and you no longer feel purpose, spiritual energy drain. You've taken some choices that maybe you chose money over passion and you're feeling empty. And so the beautiful thing here is there's no judgment. It's about a way to use not just your mind and answering the questions, but I also want people while they're answering those questions to pay attention to their body. Because our minds can sometimes be tricky and tell us, oh, it's fine, just keep going. But if your body keeps score, it never lies. So when you pay attention when you're answering questions to whether you feel contracted, constricted,

heavy, you have shallow breathing, but you're saying everything's fine, pay attention. Now, if you're answering the questions and you're like, oh, my social life, you want to know the five people or groups of people I spend the most time with online or in person and you're checking it off and you're writing it in and you notice you're smiling, you're relaxed, your heart is open, your breathing slowly and deeply. It's like body matching what mind is saying.

So you need alignment. And that's a big part of this book, which is you are usually leaking energy. There's a net drain of energy where you are not in alignment. And you described that when you burned out, and you were making decisions that were not in alignment with what you valued. So how people get there and how they build the habits

and where they focus, I didn't want them to feel so overwhelmed that they have to go through the whole thing. I want them to like assess where are you getting a net gain and a net drain and then go to the places, because if you're burned out, you wanna know where to focus and I want you to be able to go where you're having a net drain.

Well, I'm so glad you brought up paradoxes and a great resource for the audience is I interviewed professors Wendy Smith and Mary Ann Lewis who teach at the businesses schools at the University Cincinnati and Delaware. And they have a great book called Both Anne Thinking. And it really goes through how so much of what we do in society today is around either or and how much more powerful we can be both in our personal and professional lives if we use both and thinking. So I think you just made a very good point. And speaking of people I interviewed earlier this year, one of those was our mutual friend Terry Cole author of Boundary

Boss who I saw endorsed your book. And in our conversation, we explored the impact of boundaries on her relationships, health and career. But what I wanted to ask you is, what is the relationship between burnout and healthy boundaries? Boy, burnout is boundaries.

People say to me, well, when do you know how to set a boundary or when you should? And I say, anytime there's a net drain of energy, there's a boundary that needs to be there. Now, the problem is that people either wait really long, and then when they draw a boundary, it's like, thud, like you just a tree fell. Or they're so porous with their boundaries that they let anything in, because they want to belong to a group, to a relationship, to a work culture, right, whatever it is.

So there's how you draw the boundaries that's really important as well. Boundaries matter. There's so many different types of boundaries. So if you think about it, our skin is a physical boundary. It's what separates me from others, right? Or the territory around your home, if you have land like this is the boundary. There's mental boundaries, which are,

what are you willing to discuss and what are you unwilling to discuss? There's emotional boundaries. What are you willing to feel and what are you unwilling to feel? There was a time in my life where my heart got broken so badly that I didn't date for eight years. I put myself in a metaphorical corner and I was like, until you learn how to choose people who are going to treat you well, you don't

get to date. But you know what I was really doing? I was drawing an emotional boundary that I wasn't willing to feel heartbreak. There's boundaries that are emotional and then there are also spiritual boundaries which is about exploring the unknown, about exploring mystery, about exploring our oneness and connection. Some people are willing to do it. Some people aren't. Some people believe certain things. And so there's boundaries that people have. So I'd say there's types of boundaries. And then probably something really important I want the audience to know is that I think of boundaries as a double zipper winter jacket. So for anybody who lives in an environment where it's cold or you ski with a benefit of

a double layer zipper, right? So there's an external zipper, okay, that comes undone. Let's say someone out in the world judges you, says something to you, accuses you of something, whatever it is, shames you. All right, that's like the unzipping of the external boundary. They control that, how they show up in your environment. external boundary. They control that, how they show up in your environment. But I don't know that most people know they have an inner zipper. They have the ability to unzip their own vulnerability and say based on their self-trust, self-love, and ability to draw boundaries and know who they are and what they value, they

get to decide whether they believe that is true. And that's where I think a lot of energy gets lost. People not knowing there's a double layer there, just because people say something, just because they have an opinion of you. It doesn't necessarily mean it's true. So make sure that you strengthen your inner boundaries around who you are, what you believe, what you value, know why you make your decisions, and I hope that they're based on your highest values. And if you're somebody who's thinking to yourself, how would I know that, Neha? How do I figure out what my highest values are? Let me give you a couple of quick ways to do it. I want you to pick somebody in your family or someone in the world that you don't even know that you admire.

And then tell me three things you admire about them. Would you be willing to do it, John? You don't have to tell me the name of who it is. I just want to know three qualities you admire about the person you brought to mind. Loyalty, empathy, and forgiveness. Okay, well right there, the switcheroo is, those are some of your highest values. That's why when you see them in somebody else, it matters to you. So oftentimes people can see what they appreciate. And other people, I think, oh, it's in that person. No, the only way you're recognizing it is because it's in you and you value it greatly. Another way that you can do it, I'll figure out your highest values so that you can start getting really clear

on decisions and boundaries is what are three things? If someone said about you, when you weren't in the room, would be so meaningful to you. One of my biggest ones is that I try to live the things and the tools that I write about and I teach. It doesn't mean I'm perfect, but if someone were to say she really makes a sincere effort to use the tools she gives other people, that would be alignment to me. That would mean a lot to me. And so now I know that's one of my highest values. Does that make sense? I totally make sense. And thank you for sharing that. And for the audience, what we were just talking about

with boundaries came out of part four of Nia's book, which is all about social energy. The last thing I wanted to touch on was a topic out of the fifth area of her book, which is about spiritual energy. And I thought chapter 19 was one of the most powerful chapters in the book, it's about choices and conflicts. And I find we make choices all the time. And we often find ourselves living in autopilot mode, distracted with the things around us,

the conflicts around us. And I recently interviewed Joe Grover about her new book called The Choice Point. And our discussion was all about how do I go about making the healthy decision instead of taking an action that I know is going to undermine my success. And I think that's something you conveyed as well. Why is it so important for the listeners to remember that they have a choice and a choice point is going to undermine my success. And I think that's something you conveyed as well. Why is it so important for the listeners to remember that they have a choice and a choice point and how to respond to the situations that are around them? This goes all the way back to what you were saying about why is it important to self-reflect? Why is it important? Because if you slow down, then only can you speed up.

Your biology keeps track of every time you were afraid, your brain needed to protect you. It's called your amygdala. It's two almond-shaped organs on the center of your head. They are scanning all incoming information. And whether you might remember something that made you afraid or was traumatizing for you or upsetting. You may not remember it, but your amygdala does. And so you may find yourself like I did when my heart was broken saying, none of that.

I'm not doing that. No, and I might make a decision that feels I'm in control. But really, what am I doing? I am blocking out the very thing I love and what I want because I'm too scared. What I want everyone to know is your biology, sometimes hijack shoe, in making a choice for protective reasons. And when you slow down to think about what you value, when you learn new tools about boundary setting and leaning into conflict and choice and decision making, you expand your perspective and your ability to see options. You unhook from that fighter flight, I only have to do this,

I stay or I go, to suddenly seeing so many more options. And here's the trick about choice point. There's discomfort in your body that may happen. If I decide to start dating again, after those eight years, I have a boyfriend. I've had a boyfriend now for four years. So this isn't current for me. But when I decided to start dating again,

you bet my stomach was turning, my heart was racing. And so when you get to a choice point, any choice point, there's the choice of taking the short term high for the long term yuck, which means I'm going to avoid this discomfort in the short term, and I'm not going to face it. And I'm going to get the same outcome I've always got. Or there's taking what I call the short term dip of discomfort. I'm going to breathe through my stomach, turning, and my heart racing, and my sweating to look this person in the eye that I'm attracted to, or I think is amazing, and I'm going to smile.

What it might feel weird, but guess what? That connection may lead to somebody coming over to talk to me, right? So we are at a choice point all the time in everything. That's a really simple example, but oftentimes it doesn't feel like it because we get hijacked by our fears and our past and our biology.

And so that's the value of listening to podcasts like this, of reading these books and expanding your awareness. Now your playing field gets wider. You have more choices and you start to see that this isn't A or B. It's ABCDEFG. And now you're choosing your life. I love that answer. So thank you so much for bringing that up because I think that choice point is such an important concept

for people to get right in their lives. And Joe's work is all about using functional imagery training to help you do that. Well, I have wanted to ask you one last question and that is what message do you hope readers and listeners take away from your book and your work in general? If you are somebody that's going to be a great person I have one to ask you one last question. And that is what message do you hope readers and listeners take away from your book and your work in general?

If you are somebody who feels like you are ready to elevate and create in your life, you're ready to do it differently, that you not only can, that you are about to embark on the most real experience, the most satisfying, the most joyful experience. Because when you're powered by me, you go from being driftwood in the ocean, going whichever way the wind blows, to becoming a sailboat with a rudder where you're influenced by the wind, but you're charting your own course. And if anyone's been feeling overwhelmed, you aren't sure how to get yourself more resourceful agile,

and you've been trying to figure that out. What I want you to know is not only is it possible, It's here. I love both those analogies because Abraham Lincoln actually described himself as a piece of driftwood for the vast majority of his life. And then on the other hand, Scott Berry, Kaufman, Professor at Columbia wrote the book Transcend, which is all about studying Maslow and self-transcendence. And he actually used the metaphor of a sailboat around what it takes to become self-actualized. So, what a great way to end the discussion. If a listener wants to learn more about you, where is the best place for them to do so? Sure. So, the book is powered by me from Bernaut to Fully Charge. You can get that at IntuitiveIntelligenceInk.com. So there's an INC at the end, IntuitiveIntelligenceInk.com.

Okay, well, thank you so much, Nia, for being on the show. It was such a pleasure and honor to have you. Oh, my pleasure, too. Thank you. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Dr. Nha Sangwon and I wanted to thank Neha McGraw-Hill and Alyssa Fortnato for giving the honor and privilege of having her appear on the show. Links to all things Neha will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show.

All proceeds go to supporting the show. Videos are on YouTube at both John Armyles and our other station at PassionStruck Clips. You can now order my brand new book, PassionStruck, which is all about 12 powerful principles that I give you for understanding the science behind how you create an intentional life. Links will be in the show notes. Avertise your deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at PassionStruck.com slash deals. You can find me on all the social channels at John Armiles, sign up for my LinkedIn newsletter, or you can go to either John Armiles or passionstruck.com to sign up for my other weekly newsletter. You're about to hear a preview of the Passion

Struck podcast interview that I did with Arthur Smith, who's a trailblazer and nonfiction television. He's renowned for creating iconic shows like Hell's Kitchen and American Ninja Warrior, earning accolades like producer of the year and inductions into the real screen awards, Hall of Fame. His latest book, Reach, offers a thrilling peek behind the scenes of his extraordinary career journey. There's no logical reason why an obstacle course show should work in prime time on NBC, American Ninja Warrior. It doesn't make any sense if you look at it as an obstacle

course show, but it's so much more than that. But it's really about the people who run. We celebrate the attempt. It's the only athletic competition where the athletes root for each other. It's the only athletic competition where we usually don't have a winner in the end. You know, there's only been two times in the 14 previous seasons where we've had people actually climb the four stages of Mount Medurayama and win a million dollars.

It's only happened twice. It's the only athletic event where men and women compete on the same course. There's no head to calves. There's this really lovely community that's around the sport. If you've watched the show, and John, I know you have, thank you for watching.

It's really about the people around us, about their story. We tell their stories, you're so vested in who they are. The fee for the show is that you share it with family or friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know someone who's experienced burnout, then definitely consider sharing today's show with them.

Greatest compliment that you can give us is to share the show with those that you love and care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen to now. Go out there and become Ash and Strut. you