Name: Keynote Session: From Burnout to Breakthrough: Sustainable Peak Performance in a Hustle Culture World
Uploaded: 2026-09-30T17:44:07.333Z
Duration: 58 min 12 s
Description: Keynote Session: From Burnout to Breakthrough: Sustainable Peak Performance in a Hustle Culture World

Transcript for "Keynote Session: From Burnout to Breakthrough: Sustainable Peak Performance in a Hustle Culture World": Twenty twenty six Customer Advantage Summit. We hope you had a great break, enjoy checking out our virtual booths, and that you're ready for our keynote session, from burnout to breakthrough, sustainable peak performance in a hustle culture world. In just a moment, I'll be introducing our keynote speaker, but first, let's cover some quick housekeeping items. At the right of your console, you'll find the docs column with a few select resources you can download, and our speaker will have more details on how to access additional resources she offers before we close. Today's keynote session also offers SHRM or HRCI certification for those who are interested. To receive full credit, you must remain online for at least fifty minutes and please note that credit only applies to our broadcast today as on demand recordings are not eligible. Provided you meet certification requirements, you'll receive a separate email within the next business day to download your certificate. And as always, this session does not constitute as legal advice. It's for informational purposes only. And now, let's meet our keynote speaker. Aaron Stafford is an award winning speaker, best selling author, burnout survivor, hyper growth business leader and Cambridge social psychologist. With more than twenty years of international experience working with leading brands, Olympians, Fortune 100 CEOs, start up founders, and top researchers, Erin has seen how hustle culture and constant overachievement, while celebrated in business, can lead to debilitating burnout. She's here today to share the steps leaders must take to sustain peak performance and create a life that not only looks good but feels good. Erin, I'm gonna turn it over to you, and welcome. Woo. Woo. Woo. What's up, everyone? Oh my gosh. I am so excited to be here with you guys today. Such a thrill thrill. Such a treat. Thank you guys so much for having me. So before I dive into this, I've just gotta ask you one question. Do I have your permission to just keep it totally real with you today? Is this kinda how I roll? I just keep it real, just straight to the point. Okay. Do I have your permission? Okay. Good. Good. Good. Good. So I have lived my life, my entire life by this mantra that if I work hard, I win. And if I don't win, I didn't work hard enough. Does that sound familiar to you? Does that ring any bells? Something tells me you probably wouldn't be watching this. You wouldn't be on this call if you didn't somehow relate to that as well. We, as leaders, as movers, as shakers, we can so often think, like, I'll just outwork everybody to get what I want, to accomplish what I want. I'll come in early. I'll stay late. I'll get another degree, another certification. I'll come to the event. I'll get the CEUs. Like, we will do all the things that we have to do to get ahead, And it works so well until it doesn't. And it eventually catches up with us, and it caught up with me spectacularly a number of years ago when I burnt out professionally. And I really thought that that burnout moment professionally was my rock bottom moment. But I didn't realize that that was just the warm up act for 2023. 2023 was one of those years that just knocked me off my feet. One of those years where you're just like, I don't even know what the hell's what the heck else I can handle at this moment. It was a year where my husband and I were trying to buy a house, and we had spent years trying to buy a house, scraping up money, and we live in San Diego. So if you know anything about the property prices in San Diego, you know it ain't cheap. It is not cheap. And it is it took us so many years to scrape up the money, and we finally were able to do it. We bought this total fixer upper. And trust me, this was not the dream house, but it was what we could afford. I remember my dad showed up the first day. He was like, how much did you guys pay for this? But it was what we could do. So we bought the house, which is amazing. At the same time, we've been trying to start a family for years. We had done countless rounds of IVF and had miscarriages and failed transfers, failed adoptions, like, you name it. I felt like we couldn't even buy a baby. I mean, we were doing everything we possibly could have done. And we finally got pregnant. And so it felt great. We're like, god, we have the house. We're gonna have the baby. Like, we're doing all the things. So we move into the house. Two days after we move in, we lose the baby, which is horrible. I'm sure, you know, we have a lot of people on this. I'm sure many of you have been through that same experience as well. It's horrible. Three weeks after that happened, my husband accidentally killed our dog. Now for two people who have no kids, this dog was our life. And he died in a horrible accident, and it was awful. This sent my husband into a terrible mental health crisis to the point where I had to call 911 because I have truly never seen anything like it. He then relapsed on an old drug addiction that he had in college because he was so distraught. I had to stage an intervention, get him into rehab. Like, this is not stuff that I do. I'm somebody who works hard and wins. I'm not somebody who's stages interventions. What do I know about that? Like, it was crazy. Needless to say, our marriage broke down. I ended up moving out of the house. I put my stuff in storage because I was like, I don't know what's going on. Like, there's so much happening. Everything's falling apart. In the span of just a few short months, I lost my baby, my dog, my husband, my marriage, my house, my dream of becoming a mom. Like, that's a heck of a lot to unpack in one really short period of time. We all feel unmotivated and inspired yet? The the reason that I tell you all of this just straight out of the gate is because every single person is going through something serious. Every single person watching this is going through something heavy. Nobody gets a free ride. We all have things that are weighing on us, and we would be crazy to think that we can keep showing up at work as our best selves when we've got all of this other stuff going on in our lives. And I also tell you this straight out of the gate because the same exact tools that got me through my burnout professionally are the same tools that I leaned on during this very difficult year of mine. And they're the tools that I share on stages all over the world. They're the tools I write about in my book, the type a trap, and they're tools that I'm gonna share with you today. We've got time for about three of them today, so we are gonna dive into those. Now this whole notion of if I work hard, I win. If I don't win, I didn't work hard enough, that started super early for me. I had my very first job when I was in fourth grade. I was a munchkin in a professional theater production of The Wizard of Oz. Oh, yeah, baby. I was winning, and it was so much fun. I think I got paid, like, a $150 for, like, 10 performances or something, but it was amazing. But I was not just any munchkin. Oh, no. No. No. No. No. Of the, like, 20 munchkins that all come creeping out of the bushes when Dorothy gets to Oz, I was one of four coveted tap dancing soldier munchkins. Oh, yeah. You get the job of tap dancing soldier munchkin when you're in fourth grade, you're winning. And I will just never forget opening night. Being backstage, I had my little my little soldier helmet tied tight. I had my black patent tap shoes on, my freshly pressed little soldier uniform. I high fived my fellow munchkins, and I tap danced my way across that stage and hit my mark with the precision of an Olympic athlete. I munchkinned like nobody had munchkinned before, and the crowd erupted. And I knew that they were all clapping for me and my absolutely riveting interpretation of second tap dancing soldier munchkin from the left. I mean, why wouldn't they have been clapping for me? And it truly was one of those moments where I was like, god. This feels really good. Like, I worked hard at the audition. I got the job. I worked hard during rehearsals. Now I'm on stage. People are clapping. Like, this is kind of fun. Like, I want some more of this. So I was like, okay. Well, what what else can I do? So I knew how to tap, and I was like, okay. I'm gonna learn more dancing. I'm gonna learn jazz and ballet and modern and hip hop. I'm from Southern California, so I was like, I'm gonna start swimming competitively. Swimming's super popular here. You know? So I swam competitively all through elementary school, junior high, high school, college, went to junior Olympics. That led me to softball and tennis and then piano lessons. I hated piano lessons. Does anybody else have to, like, suffer through piano lessons when you were, like, eight years old? It's brutal. I was like, how is this even legal? This feels like absolute torture. But like the good little achiever that I was, I just kept plowing through, pushing ahead, working hard in high school with summer jobs, internships, college, double majoring, graduating early, climbing the corporate ladder, doing all the right things. But I didn't realize it at the time, but all of these were just little feathers in my cap feeding my achievement addiction. My sense of self worth had become so wrapped up in what I was accomplishing and what I had achieved and also went upping my brother. Like, everything I did was, like, what am I crossing off my list? What am I accomplishing? What am I achieving? Because it made me feel so good. And you get attention and our egos love it. I didn't realize it at the time, but my achievement addiction was actually a silent burnout contributor. Maybe one of these looks familiar to you. Maybe you're a perfectionist and just everything has to be perfect. You will kill yourself at night thinking about an email that went out without a typo or something. Maybe you're the people pleaser and just everyone else has to be happy at your expense. Or like me, you're the achievement addict, the overachiever, or maybe you're a giver. You're just constantly give, give, give, give, give at your own expense or the denier. This is one of my personal favorites where you're like, no. No. No. I'm fine. I'm fine. Everything's fine. It's fine. It's great. Move along. Carry on. All of these creep up on us and silently contribute to burnout. And I know I had such a wake up call a number of years ago when I was the head of marketing for the largest health care staffing company in The United States. We were a massive $11,000,000,000 company. We grew 27 x in the six years I was there. I had about 75 people on my team. We had, like, 50,000 nurses working for us. I mean, it was a big operation. And let me just say, doing travel nurse staffing during the pandemic, that was its own special kind of help. Like, it was pretty full on. But I remember just having a moment where I was like, god. I have a great job. I'm making good money. Like you guys, like, we're doing work that's actually helping people. We're making an impact in people's lives. Why am I so unhappy? Why do I feel so dead inside? Why am I so miserable? And I didn't know. And, like, sure, you hear these statistics that fifty seven percent of all workers are burnt out. I don't need to tell you guys that. You probably see it every day. Seventy percent of people aren't engaged. Forty four percent the burnout's gotten forty four percent worse just since the pandemic. I'm sure you guys see this all the time with your teams and your employees, but I didn't think burnout was real. But it's not just affecting the individual. It's costing organizations $300,000,000,000 a year in paid leave, sick time, lost productivity. It is affecting every area of our organizations, the personal and the bottom line. But I truly did not think that burnout was real. I thought burnout was some garbage excuse people used who couldn't get their lives together. I was like, oh, yeah. You're burnt out? Like, go take a nap and figure it out because ain't nobody got time for your burnout. Although, we got things to do here, people. Like, I thought this was something that happened to weak people, lazy people, those people. I did not think that this was something that happened to high achievers and movers and shakers like you and I. But I was wrong. I was dead wrong. And so I spent the next few years really just digging in and interviewing and surveying thousands of high achievers, people from all different walks of life like Olympians, Navy Seals, New York Times best selling authors, politicians, Fortune five hundred CEOs, founders, doctors, lawyers, like, just a whole gamut of people. We try to figure out, like, how are they doing it? How are they managing to stay at a level of peak performance without burning out? How are they burning bright and not out? Because I don't know about you, but I still want to achieve at the highest levels. I just don't want it to be at the expense of my health and my relationships at the same time. And so that's really what we're gonna dig into today. All of these decades of research and interviews and surveys, my own experience, have been boiled down to something that I call the burn bright blueprint. And I am gonna share the three steps of that burn bright blueprint with you today. So before I dive in, like I mentioned on the intro, I have got a bunch of free resources available to you. At the end, there will be a QR code or a URL if you're not into the QR code sort of thing. And there's a bunch of free resources on there. You're welcome to download and share them with your teams, your colleagues, your friends. There's also a place for feedback and questions, and I answer all of them. I look at all of them. Would welcome all of your feedback and questions. Okay. Now let's get to the good stuff. The very first step in the burn bright blueprint is to recognize to recognize the warning signs because as leaders, as high achievers, as ambitious individuals, like, we're really good at just pushing through and pretending that everything's okay. It's like having a janky knee that's driving you nuts, and then you just ignore it for a year or two. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, you blow out your knee. It's like, okay. Well, you should have had that checked out by a year and a half ago. Maybe this would have happened. The same exact thing is true with burnout. All of the signs that you ignore today are what take you down tomorrow. We just pretend it's not happening, and it gets even worse. I know I had ignored a lot of the warning signs when I was burning out, and it caught up with me. I would be on countless conference calls just aimlessly scrolling Amazon or Instagram, buying more crap I certainly didn't need. It was like Christmas every day in my house. I would be doing something I call the mouse jiggle. Maybe you're doing it right now. You know, when you're at your desk and you're there, but you're not, like, really there, so you just sort of jiggle your mouse every now and then to make sure it looks like you're still active on Teams. You don't want it to go to inactive. You're like, no. No. No. No. I'm working. I promise. I promise. I would do like, I I I'm from Southern California. Okay? So I already have road rage, but my road rage got even worse. Like, if you didn't start your car the second that that light turned green, I was like, boop. We'll courtesy honk, get you moving. You know? I mean, I would even do shadier things. Stuff like on a Friday, if I hadn't done the work that needed to be done that week, I would wait until the very, very end of the day, open up my laptop, and be like, hey, John. Please be attached. Send the email. Bye. Did I attach anything to the email? Of course not. Why would I do that? I was just praying that John wasn't gonna check his email all weekend, and I would, like, buy myself a little bit more time to get the work done. And then on Monday, the best part, on Monday, I would then send the email being like, oh my god. I'm so sorry. I totally forgot to attach it. This is not stuff I'm proud of, but it did work. But now you know, if you get one of those emails on a Friday with no attachment, you know you know what's going on. You are not gonna fall for that one. But it got so bad that my boss called me up one day. And you know those moments where you see someone's name on your phone and you're just like, oh, this is not gonna be good. I just knew in my gut. So I answered the phone, and he just rails into me. He's like, Erin, do you even wanna be here? It doesn't seem like you wanna be here. Feels like you're just phoning it in. Do you wanna resign? That woke me up. I mean, I kinda did wanna resign, but, like, I didn't have an I couldn't resign. This was a great job. I couldn't just leave that. And it certainly woke me up and made me realize, like, I can't pretend this isn't happening anymore. I'm about to lose my job. Oh, and let's be real. Being asked if you wanna resign is about a hair above getting fired. Like, he was giving me another chance. I've deserved to be fired, and he was giving me another chance. So maybe you have experienced some of these warning signs too. I know that you are dealing with AI as we all are and the constant change. I mean, it's changing so quickly and so fast that it's just impossible to keep up with. You wanna do it. Are we supposed to use it? How much should we use it? What should we be using it for? Just when you get good at one thing, it changes, and now it's even better. I mean, it's so hard. People are being asked to do more and more and more with less and also now do it with AI. You've got compliance and regulations you're dealing with. You're working with employees and dealing with their problems, and that creates pressure for you. How are you meeting those expectations? Maybe you're dealing with hybrid or remote work or loosely dealing with the two. People happy, unhappy, be in the office more, no stay home more. I mean, it's impossible to keep track of all of it. You've got macroeconomic factors that you're dealing with. There is so much uncertainty in the world right now. Feel like every time you turn on the news, something else is happening that's gonna affect the economy in some way. There is no shortage of things that you're dealing with. And maybe, like me, you were having one of those years where you just can't catch a break personally. You've got aging parents or a sick child or you're dealing with a divorce or illness or grief. I mean, the human experience is difficult. There is no shortage of ways that you have been tested and that you continue to be tested. But I have a feeling there's a lot of you that were like me just pushing through, pretending thing everything is just gonna be fine. And so I wanna talk you through the 10 universal signs of burnout because the earlier we can recognize these, the better we are addressing them, not just in ourselves, but in our teams, in our and in our colleagues and our friends. So the first sign is exhaustion. We got that one down. Right? Like, we're good. We're we're good at exhaustion. Doesn't matter how much sleep you get, how much rest, you're just always tired. Second one is just this sense of dread. Everything just feels like a long dental appointment, like you don't look forward to anything. The third one is irritability. Maybe you're having those moments where, like, everything your partner does or doesn't do is driving you insane. How they chew, how they breathe, how they close the kitchen cupboard or don't close the kitchen cupboard. It's all driving you nuts. Maybe it's physical pain. The body keeps score. We've all heard that. Maybe you're dealing with headaches that just won't quit or adult acne at the ripe age of 43. Maybe you've got stomach issues and digestive problems that won't stop. Physical pain, burnout and stress manifest in physical pain all the time. Maybe you're making poor choices. Now these don't have to be life altering poor choices. This could be just binge watching too much television, scrolling so too much social media, eating too much, drinking too much. Maybe you've got a lack of motivation. Just don't feel like doing anything. All those things that used to make you happy just aren't. Isolation. This was a big one for me. If you couldn't tell, I got a lot of energy. I'm an extrovert. I love people. But when I was at the depths of my burnout burnout, I was like, don't invite me. I don't wanna come. Don't talk to me. I just leave me the heck alone. I'm good. Maybe you're feeling less joy. All of those things that used to light you up and get you excited, you just don't care about them at all anymore. Maybe it's brain fog. You are doing a task or a project that you've done a thousand times, and it's taking you four times as long. You're just sitting there staring, zoning out at your computer. There's no there there. And the last one, which I think is the biggest one for most leaders and motivated people, inability to escape. We cannot turn it off. We are forever checking our phones, our text messages, our voice mails, our notifications, our emails, our computers. Like, we can't shut it down. And then if we actually do manage to put our computer or our phone down, we're mentally not there. You might be at your kid's baseball game, but you're not there. You're thinking about all the 85 other things that you have to do. And so get honest with yourself. How are these signs showing up in your life? What are the warning signs that you're ignoring? Pay attention to how you feel because the sooner you can start recognizing these 10 universal warning signs, the easier it is to address them. So step number one is recognize burnout warning signs. Okay. Our second step is my personal favorite, do less. Just do less. Oh, if only it were so simple. Oh, just do less. And before any of the leaders on here panic that I am telling you or your team to just do less of their jobs, that is not what I'm saying. Just hear me out. We are so used to living in this constant state of exhaustion, we don't even know what the alternative feels like. I mean, when was the last time that somebody asked you how you were doing and you were like, I am so relaxed. I have so much free time. I'm just my best self. It doesn't happen. We just immediately default to how tired and how busy we are. It is like a race to the bottom. But if you don't slow down, your body will do it for you. I am sure we all know people or at least have heard of them on the news that had been the picture of health and then all of a sudden just gotten some terrible diagnosis or had some horrible health thing happen to them. It happens all the time. One of my girlfriends is the mayor of a suburb outside of Sacramento, and she gets kidney stones, like, every four or five years, and it is her body's way of telling her, listen, lady. You gotta slow down. You got too much going on. But the problem is is when we're busy, we don't think of resting and stopping. No. We think I gotta come in early. I gotta stay late. I gotta get extra help on that project. But if we could just start incorporating rest into our days and our weeks proactively, so it's something we use to prevent exhaustion and burnout in the first place, as opposed to something that we just do to recover from it, we would actually have a 26% increase in performance. That's huge. Who wouldn't wanna be 26% better at life or their job? But we don't do that, do we? We get one day off and we start playing recovery bingo. We wanna shove everything we possibly can in that one day off to make ourselves feel better. We will meet with our personal trainer. We'll work out for two hours. We'll get a facial, get a massage, go get to the chiropractor. We'll drink green smoothies. Maybe we'll meal prep for the next, like, year. Maybe we'll start meditating. Maybe you'll start leaving little post it notes with positive affirmations all over your house. Maybe you're gonna start journaling, But you can't just journal. You have to have the right journal and the right pen, and you have to take a picture of it and post it on social media. Otherwise, it doesn't count. Heck, will we even try goat yoga? Like, you name it, we will try it. Anything that we can possibly do that we think is gonna make us feel better, we will shoehorn into one long weekend. When I was at the depths of my burnout, my schedule was so jam packed with every recovery tool I could think of. I was like, am I relaxed yet? And I wasn't. I had to start taking things off my calendar. We have to commit to less so that we can show up more so that we can show up more for the things that matter, the things that move the needle, the things that light us up, and that transform our lives and our work. I love this quote by Coco Chanel. She says the famous French fashion designer. Hopefully, you've all heard of her. She says, before you leave the house, take one thing off. She's talking about dressing with accessories and that less is more. I say before you start your week, take one thing off. It's kinda like a little game of calendar strip poker. Now listen. I don't know what you did in college. Okay? But if you, by chance, ever happen to play strip poker, you don't start with the most important pieces of clothing. You start with the little things like your socks. So what are the socks of your calendar? What are those little things that are just draining your time, your energy, and your resources? And how can we just take one of those off this week? Maybe it is a meeting that could really be an email. Let's be real. There's a lot of those. Maybe instead of a sixty minute meeting, you book a forty five minute meeting. Outlook loves to just default everything to an hour, but most of the time, you don't need an hour. And let's be real. There's always some moron waffling on at the end about stuff nobody cares about. You're like, dude, shut up. Let's go. Let's move on. Schedule a forty five minute meeting. I'm not saying we gotta cancel the whole meeting. I'm just saying, can we make it a little shorter? And maybe instead of a meeting that happens every week, could we do it every other week? Is there somebody else from your team you can delegate this to, empower them, make them feel good, like they got a little more responsibility, and you don't have to go? Now I realize there's probably some of you looking at me being like, yeah. Whatever, lady. You don't know how busy I am. You don't know how many kids I have. You don't know how much I have on my plate. I see you. Well, I can't really see you, but I see you. Maybe you just start by removing a little guilt. You let go of a little shame. You let go of some of those shoulds and you stop shoulding all over yourself. Maybe you just turn the music off when you're in your car. Turn the podcast off. You don't have to be productive every single second of the day. When I was commuting to my last job, I think I had, like, a, I don't know, like, a thirty minute commute one way and, like, forty five the other way. And I was like, I gotta listen to a book on tape or audible. I've gotta practice my French. I gotta listen to a podcast. I gotta learn something. I gotta call someone. Like, I gotta use this time. I can't waste this time. We don't have to be productive every single second of the day. It is incredible what happens when you just get quiet. You turn the music off. It may feel awkward at first, but it is incredible because all of a sudden when you start getting quiet, solutions to problems start bubbling up. Answers to questions that you've been wondering start bubbling up because your mind finally has a second to just think. Maybe this is the week that your kids carpooled to soccer practice with somebody else. Maybe you got plans three nights this week and it's already stressing you out. Just cancel the plans. You do not have to show up for everything because if you keep showing up for everyone else, you will never show up for yourself. So what is one thing that you can take off your calendar this week? Just one. Start there. As we get better at this, you can start taking a couple things off. And listen, I'm not saying that making a meeting from sixty minutes to forty five minutes is gonna solve all of your problems, but you know what it's gonna do? It's gonna give you a little bit more margin in your day. You're not gonna have to rush between every single thing and constantly feel flustered because you never even have time to go to the restroom or grab a bite to eat. All of these little things just give you ten extra minutes here, fifteen extra minutes there, thirty extra minutes there, a free evening here. That is what adds up to helping us feel more balanced and less stressed. And the question I always love to leave you with on this topic is, is your routine building your future or is it just maintaining your past? That one gets me. Because, again, Outlook and our computers and our phones, like, they just auto populate all of these events and meetings and things to the next week and the next month. But when was the last time you really looked through them and was like, do I even wanna go to this thing? Like, why is this on my calendar every month? Is your routine building your future, or is it just maintaining your past? So what is one thing that you can take off your calendar this week? Just one. Start there. And next week, maybe you can take two off. Start building in a little bit more margin into your life. Your nervous system will thank you. Okay. And our last step that we're gonna talk through today is connection. I feel like I could do a whole entire talk just about the importance of connection, the loneliness epidemic that we are facing in this country and arguably the world, but we are just gonna touch on a couple little parts of connection. And the reality is connection is not a luxury. It is truly your lifeline. In business and in life, it is the thing that keeps us going. And there are a number of different ways that we can stay connected, but a couple of my favorite ways to stay connected are to connect with small moments of joy. How many dog lovers do I have out there? I know I can't see you, but I better see every single hand raised. Is there anything better than just, like, making out with your dog? I mean, it is the best thing on planet. I have a new dog now after a lot of therapy, after the last one, and it just brings me so much joy cuddling with him. All those things that may annoy you about your partner, like the bad breath or, like, the snoring, when it's your dog, you're like, bring it on. I love it. Give me some more of that. It's so fun. It brings me so much joy. Another small little moment of joy. Savoring that first cup of coffee in the morning. Trying to really enjoy it. I just have some old school Mr. Coffee coffee maker. It gurgles away in my kitchen, smells like my whole house. I love it. But I really try to savor that first cup and not just, like, chug it as I'm running out the door somewhere else. And my favorite little moment of joy, calling my parents during happy hour. So my parents have been married for fifty five years, and I am convinced the fact that they have happy hour every single night is the key to their marriage. They're just drunk every night. And it's so cute. They used to do they're both retired, by the way. And they used to do happy hour at five, and then during the pandemic, they moved it up to four because well, what the heck else else were they doing? And so now my mom's new mantra is if it's four, it's time to pour. It cracks me up, but I love it. I know if I call them during this time, my mom is sitting there and she's having wine. My dad is sitting there, he's having a martini. They solve all the world's problems for, like, an hour and a half, then they go in separate bedrooms and watch TV. Another secret to their long marriage. But it brings me joy. What are those little moments of joy in your life? Is it jumping on a trampoline with your kids? Is it calling your grandma on Sunday afternoon? Is it singing in the church choir? Like, what are those little things that bring you joy? These may sound so insignificant, but when you're having a rough time like I was a few years ago, these are the things that get you through the next hour. They're the things that get you through the day, that get you through the week. And so often when we're hurting or when we're stressed and overwhelmed and burnt out, these are the first things to go. So how can we be intentional about incorporating some of these little micro moments of joy into our days and our weeks because they truly are a pick me up? I can assure you that you are not doing too much. You're doing too little of the things that make you feel alive. So start proactively incorporating a couple of these little moments of joy into your days and your weeks. If you have the time, write down three or four. Put it on a post it note so you see them. Remind yourself that you've got these fun things to look forward to. And the last little part of connection that I love is connecting with gratitude. Gratitude. Gosh. It is one of those things when we are stressed out and we are overwhelmed and we are busy, usually, the last thing we are is grateful. We're like, I hate everybody and everybody hates me and, gosh, this sucks. Like, that we we have our own little mental spiral that we go through. But gratitude is truly the thing that gets us through these hard times. Success without gratitude is just burnout in a better outfit. When we are able to actually focus on what we have, be grateful for it, be thankful for it, and really focus on it, it makes all the difference. But the problem is is as motivated, ambitious people, we tend to just focus on the big things, the the running the marathon, the hitting that target, the losing the 20 pounds, whatever it is personally or professionally. But I love the study on Harvard called the progress principle because it tells us that when we can actually focus on making progress, we feel so much better. Having that sensation of progress equals so much more happiness in our days and our weeks. So how can we just get better at celebrating the progress and celebrating those small wins? There's a couple of different ways that I like doing that. One is through just a very simple gratitude practice. Every night before you go to bed, when you're laying in bed, think of three things you appreciate about yourself and three things you're grateful for. You don't have to write them down. You don't have to say them out loud. You don't have to tell anybody. Just three things you appreciate about yourself, three things you're grateful for. It is such a beautiful way to go to bed and to wake up the next morning. And when I was at the depths of my crappy year, I was like, I'm grateful I have legs. I'm grateful I have a bed. I'm grateful I have food in my fridge, which may seem like the simple, most mundane things. But as we well know, there are a lot of people that don't have legs, a bed, or food in their fridge. So how can we be more grateful for what we have? Another way I love to celebrate the wins is to create what I call a win box. So in your email inbox, I'm sure you probably have a number of folders, create one that says win box. Anytime you get an email from a colleague, a client, a friend, a customer, a a a family member that tells you you're doing something well, save that in your Winbox. Then when you're having one of those days where you hate everyone and you think everyone hates you and the world is against you, which we all have, by the way, go back through and read those emails in your win box. Remind yourself you've done something great. You've accomplished something. People are proud of you. Like, remind yourself. We all need those reminders from time to time. And if you don't have any emails like that yet, send one to somebody else. It doesn't have to be a whole dissertation. Just a quick email that says, hey, so and so. Thank you so much for covering for me yesterday, or I loved how, you know, motivated you were in today's call. Like, it really set the tone for the whole meeting. Like, whatever. It can be the simplest thing. I have this personal, I have this personal rule with myself that I don't ever keep a compliment inside. So even if I'm at, like, the gas station and someone has cool shoes on, I'll be like, hey, dude. I like your shoes. It cost me nothing. It takes me one microsecond to say that. But you know what? Probably makes that person feel good for a hot second. Why keep these things inside? Like, let us spread the joy, the gratitude, the compliments. Such simple ways to be grateful. Connecting with joy, connecting with gratitude. All of these things help us feel better about ourselves. And when we feel better, we do better at work and in life. So as a quick little recap here, when we recognize burnout warning signs, we're better able to deal with it before it becomes a huge problem. The signs you ignore today are what take you down tomorrow. The second one is just do less. How can we commit to less so that we can show up more for the things that matter and the things that move the needle both at work and at home. And then connection, really connecting with those moments of joy, connecting with gratitude, and realizing that connection is not a luxury. It is truly your lifeline. So before I wrap up here, I'm gonna pause for a few questions, and I'm gonna go through just, like, some of the questions that are the most popular that I get most of the time. And I want to actually, while we're doing this, I'm gonna put up my little QR code while I answer some of these questions. This is what I was mentioning at the beginning. There is a bunch of free resources available on here. You are welcome to download them, share them with your teams, etcetera. I'll leave this up while I go through a few questions, and then we're gonna wrap this all up and tie it on up with a bow. So one of the first questions that I get asked all the time is, can you experience burnout even if you love your job? And why does this happen? The short answer, yes. Absolutely. And the reality is is that when you are passionate about something, you can also often just get blinders on, and you can completely forget how much time you're spending on something, how long you've been doing something, how much effort you've been putting in, how much you've neglected something else. Passion is an accelerant. It is not a shield. If you love your work, you will override every single warning sign that we went through and we talked through because quitting feels like betrayal. Quitting feels like you're failing. Quitting feels like not something that high achievers and that movers and shakers do. I definitely did this at AYA. The people who burned burn out are usually not the disengaged ones. A lot of times, they're the ones who care the most, who are putting the most effort in, who do not have a boundary telling them when they need to stop. So, yes, you can absolutely love your job and also burn out at the same time. We see this often in health care as well because they call it caregiver burnout because they are so passionate about helping people. I mean, I know we've got so many HR leaders on here too. Like, that's, hi. That's HR helping people, making sure people are happy in their jobs and in their lives. Like, when we care so much about the work we do, we often just get these blinders on. So, yes, that happens all the time. I've got my little notes here for some of my my most asked questions. One of them, one what's one thing leaders get completely wrong about high performers on their team? Similar to what I was just saying, they often will assume that high performers will say something before they break, before they burn out. Have you met a high performer? We don't do that. No. We just keep taking on more work. Oh, you need this tomorrow? Yeah. I'll stay up all night and do it. Like, we just do all of the things that need to do be done, and we are so good at masking the issues. We're so good at pretending everything's fine and, like I said, ignoring those warning signs. That's how we get labeled a high performer in the first place. By the time that we are visibly struggling, it's usually because we've been running on empty for years. One of the things that I used to do when I was leading my large team was I would look back through the logs of who took time off recently. And if there was somebody on my team who had not taken a day off in months, I would contact them and be like, hey, buddy. Maybe it's time for a staycation. Maybe it's time to just take a few days off for the heck of it. You don't need to go fly to Bali for three weeks. But looking at those logs and paying attention to the last time people took time off is a great way to realize when somebody might be starting to burn out. Another question I get. Let's see. What's the difference between stress and burnout? Stress is very much I have too much to do. Burnout is nothing I do matters anymore. It doesn't matter how much I work. It doesn't matter what I accomplish, what I do. It doesn't matter anymore. Stress feels very urgent and, like, it has to happen immediately. Burnout feels flat. Remember I said at the beginning how I I had this moment where I was like, god. I have this great job and stuff, but, like, I just feel dead inside. I feel empty. I feel just completely hollow and empty. You can be stressed and still very motivated, but burnout is what happens when that motivation just wears off, and it feels like nothing you do will get you there again. Most people wait way too long to name it because stressed sounds acceptable. Burned out sounds like failure. I mean, I could have taken, like, a three month leave of absence at my job, and I didn't because I was like, how do I come back from this? Like, what's my boss gonna think? What are my colleagues gonna think? What's my team gonna think? Like, burnout? You sound like a loser, but stressed? Oh, you're good at your job. So it's hard. There's a lot of psychological mumbo jumbo happening in there as we navigate through this. Okay. Let's see. We've got probably one more time one quest time for one more question. Let's see. How do I support a coworker or a team member who seems burned out? Stop asking if they're okay and start asking what's actually on their plate. Leaders, if you're managing a big team, we often don't know every single little task that each person on our team is doing. I sure I certainly didn't. I mean, I knew broadly what they were doing, but I would just keep giving them more work, more things to do until they told me they were at capacity. Most burned out people, they can't really self diagnose in the moment. They just know they're tired. They just know they're stressed. They just know that they feel like they're they're at capacity. But naming that specific overload of, like, you've been covering three roles since March, for example, That does a lot more than just some random wellness check-in does of, like, hey. How are you? Because what are most people gonna say? Fine. We all say the same thing. It's like when you ask someone how they are and they say fine, and then you say, no. How are you really? And then it's like, cue the waterworks because all of a sudden they feel like they have permission to to share. So dig a little deeper. Don't just suffice with, like, oh, yeah. I'm fine. Really dig into what's on their plate. What exactly are they working on? And make sure that you as a leader are setting the tone as well. Because if you are constantly checking emails and phone calls and text messages while you're on vacation or you have time off or at 02:30 in the morning, they're gonna think they have to do the same thing. So those are just a few of the sort of questions that I get asked time and time again after my talks. So if you have additional questions, please feel free to drop them in that, QR code URL that I just had up there. I'll have it up again at the end as well. And like I said, I'm I'm happy to respond to them individually because we all got a lot of questions on this. So just to wrap this all up with a bow, burnout does not happen overnight. It is this slow erosion. It is this accumulation of just pushing through and ignoring the signs, chasing more and more and more and more until one day you wake up and you realize that you have been so busy building a life that you forgot to actually live one. What I've shared today, it isn't some one time fix or or something you do once and you never have to do again. It is a way of operating. It is a commitment to protecting the energy, the clarity, and the passion that make you guys extraordinary, not just at work, but everywhere that it counts. The goal is never to just eliminate the hard things. The hard things are coming. They're always coming. The question isn't whether you're gonna get hit. The nature of your jobs is you're dealing with everybody's problems. The question is not whether you're gonna get hit. The question is whether you have built yourself and cultivated these tools so that when you do, you don't break, so that you can continue to thrive at a level of peak performance no matter what comes your way. I know what it feels like to lose everything in the span of a few months. I also know what it feels like to be somebody who wins all the time and then all of a sudden isn't winning anymore. But I also know what it feels like to come out the other side stronger and feel more myself and better than I ever have before. And that is not luck. That's not resilience as some sort of personality trait that you either have or you don't. It's truly a practice. It's these tools in action. And that's really what today has been about. And I was reminded about the importance of these tools recently. And it wasn't some dramatic crash. It wasn't some horrible thing that happened. It was really just a quiet Tuesday that stopped me in my tracks. And I want you to think about a phone call, a phone call that maybe you've missed that you still think about today. Maybe it was a moment or somebody that called, an opportunity that you didn't answer the phone and you wish you did because that happened to me a few weeks ago. It was a call from my dad. And it was on a random Tuesday, and I was super busy. I had back to back calls and meetings, and I saw his name pop up on my phone, and I just let it go to voice mail. Not because I didn't love him or didn't wanna chat with him, but I was busy. I had things to do. You know how that is. And so in the afternoon, I listened to his voice mail, and he just said, hey, sweetheart. It's dad. I'm just calling because I miss my daughter, and I wanna hear your voice. It got me. And it just made me realize that I wasn't missing emergencies. I would clear my calendar for emergencies. My mom just battled canceled for eight months, and I completely rearranged my whole schedule to be there with her for that. I wasn't missing emergencies. I was missing out on life. I was missing out on the little things that are actually the big things. The phone calls that don't seem important until one day, they stop coming. Now don't worry. My dad is still alive. He is fine. This isn't gonna end in a sad story. We already had one of those. We don't need a second one. But it really made me realize, like, I don't know how many more of those I just wanna hear your voice phone calls I'm gonna get from him. He's 82. Who knows? So how many of you have spent so much time chasing more and more and more being so desperate to win and achieve and accomplish, yet never feeling like you ve ever done enough only to have something serious happen and then realize that the thing worth winning it can t go on your resume. This isn t about doing less or slacking off or being less ambitious. You wouldn't be here if you didn't care deeply about your work, about your career, and about your growth. But it means nothing if it comes at the expense of your health and your relationships at the same time. When we recognize the warning signs, when we do less of what drains us and more of what fires us up and gets us excited, when we connect with our joy, with our teams, with our gratitude, we're happier. We're more fulfilled. And when we're fulfilled personally, we have the energy to thrive professionally. So go go answer that phone call. Go take the walk. Go book the vacation. Sleep in. Wear the outfit you've been saving. Drink the good wine for goodness sake. Schedule a shorter meeting. Reach out to that person that you missed. Schedule fun and rest into your life and your weeks. Go do less of what depletes you and more of what lights you up and moves the needle both at work at home. Go live and lead at the absolute highest levels, not because you have something worth not because you have something to protect, but because you have something worth protecting. Let me say that again. Go live and lead at the highest levels, not because you have something to prove, but because you have something to protect. My friends, it has been an absolute joy and an honor to be here with you. Go out there. Burn bright. Not out. Thank you so much for having me. Wow, Erin. That was, that was great. What a powerful message. I just loved all the tips, all the tricks, all the all the important insights you just shared. That was fantastic. And also the practical strategies for building that resilience, that sustainable peak performance personally, professionally, and I think also for our people. I really liked how you covered that during the questions. So on the docs column, everyone, on the right side of the console, you'll find a PDF of Erin's deck along with her mental health toolkit and an FAQ of some of the top questions she gets on how to counter burnout while still achieving. And you'll find additional resources on her stop burnout guide and a reflective exercise for your team, personal assessments, and more. Just go to our site, that QR code or that custom link she put together for everybody who's here today at the summit. And for those who are interested in your SHRM or HRCI credit today, provided you met the requirements during the broadcast or during the broadcast, you'll receive a separate email within the next business day to download your certificate. Now please note, on demand recordings are not eligible. We'll also be sending Summit registrants and attendees a post event follow-up email with additional information, access to on demand recordings, and an opportunity to share your feedback on today's event. So now let's take a quick look ahead. Our next session, Meet Wise, A Live Look, will introduce you to Paychex Wise Intelligence Engine, trained by fifty years of real workforce data. It's built directly into the Paychex Flex platform that already helps you manage your business. You'll see a demo of Wise in action and walk away with a clear picture of where it can start working for you right away. Now this time, I invite you to take a quick break or visit our four virtual booths to review videos, access resources, and chat with a member of each Paychex team standing by to help you out. We invite you to connect with reps from our merchant services, Paychex Perks, marketplace partners teams, and, of course, our year end resource center for clients. We'll be back in about fifteen minutes, and I look forward to seeing you then.