Mellow Calarco. Welcome to the podcast.
Great to be here.
It is Spits And we met the other day in our village.
So you are the first ever person on the podcast from the same village as we and but we actually I didn't know we lived in the same villages until we met a couple of weeks.
Ago, exactly exactly. And Amazon suggests that our two books are frequently bought together, so it says that often, and I thought, well, you live in the same village, we should get together for a couple and have a coffee together and tea together. So it worked out really well.
Absolutely, And so we are both best selling, multiple award winning.
Authors from Mantle. You know what I think we did.
See if there's a third one, it'd be good to have a trifecta in the village.
Shout out to any award winning authors in Eliza please.
So, man, before we get into talking about burnout, because you've written a book on burnout. You do coaching for seals and athletes and all of that sort of stuff. But you were telling me the other day you actually have a very interesting background. Younger years, like I did a lot of travel, but you cycle thirty thousand kilometers around the world.
So tell me what inspired you to do that?
Yeah, and just talk our listeners through the journey.
Oh yeah, sure. So had the crazy idea to cycle trek and travel around the world for around about two or three years and end up through Africa and India. And actually there was five of us that had the idea, five or six of us, five of my mates. So let's go around the world on mountain bikes and let's go see the planet. And unfortunately, one by one they all bailed on me as we started. We started getting the mass as it got yeah, yeah, the reality setting.
We got the maps, you know, the micheline maps of Africa and you know the Congo and Nigeria and all those sort of stuff. So one by one they sort of like stepped out on me and said, no, I'm not doing it, which put me in the position of like, do I do this solo or do I not do it? Do I bail myself? And I went for it, went and I went solo. So the inspiration was more like
I just wanted more out of life. I wanted to see the planet, and I was practicing martial arts and meditation and things, and I wanted to go stay in monasteries and temples around the world to immerse myself in the spiritual practices. But I'm also very interested in indigenous cultures and different places of the world. So wherever I did stay, most of the time it was with indigenous people, and most of the time it was in monasteries and temples and churches and whatever it was around the world.
So the inspiration was just to see the planet and get more out of life because I knew there was more to what I was doing too at the time.
Wow, and how or what are you at the time?
Twenty odd years ago? So disclosing my age in my thirties? Yeah, thirty?
Yeah, okay, yeah, wow, So that that's amazing. And how long how long did it actually take you?
How long were you away?
Plans changed along the way a lot, So I caught malaria in Africa nearly killed.
Me, you know.
Yeah, all sorts of funky as you can imagine living with indigenous people and eating their food.
So but because we are we are in the west, we are just not robust, are we. I got all sorts of in the Amazon jungle, whereas the locals are just they're adapted.
Yeah, they are. We could talk about all those diseases all day, right, But yeah, so the plans changed along the way, and I did have to hang up my bike for a while and went up trekking through the Himalayas. But in short, in answer to that question, around about two and a half to three years of that trekking and cycling component of it, and then I ended up meeting my wife in Africa crossing the Western Sahara, and I ended up, as you not.
A story that you hear every day.
I mean, I met Kylie in Ecuador, but it wasn't crossing the sha Yeah.
On the back on the back of one of these big orange trucks. I had to sort of throw my bike on there because it was a land mine area through Mauritania and Morocco. And yeah, she was a tour guy and on one of these trucks, one of those overland traveled trucks from the UK ah Yeah. Yeah, yeah, we met there and we traveled then. So the trekking and cycling part was about two and a half years.
Then Killer and I we cycled and trecked and did all sorts of crazy stuff together again for probably another four or five years actually, so all in all around about seven years of trekking the planet.
Wow, that's amazing, and it goes I mean, I've done it for a bit of travel, not to the extent that you have, but it really does ship you, doesn't it.
You cannot go and travel.
Particularly in more Third world countries and indigenous cultures, you just can't spend time there and not be must affected. What were some of the big tear comes and lessons for you on that journey?
Think about everything in life, resilience rising above adversity, all these lessons that I learned on the road, and that's where I definitely shaped who I am today. And in many ways, I'm actually glad I did it on my own. I'm glad the other five bailed on me because I could spend as much time as I liked in the villages and the places where it resonated with me. So there's all those lessons on resilience and making decisions and
being clear. Believing in yourself was probably one of the biggest ones, Like really believing that I had the resources inside of me to get through any situation, no matter what, whether it was machine guns in my ribs in Rwanda, or whether it was a storm that I was stuck in. I had to meditate for twelve hours to survive this storm. But really believing in no matter what life throws at me on this adventure, but in life in general, I've always got the resources inside of me and I just
have to really tap into that. So that definitely shaped way. And many people always ask me what was the hardest thing or what was the toughest thing, what was the most challenging. Yes, there was near death experiences, but I
was also humbled by the kindness of strangers. I was humbled by some of these countries, these developing countries where they have absolutely nothing, but they invite you into their home and they look you in and next minute, you know, you're drinking yak butter tea in some funny little village, and I was really really surprised by that.
Actually, it's really interesting the belief in yourself right, which leads us into a conversation around around burnout. And this may be a bit premature in the conversation, but the whole challenge and threat and how.
People perceive stress is absolutely massive.
And I was actually talking about this in a workshop yesterday that if there are two people, say me and you, presented with the same adversity, and I view it as a threat and you view it as a challenge, it completely changes our physiology, and it changes the motivation, it changes the behavior. Right, So having a challenge orientation is very, very protective against burnout. But and this is the thing that a lot.
Of people don't talk about.
You need to believe that you have the resources to be able to overcome it, right, And that's where doing hard stuff actually comes into it. That your life experiences that you've had then you hit the nail on the head, gives you your belief in yourself that you can actually overcome stuff because that then has a massive effect on
how stress works. And I'm preaching to the converted to you because you've written a bloody book on burnout, right, But I think right from the start, getting the listeners aware of that is pretty key. But then leads into you know why some people bonote and some people don't bonoe. But before we dig into it, why did you decide to write a book on beating bonote and finding violent balance?
Yeah?
Originally it wasn't going to be that. Actually, to be honest, it was a bit of a journey in the process. So I've always helped people. I've always done work where I'm supporting people in different ways and shapes and forms, and mindfulness underpins a lot of the work that I do, so mindfulness is a big factor of what I do. So originally it was going to be a Mindfulness for Leadership actually in book when I first started thinking about it.
But as I was writing it, I thought, you know what, this book's for everybody, and this book's all about finding balance and preventing burnout. So and it was born out of a mission to help more people because a lot of my work is probably similar to you. You know, I work in many corporate companies. I deliver workshops, programs, keynotes, and public speaking. So a lot of the work that I do is in house. You know, people know me in that company and people you know work and are
familiar with it. But out in the big vast world, not many people know my work. So I thought, I want to get this book out to support as many people as possible, And so that's where the idea was born. Out of my mission to support and help a billion people on this planet. And I still get emails weekly from my book that says, you know, your books saved my life, or your books helped me through a cancer diagnosis, or your books helped me through a difficult time or
a difficult marriage. So I think my book's doing what I wanted it to do, just to help as many people as possible. But I just wanted to get something out there in the public that people can't access me in the corporate world. They can access me through this sort of book and other TEDx talk that I did recently also, so just getting it out and then I
think the world needed it. At the time, it was just post COVID, so I was after that, so a lot of mental health issues, a lot of the people around me were struggling, and I thought, if I've got some tools and techniques that can help people right now here it is, I'll put it in the book to share.
And that post COVID, I think is is really relevant.
I was writing some data the other day actually that between fifty and sixty five percent of people in the UK, United States, America, Singapore, India are all feeling signs of burnout post COVID because COVID, I think, in and of itself, was clearly a massive event that impacted people and impacted
their stress. But I think one of the things that people don't really think about is that COVID made people hyper vigilant to stress and threat We know that if you're constantly exposed to stress as we were in COVID, particularly at Melbourne with two hundred and seventy three days a long time, it actually makes the amygdala grow and become more sensitive and hyper vigilant to stress and threats.
So people's brains become more negative. And so the these are the bloody, lingering effects of COVID and particularly the lockdomet But let's just for the for the ontank. Most people have a sense of what bonot is, but give us your definition of bnot.
We'll give you the who's definition first, and then you know my take on that. And you've probably heard it and probably seen it. Many people have heard this, you know, over the years. Here, So in twenty nineteen, this is their version and by the way, this is their eleventh revision, so actually they've changed it eleven times. So you know, burnout is a syndrome conceptualized as chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. So that's their definition. I
like it. It's getting closer. But the word workplace in there, you know, it doesn't have to be there. It could just be chronic stress. So it could be financial stress, it could be relationship stress, it could be family stress, it could be illness or whatever it is. So let's remove that word workplace or sort of fade it out. So it's essentially chronic stress that has not been successfully managed.
And usually it's cumulative over a period of time, so it either sneaks up on you or it's sort of sneaking away in the background there, And it could be weeks, it could be months, it could be years. Some of my clients it could be an instant nervous breakdown, but it's been this accumulation of stress that they haven't managed. It turns into that alistatic stress or alostatic load, and then it's like burnout, and burnout is the end result.
Of course, it's like dysfunctional, no longer functional. And the three main criteria probably aware of in terms of the WHO version is number one is that absolute sheer, exhaustion and depletion and fatigue, not just stress where you have a good night's sleep and you wake up the next day and you feel better. This is like, it doesn't matter how much sleep you get, you just got nothing left.
So that absolute exhaustion. Number two is that feeling of detachment, feeling a bit disassociated with the world around you, not connected with your peers or your colleagues or your family, maybe a bit more cynical and complaining more than usual. So that's number two. And then number three is that lack of professional efficacy. So just a thing that would all be easy for you is just hard. It's difficult,
it's challenging, and making more errors less efficient. So that's the three criteria, and I'm sure many of our listeners here have probably experienced one or two of those from time to time, but it is the prolonged sort of exposure to that, and then you know that constant cumulative effect that it has on us.
And I think that's a really important point, that the cumulation.
And you're saying it's not.
Just workplace, right, because people can be going along and be in a reasonably stressful work environment but coping well and then all of a sudden one of their kids gets depression, right, and that just tips them over the edge, or they have a marriage breakup, or there's something there's financial stress. And this is the thing is that it's not just like you're just doesn't compartmentalize stress, right, It
is cumulative. Or somebody gets a chronic health condition and that then increases the allo static load on the body. And so it's looking at all of the different sources of stress in your life is really really important, right, And it can be just a job that you could normally do, but then there's some significant life events or an ongoing stressful issue in your life that can actually tip you over the edge.
Yeah, exactly. And when we say tip you over the edge, that tipping point, it's there in the background anyway. You know, when I did write the book, and I interviewed around two hundred thought leaders, professionals, executives, athletes, whole range of different people, and ninety percent of them didn't even realize they were burning out until it was too late. Ninety percent didn't even realize they knew something wasn't quite right there, something was not quite right. I feel a bit tired
or feel fatigued. And of the of the camp, the ones that did realize it a little bit, they either didn't have the tools or techniques to get out of it. They didn't know what to do, they didn't have any any support there or the other ones just kept powering on and charging on anyway. They knew something wasn't right, But I'm just going to keep you know, finish that last thing and keep doing that. So the self awareness piece is number one.
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely key, And I actually had that in a question for you about about the role.
Of self for Warner.
So let's let's do a deep dive into that, because what are and to your mind? And I can sort of chip in with some ideas as well here, But what are some of the signs and symptoms that you're starting to go down the slope?
I actually use when I talk about but I use a.
Whirlpools as the as the kind of descriptive, because the lower down you get, the stronger the downward poll actually becomes.
Right, it's not like a slope, it's a pool dime. So what would some early sayings be.
Yeah, the earlier ones, usually the ones we notice are the physical ones, you know, usually we feel it physically. By then it's already like you're halfway down the whirlpool. To be honest, that's happening. So the physical things, it could be tightness in the shoulder, It could be tightness in the jaw. It could be clenching your jaw. Everybody feels stressed differently. It could be migraine's headaches. It could be even lower back pain or tension through the whole body.
Of those typical fight and flight response things there that we feel in the body. So that's the physical ones. Also behavioral and emotion it could be just snappier, you know, like more reactive than usual, losing your temper, losing your cool more than you would you know, you might keep it together all day at work, but the moment you get home, yeah, it gets right.
Yeah, Yeah, that's right, because because it just it just builds and mills exactly.
And also also it could be withdrawal. It could be like withdrawing from meetings and showing your face on the zom screen or not going to meetings, or withdrawing from any social activities. So all of these things are happening, but very often we notice these things and we just ignore them. I'll just keep going. I always use the analogy a bit like driving the car, you know, and the oil light pops up. That's fine, I'll just keep going. Yeah,
and then the temperature gauge lifts up. That's fine, I'll just keep going. So eventually you know that car is going to burn out and break down, same as us. But we see these little signs and we either ignore them or we just don't know what to do. We don't know how to get out of them. So it is about Number one is self awareness. And there's also for me when it comes to self awareness, there's like board or baseline self awareness, which is just like the
usual things. You might notice the physical sensations in the body, you might notice how you're feeling or what you're thinking in some of your thoughts, but there's also a deeper self awareness, like this deeper level of self awareness, and then you know something's not right. So there's sort of almost like this gut feeling and you have to act on that. You have to do something about that.
Often the early stages, like the really early stages before people notice, you know, people, they get sucked into mindless multitasking, right and and just procrastinating.
That that's a sign that.
That you're you're stressed often and that your brain is going O that ship over there is too hard, but I want to pretend that I'm doing stuff right, you end up doing this And I think another early sign is is just a bit of apathy. Right, we just kind of go I'm a bit bur right, and I think a lot of people will recognize that. I think that that is one of the early signs that stress is starting to take its toll on your body. And and then I think to throw in to add to
your physical ones. I think that when you're sleep is starting to become effective, right right right, when you're you're knackered and you lie do to go to you think I'm going to be in sleep within five seconds, and then your brain goes on five right, that that is a sign. And waking up and being tired, I think we're starting to get down the vortex na.
And often I.
Think i'd throw in as well to your because you mentioned behaviors. When people start to self neglect, I think that's a big sign. When you know they know they should be exercising more and they just don't have the motivation to do it.
Their diet starts to go to ratchet.
Right, you're comfort eating, you're drinking a bit too much, and you're kind of going you know, I.
Just need to get through this. I'll sort this out.
That's when the world really starts to grab you and suck you down further.
When you start letting go of those things that you need the most. It's like, you know, when that's the ironic thing. The more stress we get and the more we get caught up in this chronic stress and this busyness at work and whatever it is that's stimulating you, we often start letting go of those things that we need the most. I won't go to the gym tonight.
I'm too tired, or I'm just going to grab some takeaway on the way home because I can't be bothered, you know, that sort of epathy and not caring exactly what you're saying. But it actually should be the other way around. It should be.
Absolutely one hundred percent. And I often use the analogy of an athlete. That's whether it's you know, a World Cup, Rugby World Cup, soccer, World Cup, whatever, where they're having to perform at a high level and then get up and perform again and again and again. I tell you what, they're not coming home and going fucking hell, that was a hard day.
I need a drink.
You know what I mean that they are coming back and they are recovering effectively. And before we jump into some sort of solutions, I think it is worthwhile just diving into this these signs and symptoms a little bit more. When people are really starting to get pulled down and starting to get close to burnt.
Is there.
I think you mentioned social withdrawal. I think that's a massive one. Not just the meetings and the people not turn into compans, but when they socially withdraw when you're just like, you know, I don't want to go out and see my friends.
I'll be bothered.
That's a big red flag for me.
Everything's too hard everything to The big red flag is this sort of overwhelmed. There's sort of overstimulation. So there's, yeah, there's healthy stress, we all know about that. There's the good stress that drives us, that motivates us. You know, there's chronic stress of course when we get caught up in it. But this tipping point is that overwhelmed where
everything's just too hard, too much. And the reason I say this is I also work in psychiatric clinics, so I work in for mental health clinics, and I ask the patients when they come to my programs, what happened? How did you end up in here? And most of them will have a version of like, there's just too much. I couldn't take it anymore. So this overstimulated overwhelm and mind it's just everything's too hard, so they just stop doing everything, stop doing work, stop socializing, stop going out.
Everything is too difficult. And then from there it's this slippery slope downwards into that fatigue and exhaustion, and then you've got no energy because you're not moving. So this tipping point of overwhelmed. So if you're hearing this language even in the workplace for some people at home and people are talking about too much is too much or not coping or man, it's a bit manic at the moment, it's a bit crazy at the moment. Chances are they're
heading to that slippery slope. Chances are they're not cloaking.
And to bring that back to the.
Challenge and threat orientation, that's where everything starts to become a thres right. But with that overwhelm, no, I don't feed like I hub the resources to do this thing that I used to.
Be able to do. Starting on my head I think.
That is a massive flashing neon light to people.
That they are just there.
They're getting sucked into that burnout vortex because it's just it's affecting their their perception, and their perception then affects their motivation and their coping strategies that use and as you rightly pointed out, right then we start to get into maladaptive coping strategies.
As well, such as alcohol, shit food. And we could justify all this to ourselves, can we?
I think everybody's been there. We're just going and I think you said it, mellow. I'm just too tired. I'm just going to get take out and it's been a hard day. Psychologists talk about self care. I'm going to have half a bottle of wine or bottle of wine and what's Netflix.
That's not breaking self care.
Self care is exercising, good food and meditation and sleep.
Higiene amen to that absolutely. But you're right that the migda that you said before, that is on this hyper vigilant it's on. So when we're on, when we're in this mode, everything's you know, we get better at stressing out. We actually build that amig deala muscle. It gets stronger, and we actually get more reactive. And that's addictive too, is sort of like we get addicted to that feeling. We're just going to keep going, keep moving, keep doing.
But I always use the analogy of those you know, those neutribullets, you know, those neutribullets where you put your smoothie, you make you make smoothing. So the fight and flight response you know that you know, is handy. We need it to get through situations, but it's only designed for short term stimulus. It's only designed to get you through that thing. It's a bit like putting the nutrible on
and just leaving it on, you know. Is that neutrible is designed to oscillate at a high frequency, so it makes you smoothie. But if you leave the neutrable it on for five minutes or ten minutes or twenty minutes, it's going to burn out. It's not designed for that. The same as the fight and flight response. The amigdala is not designed to be switched on twenty four or seven,
you know, without any consequence. And one of the worst cases of burnout that I've seen in the work that I do is a one particular client was very sharp guy like men. He very sharp, very smart, smart guy operating and owning twenty seven businesses around the world and obviously need to be switched on to do that. Very successful. But he wore it as a badge of how busy he was, you know, like yeah, and he was working
across multiple time zones. He was working the US, UK and Australian time zones and saying, oh, I slept on. I didn't get any sleep last night. I worked in the Quantus Lounge, and then I got to LAX and I worked in the LAX in Los Angeles, and then I got to my office in London and I didn't sleep at all. Two hours sleep, You know, I wore it as a badge, like, you know, how busy he was. His mind kept going, but his body said I had
doing this anymore. Totally shut down. Multiple organ failure, like his pancreas spleen liver started shutting down, stopped producing his endocrime system was shot, stopped producing testosterone. He was hospitalized in intensive care for weeks and in hospital for months, Like at what point do you listen to the signs? At what point do you stop this machine.
That that is severe clinical burnout, right, So there's a clinical and non clinical burnout.
Actually, I think it's worthwhile double clicking.
On that stress response and the hormones, right, because when we're in that challenge orientation, right, when you're dealing with stuff, it is it's your fight or flight, and it's the chemicals adrenaline and no adrenaline. And then when we get into threat response and overwhelm, cordisole comes in over the top, right, And and this is the thing for people to understand.
When you're in challenge response, that adrenaline nor adrenaline that activates the fight part of fight, flight and freeze, right. It's engagement, right, it's being on the front foot. I'm all over this right, and you're motivated to do stuff. But when cordisole comes over the top of it, and that drives you into the flight avoidance freeze response as well, and chronic stress. And here's something that I only discovered lately is that the half life.
Of adrenaline and noah adrenaline in the body is one to two minutes.
Right, So if we're both faced with the same stressor use that example earlier on, you're in a challenge response as soon as that stressor has gone within minutes, your body is back to homeostasis.
Right.
Cord Isol I hadn't realized until recently has a half life of one to two rs. So with me and the threat response, right, and that overwhelmed with the freezer whatever, even when that stressor goes ours later, I still have significant amounts of cortisol running through my body and brain, attacking my organs and attacking like a little bit of short term cortosol is good, but as you you well know, our solo when it's our metal. So when it when
it's high and it's protracted, that's when it really creates damage. Right.
Yeah, I knew you bringing this stuff to the table, which is good. You can explain all that so.
Well, yeah, I can't. I can't help the geek in me. It's to bring it up.
But it's I think it's really important for people to understand that that we have this beautifully designed stress response that has been honed over hundreds of thousands of years in Homeo sappiens. And if you look back, they evolution of our species millions of years, right, and and it's honged this beautifully to deal with stressors which were mostly intermittent and but sometimes severe and and you know that's
the fight or flag response. But when stressors were prolonged and really severe, that's when the espai accesis and cordsole kicks in. And that's when the bad juju happens to your physical and mental health. Right when you're just you just become completely dysregulated and chronically elevated cortis are makes you fight, makes you sick, destroys your brain function, destroys your mental health, destroys your motivation, It just does horrible shit.
Yeah, it's not designed to as I said, it's not designed to be switched on all the time. And many people are switching that that mechanism on the first thing in the morning. They pick up their telephone, they look at their emails, ping, it's on exactly left their bedroom yet, and they've created a stress response. And then they go through their day and it's this constant emails and pinging and the boss and it's just this constant overstimulation of
that fight and flight response. It's not designed to be like that. With the work that I do, obviously, that's what's called that sympathetic activity. The work that I do is you know, to help people find balance between that sympathetic activity and the powa sympathetic yea, not many people switch on the relaxation response. They use that stress.
Response absolutely critical. And you, I think you've hit the kneel on the.
Head these people who wake up and if you look at your phone before your feet touch the.
Ground, that's a problem. I agree that that is a problem.
And you're getting inputs straight, especially if you're checking your freaking before you've even thought about the day, thought about who you want to be that day, you know, like the stoics would do, and and I'm sure you know you would be encouraging people to get up to be mindful as they start today. But it's that stimulation and then we bookend it our day with more stimulation, right, and people go, h, you know I'm recovering, I'm watching TV or I'm on social media. That's not recovery for
your nervous system. That is stimulation for your sympathetic nervous system. So we're always on right And I think that's the major issue, or one of the big contributors should say is that even when people are not at work, they are not recovering, not right. And I think we're both seeing from the same m sheep here that there is a difference between relaxation and recovery.
Absolutely yeah. And most people don't give themselves permission to stop. And most people don't, you know, switch off. They don't even know what downtime is anymore. The words not in our vocabulary. And that's what I always say. People are wound up all day, you know, wound up. There's constant overstimulation from the time they wake up. They're looking at their telephone. Every break they get, they pick up their phone, they scroll, or they do something, and there's no off time.
You know, when it comes to the brain. You probably know a bit about this yourself. These different frequencies that the brain oscillates, and you have the beta, alpha, theta delta. Delta is you're dead, asleep, you know, you're out, and beta is you're on. You know, you're thinking, you're planning, your problem solving, decision making. All of these things when the brain is oscillating at like fifteen to forty hurts.
So if beta was a drum, let's say, it'd be like boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom, boom working quite fast. The brain cannot be working that fast all day long, twenty four to seven. You need to drop into those alpha and theta states where it's meditation, relaxation, recovery, all these things where the brain slows down down to like seven to fourteen hurts. And that's where we can
give our brain a little bit of a break. We're not designed to be switched on all the time without any consequence.
Yeah, for assuring me.
And I think what the research chools is that high beta is associated with high cortis. Were right, So when you're in very high beater, that's anxiety, right. All anxiety is is a massive overstimulation of the sympathetic nervousness. But you then come into a point which is really your wheelhouse here, right, which is about mindfulness, which is something that I have wanted to do for many years but
completely shit out. But the one thing that I found, actually two things that I have found att mellow and and and maybe you can give me and the other listeners some tips here, right, was I'm just fucking rubbish at trying to do any type of meditation, but I find that just focusing doing breath work, I can do that right, And the other thing that I adopted, and I think it was Carley manned nudge me, is I walk our dogs every morning and every evening when I'm when I'm here, and I like to go out.
At sunrise and sunset.
But I was occasionally going out and getting on the phone or listening to podcasts, and and Carley said to me one day, why don't you just go out and be? And I thought, actually, you're right, And so I've stopped taking taking my phone, stop taking my ear pods, and I just go out and just especially around sunrise and sunset.
Right, there's just all the bird life and the changing.
Colors in the skies and stuff like that, and its presence and its mindfulness. Right, So talk our listeners through mindfulness in its different gases. Why meditation particularly is very very good for us and maybe for the nupties like me who are just have tried and not doing it very well.
What are sort some things that we can get.
Sure and yees. Saying the word mindfulness, of saying the word meditation actually is like saying saying the word sport. You know, there's different types of sport, you know, when it comes to meditation, you know, there's different types of meditation, and mindfulness is an aspect of that. So for me, there's two main ways to practice mindfulness. First of all, number one is the stopping, the pausing, the closing your eyes,
and doing the formal practice. So the formal practice is typically what you know is meditation, whether you're following your breath or you're doing a body scan or whatever. It is, just to get that presence to anchor yourself into yourself. So that's the formal practice of mindfulness. I do two formal practices every single day. Start my day with it.
I'm the same as you. I get up quite early, take my dog for a walk, and then I do a meditation practice straight after that, get that serotonin production first of all with the sun, and then stop and pause. So that's the formal practice. Whether that's two minute meditation practice, whether it's a five minute, whether it's a twenty minute, whatever it is for you. The duration. The other practice of mindfulness is also what's called the non formal practice.
And the non formal practice is doing all those things you do in the day, but you do then more mindfully. You know, from the time you get up in the morning, you know doing some breath work, maybe getting out of the bed, mindfully, brushing your teeth, having a shower, eating your food, going for a walk, whatever it is. These are all washing washing dishes exactly. These are all mindfulness
practices on their own. And the trouble is, you know, people think, oh, yeah, I've done my ten minutes and mindfulness this morning, and then the rest of the day is crap. The rest of the day is reactive and the rest of the day is busy because you're not taking it off the mat. It's a bit like going to the gym every morning. Yeah, it's like going to the gym. You do a thirty minute workout in the gym, but the rest of the day you eat burghers and chips and whatever. It's the same as that. So you're
want to take it off the mat. And I always encourage people to do both, like I actually think they're we equally weighted. So the way you do something. So for example, let's just talk about eating. For example, So you know, eating you can eat in front of the computer, you can eat what you're scrolling on your telephone, or you can just eat and just enjoy the flavors and the aromas and the tastes. And the more you do that, the more you appreciate your food, of course, and you're
more mindful and you engage all the sensors there. But if you're someone that eats distracted all the time and you're scrolling on your telephone, you're actually training your brain to be distracted. You're not taking those cues that you're satisfied, and your chances are you eat more.
And you'll active eat your sympathetics, which inhibits digestion.
And brain access. It is not connected there. So I always say, the way you do something is the way you do everything. So if you're doing these things in a distractor's state, how can you focus for longer periods of time. So mindfulness essentially is at tension training and
being present in the moment. And when I was traveling, when I was cycling around the world, I was staying in monasteries, as I mentioned, and I was staying in one particular monastery in Vietnam, and it's a Buddhist monastery, and the practice there was more about the non formal practice to be honest, so you could talk. It wasn't one of these meditation retreats where you couldn't speak at all. You could speak, but you could only speak about the thing that you were doing. So if I was chopping
the vegetables, I could only talk about the vegetables. Oh wow, look at my carrot today, or look at the smell of my onion, and just only about the veget You couldn't be chopping the vegetables talking about the weather or anything else. When you're eating your meal, you could only talk about the flavors, the aromas. And like you said, when you're washing the dishes, you could only talk about the dishes or the scent of the soap or the temperature of the water. And for me myself, it was
already a mindfulness practition. I've been meditating for thirty plus years. That was also like wow, I didn't realize how not present I was doing all of these little daily things, and it taught me. It was difficult at first, but it taught me that everything is a mindfulness practice. Everything.
Yeah, that's actually very cool, you know that.
It was actually as you were saying that there's one thing that I probably do mindfully other than that going for the walk, and that's weeding the guard beautiful and after that commend I'll talk to my kids about I freaking amazing guitar in the respect that I have for them, the resilience, and I'm like, oh, yeah, this weed here, this one's got the little root I can put out out.
My kids are like, you're crazy. But it reminds me Melowo.
When I was a kid, I was trying to get into Zen Buddhism, and I was reading stuff on Zen Buddhism and Zan Cohen's.
And I remember one that stuck in my head where.
This and there was this, this the student who wanted enlightenment and he went to his master and said, oh, you know, my master, how can I be enlightened?
And he said The master said.
To him, have you had your breakfast? And he said yes, and he said we'll go wash your bowl. And that was it, right, And I was like, what the hell does that mean? And it was only twenty years later that I had I remembered it. I had a little light bulb moment that it was just about being totally in the.
Moment, right, And all you've got to do to see this is go and watch a Japanese chef.
Yeah perfect, and that yeah, perfect.
The attention to detail that they have when they're putting stuff together is just amazing.
They are so mindful whenever they're actually preparing their beings. But I think that's a really good point, is and I love your concept of taking it off the matt and just bringing it into your every day life.
But it ties it with to self awareness totally.
Yeah, And that's the very first point. You can't change what you don't notice, so we have to notice. At first, I didn't realize that I eat in a distracted stat I didn't realize that I do think about all the things you do in your day, you know, from commuting to driving, to getting to work to listening to people. Are you really listening? There are so many opportunities that we could bring more mindfulness to that, but it actually
takes training. It actually takes work, and most people don't have the discipline to do the work.
It's a bit yeah, And as you rightly say, this is attention.
It's attention training.
Yeah.
And I actually like this concept that of checking it off the mat that every time you even do a minute of stuff right, you're actually doing good for your brand because when we are fully engrossed and stuff, it changes our briand patterns and it does help us to recover. So even you know, turning your bloody computer off just for five minutes to sit and eat your lunch mindfully, to cheer your food, you know, and think about the chewing that you're doing, thinking about the food.
All of that is actually recovery, isn't it.
It is. And research says that forty seven percent of the time our mind is elsewhere, it's flicking away somewhere else. So, like you said, when you're doing something for a minute, half of that minute, your brain could be flicking away. And these are what's called the task performance network versus the default mode network.
Yes, oh, top, top, Yeah, let's talk a little bit about that.
It's what you're talking about there. It's about you know, when you're on task, when you're doing something, your mind is on there and you're switching on certain pathways through the brain, which is your task performance network, and you're focusing on that. That's mindfulness too. So think about those things that you do in the day and you know you're really present, you're really there, you're really enjoying it.
That's you're switching on that network versus what's called the default mode network, where the brain starts drifting off and starts thinking about other things. It could be flicking into the future, catestrophizing about something that hasn't even happened, or it could go into the past. And this default mode network can run wild. You know the research and the research you've probably heard of through Harvard there where the research paper was called a wandering mind can be an unhappy mind.
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, it is the Dalai Lama. I think because he used to do this Mind and Life conference where there was a bunch of neuroscientists and a bunch of Tibetan monks.
Talking about this.
The overlaps between the two disciplines, and when I think it's Richard J. Dividson when he told the Dalai Lama about the default mode network.
You'll be familiar with Richard J. Davidson, right.
The Dalai Lama was like, ah, you mean monkey mind, Yabba yaba yaba yaba, right, And but that monkey mind leads to an on happy mind. To your point, when we're constantly multitasking, thinking about other shit and not being focused, it leads to unhappiness.
Totally totally, and it can go run wild. It can be running wild all day and we're not even aware of it. We have thousands and thousands of thoughts for the day just constantly rolling away in our head. Most of those are negative. Most of those are the ones the same ones we had yesterday. And that's where it comes back to that self awareness piece. So mindfulness is training our self awareness when you sit in stillness and you just sit there. So going back to the formal practice,
the one where you stop and sit. When you sit there, very often when you close your eyes, your mind just goes wild. It starts thinking about all of these things. And that's where people say it doesn't work. Meditation doesn't work for me. That's actually working. That's actually showing you how busy your mind is. That's actually showing you how much out of control you are. So the more you practice this, you notice how he comes a thought, What
am I thinking about? It might be planning thought, planning a day. Well, he comes another thought, and you're just letting those thoughts be there in the background, and you're just letting them come and go. And the longer you practice, the space between the thoughts becomes bigger. It's not non
thinking like there is. People think the meditation you close your eyes is like this blanket blissful state, like it's actually observing your thoughts as an observer, not attaching to them non judgmentally, and just let them come and go. And the more you practice, it's about the space between, and that's the space we like to sit in. I often teach, and I always teach, actually not often. I always teach a ninety second breath break first, as opposed.
So if I'm getting a new meditation client or an executive or a CEO, first of all, I don't use the word mindfulness of meditation because I think, oh my god, I'm not doing that exactly. So I'll use you word
focus and attention. And instead of teaching them initially a ten minute or twenty minute of practice, which is good, but I teach them these ninety second breath breaks, so they actually start learning how to downregulate the immiguey, they start learning how to control their physiology through their psychology
and vice versa. So I would rather somebody did five lots of ninety second breath breaks, which is basically just stopping and following your breath for ninety seconds doing deep dire breath diaphragm breathing I'd rather someone did five of those in the day because they're learning how to switch off that busy mind. They're learning how to use that, and the more they practice, they start learning how to
switch it off quicker. And I've been practicing for many years, I could probably access that deeper alpha theta alpha theta states in two or three breaths because my physiology understands, Okay, I'm closing my eyes, I'm safe, I'm breathing deep, I'm safe, and it initiates that relaxation response really quickly. So most of us are up in that sympathetic nervous system all the time. We don't know how to even act. We don't even know what it feels like to feel that
deeper state. So I encourage when I'm starting out, let's get lots of ninety second breath breaks going. And then once you get that going, let's extend the duration. It's a bit like exercise, you know, Sam, you start increasing intensity and duration same thing, and you start extending it. Oh wow, I can sit now for five minutes. I can sit for seven minutes. I can sit for ten minutes.
So it's about training your body and mind to understand what the pole opposite of the fighting flight response feels.
Like yeah, and that's a really I like that. You do that with the breath break and the slow controlled atraumatic breathing.
Just to add a bit of geeky science, when you do that, you switch on the vegus nerve and the phrenic nerve, and you switch you activating the vegus nerve, which is your parasympathetic from the bottom up, because there's lots of projections into the heart and the lungs, and it reduces your heart rate, increases your heart rate variability, which is your parasympathetic nervous system, and brings your brain
out of a stress. And it's like taking your brain out and plugging into a wall for a recharge, isn't it. But you reminded me when you say about the no mind stuff, because that's what I was trying to do in my use right. And I was in Cambodia, and I was traveling alone, and I wanted to go.
And visit this monastery. So I went and visited.
I know it wasn't Yeah, there was an old monastery that wasn't inhabiting, but yeah, ruins, And I had a guy took me on the back of a motorbike and took me out there and went up there, and there was a female monk there who she was there meditating, and I had a conversation with her through the guide he was translating, and she was there for a month of meditation. She had rice and she'd just go down and up and get what she needed. And I said,
I'll get some advice off her. And I said, I'm trying to do no mind meditation to empty my mind.
And she laughed for.
About a minute, right, and then she through the interpreter, she just told him, tell him not to worry about that.
He just needs to be the watcher. Yeah.
Nice, Yeah, yeah, And it was that exactly what you're saying is you just watch your thoughts non judgmentally. And Cardi does a meditation about leaves on a stream. They're just leaves passing on a stream and you just let them go because that and it really is quite simple when you think of it like that. But it also reminded me something that might be helpful for people like me who have wanted to do it but are shit.
Is a guided meditation. Can you know ups like Bootify.
And insight Time. Yeah, inside.
Yeah, there's lots of them out there that have little short meditations one minute, two minute, five minute, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, and that can be useful for getting the uninitiated income.
Yeah, I recommend that when you're starting out, like, it's good to do both of course. And I have some free meditations on inside time orrap for example. And one it is a nine minute body scan meditation, which is great. It talks you through your whole body from the top of your head all the way down to your tone.
Yeah, there was a protecular.
Yeah, really good for athletes also to sort of get in tune with their body. So I teach that I have a ninety second breath break on there because some people don't have ten minutes. But the way I view guided meditation is great, it's fantastic and it will help you stay in that present state of awareness. But eventually it's a bit like riding the bike with training wheels. Eventually it's good to take the training wheels off, like
what happens when I switch it off. So if you are doing guided meditation at home, maybe after the guided meditation, spend two minutes just in silence. Just yeah, just stop to train that because you're in that state, and just to train, and then eventually it might be three minutes
and five minutes guided. Then it might be you know, two minutes just to set you up, and then you know, so you start extending the silent meditation part because yes, it's you know, when you are riding a bike with training wheels, it's an easy experience, but when you take the training wheels off, it's less pleasant. But what's what's going to make you a better rider in the long run is to take them off. So I recommend both,
a good mix of both, and everybody's different too. By the way, it's not a one size fits all when it comes to breathing techniques. It's not a one size fits all when it comes to different types of meditation. So finding what resonates with you. For some people, that
might be counting your breath. That might be you know, as we said before, a prolonged out breath, so you might have a breath of one, two, three, four, five six on the way in, then make sure you just breathe out for eight, seven, six, So it might be counting. It might be box breathing, as you're probably familiar with counting one, two, three, four, holding your breath. So it's not a one size fits all, find the one that
you work with most. And I also teach moving meditation, and I teach chigong and tai chi practices because someone for example, with ADHD a very busy mind or something, it's really hard to get them straight from full on to stop. So I'll tune into their body first, do exercises coordinated with breath, which acts as neuromodulator. So then they slow down and they connect with their body. Once they connect with their body, they connect with their breath
and they connect with their mind. Then you can sit in stillness for a little bit. But just that movement aspect is just a great portal to get into the practice.
Yeah, and I think I told you when we had coffee, Me and Carli when we were in Scotland did tai chi for a while and it was brilliant. I loved it and have been looking over here for some sort of tai chi or chigung. But because we live in the Peninsul, there's nobody apart from you.
So I'm going to jump in me and that one we are going to lock in.
And you also have a chapter in your book where you talk about gratitude, and I'm a gratitude geek, So let's talk gratitude and the role that it has in combating burnout, and just some practical things that people can do around it, because again, it's one of those things that some people look at it and go, oh, yeah, it's a bit fluffy.
But that shit ain't flying.
Yeah. Often when I'm presenting gratitude and compassion and kindness things in a corporate seminar, I can see the eyes roll immediately. Here we go, oh, you know, sort of thing against that idea of it is not fluffy. There's reams of research around it, as you know, practicing gratitude releasing all those good chemicals instead of those bad chemicals oxytocin and all those nice sedating chemicals. So what I do typically is I add a little flavor of gratitude
into my practices. So we've got a mind from his practice, you know, towards the end of the mindful of practice, I'll add some compassion, kindness, gratitude, And there's varying degrees of this. Sometimes, if I've got more time, I'll do what's called a meta meditation, where you're actually being compassionate and kind to yourself, compassionate kind to others, sending out love and compassion to the greater world and all sent in beings. But sometimes it's just as simple as like
just being grateful of running water. It like being grateful of the sun on my face, the comfortable house. But practicing this on a daily basis, it starts wiring yourself to actually notice it more so, over rule that I can't say the same thing twice like I have to like every day and imagine gratitude pspect it's so typical. So I love my family, and I love my kids, and I love my wife, and I'm grateful for them,
and that's easy. But then you start like digging a bit deeper when you can't say the same thing two days in a row, and you start looking for that. You start your actual reticular activating system starts looking for more gratitude, and you start noticing more gratitude, and you start noticing the barista that smiles at you, or you notice the guy that opens the door for you. You start noticing things more So it's just wiring your brain to see it, practice it, and actually it fires up
as you know, different brain regions. You've probably heard that going back to Davidson actually the research where he did the study on what's his name, Mattu Ricard.
The.
Monk.
I've seen him speak, actually.
Awesome and he's someone you know. So they put like two hundred and fifty six senses on his brain and they measured him for a twelve year study and they realized that because he practices compassion and kindness in his meditation, that had abnormal regions of his brain that exercise that area, plus abnormal regions of his brain for gamma activity.
Yeah, yeah, that's right. And this gets the point.
And it's like we talked about right at the start that when you're constantly stressed, you're a MiG dealer growth bigger.
Like our body is so pliable and plastic to environmental impact. Right, you do nothing on your muscles, they waste away. Right.
The Harvard the Dallas bed rest study show putting people in bed rest for three weeks aged their heart by thirty freaking years in three weeks of bad rest. Right, But you train the muscles, they get better. You expose yourself to lots of stress, you're amig dealar gross, Right, You do lots of gratitude or self regulation stuff, those parts of.
The brains actually grow.
And that's such a good point because regular gratitude actually primes your brain for positivity, and for me, that is the thing that's combating the amygdala. Constantly being stressed, you develop a negativity bias. So I believe that gratitude is hugely, hugely important. And I love that you said running water because often I'll do that. I'll turn the tap on and I'll go, how fucking cool is like when you combine gratitude with awe And that's when magic starts to happen.
And sometimes I'll turn a light on and.
Go, how fucking cool is that?
Right? If you think about like all this shit, and then you go out into nature, and there's so much stuff that if we would just slow down a little bit and notice and then just be grateful for stuff. And as I always say to people, right, if you've got running water, a roof over your head, electricity, food, security, hating, cooling, and you have safety. If you've got all of those things, you've probably got better than ninety nine percent of Homo
sapiens that ever walk this earth. And how about we wake up in the morning and go, I'm in the luckiest one percent of Homo sapiens that have ever walked this earth, Right. I think it's a game change psychologically because you know all the shit that we then get worried about, you go, yeah, it's not that big really whenever.
You know, I don't live in a freaking war zone right now, you know.
And it's but we kind of default to what we have when we start to take it for granted, right, And that's why I think gratitude is so so.
Important totally, and also does reflection in general. I think like a lot of people that have there to do this for the week ahead. You know, I've got to do this, and I've got to achieve this, and I've got to do this to make my week successful. But they get to the end of the week and they crash because they're exhausted, and then they do it again the next week and they keep going and going and going. So one practice that I do at the end of my week every week is I just have a little
almost like my mini performance review reflection. It's like, what was my presence like this week, what was my energy like this week? What was my diet like what was my meditation, like what was my family commitment, what was my social and just measuring that and reflecting on that with a bit of gratitude. I'm grateful for doing that.
That's a fantastic practice, just to remind yourself like every week's unique and every week you don't realize how many amazing things happened in the week, and putting that sort of lens on it, reflect and then reset your intentions for the following week and just exercising that. Going back to that negative bias, we're often looking for the stuff, you know that's like the bad stuff in the week. And you know, there's a research that I was looking at.
I don't know the exact details exactly, but there was a company that actually had they had to keep a journal, and they had to keep a journal for thirty days, I believe, and there was three different groups and one group had to actually write down all the bad things that happened that week. You know, all the got caught in traffic or you know, the cold coffee that they got, all the bad email. That was group one. Group two was just write down things but with no emotion or
no biased negative or positive. Just have to write down the facts and figures that happened in the week. And the third group had to practice gratitude three things they were grateful full at the end of the day and write down all the good things that happened in their week. It's all the nice things that happened, the nice email, the good call that went well, or the lunch they had with a friend. The ones that did the negative one, many of them actually felt physically sick. They actually felt
they some of them didn't finish this study. They just felt physically sick. The ones that actually practiced the gratitude obviously, the middle group probably not much change at all. But the ones that practiced the gratitude, they were more productive, their performance enhanced, they were happier at work obviously. So just by doing that simple little practice, it can just
change your world. And something we forget about how simple is you can't have You can't have gratitude and anger in the same body, you know, like yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I like it. And then I love that.
I love that performance review because what gets measure or gets managed right, and yeah, that makes it's just it's performance one on one, isn't it from from And I think it's it's adapting some of the tools that you use in elite sport and just adapting them.
For for for our lives. So we need to wrap up in a minute.
But is there anything else that that kind of jumps out to you that people can can use, or practices or things that they can do if they feel like they're in that overwhelmed space and they want to avoid being a burnt out basket kiss.
Two things I'll say basically in closing. One will be give yourself permission to stop. Yeah, like, give yourself permission to pause. And most people don't. They think I'll have a break when I finished this next bit. After this bit, I'll have a break. But give yourself permission to pause. Punctuate your day with periods of renewal and recovery and periods of on so that on and off. So give
yourself permission to stop. Most people wont. The other thing I say is to ask yourself this one question every single day. What have I done for me today? What have I done that fills up my cup? What have I done that energizes me? Write it down, put on a sticky note or something, and make sure you're doing something for you before you, before you switch on your telephone, before you jump into the world. There, what have I done for me today?
Awesome? So Mellow.
So for people who want to read the book, it's called Beating Burnout, Finding Balance by Mellow Calarco, and we will stick a link to it in the podcast. But also if somebody wants some coaching for you, so you do coaching, presumably these days you do it virtually as well, so they don't have to live, they don't have to be one of our neighbors at Manteliza.
And so what what else? Where can people go?
Where should we send them in order to reveal of your services?
So probably the best portal will be my website meloclaco dot com m E l O c A l A r c o dot com. I'm sure we'll put that in the show notes. And yeah, also I have a free sample chapter of my book on that on that website. You can jump on there and have a little Actually, the first chapter, ironically is on self awareness, so that's what we've been talking about, and it actually talks about a situation where I had to meditate for twelve hours in a storm and survive it. So that might be
room for a next podcast, so jump on there. I also have some free meditations on there. LinkedIn is another area I'm on the socials, but probably out of all of them, LinkedIn is probably my most active one there, And yeah, jump on in. Say hi, happy to support, happy to help wherever I can.
Awesome Melop and thank you for your time.
I have agreed, Thanks Ball, take care everybody,