Reframing Burnout with Emilie Aries

Is reframing burnout even possible? According to Emilie Aries, the founder of Bossed Up, it is — sort of. Emilie is a speaker and author whose company is committed to closing the gender leadership gap. In this episode, you’ll hear our conversation about the systemic nature of burnout culture, particularly for women. We unpack “role overload,” try and take a really realistic look at boundary setting, and learn the difference between active and passive rest. These and other important ideas will sustain us through the holidays and beyond!

Emilie Aries is an award-winning speaker, podcaster, writer, and the founder of Bossed Up, a personal and professional training organization that helps women craft sustainable careers. She is the current host of the podcast Bossed Up, and former co-host of Stuff Mom Never Told You. Previously, Emilie served on national political campaigns as an organizer and digital strategist.

Links:
Bossed Up
How to Recalibrate Your Career, a recent episode of Emilie's Bossed Up podcast that continues where our conversation leaves off
For more from Emilie, check out her website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram

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Transcript

Natalie
Hey, it’s Nat. 

Rebecca
And Bec — two very different sisters who come together to reframe some of life’s big and small problems. We’re moms, writers. 

Natalie
We have soft boundaries. We see the world differently, but we both lean into vulnerability together and with our guests, because we like deep dives. So come with us — let’s reframe something. 

This week, we are reframing burnout. 

Rebecca
Is that even possible? 

Natalie
Well, according to Emilie Aries, the founder of Bossed Up, it is — sort of. 

Rebecca
Emilie is a speaker and author whose company is committed to closing the gender leadership gap. In this episode, you’ll hear our conversation about the systemic nature of burnout culture. 

Natalie
We unpack what role overload is, and then we try and take a really realistic look at boundary setting. 

Rebecca
We also learn the difference between active and passive rest. 

Natalie
These and other important ideas are going to sustain us through the holidays and beyond, Bec — I swear. 

Rebecca
Well, let’s dig in: reframing burnout with Emilie Aries. 

Ok, Emilie, can you give our listeners a little bit more about who you are — and your background, where you’re coming from, why you can speak to us about burnout? 

Emilie
You got it. So let’s see — I’m Emilie Aries, I’m the founder and CEO of Bossed Up. We are a career services and leadership development company really committed to closing the gender leadership gap. I’m also a podcaster and an author. And I started Bossed Up 10 and a half years ago now because this was the community I needed myself. I had burnt out at a really early age — before the ripe old age of 25, from the start of my career, which was a fast rising run in the world of campaigns and elections. I started volunteering on campaigns in my high school days when my friend’s mom ran for state house just outside of Hartford, Connecticut, where I grew up, and served on a variety of congressional campaigns up and down the east coast, interning at every chance I got. And when I graduated with my fancy schmancy Ivy League degree in political science, I was off to the races — ready to, you know, change the world for the better. 

And then a series of challenges sort of came my way. I learned early on that even though women have been outperforming men academically for over 40 years now, life after college looks a bit different in terms of how you are rewarded, how you advance in your career. Turns out likeability can be a challenge for women who are assertive, who are leaders. And likeability, unfortunately, matters. And while I think I’m a very likeable person, I remember early on kind of running into unconscious forms of sexism and ageism that just become more pronounced over the course of women’s careers. And so I created Bossed Up because I desperately needed a safe space to come together with other women who, like me, struggled to advocate for ourselves. Because even though I was a professional advocate, working day in and day out to advance policies and advocate for candidates I believed in, I also found myself feeling quite trapped in a toxic relationship with a loved one who was a highly skilled person but also, like millions of people, struggled with addiction. And so it just felt to me pretty early on like, “Oh my goodness, how did I get here?” I went from being this bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, like, ambitionista to feeling so detached from my own identity and ambition at 25. I felt like a shell of a human being and didn’t know how to find my way back to not only feeling ok, but also advocating for the career and life that I wanted. 

Rebecca
I mean, that is knowing yourself very clearly — like, I’m impressed by that ability to reflect and be able to say, “This is what was happening.” I mean, has that taken you years to see what was happening, or could you see it while it was happening? 

Emilie
Well, years and thousands of dollars in therapy, I’ll add. You know, I was just at an event with writer Roxane Gay and she called narrative distance out as something that was really key for her as a writer. I wrote my book Bossed Up (about overcoming burnout and learning to advocate for the career and life you want) in 2019. And I really burnt out back in 2012. The irony here is that I’m kind of right back to where I started from — I’m experiencing a new iteration of burnout in my career right now. I have a two-year-old. You know, this has been the most challenging year in business I’ve ever had in 10 years. I had to lay off two full-time staff members back in March. I’ve actually experienced multiple pregnancy losses in the past five months alone. 

So I feel like I’m on the alchemist’s journey here in so many ways in that, to be completely candid with you both, I’m not a scientist, I’m not a medical professional — like, I am a student of burnout. I’m a student of self-advocacy. I’m a student of feminism because we live in a patriarchal world. And I’ve been trained, if you want to call it that, in advocacy skills. But it’s a lot easier to advocate for others than it is to advocate for yourself — particularly for women, particularly for caregivers, for mothers, for daughters. And so I’m right there with y’all — like, we’re all in these trenches together. This world was not designed for us. But I think the reason I’ve been successful in creating the community that is Bossed Up is because anyone who peddles an easy fix for this stuff — you know, who, like, can speak on this high horse of having it all figured out, is so full of shit from my vantage point. So I hope it’s really clear that yeah, I’ve learned a lot. I’m a quick study. I’ve spent the last decade helping others navigate burnout. And I’m a student of the practice myself. 

Rebecca
Ok, so how do I know if I’m experiencing burnout? Because I was just thinking about this beforehand. We come from a really caregiving family. We really value work and supporting others. So honestly, I was like, “Maybe… maybe I’m in a constant state of burnout.” How do we know? 

Emilie
Well, caregiver burnout’s real. It’s not a coincidence that my mother’s a labour and delivery nurse, and I struggled early on to reconcile being a good woman, being a good daughter, a good girlfriend even, now a good mother, with self-care. Like, how are those two things possible? It’s very much a current iteration, generation to generation, that we’re navigating. I like to think of it as, like, each of our parents hands us a manuscript of the role that they’ve played, and then we have a red pen and we have to mark it up and come up with our own conclusions about, “What do I want to take with me?” Like, my mother cooked, like, a five course homemade meal for us every night while being a full time nurse working 12 hour shifts — like, she set a very high bar. And then when I called her at 22 and said, “Mom, I think my partner, this man I love, who I’ve been with for years now, who I’m living with, I think he’s an alcoholic.” The first words out of her mouth were, “Oh honey, be nice to him.” 

And it’s taken me a lot of time in therapy to figure out that that’s not quite what I needed to hear in that moment, but it comes from my mother’s caregiving role, right? That’s her entire vantage point of, “Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor.” Like, you know, she is a safe harbour for so many. And I don’t want to live my mom’s life that way, right? So for me early on, I had to understand that it’s a negotiation with ourselves, what we’re willing to tolerate. Now, clinically, the WHO does have a definition of burnout that’s worth mentioning, because it’s still a very fuzzy scientific conversation. And I have my theories as to why it’s, like, kept a little fuzzy, but we can talk more about that. So they define burnout as a state of chronic stress. And it’s not diagnosable — it’s not a mental health diagnosis that you can get. It’s not in the DSM here in the United States. It’s not a diagnosable condition in the global, like, WHO manual, like anxiety or depression is. So instead it’s just considered a global workforce phenomenon. 

Natalie
Oh boy. 

Emilie
Right? My theory behind this is it all has to do with insurance, because if we all could be out sick right now for burnout, 53% of the United States workforce would be out sick right now with burnout. So the three defining characteristics are: physical and emotional exhaustion — which I think women, like, know exactly what that feels like, right? Cynicism and detachment, which often shows up in my clients who are burnt out as, “It doesn’t even matter what I do here.” Like, “There’s no way they’re going to recognize me.” Or, “What am I even doing? How am I showing up in the world? What difference am I making? What does this even have to do with anything that I care about?” Detachment from the outcome — not healthy Buddhist detachment, but rather, “I can’t care anymore. I’ve got no fucks left to give,” right? Like, that is how I’m feeling at the moment. And then finally, feelings of ineffectiveness and a lack of accomplishment even in the face of evidence that you’re getting a lot done. So if you just feel like you’re drowning, you can’t keep your head above water, it doesn’t matter how hard you work, your to-do list is always longer at the end of the week than it was when it started, that’s often a warning sign that you’re on the brink of burnout. 

Natalie
My question to you was going to be, “Is burnout potentially an overused term, like ‘toxic,’ right?” I mean, like, we’ve had another guest on who was really helpful talking to us about friendship. And she was a bit reticent with the word toxic being thrown into that kind of conversation because people sort of potentially can overuse it. And so I was starting to wonder about that with this term, with burnout, but now I’m hearing you describing it and I’m like, “Well, maybe not.” 

Emilie
I think it’s both under and over in two different ways. I’ll say this: you know, people use the term ‘burnout’ like, “I’m burnt out on the pumpkin spice latte,” you know what I mean? Like, that is very colloquially overused. I think burnout is a serious slippery slope to more chronic mental health conditions like depression and anxiety, which often warrant medication, if not certainly cognitive behavioural therapy, right? Burnout is deemed a personal problem in a world that has normalized burnout culture. So what I see it being under-talked about as is literally even in the WHO’s framing of this, which in 2019 they changed the classification to indicate how serious a global problem burnout had become. They actually called it a pandemic — and then of course, like, 2020 hit, and we really learned about the word ‘pandemic.’ But even back in 2019, scholars were getting really concerned about how chronic stress is physically and societally really harming us. 

The problem is even the WHO and the American Psychological Association, the APA, they essentially say burnout is easier to turn around with boundary setting, with behaviour change. Which is true — but that puts the onus on the individual to advocate for ourselves and our own sanity, to get our stress under control, as they might say, when the workforce, the working world, the corporate world that so many of us are in has really normalized moving at the speed of our computers. And humans just don’t operate like computers. We cannot have multiple programs running simultaneously at the same time — hell, even some of our computers can’t do that. So I think we’re under-diagnosing burnout culture. Whether you want to call it toxic workplace culture, which is also a term thrown around, we are putting the onus on the individual to try to advocate for a good life in a capitalist world that is very indifferent to you having a good life. 

So I just think there’s chronic stressors like wage inequality, like unequal pay for equal work, racism, sexism, like, class immobility. You know, these are macroeconomic and social political trends over the past 50 plus years that have worn away the ability for so many of us to carve out a decent middle class life. Those are not being talked about when we talk about burnout. We’re talking about meditation and stretching and exercise. And I’m sure I will talk about those solutions, those individual solutions today, because they’re very accessible to us. But if you are doing all the right things and trying to self-care your way out of burnout but you’re still not being paid a living wage, good luck getting rid of chronic stress in your life. 

Rebecca
We say, “Oh, just more boundaries, set more boundaries.” I just want to roll my eyes, and even… I signed up for some life coaching and my life coach today was saying, “It sounds like you need more boundaries.” And I was like… 

Natalie
And lists. 

Rebecca
And lists. He’s a nice guy. I appreciate it at some level, but I’m like, “Ok,” — I wanted to be like, “I literally don’t even know what a boundary is.” 

Emilie
Yeah. 

Rebecca
Like, it feels like this foreign thing that I’m like, “I need to erect something around me. But there are no bricks.” 

Emilie
Yeah. 

Rebecca
Or whatever the metaphor is — like, I’m like, “I don’t know.” 

Emilie
Well, here’s the irony about burnout. When you’ve reached a point of burnout or when you’re experiencing chronic stress, the first part of your brain that really begins to quite literally deteriorate is the same part of your brain that helps you manage stress. So those who are most in need of boundary setting or self-advocacy or putting our oxygen masks on first are the least capable of doing so in that moment. And this can be really challenging. And so one of the first steps I like to advise — and I literally have just been following this advice myself this year because I’m in the trenches. I was just having a minor meltdown about the fact that I have no kitchen right now. Sunday night, I’m sitting on the couch with my husband — my loving, wonderful, talented builder architect husband, who I opted into marrying knowing that we were going to live in a construction zone for a lot of our life because that’s part of our, you know, strategy and we love renovating houses. But I’m currently living in a house with no kitchen with a two-year-old, and my house looks like a bomb went off. I’m looking out beyond my screen right now, and it looks insane. And I sat down on the couch with Brad, and I’m like, “This is not working. We’re never doing this again. I hate everything about this.” And then I was like, “Or maybe I just need some sleep.” You know? “So let’s reconvene this conversation before we give up on our real estate empire building dream.” So, you know, the first step is identifying burnout’s root causes. Because there’s many different avenues to arriving at burnout capital, right? 

And I started Bossed Up in Washington, D.C. I mentioned that I worked in politics, it brought me to D.C. And then I like to joke that D.C. is the burnout capital of the world because that’s where people go full of vigour, excited to go take on the world or change the world for the better, and then so many people leave with their tail between our legs — like, needing to recuperate and recover. So here’s four root causes I like to break down for folks. One is a lack of agency. Going from not having a child to having a child is a lack of agency that we opt into. All of a sudden, you know, the hours of, you know, post-daycare or whatever, you know, post-childcare to bedtime, those are not your own anymore. You all of a sudden have less control over your day-to-day life. Same thing with a micromanaging boss. Same thing with a controlling partner. A lack of agency erodes your sense of self, of the ability to impact your life for the better, and that can really lead to burnout. 

A lack of rest is often the most obvious one. I described not getting enough sleep recently. Again, I point to my two-year-old as the burnout root cause there in so many ways — lovingly, of course, but it’s real. But also a lack of rest could not just be, like, eight hours of sleep every night. It could be not being able to take a lunch break at work, or eating lunch at your desk every single day, or never having a real vacation. So I like to think of rest as a daily, weekly, and quarterly or annual thing that I audit for — that I audit my life for. 

A lack of purpose is another really interesting one. I have very well-paid folks who come through our doors at Bossed Up who, for all intents and purposes, have a very privileged life — and feel empty inside. And feel like they’ve got golden handcuffs on. And feel like maybe if they just retail therapy their way to something, they’ll find fulfillment. And often it’s just the work they’re doing doesn’t feel like it matters. The antidote to burnout in that instance is not rest, it’s not more retail therapy. It’s find another role in your life you can play that gives you a sense of purpose and meaning, right? That’s actually adding to your play instead of subtracting. So you have to really understand the root cause to bring the right solution. 

And then finally, something I think a lot about post-pandemic (or whatever we call it now) is community — a lack of community. If you feel isolated, if you feel disconnected, both in a personal and a professional way, isolation can hurt your brain and body, right? A lack of social connection and really being seen for who you actually are and having relationships in which you feel safe, those are not optional nice to have perks. Those are human necessities, prerequisites to a good life. 

Rebecca
And now, some housekeeping. Hey Reframeables: do you get something from these conversations? Would you consider becoming a supporter on Patreon? For as little as $2 a month, you could help to keep this show going. It’s meaningful financially, and relationally — it feels like a hug. For our Patreon supporters, we do mini-episodes which we call Life Hacks and Enhancers — our five best things in a week. You could also tip us on our Ko-fi account, where Natalie’s recipe book is also for sale. Oh, and tell us what you want to hear more of — listener messages make our week. And don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter. All the links are in our show notes. Love, Nat and Bec. 

Nat, can you identify your burnout? Are you burned out? 

Natalie
I’m sitting here, I’m pondering it. I mean, like, I don’t think I am right now because I think I’m like that D.C. newbie who’s still got some energy. Going into something new, I came out of a career, I transitioned into something new, and so I’m in that kind of early couple of years stages, but I do think I had hit a burnout stage at the end of 20 years in education — like, in a specific kind of education, like, public education. For me, I think I had hit a wall, and I’m calling it my burnout wall, but I don’t know if that’s the right metaphor. But I definitely feel like that was then. Now I feel stressed, but… 

Emilie
What were some of the signs that you could point to when you hit that wall that felt like, “Oh wow, that’s a sign that I was burnt out?” 

Natalie
I think some of what you described around, like, feeling disassociated from the space — never from my students, they grounded me. You know, I had lovely colleagues who were good people, but those human beings weren’t enough for me to feel like I could make real systemic change. 

Emilie
Totally get that. 

Natalie
Yeah, it was like hitting up against those moments of, like, the people aren’t going to get me through. What is this about me? 

Emilie
There’s a term in the world of community organizing that I kind of was brought up in called ‘a theory of change.’ And sometimes when you feel jaded about your current ability to affect change, that disengagement sets in, that cynicism sets in. And maybe even a lack of purpose in some ways — where you’re saying, “I see these big problems, I want to solve them, but this seat in this role, in this ship maybe, is not going to help me get there.” And I’ve been navigating similar feminist existential crisis (as I’ve been calling it) this year, where I’m looking at the data on the gender leadership gap, the gender wage gap, and we have made, as a movement in the past 20, 30 years, we’ve made no progress — almost no progress. 

And so what comes into question for me in those moments is my theory of change. And I think we all need to believe in a theory of change, whether it’s in our lives or in our profession. You know, if you’re able to fulfill your purpose in a way that also yields a paycheque, hooray, bully for you. But it’s not always possible for everybody. But you have to believe that what I am putting in is giving me something. And if that theory starts to feel fragile or you’re not believing in the efficacy of what you’re doing, you know, stress is always there just to get us moving in a different direction. Stress is there to get us acting on something. And so while stress can, in an accumulating way, really wreak havoc on your brain and body, the thing to remember about stress is that it’s not inherently bad, right? It’s designed to get us to take action on something that needs our attention. 

Natalie
I’ve seen that TED talk. No, I’m teasing you, but I actually do. 

Emilie
Yeah, totally. 

Natalie
I can think right now of, like, a specific TED talk that I brought forward to my students that says, like, something of that thesis — that actually it can be useful, and it might actually be a part of why we sort of use reframing as a term that grounds how we move forward with this podcast. You know, we can take some control in terms of the way that we gain perspective on what it is that we’re navigating. It’s really helpful what you’re saying here. 

Rebecca
You know what, but I think that could be part of what I’m experiencing. Sometimes in my industry, in the film and television industry, some cynicism around that it’s possible to get stuff made. That if you aren’t connected that you can, just by working hard, by having your brilliant ideas, that you can navigate the system. And I think, like, navigating some cynicism around, “No, you can’t.” There’s always going to be obstacles as a woman, as, you know, someone that doesn’t have a dad who’s the vice president, or whatever. That’s where community is good, because Nat you’re coming in and not with a new optimism, but I do think that cynicism — so the theory of change, that I don’t think I can affect change, is something to navigate. 

Emilie
Right. Well then, you have to ask yourself, “So what am I going to do about that?” Because I sit here today and I’m like, “Ok, I’m navigating a bit of a business readjustment that needed to happen,” — which honestly, like, I think we all burn out every 10 years or so, right? I feel like I’m right on time in some ways. But now that I’ve identified, “Ok, here are the things that are triggering burnout for me,” — like, here’s where I see a lack of agency, even in a company of my own creation. Or the fact that I have no kitchen right now is like, “Ok, how am I going to sustain myself for the next two weeks until we can get through this?” Or a lack of autonomy around juggling the roles that I have between mom, CEO, wife, daughter, right? Like, role overload is such a real thing that women are disproportionately juggling. 

Given all of that and given the systemic barriers that you run into in your industry or in my industry or in any industry, you have to really make that own reframe with yourself, which is, “Ok, what are my expectations of myself? How can I live up to my own expectations of myself? How can I set a bar that is hopefully ambitious, but also maybe realistic, like maybe possible?” And that requires quitting something I call aspirational planning, which is like, “Ok, I’m going to do these 17 things today.” I’m already in trouble when I’ve set myself up to fail. So I think it’s sort of like when we talk about boundary setting, it’s so easy to say and it’s so hard to do because it’s often an internal and external negotiation of expectations. 

Rebecca
And I think expectations of oneself. 

Emilie
And usually also with your boss or your colleagues or your children or, like… you know, somebody recently pointed out to me, like, if your kid was really struggling to tie their shoes and it was maybe the first hundred times that they’d attempted to try to tie their shoes, you’re not going to sit there and say, “What’s wrong with you? Why haven’t you figured this out already?” And yet we do that to ourselves all day. We’re like, “I’ve already done three podcasts. Why can’t I do this perfectly yet?” You know what I mean? The inner critic and the inner expectation is so severe for a lot of high achieving people. And then you have to see, “How is it manifesting in my relationships too? How am I setting expectations with my clients, my colleagues, my friends?” So it’s both. 

Rebecca
So I had read something in a newspaper here in Canada that was saying that you need seven types of rest to get over burnout. Have you seen that? Like you need spiritual rest, you need… is that just someone’s, like, gimmicky thing or is that actually a thing in burnout? 

Emilie
I get a little exhausted by things like that. 

Rebecca
Ok. 

Natalie
That’s a good use of that word. 

Emilie
Yeah, I do. I sat in a fertility doctor’s office, like, a month ago. And she said basically to me, like, “Everything looks normal.” Blood work, et cetera, all the things I’ve been trying to figure out. She said, so maybe it’s just, like, self-care? And I looked her in the eyes and I said, “I’ll add that to my to-do list. Thank you.” You know what I mean? Because if rest is just another set of lists that we need to put in somewhere, like our family… Asana or whatever task management system families are now using, which is a big story in The New York Times. I’m like, “Oh my God, what’s wrong with us? As a society, truly, what is going on here?” 

Because look, rest certainly looks different for different people. I will acknowledge that. I like to just simplify it to active rest or passive rest, right? There’s a great Jewish saying that if you work with your head, you should Sabbath with your hands. You should rest with your hands, right? And if you work with your hands, you should Sabbath with your head. So my builder husband should read a book on the weekends and I should garden on the weekends because I’m a knowledge worker. So I like to think of, like, active rest: walking, hiking, moving, building, making, singing, playing music, learning a new skill, versus passive rest: hitting the couch, you know, reading a book, yes, even watching some Netflix (even though I don’t feel very good after I watch a lot of them). You know what I mean? Like, rest looks different for different people, but let’s keep it simple, people. Ain’t nobody got time for seven bullet-pointed lists of how to rest properly. 

Rebecca
Yeah. 

Emilie
Because the perfectionistic people like myself will just fail again to meet our own expectations of rest. 

Rebecca
Ok, that’s really nice, because I read that, then I was like, “Oh, where am I going to write this? All the types of rest I need.” I was like, “I need a longer list somewhere, and then I’ve got to make sure I’m hitting them all.” So yeah, just some passive rest. That’s probably what I need. Or no — I need the active rest, because I’m a head person, so I need active rest with my hands. 

Emilie
Work with your hands. There’s real science behind the hand-brain connection. When I was really grieving my pregnancy losses, weirdly I started to really take on… like, I have a lawn that we clearly do not care about here in Denver, Colorado. We’re trying to let it die so we can xeriscape it after we, you know, renovate the whole fucking house. So (and pardon my French) but all of a sudden I got very busy in the garden. I was like, “You know what? I’m going to weed, and then I’m going to learn how to sow, like S-O-W, sow some grass seeds, and I’m going to water it every day.” And I got a lot of, like, therapeutic satisfaction from the physical act of making something better. And there’s really good neuroscience to back that up, that if you can use your hands, you put in a couple hours or 45 minutes of weeding, and you can physically see you’ve made something better. And that is deeply satisfying for the exhausted knowledge worker. 

So even though my default habit is to just scroll on Instagram endlessly, right, that doesn’t make me feel better. Like, putting my phone down, going outside, and weeding (even though that is labour in a way, right?) makes me feel a lot better. So there’s an active mindfulness and just awareness that we need to bring to our day-to-day because this world we live in will never encourage you to bring mindfulness. Like, we live in a society that profits off our mindlessness. Just buy this and you’ll feel better, right? Just go here. Take a vacation and you’ll feel better. You know, like, travel halfway across the world to feel rest. And it’s so much more accessible than that. But we live in a consumer society. 

You know, we’re sort of training the mindfulness out of people. And every time I spend hours on Instagram, people are profiting from that. So it’s sort of like this is where I take a deep sigh, because I come back to the systemic nature of our burnout culture — it’s not talked about often enough. And so I hope we can advocate both for ourselves and a more sane world. Because it would be nice to live in a world that actually valued rest. 

Natalie
That’s so lovely to hear you frame it that way because it’s funny — like, we’ve talked on this podcast many different times about my love of cooking. And in fact, so much so that we ended up crafting, like, a cookbook that’s actually related to the podcast. And we just spoke about it on another podcast where… she was our host, Dr. Sarah Duignan, she was talking about the playfulness of our recipes. And I’d never heard my cooking described the way, and then Rebecca talked about it. She’s like, “Yeah, no — you like to experiment in there,” and I’m realizing that’s a form of rest for me. It wasn’t so restful writing a cookbook, but it was restful being in the kitchen making the recipe even though it’s quite active, the doing of it — but, like, it’s not knowledge work as you’ve described it. And it hits on so many of the components of rest without taking a nap which I think I’ve been limiting myself to thinking about, like, a very binary experience of, you know, “This is burnout, therefore this must be healing.” 

Emilie
Natalie, I want to ask you about that, if I may. 

Natalie
Yeah. 

Emilie
What is different about playful, restful creation in the kitchen versus the same act of cooking dinner that feels stressful? 

Natalie
Well, I don’t generally feel stressed out cooking dinner because I make everybody go away. 

Emilie
Ok, that’s key. 

Natalie
Yeah, I think that is part of it. Like, I don’t actually welcome my family into the kitchen when I’m actually in the mode of cooking dinner. I call everybody at the point when I’m sort of ready to, like, plate things. But up until that point, that’s been, like, my solo time in my head. So does that kind of make sense? 

Emilie
Yeah, that’s what I’m getting at because it’s, like, agency, right? You’re not entertaining. Are you maybe an introvert, would you say? 

Natalie
I don’t think — I used to think I wasn’t. I think I’ve come to some awareness that I am more than I understood. 

Emilie
Perhaps you enjoy the solitude of doing your own thing, creating your own thing without an audience, without an interruption. Do you like to be rushed when you’re cooking a meal? 

Natalie
No. 

Emilie
Right. It’s like having some headroom in your schedule, right? So I think just, like, the act of cooking dinner itself does not necessarily equate to rest, but how you’re cooking dinner is, you know, a meditative approach to cooking dinner. So I think it’s a good reminder that you can take the same action and experience it in different ways. It can be work or it can be rest. It’s how you do it. 

Natalie
Oh, I like that. 

Rebecca
Because when we’re at the farm, Nat, and we’re cooking together, sometimes when our three families come together, it’s no longer soothing for you. 

Natalie
Yeah. 

Rebecca
You’re now managing us. But when you’re on your own and you’re like, “Ok, you know what? I’ll just make this sauce.” And then I think then you can kind of go inside, right, and then it’s fun for you. 

Natalie
I think it is. Yeah. 

Rebecca
Yeah, that’s good to sort of clock how this experience needs to be for it to be restful. So not just to say, “Cooking is always fun or restful,” but it… 

Emilie
It’s tricky, right? Because that’s how hard it is to identify our stress triggers. And at the same point, you know, going to lie down and read a book can maybe also be a stressful experience if you’ve got a really tough conversation you have to have half an hour later whirring through your brain, right? So the action is not what begets stress or rest. There’s more to it, and we have to identify the triggers that are contributing to our stress — or in your case, what absence of those triggers, like not having people running around in the kitchen. You know, that’s the absence of stress triggers that makes cooking dinner restful. It’s such an individual experience. That’s part of the reason why burnout is on you. At the end of the day, every doctor you talk to is going to say, “You have to figure out your stress triggers. You have to figure out what boundaries you need, because no one can set those boundaries for you.” And I like to say, “Yes, and we should probably live in a world where stress was, like, maybe doled out a little more equitably along with wealth and opportunity.” But that’s a whole other conversation, right? 

Natalie
Ok, so I’m hearing also in there the community part of all that work, right? I mean, it isn’t just me solo in the kitchen. It’s good for me to think about how you’re talking about this because I like people around because I want people to enjoy my food. So to sort of make centred that metaphor, that thinking here, who are the people that sort of have healed you in your kitchen of sorts? Who are part of the community of your burnout to self-care pipeline? 

Emilie
I think what’s been interesting is everybody wants to be understood. I am no exception. I think the best relationships in my life are the relationships in which I can show up as myself 100% of the time, right, and feel like even if this person (my husband or my good friend Janelle comes to mind) — even if they’re not experiencing exactly what I’m experiencing, I know that they’re going to validate my experience. They’re going to seek to understand my experience with empathy. They’re not going to judge my experience or try to paint a rosier picture of my experience and send it back to me, right? So that deep feeling of being understood for who you are and for whatever you’re navigating is so key. 

And for folks who want to read a lot more about this, first of all, everything in Brené Brown’s catalogue, feel free to read those — those are helpful. But I recently read The Good Life by Marc Schulz and Robert Waldinger. It’s about the world’s longest study on happiness, and the answer to The Good Life is relationships — not quantity, quality, right? The relationships where you can show up as your full self. So, for instance, this year I’m 10 years into my business. Things look great on Instagram. Things look awesome on my podcast. You know, like, so many wonderful things that I’ve experienced in the past decade I’m very proud of. And I can go to my friend Janelle, who’s a consultant, who’s run her own business, who any day now is about to deliver her second child. She’s done the mom thing plus the business owner thing. And I can say, “Wow, I’m having a really tough time. I have to make some really horribly difficult decisions around my business that will impact people who I care about.” And she can understand what I’m going through. And so hopefully we’re lucky enough, if we are married or partnered people, to have that ability to level with our partners — you know, not always, but most of the time. And the same thing goes for my husband. I can say to him, you know, “I hate renovating houses. We’re never doing this again. And also, maybe I just need to sleep and we can talk more about it in two days.” And two days later, I’ll be really enthusiastic about it. So, you know, people who are going to be there for you to celebrate your wins and hold your hand, or just be a shoulder to cry on during those low points, because we all are navigating both. Everybody is on a roller coaster, and it’s not that simple. Like, you could be really crushing it in one arena of life and really struggling in another. And to have people who can hold space for you is just so valuable. 

And so, I don’t know. I have this theory in my book that I call mirror theory. And I like to think that every person in your life is kind of like a mirror who you stand in front of and you let yourself be seen. And some of those mirrors are really nice looking mirrors — like, I’ve had the same vertical mirror since college because I’m like, “Ooh, that’s a good mirror.” You know, like, “I look good in that mirror. I’m going to keep that one.” And then some of our people in our lives are funhouse mirrors and they will reflect back to you a warped version of who you are. 

Natalie
Yeah. Oh my gosh. 

Emilie
Right? And so my husband, he will reflect back to me the most courageous, unflappable, fierce version of who I can be. And he’s like, “Of course you’ve got this. Of course you can do that.” And you’re like, “Damn, that is awesome.” Like, I look good in his eyes, you know, and I need to hear that because he gives me courage to take risks. My loving father is a lawyer who’s been trained his whole life to look out for risks, to poke holes in every plan. So if I bring my business plan to him and say, “Hey, Dad, I’m going to quit my job at 26, my really cushy, stable job to start this business called Bossed Up,” he’ll go, “What now?” Like, “Are you sure you want to do that?” And guess whose job it is to stop standing in front of those mirrors? Mine. 

And so there’s this agency, this self-responsibility, right, for going to the people in your life for what you need when you need it. I’m telling this to myself as much as anyone. I have to stop expecting my father to straighten himself out. Like, I will take to him the plans that I want torn apart, and I will love him and accept him for that skill set that he brings to the table. I’m not going to expect him to iron his, you know, funhouse mirror out. So the quality of those mirrors in your life in terms of the people you surround yourself with is not an easy road. You’re better off having nobody in your life than having nothing but funhouse mirrors in your life, truly. 

Rebecca
One of our good friends, is she where we got that line, “Know your people?” 

Natalie
Yeah. 

Rebecca
Such a simple line, but — “Know your people.” 

Natalie
Like, stop being surprised by folks too, right? Like, recognize what’s going to come in this moment. 

Emilie
Yeah. I love that. 

Natalie
Which maybe there’s still got to be space for some folks to make change over time — but that’s, like, relationship over time. But there is just, “Know your people.” 

Emilie
Well, there’s risks involved, right? It’s like a willingness to take risks, to let yourself really be seen, and then to not try to force a response from people, but to really see how people respond and, like, pay attention to if that is a response you want to tolerate and allow in your life. But interestingly, Marc Schulz and Robert Waldinger would say your brain and body benefit from you saying hi to the mailman and talking to your neighbours and going to a café and striking up conversation on public transit, right? Like, human relationships can improve your life even if they’re not the deepest of relationships. So if you have really deep relationships with people who do not add value to your life, like, you’re better off going to a coffee shop and chatting it up with a stranger. Like, that will boost your mood, your serotonin, and your physical well-being more than hoping and waiting and holding out for people who are close to you to really transform. 

Natalie
I’m going to be thinking about that as I make dinner tonight. 

Emilie
Yeah. I mean, it’s tricky, right? And I always say to my introverted friends — because I’m an extrovert, I love people. I love raising a city boy, as I call my kid, a city kid. Because he can, like, find delight in talking to strangers and most of the time strangers are delighted in talking to him. But I see that happening less and less in our more rural communities. My in-laws live on a farm and they would consider themselves a very tight-knit community — and they are, but even in tight-knit communities, like, in public spaces, I think there’s sometimes less friendliness to someone you don’t recognize. So I don’t know. I mean, we’re all tribal — you know, cave men and women, and cave people at the end of the day. So we have to understand and overcome our own innate biases towards people who look and remind us of us. But I do think there’s something really magical in allowing people, including strangers, to surprise you and hopefully delight you. 

Natalie
I’m ready to be delighted. Bring it. 

Emilie
I’m feeling delighted right now. I know. I’m surprised and delighted about how this conversation has gone. So thank you both. 

Natalie
Yeah, this is lovely. I guess we just need to know if we’re going to reframe the word burnout. Is it ever useful? 

Emilie
Absolutely. I think it’s really helpful when folks know that they can put a name to the chronic stress that they’re navigating because often that which cannot be named cannot be tamed, right? So we have to have a vernacular to say, “Ok, I think I’m burnt out.” Don’t expect to go to the doctors and get a prescription for burnout, because that’s not going to happen. You cannot be diagnosed with burnout. But if you are experiencing chronic stress and all of the elements that we just talked about, audit your life for the root causes of chronic stress in your life. And then begins the hard work, the real work, of making the changes you need to make to make your own health and wellbeing a priority. And to your point, you don’t need to go it alone. You don’t need to do this alone. So wherever you seek out community support and allyship to do that hard, iterative trial and error-like work in your own life, no one’s going to do that for you. So I do like having burnout as a way to name that you can no longer sustain the way things are going. 

Rebecca
Ok, so Nat, both of us, we’re going to go home (or we are home, never mind) and we’re going to audit our lives. 

Natalie
Yeah. 

Rebecca
I like that. And see what iteration comes next. 

Emilie
I like to think of it as like a realignment. What do I need to realign in my life, in my work? And what can I control and what can’t I control and might need to radically accept? 

Natalie
That’ll be… 

Rebecca
Guys, can you hear Violet? Violet just started playing the piano. I was like, “What is that?” 

Emilie
I was like, “Are they playing me off stage here? Are these the Oscars?” What’s happening? 

Rebecca
Yeah. 

Natalie
That would be awesome if we had somebody walk across the screen with, like, a little cane. 

Emilie
I love it. 

Rebecca
What a great conversation. You’re so dynamic and thoughtful about this. 

Emilie
Thank you. 

Rebecca
Maybe because burnout isn’t fun, it doesn’t seem like a fun thing to talk about, but you made it fun. You’re fun. 

Emilie
Burnout’s not fun, but I like to think I’m fun. I like that we’ve come back to me being likeable. Thank you for that. Because I started off saying, like, “Oh, I’m not likeable.” So great, I’m glad to hear it. This was such a joy. 

Rebecca
Definitely likeable, and I hear that struggle of the impassioned woman who is feeling like they’re too big. I’ve been told that many times — too big. And I hate that. 

Emilie
Ugh, yeah, don’t let that sink in. Don’t let that message sink in under the skin because then we need to let that just roll off us — like, you know? 

Rebecca
I know, we do, yup. 

Natalie
Wrong mirror.