But I'm So Tired

Sarah Vermunt: [00:00:00] I work with a lot of people who are desperate. To feel better in their work life. And very often. These folks are also so damn. Tired. They know, they need to change something. They know something is off and they like genuinely have the will to work on it. But it's very hard for them because they feel like there's very little left in the tank. Their day takes everything out of them. 

And they've got very little juice left. So today on the podcast, we are asking the question. How do you start changing things? How do you start feeling better? When you're already so tired. 

So. For this one. I want you to grab your pillow. Grab your blankie curl up on the coach. And we are going to get into it. Let's go.[00:01:00] 

Welcome to Careerism. This is a place to help you find your way to feel good work. I'm Sarah Vermunt and I help people navigate their careers. I'm a career coach, best-selling author. And my work has been featured at places like Forbes, fortune Inc entrepreneur and fast company. On this show, we talk about career navigation and career change. And specifically the human side of work where they're professional is personal. We have heartfelt nuanced conversations about navigating your career, including all of the squishy feelings that come along with being a human at work. Thanks for listening. 

How you doing today, friend? Are you tired? If you are tired, you are absolutely in the right place. Because you are in [00:02:00] good company. A lot of people are tired. And a lot of the people I help with career navigation are tired. And that made me think we got to talk about this because sometimes. Sometimes we get the impression that. Working towards happiness and going after the things we want. Is something we do when all of the stars are aligned. Or something we do when the timing is exactly right. But perhaps you've noticed. Uh, at that time, never really tends to come and life just keeps on spinning by as we're trying to work things out. So how do we do this when we're tired? We're going to talk about tiredness today. And specifically first, I want to talk about how to tend to your tiredness. While you're figuring things out. [00:03:00] Because you've probably noticed that problem solving when you're exhausted. Doesn't exactly lead to the greatest solutions. In fact, sometimes trying to solve problems when you're exhausted, can lead to just more problems or different problems. 

For example, I have so many clients that have. Bailed on a job. Out of frustration and panic. Because they knew they needed to get out of the job. But because they didn't really think things through or take the time to think. Thoughtfully and creatively and strategically about what's next. That sort of. Exhaustion induced. Case of the, I mean, I'll just say at case of the fuck-its the, the sort of frustrated, exhausted. 

I quit. Very often it leads them back to a place of frustration [00:04:00] again in six months or a year, because they didn't exactly land in the right place. So. How do we avoid that? How do we tend to, or tiredness? So that we can make. Good decisions from this place. Well, how you tend to your tiredness. Depends on what kind of tired you are. 

So let's take a minute to excavate your exhaustion. 

We're going to ask the question today. What is your tiredness trying to tell you? And what is your particular brand of tiredness? Because there are different kinds of tired. And you'll see what I mean. I'm going to set out a few of them for you here. So we know the kinds of things we're talking about today. One type of tiredness is. Maybe you have some sort of medical thing going on. 

Never hurts to check and see if there's [00:05:00] actually something going on. Maybe you need some blood work, maybe you should talk to your doc to see what's going on. It could be simple, right?

But there is a lot of stuff that. Is perhaps. Not that. For example, there's another type of tire that I'm just going to call frustration tired. This is when you're mentally tired and you just keep spinning and spinning and spinning looking for some sort of solution something you can change, but like, it never really happens. That's one type of tired. 

Another type of tired is. Sort of like a Malays feeling tired. It's almost like low key depression where you feel like you're like wilting. It's like, it's like, you've been unplugged. It's sort of a feeling like, uh, like you're a balloon with a slow leak. Then there is full body [00:06:00] exhaustion, the kind of exhaustion that's really like bordering on burnout, where your body's just shutting down. 

It's the kind of exhaustion you might feel if you could like instantly fall asleep. In full clothes on top of the blankets.

So we're going to go through these one by one and talk about how to tend to your tiredness. And also where that might be coming from. From a career angle.

So before we get into all of those other kinds of tired, it's worth saying, like, you know, maybe it's a medical thing. Maybe you decide to see your doctor. Get some blood work, check it out, do that. But also. The mind body connection can be a real doozy. There is a body of work that I started to learn about maybe like 11, 12 years ago. The work of Dr. 

Gabor Matay um, he's an expert in a field of medicine called [00:07:00] psycho neuro immuno endocrinology. Which is a really big word. That's really about the field of medicine that looks at the mind body connection. I'm really boiling it down here, but that's essentially what it is. It's a field of medicine. That looks at studies and deals with the mind body connection. He wrote an incredible book called when the body says no. Incredible title, by the way I read this book maybe 11 or 12 years ago, and I still can't shut up about it. 

It's maybe one of the most top recommended books that I have told clients about. I work with a lot of people who have burnout and it is a very illuminating and validating. Book. That looks at. Y our bodies shut down when things aren't going so well for us mentally and emotionally. Because our bodies give us biological feedback, right? 

Our bodies are our allies [00:08:00] and our bodies have their own kind of wisdom. Right. And that's something I want us to keep in mind today. 

When I was a kid. 16 years old. I took driving lessons. I grew up in a small rural community. And the driving lessons at my high school were given by a guy named bud. Yes. A little company called buds driving school. And when we would go out and get our driving lessons, maybe you took driving lessons when you were a teenager, too. When we would go out for driving lessons. But would have an extra brake pedal on the passenger side of the special car he had, so that when he was driving around these kids who didn't know what they were doing yet. He could put on the brake. If we didn't put on the brake. 

And I found myself thinking about buds driving school, as I [00:09:00] was thinking about this mind, body connection thing and exhaustion. And I think our bodies kind of do the same thing that bud was doing in his little special driver's ed car. It's like if we don't put on the brakes sometimes. Your body. Your bud, the body. Is going to do it for you. 

And I know I've had times in my life where I was maybe in denial about something or tried to push through something. And my body just sort of took the wheel. And hit the brakes for me, even though that's not what I would've chosen. So let's look at some of this mind body stuff that might be connected to some of your exhaustion.

Let's look at what I'm going to call. Frustration tired. The type of tire that's mostly caused from frustration, sort of like mental exhaustion. This is the kind of tired you might be feeling. If you are like constantly scanning [00:10:00] for a solution in your work life and you just can't see one. It has like a, I can't see a way out of this energy. None of the options are ideal. And you kind of feel like I just need the external situation to change. 

So you're scanning, scanning, scanning your environment for something that can get better. And it's just not getting better. Here's why that's really tricky. We have very little control on things outside of ourselves. And when you're constantly scanning to see what might possibly change in the outside environment that can leave you feeling really powerless. There's an interesting study that came out from the world health organization about maybe like seven or eight years ago. They did a study on burnout and found that one of the biggest causes of burnout. We [00:11:00] usually think it's overworking, right. But one of the biggest causes of burnout is actually feeling a lack of control, feeling powerless, feeling like you don't have control over your own career and life. I think about that for a minute and think about this particular type of tiredness I'm talking about this mental exhaustion. 

Usually we feel mentally exhausted when restorative like grasping after something that we can't actually control. So here's an example. Let's say that you are someone who's worked very hard to get where you are in your career. And.

Where you are in your career right now is a place that requires a lot of you. 

It's almost like you're not allowed to turn off. People are constantly reaching out. Perhaps you've climbed up the ladder to like a, a greater position of responsibility. And you just can't turn off. There are so many [00:12:00] demands on you. You're pulled in many different directions. And you know, that something needs to change. 

This is not sustainable. Perhaps you've even gotten sick. And your body, it keeps trying to tell you like, Yo, we can't do this for much longer. This is not working. And so perhaps you get to the point where you're like, well, maybe I need to look at something else, but maybe you've worked up so high. In your career. That like a jump to another organization isn't necessarily. Easy. Perhaps there aren't a lot of high-level jobs in other organizations that are similar to yours. Perhaps there are other attractive options, but you'd have to take some sort of pay cut to get your foot in the door somewhere else. So the options you see, aren't exactly easy. 

And so you end up feeling powerless. What can be helpful when you have this kind of mental tired? [00:13:00] And you're not going to love this. I'm just going to say it in advance. 

But what can be helpful when you have this mental exhaustion, this spinny kind of tired. Is to widen the scope of actions that you would consider. So to zoom out and think a little more widely about various actions that you could be taking, because very often when you're caught in this sort of like spinny, mentally tired energy, You are limiting yourself to the same two or three options that you're considering. Over and over and over will I, you know, stay and try to suck it up. 

Will I just wait until things get better? We'll I sort of hold out and hope that I get a different boss. And if you're just sort of hoping and crossing your fingers, that one of those two or three options. Will eventually happen. What can end up happening is sure. There's, there's an off chance that something in the external [00:14:00] environment may change. But what can often happen is that you stay in a hopeful mode. Or, you know, let's be real and call it what it is. 

You can stay in denial. For years. As you get more and more tired and as your health deteriorates, So I will just say that widening the scope of the options that you will consider. Is not fun. And it's not easy. If it was, you'd already be doing it. But what I have seen with a lot of my clients, specifically, a lot of the clients who have reached the stage of burnout and if maybe had to take a medical leave. Is when things get really, really bad for them. 

Like we're talking tiredness and exhaustion on a medical scale where they can't function anymore. Then they're finally willing to consider. Some different options than perhaps the ones that they're sort of clinging to, that they would hope would be most [00:15:00] ideal. And so when you're reaching this point of mental frustration, sometimes it can be helpful to. Give yourself the latitude. Two. Zoom out. Widen the scope of options before things get that bad. It's not fun by the way. 

And it's not easy because there are better options that you would like to happen that just aren't happening. And they probably, you probably have been hoping they would happen for a couple of years now, but it's just not happening. 

Let's talk about another kind of tired. I'm going to call this one. Malays tired. This is when you feel like someone like just unplugged you from the socket. You feel like a little bit wilty, kind of like one of those. It's like if there was a kid's birthday party, like five days ago and there's some leftover balloons, you know, those sort of like wrinkly, sad balloons. It's kind of that vibe. Uh, this is what I would call the Netflix and numb out crowd. [00:16:00] No judgment there, by the way, whenever I have. Tiredness. 

It's usually this kind of Malays tired. And I meet a lot of clients who are in this place as well. You know, it's the kind of feeling you have where you just want to curl up on the couch and hibernate. Uh, it's distraction by any means necessary. I remember when I was on a career path in academia. And I was teaching some courses at a university. 

I was also working. On my dissertation. Which I never did finish. And I'll tell you why I was. Exhausted. When I would work on my research, I literally couldn't stay awake. It was almost like a switch flipped. When I went from teaching mode into research mode. And I could, my body could feel it instantly. 

I was really like alive when I taught. And I shut down completely when I moved into research. [00:17:00] And so, you know, Uh, long story short. Some things were pretty misaligned in that career and it wasn't right for me. Here's another example, a couple of years ago. I remember. Feeling that sort of blah, malaise tired. 

And I'm telling you, I was sure. It was a medical issue. I felt fine in my career, but there was still this, there was something going on with me. And so I thought, okay, like maybe there's something going on here. I'm in my forties. I was like, maybe this is some early perimenopause stuff. I don't know. 

So I see my doctor. I tell her, I think we need to get some blood work done. And. She did. But she also said, you know, we'll do the blood work. But actually I think maybe what you need. Is possibly therapy. 

And I thought. Absolutely not. I'm fine. I'm [00:18:00] fine. I help other people get happy for a living. I'm good. 

Well, of course the blood work comes back and it was perfect. And I did. Seek the help of a therapist. And when you know it. That was the thing I figured out I was in a relationship that I needed to end. And so there was misalignment again with these two examples. I've given you with my old career path. With this sort of malaise realizing it was a misaligned relationship. 

I think there's something about misalignment for people often. Not always, but often when they're experiencing this. Malays kind of tired. 

So a good question to ask when you've got this kind of tired, is, is there something I don't want to look at? Because, like, let me tell ya. From personal experience and also from helping people with this. Denial. Is exhausting. It will [00:19:00] really take it out of you. If you're trying to push yourself through something that isn't working. If you are trying to not see something that you need to see and change that will wear you out. So. Maybe you get to the point where you, you sense there's some denial going on. 

Maybe you finally see the thing and admit the thing that's going on. You know, for the people I work with, it's usually I got to get the hell out of this job. 

That doesn't mean the problem is resolved though, right? If you're like most people, you probably want to throat punch the next person who's going to suggest you just need to find your passion. 

Passion. Isn't something that's accessible when you're exhausted. So it is not helpful for someone to be like, you know what? You just got to find your passion. It's not accessible when you can't get off the couch. [00:20:00] So I have found something that is more accessible than passion. Is curiosity. Start noticing what tugs at your attention. I often talk to my clients about the power of dabbling and the power of noticing. And if you think about it, anyone who was ever passionate about something was curious about it first. So when you're tired and when you have this kind of Malays tired, Instead of trying to force herself to automatically figure out what your passion is. 

Boy, that's a tall order. Maybe start paying attention to curiosity. Just see what tugs on your attention. And even if it doesn't seem like an obvious career fit, for example, sometimes it can be really good for us to pursue. Just life curiosities. And sometimes that just fills the tank again. And sometimes it sort of like starts a little something. 

It starts [00:21:00] like. A little trickle of something in a direction that could turn into something. For your career. But it all starts with curiosity and curiosity is much more accessible than passion. When you're feeling a little empty.

Okay. Another kind of tired. Uh, borderline burnout, tired. I am talking to the new parents. I am talking to the parents of young kids. I am talking to the people who have jobs with no boundaries. I am talking to the people who have to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet. This is probably you. This is when you have to spend so much time just responding to life. That you have no juice left to actually engage with it. You see the difference there? 

It's like, you're just constantly in reactive responding mode. And so there's really nothing, uh, left in the tank to allow you to engage with life [00:22:00] in the way you want to. It's almost like life is just taking, taking, taking, and you feel like you can't even choose where you put your energy. Well, this is a really, really hard thing to work through if you're unhappy in your career. 

And you're this kind of tired. It's going to drive you crazy. If someone is like, you know what you need to do? You just need to wake up an hour early. And you need to meditate for that hour. Just take that time for yourself. And you're probably thinking. Jesus Christ. I only get five hours of sleep a night. 

Are you freaking kidding me? Or, you know, the person who's like, you know, what, what you really need to do is to take a nice wellness retreat for the weekend. And you're like, are you kidding me? A whole weekend to myself. I didn't even have time to wash my hair this morning. So these kinds of solutions seem wildly. Unrealistic to the point of being insulting. So instead. Here's something that might [00:23:00] feel a little more accessible. And that is to take small and I mean, very small. Pockets. That are uninterrupted. To remove distraction where you can in, like, we're talking just 10 minute intervals here. Do you ever wonder why you have your best ideas in the shower? I think it's because we cannot multitask in the shower. I mean, I'm sure there's someone out there who's multitasking in the shower, but most of us are just there doing our thing. Alone with our thoughts. 

And of course that's when we get the best ideas that's because we think. Clearly. Because we're not distracted, but so many of us are distracted 24 7, not just with the obligations we have, but even in the in-between moments like. You're in your car, driving to work. If you're like most people you're probably listening to a podcast or you have the radio on. What if for that drive [00:24:00] just a couple of days a week, you turned off the radio and you were just alone with your thoughts or what if, when you took the dog out for a walk. You weren't texting with people or you weren't on a phone call or you weren't listening to music. 

What if you were just alone with your thoughts? Sometimes when you have this borderline burnout tired. The small pockets are really the only pockets that you can access. So if you can remove distractions from these pockets, occasionally, sometimes that will give you a window to start thinking more clearly. It's not going to solve your tiredness by any means. But I'm talking about. Creating micro moments. Where you can think a little more clearly and be distraction-free and it's those micro moments that will maybe give you a little bit more clarity about what you need to do, or at least some of the options that you need to consider. 

Instead of filling those extra pockets of time where you're [00:25:00] multitasking with extra distractions, it can make a difference.

Now. If you are feeling a strong Nope. To those things that we've just talked about, those different kinds of tired, there might be something going on with you. That's a little different. And you might be someone who needs to take what I'm going to call. The stop drop and roll approach. This is when things are so bad and you're so exhausted that you just need to sort of cancel. Everything. this is the point people get to when they finally sort of surrender to having to take some sort of sick leave. When they back out of all of the plans, just because they literally can't anymore. So this is folks who might be going through some sort of medical burnout. Uh, someone who's just gone through some sort of trauma or has had like a trauma trigger [00:26:00] of some kind. Also someone who might be going through a period of grief. When you are dealing with things that are sort of, of this severe nature. What you actually need is depressed. You are not going to be in a good place to come up with solutions. Which is why I call this the stop drop and roll. 

It's that feeling where you're like, I hate this, but I need to stop immediately. Well, actually your mind will hate it. Your body will. Thank you.

And your mind hates it because it will feel impossible. But there will also be a part of you that knows. Listen, my body won't let me continue. There's something going on here. And I just need to shut her down. So there will be a part of you that sort of kicking and screaming and having a hissy fit about it. 

And then there will probably be another wiser part of you. That's [00:27:00] like, you know what, honey now is just not the time for figuring out my next move. We just got a crash for a minute. Even though it's deeply inconvenient. And you know that the time will come to figure out your next move, but first you need some period of recovery.

So, let me give you an example of when people might get to this point. I sometimes have clients who realize that they need to quit their job. Without having something else lined up yet. And that is not a position that people generally want to be in. There's usually all sorts of fear that comes up for folks like that. But when people's health is suffering and when things have reached a certain. Threshold. Sometimes they just sense they need to do. The scary inconvenient thing. 

It's like their body is just not letting them proceed. And it's like that thing I was talking about. With the driver's ed car. It's like your [00:28:00] body puts on the brakes. When you can't do it. 

I also have clients who experienced this sort of automatic shutdown. At an unexpected period. So when someone finally quits their job and they do have another plan, Some of the clients I work with, they crash immediately after giving notice. And very often they don't understand why. They're like, oh my God. 

I finally did the thing. I finally like quit the job that I've wanted to quit for years. But then their body shuts down immediately after. And it's like, they fully expected that they would be living their best life, but instead they're collapsing. But if you think about it, that makes sense because if you've been running on adrenaline, For many months or in a lot of cases, even years. Your body is going to shut down when it finally feels safe. 

So when you finally extract [00:29:00] yourself from the situation. That was causing you to run on adrenaline. It totally makes sense that your body would power down. Right.

This is similar to when, I would get sick after exams as a student. I remember every December. For years, I was sick at Christmas because I would power through exams. I would be running on pure adrenaline. And then after exams, right before Christmas, my body would just totally tap out because I had pushed myself too hard. Through something that wasn't sustainable and I would just crash. It's kind of a similar to that.

So here you have a couple of different kinds of tiredness and it would be good for you to think of what kind of tiredness you're experiencing. So that you can decide what kind of. Approach. What kind of. [00:30:00] Tending that you need. And once you tend to your tiredness. In a way that feels right for you. You'll notice, you'll start to notice slowly. That the fog. Does Lyft a little bit, that you are able to think a little more creatively, that you're just feeling less mentally foggy and that you're able to engage with life a little more. 

You're able to take actions, even if some of those actions are baby steps. So it's not like all of your problems resolve themselves right away. That's not realistic. But it's more like you can think a little more clearly. You can start to see a few options for yourself. And then you get to a point where you can weigh those options. And you can take some sort of action. 

So you see here, what we're really doing is we're taking a look. Inside. We're doing some inner work. So that eventually we can take out or [00:31:00] action. And if you notice so much of what I talk about in this career, navigation stuff actually follows that simple formula first inner work. Then outer action. It's a really good formula to think about actually, when you're making a lot of career decisions, because a lot of career navigation is truly an inside job. So. This week. I hope you get some rest. And I hope that you. Take a look at. Some things that you could just gently start to work on that will help you with your particular type of tiredness. So that you can gently just rock yourself out of that rut. A little bit slowly. Gently so that you can start moving towards something that feels better. 

Thanks for listening this week. I'll see you next time.[00:32:00] 

Hey there. I'm still here. I have something free for you this week and it is related to everything we were talking about. I did a really wonderful workshop. With Dr. Christina kuru all about burnout.

If this podcast episode resonated for you, it's possible that you are on the edge of burnout and you might want to look into that a little bit sooner rather than later. So in the show notes, I am going to put a link to that video workshop so that you can check it out for free. And if you haven't subscribed yet, I would love for you to subscribe so you can keep this good stuff coming every week. And if you haven't rated the podcast yet or left a review, I would appreciate that so much, especially if you're over on apple podcasts. Those reviews are so easy to leave. 

Just leave me a little one or two sentence review. And let [00:33:00] me know what you like about the show and what you would like me to do a little more of. Thanks for listening. I really appreciate you're here. And I'll see you next week.