Pay yourself better emotions

burnout founder burnout healing recovery Feb 12, 2020
 

Full Transcript:

Hi there. I'm John Wang from founder burnout.

Today, I want you to imagine for me, if you will, that you have a star employee, this employee goes not just the extra mile, the extra 20, 30, 40 miles.

He wants to wake up every morning at 6am 6am he wants to go to bed every night like 1am. And all he wants to do is help your business make more money.

This guy is so motivated that even when he's not working, which is very rare, because he's almost always working, right. He's almost always taking phone calls, scheduling meetings, you know, you know, planning out sales calls, and even when he's not working, even when he's at dinner with his family, right, even when he's hanging out with his friends, he's thinking about how to make your business more money.

Not only that, but in his mind, he gives himself so much guilt, that whenever he's not doing something that he deems to be the most productive for your business, he beats himself up about it. Now, as you picture this star employee, let me ask you a question.

How would you treat him?

How would you talk to this guy?

You know, when you see him in the morning, and he's cranking so hard at doing what he does, when he tells you, "Hey listen, boss, I'm totally fine with ditching my family at home. I'm totally fine with moving my life across the country. I'm totally fine with missing my family time missing my daughter's recitals. I'm totally fine with missing my gym workouts... if all I can do is keep making your business more money."

How would you talk to him? I'm guessing you wouldn't be very critical of him, right?

You probably would show a lot of love.

You might be even say, "hey, listen, you're working really, really hard. I don't want you to No crash, I want you to take some time off. I want you to make sure you're taking care of yourself, because clearly you're taking care of my business here."

 

Now, you probably know where this is going. Because you're a smart guy. You probably know who exactly I'm talking about, because I know that you have somebody like that in your business right now, don't you?

And I'll bet that employees currently watching this video right now. That's right. I'm talking about you know, why do we run into this situation? Because Well, take a look at that employee here. Let me ask you a question. If you were paying that employee as if you are that employee, how would you pay this employee? Will you pay him? Well, of course, you want to keep him right you want to keep him operation. You want to keep them in the business.

You want to do whatever it takes to make sure that he doesn't go and join somebody else or god forbid crash your business loses such an amazing talent. Would you payment positive or negative emotions? Now I know this is a strange thought to think about. But think of it this way.

You do pay yourself emotions all the time.

And what I mean by emotions Well, sometimes you yourself negative emotions, negative emotions like guilt, negative emotions like shame, negative emotions like blame or fear.

As a matter of fact, I'll bet that sometimes when you think of emotions, like fear, you might even think of them as motivating.

You might even think of them as that's what got you started. That's what got you hustling into the mode that got you up at five o'clock in the morning or up until four o'clock in the morning, still cranking that extra time to get work done. And I get that I've been there.

You know, when I, a few years ago, when I was, you know, still working on building up my business, one of the biggest things that I hit was very, very serious burnout. I got ulcers, I became hospitalized. It was rough. And while I was going through that, all I could think about was how much time I'm taking away from the work that I was doing.

And I started getting these really dark thoughts and I'll be driving to work and I will fantasized about being in a car crash, I know, this is this is sick, this gets dark, because I just couldn't take the stress anymore. And then I'll beat myself up for feeling guilt.

So I will feel guilt about feeling guilt. And I'll create this guilt cycle. And it wasn't like I didn't know about meditation. It wasn't like I didn't know about self care or anything like that. But I just realized that, well, if I take self care that I'm taking time away from my work with my business, and that's not a great habit.

So I was paying myself a lot of negative emotions, hoping to use negative emotions to motivate us to motivate myself, right? It's kind of like paying ourselves money to motivate ourselves, but we pay ourselves in emotion. So I'm going to make a suggestion. If you're gonna be paying yourself emotions anyway.

Why not pay yourself some positive emotions? Okay, so what is paying yourself positive emotions look like? Well emotions like joy, emotions, like gratitude. Right? rewarding them Like when something goes right, like, even if they're not amazing when even like a small victory, are you letting yourself celebrate those?

Are you giving yourself the recognition that you deserve for it? Where you kind of going? Okay, well, that's done. Yeah, well, but what's the next one? How long are you taking? How much time would it take for you to pay yourself a little positivity in that moment? Are you scheduling these things in?

You know, we pay our employees once every two weeks, they get a paycheck, right? Are you scheduling that paycheck, that positive motion paycheck into your life? Are you scheduling that structure where you wake up in the morning, you start your morning with gratitude, realizing that what you're doing is paying that employee inside of you, right?

You are the most important employee in your business. You are the star employee in your business right now. Are you paying yourself well enough? Because guess what happens when you stop? Well, you start getting, you know, a little burnt out, you start feeling a decrease in motivator You start feeling more and more resistance and even resentment. If you're in partnership with somebody else creating this business, you might create more friction with this person.

The funny thing about this is that little internal employee that we have with run the show, often hundred come out of sabotage your business, we want to avoid that. So what are some positive structures you can start employing because I always say structures over stories, right?

One, scheduling a morning meeting with yourself where all you do is pay yourself positive emotions.

Look back on what has been a win in the last day. And give yourself a pat on the back for it, even have a small piece of gratitude to yourself and give yourself, or self compassion.

Whenever you're feeling like something didn't go right. Take a moment and just say, you know what, I accept this, I forgive myself. I'm going to let it go. I can do better. I will work on the techniques or whatever it takes to make that better work.

But in the meantime, I'm not going to beat myself up for it. Except that I did my best in the moment, even if you're feeling like I could have done better, great in that moment, your energy may have been needed elsewhere. So forgive yourself for that.

Other emotions is throughout your day, are you checking in with yourself about how you feel? Do you need, for example, a little more joy in your life?

Do you need more connection? Are you scheduling those things in write every day, you should be scheduling it at least one meeting with somebody else. Like a personal relationship, someone in a family where you're just connected person to person, not about work, not about business.

Give yourself that intention that that moment of recognition. Are you are you going into the work reminding yourself of the values you get from this? When you're about to start any task? Ask yourself, what's my intention here? What is the value what's the highest value that I'm fulfilling here? is a connection is an impact is a creation is something deep inside it gives you joy? Right?

And I'm not saying everything has to be you know all love and happiness you know what i do by I do believe that hard work is necessary grit exists for a reason, but it should be balanced.

So every time you pay yourself that grit something that you gotta like kind of like go are all right, why just gotta like deal with this. Make sure that you're balancing it by another act that is in your high value that is in something that you believe in and gives you a sense of joy and creating. Very, very important.

Most importantly, again, coming back to those two words, self compassion, pay yourself and positive emotions structure those paychecks in there regularly. I say three times a day.

First thing when you wake up, right, one time in the midpoint your day, usually early afternoon where our energy levels at lowest point. And then sometime the evening time we're about to close up work and it's important, draw some boundaries there close up work. You're not sure how to draw boundaries with your business. 

 

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