Jason Lauritsen - Teach From Your Scars... (Part 2)
Ever wondered how a workplace optimist navigates through the storm of burnout? Join us as we welcome back Jason Lauritsen, who opens up about his profound journey from the brink of exhaustion to a place of renewed strength and purpose. This two-part episode offers an intimate look at how Jason's experiences have shaped his perspectives on leadership and self-care.
Links and Resources from the Episode:
Click here for Jason's website
Click here to connect with Jason on LinkedIn
Click here for Laurie Santos' video "What is Burnout?"
Jason's burnout blog posts:
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The Bosshole® Chronicles
"Jason Lauritsen - Teach From Your Scars Part 2’”
Original Publish Date: 7/9/2024
Hosts: John Broer and Sara Best
Jason Lauritsen: So that's when it really I was like okay, boy, I'm really, I'm not just burnout, I'm really really burnout this time.
John Broer: So that is just an excerpt from last week's episode with Jason Lauritsen on his journey through and out of burnout. Hi everybody, it's John Broer and welcome back to part two of our series with Jason Lauritsen about teaching from your scars. This is such great content and if you haven't listened to part one, go back and listen to it, because part two is going to take us further down the pathway with Jason and what he experienced in terms of coming out of a period of burnout and his recovery. What I know you will really appreciate is Jason's transparency as he shares his story.
The Bosshole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode episode.
JL: The irony of it, though, was you know what I did? Ran the same playbook, same playbook. So did another retreat, which and the retreats are delightful I'm not like they were helpful, but I went on retreat and I thought that would, uh, I thought that would help, and, uh, had my retreat came back, wrote a blog post right, it's just rinse and repeat, and and there were some things I did learn. I mean, there were some things, certainly, that I had made progress on, but then what happened was a friend of mine reached out, who is a colleague, she's an executive coach, has done a bunch of stuff, and, and I had written. You know, I had written. I wrote about that I was burnout again, and the title of that one was the burnout lesson. I hadn't learned yet, still teaching from my wounds, and so I'd put that out.
And then, I don't know, a couple of weeks later, I'd sent out something else, and Carol reached out to me, and she just sent me a note, and she said hey, was surprised to see you back at it so quickly. Number one, she's like. Number two she's like I don't know if you remember, but she said I went through some pretty serious, severe burnout a number of years ago. If you'd be interested in um talking and learning, like what worked and helped me, I'd be happy to jump on a call. And so we scheduled that.
And the thing that was different this time with my experience is I went on retreat. I came back, I felt sort of okay for a few weeks, but then it sort of immediately started, like I felt it come right back and I felt myself sinking back into this. And so when Carol reached out and we had this conversation, she, that was the moment that changed everything, Because what she told me me a couple of things, she told me one was um, and this was more. She asked me cause that's how she's a coach, right, she, she led me to this, this insight. But I was telling her about all the things I was doing and you know, to try to resolve this or try to fix this or whatever.
And she said and I was working on the business mainly because I knew the business was what was breaking me and she said it sounds like you're doing a lot of stuff and she's like but everything I heard from you was external, like it's all out here, stuff, right, it's stuff. That's the external to you about the business, or about the future or about whatever. And she's like I'm curious have you spent any time sort of investigating internally what kinds of habits and patterns have sort of led you to keep ending up in the same place over and over? And I was like, huh, you know now that you say that I really haven't, it's a good question.
JB: It's a good question, yeah.
JL: And I said, no, I haven't done that work. I know I need to. She's like, well, I would suggest. So we talked a little bit about that. And then the other thing she told me is, she said, when she hit this point and she was trying to figure out what to do, she said I realized that, um, she said I had to I, she's like in order for me to heal.
I, she said I had to close my business down for six months and she said all I did was rest. And she's like, for the first like month or two, she's like I'm talking like two to three hour naps every day, like doing nothing, just deep rest. And she said it took months and months of that and working with. She had a coach that she was working with that was helping her, kind of. You know, once she got through the initial phase of rest, kind of working through the healing work that she needed to do. And this struck me I was like God, I, first off, I'm like I can't do that, like I don't, I'm not in a position to do that, I can't shut my business down, just not. And so I'm like, well, I don't know what does that look like? So then I fact-checked her.
I went out online and I Googled like how long does it take to recover from burnout? And I find myself too on the Cleveland Clinic website and the Mayo Clinic website, and you know what it says, loosely, it says from several months to several years. The median is six to 18 months. And that makes perfect sense to me because in hindsight it's like well, I didn't get in this situation in a few days. Why would I think I can get out of it in a few days? It's like if I've gained 60 pounds over the course of a year or two, why would I think I can go on a retreat for a weekend and lose 60 pounds?
Sara Best: That's not how our bodies work. That's a great analogy, yeah that's a great analogy.
JL: I've been eating Blizzards for a year. I can't undo that. I've got to figure out it's going to take prolonged commitment to different behaviors and choices in order to get better, and so that's what set me down the path of true recovery is I realized I needed to do something very different, and I'll tell you what I did here in a minute. But again, I'm going to draw a breath because I'm talking. That's a lot of story.
JB: Again, I'm having an image that and don't ask me why, maybe it's because I saw him, Mike Tyson, just recently coming out of retirement to have a fight. But it's almost like a prize fighter when you talk about teaching from your scars versus your wounds. A prize fighter coming out of the corner, getting a very short break and just getting pummeled and it's like okay, okay, I got this, I'm going back to my corner. That's, that's just what I'm I'm seeing. It's like you're, you're putting yourself out there, you're getting pounded, You're trying to fight hard, but every time you go back out there, your capacity to stay strong diminishes and you just keep those wounds just keep getting deeper.
JL: No, I think it's right and I and I'll build on that. I, I'm a metaphor guy man. I love a good, a metaphor, analogy and what I would say is that it's what's even. I think that is true and I keep going back into the fight. I'm against an opponent who has my number and I go back to the corner, I rest, you know they spray me down and whatever, and they're like you got this champ and you go back in there with no strategy adjustment.
Yeah so it's like well, what? What makes you think that next round is going to be better than last round. If you keep showing up the same way against an opponent who has found your weakness? Yep, and that's. And so in order for me to not end up knocked out, right, I had to, I had to interrupt the cycle dramatically, and that's. I think if I were to say that's kind of the big thing, that that for me, is the, the headline of what I learned through all of this.
Um, and you'll hear this in the work that I had to do, but one of the takeaways was so almost all of what we tell people about burnout, recovery right now, what you hear, what the narrative at work, what we talk about is it's all about escaping, it's all about escape and self-care, and those are not bad things, like going on vacation isn't bad, self-care is great. But here's what I've learned about those two things. Escape is just like going to the corner, right, that's going to the. You go like I get to sit down and and they stop punching me in the face for a little while and that feels good, you can catch your breath, you start to feel a little better, like, okay, that's better. But then I get tossed right back into the ring and the punches start coming again and it's like, well, I need to get out of this fight.
SB: Yeah, there you go.
JL: Yeah, I need to get out of this fight, and so escape is a temporary reprieve. It is going to your corner, but if you don't get out of the fight or if you don't learn how to fight in a way that protects you from getting harmed, then you're just going to keep same thing over and over and over again. So escape is a short-term respite. It is not a solution. The other piece of it is self-care, and this is just a different analogy.
But the way that I've, the way that I've come to think of it, is that if you are, if you're, let's say, you're in the middle of a lake and you have a rope tied around your waist that's tied to an anchor that is pulling you underwater, self-care is is anything you can grab onto, or any skill that you can, you can find that will help you keep your head above water so you don't drown, and the anchor is the thing, whatever it is, that's getting you to burn out in the first place.
So it's the way you work, it's who you work for, it's the kind of work you do, it's the relationship you have with your work, it's some combination of all those things, how you're managing your life, how you think about showing up all those things. If that anchor is hanging down below you, then what self-care is literally about? Just keeping you from drowning? You can't heal until you cut the anchor loose. Yeah, sure, you just can't. And so that's another analogy I would add on, or sort of a competing analogy or metaphor for the same things. That's what I learned, that's the biggest takeaway?
JB: That's a powerful one. That's the escape. Unless you cut that line, you can't possibly heal. Now you're in a position to think about a different pattern. That's what I was thinking about is somebody said what are the patterns? You've recognized the pattern. Now you're prepared to change that. So what does that look?
JL: Like, yeah, yep, once you recognize and that was the journey for me was certainly about. I think Carol was one of the. I mean, carol kind of saved me. She's been my guru, sort of spiritual guide through this whole thing. She was the one that invited me to truly heal.
And the thing that you realize, though and I mean I don't want to minimize, and I think this is the really inconvenient, and this is the conversation we need to be having about burnout is that it's like the gaining 60 pounds and needing to lose the 60 pounds. It's not convenient, it's not quick, there is no shortcut. Like you have to do the work, you have to be committed to it because you allowed I mean allowed or didn't, whatever but you got to this place through a series of choices and behaviors and decisions and consequences and circumstances, and in order to get out of it is going to be a prolonged journey of different choices, different behaviors, different circumstances, and there's an act. So when you cut that, the act of cutting that anchor loose is not easy some people. For me, it meant entirely rethinking my relationship with my work. It meant rethinking how I do my work. It meant a whole bunch of internal work.
I had a lot of discovery work. I had a lot of baggage. It meant a lot of things, and so it's not easy and it requires commitment and it might require some pretty dramatic change in order to truly heal. And so I'd love to tell you a little bit about what my journey looked like. I'll tell you a little of just sort of what I did and what was helpful. I will caveat this by saying I am not a mental health professional.
JB: I am. This is not medical advice.
JL: I'm not any of those things. I can only share with you my experience and what worked for me. Um, this is what worked for me and maybe it'll inspire other people to to find their own kind of path right through it. But what so? What happened for me? A couple of things. The first thing is I realized to Carol's point, and once I started doing some poking around, I'm like, yeah, I, it's going to take a long time to heal and a big piece of it is rest, and so I had to. I couldn't shut my business down, but I scaled things down dramatically as much as I could. I did mission critical things to keep it going and what I allowed myself to do.
And this sounds really weird and it's really hard if you're a constant motion kind of. You know, I've always thought of myself kind of like I feel like a shark sometimes. You know, if I stop swimming I'll drown, right, you've got to be moving the water through your gills to survive. And but there were days where I'd wake up and I'm like I just can't, I don't feel it, and so I wouldn't. I would take the day and I would go for a walk or I might I mean, I might sit and play some stupid game on my phone for a while or whatever, but that's what I had the energy for and I would just give myself permission to like that day. I'm like I'm done, I can't, I don't have it today. I need rest today and I would take naps and I would do whatever I needed to do, and this had consequence. I mean, this is where it's hard. It had real consequence for my business, but it was part of the like.
I knew I couldn't get forward until I healed myself, and so I had to prioritize that. So that's where it started. I had to make as much space as I could for rest and for me to slow down and truly kind of start to heal. There I knew that I needed help and so, even though I'd been advocating for the value of therapy and therapists for years, I personally had never had one and I'm like I don't know why I've been on this burnout journey for three years and haven't engaged a therapist. I'm like, okay, it's time. And so I found a therapist, got a professional involved, and that was super helpful. I also, through this, got some feedback from people that I care about and care about me deeply that, in a weird way, like apparently I always prided myself on being someone who would ask for help when I need it, but apparently I was not good at accepting help when someone offered it unsolicited. And I didn't realize this. But I got this feedback that there were people around me that wanted to help and probably could help, but would say I don't think Jason would let us help him, even if we offered.
SB: Wow.
JL: That sucked, that sucked, but that was good feedback to get. And so it really was something that I took on board and thought a lot about and have tried to be way more open and way more accepting of support. When people reach out to me or people that I care about are like hey, could I, would you be open to this, would you know I could do this to help you or could we help you with this or could I? You know? It's like yes, yes, I will always say yes. And so that changed. And so I needed help. People around me, I needed help.
So self-care the thing about self-care is that that is magic is that if you keep doing self-care, all the you know you figure out what your self-care and I've I've been pretty disciplined about self-care for a long time in a lot of different ways, not always probably fully as much as I needed to, but that when you start to cut that anchor loose, then your self-care like helps you. Like, all of a sudden you're like, wow, I'm actually a lot stronger than I thought. I can actually tread water really good and I can swim pretty fast because I've been struggling against this down current, this force. When that force starts to lighten, you start to feel the real benefits of your self-care practices, and so self-care is wildly important. It's just you also have to be addressing the underlying things. And then I dove into the process of really unpacking and reshaping my relationship with my work, of really unpacking and reshaping my relationship with my work, and so what that looked like for me was a few things.
One of the big realizations through this process was I felt the best way I can describe when I was in the midst of burnout is I felt lost was in the midst of burnout, is I felt lost, like. I felt like, like, how did I end up here? Because I, like, I have an incredible job. I'm an entrepreneur, I am a passion driven guy, I do work that I deeply care about and that I love and that I am committed to and I am excited about, and whatever. Like, I can create my own schedule, I can find what clients I want. You know I mean you, I'm preaching to the choir with the two of you. You know, there's just such a privilege and opportunity and freedom in the work that we do. I'm like how did this happen? Yeah, that I feel so lost in this work, like, how did this happen to me? Feel so lost in this work, like how did this happen to me? And and so I was the thing through one of my therapy sessions.
One day my my therapist asked me. He said so, tell me, what is your, what is your work? Feel like, or look like when you get to the other side of this, when you feel like you, you know you've, you've recreated it, you've healed, you've made it, what does that look like? And I started describing a bunch of things to him. And then later, uh, the next day I think, I was doing some journaling and as I was reflecting on what I was sharing with him, I was like wait a minute. And I went and I pulled out my. I pulled out my values, my sort of my, my five core values that I'd been working on and refining over the last several years, and everything I described to him were my values. And it dawned on me I had done the work, I knew the coordinates, home.
I had the coordinates in my pocket, but I wasn't paying any attention to them, like I wasn't using them to navigate my way back to back home. And once I realized that, then I started using those values as a way to kind of step into and rethink, like, okay, why is it these parts of my work aren't feeling as nourishing or as energizing or as rewarding? And it had everything to do with, they were out of alignment with or weren't satisfying one of my values in some way. You know how many times have we talked about values to an organization or the importance of values and actually living your values? I've said it, I can't even tell you how many times. And yet here I was. You know the cobbler's children have no shoes. That is me in that situation.
And so then I committed to that, and what happened through that was, I also realized, at least for me, and I would be surprised if this isn't true for almost anyone that's feeling burnout. Is that part of the, the thing that was contributing to my burnout, my relationship with my work and why it was burning me out? Is I or what I had to do in my work that I was confined by? I had boxed myself in things I had said well, I don't do this kind of work or I am this kind of. This is my identity. I am a keynote speaker and yet, even though that's part of part what I do but that's very narrow definition, or um, one of the really stupid things that happened is that I thought, um, stupid and freeing, it was liberating, but, like, a little silly thing is like I always thought for the first 15 years of my speaking career that I had to wear a suit when I spoke. I'm the reformed corporate guy, I speak to corporate audiences, I have to wear a suit, and somewhere in the midst of the pandemic I'm doing all this virtual presentation and my virtual presentations. At first it was button-up shirts, and then it was polos and then eventually it was t-shirts, because really t-shirts are what I'm most comfortable with as I'm wearing today. And I finally realized, like, well, why am I not wearing what's most comfortable for me to make my best, to do my best? And so then, when I started, so I shed, I let go of, like I don't. I had the story about I need to be the guy in the suit. Yeah, turns out that was nonsense. Right, turns out that I mean, cause I've gone out in jeans and t-shirts. Sarah saw me Yep, um and and uh, I do still wear a blazer, cause the blazer is pretty snazzy, but I have jeans and a t-shirt on, I feel great. Yeah, I think I still look pretty good and guess what?
I've done some of my best work on stage since I made that shift, and so those are examples of what we decide. We have to be these things, I have to be this. I have to make this amount of money in order to be happy, I have to have this kind of title or do this kind of work. I don't do this or I do do this or I can only and all these stories then create. I had created a prison and when I started evaluating these stories and peeling back these stories, I realized like I'm not. I know what I'm passionate about, I know what the impact is that I want to have on the world and I know what my work is about. But I'm not. But but I was like I'm not sure what that looks like anymore. I had found him. I had gotten so far off track that I'm like I need to refine that, rediscover that with a different kind of curiosity and openness. So the journey has been all these things and layered in in in that has been underneath has been a lot of personal work. So there was the work with the business and then there was personal work with a therapist. There was all kinds of practices that have been layered in for me, things like well, the values you know the values, reflection and check in the to your point. Sarah Carol has led me, my guru Carol has led me through some exercises like logging your emotions every morning just to be tuned into.
What emotions am I feeling and am I recognizing them? Do I notice them? A heart attunement practice Liz Gilbert. The author Liz Gilbert has this practice called Letters from Love, which is really about sort of attuning to this voice of unconditional love that is inside of you, which people can interpret however they want to interpret. But so much of this was sort of also a spiritual journey back home. It was getting back in touch with who I am and what's important to me and then from that place to realign my relationship with the world. And that is heavy work and there's some consequences. You got to drop some things and you got to make some decisions. But, man, I can breathe and I have joy.
JB: Well, and if I may, and as we start to put a bow on this amazing gift that you are giving our listeners, which is considerable, Jason, what I just thought of is you've been able to find your way back to this is my perspective what God created you to be, and I don't know your faith. I mean I'm a follower of Christ. I mean Sara and I share some we talk about in our world the power of surrender and get our plan out of the way and realize that God's got a great plan. So, whatever that may look like, just getting back to a more authentic version of who you are and starting to dismantle these, what you were describing of what you thought the world expected from you, wearing a suit and how you showed up, those are mental maps. Those are mental maps that we build for our entire lifetime and realize how far that takes us away from who we really are.
I don't think we can step over the fact that you just said it. It is heavy work, but it is such powerful and necessary work for all of us. So thank you, Thank you for taking us on that journey, and I could just tell most of our listeners are literally just listening. They're not watching this, although we are going to have more video available. I could just see it in your face In that moment, that lightness, if you will. That's got to feel good.
JL: This brings us full circle back to WorkHuman Live yes reaching from your scars. The thing that I can tell you is that so, going into work human live this year, I had rediscovered the joy. I had rediscovered the passion. I had found my way back home and through then my work, I could be more available in a different way emotionally, mentally, spiritually, whatever to the work and to the people that are there. That that you can kind of I could sort of put my heart back in it, because my heart was full and available, it was, it was abundant again and as a result of that, the, the presentations that happen at work, human, I some of the best reaction I've ever gotten in my career and I would attribute that, I mean part of it is it's good content. I'm not going to downplay that it is good content, it matters. But I think part of it is to my ability to show up, to be present, to be whole, to be full in that room with those people Like there's a, there's something that happens there, right, when you're spiritually aligned and you can sort of give yourself and just so I mean, and just so, if you're listening to this, I am an atheist, but this work is all about spiritual work and you can have whatever spiritual practice you want, whether you're a Christian or a Buddhist, or Jewish or Muslim, whatever it is, it's about that alignment, right, it's being in alignment. To me it was a spiritual alignment kind of with me. And when I am in spiritual alignment, when I am connected to who I am at my best self, then that allows me to then be connected to everyone else, to the rest of humanity, to the rest of the planet, and so for me, that was the work, and so it doesn't require a religious ideology to do spiritual work. Planet. And so for me, that was the work, and so it doesn't require a religious ideology to do spiritual work. That was a barrier for me that I had to push through, and so when I showed up at Work Human, that's where I was I also set some intentions about connection and availability to people. That was very different than I'd had in the past.
And it's amazing when you get to the other side of the work and Carol was and Carol kept saying to me throughout this journey she's like I am so excited for you for when you arrive at the other side of this, because she said, it's going to be incredible and I never knew what that meant. I'm just like okay, carol, like when you're in it, you're like, okay, I'll take your word for it. And then it happened and you're like, oh, this is what she was talking about, I'm home, I'm home. And then it happened and you're like, oh, this is what she was talking about, I'm home, I'm home. And boy does it feel damn good to be there.
So it's worth the work, it's worth the changes, and I don't know what it might look like for anyone that's listening to this, but I would just start by digging in a little bit, doing some reading. If you're not working with a good therapist, that is the place to start. Get somebody to help you on the journey that you trust and that knows what they're doing, and trust it. Trust the journey and give it time.
JB: And I think to your point don't think you can do it by yourself. Not at all. Wow, or quickly. Or quickly, that's right.
SB: It's classic. I mean, what got you here will not get you there. You've outlined some really cool and available things to people and there's a good business case. You know, I think about the leaders I encounter who are unaware you know, they're not quite tuned into the fact yet that their burnout is growing, it's increasing, and their burnout is growing, it's increasing and their impact is decreasing. So the business case is especially for our duty-bound leaders that feel like they can't let go. You're not making a difference if you're in this state, and so being the hero in a wounded state is not being a hero at all. I think we got to look at it like it's life or death. It is.
JL: And let's not. I mean, I don't want to bury this because this is so important If you don't address the anchor, then you cannot heal. And so if your work situation is burning you out, grinding you out, or the people you lead, right, if the people you lead are burnt out, right. It's not about wellbeing activities, it's not about resilience training, it's not about making them use their vacation. It's about what about the work? Is grinding them to the ground? Like what about the work is grinding them to the ground, like what about it? What you have to address the anchor, because if you don't, all you're doing is the cycle right. You're sending them to the corner, yep, um, and then you're going to put them right back in the fight to get punched again.
JB: Right, here's some smelling yeah, here's some smelling salts. Come on back, yeah, yeah.
JL: That's right. That's right, so you might have that might mean you need a new job. It might mean you need to have some really um, some really honest conversations with your boss or whoever you work with. It might mean you've got to make some decisions with your spouse about what really matters. Um, right, there's some, there's some big decisions in here, but what's the alternative? Right, it sucks being there, right, so address it and it's worth it. It is worth it. I am living proof.
SB: It is worth it if you do the work time down the road, we can talk about walking beans and some of those powerful lessons you shared at WorkHuman Live Anytime. Yeah, cultivating, leading by relationship, all the things you do. But, Jason, thank you so much for all that. You've given us Lots of tools, lots of takeaways today. We wish you the best and we're excited to see what's coming next from you.
JL: Thanks for having me. This was cathartic and I appreciate the opportunity to share and I hope that it is helpful to someone who maybe finds themselves where I was last summer.
JB: I have no doubt that it will be. Reminder everybody go to the show notes, see all the resources in there. And Jason, thanks and we will see you all next time on the Bosshole Chronicles.
We'd like to thank our guests today on the Bosshole Chronicles and if you have a Bosshole Chronicles story of your own, please email us at mystory@thebossholechronicles.com. Once again, mystory@thebossholechronicles.com. We'll see you again soon.