How to avoid burnout and improve your wellbeing

Garreth Hanley:
This is INTHEBLACK, A leadership, strategy, and business podcast brought to you by CPA Australia. Hello, I'm Garreth Hanley, and welcome to INTHEBLACK. Today we're speaking to Thea O'Connor about self-care for finance and business professionals. Thea is a workplace wellbeing advisor who's been helping individuals, leaders, and teams to cultivate healthy and sustainable ways of working for over 20 years.

Thea's formal education includes genetics and nutrition, and she's a certified organisational coach. Her clients list includes the New South Wales Law Society, TAFE New South Wales, Clayton Utz, IPG Mediabrands, and the New South Wales Department of Climate Change, just to name a few. Thea is an expert in body intelligence, or BQ, which is the ability to connect with our body sensations or cues, listen to them, and respond in a way that enhances our overall function and quality of life. Welcome to INTHEBLACK, Thea.

Thea O’Connor:
Thanks very much for having me, Garreth.

Garreth Hanley:
It's great to have you with us. Maybe we can start with identifying the problem that we're talking about today. So can you go over some of the common stresses and challenges that are faced by accountants and business professionals? And how do these pressures impact their mental and physical health?

Thea O’Connor:
Sure. So I'd say that the stressors faced by accountants are fairly similar to those faced by many other service professionals, but of course they have their own kind of flavour or features. So a common source of workplace stress is clients, and if you're dealing with very stressed clients in cost of living going through the roof at the moment as well as cost of doing business, sometimes accountants might be there and they're not trained to be counsellors but might end up feeling like an accidental counsellor, and if you're not trained in how not to take on other people's anxiety, you do end up absorbing some of that because all the regulation and compliance that accountants have to keep up to date with and then quite quickly implement it across their client base.

Significant penalties if they don't do that. I think every profession suffers from some form of tech stress. So accountants are having to keep up with the latest tools and adapt to that and refine their roles. Accountants are handling really sensitive information, so they can be prime targets for cyber-attacks. In a way it's the issue of workload, and of course they have their peak workload times if they're doing audit or if it's tax time, and it's not like they've got these really fluid deadlines, they're pretty tight and serious consequences if they're not met.

So I guess they're kind of in the mix. And then if you add into that some workplace factors, if you've got staff shortages that bumps up your own workload, or if there's any kind of conflict with colleagues or unsupportive bosses, none of that helps and can definitely impact on well-being. And then in terms of how much might an individual be impacted by that, it really depends, and it probably depends on how many risk or protective factors you've got going on for you.

So for example, if you love your job, and you've got a really supportive team, and you've got a good home life, and you've actually got a pretty good base of health habits, you'll probably get through some demanding times. Sure you'll get tired, but not really smashed. But you're likely to be a bit more vulnerable if it's an unsupportive manager or team. If you're a bit of a perfectionist or if your self-worth depends on always being that high performer who goes the extra mile, those sort of things can make you more vulnerable to suffering, I guess.

But what I've noticed over the years is that it seems to be when it's a combination of things happening for people in their life at the one time that's often what can tip them over the edge. So yes, work might be stressful, but if you're also moving house and you've got a child with special needs, it's that combination, when they're combined, that can make people really vulnerable.

Garreth Hanley:
What are the early signs of burnout, and how can people recognise them either in themselves or their colleagues, and what are the consequences if people ignore the signs?

Thea O’Connor:
Sure. So it's probably helpful to start off with defining what burnout actually is. There are many surveys that ask workers, "Do you feel burnt out?" and you'll typically get very high responses there, many yeses. But if you want to get the technical definition, it's not just feeling really tired and stressed. You're technically burnt out if you experience all three dimensions, and the first one is that sense of feeling exhausted. Not just tired, but utterly depleted even when you wake up first thing the morning.

The second feature is if you're feeling really distant from your clients or your colleagues or a little bit cynical, you think this isn't meaningful anymore, whereas in the past you were quite connected and thought this was meaningful work, so you can feel a bit disillusioned about your job and you don't really care anymore. And then the third aspect is what they call reduced professional efficacy, which means you're not satisfied with your achievements anymore and you can see your performance slipping.

So they're the three things combined that actually define burnout. But before getting to that end point, there are a number of earlier warning signs, particularly pervasive, just ongoing tiredness or low mood, but also look out for just really negative thinking that goes round and round and has you believing there's nothing you can do to change your situation. So often we believe that is the truth, but the key is recognise that's a sign of burnout, that kind of thinking. You might also notice that your brain isn't working quite as well, you're a bit more indecisive, harder to focus, you might feel a bit overwhelmed, perhaps cry a bit more easily, but also your body will be starting to communicate with you somehow. Maybe you're not sleeping as well, maybe headaches.

Digestive problems often up when we are chronically stressed or you might have a flare-up of an immune condition, like eczema for example. So there're some of the early warning signs. And it's not rocket science. If we ignore these signs, they just get louder, they just tend to get worse. You know the old saying “listen to your body while it's talking to you or it'll end up yelling and screaming” that is so true. It would just be really great if more of us could do that. But we have a tendency to feel tired, push on, feel tired, push on rather than feel tired, reset. And I guess overall period of time then, if things do go from these early warning signs to become more embedded, it can actually lead to some medical conditions, whether that is anxiety, or depression, or autoimmune conditions, or gastrointestinal problems, or cardiovascular disease. So it's a really good idea to get good at listening to those early warning sites.

Garreth Hanley:
You mentioned those three factors, and one of them is reduced professional efficacy. Do you find that people sometimes who are high achievers might actually experience some of those physical symptoms before the efficacy is reduced?

Thea O’Connor:
Yeah, I'm not sure that there's a standard rule about that, but I will say that you can be pretty sure that your body will try to communicate with you as early as it possibly can, and then the degree to which it affects your productivity, that's just going to really depend, I think, as to how sensitive your particular brain might be to the increased cortisol levels.

Garreth Hanley:
Do you have some practical and effective self-care strategies that people can easily implement into a busy lifestyle? And any tips for how people can maybe incorporate this as a habit rather than just a nice-to-have?

Thea O’Connor:
The foundation of self-care is that it has to be grounded in a sense of truth. I used to see when I was working as a dietitian that self-care efforts, whether it was diet or exercise, they fall over pretty quickly if you actually don't really appreciate everything there is to like about you. Self-worth is so important, because if you don't truly value yourself, then you're not going to be bothered putting in the effort to take care of yourself. So this is a really important thing to do.

The other thing that happens is if we don't really appreciate ourselves, then we have to get that recognition from the outside, and an easy way to get recognition from the outside is to be the super parent, the super worker, always going that extra mile or to do it exceptionally well, and obviously that's going to make you more prone to stress and exhaustion and overriding your own needs.

So I would take a moment to really clock what are all the valuable qualities that you bring to your world every day. So self-appreciation is actually really important as a foundation of self-care. So that's number one. The second one would be just get really good at listening to your body and also listening to what's going on in your mind. So listening to your body, if you think about it, every day, every hour, every minute, every second almost, we are getting little text messages from our body about what's needed to help remain in balance and to protect our health.

It might be the tight neck that if you attended to that now with some regular stretches and short breaks, that'll prevent a more serious neck problem. Or it could be the yawn in front of whatever your screen of choice is at nighttime tells you it's actually time to go to bed now. Listening to your body will also tell you what's not working for you. When you had the doughnut and the coffee for breakfast, you had a bit of a high, but then you were slumping just by 11:00 AM and it didn't sustain you.

And so what you can do is scheduling just a little bit of a body scan a few times a day, just checking with your body, and some good points of focus would be what's the quality of your breath, or the amount of tension in your body, or your energy levels, or your hunger. Make that a little practice, and maybe you could just choose one thing that you know you normally don't pay much attention to. Maybe it's postural discomfort or the need to drink. So listen to your body, but also listen to yourself talk. Because it's quite incredible, isn't it? We've got chatter going on in our brain 24/7. So I would say try to identify your ANTs, and ANTs are automatic negative thoughts.

Now these ANTs might be the ones that are making you stressed and awfulizing about the future. "OMG, I'm not going to meet that deadline," or, "That client's going to be so angry at me." Or it could be the ANTs that walk you out of your self-care intentions like, "I'm so busy, I've got no time to go to the gym," or, "I deserve another glass of wine." So call them out, these ANTs, because they can literally white ant your well-being, your confidence, your self-worth, and then try to replace them with PETs. So PETs stands for more positive or empowering thoughts.

And I'm not talking here about flowery Pollyanna affirmations. I'm just talking about ways of thinking that are supportive. So instead of saying, "I'm so busy, I don't have time to go to the gym," you could say, "I'm so busy, I can't afford not to prioritise exercise right now." Or when you know that your workload is really high, rather than saying, "I'm not going to meet my deadline," you could say, "Wow, my workload's really high right now."

So the higher the level of demand, the higher the level of self-care I need to practice. And I guess just my fourth one is when everything feels too much and you really don't feel like you've got any motivation or time to do the things you know should do, you've always got the breath. And breathing is incredibly powerful. It's not even a technique, it's the source of life, isn't it? And it does way more than just get oxygen into your blood. It alters the pH within our blood, it affects how our core muscles work, a whole range of different things. And the neat thing about breathing is you can do it anywhere at any time and you don't even have to stop what you're doing, although it does help to pause to bring more attention.

Garreth Hanley:
Indeed. And so you mentioned there it was ANTs and PETs. So automatic negative thoughts.

Thea O’Connor:
Yes.

Garreth Hanley:
And positive empowering thoughts.

Thea O’Connor:
Yes. And just step number one, just catch your ANTs, catch them out, because they're at you the whole time. It's really annoying.

Garreth Hanley:
And maybe for our listeners who aren't familiar with what a body scan is, you mentioned a body scan, I'm not going to ask you to do one with us now, but can you maybe explain to people who aren't aware of that term what a body scan is?

Thea O’Connor:
Sure. So it's super simple. All you need to do is either sit or stand and bring your attention inside. Closing your eyes does help that, but you don't have to. And then you just kind of systematically take your attention through all your different body parts and starting with feet, calves, thighs, and until you've scanned your whole body, and all you are doing is bringing non-judgmental attention to that body part and you just notice what's happening there. So it's great for generating a bit of information about how your body's doing, but it's kind of a little meditation technique as well. When we bring our attention to the present moment, that's wonderful for lowering stress, lowering your blood pressure, and helping to clear our mind.

Garreth Hanley:
It's a few minutes that you would take to do the body scan?

Thea O’Connor:
Absolutely. You could do it in two or three minutes or you could give yourself more like ten minutes.

Garreth Hanley:
Let's move on to maybe some of the barriers that you've seen in people that prevent them from prioritising self-care, and if you do have any tips for how people can jump those barriers, can you share?

Thea O’Connor:
Sure. I find this stuff really interesting, actually. So talking about barriers to self-care, and I call it our knowing-doing gap. You know, we often know what we're meant to be doing, but we don't do it. So what's inside that gap? And obviously that's going to be different for every person, and often time comes up as a common reason. So there can be many different things in the knowing-doing gap, but just to give you an example of two of them, and first one, which is quite common amongst busy professionals, is that we think self-care is going to stop us from getting things done.

"I could send another three emails if I don't have to stop for lunch." So that's a really common way of thinking, and we start to regard the body and all its needs as an interference with patient success and getting stuff done. So what can help if you know that you're really in that way of thinking is just to adjust your timeframe. If you just look at the next hour, yes, get lunch means that you're not going to get those emails done. But then extend it out, and how are you functioning in the afternoon when you didn't have your lunch? How are you feeling at the end of the day? How is your productivity at the end of the week?

And there's a number of studies that show how much our productivity is lower on a Friday, and it's often because we haven't been self-caring during the week. So when we're not self-caring, our productivity will actually diminish over time. So just adjust your timeframe and realise, "Oh, okay, over a whole week I practice self-care, I'm actually operating at a higher level on more days of the week."

So what could be really helpful here, it's actually to start, before jumping into solution mode, tracking whatever behaviour it is you want to improve, whether it's and look at when you don't do what you intended. Just ask yourself what got in the way and you might find a hidden benefit. You know, it's a valid need to up your energy. Okay, you're dealing with using coffee at the moment, and then we can explore other ways. So the solution to that one is identify the valid need that perhaps your less healthy behaviours are serving and just try to address it directly. So they're just a couple to give you some idea of the range of things that can get in the way of this, as well as what I mentioned before, which was the one around the self-worth.

Garreth Hanley:
So it sounds a bit like a place to start might be to do maybe a self-assessment of what you do during the day and work out what the drivers for those things are and then maybe try and find other activities that are more beneficial?

Thea O’Connor:
Yeah, absolutely. I would often encourage when people come to see me for coaching and we, at the end of the session, do single it down to a singular focus, because we have to start somewhere, and I often do not send people away with change as the first thing to do, but it's really increase your awareness around that particular behaviour. So tracking, keeping a bit of a diary, and not just writing down, e.g., how much exercise you didn’t do, but also writing down your thoughts and feelings around that time.

Just the act of raising awareness rather than staying stuck in automatic mode can quite easily lead to some changes and insights. And even if it doesn't lead to change immediately, it will definitely help you understand your patterns better. So for example, I remember one woman, she was really addicted to a phone and she just would not turn it off at nighttime. And when I just asked her to track and inquire a little bit more into it, she realised that she didn't want to go off her phone at nighttime because there was a lot of stress in her life at the time, and when she turned off her phone, she had to think about the things in her life that were causing her anxiety.

So the benefit of the phone was it was avoiding anxious thinking, but she could learn other strategies to deal with anxious thinking. So yeah, step number one, and you asked before about how do we turn things into habits, step number one, always just raise your awareness, do a bit of tracking first.

Garreth Hanley:
Maybe build a spreadsheet.

Thea O’Connor:
Absolutely. And then to turn it into a sustainable habit, again, depends on many factors, but I always talk about the four S's, and the first one is just keep it really small. You might be a high achiever and you want to go from no exercise to five times a week. No, don't do that. Say for two times a week to start off with because you've got a lot on in your life already. You want to get some early runs on the board because that increases your feeling of success and you can build on it.

So it's keep it small, get support, whether that's someone to do your cleaning on the weekend, or a coach, or just an accountability buddy, someone to go to the gym with you. A little bit of support goes a long way. The third one is self-monitoring. So this is where you do have to track what you are actually doing or not doing. We're quite good at telling ourselves little porkies, so find some kind of tracking, whether it's an app or a piece of paper.

And the fourth one is look at your self-talk, which is what we mentioned before. What are the little whispers that are talking you out of doing what you want to do? So there are four S's of habit change, which aren't the whole story, but I definitely wouldn't leave them out of your toolkit.

Garreth Hanley:
That's really interesting, Thea. And I'm wondering, we've been talking a lot about personal responsibility here and what people can do to help themselves, but do businesses have a role to play in self-care? And how does self-care intersect with business responsibilities?

Thea O’Connor:
Yeah, so I would say self-care is an individual's self-responsibility, but if you look at employee well-being in general, yeah, that is a shared responsibility. So we've got our own responsibility to take care of our bodies and minds as best we can, but workplaces have legal obligations to create healthy, safe, and discrimination-free environments.

And more recently, this is problem where there's been much more onus on workplaces to assess the psychosocial environment in which people are working, not just the physical environment, and they're required to assess these risks and ideally do something about them. And when I look at these risks, they're things like, "Do you have supportive relationships or supportive manager?

Do you have adequate resources to do your job? Are you clear about your role? Has changed been managed well and are processes within organisations fair to everyone?" and they are the absolute ingredients of team wellbeing and individual wellbeing. So if workplaces just look at those psychosocial risks and address them, they'll actually be doing a great job in terms of fulfilling their part of this deal of maintaining worker wellbeing.

Garreth Hanley:
Great. We're going to have to wrap up soon, Thea, but before we do, did you have anything else that you wanted to add to this conversation?

Thea O’Connor:
I think I would just add habits can be hard to change, and if you are one of those people who are just tipping into the burnout zone, it can be really hard to get perspective and treat yourself. So reach out and don't delay in getting some help, because there'll just be a greater toll on your health and it'll be more disruptive to your life and to those around you the more that you delay, and asking for help, it's an act of self-responsibility.

And in the first instances, sure you can go to a professional, but don't undervalue informal support. It could be you just need to have a really good honest debrief with a friend. But don't choose the friend that's going to be the enabler. Choose the friend that can offer your objective and honest insights. Then you could make use of your workplace's EAP services, and your GP's always a good point of contact if you need some referrals to a psychologist, or counsellor, or to someone like an exercise physiologist or dietitian, if it's the health side of things that you're wanting to address. But gets support, get help. Remember, getting support is one of the four S's of actually successfully forging healthier habits.

Garreth Hanley:
And is that because people just sometimes need that external perspective?

Thea O’Connor:
Yes. So it offers a number of things. One of them is just the sheer accountability. It taps us into more resources and information and perhaps skills. You know, we could get taught things by health professionals, but also it's just that sense of not being alone. We're social animals, we're hardwired to connect, and when we do, something just resonates like, "Ah, I'm not alone," and that in and of itself can be healing and supporting.

Garreth Hanley:
Great. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast and sharing your insights with us today, Thea. It's really good conversation. Thank you.

Thea O’Connor:
Thank you, Garreth.

Garreth Hanley:
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