Passion Struck with John R. Miles - What to Do When Work Hijacks Your Life | Dr. Guy Winch - EP 767

Episode Date: May 14, 2026

In this episode of Passion Struck, John R. Miles sits down with clinical psychologist, TED speaker, and bestselling author Dr. Guy Winch to explore the hidden psychological effects of burnout, chronic work stress, emotional exhaustion, and the modern culture of overwork.Drawing from his new book Mind Over Grind: How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life, Dr. Winch explains why so many high performers feel emotionally numb, disconnected, and trapped in survival mode despite outward success. He reveals how work stress quietly spreads into every area of life—impacting relationships, identity, mental health, emotional presence, and even our ability to experience meaning and joy.Together, John and Dr. Winch discuss burnout recovery, work-life balance, rumination, emotional regulation, workplace pressure, boundaries, and why many people unknowingly normalize functioning while emotionally disconnected. They also explore how chronic stress keeps the nervous system in a constant state of activation and why intentional recovery is essential for emotional health and resilience.Throughout the conversation, John reflects on his own experiences with corporate burnout, emotional numbness, and the feeling of insignificance that can emerge when work slowly consumes every other part of life.This episode is part of Passion Struck’s May series: Forged in Adversity — How Struggle Shapes Meaning, Resilience, and Transformation.In this episode, you’ll learn:The hidden emotional signs of burnoutWhy high performers often feel emotionally disconnectedHow chronic work stress impacts relationships and mental healthThe difference between exhaustion and emotional numbnessWhy rumination keeps people trapped in stress loopsHow survival mode gradually becomes identityPractical strategies for burnout recovery and emotional resilienceWhy intentional recovery matters for emotional well-being and performanceIf you’ve ever felt emotionally exhausted, detached from yourself, consumed by work stress, or unable to fully disconnect from performance mode, this conversation offers practical and psychologically grounded insights for reclaiming your emotional health and life.Passion Struck is the #1 alternative health and personal growth podcast dedicated to human flourishing and the science of mattering.Full Show Notes: Get the Companion Workbook:  https://www.theignitedlife.net/Order Dr. Guy Winch’s new book, Mind Over Grind: https://amzn.to/4nw3PMWConnect with John Pre-Order The Mattering Effect: https://matteringeffect.com/Book John to Speak: https://johnrmiles.com/speaking/Keynotes, books, podcast, and resources: https://linktr.ee/John_R_MilesChildren’s Book — You Matter, Luma: https://youmatterluma.com/Substack: https://www.theignitedlife.net/Support the Movement: https://startmattering.com/. Every human deserves to feel seen, valued, and like they matter. Wear it. Live it. Show it.DisclaimerThe Passion Struck podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Passion Struck or its affiliates. This podcast is not a substitute for professional medical or psychological advice.

Coming up next on Passion Strike. Moods are extremely contagious as when somebody comes home, irritable or preoccupied or anxious or worried or tense, it radiates to the, it creates that vibe in the home. And so there are all these ways in which we really bring work home, not to mention that so many people are dealing with after our emails that they have to check in all the time. So they're not even, they're still really at work. They're still dealing with it. are still in that mindset. They don't even get the evenings or the weekends to fully detach and to be somewhere else mentally, physically. For all of those reasons, we absolutely bring it home,

and then it really infects them. Welcome to Passionstruck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week, I sit down with change makers, creators, scientists, and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection, and impact is choosing to live like you matter. Welcome back, friends, to Passionstruck Episode 767.

Whether this is your first episode or your 100th, thank you for being part of this global community committed to living intentionally, leading with purpose, and creating a world where every person feels like they matter. We're continuing our May series forged in adversity, how struggle shapes meaning, resilience, and transformation. And this week we're focused on one of the hardest parts of adversity,

recovery, not just surviving difficult experiences, but healing from the invisible toll that they leave behind. On Tuesday, Dr. Paul Conti and I explored how adversity can quietly shape our inner world. Our emotional patterns, our sense of self, and the stories we carry about who we are. And honestly, today's conversation feels like a continuation of that idea in a way that I think so many people are living through right now. Because adversity doesn't always arrive through a single traumatic moment. Sometimes it happens through accumulation. the constant pressure, the endless demands, the inability to disconnect, the feeling that no matter

how much you accomplish, you can never fully recover. I know for me there were periods in my corporate career where externally everything looked successful. But internally, I felt exhausted, detached, and disconnected from myself. It wasn't that I didn't care about the work. It was that the work had slowly consumed everything else. And I think a lot of people know. exactly what that feels like. Today's guest is Dr. Guy Wynch, clinical psychologist Ted Speaker and author of the new book Mind Over Grind, How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life. In this conversation, we talk about burnout, work stress, rumination, emotional exhaustion, boundaries, and why modern work culture keeps so many people trapped in survival mode. But what

I appreciated most about Guy's perspective is that this conversation isn't really about who productivity. It's about recovery. It's about learning how to reconnect with yourself before stress, burnout, and emotional exhaustion quietly began eroding your relationships, your well-being, and your sense of presence in your own life. And honestly, some of the stories that Guy shares, especially around numbness, cynicism and losing touch with who you are beneath the grind, hit very close to home for me. Because there's a difference between working hard towards something meaningful and losing yourself inside the process. And maybe that's why this conversation feels especially important during mental health awareness month.

Because exhaustion isn't just about being tired. Sometimes it's about realizing you haven't truly felt seen in your own life for a very long time. And so much of that connects deeply to the themes that I explore in my upcoming book, The Mattering Effect, how chronic stress, disconnection, and feeling unseen can quietly shape our emotional health, relationships, and sensual. sense of self over time. Before we dive in, one quick note, if this show has ever made a difference in your life, please share it with someone who might need it. Leave a rating a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and follow along on YouTube for our full episodes and Passionstruck shorts. All of it helps us reach more people who aren't just searching for answers, but for a better way to live.

Now, let's dive into my conversation with Dr. Guy Wynch. Thank you for choosing Passionstruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters. Now, let that journey begin. I am absolutely thrilled today to welcome Guy Wynch to Passion Struck. Guy, it's very nice to meet you. And it's a thrill to meet you and thank you for having me. I am honored to have you and I met you through a good friend of mine near Bishan. How did you originally meet near? I have an identical twin brother who's also a psychologist and also had a book out and he met Neer through his work with the company that he founded and put me in touch with Neer who put me in touch with you. I'm not sure if Neer had told you, but he and I have started a speakers bureau together.

I'm talking to him quite frequently these days. Yes, he did. So your new book is titled Mind Over Grind. and how to break free when work hijacks your life. And I think a lot of us these days feel like work is hijacking our life. It feels like lots of things are hijacking our life. What got you to come up with that title, Mind Over Grind? Mind of a Grind is the solution. In other words, part of why we get hijacked by work

is that we are on autopilot all the time. The workplace today is a very high-pressure environment. So we're on autopilot. We're just going to put our head down and just get through the day. We just get through the weak kind of mentality. And when you do that, you're grinding and you're not thinking well about how you can reduce the grind and be more sophisticated in how you manage yourself. And so mind of a grind refers to the idea of if we use our mind correctly, then we can manage

the grind and how to break free and work hijacks your life is this phenomenon of all these different ways. There's so many bodies of literature of new research that shows a different way. ways that work actually seeps into our lives and ways in which we are unaware. And so therein was the combo. Do you think that this is more a United States thing? I know you're from Europe yourself, or do you think that this is a global phenomenon that's happening?

Well, I've been in the U.S. for decades. I identify as, and I'm a U.S. citizen, I'm very much in that mentality. My life was spent here. It's not a U.S. phenomenon. There are many other countries in which are dealing with this same kind of phenomenon. You hear the headlines out of China all the time of executives in their 30s and 40s who are dropping dead from overworking in Japan. That overworking to death has a term. It's called Karoshi deaths.

It's death from overworking. There's there many cultures in the many countries in which overworking and just the grind has become quite systemic. I remember when I was in my early 20s, I was at, one of my first duty stations when I was in the military in Spain. And I developed a friendship with a lot of the Spanish military people. And it was such an interesting difference between the two cultures. We would get to work around 6 a.m. probably leave 7.7.30 at night about the same time. They would leave. They didn't show up until about 9.9.30 in the morning. And then they took a two-hour or siesta from about one to three before coming back.

And they used to love to tell me, you Americans live to work and we work to live. And I think there's some truth to that. There is some truth to that generally, I think, in Europe. But even within Europe, there's certainly many industries that, unfortunately, for them, the truth is not that, that they are also at work very long hours and have very high pressures. I think in the U.S. it's a more general thing. But in certain countries, it's also industry by industry and what the expectations are. I've had very many moments and profound conversations in elevators over my career.

In fact, I used to work for a CEO that we called the elevator CEO because it always seemed to be the last person he had a conversation with in the elevator would be the strategy of the day that we would have to go out and tackle. But you had a different experience in an elevator and to help you see yourself act in a way that didn't match who you thought you were. What did that moment reveal to you about burnout and yourself? That moment actually happened one year into my career. I had, I was young. I was just, I just graduated. I just opened a private practice. I was a year in. And I got home on a Friday night and was in the elevator in my building with a neighbor who was a doctor in an ER. And the elevator

started rising and then it stalled and shuddered and stopped between floors. And my neighbor, really went into a panic. He started hitting all the buttons and pounding on the door and saying, this is my nightmare. This is my nightmare. And what came out of my mouth, which I'm not proud of, was I looked at him and said, and this is my nightmare, aloud. And he was so offended and he was so horrified by what I was saying that his behavior was a nightmare for me. I'm a compassionate person. I actually wasn't panicked. I even knew what to say that would have calmed him down. But that's what came out of my mouth. And when I got home, when you act in ways that are quite out of character for it, you usually, or one should, ask yourself, what's going on? Why am I behaving in this way? What's

happening with me? And I realized I was thoroughly burnt out. I had nothing left at the end of the week. That's why there was no empathy left to give there. And worse than that, I felt like I'd been doing it for 30 or 40 years. That's how jaded. That's how tired. That's how depleted I felt. It had been won. And this was my dream job. My entire life was aimed to be able to have that practice in that moment, which I did. And rather than living my dream, I was thoroughly burnt out. And in graduate school, by the way, and I think still to this day, we learned nothing about burnout. That's not a topic that you teach. It's if you happen to have a client or a patient who's burnt out, maybe you'll go, but nothing was said about it. I associated it with people who have been doing their jobs for 30, 40 years,

not somebody who's been doing it for one. So I was very confused by it, and it got me interested in this idea of what burnout is and how you can get it very early on in your career and what it does to you. Yeah, it seems Professor Maslach's teachings and course should be a prerequisite for anyone who's becoming a psychologist or a psychiatrist, I would think. Yes, yes, I agree. And because what I was going through at the time a year in was I just didn't like what I did anymore. And I thought, did I just spend my entire life dedicating myself to something that I don't like, really?

And I could not tell because you get so cynical towards everything. You get so numb. You're grinding. You're just trying to get through. There's no feeling attached to it. There's no excitement. There's no motivation. There's just the grind.

And you can't tell. It was only after I recovered from the burnout that I recaptured the interest, the joy, the passion I had for psychology, which decades later I absolutely still have. but it was a big warning sign and it alerted me that it's something I have to keep my eye on because it can creep up on you. The quote I remember from the book is you said I wasn't just tired. I was no longer showing up as myself. And to me, because I've experienced burnout myself, pretty severe burnout, there is being exhausted and then there's being exhausted as if you're burned out exhausted.

and sensation that bothered me the most was I just felt numb. And I remember I went to a psychologist trying to figure out what was wrong with me. And he gave me this analogy that I still used to this day. And that is he had me picture myself as if I was sitting on a stool in my kitchen. And he said, John, what are the different pillars that are holding that stool up? And as I was going through the analogy, I realized, that the constant grind was the one pillar that was more prominent than any of the others. It was almost as if I was on a stool that had one pillar because all the others were slowly

erasing. And it really helped me because what was happening to me is that relationship pillar was dissolving, the emotional pillar, emotional health pillar was dissolving, the physical health pillar was dissolving. And is that kind of how you felt as well? Yeah, I absolutely felt as yours were dissolving, mine were barely existent. In other words, I had been so dedicated to my work and to setting myself up to do the thing that I had neglected vast areas of my life. And you're right about the numbness, because the numbness doesn't stay contained to the workplace. It generalizes.

You get numb psychologically. When we numb as a defense mechanism, it's a coping mechanism. We don't numb selectively. We numb, period. So get numb to everything. nothing seems important. You're just tired. You just want to be left alone. It's not the kind of tired that a good night's sleep or a good weekend away is going to address. It's not. Something much more dramatic needs to shift. There needs to be changes that happen. And why I wrote this book now? This happened so many decades ago. But burnout and work stress are peaking in the workplace over these past four, five years. They're at peak levels at all-time highs. So it's something that's becoming much worse in the current workplace. with no real signs of it letting up, that's happening, A, because of the culture of the workplace, but B, because of our mismanagement of that culture, a mismanagement of ourselves.

The way we are dealing with it is not adaptive, it's not healthy, and we're not aware that we're dealing in unhealthy ways. And that's the message I tried to bring. Oh, no, these are the ways that you're doing things, which might seem normative to you, but they're actually quite bad. Yeah, one of the things I found as I was going through this, and I talk about it, a lot about the topic of mattering was not only did I feel exhausted and numb, I felt completely insignificant. And it happened at a point in my career where on paper, man, I was flying high. I finally had gotten this Fortune 50, $80 billion company C executive C-suite role that I had always wanted and I had never been more miserable in my life and I don't think ever felt,

as tiny as I did in that moment. Do you think that is something people are feeling as well, that insignificance? Yes, it's an absolute feature of burnout. Exhaustion is one of the features, but there's this cynicism about what you do and about your profession and about where you work that comes with it,

this kind of detachment from it. This doesn't even matter. What is this all for? There's this real kind of cynical view of the work that you do that takes over. And the work that you do can be significant and can be, meaningful to you to others. I was a therapist. I was doing whatever the job was. I'm sure it wasn't

the best, obviously, but I was helping people theoretically. It felt like a meaningful thing, theoretically, but it didn't. But there was no meaning to it, even the sessions in which people were thanking me for really helping them. So what? So there's one out of billion. Like it just, the way you look at the vantage point is such a distant, cynical, unfortunate one. And so that's a big feature that people experience. And that's problematic because then they start to detach from what they're doing, question their careers, question their trajectories, when it's actually an artifice of the burnout. One of the things you write that I found

to be darkly brilliant was you can't dread work if it never ends. And I think that's extremely relatable to a lot of the listeners. So to follow that up, you said something almost shocking. You avoided the Sunday blues by working seven days a week. What does that say about how people cope with stress? Yeah, I just work seven days a week because that's what I thought I needed to do to get to this place and to succeed.

And here I am. Now I'm a psychologist. I need to build a practice that requires, and many people, and especially in today's workplace, they could work seven days a week. There's enough to do. Or certainly if you're self-employed, there's never ending. So if you own a small business, if you're certain industries, and there are industries in which the expectation is that you do work seven days a week. And people always tell me, I could work 24-7, or I have enough to. to do. It's just, that's not an issue. And that was the habit and the, and the conversation I had was

with the colleague who was asking me about whether I got the Sunday blues, the Monday scaries, this dread you feel at the end of the weekend about going back to work. I'm like, you can't feel dread about going back to work if you're working all the time because you need a break to get the dread to then re-engage in work, but I don't have a break. And I said it, and this is the awkward part. I said it with almost pride. It was almost like, I work seven days a week. Look at me. And as opposed to, and I'm a psychologist, I should have known, oh, that's not good. That doesn't, that's not something you should be proud of that you don't actually take time over the weekend, that you don't rest, that you're going at it so hard should not be a point of pride. It should certainly for psychologists, she knows better.

And she looked at me and she gave me this look and I was like, okay. And then after the burnout, I realized, wow. And I remember when I dropped the six days a week first, that's going to go crazy. Let's not have whole weekends. And so I did that minor adjustment. But it felt to me like I am slacking off. It felt to me like I'm being irresponsible by taking a full day off to live my life because you get so used to it that then you feel guilt about actually doing the life part of the work-life balance.

Before we continue, I want to thank all of you who continue to support Passion Struck and share these conversations with others. One of the biggest themes in today's episode, isn't that burnout doesn't happen all at once? It happens gradually through stress, disconnection, and living on autopilot for too long. That's exactly why I created a companion workbook for this episode with Dr. Guy Wynch, along with weekly reflections and tools through the Ignited Life newsletter on Substack. You can download the workbook and explore more at the ignitedlife.net. Now, a quick break for our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.

You're listening to PassionStruck right here on the Passionstruck network. Now, back to my conversation with Dr. Guy Wynch. I completely relate with you. I'm in the final stages of finishing my second nonfiction book called The Mattering Effect. And as you, when you write these things, you typically write them far in advance before they even go to the editor. And I remember last year, I was writing this thing on the weekend because that's when I had time to do a lot of the work. And then this year, as it's gone through developmental editing and then copy editing, I've fallen into the same thing. So I've been working all these weekends.

And this past week, I turned the manuscript in for the last time. And about a week later, I got to go to Colorado for a few days. And it was a Thursday. And I just said, I'm giving myself the day off. And I went to this thing called Colorado National Monument. It's a national park. It's like a slightly smaller version of going to Grand Canyon. Canyon. And I just felt this complete release that, man, I have needed for so long, one, to just

stare at the beauty and be in awe for a moment, but two, to just get away from it because I think you don't realize sometimes how much you're in it when you're in it. And this brings me to one of the surprising things I learned reading your book. And that is even people who love their work are just as vulnerable to this as people who don't. So, So why doesn't passion protect us, given we're on the Passion Struck podcast? Well, I think it endangers us because when you're passionate about what you do, and your book was a labor of love, right? It wrote about mattering because that matters to you.

That's a concept that you really championed and feel strongly about, and it's a message you really want to get out there. And you, like I, like the vast majority of nonfiction writers, do it on top of the regular work. No one says you can take a year off to write your book. No one's paying it. You get paid to write a book, but that's not how it works. You do it on top of everything.

So that means nights. That means weekends. It means holidays. That's the habit you get into. But when you're passionate, then you lose sight of it. Because a lot of people that I work with, a lot of my clients, a lot of the people that I've in companies that I give talks to, what happens is people are like, but I'm excited about what I'm doing.

And you will be excited about what you're doing because the burnout cliff comes upon you suddenly. And at some point, you'll start to get tired, and at some point you'll fall off the cliff, and then you won't be excited about anything. And so that excitement galvanizes us. It makes us move forward, but it takes our eye off our lives. It makes us pay less attention to what we're all for in the first place. It makes us pay less attention to our personal lives, to our relationships, to our family lives, to our health, to our mental health, to our friendships, to all these sources of who we are. It makes us turn away from the things that make us feel like us. Our hobbies and our passions and certain amount of our friends all get pushed to the side

because there's no time for them. And we think temporarily, but it ends up being not temporarily. It ends up taking too long. So, yeah, when you're very passionate about what you do, you're more at risk, in fact. I would agree with that. And the issue is you don't have to be gone from your friends for very long before you stop getting the invites and... the connection and the phone calls and everything else disappear. Right. And you don't need to be checked out from your family life before your kids stop telling you what's going on

because you're not available to them. And your passion and your relationship can dry up as well because you're so preoccupied. It's just you're not connecting. You're just becoming very transactional in your communications with your partner. It's just about who needs to do what the thing is, but it's not, you don't have time to sit and talk about hopes

and dreams and feelings and this. that emotional drifting can begin. All these consequences. Guy, in my first book, Passion Struck, I have a chapter called The Conscious Engager, and I go into depth here about the difference between living unintentionally and living intentionally. And I used the analogy of living the unintentional life

as being the pinball in the game of pinball. And I used being intentional is learning how play the game again so you're controlling the ball instead of being bounced off of it. And you use a similar analogy in the book describing stress as a pinball bouncing off every area of our life. Why does stress spread so easily from work into everything else? Number one, because when we are at work, a modern workplace for many people is the equivalent of the modern day battlefield, because you have to get in there your livelihood, your reputation, your ability to provide all your needs and your family's needs depend on your job so the stakes are quite high

so it's not a mild thing you're like and there are cuts everywhere and there are threats from AI taking jobs and they're the internal politics of this one trying to step on your turf and this one trying to stab you in the back and you have to prove yourself and you're in competition with all these other people and all these pressures really significant so we are activated a lot of the times when we're at work. Most of the day, we're in fight or flight mode. We're activated. We're ready to speak up in the meeting or to defend our thing here or to present over there. And at the end of the day, when you spend your whole day activated, you don't come down in an instant. You don't pivot on a dime. And so we actually bring that home. We bring home the

fog of war, as it were, with us. We think we don't. We try not to. But when we walk back in home after a difficult challenging day or when we close our laptop if we're working from home, we are still in that very activated mindset. And then when our kids or our spouse or someone rushes to give us a hug, it can feel intrusive and we can stiffen because we're not there yet. We're still in our defended, watching out, being worried, stressed out mode. And that creates, and we know there's research, for example, that demonstrates that when one person is severely pressured and stressed at work, their partner will start to develop symptoms

of burnout, even if the work is not stressful or they're not working, because that's how much it can transfer from one person to another. Moods are extremely contagious as when somebody comes home irritable or preoccupied or anxious or worried or tense, it radiates to the, it creates that vibe, then the home. And so there are all these ways in which we really bring work home, not to mention that so many people are dealing with after our emails that they have to check in all the time. So they're not even, they're still really at work. They're still dealing with it. They're still in that mindset. They don't even get the evenings or the weekends to fully detach and to be somewhere else mentally, physically. For all of those reasons, we absolutely bring it

home and then it really infects them. I work from home. And so from one aspect, I love the convenience of it. I love that I get to spend my day with my two dogs and all those things. But on the flip side of it, I feel like I can never get away from it. And it's so convenient when your spouse steps out of the room and is doing something for five minutes and you know on your mind that there's a million things you haven't gotten done to just walk down the hall and get back into it. And then before you blink, an hour has gone by. So sometimes for me, I wish I would have a job or be in an office environment where I didn't have to bring home or live with it at home because it does complicate things.

What's your advice for a person in that type of situation on how to get away from it? Well, first of all, I do want to say that when people actually, I work from home as well, But when people work outside of the home and they come home, it's very hard to escape from that as well because they're preoccupied with work, their emails to do. When they have five minutes, they'll open a laptop at home and if they work in the office to do that thing. The same temptations are there. But the two things people need to understand. Number one, the research is very clear in terms of emotional health and physical health. When you have a very stressful and demanding workday, it is a physiological and psychological necessity.

to recover, quote and quote, from that workday after hours. You actually need the after hours to not be in stressed mode, to not be activated, to not be in fight or flight, because from there comes the wear and tear to all your systems, mental, psychological, physical, and otherwise. So you need to be in a relaxed mode. You could be in an excited mode, but it's different than feeling the tension of the workplace.

So that is an imperative. And then the problem is, that when you're dipping into work throughout the evening, you're not coming down from that because you're in work mode. When you work from home, they're reminders of work all over the place. So you're likely to think about work. You're likely to start processing the difficult, upsetting, distressing events of the day and to start ruminating about them

in ways that are quite harmful and are stressing you out and to think about all the worrying things that you have coming up. And you're at work again. I always say to people like, I don't care what time you finish work. You don't finish work when you leave the office. You do not finish work when you close your laptop. You only finish work for the day when you stop thinking about work. And for many people, that's never.

So that's one thing that, you know, that they have to understand that the goal there is to disconnect, is to detach from the workday. And then the other thing I try and point out is when we talk about work-life balance, people always say to me like, oh, no, I added an hour of yoga, so I'll have a better work-life balance. And I'm like, no, no, you're not understanding what work-life balance is. the life part is not the hour of yoga. The life part is regular life. The life part means making dinner with your partner and walking your dogs and doing homework with your kids or putting them to bed or watching a show with friends. That's what life is. You want to be present for that because that's life and not preoccupied and not detached and not there in body but not in mind

and not in spirit because you're actually thinking about something else. So the other part, other reason that's important is because you want to be, otherwise life goes by and he won't remember any of it because you were detached what you weren't actually there. Can you talk a little bit about who Tony in the book is so I can reference him through a couple questions? Sure. In the book, I follow five people from the start of the book to the end. We see their stories. We keep dipping back and forth between the five characters to hear what happened to them because I want to talk about the science and I want to talk about the tools and techniques via through their lens. And so the first person I talk about is Tony.

Tony is a trader. And these are all like fake names, right, the people I work with. But Tony was a trader. And he encountered office politics that were very difficult and problematic. And traders have a very stressful job. It's all very high pressure. And for him, the trading part of the work was like, eh, that's a piece of cake. it's the interpersonal politics that he really couldn't handle well.

And so we find out what happened to him in this period in his work life. And people always say to me like, oh, when I start reading the book, these characters are nice and interesting. I hope nothing bad happens to them. And I'm like, well, there wouldn't be a book if nothing bad happened to them. So, yes, you might anticipate bad things happening to them because bad things did happen to them. So you tell the story about Tony, who you just mentioned, screaming, sell 20 million, yet being calm second later.

What does that reveal about how stress actually works? Stress is very specific for us. I've dealt, for example, in other words, we develop a stress tolerance for, which is not general, it's specific to certain kinds of stresses. Tony did that for a living. So he could get on a call. And by the way, he was screaming because the trading room

is very loud and busy and you just need to get their attention. But he could scream, sell to him in and towards the phone, He's done. In other words, his stress response was very well, well sharpened in that domain. I've worked, for example, with veterans in war that did not have PTSD, went through difficult things, but their stress response for those situations was incredibly sharp. They could deal with them without and but put them in an emotional argument with their spouse and they would go to pieces because that's their resilience was not there it was in other places and so how we respond to stress is a matter of

training when somebody when doctors first start they they spend their rotations they get extraordinarily stressed out they're not used to that level of chaos I worked in a locked psychiatric ward I talk about some of that in the book. And when you get there, the chaos, the screaming, the shouting, the babbling, the hallucinations. It's like you get so overwhelmed because I am not used to this. But one month later, you can walk through like people screaming and then doesn't touch you because you're used to it. So our stress tolerance is quite adaptable and it's quite elastic. And so we can adapt to certain situations. And the ones we are more familiar with, we adapt well to and we can deal with stress and then come down from it quickly and the ones that we don't, we're going to have a much poorer response to.

So another character in the book is a woman named Sally, and Sally's parents died, unfortunately, within a very short period, one from, it appeared to be causes from being in the military and the other one from cancer. But you use her to talk about rumination. Can you expand upon that? Yes, to ruminate means to chew over. That's the literal meaning of the word. It comes from how cows digest food, they chew things over, they swallow, they regurgitate chew. That's how they extract nutrition. When we ruminate, we brood dwell. So ruminate is the psychological term for that. We tend to do it about distressing upsetting things. And we tend to do it in a way that's extremely unproductive. So if you had an altercation with somebody, a big argument with

a co-worker in the office, because they literally, they were trying to stab you in the back, or they were trying to do something underhanded. And you get home. you're going to brood about that. You are going to ruminate about that. It's going to be really upsetting to you. Your boss shoots you down in a meeting. It was embarrassing. You feel humiliated.

You're going to get home. And the way we churned, the way we do that rumination, is extremely unhealthy. Because what makes it unhealthy is we just go over the upsetting part. We just relive it. We think it. We imagine it from different angles. We imagine you have fantasy arguments that we'll never do. We imagine, oh, I wish I could go back there and tell off.

my boss and say, you know what, I hate you and everyone hates you, and we are terrible. Like, we're never going to do it, but we can spend hours imagining mic drop moments that will actually never happen. What happens when we ruminate in that way is we actually are stressing ourselves out. We are flooding our body with cortisol and we are reactivating all the upset that the incident caused. The incident might have lasted two minutes and we were upset at that point for two minutes. We're going to be upset for two hours at home because we're rethinking and reliving and relitigating, and then we'll rumination surf, we'll think of all the other times the boss said the bad thing, and we'll get upset about that, and we can spend hours,

and what makes it very unhealthy is there's no product that comes of it. It is literally churning in an emotional hamster wheel. We're not getting anything out of it. Healthy self-reflection, on the other hand, is a process of problem solving, of gaining insight, of deciding on action items, on getting perspective, on doing something that actually eases the stress and distress of whatever it is that we're thinking about. If we got home and thought about our colleague and thought, you know what, let me think about how to manage that person. Do I need to have a conversation with them? Do we need to go to HR? How can I get my ducks in a row here? Same with the boss. How do I need to think about it? Then we would ease because we're actually trying to figure something

out. But when we're ruminating, we're not figuring anything else. We're just churning. And Sally, this character in the book, had such a stressful job situation. She was a single mom. She got home, and her precious time with her young daughter, she was checked out for all of it, because she's just doing the things, diapering and feeding and putting, doing all the things, but actually completely somewhere else. And it distressed her terribly. She goes, I'm working so hard to be able to have time with my daughter. I'm missing it. I'm not there at all, and I can't shut it off. Ruminations are involuntary thoughts. They're very compelling and they're very difficult to stop.

You can't just say to yourself, I don't want to ruminate. And speaking of her child, what are the ramifications speaking of passing things on to the child when the parent is ruminating like that and checked out? Well, her child was quite young, I think she was five or six at the time. But children can tell when the parent is checked out. Mommy, mommy, I said something and you're not responding. But again, as the kids get older, they will start to avoid you when you get home and you're ruminating. Because they can see the tension in your face.

You're thinking about something very upsetting or distressing. If you've ever sat by someone, I've been in a room with somebody who seems extremely preoccupied with something upsetting. And you're not in an upset mood and they don't want to talk to you about it. You'll be like, I will go to another room because that is stressing me out, upsetting me, making me tense. I don't want it. It really causes these disconnects. in families and in relationships and in friendships. From the work I've been doing that exact age,

456, from a developmental standpoint, is exactly when kids are forming their identity and forming their value system. And from what I've seen in the research that I've been doing, almost four out of 10 kids that age today feel like they don't matter. And I think a lot of this has to do with that social mirroring the person from a neuroscience standpoint who we reflect, who reflects our worth back as our parent. And when that parent isn't doing it, it creates a huge void, which is where I was going with the question.

So I think it's doing far more damage than what we think. Right, because when you're an autopilot as a parent with a kid of that age, it means that you're listening in semi. And yes, yes, sure, honey. But you're not going to show any curiosity towards the kid. You're not going to actually look at them in a way that they feel fully see. you're not going to get the nuance of what they're saying and explore that more with them. And yeah, they will not feel that scene. They'll feel like you're there doing something robotic and disconnected, and that will have an impact.

Guy, you've alluded to this a few times throughout the interview today, but one of the most profound ideas I found in the book is that every stressful situation is either a challenge or a threat. why does it matter so much to realize that difference? And how is it not only psychological but physiological? So the challenge threat theory, it's not mine. It's the prevailing theory in sports psychology. And it's a really interesting theory because the idea is that when you have a situation in front of you,

like you have a big game coming up, you have a big presentation at work, you have an important meeting happening at work, then how you perceive that meeting and how you. perceive your ability to manage it can be very nuanced, but those nuances make a critical difference. Specifically, if you see that as a challenge to which you can rise, the idea of the challenge state, it's a challenge you feel equipped to meet. You have the training, you did the preparation, you know your stuff, you feel confident, you're going to go in there to crush it, that kind of mentality, let's go crush it. That puts you in a very specific mindset that has consequences in terms of your physiology that are dramatic in terms of your heart rate and your hormones,

zero transmitters. And the physiological and mental state that you will be in will be very conducive to you doing well. See the situation, not as a challenge you feel equipped to meet, but as a threat, one that you hope you can do well, but it feels a little bit threatening. You're not going in to crush it, you're going in to not lose. I'm heading into the field. I hope you don't lose this game as opposed to I hope he crush it. That's a nuance. You want to win in both situations. You want to do well in both situations, but one is a defensive posture. One is not confident. One is in which you don't feel fully in control. One is in which you don't feel as prepared as you might. And that mindset, no matter how motivated you are to

succeed, has a very different suite of psychological and physiological responses. And in our mind and our body, that will make us second guess, will make us tentative, will make us hesitate, and will predispose us to failure much more. And so it's not even the training that matters. It's the mindset that you bring to the situation. Because if you have all the training in the world, but you're still hesitant, you're gonna see the situation as a threat

rather than a challenge. And so mindset becomes extremely important and feeling in control of a situation feels, becomes very important. And feeling prepared for that, you know, is very important. And in the workplace, you need to understand the difference between these mindsets,

because success depends on it in many cases. So this past week, I was on a trip across the country and ended up having a mechanical delay on my flight, which caused a lot of issues because I missed the next flight, then had to get booked into a hotel. And of course, they schedule you out on the first flight in the morning, so I've got three hours of sleep at night. But the thing I have always had a disdain for about flying

is that I'm not in control. And I hate it from that standpoint. And going back to Tony, you talk about him working in a very chaotic environment, which I found much of my career, especially in Fortune 500 companies, was in extremely chaotic environments, constantly changing, constantly reprioritizing. And oftentimes we're not in control, but we're striving to feel like we're in control or trying to get sometimes. type of control because if not, to just feel completely out of it. How do you suggest to people that they can create a sense of control in a chaotic environment like that? Well, first of all, you said it exactly. We strive that you should strive to feel in control. The sense of control, much like stress, is very psychological. It's illusory. It's not about how much control you have.

it's how much control you can feel in a certain situation. So you don't need to have a lot of control to feel that you have some control. In a chaotic work environment, you can take time, and this is part of the message of the book, that intentionality as your first book was, it's about being intentional, which means, okay, I have a very difficult day. I have this very difficult meeting, then this client who always throws a monkey wrench into the works at the last minute, and then my boss, who always have some unexpected. thing and so I have no idea what's coming down the pike but what so I don't feel a sense of

control but what how you then try and give yourself a sense of control is okay let me sit down and figure out what the possibilities were what did this client do the last time what if they do that again let me just be a little bit prepared let me think a couple of steps ahead let me try and regain a sense of control by anticipating or for example by after this meeting which I know is going to be difficult let me schedule time to meet up quickly with a colleague so I I can debrief and re-regulate myself so I don't go into the next one, all activated because things when it were chaotic, the self-regulation, the emotional intelligence of being able to do that matters as well. Let me make a list of four things I can do that if my boss does the A, B, or C,

I can give him arguments or her arguments about why it might be a better idea to do something else. B, anticipate, think ahead, make some lists. Those things might or might not prove to be useful. but the doing of them, the making of them, will calm you and will make you feel more in control. Because instead of something that's unexpected, one or two or three things might happen, I thought through each of them and how I might respond to them. So again, you're not controlling anything that's happening, but you have a better sense of how you would manage it, and that gives you a sense of control, which will calm you, make you less anxious, make you less reactive, make you less emotional, and make you respond much more from the head than impulsively

or spontaneously, which can go wrong. Guy, another character in the book who you follow is Carlos, and I wanted to use Carlos to talk about boundaries. In the book, you lay out to four steps in an overarching principle for boundary setting. You say clarity, explanation, consequence, and then maintaining the boundary enforcement are all key. But why is respect also part of that equation? anyone knows who's experienced boundaries from the other end. In other words, anyone who's had a friend, a colleague, a loved one, say to them,

hey, you violated my boundary in some kind of way. I'd like you to not do this again, especially if they did so inadvertently, knows that that's a really uncomfortable message to receive. We don't like to think of ourselves as somebody who's violating somebody's boundaries, making somebody feel uncomfortable. There is small percentage of people don't mind that.

most of us minded quite a lot. So it's actually quite a difficult message to receive. And usually boundaries are set after multiple violations, not the first time. And so now you're thinking, oh, I've been upsetting this person over and over again for like months or years and I'm just finding out about it. That's also a different thing. Our natural response that is going to be defensive, is going to want to like an argue with it and push back on it or tell them, well, fine, but you violated mine. So it's a very difficult thing for the other person to accept. especially if they're close, especially if it was not intentional. Doing so respectfully is the spoonful of sugar that will help that message go down.

Because if you're being respectful and you don't have a tone about it, you're not like ascribing malintent or this. You're saying, hey, I know nothing was intended here, but you should know that I'm really sensitive to being called that word. For me, I get very discombobulated when someone comes at me with five things to do at once. So if you could actually just come at me, whatever the thing is. But if you explain it and you do it in a very respectful way, and then you explain why respectfully this is difficult for me.

So I'm asking you if that would be okay that from here on going forward, we do things differently. And then even when you maintain the boundary, which is the key element that most people don't, boundaries, it's 10% of the effort isn't setting, 90% is in maintaining. So if you think you're going to give the message once and you're done, absolutely not. You're going to have to repeat it.

You're going to have to maintain. You're going to have to remind. But then again, do it very respectfully. Oh, I'm too sorry, but remember I asked you if we could do this differently. Do you mind if we do it differently from here on, et cetera? The more respectfully you do it, the more you're helping the person hear it. You're helping the person adhere to it. You're helping them have less of a agenda around it.

And so it behooves you to do it in a way that would be more effective. So, Guy, throughout the book, you're pretty clear that this book won't help you change your workplace. It helps you survive it. Why did you think that that was the more honest and more empowering approach to take? The workplace today is very difficult in many places. I've seen many people try and set limits, try and set limits for the boss or set boundaries or try and push back on expectations or try and push back on after our emails or how things are being done and suffer real consequences for that.

Oh, we have cuts coming. And so let's look at the complainers. and let's put them on the list. You're not a team player. If you're not staying here till 10.30 at night and showing the face time, then maybe you're not dedicated to the job. And there's a lot of research, for example, that shows that somebody who does the job as effectively, but in less time, exact same work product, but they do it more efficiently,

will be judged more poorly than those who seem to take longer because they're more dedicated, they're spending more time. Surely that means commitment. They're less efficient. It doesn't matter. People manage and misjudge that all the time, especially when it's women who are efficient. They get misjudged most, unfortunately. So there are all these consequences, and pushing back can be dangerous in many industries.

It's just not acceptable in many companies. It's dangerous in many industries. I don't know the reader. I don't know what company they're in, their industry they're in. I don't know their boss and their proclivities. So I don't want to set them up to advocate for themselves as nicely as well as they might do it in a way that's going to be harmful. And that's also not the point of my book. My point of the book is that you can reduce stress and pressure

and improve your quality of life at home and improve your quality of work life in the office by managing yourself differently, more effectively, more thoughtfully. There is a huge delta to be had there. So start there. Then if you've done everything you can to minimize the grind, to use all these tools that I give, to manage all these situations better,

to recover more effectively from the workday, to improve your relationships, to rest and find opportunities for breaks and recharge during the workday. If you do all these different things, to minimize rumination, et cetera, there many, and then you should be in a better place. Then you want to be in a more objective place to judge, but if this still feels intolerable for me, then maybe a move might be warranted. But first, take care of the part that you can take care of. So, Guy, final question for you about the book. If someone really applied it, how would they feel different about their life six months from now?

So first of all, the characters in the book apply it, and over the years that I've been working with people and with companies, many dozens and hundreds of people have actually applied it. But apply it, you need to apply it. This is not a, oh, I'll do a little bit here, a little bit there. It's like if you're training for a marathon, for example, or for a big race, you need to train in all the ways you need to train the muscles, you need to train endurance, you need to eat correctly, you need to sleep correctly. You need to do it comprehensively. When people do this, the first thing they feel is a real reduction in stress. They feel like they're getting back in touch with themselves and their lives.

They feel this oxygen come in to these aspects of their personalities and their identities and their home lives that they feel reinvigorated by, enthused by, and rejuvenated by. And work feels more manageable and for some more compelling. You can rediscover the joy in what you do, the meaning in what you do. do and it will improve your work product. You will be sharper because you're not exhausting yourself unnecessarily and you're really finding ways to maximize your abilities, your mental skill set, your creativity, all those different things. It should be, for many people, it's a general tonic. They just feel so much better and so much more aware. Like they go through the work day and it feels,

oh, I'm aware of what's happening now. I'm aware that I need to take a break after this. And before I would just keep going to the next thing, I'm aware that. I need to plan my evening so that even if I plan to do nothing but veg out, it's an intentional veging rather than the default one, a mindless one, because I'm giving myself that evening to veg out because the next day I'll do something that's more active and recharging, etc. It's just leading a more mindful life and a much more rewarding one for that. And the last question for you, what does it mean for you to live a passion-struck life? For me, it means to be able to stoke. I'm a kind of person. I'm very fortunate, I think, in certain ways,

because I have passions about many things. Some people, there's just one thing they're interested. There are many things that excite me. There are many things that interest me. There are many things that spark my curiosity. There are many goals like I'd like to have. For me, a passion-struck life is being able to pursue these things as much as possible and as many of them as possible.

And I'm very thoughtful in how I curate. The things I take on at work, the stuff that I do in my personal time, in my family life, I am very thoughtful because I want to, passion to me is a driving force. It's what it's about. That's what gives you meaning. It's the engine, right? It's where you get everything from. So stoking that and being aware of that and cultivating that and addressing that and discovering that in new places. That's what that means to me. I love it. Guy, where's the best place people can learn more about you and everything that you do?com.com. That's G-U-Y-W-I-N-C-H.com. Do you forget that? Just remember Guy and put in Guy, psychologist, and

they're just not a ton. My name will pop up at some point. They can see I have three TED Talks. They can see my TED Talks. This is my fourth book. They're in 30 languages. You can find them links to them through my website. You can link to my social media. I have a sub-Sack newsletter that comes out every couple of weeks. You can find that. So that's the best portal to find out more about me. Love it. Guy, it was such an honor to have you today. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. That brings us to the end of today's conversation with Dr. Guy Wynch. And what stayed with me most is this. Burnout doesn't usually arrive as a dramatic collapse. More often, it happens quietly. You slowly disconnect from your relationships, from your energy,

from your presence, and eventually from yourself. What I appreciated so much about Guy's perspective is that he reminds us that work stress isn't just logistical, it's emotional. It affects how we think, how we show up at home, how we connect with the people we love, and whether we feel truly alive in our own lives. And honestly, I think many people normalize these patterns for far too long, because achievement and exhaustion have become so intertwined in modern culture. But maybe success was never supposed to cost us ourselves. Maybe the goal isn't just productivity. Maybe it's learning how to pursue meaningful work without abandoning the parts of ourselves that make life meaningful in the first place. And next up in our Forged and Adversity series, we continue week three with Paralympian best-selling

author and inspirational force Amy Purdy. In our conversation about her brand new book, Bounce Forward, we explore what it means not just to survive life-changing adversity, but to rebuild after it. Because recovery isn't about returning to who you were before hardship. Sometimes it's about discovering new strength, new perspective, and new possibilities because of it. When I first lost my legs, everybody told me what I couldn't do, that I wouldn't be able to snowboard again, that they didn't know what my life would look like either. They didn't know if I could go back to work as a massage therapist or I'd be able to wear the things I want to wear my high heels or, and people would actually say, I'm so sorry. Really, you lost your leg. Nurses would say,

that. I am so sorry. It was just such a sad thing. And I didn't want this kind of story to be created for me, like this identity that I'm supposed to now take on because now I have a disability and it looks a certain way. I didn't want that to define what my life was going to look like. I wanted to figure out what my life was going to look like. If today's episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need it. Leave a writing or review on Apple Podcast or Spotify and explore more at theignitedlife.net.net. Until next time, remember, a meaningful life isn't built only through achievement. It's built through presence, connection, and remembering who you are beyond the grind. I'm John Miles and you've been passion-struck.