09: Combating Burnout with Jo Muirhead

Her Life Unscripted

Jo Muirhead is my guest today, and I’m so excited to bring you another sponsor for the Shine Retreat, which is coming up next month.

I met Jo at a business/work retreat in 2015, and she was one of the coaches at the event. We had an immediate connection, and I know you’re going to love her, too. Jo has a brilliant straight-forwardness that’s mixed with kindness, passion, and compassion.

She truly believes in connecting people to purpose through inspiration and innovation.

Some of the things we’re going to go over are how work is something that we DO, not something that we ARE. We’re going to discuss safeguarding against burnout when work is our only identity.

As a Rehabilitation Counselor, she is at the intersection of how we manage our health and the work that we do. After someone leaves rehabilitation services, people often wonder what they are going to do for the rest of their lives. This is where Jo steps in.

Jo is all about connecting people to purpose through inspiration and innovation. Author of The Entrepreneurial Clinician, she is also the Founder and Principal Consultant of PurpleCo - a team of specialist allied health consultants dedicated to helping people who experience injury, illness, and trauma reclaim their lives through work. Jo graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Health Science, Rehabilitation Counseling in 1994. Jo is passionate about the health benefits of work and truly believes that everyone has the right to meaningful and rewarding employment. PurpleCo grew out of this belief as a truncated form of PURpose for peoPLE.

Show Highlights:

• Allied Health Professionals - a collective of professions including occupational therapists, speech pathologists, physiotherapists, and audiologists.
• Rehabilitation services help people manage chronic health and chronic sickness.
• As a Rehabilitation Counselor, Jo helps people learn how to take back their lives.
• Over the last few years, Jo has been working with Allied Health Professionals, working out who they are, who they serve, and how to create a lifestyle that allows them to do good work. “Good work” - there is no clinical definition of it and it’s a path that everyone needs to go on and define for themselves.
• When we’re not respected, and don’t have control over our workloads, and when we don’t agree with the outcomes we’re asked to achieve, we burn out.
• Institutionalized thinking has created a culture of fear among health care professionals, particularly mental health professionals.
• When this happens, health care workers tend to feel less engaged with our work and question our decision to be a health care professional.
• When it gets harder and harder to keep going, some people jump into private practice, thinking it will solve their problems, when, in fact, it creates new ones.
• The day and age of the autocratic, dictatorial boss have come and gone. In the companies we love to support, we can see dynamic, enthusiastic workplaces, with a different approach to management. In companies that offer unlimited annual and sick leave and studies show that workers are not taking advantage of the extra time off, but are actually being more productive.
• How do you get the best out of me? Don’t undermine me; don’t disrespect me; give me some choice; if my ideas are good, let me own them.
• Nutrition, giving your brain a break, managing your emotions, managing your social and emotional intelligence, and constructively dealing with managers are all part of taking care of our health at work.
• Jo discusses 3 key indicators of burnout:
• Overwhelming fatigue (differentiated from just being tired) that is not resolved through rest

• Akin to walking through cement
• Fatigue can be confused with depression, as fatigue can be a depressive symptom
• Incredible need to over-exert and over-work, for fear that somebody finds out that you don’t feel well. (Overcompensate by doing more, being more, i.e. micromanaging, taking on more projects, working longer hours, not taking a vacation, eating at your desk)

2. Cynicism

• There’s a lot of humor around cynicism, but in the case of burnout, it is something that constantly surrounds you, and you start living in this place of worst-case scenario, expecting the worst from every occasion, always expecting to get in trouble.
• Anger and irritability can accompany the cynicism, and can not only affect you but those around you.

3. Personal efficacy

• When nothing we do feels good enough
• Work becomes all-consuming, trying to prove that their work is good enough, spending an inordinate amount of time over details
• There’s a pendulum shift among Gen-X’ers who get frustrated with Millenials, who are seen as lazy. It’s not actually laziness that is being seen but an enormous amount of responsibility that is being thrown at them.
• Letting work define you is not healthy.
• People who stick to their job description as a way of self-preservation are often shamed.
• Changing workplaces if you’re in burn out might be needed in order to get well again.
• You understand the skills you have, and the work you’re good at, but what’s the environment that’s going to get the best out of you?
• Doing a “wheel of life” is a simple therapy tool that can help you reconnect with what you want.
• Identifying your core values and being true to them helps set boundaries.
• Prompts: you have a start time and an end time to your day.
• Choosing a transition activity between work and home.
• Leaving your work at work.
• Making small changes, but just one thing at a time. That way, you’re not setting yourself up for failure. Remind yourself of progress, and what wellness looks like.
• There’s going to be days where you go backward, but look how far you’ve come!
• Powerful question for men: “What type of role model do you want to be for your kids?”
• Jo teaches people how to calm down inside, and reset what’s important to them.

Resources:

Her Life Unscripted Facebook Page, give it a LIKE!

https://www.facebook.com/herlifeunscripted/

Special Invitation: Shine Retreat is coming up September 27th - 29th, 2019!!

Registration at: https://www.shineretreatforwomen.com/

Email me at [e-mail] to receive a $50 discount code off registration.

You can also reach me at [e-mail].

“Shine Retreat” is limited to 40 women.

How to contact Jo:

https://www.purpleco.com.au

https://www.jomuirhead.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/purpleco/