Headspace Conversations - Avoiding Work Burnout

Hi, I'm Monica. I'm here to talk about work stress and burnout. I've been a workaholic my whole entire life. And so I started in an industry at the time where, you just had to keep going, you didn't stop, you didn't complain, you worked hard, and trying to sustain at speed, it's not sustainable, and it can't help but make me feel like, you know, like I naturally want it to implode. Interviewer. And, what would you like to get out of this? What I hope to get out of it, it's conquering a fear. It's doing something that I'm uncomfortable doing. It's knowing that hopefully my story will be able to make somebody feel more comfortable about talking about this, about not being afraid to maybe go to their boss or go to the CEO of the company, or go to somebody that might be an ally and say, I just need a little bit of time, can you just please help me get space? Can you work with me so that I can be able to be the most productive person, but also give myself the opportunity to honor what's important to me. So, yeah, we were talking about what brought us here, what called us here and sharing our story. So who would like to go next? So today when I was... Oh, sorry, I just got so nervous. Oh, no, sorry, that's great. Yeah, we're gonna support you, take your time. I come, I come from a, like a community and a culture where, like, you don't rock the boat. If you have a good job, you put your head down, you work hard. There weren't tools when I started where you could talk so openly about, I need a break, I need a pause, I need to meditate. And workaholism was something where I just thought that's what you had to do. I work in an industry where they're never allowed to see you sweat. And when things come at you, these high pressure situations, like you have to be cool as a cucumber, or if there's some chaos or some madness coming, like you really have to sometimes be that, that soundboard to keep people calm even though things can be like completely falling apart. And I didn't realize how much I had to take time to work on myself. I think we've glorified the grind to the extent that, even the first question you ask people when you meet them is like, what do you do? Now I consciously try not to ask what people do when I first meet them, 'cause I want to be able to learn other things. I love learning people's hobbies, 'cause that's what they do with their free time, like what they really are passionate about. I have so much admiration for what people choose to chase down in their free time, and I was like, that's cool, like, that's joy. I think a lot of...