Lessons To Learn Before You Die
You can’t get through life without learning a few lessons along the way. Guests share their personal stories and tidbits of wisdom with listeners.
Lessons To Learn Before You Die
Break Free from Burnout
High-achievers often reach burnout because they put too little focus on what truly fulfills them. In this episode, Brennan, a burnout prevention coach and Marine Corps veteran, shares his personal journey through burnout and how he lost everything before discovering a healthier path forward.
We cover the warning signs of burnout as well as practical advice to prevent burnout with tools like dynamic prioritization and energy audits.
If you are worried you are existing rather than truly living, you'll gain real tips to evaluate your time and choices.
*Note* There are mentions of substance abuse and suicidal thoughts in this episode.
About the Guest:
Brennan Hilleary is a burnout prevention coach, keynote speaker, and Marine Corps veteran. As the founder of Build Your Power LLC, he helps high-achieving business owners and professionals take back control of their time, energy, and success outside of work. Through practical tools and a values-first approach, Brennan empowers clients to prevent burnout and build lives they don’t feel the need to escape from.
Website: www.build-your-power.com
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Hi, today we are welcomed by Brennan. Brennan is a burnout prevention coach, a keynote speaker and a Marine Corps veteran. As founder of Build your Power, he helps high-achieving business owners and professionals take back control of their time, energy and success outside of work. So welcome Brennan.
Brennan:Yeah, thank you so much, Parker. I'm super excited, appreciate you having me on.
Parker:Yeah, this is great. So we just mentioned your burnout coach. You've obviously been burnout before. Do you want to tell me a bit about how you got there and how you burnout the first time?
Brennan:Sure, absolutely yeah. So for me, burnout was something that was a slow, steady build. I didn't really I never really had any education or awareness around burnout. So how it started with me was when I was 19 years old, I joined the Marine Corps Reserves and I also started my corporate career at the same time. So I've always been, in some instance, somebody who's really purpose-driven, would consider myself a high achiever, and because of that, I really didn't know exactly how to set boundaries for myself. I didn't really know how to prioritize my own personal well-being and my own needs in the pursuit of the big goals that I wanted to accomplish for myself. So throughout my corporate career, I was the person who would always say yes and I was always the person who would tackle any challenge that came my way.
Brennan:And because of that, in order for me to maintain that persona or maintain that identity of the guy who always got things done, I found myself having to push through a lot of exhaustion and push through a lot of feeling overwhelmed and, you know, was just essentially acting like I was a machine for a long time, and I started experiencing burnout symptoms probably three years into my career. So 2017 is when I started my career in 2020 is when I really essentially like demoted myself because I couldn't maintain the level of activity that was necessary to do my job, and so that's when I was feeling like chronic exhaustion. I felt guilty, when I was slowing down and saying, no, I just didn't really like have any source of fulfillment or joy outside of my job. That's where I got all of my satisfaction from, and so that's like the first time it became really relevant to me that maybe burnout was something I was experiencing. However, because I had this stigma around burnout and I didn't really want to accept that I was burned out, I doubled down. So, instead of resting and creating space for my life to recover more, what I would do is I would.
Brennan:You know, I got prescribed Adderall and I got prescribed Vyvanse and had these stimulants to help me with continuing to push through it, because I didn't really know the deeper sign of what was going on, and what ended up happening was 2022 is when everything stopped working. So all of the stimulants I was taking the caffeine, like the you know, I wasn't getting any fulfillment for my job. That's when I got so burned out to the point where I really couldn't keep going and I had to put in my month notice at my job and at this point in time as well, I essentially lost my relationship because I was so disconnected from her. I lost the apartment that I had because I couldn't even sustain a job after going through like, after pushing through burnout for so long, and I lost everything and essentially had to learn how to rebuild my entire life from the ground up and heal from it, knowing how to prioritize my fulfillment and the forefront, you know, as I was pursuing goals.
Parker:So so you talked a little bit about kind of how you hit the end. What would you say are some warning signs to look out for in someone else or yourself that you might be approaching a level that's unhealthy?
Brennan:Yeah, great question.
Brennan:So if you find yourself after you're off work just too tired to do anything, you can get all the things done in your life that you know you have to get done, but anything that you want to do is something that it feels like you're trudging through mud to get there.
Brennan:Um, I would say, if you have a really hard time, just if you have this chronic feeling of like you're always tired no matter what you're doing, like like no amount of coffee in the world helps you with getting the energy that you need, I would say having a hard time with kind of this overall feeling of numbness, so not able to like experience emotions deeply, that's a really, really big sign, just because there's probably a part of you that's disassociated from feeling the way that you felt, because your nervous system has been in a part of you that's disassociated from feeling the way that you felt, because your nervous system has been in a state of fight or flight for so long. And then one of the other ones that's really important is a lot of essentially like, if you're not doing something, if you don't have an agenda, you don't have like a task at hand, you being extremely uncomfortable with that and not really being able to sit still without this like nagging feeling of I have to be doing something. That's probably one of the biggest signs.
Parker:So it sounds like there are both physical and mental side effects from this. Do you think that there are different levels of burnout, like maybe somebody is in the beginning stages or maybe somebody is like about to break?
Brennan:Yeah.
Parker:Um, and since you do feel that way, are there ways to kind of approach that early on, if you aren't in, maybe, the later levels?
Brennan:Absolutely so, yeah, and I consider myself a burnout prevention coach, so that's kind of where my specialty is is, you know, before you get to the point that I got to, which is stage five, burnout, which is essentially, it's chronic, it's like it's like you're operating in a way that's not sustainable, consistently Right. So you, that's that's stage five. I would say, like the first few stages, like a sign that you're really going towards that path, would be, um, I would say one is you don't have a source of, you don't have a hobby for yourself, you don't have like sources of joy outside of your work. Um, so I tend to work with like people who are like workaholics, right. So, um, you don't have a source of.
Brennan:There's a difference between rest and recharging, and this is something that's really important to understand. So rest is like the same thing as like a phone being unplugged, right, so we're a phone being turned off. So when you get home from work, you get home from a long day, and you find yourself mindlessly scrolling social media a lot you find yourself just like watching TV, like you don't feel like you have the energy to do something that's actually going to recharge you. That's a really big sign that you're already in the early stages just because your nervous system is most likely in a state of functional freeze.
Parker:Okay, so that's like the rest aspect. Yeah, and recharging, I'm guessing, is like refilling yourself. Okay, so that's like the rest aspect. Yeah yeah, recharging, I'm guessing it's like refilling yourself with.
Brennan:Yeah, so so recharging is like doing things in your life that light you up. So it's doing things for the sake of like. For me that would be, you know, guitar playing guitar and singing, and like connecting with my loved ones and hiking and physical exercise. A lot of people, what I've seen, seen because we live in such a society of hustle and grind culture. They don't actively pour into activities that pour into them. So burnout from a very simple definition is when the things in your life that drain you is higher than the things in your life that energize you.
Parker:Okay.
Brennan:So when the ratio of things that drain you is higher than the things that energize you, that's where burnout comes from. And you do that for a long enough time period, then that's where it's chronic. That's where, like, you're kind of stuck in that burnout cycle.
Parker:So yeah, so I'm guessing for some people, maybe work does energize them, but if they take it too far it becomes unhealthy.
Brennan:Okay, yeah, and I so, and and so we have seven areas of life, right, we don't just have work and we don't just have personal life, right, there's.
Brennan:So it's like way more multidimensional, right. So what happens is, when we're not conscious about these other areas of life like we, if we're only relying on one area as our source of energy and what's, but then we're neglecting these other areas in our personal life what happens is, over time, the ratio of, like the, the things that drain us, starts to increase. And then, and then our, our job and our the thing that used to fill our cup up it starts to give us less and less energy and less and less satisfaction. It's almost like I love to use the phone example because it's relatable. If, like, you have a bunch of apps running in the background and your brightness is at, like, full throttle, right it's. You know that's gonna drain you a lot quicker than if you, like close out the tabs and, like you're intentional about like, hey, I'm gonna put this on low battery mode, I'm going to charge it up. So the way our energy works is very similar.
Parker:What are the seven areas of life? Because I know I gave you a hard time there, but in life it does become a lot just about like personal and professional, but it sounds like it makes sense that there's more to it. So what are those areas?
Brennan:Absolutely so. We got social life, so that'd be like a sense of community and your friends, so connection with people. You got family life, which pretty obviously that's significant other and that's your children, that's your home life. You got spirituality, so, whatever that means to you, whether that's a connection to self, it's a connection to God, the universe. A sense of purpose is a good way to think of spirituality.
Brennan:Um, doing something greater than yourself. Um, you got career we know that one, right. We got financial we know that one too. Um, and then we have mental health, so, um, that's going to be pretty, you know, we know that. And then also physical health. So those are the seven areas of life, and what happens is most people they don't really know what they want out of all these areas. They know what they want out of the career, they know what they want financially maybe, and they know what they want out of like one or two, maybe one or two other areas. So, whether that's like physical health and family, or mental health and spirituality, it's very rare that people kind of create a North Star for all of them.
Parker:So well, it's like to me. I'm like, oh you know, like I can think of things that would fill me up in all of those areas, but I feel like it would be so hard to maintain. Yeah, like, if I look back at my life, there have been times where I was like super strong on my physical health, or I was super strong on my social life or my personal, but I you're right Like it's hard to maintain a healthy balance for more than a few of those.
Brennan:Yeah, and I want to, and I want to debunk balance too, because I think, I think, I think the way that society talks about balance is I have to put an equal amount of energy into every area of my life, and that is a recipe in itself for burnout, right? Because what the standard is is a perfectionism, right? So it's like, no matter what season of life I'm in, I got to put all this energy into it, and the way I like to think about it is more so, like I call it, dynamic prioritization, okay, so it's like, based off the season of life, that you it and the way I like to think about it is more so.
Brennan:Like I call it, dynamic prioritization. Okay, so it's like based off the season of life that you're in right now. It's like being intentional about realistically, we can only consciously build three areas of our life at once, right. Anything more than that is really overwhelming. So it's not only being conscious about what areas of life I want to build based off the season I'm in, but it's not only being conscious about what areas of life I want to build based off the season I'm in, but it's also what areas of life am I okay with just maintaining, right, and just kind of keeping keeping here. It's like, for example, for me, right now, I'm building my business right now right.
Brennan:So I know there's going to be a couple of areas of life I need to put on the back burner a little bit. But the difference between somebody who's overwhelmed and somebody who isn't overwhelmed just comes from a perceived lack of control. So that means if I'm not consciously putting my you know kind of leaving these areas on the back burner, if I feel like that's happening to me, I feel like it's not my choice, well then I'm going to feel like things are out of control and I'm going to feel overwhelmed because that's not my decision. I feel like the world is, you know, happening to me right, whereas if I know what I'm focusing on right, which prioritization is a whole nother topic. You got to kind of know what are, what are my values and what do I actually want in order to prioritize, right. But if I know those things and I know what I'm building and I'm really conscious of that, then I'm gonna feel way less overwhelmed because now I'm very clear on hey, this is the priority and this is not the priority.
Parker:So, like this is my season to focus on building my business or improving my physical health, and will maintain, maybe family and social, but it's not gonna to be what my main priority is. And because I'm consciously choosing to do that, I'm not as upset about it because it's not like, oh like I don't get to do anything I want to do because of Exactly, and now I can communicate.
Brennan:You know, now I can communicate with these people in my life and these areas too right. Like I can, I can advocate for that for myself. Like I can, you know, and I can like not now. That's also a lot of times where the guilt comes from, is feeling like, you know, it's out of my control too, so it's like I feel guilty if I don't know how to prioritize right the areas of my life I need to prioritize properly. So what happens is there's this overwhelming sense of like I'm not doing enough.
Parker:Yeah.
Brennan:Right and that that on feeling that a lot of high achievers feel and just people in general too, it's like you can't turn it off because you're not being intentional about where you're, where you're putting it, you know this is so fascinating.
Parker:Wow, I feel like there were so many good tidbits in there, like the balance part I'm fascinated by. I love it. So you believe that your mission is to kind of help prevent burnout? Am I correct in that?
Brennan:I would say it's a little bit yeah. So I would say from the front end, I would say burnout prevention is yes, it's helping people where they don't get to the point of their burnout, where, like, they have to lose everything in order to learn how to prioritize their own personal wellbeing. I would say, on a deeper level, what I really wanna empower people to do is I wanna help them with really figuring out who they really are and then building a life that reflects that. So I'm a huge believer that we all have certain desires for a reason.
Parker:Right.
Brennan:And I also believe that we're trained depending on our upbringing or who we're around. As we get older, I think that we're trained in a way to sometimes abandon those desires and abandon our own values for the sake of having to survive, or because we're told by other people what we want is not something we're worthy of, or it's not realistic, or whatever. The story is that we learn the limiting beliefs that we learn. So what happens is we try to force ourselves to build a life and live in a way that's not actually authentic to who we really are and what we really want. And then I also think that's why there's so many people that are externally successful. Their life looks good on paper, but they're internally miserable, and for me, I want to help people reconnect with who am I really and then know practically how do I build a life for myself that reflects that.
Parker:So it doesn't necessarily mean that your job has to be a part of your mission. It just means you have to build your life towards that mission, because there's the seven areas, and it doesn't have to be career.
Brennan:Yeah, and that's the thing. And so people think about purpose a lot of times as if it's like what I do, and that's also what I used to think about it as, too, because I tied my whole self worth to like what I did and how productive I was and how much I achieved Right. And the more that I've done this you know a lot of inner work with myself and the more I've helped people with getting more in touch with who they are. What I've realized and what I believe is that our purpose is not what we do, it's who we're becoming in the process. So the thing about success is like.
Brennan:The only thing that makes success sustainable in my perspective, is fulfillment. Fulfillment can only come from becoming the person that we're meant to be, and success comes from what we achieve in the process process. So I spent my whole life chasing success, thinking it was going to give me fulfillment, not realizing that in order for me to get fulfillment, I have to do it in a way that I have. The process of getting to where I want to go needs to be fulfilling in itself.
Parker:Like.
Brennan:I need to be so, I need to be satisfied from actually doing it, and that's and that's where a lot of people when they say, enjoy the process. Right, um, life's a journey, not a destination, right? Practically, what that means is, if you learn what your values are and you learn how to live in accordance with those values, right. What happens is now you're fulfilled in the process of becoming, which means that you don't care as much about needing to get to this, this destination over here. Like you don't get all of your dopamine from. Like oh, I just achieved this goal. Like that's not good enough, I need to achieve more. That's not good enough. Now you have this steady flow of oh, like I'm living instead of waiting for the next thing to externally to make me happy.
Parker:Like enjoying the training, not just competition day or something like that kind of thing. Exactly, yeah.
Brennan:Yeah, and it's hard because we don't live in a society that, I think, a lot of times reinforces that. You know it's, it's a lot of destination based thinking.
Parker:I feel like the one piece of advice that I've always struggled with is whenever somebody was like, if you do what you love, you're never working a day in your life, and I feel like for me, I feel like that's BS.
Brennan:It is BS, I agree.
Parker:And a lot of times, if you turn something you love into work, you might lose some of the fun of it.
Brennan:Yeah.
Parker:And so I had somebody recently be like I want you to feel like impassioned by your job and like love it, truly love it, and I'm like I don't I don't need that, like there are other areas of my life that I feel like I truly love, and as long as I feel like I'm working in my strengths, like there are definitely things that may not be my strength, that would be more of a slog, but as long as I'm working in my strengths, I don't.
Brennan:I don't need my job to be like the thing I just feel good about it Like yeah, I love that perspective and and and that's. And it's a lot of pressure, right. Like the pressure to be like I have to get my main source of fulfillment from my job, like for a lot of people that may not be 100% feasible, right. So it's like and this is, it's so funny, we're talking about this, so I do presentations for organizations too, and the whole concept of it is like one. It's like showing people what is burnout like, what are the symptoms, what are the root causes. But it's like how do I create fulfillment outside of work so I can show up better inside of work? Like that's my whole thing. It's like we're not.
Brennan:I'm not here to tell you how to do your job better. I'm here to show you how do you prioritize your own personal fulfillment, because you have so much opportunity to do that and and and. You're and in your life outside of work. Right, you're not burned out because of work. You're burned out because you're doing too little of what lights you up, period, right. And it's like if we, if we don't, if we and so many people, including me, I'm still figuring this out Like people don't even know what lights them up, because they've never given themselves the opportunity to find out, you know.
Parker:So I have two follow-up questions from that One. I mean, you are the coach here, but we're all human. Do you find yourself slipping back towards burnout from time to time?
Brennan:Absolutely, oh yeah, oh yeah, a hundred percent. So yeah, I mean recently like so I'm building a business right? So for me, you know, I have one of the biggest limiting beliefs that was running my life for you know, up until recently, was I have to suffer in order to be successful?
Parker:Yeah, a lot of people like entrepreneurs probably feel that way, like I'm going to sacrifice for three years but it's going to pay off later and they're like, miserable for those three years but they're building.
Brennan:Yeah. And the thing is, once they get there, it's like, oh, I don't even know how to enjoy this, right, because the thing about a belief system is like it's it's running in your unconscious. So, like for me, I have these still core store. Everybody has like three to five core stories that they've developed throughout their life, and these core stories either enable you to be more of who you are or they take you further away from that. So it's either it either creates belief systems that amplify your actual values and who you really are or take you away from Right, and what I would find in my business, for example, is like and this is how I was kind of creeping towards burnout as a burnout prevention coach is like I would find something that works as far as like acquiring clients, like build a system.
Brennan:It's like, oh, like this is how I consistently get clients. And then what would happen is, when I would see results from it, I'd be like, oh, I got to go bigger now. And then I would like completely change the system and not stay consistent with the thing that actually works. And then, all of a sudden, I lost all my momentum. I was making things way more complicated for myself than they had to be, and part of that was because I lived in such a stage like a really turbulent childhood to where so consistency and mundane and boring feels unsafe, right, so I would create chaos out of nothing because that felt safer to me than actually embracing the slow, consistent actions that I needed to take every single day to build my business.
Parker:My therapist told me that two years ago. I'm having deja vu, hey love it.
Brennan:I don't want to create chaos, you know, and I'm like whatever.
Parker:Okay, you said people don't often know what fulfills them. What are some kind of things that you would suggest for people, for them to be able to explore and figure out what does fulfill them?
Brennan:Yeah, great question. So one is what did you like to do as a kid, right? So that's the first thing I always tell people. When we're kids, we know intuitively, we know how to do what we're talking about. When we're kids we don't have an agenda for our life. When we're kids, we know we like to be present, enjoy the moment, do things for the sake of fulfillment, right, like that's kind of like already and daily in us, we learn how to be different than that, right?
Brennan:So a lot of this process of learning your own fulfillment is unlearning the patterns and the behaviors and the things that have made you think that that's not a priority in your life, right, and that you know, you hear it all the time oh, it's time to grow up.
Brennan:We're all just oversized children, right, we're all just like.
Brennan:We're all just children that like we, you know, like are just trying to like be an adult and like we think that we have to like, essentially like, kill a certain part of our innocence and joy in order to do that and I don't fundamentally just think that's true. It's going to be really uncomfortable to start, like allowing yourself to do things just for the sake of joy, because your nervous system has been trained to not enjoy those things. So giving yourself some grace as you're like, trying out those things to, is by default. If you ask yourself what are my four core values and you spend a lot of time figuring those out the areas of your life that you're practicing your values the most are the areas you feel the most fulfilled in, whether you're conscious of it or not, and the areas of life you're practicing in the least are the ones you feel the most drained in. So being consciously aware of what you're, what you value, is really helpful, because then you can start intentionally reinforcing them in different areas of life.
Parker:Would you suggest for like people let's be honest, like most people feel like they're so busy they don't have time to explore. But would you suggest maybe scheduling time, like, okay, on Saturday for two hours, I'm going to do this and that's what I'm going to do.
Brennan:Yeah. So the thing is, you have to make it a priority, right. So so you know there's there's a reason why we don't give ourselves time to slow down, right, there's a reason why we don't give ourselves time to reflect, and and I don't so procrastination. I think a lot of times people think that comes from like a lack of discipline or laziness, but you know where I really think it comes from Fear.
Parker:Okay.
Brennan:It's the fear of what happens when I slow down and I actually have the chance to reflect and I see, I learn and I've let myself see the fact that maybe the way my life looks right now is not actually the way I want it to be.
Parker:That could probably be uncomfortable, especially after spending all this time doing getting yeah.
Brennan:Yeah, so it's like I've spent all this time and energy building this life I thought I wanted for myself, right. So me slowing down and reflecting Right Me looking at that is terrifying because it's going to contradict, right, some of the things that I have going for me right now in my life.
Parker:Yeah, like, I feel like that could be like a midlife crisis there. Like is that where midlife crisis comes from? All of a sudden, reflecting, being like is this what I really wanted?
Brennan:100%. I had midlife crisis. I had quarter-life crisis. I think human beings are amazing at avoiding the things that they need to avoid, right, or they. You know. They're really good at distracting, especially in our society. Now it's like there's so many different ways you can distract yourself.
Parker:Productive procrastination in a way.
Brennan:Yeah, yeah, it's like people are mistaking motion for progress. They think they think those are the same thing, right. And the crazy part about this, the most important thing that I've realized for people listening, what you avoid controls you.
Parker:Wow.
Brennan:So that means what happens when you don't face what you actually want, when you don't allow yourself to see it. It will control you and you will get to a point where you're forced to face it.
Parker:Brennan, you may call yourself a preventative burnout coach, but I feel like you're a little bit of a therapist too.
Brennan:I hear that a lot. Thank you, wow, okay.
Parker:So if you kind of could give people some generic kind of one sentence advice they should do to try and prevent burnout or address burnout, what would that be?
Brennan:Step one is I want you to, for one day this is probably the most powerful thing you can do to start really putting practical evidence to suggest what we're talking about so, for one day, I want you to make an energy audit list, which means that I want you to pay attention, just for one day, pay attention to after you do something, after you talk to somebody do you feel more tired or do you feel less tired? Right, do you feel more and do you feel, did you, did you get energy from doing this thing or did you get less energy from doing this thing? And I want you to write down, just go throughout the day and, and, and and kind of take note of that. Don't judge yourself for it. Just just do an energy audit and see, like, how many things am I doing daily that drain me versus how many things am I doing that energize me.
Brennan:And if you allow yourself to do that, if you're experiencing burnout symptoms which, from my perspective, I definitely more on the emotional and like mental side of burnout right, I would say the energetic side, chronic exhaustion, constantly procrastinating and feeling overwhelmed If you're experiencing those things and you do that list, I guarantee that the ratio of things that you're doing that drain you on a daily basis is a lot higher than the things that you're doing that energize you. And then what's one thing you can do to prioritize more of the thing that you figured out that energizes you. So how do I make that more of a priority in my life, whether that's scheduling it, that's making it a habit, it's you know. How do I schedule more time for myself to be able to do more of that thing?
Parker:I love that. And if you could go back and talk to yourself when you were like, struggling, like when you were at the height of your taking stimulants and just struggling to exist, like what would you tell yourself at the time?
Brennan:I would tell that version of myself that you deserve to live the life that's meant for you.
Parker:That's really lovely, yeah, um, and I think, if I'm thinking about it, like people talk about, like people on their deathbed, their regrets are usually like not the things that they did, but the things that they didn't do, and I think that's always been my fear is not feeling like I've lived life while living. I love that your advice is to try and do those things that that kind of fulfill you, because I imagine by following that, it would help prevent feeling that way near the end of your life.
Brennan:Absolutely yeah, and it's. I think so many people have that fear and can relate to that. And the thing is is you know when I was at my lowest point and I'll be really transparent and vulnerable for the audience you know, there was a time where I didn't want to be here anymore and before I followed through with that, I literally my turning point was I heard a voice in my head that said do not end your life before you know what it's like to really live it, really live it. And that's when I realized that there's a huge difference between existing and living, and the difference is are you doing the things that you actually want to do or are you trying to live a life that isn't yours and it just takes? Do the work now, listen to your heart and don't wait 30 years down the road where you're 70 years old and you realize that your entire life has been based off of what other people want for you, not what you want for you.
Parker:Yeah, wow, thank you. Um yeah, thank you so much. Thanks for joining me you're welcome.
