Welcome to season two of Inner Workout! Over the next six episodes, Taylor will be sharing her experience with using the Take Care Assessment, and how she navigates her own burnout. You'll also hear from experts in burnout and neurodivergence.
In today's episode, Taylor talks with Erayna Sargent (aka The Burnout Whisperer) of Hooky Wellness. Erayna emphasizes the importance of acknowledging burnout, continually learning to manage it, and considering what changes in your life may be affecting your bandwidth and capacity to handle stress.
Mentioned In The Episode:
Meet Today's Guest:
Erayna Sargent (aka The Burnout Whisperer), is a speaker, mental wellness champion, and burnout relief strategist. As founder and Chief Anti-Burnout Champion at Hooky Wellness®, she merges employee-centric design and mental wellness for their signature burnout relief experience, Navigating Burnout™. She has empowered thousands of professionals across clients including Google, Deloitte, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Moet Hennessy, and more.
Erayna is a classically trained brand & innovation leader with over close to two decades of industry experience across workspace design, consumer goods, and tech at companies including Nestle, Haworth, and Intuit.
Erayna is a Consortium for Management fellowship recipient, MLT alum and MBA from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. She is an initiative member at the Global Wellness Institute and the founder and co-chair emeritus of BL2END, a Michigan-based non-profit for professionals of color. As a contributing writer at Well+Good, she provides perspective and practical tips for real-time workplace challenges. Erayna is a born & bred Detroiter, turned domestic nomad, currently residing in Charlotte,NC with her husband and their One-year old son. On a Hooky Day you can find Erayna in the spa, a hammock, or binge watching Tiny Desk episodes.
Connect with Erayna Sargent:
You're listening to Inner Warmup, where your inner work begins. I'm Taylor Elyse Morrison, creator of Inner Workout and author of the Inner Workout book. And you as always are our expert guest. Thanks so much for being here today.
Hi, friends, it has been a while since we've last shared this space. As you heard in the last Deep Stretch of 2022, I took a break from the podcast and decided to switch it to a seasonal format. I made that decision for a lot of reasons. But one of the biggest ones was that I was burned out. And it took me so long to even admit that to myself, to admit that I was burned out. I mean, I wrote a book about self care that's actually going to be out in the world in just a few weeks. Shameless plug here, preorder the book if you haven't already. And I felt like burnout shouldn't be something that I struggle with. I should have moved past it. And then I remembered the first line of my book, which reads, "This is not an aspirational wellness book. It can't be because I'm writing it." And those words that I wrote at this point, over a year ago, reminded me that I started this work and this company because I don't want to hide my struggles. I want to come alongside you as someone who is doing this work and is journeying as well. And so instead of hiding my struggle, I decided to open up and to have a candid conversation, actually multiple candid conversations about my struggles with burnout. This season, I'm going to share how I use the Take Care Assessment, and the principles and the practices in the Inner Workout book to navigate my own burnout. Over six episodes you'll hear from not just me, but also from experts, people who are bringing their subject matter expertise in burnout, in neurodivergent, and you'll even hear from my own coach and some of my friends. I'm so excited to share this next season of Inner Warmup with you and this new iteration of Inner Warmup with you.
Today, for our first guest, we have Erayna Sargent. Erayna, I am so glad that you're here. And I told you this right before we hit record, I had a different kickoff question planned but then I read your bio. And I also love listening to Tiny Desk Concerts. So I'm wondering which one's your favorite or if not your favorite, what's one that you've been like vibing to lately?
Erayna Sargent
Yes, there are so many. The ones that I have on repeat and my husband is like, really again? Is one, Tom Misch. Two, Masego and I think I'm saying that right. And then three is Mac Miller.
Taylor Morrison
Oooh, I don't know if I've listened to the Mac Miller one. So I'm gonna have to play that after this. There's so many good, Tiny Desk Concerts. I love the Tank And The Bangas one when they like, won the concert and I've been listening to them lately. And then I also love the T-Pain one just because people didn't know that he could sing and that surprise in the room where people are like, wait, where's the auto tune?
Erayna Sargent
Yes, there are so many. Chika's another one. I was like, like, I found artists that I love and it's on my vision board. I want to go to a Tiny Desk. I don't know how I'm gonna make it happen. But at some point, it will
Taylor Morrison
Yes, manifesting that for you. And me too. I'm gonna steal a little bit of that for me too.
Erayna Sargent
Let's go for it.
Taylor Morrison
There's more than enough room for us both to go to a Tiny Desk Concert. So I actually didn't bring you here to talk about Tiny Desk Concerts. I brought you here to talk about burnout because
Erayna Sargent
Just as exciting.
Taylor Morrison
Like shift from like the Tiny Desk Concerts, pump up things to womp womp burnout, which you've turned into a career and I'm so curious, like what brought you to this point where now your title is anti-burnout champion?
Erayna Sargent
Yes. What ultimately brought me to that point was where working harder was no longer working. So I am from Detroit, very blue collar, working harder is the thing, like you just grind. Since I could have a job I had like three, no joke. And so I had an amazing career in like brand management where I was able to work on some of the world's biggest brands. I worked in office furniture. I worked in tech, and across this experience was able to to like, hone in my skills of building like brands from the ground up, getting in touch with consumer needs, and really just being at the heart of building what comes next from an innovation standpoint. And then about five years ago, I was at a point where, literally working harder was no longer working. And it was actually making me physically, emotionally and mentally feel worse. And so that was just so foreign. I was like, what, what is this, and it caused me to go into this path to figure out how to feel better. So I started deep diving into the world of mental health and wellness, I got my first therapist to get started in that space. And that is how I started to understand the space, and language of burnout. And at that point, it was not something people talked about at all. It was extremely unfamiliar. But once I hit it, and I started to talk about it and really assess the situation, I realized how far from alone I was. And what was an exciting thing to see is, as I started to talk about it, and what I was doing and what I was learning, people were coming to me, like, excuse me, tell me more. I think I feel that way. I'm trying to figure it out. And I have no idea where to start. So it drove me to leave my job in tech at the end of '19. And to really launch my business Hooky Wellness. And yes, it is like play hooky. It's now a comprehensive burnout relief support system for high performance professionals, and teams, and I'm purely focused on helping you understand what burnout is, isn't and what you can start doing about it and connect you to the resources to actually start doing it.
Taylor Morrison
That's one of my favorite questions is to ask people how they got to where they were. Because it just reminds us that no one's journey is linear. And like the fact that you had this career where you were getting to do all of these different things and work with different types of companies perfectly brought you to this point. And I liked where you ended where you were saying like helping people understand what burnout is. Burnout is a topic that I broach a little bit in my book. And for me personally, I find that it's often related to a lack of connection with myself, like the times where I am the most burned out, are the times when I'm the least connected with myself. So that's a little bit of my own take on it. But you are like thee burnout, thee, I'm imagining it with two e's, Burnout Queen. So I'm curious to hear how you define burnout and how you think about it.
Erayna Sargent
Yes and the burnout queen, I can tell you, it took me a while to accept that because I became the queen because I had so many experiences with it in so many facets of life. But the learning and the experience with it is how I'm able to do what I do. But by definition, and I use the textbook's definition of burnout being a state of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion that's brought on by chronic and unmanaged stress. So the big things about it is that it is multi-dimensional. So often the conversation about burnout is just you're tired, but it is so much bigger than that, like you're drained in all layers or dimensions of your life. And the other part of it is that it is brought on by chronic stress or unmanaged. It is not like a fluke, it is not something that happens in a day. It takes weeks, months, and sometimes it's a progressive thing over a year's time. A couple other things with burnout is that it is situational. So it's created by a combination of proven drivers. So there's drivers in the workplace from values, fairness, workload, which is the one that usually gets the shine, but there's actually six proven drivers. And then there's also things outside of the workplace. So your lifestyle, environment or situation, as well as just life life-ing, or accelerators, that can impact you on an internal level as well. So we, I get excited, there's now a conversation about it. And now when you look on social media, it's no longer just hashtags of tires spinning, but there's so much depth that we still need to learn because it is not the same as stress. It's the result of what you do when you don't take care of stress. So it's progressive. It also has multiple stages, but there are like common symptoms that are familiar and can really give you a heads up. So if you are like, I think I might be dealing with it. Some of the early flags is exhaustion. So like no matter how much sleep you're getting, you are not feeling replenished or rejuvenated. It goes into filling a need from detachment. So you're pulling away from the people and things that bring you joy, which starts to get into the spaces of how, it sounds like you start to recognize it in your life. And then some of the later stages can really start to echo similar things of depression. which is its own thing outside of burnout, but burnout can really highlight and intensify or uncover even some of those official mental health conditions. So it's a very nuanced and personal experience. But it's also extremely common, especially for high performers. So I love that you have this awareness because self awareness is one of the biggest things that makes a difference in managing, mitigating and preventing burnout. So ignoring it is not what is going to help you get past it. And I know we're gonna dig into that later. But I just applaud you in having this self awareness to feel it coming on. So you can start doing something about it.
Taylor Morrison
Thank you, it's like, I want to receive that. And also, I'm like, Ah, I probably could deal with this a little bit sooner. We talked about this before we recorded but I decided to center this season around burnout, really, because I had so much shame around admitting that I was burned out. And I didn't even realize how much shame I had. With having this self care company, with showing all of these things on paper of like ways to mitigate burnout and ways to deal with burnout. I was like, I should not be able to reach this point of burnout. And if I do, I'm a failure. So if I just pretend that I don't, that I'm not burned out then like it'll go away. Which, spoiler alert, that's not how burnout works. So I'm just curious if you've heard other people talk about that shame? And if so why do you think that shame around admitting that you're burned out exists?
Erayna Sargent
Yes, shame is so real. So it's actually one of the most common emotions when it comes to burnout. I am very guilty of that, like, I started Hooky at the end of '19 and even I was slow to talk about, like I talked about it in smaller circles with individuals, but I had shame because in the work that I do, I have to be so vulnerable and real about my experiences. And here's the thing, my experiences didn't stop just because I started a company to help others with burnout, like I am constantly learning and every time my situation changes, how I interact, or how I mitigate burnout changes like this started with me in corporate with wonderful benefits that I could leverage, then I went to entrepreneurship, which there's no benefits and challenges with some of the reward as my finances had to do with my work. I dealt with it as well when dealing with grief of an aging, ailing parent, and now I'm dealing with it as a new mother. So burnout is situational, what can create it, what can accelerate it and what you do about it changes just as your life does. And so this shame is one of the most common things, one with people in the first place. Because when you reflect on how many of us were raised in quote, unquote, hustle culture, there's not as much of a surprise that when you get to a point where you need to slow down or not hustle as much, there could be shame, because that's what you're expected to do, in a sense. And especially if you're used to doing it, so not only might you be dealing with the perceptions that other people have of you, you are also potentially battling the perception you have of yourself, of what you should be capable of. But what is often overlooked is that we're doing all of this in the midst of life lifing, as a lot of us say. Life is happening to us all. But we often aren't equipped with the skills or tools to adjust within it. And the thing about burnout is that it's not new. So we have this shame because no people weren't talking about it. Like burnout was actually coined in the 1970s, the WHO deemed it a occupational phenomenon in 2019. But we still weren't talking about it until the pandemic just poured gasoline on this craziness. So it is a new thing to be discussed and to recognize as something that is just a part of life. So when you feel like you're in it by yourself, and it is something that's only happening to you, and it's an especially as in the past, when it was discussed, it was discussed as a failure on that person's part like that individual couldn't cut it, versus there's a collective issue with the way in which we are either doing our work, the systems we have set up to either support people or not support people. How are we as a collective and as a community, setting up our systems and ways so that we can create sustainable performance? Like in a world where we're only talking about productivity, no wonder we're running ourselves into the ground. So shame exists because of our conditioning. And what we've been taught of How much more can you take on and last but not least, especially women and black women? That's a whole nother can of worms where both the expectation and a lot of the real life is that you're carrying the weight of not only yourself, but those around you. So when you say I can't, or if you get to a point where you need to say I can't, that's different. And that's something that is unfamiliar and actually wasn't allowed for so long, that an initial part of changing mindset, shame, it could be expected with something that you're like, no, I don't want to do that anymore. And I recognize other people aren't. But this isn't for me, this is not sustainable. And I choose not to burn out anymore. So hopefully, that gives you a picture and helps you feel so far from alone. Because shame is the first thing my clients talk about.
Taylor Morrison
Yes, the whole time. I was like, yes, amen. snaps. I felt so seen in that and like you said, it's the hustle culture. It's also sitting at the intersection of these marginalized identities. There's a lot to unpack. And as you were saying it like, oh, yeah, of course, it would make sense that the shame is a byproduct. And as I said before, the way I responded to the shame was just like, okay, we're gonna pretend burnout isn't happening. What are the impacts of that, of just pretending that you're not burned out?
Erayna Sargent
So sort of lying to yourself, which, I mean, that's what a lot of people do. But pretending you're not burned out. Honestly, that doesn't, no one buys it. But burnout is something as I said, it's situational. So there's stages and phases, and you can be different places in the cycle. But the really intense stages can be temporary. And if you're doing things to mitigate and manage it, it should be temporary. But if you're pretending you're not burned out, it's no longer temporary, you're getting deeper into the cycle, or you're staying in the deepest depths of the cycle, which in those, I call it a slippery slope, because that is where it can trigger latent mental health, physical or emotional challenges that you have, it can amplify things like imposter syndrome, amplify identity based issues, it can weaken your ability to produce and your efficacy in the workplace. So that ultimately, like pretending you're not burned out, will have a negative impact on your career and your personal life. So when you think you can do something, but you can't, and you're like limping along, you're never going to get as far as if you took a step back and sat for a minute, and then started once you could jog or run again. So it and I say this, I like pause for a second. But I really do mean it. Like, if you pretend you're not burned out, it will have a negative impact on you. Point blank period. Like, you just, it's like imagining that you can, you think you can continue to carry like 100 pounds up a hill, but you broke your leg along the way. How far are you gonna get?
Taylor Morrison
Yeah, really, really not far. And you're gonna be in so much more pain
Erayna Sargent
Yes, and everyone around you will see that you're not going to make it. So that's actually one of the symptoms, if you're like, I don't know if this has happened to me. But that metaphor works, one of the symptoms that can happen is that you get blinders on. So you may not see how you're interfacing, interacting or the the impact of your actions, but those around you will. So if you are in a point where like friends, family, like even some of your close coworkers, those around you who know you are starting to say, hey, you seem off, you don't seem like yourself is everything, okay? Take a step back. And instead of taking immediate defense to it, which that can be something that happens is superhero complex and getting very defensive. Try not to do that because they might be seeing something that you are blinded to in your life, they might be seeing that your leg is broke when you are trying to limp along. So that's one of the things to keep an eye out or ear out and open your heart is if those people that love you are saying, Hey, are you okay, as something off? There might be something off that you haven't recognized or you haven't been willing to recognize yet.
Taylor Morrison
Yes, yes. It's so important. And I talk a lot about how self care is great obviously, a lot of what Inner Workout talks about is self care, but we need community care as well. And we need people who we are allowing to see all of us so that they can see our blind spots. When we think that we are these superheroes who can do things and they can say, hey, it looks like your leg is broken, maybe you need to rest and we can honor that. So thank you for that reminder, that's a reminder that I need as well because I definitely have people in my life who will remind me of things. So we, hopefully by now, I mean, I'm convinced, and I'm hoping that the people listening are convinced as well, like, the staying stuck in the shame. And pretending that burnout doesn't exist is not going to take us to any place that is good. So how do we move through that shame? As caretakers, as wellness practitioners, like you and I are, as people who identify as being the strong friend. How do we move through that shame?
Erayna Sargent
Yeah, and this is a very timely conversation with everything going on in the mental health space. And I feel like the very common losses we are experiencing every day, but moving through this shame is really, really important. And the one thing I don't want you to think when you hear that is, oh, so that means I have to tell everybody my business. No, you do not. And that even when it comes to pretending you're not burned out, that does not mean that you have to go tell everyone Oh, I'm burned out, oh, I wasn't able to cut it. It comes with recognizing it within yourself and then adjusting how you do the things that you do. So in that, one of the first things of moving through the shame is recognizing you're far from alone. As I was talking about, burnout is not new. It was accelerated by the pandemic, but it's been here. And so a study by Deloitte in 2018 actually had 77% of professionals reported feeling burned out, and 85% of millennials, so moving through the shame is knowing that you're not in it by yourself. And when it comes to who deals with burnout, it's not something that happens to slackers, like some organizational leaders like to have it perceived. High performers are actually the most susceptible to burnout. Because those are the individuals that are often taking on more, raising their hand, taking on extra projects, volunteering, wanting to go above and beyond. So it's that emotional, extending your emotional self, emotional, mental, physical self, to taking on more that makes you at higher risk if you're not balancing this workload, or the load in work and at home. And then another thing I'm moving through the shame is what I was talking about before, is just recognizing it's part of life, it's part of life lifing honestly. It's a sign that something is off with your situation, and or your behaviors versus something is wrong with you. Like burnout is situational, there are things that can be done about it. It is not something's wrong with you. So when you if you are one that is the strong friend, if you're a caretaker, if you're in wellness, all of these, what is the consistent is that you're human. And burnout is something that happens to humans. So why would it not be something that could show up in your life?
Taylor Morrison
Everything that you're saying, I'm like, it's great that other people are going to be listening to this episode. But it's like, you're just telling me everything that I personally need to hear right now.
Erayna Sargent
I'm sharing all the things I've learned through this wonderful journey and a lot of what my therapists have told me along the way, and reminded me. But, one other thing in this especially wellness practitioners, something that I had to accept is that the first step is knowing and then the next step is doing, and you're constantly learning along the journey. So sometimes, at least I can speak for myself, sometimes it feels like, oh, I should know better. Yeah, I know some things better. But I have to still learn in order to do some things better. So as I was saying, my life has evolved over the past like five years. It's one thing to know how to manage burnout in a corporate environment, when you have the benefits, you have a team that is helping you with different things, you have all these additional resources. But how do you manage it when you're doing it by yourself? Or how do you manage it when something else in your life changes? If you're dealing with an aging, ailing parent, which that is taking away from your emotional, your mental, your bandwidth, and what you're actually capable of. If you are a parent, that changes how much energy you have to exert to other things. So if you are one of many people who has recognized they've had burnout, they found their way through it and started to change their behaviors. And then months or years down the line, you feel like you're in that same situation, take a step back and think about what else has changed. How has your bandwidth been impacted? One of the biggest things that has happened over the past few years of why people are like pretty much all of cultures dealing with burnout, is our bandwidth has changed, but we didn't recognize it. So those 20 minutes that you use for commute that commute was more than just a commute. It might have been how you mentally prep for the day, it might have been how you learn, it might have been how you connect with those other special people in your life. But when we eliminated the commute, we eliminated the reprieve that came with the act in that moment. And so, so many people have gone through the past few years and have never found other outlets or replaced those outlets. And so we're dealing with less bandwidth to do the hard stuff, because we're still trying to figure out that, how are we going to find that joy? How do we find our learning? How do we connect? So the changes around you and your environment has impacted your bandwidth, so just give yourself credit that sometimes you can't do it all because you do not have the same amount of energy in life. Hopefully, that tracks.
Taylor Morrison
Yeah, that absolutely does track. And you know, what, like, I was going to ask you to offer up a reflection question for listeners. Because going back to our roots, on the podcast, I used to always offer reflection questions. And what you just said, I feel like is such a powerful reflection. Take stock of what has changed in your life, over the past month, over the past quarter, over the past year, how has your bandwidth changed? And how have you or how have you not adjusted your expectations of yourself in light of those changes? Because like you, oh my gosh, like, I'm just thinking of how many times that has happened to me, where I'm like, why am I not performing? Why am I exhausted all the time? And oh, I'm doing like fifty more things and expecting that I can do all of them with the same level of excellence.
Erayna Sargent
Yes, yes, yes, I'm definitely definitely guilty of that. I had to learn the hard way. Because if you don't do that, then you are pretending you're not dealing with burnout. And then you end up in the deeper stages of it. Because it can very easily start that negative talk cycle of I should be, how can I not? Now I'm a failure. And it's like, wait a minute, but what just happened in your life? But what else are you dealing with that you may not have been dealing with before? So yeah, that's a wonderful reflection question. And then just building on it, looking at what has changed and then how does that impact you over the next quarter? So now that you know, what is your bandwidth? And what else is on your plate? How are you going to adjust for this next quarter, so that you can find spaces to breathe, and to, like, avoid or mitigate any symptoms of burnout that could come?
Taylor Morrison
That gets into, like you said, like, the awareness and the action piece of it. So I like how in that reflection, you've added those dual parts of it. What can we be aware of? And then what does that mean? What is the action that it's getting at? And I guess the last question that I'll end on is, there is self awareness that's certainly involved in the conversation around burnout. But like you said, some of how we think about burnout, the shame that we have around burnout is because of our broader societal and organizational conversations. So I'm curious, what kinds of conversations do you feel like we need to normalize in order to reduce the stigma and the shame around burnout?
Erayna Sargent
Yes, definitely. conversations like this are very, very helpful. Just having two people talking about their experiences, and making it real, because so often, it is shadowed in shame and so it doesn't get as much light or airtime. But even beyond the conversations, it's really a matter of actions that you're taking so that you can illustrate that there are things to be done. I think one of the other reasons there's shame and people get stuck in burnout is because you feel like there's no end. Burnout is not an identity, it is a thing that is happening to you and a thing that is reversible and manageable. When it comes to what are the actions you can do, in a workplace, it's as simple as taking your time off, please do that. I'm all about hashtag use your benefits. If you still have them, I am jealous. I'm like I miss that part of the workplace. So for all your entrepreneur friends, use your benefits on their behalf so that..
Taylor Morrison
Yes, do it for us, please.
Erayna Sargent
Yes and tell your teams about it. So if you are leading teams, one of the most powerful things you can do is to lead by example. So if you're taking your time off, do not work on it. Do not answer emails, do not take calls. I know there's always an asterix and an exception but making an exception, not the rule because it will keep going with or without to you, it will be okay. But tell your team and hold to it because if you don't, they never will. I'd like to say like "Do as I say, not as I do" does not work for children and it does not work in the workplace. So can we please stop acting like it does. And what's exciting is I have started to see changes. One of my more recent clients, we had this workshop series and I talk all about hooky days, and the importance of using it to prioritize mental health, and your own personal well being, not like Ferris Bueller, you do it in a responsible way, because I don't want you to get fired. But in that conversation, and coming out of that conversation, I was so excited because their VP was like, as a team, we are now going to each take a quarterly hooky day, and they declared their days and they have started to do it already and talking about, they come back and talk about what they did, how they're feeling. And they're holding themselves accountable as a collective. So there's a way that we can create this, it helps everyone feel better, it actually helps to reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression, and a number of other mental health and wellness challenges. And it also can build team collaboration, it builds engagement, and it just builds this collective team experience, where they hold each other accountable to doing better. So it's part conversation and part action. I'm all about, one of my favorite quotes. And I just need to put it up on my wall. By the late Dr. Maya Angelou, is the "Know better, do better." And that's exactly what it is. So start talking about the know better, and then do better, and bring someone else with you.
Taylor Morrison
What a powerful way to end that, like, we get to do this work for ourselves. We get to support and be supported by others, and we get to bring others with us. Thank you so much. I am just feeling so refreshed and not alone in this conversation around burnout. Because honestly, I did feel like I was the only person who felt ashamed because of my particular situation. And so it's so nice to be like, you're not alone in this. For me personally, for you, for the people who are listening. And the more that we talk about it, and the more that we take action around it, the more we're going to be able to create change. So this has just been exactly what I needed to hear today. If people want to hear more from you, Erayna and about Hooky Wellness, where can they find you?
Erayna Sargent
Absolutely. I really enjoyed the conversation as well. I am on Instagram. My personal handle is @burnoutwhisperer. And then Hooky Wellness also has an Instagram handle. And if you as an individual or as a team or organization are looking to equip your professionals with high performance, action oriented and still fun, burnout relief, definitely check out Hooky Wellness. That's www.hookywellness.com. And we have a menu of burnout relief support services that is tailored to your personal issues and finding you fun in real life relief. So it was amazing the chat. I'm excited. I'm always here to talk about burnout, and really to focus on the relief that we can find with it.
Taylor Morrison
Wow, I cannot think of a better way to have kicked off the season on burnout. Stay tuned for more episodes exploring my burnout journey, and how I use the tools of the Take Care Assessment and the Inner Workout book to navigate this most recent bout with burnout. You can get all the details for pre-ordering the book in the shownotes. Make sure that you're subscribed and if you feel so moved, rate and review the show. It makes a huge difference in helping people find Inner Warmup. Thanks so much for your time and take care.