Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Sheep Get Sheered podcast.
I'm your host Austin Creed.
My friends, I think we need to revisit a couple topics from before and mix in with a couple
new topics for today.
Reason I say that out the gate is because, have any of you ever been burned out?
I'm in lead with that question.
Y'all ever been burned out before?
Gone through this grind in and grinding and then you're just not seeing the results you
want to see and you keep pushing, you keep trying new things, you keep going up the bat,
you keep swinging, keep getting strikes, you keep striking out, but you keep getting back
up to the plate.
Is that something familiar to anybody?
Burnout effects is all from time to time.
Some of us more than others.
And that's why I think we need to talk about it today.
The first time I'll start with myself before I open up the floor for you to share your
comments in the comments below.
But the biggest burnout I've ever experienced was when I was in the military and day in
and day out, I go to what we call the weapon storage area, the WSA.
We go in there every morning, exactly about 6 30 to get in there by seven.
And we usually work to about seven again.
We usually worked about 12 hour days.
10 12 hours was pretty standard for us.
And I'm not saying that to say boo boo.
I'm saying it because when you're doing something, especially something new or something unfamiliar,
something you're not really good at, and you haven't found a way to enjoy or don't fully
enjoy yet, it can be absolutely exhausting to the point where you push and you push and
you push and then it's almost like your car breaks down when you don't take care of it.
You start to break down.
I've experienced that and frankly, you know, my friends, I like to mix in a little bit of
vulnerability here and there.
So get ready for it.
If you think this is weak, you're more than welcome to skip fast forward on the next minute
and a half.
But I'm an experienced as a burnout myself, quite frankly, and it's taking a toll on my
physical health.
And despite the fact that I go to the gym every day, despite the fact that I eat, I try
to eat as healthy as seemingly possible.
In fact, I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to nutrition.
I experience it more often than I like to admit.
And so my friends, I want to open the floor up to you.
Now I want you to tell me, how have you dealt with burnout?
Maybe maybe it wouldn't just help me in my house, someone else who listens to the show,
though they're dealing with burnout or they're dealing with just they're not low in their
life right now.
And they're going to go on through the motions and they're really actively making an effort.
I'm not talking about the people who fake making an effort.
Those people know that that's some fake garbage.
Now I'm talking about people who actually are trying in their trying and they're trying
and it's just not panning out the way they want and they're actively doing they're trying
to they're trying new things.
They're trying new avenues.
They're trying everything they can and it's just not connecting up the way they envisioned
time after time after time.
And this is what can lead to burnout.
And my friends, we need to discuss this because as men in this space, we like to talk about
self improvement.
We really had to talk about developing ourselves into the best we can become right.
So here's the thing.
We like to talk about the destinations that we're all shooting for.
Well, we don't talk about the journey itself.
Well, my best friends.
He gave me a quote a couple of weeks ago that's just stuck right free in my head ever since
he said it.
He said that there was one of two ways that a great story always began according to I
think he said it was.
It wasn't T.S. Elliot, who was it?
It's going to come to me later.
I'll come.
Tolstoy.
It was Tolstoy.
There we go.
It was Tolstoy who said that a great story begins one of two ways.
One was a hero goes on a journey or to a stranger comes to town.
And ever since I heard that, I thought to myself, wait a minute, there's something to
be extrapolated from this.
And then we talked yesterday.
Great show if you missed it about honoring our ancestors about pushing past what is normal,
pushing past our own ambition to harness the energy of past generations to say, you know,
what, my grandparents, parents, great grandparents, etc.
They sacrificed so that I could be here and I owe them a debt for pushing themselves for
sacrificing and paying it forward.
All this to say, we need to discuss burnout and how to avoid it, because on our path to
become the best on our path to get the girls we want to own the car we want to own the
house we want to live in the town we want to have the lifestyle that we want to have.
It's easy to just talk about the oh, this is what I want.
And this time I'm going to get it.
What about the day to day the month to month the year to year?
Where's that conversation?
I don't hear it at a whole lot.
This is where burnout comes in.
This is where people start to experience really tough adversity.
And the more you try to climb the wall and you keep falling, you keep scraping bumping,
you know, whatever.
It's so hard to just keep going.
Our man wants to find insanity as trying the same thing over and over again and expecting
a different result.
I would care to say that that is not insanity per se, because there's a fine line between
insanity and perseverance.
Now if you're trying the same thing over and over again and you're not adjusting, you're
not adapting, you are not saying, okay, this didn't work.
Let's try that.
This didn't work.
I'm going to tweak it a little bit and do this.
That is what must be done.
That's what I'm actively doing.
Here's the problem, though.
Day in and day out, we can only suffer so much rejection, only so much defeat before
it gets start to get to us.
It could start to make us think that we are the failures.
We are the ones who are not enough.
We are the ones.
It's not necessarily what we are doing, but then it becomes us, not what we're doing,
but us.
We're not able to distinguish between, okay, this is the problem with my approach, with
my pitch, with my way I am trying to do, but I've set my mind to do.
Problem is, if you experience consistent rejection, consistent pushback, consistent disappointment,
then you are going to unfortunately have to step back and say, okay, am I the issue or
is it my approach?
Is it something I am doing or is it me?
Burnout can often lead us to not enjoy the things that we once enjoyed and it can lead
us into almost a state of depression, anxiety, and it can lead us to not be able to be as
prolific as we would like to be into our performance will suffer.
My friends, when I was a kid, my parents, God bless them had a saying that became, I
don't know, something that I unfortunately realized wasn't exclusive to them.
And it was this idea of do as I say, not do as I do.
And I try actively not to do that on this show.
I don't sit here and tell you the loyal audience, yes, you listening to the show, I don't tell
you to do something I myself am not actively working towards doing, practicing or already
doing.
Reason being, there are so many hypocrites out there.
So many people who talk for hours about things that they have tons of opinions about, but
no experience, no theories, just hot air.
And my friends, the reason I bring this up about burnout is because I've suffered it.
I actively gone through it and arguably I am right now.
And the question is, how have you gotten through with this?
How have you managed to stay on the path you've set for yourself without compromising your
goals without giving up and without losing your vision, because your vision is what is
leading you down that path?
It's easier to turn out the noise that it is to keep your vision focused.
It's super hard to not get distracted.
It's very difficult to not to stay focused and not lose perspective.
A lot of times we can be stuck with our so far with our own heads that it's difficult
for us to know what is up, what's down, what's left, what's right, what's foul, what's fair.
And I'm here to tell you, my friends, you need to remember who you are.
That's one of my favorite scenes from any Disney movie ever.
I'll tell you right now, one of my favorite scenes from any Disney movie of all time is
from The Lion King when Simba is getting, you know, the Yoda treatment from Rafiki where
he's asking him weird questions, giving him insightful answers and messing with him.
And then he encounters his dead father, Mufasa in the clouds, and he's talking to him and
Mufasa says to him, remember who you are.
And that's checks a chord with it.
And that goes my father is a king, not because I'm some great man.
It was Wilbur William, it was William Shakespeare who said, I mean, that there was that one
there are several ways to encounter greatness.
Some achieve greatness, some are born great, and others have greatness thrust upon them.
In that situation, in the example of the Lion King, Simba had glory, I had the greatness
thrust upon him.
But he also he was born great.
He was a man who had greatness both thrust upon him, had to achieve greatness.
He had to go through all three, a lot of people, they try to get one.
And the reason I bring this up is not for you to go watch the movie again.
The reason I break it up is because we must remember who we are, who we want to become
to keep us grounded, to keep us saying, this is why I'm continuing to risk the rejection.
This is why I'm continuing to put myself on the limb to not give up to persevere, no matter
how hard, how frigid, how humid, how barren the climate is, I will not give up, I will
not give in, and I will achieve the goal that I have set for myself when I shall claim my
birthright, which is the riches, the lifestyle and the people that I wish to have, not going
to be free.
Never you never want anything free.
I hate the word free and I'll tell you why because it's disingenuous.
If I say here and tell you, hey, listen to this show and then as soon as you listen to
it, you'll be you know, this free show and never have burnt out again.
If anybody's read the 48 Laws of Power, Robert Green says the following in Law 40.
He says one must despise the free lunch because it is either a trap or it is trash.
You're either picking up somebody else's trash or falling for somebody else's trap.
And my friends, there are a lot of traps out here.
Lot of unfortunate circumstances, individuals, events that we oftentimes don't have control
over.
But there is one thing we will always key word always have control over and that is
how we react to the situations that come our way.
We always have control over how we react.
May not seem like in that moment, you got to pull yourself away from the emotion away
from the stress and away from all the fog that has been seeping into the situation into
your mind.
And that is how you avoid burnout.
That is how you avoid adversity becoming something that destroys you.
The flame of ambition burns bright in many of us.
But it is important that that flame of ambition is a signal fire and not something that singes
us and burns us.
Avoid burnout.
You taking care of yourself.
Go to the gym, very therapeutic for you to throw around some weights and take care of
yourself.
Number two, if you are smoking or drinking too much, you got to knock that off.
Stop it.
Go 30 days with none.
And if you can't do it, that means you're addicted.
That means you got to do something about it.
My friends, that's only two of the things that I have personally been doing to try to
avoid and curtail this burnout that I am been personally feeling over the last couple days.
This might work for you and it might not.
But it is important for us as men, us as brothers in mind and in thought and in spirit for us
to understand that we are not alone in this fight and that we need to bring up these types
of topics more often because then it helps us know that we're not alone and that there
are different alternatives to what we are currently trying to overcome the adversity
and not be singed by the flame of ambition.
The flame of ambition is meant to guide us, not burn us.
My friends, let me know in the comments below.
Let me know how have you been burned out before and how have you gotten through it?
How would you avoid burning yourself out if you've experienced it before and now you're
actively trying to prevent yourself from being in that place?
How have you done it?
Might help me, might help anybody, somebody else who listens to the show who wants to hear
this, who needs to hear this because they themselves are going through a hard time.
My friends, you let me know below.
Anything you want to talk about, you're more welcome to share it.
This is your space.
I don't delete comments, even the ones I find very distasteful, I don't delete them.
We are here to exchange notes.
We are here to get to the finish line together to claim our birthright.
My friends, you take care of yourselves.
Avoid the burnout to get back on the front lines, fight your way to the freedom that you
are trying to actively earn.
Take care.
I'm out of here.
Thanks.