In this episode, Nick talks with Susan Landers about the experience of working in a high-stress, critical role in healthcare and battling burnout. 

About Susan Landers

Susan was a neonatologist for 34 years while also raising three children. She says she gave all she had to medicine and motherhood. For most of her career, she kept burnout at bay, but near the end of her career, the excessive work hours, the constant stress, and the complex ethical cases began to weigh heavily on her.  She suffered through burnout, and afterward, it took nearly two years of self-care, cutting back hours, and a practice change to heal.

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Your Friends at “The Mindset & Self-Mastery Show”

00:00:08:12 – 00:00:35:16

Nick McGowan

Hello and welcome to The Mindset and Self-mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan. And on this show, my guests and I unpack the stories that shape us and the lives that we lead on our path to self-mastery. Today on the show, we have Susan Landers. Susan was a nanny. Challenges for 34 years while also raising three children. She said she gave all she had to medicine and motherhood and for the most part of her career, she kept burnout at bay.

00:00:35:16 – 00:00:54:28

Nick McGowan

But near the end of her career, the excessive work hours, constant stress and complex ethical cases began to really weigh heavily on her. She suffered through burnout, and afterwards it took her nearly two years of self-care, cutting back hours and a practice change to heal. So let’s not wait any longer. Let the games begin.

00:00:59:18 – 00:01:02:03

Nick McGowan

Hey, Susan, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?

00:01:02:19 – 00:01:06:01

Susan Landers

Oh, I’m good, Nick. Thanks. Thanks for having me.

00:01:06:20 – 00:01:26:22

Nick McGowan

Absolutely. I appreciate your reaching out to as soon as your information came through and I saw that you wanted to talk about a subject I think a lot of people get into, but maybe don’t really think about it too much. Is that burnout? And also the health care side of burnout, I was saying right before we we hit record here that I’ve got a good friend of mine who was in the health care industry and there’s actually no longer in health care.

00:01:27:02 – 00:01:37:15

Nick McGowan

And part of the reason was for the burnout. So, Susan, again, thank you for being on the show. Why don’t you kick us off? Tell us who you are, what you do for a living. And one thing that most people don’t know about you.

00:01:38:13 – 00:02:06:00

Susan Landers

Well, I am retired. I used to be a neonatal intensive pediatric specialist who takes care of critically ill newborns and premature infants in the nick. You and I did that for 34 years and I loved it. And I practiced in academic medicine for a while. I practiced in private practice. I worked in nationalized medicine with the American Academy of Pediatrics.

00:02:06:16 – 00:02:46:06

Susan Landers

My husband is also a physician, so our whole lives were wrapped around medicine. I also raised three children, and they’re all grown now. They’re all young adults. What I’m doing now after retirement is I have written a book and I am talking to younger people about particularly working mothers, about working mother career burnout. I went through Working Mother Burnout in my forties after the birth of my third child, and then I went through physician burnout again when I was 62.

00:02:46:24 – 00:03:30:21

Susan Landers

Before I retired, it was the reason I retired early, actually. So I enjoy telling stories to younger people, younger professionals, especially career moms, because they are so hard on themselves and they’re juggling so many different things right now. The dads are too, but I think the moms are carrying it a bit heavier and they really are struggling to make it all work and to feel like they can be an okay mother when in fact they’re probably doing a great job, having a job, having a family, having a marriage, keeping it all together.

00:03:30:21 – 00:03:53:05

Susan Landers

It’s it’s really no easy feat. The way women go at it is a little bit of a problem. We want to be super moms. And I was like that when I was a young doctor and I got married and I had children. I was going to be supermom and I was going to read all the books and and do everything perfect with parenting.

00:03:53:05 – 00:04:12:15

Susan Landers

And I found out that it was not easy and I didn’t know everything. I had a lot of friends who were in the same position. We got married and had babies at the same time. And so I was able to have a, you know, a good support system. And we helped each other through learning how to be working mothers.

00:04:13:12 – 00:04:41:28

Susan Landers

I think the pandemic really hurt a lot of working parents. They were isolated. They were at home with kids, and some of the environments were very chaotic to hear them talk. And it made all the different jobs that they have to do seems so much more work. It. They couldn’t send the kids to school. They didn’t have childcare.

00:04:42:10 – 00:04:50:19

Susan Landers

They weren’t going to the office to get a breather from their home life. And so everything sort of snowballed in the pandemic.

00:04:51:00 – 00:05:08:29

Nick McGowan

Not just for people that have kids, but everybody kind of experienced some sort of effect like that. But I would imagine it’s got to be pretty worse for people that have kids. I know there are people that are on my teams that I talk to where I can see a little body run by them in the background or something that goes on.

00:05:09:06 – 00:05:24:24

Nick McGowan

And that’s just part of how it is at this point. Now, you’ve touched on a couple of different types of people, the people that are doctors that actually need to get out of their house and go to the hospital or whatever the facility is. And those people are in some ways able to get away from their kids, but then they have to figure out how do they do?

00:05:24:24 – 00:05:37:11

Nick McGowan

And, you know, all of that. Then they’re the people that are still working from home. Now, I talk to people that absolutely love working from home because they’ve gotten into the rhythm of it. But then there are other people that are like, I need to get out of here and.

00:05:37:11 – 00:05:38:01

Susan Landers

Everybody.

00:05:38:17 – 00:05:45:17

Nick McGowan

Away from me. Who do you find that you typically end up kind of working with? Which of those are the categories?

00:05:46:09 – 00:06:14:24

Susan Landers

Mostly the parents that try to leave home and go do their jobs somewhere else. My daughter is a pediatric ICU nurse. She’s a great example of the mom who has a career, has two kids at home. She and her husband are juggling schedules. He’s picking up his dropping off. He’s making dinner and she works a lot of overtime during the pandemic.

00:06:15:15 – 00:06:54:11

Susan Landers

And and she saw some COVID cases in children that were very upsetting, some children the same age as her kids. And that’s what you do when you’re a nurse or a doctor is it touches you mostly when you see a patient that’s a lot like someone in your family. And so being a nurse or a doctor, respiratory therapist and going into the hospital during the pandemic because you had to work, gave those people a sense of fulfillment and it was rewarding, but it was also scary and they were fearful in the early days.

00:06:54:11 – 00:07:24:15

Susan Landers

They didn’t want to catch the virus or bring it home to their family after the vaccines came out. And then there was all this politicization of getting the vaccine or not, and most nurses and doctors happen to think vaccines save lives. So there was this conflict not only about having to go to work, but dealing with people’s attitudes about health care, about vaccinations, about school being out.

00:07:24:25 – 00:07:54:09

Susan Landers

And so all of those stressors were there in addition to working the job or even to catch the virus. If a patient got to find that you. Is your family sick? How is your husband doing? Who’s paying for the childcare? Are lucky enough to have a kid in preschool and it just went on and on and on like that for folks who had to go into their workplace.

00:07:55:00 – 00:08:18:23

Susan Landers

I suppose working from home was somewhat of a respite for some people, but it’s not easy. I tell some moms who work from home and they were ready to pull their hair out because they couldn’t get away from their children. And it was noisy and it was chaotic. So I don’t think anybody had it easy during the last year.

00:08:18:25 – 00:08:34:08

Susan Landers

I think everybody was stressed, but in different ways. I had it easy. I was I was hanging out at home with my husband, you know, taking a walk. So I didn’t have any hardship. But that was because I wasn’t working anymore.

00:08:34:23 – 00:09:00:06

Nick McGowan

Sure. Yeah, I know. On a different side of that, there were people that had hardships within their relationships with their marriages, more with the company that they’re working with. I know obviously a lot of people were kind of shut out of work, the restaurant workers and people, all that sort that could no longer work. And then there were people that were used to going into an office, used to doing a daily routine, and that just completely changed.

00:09:00:19 – 00:09:26:04

Nick McGowan

And everybody had to figure out what that new normal is. Even I don’t even like saying the new normal sort of thing, because here we are, calendar year three and we’re still trying to figure out how does this all look? So the people that are going through the burnout and the people that have kind of gone through that stuff, what point do you think they get to to a point in their brain where they say, I have to actually do something about this, or are they not getting to that point and they’re almost getting suicidal with it?

00:09:26:23 – 00:09:58:24

Susan Landers

Well, there are different degrees of burnout among professionals and career folks, parents, young adults, middle aged adults. And it starts as bad moods. Depression is exhaustion, emotional overwhelm. And you can just have a bad day at work or a bad day working from home or a bad day in the ICU and feel those things. But burnout takes you further.

00:09:58:24 – 00:10:58:05

Susan Landers

It’s where you dread going to work when you are working. You’re cynical about it. You detach from your work and health care. It was scary how people felt detached and you and the full burnout syndrome is one that pushes you to a place where you think you’re no longer making a difference. That’s the real key. If you if you are no longer fulfilled in your work, if you’re not making a difference, if you feel like, what is the point of all this and you’re working ten or 12 hour days and you’re really trying hard, hopefully the people who are feeling these things physical exhaustion, emotional overwhelm, depersonalization, the detachment from their work, and finally lack

00:10:58:05 – 00:11:39:09

Susan Landers

of fulfillment. If they feel this, they need to pull back some space, create some place for themselves, whether it’s time off or outside of the house or talking to a friend. The point is it’s too much work, it’s too much stress and unmanaged stress from work. Burnout is a work related syndrome. Nick And it comes because we let the stress in our workplace get to us without managing it.

00:11:40:06 – 00:12:14:13

Susan Landers

Now, the way to recover from burnout, even while you’re still working, if you can’t make a space, if you can’t take some time off, is to take care of yourself, get the exercise you need, get the sleep that you need. Quit drinking alcohol so much. Talk to a friend. Really, those support people in your life. Do something that’s really wonderful, like simply play music.

00:12:14:13 – 00:12:45:03

Susan Landers

I started taking piano lessons and played Handel’s in a in a choir and a handbell choir and the music just took me away to some place else. And it was so heavenly that I felt I didn’t think about all my stress. I got psychotherapy when I was burned out. And I would like to say that people who are listening, who might be feeling symptoms of burnout, talk to somebody, not just their spouse, not just their best friend.

00:12:46:06 – 00:13:17:29

Susan Landers

Psychotherapy is really beneficial for folks who are going through burnout because there’s so many issues that that pile up. You create that that stress that hadn’t been managed properly. And some of us really need the help of that objective person who isn’t in the thick of it. Your spouse may recognize that you’re burnt out, your partner may recognize that, and it creates conflict.

00:13:17:29 – 00:13:44:17

Susan Landers

When doctors are surveyed about their burnout, they say more than half of it’s affecting my relationships. So they know they have burnout and they know it’s making things worse at home. So it’s not like they’re going to talk to their spouse to get better. Physicians are typically me. I can take care of myself kind of mentality. We we don’t show weakness.

00:13:44:17 – 00:14:11:06

Susan Landers

We are taught as interns and residents not to show weakness. We’re strong. We can back it up. We can work 24 hours, we can do whatever needs to be done. And then burnout. That’s the opposite of what you should do. What you should do, if you’re burnout is take some time, back up, look at the issues, take care of yourself, hobbies, music, exercise, rest.

00:14:11:26 – 00:14:41:16

Susan Landers

And those things are hard to do if you’re working 60 hours a week or if you’re if you’re working from home and your three kids are in the other room and you’re trying to get your job done and you don’t know what you’re your what they’re doing, are they online learning to fix and supper. And it’s just it’s just easy to imagine how job stress has overwhelmed so many people during the pandemic.

00:14:43:00 – 00:15:03:21

Nick McGowan

Yeah, there’s a lot of overwhelm still that people are still kind of trying to figure out what does this need to look like for them. And you touched on a couple major things that just tie in to kind of the blanket of depression. You know, where people start to pull back from things or maybe they’re working a little too much and that’s just they’re not processing through this stuff.

00:15:03:21 – 00:15:22:16

Nick McGowan

I know that there are times and I’ve been through depression. There are times when you just don’t want to do anything. And that even kind of goes along with fixing the problems. So taking that first step of being able to talk to somebody can sometimes be a giant step for somebody to say that I have a problem, especially if they’ve been taught that you’ve got to be a superhero.

00:15:22:28 – 00:15:31:06

Nick McGowan

So how do you talk to those people to help them get to the point where they can actually talk to somebody and put their superhero cape back?

00:15:31:27 – 00:16:12:23

Susan Landers

Yeah, well, that’s a great question. What you do is say, Hey, man, I’m noticing that you don’t seem like yourself and I’m here if you want to talk or hey, I, I noticed that you seem really stressed more than usual. And we grab a lunch and and maybe talk about things and or. Well, I’m really getting upset about all this work that’s piling up and the kids aren’t learning well and could we get together and maybe share a coffee and compare notes?

00:16:13:13 – 00:16:37:26

Susan Landers

It’s really hard. And, you know, I remember a partner telling me, I think you burn out. But that’s how he said he just blurted it out. He didn’t say, How are you? How are you doing? Do you want to sit down and talk? He just looked at me and said, I think you’re burnt out. And I went, Oh man, maybe I am, but, but that was the therapist.

00:16:37:26 – 00:17:10:27

Susan Landers

Say, as we’re supposed to approach a colleague who might be burned out with compassion and say, I notice you’re not your self, can we talk? Or if you want to talk, I’m here to offer a link to someone or say, Boy, I’ve been there too. The reason that I’m having such an easy time talking to working moms is that because I’ve been through working on burnout and physician burnout, and I go, You don’t want to go there.

00:17:10:27 – 00:17:36:03

Susan Landers

It feels really bad. You don’t want to do that. So I feel like I can give advice about how to get help, what the things you should do to get better. But it always boils down to taking a step. You’re right. The person that is burnt out has to want to get some help.

00:17:36:03 – 00:17:39:26

Nick McGowan

And if they don’t, then they’re not going to get anything out of it. You know those people.

00:17:40:15 – 00:18:00:25

Susan Landers

They’ll get sicker. They’ll get worse. Yeah. Yeah. When I was burnt out, my drinking really increased. I used to drink a glass of wine at night, and when I was really burnt out that I would drink two or three glasses. And my husband said, I know you’re really drinking a lot more than usual. I’m going, I’m just trying to calm my nerves and calm the stress.

00:18:00:25 – 00:18:20:23

Susan Landers

And and my daughter noticed it, too. Mom, why are you drinking so much? So we notice these things in people that are in our world. We notice that their behavior is different. We notice when they’re overstressed. We’ve got to be brave enough to say something about it.

00:18:20:23 – 00:18:38:12

Nick McGowan

I think there’s also the fact that sometimes those people are super stressed and they’re calling something out because they can see it in somebody, but not in them. Just like your partner. You look burnout. He may have been burnout and was just saying it because he’s like, Well, I don’t really want to talk about it, but I’ve got to be on.

00:18:38:12 – 00:18:38:26

Susan Landers

Oh yeah.

00:18:39:10 – 00:18:40:09

Nick McGowan

Like how I feel.

00:18:41:21 – 00:19:10:04

Susan Landers

Yeah. Maybe projection comes into it. I don’t know. That’s pretty, pretty much over my head. But I do know that we can be there for each other in our workplaces and provide support. There’s nothing better than saying, Wow, I really understand what you’re going through. Everybody likes to hear that. Everyone likes to know that their feelings are understood.

00:19:10:04 – 00:19:29:15

Nick McGowan

Yeah, I get that. Definitely. Everybody, for the most part thinks that I’m unique. You don’t get what my problems are because they’re my problems. But for somebody like yourself that goes, I know exactly what your problems are because I lived it and I’ve helped other people through it. Let’s actually take a little bit of a step back to that version of you who was going through that burnout.

00:19:29:29 – 00:19:38:21

Nick McGowan

What are the things that you went through that you would tell other people to be mindful of that are going through that same path and how to go about stepping outside of that?

00:19:38:21 – 00:20:04:19

Susan Landers

Well, I got help. I was brave enough to talk to a psychotherapist. I told my manager, my medical director, that I was pretty fried and I needed to cut back my hours. Some people won’t be lucky enough to cut back their hours, but I had read that working class was an easy way to decrease the stress and I changed my practice location.

00:20:04:19 – 00:20:36:12

Susan Landers

I left an there. Q I went to a low risk labor and delivery unit and I took care of healthy mothers and babies and it reminded me how much I loved newborns and mothers. And it got me out of the ICU and all the stress and the monitors and the emergency deliveries. And so those are the two things that are that are necessary, less work and sometimes a different location.

00:20:37:05 – 00:20:57:18

Susan Landers

Then the other things that I mentioned self-care, rest, exercise, hobbies, music in addition to therapy, those are the things you have to do. And some people are too busy to do it, but they’re not going to get better if they if they don’t take care of themselves.

00:20:57:18 – 00:21:22:18

Nick McGowan

Oh yeah. You can only be too busy. I think when people make that excuse of work, I’m just too busy. I like to call people B.S. on that. I’m like, I get it. You just tell me no or like screw off or whatever because give me the real answer, because that’s not the real answer. Somebody said to me years and years ago and they were like, Look, if your kid had a broken arm and somebody called you and said, your kid’s arms broke, you want to drop everything you’re doing, you’re going to go get your kid, right?

00:21:22:23 – 00:21:31:01

Nick McGowan

You don’t have an excuse at that point. Well, you know, I don’t have time. I got I got other things I got to do. I got work or I got this. It’s like, no, your kid’s arm is dangling. Come get it.

00:21:31:22 – 00:22:11:12

Susan Landers

Yeah. It must have something to do with admitting that we’re not being our full selves when in fact, burnout is a mental health condition. It’s now in the DSM five and W.H.O. recognizes burnout as a mental health condition. And and there’s such a bad stigma about mental health, mental illnesses in our country that a lot of people think if they admit they have a problem, that they’re going to be labeled as mentally ill or crazy or less than or not good enough.

00:22:11:27 – 00:22:28:26

Susan Landers

And so I understand why people are so hesitant to bring it up, but we’re we’re going to run ourselves into the ground as a culture, as a working culture. If we don’t admit it when we’re fried, when we’re overdone.

00:22:29:10 – 00:22:46:11

Nick McGowan

Yeah, that’s a very good point. The admittance of that. Now you’ve got to admit it to yourself. You step down, talk to your manager. There are certain people in certain jobs that don’t want to have that conversation with their manager. They don’t feel comfortable to have that conversation with their manager.

00:22:46:22 – 00:23:16:27

Susan Landers

You know, there’s another way to go about it. Almost all corporate jobs have H.R. programs that offer employee assistance. You could go to your H.R. department without your manager knowing, and you could hook up with or talk to a therapist or a social worker or some kind of counselor. And you might have four or six visits or ten visits depending on what your employer offers.

00:23:17:07 – 00:23:46:13

Susan Landers

And even doing that would be helpful for almost all of us. I mean, think I hope people think about this. Go to your workplace and find out what kind of employee assistance program there is. Maybe you could talk to somebody. Fix A friend of mine who’s a social worker has now started working just with folks who get her through employee assistance programs.

00:23:46:27 – 00:24:07:20

Susan Landers

And it’s men predominantly who don’t want to admit they have a problem, but they know they’ve got a problem and they want to kind of secretively look at the issues. And she helps them pretty quickly figure out what’s going on and how to go about getting better. So that’s one thing that people can do.

00:24:08:03 – 00:24:29:12

Nick McGowan

It’s such a big thing to be able to go talk to somebody and you kind of hit hit that big piece there where men and women get that. You come from the woman side of this and especially working with working moms and all as a as a men’s mindset self-mastery coach and obviously having the podcast, I understand what that looks like on the men’s side of that and I understand what that’s like to go.

00:24:29:27 – 00:24:47:22

Nick McGowan

I don’t want to have this conversation because I don’t actually want to admit to myself there’s a problem. But to be right, do the research and see what you have in your h.r. Portal or whatever. I can almost guarantee that most people will be shocked at the amount of actual resources they have. Like you said, four or five sessions, something like that.

00:24:47:22 – 00:24:50:11

Nick McGowan

I think that’s kind of a standard thing for most companies.

00:24:50:17 – 00:25:17:06

Susan Landers

And that’s probably available without your manager knowing. Aren’t those H.R. people real secretive and they keep everything confidential and and that makes people feel a lot better. My husband said I was burned out, too, and I left the symptoms off. And he said, Well, maybe I wouldn’t burn out. Maybe I was just tired of working. And I said, Honey, there’s a big difference between burnout and being tired of working.

00:25:17:20 – 00:25:33:00

Susan Landers

And so we talked about it and, and it was a great conversation because our approaches to being stressed at work, he just wanted to retire early and I just got all crazy burnt out. So it’s really interesting.

00:25:33:16 – 00:25:42:25

Nick McGowan

Yeah, that’s an interesting sort of scenario. How would you suggest that couples go about having that conversation or even stepping out and saying, Hey, I think I may have a problem?

00:25:43:23 – 00:26:09:13

Susan Landers

The best way is to talk to your spouse or your partner, sit down and say, I don’t want you to fix this for me. I just want you to understand it’s just basic marriage. 101i have these feelings. They’re driving me crazy. You’re my partner. I need you to understand, especially if you decide you’re going to do something about your burnout.

00:26:09:13 – 00:26:33:28

Susan Landers

If you’re going to get some help or if you’re going to change your schedule, it’s going to change your job or your job. Location. Who spouse or partner has to know that and probably needs to understand why. And so it really boils down to you’ve got to talk about it. You’ve got to sit down without the kids somewhere private and talk about your feelings.

00:26:34:10 – 00:27:04:17

Susan Landers

And men don’t like to do that as much as women do, but they can. And wives and partners can encourage men to talk about their feelings. I’m positive. I mean, I’ve I’ve had lots of partners who didn’t want to talk about things like if we lost a baby or there was a very difficult code and afterwards and so can we can we debrief on that code and say, well, it’s okay, you know, we have to talk about that.

00:27:05:10 – 00:27:10:20

Susan Landers

So if you encourage people to sit down and talk, they will.

00:27:11:12 – 00:27:29:04

Nick McGowan

Yeah, that’s kind of like stretching that muscle because once you start to open up, you start to have a conversation, then it becomes easier to have that next conversation and it becomes easier to say, Hey, I just got home. I’m a little stressed. Here’s why. And I think there’s also that balance where you don’t want somebody to just complain the entire time.

00:27:29:04 – 00:27:43:18

Nick McGowan

Nobody just wants to listen to somebody complaining. But if they’re processing through and it’s an allocated time to be able to do that, it can be a beautiful situation in a relationship to be able to build that and know that, Hey, we’re in this thing together. It’s not just you by yourself.

00:27:44:24 – 00:28:12:00

Susan Landers

Right? I agree. And my husband said, Well, why do you bring in handbills? That’s crazy. You’re not a musician. I said, I know, but the music is so amazing. It just makes my brain just turn off and I don’t have to think about anything else. And he said, Oh, I’ve never thought about that. And I said, Yeah, it’s just like this amazing step away from life.

00:28:12:15 – 00:28:25:22

Susan Landers

And so he asked me, he made a snide comment, Why are you doing that? Because I’m no musician. And I answered him. And once I explained why I was doing it, he got it. He understood.

00:28:26:03 – 00:28:32:24

Nick McGowan

Makes sense. It sounds like there’s a little bit of a judgment there at first. Why are you doing such a thing? Yes. And then when you make.

00:28:32:24 – 00:28:33:06

Susan Landers

This.

00:28:33:18 – 00:28:58:05

Nick McGowan

That case of why you’re doing it, go, oh, yeah, that makes total sense. And it’s a nice little reset. So be it. Find anything that is a reset? Sometimes. Are there times where I get frustrated with business or work or something happened or anything could happen? And I know to get out of this space and just taking that little step to actually step out of your space, don’t just sit in your anger or your frustration.

00:28:58:05 – 00:29:20:06

Nick McGowan

You got to be able to get out of it. And then being able to have a conversation and say, Hey, I’m a little pissed. Here’s what’s going on, here’s what happened. Most times you can talk through it and like, I’m good now, thanks. I got it off my chest. Other times your need to process through, but there are any stories that you can tell us of people that you’ve connected with, that you’ve seen kind of a major breakthrough, especially in burnout.

00:29:21:13 – 00:29:44:00

Susan Landers

Yes. I talked to a bunch of neonatal nurse practitioners recently and their man, Inger, who is just completed her Ph.D. in nursing after my presentation. And she came up to me and said, Would you be my therapist? And I said, No, I’m not going to be your therapist. I am not a therapist. You know, I’m a retired neonatologist.

00:29:44:20 – 00:30:06:20

Susan Landers

So I think I’m really burnout. And I said, Well, okay, we’ll sit down and talk about that, but you’ve got to get some help and you’ve got to figure out how to cut back your hours. And so the point of this is, I gave her permission to talk about it by giving a presentation to some of the other nurses, chimed in, Yeah, I don’t like this or I don’t like that.

00:30:06:20 – 00:30:18:02

Susan Landers

But she, the manager, she was really burnt out and she came up to me afterwards and I helped her kind of make a short term plan and how she was going to deal with it.

00:30:18:25 – 00:30:40:28

Nick McGowan

Susan, it has been wonderful to have you on. I appreciate you jumping on and talking to us and for doing the work that you’re doing. Burnout is in some ways a hidden sort of frustration for people where they don’t think that it’s real. Some people think it’s too real, and some people don’t actually know that it’s happening to them.

00:30:40:28 – 00:30:53:20

Nick McGowan

They just feel maybe I’m a little off. Maybe I’ve just been off for a couple of weeks or a couple of months. So that’s what’s key. And Susan, can you tell us one piece of advice you would give somebody that’s on their path toward self-mastery?

00:30:54:00 – 00:31:31:00

Susan Landers

I would say write down your goals, be very specific and prioritize them and put yourself on the list. It took me until I was 40 to learn to do that. I think a lot of overachieving, motivated people, professionals, whether it’s medicine or business, push themselves so hard they know what their goals are and they clear about priorities, but they themselves are not on their list.

00:31:31:24 – 00:31:46:06

Susan Landers

And that’s part of why we’re in such trouble with burnout. So I say on the road to self-mastery, learn how to take care of you. You’ve got to take care of you to make everything else work.

00:31:46:06 – 00:31:55:13

Nick McGowan

Yeah, absolutely. You have to come first before anybody else can. It’s almost like when you’re on an airplane, they say, put your mask on before you put anybody else’s on.

00:31:56:13 – 00:32:23:09

Susan Landers

Yeah, that’s a silly that’s a silly analogy. But it’s really true. And I, I just in retrospect, I think that I learned to do that very late in my career. I was in my forties and maybe I forgot how to do it in my sixties, and maybe that’s why I got burnt out. There were some very stressful cases, but I wasn’t taking very good care of myself.

00:32:23:09 – 00:32:29:03

Susan Landers

So on the road to self mastery, learn how to take care of yourself.

00:32:30:09 – 00:32:35:06

Nick McGowan

That’s beautiful. So hey, tell us where people can find the book and where they can connect with you.

00:32:35:14 – 00:33:03:07

Susan Landers

I have a website, Susan Landers and dot com. And if you go to that website forward slash burn out in caps, there’s a checklist there to see if you are stressed. Okay, or burnout. I also have resources on my website and I write a blog there. I’m on Instagram and Facebook and all the social media links are on my website.

00:33:03:07 – 00:33:10:24

Susan Landers

So check out the burnout checklist. Landers, Indeed.com, Forward Slash Burnout.

00:33:11:24 – 00:33:24:27

Nick McGowan

That’s perfect. And that’s that’s a great checklist. So everybody go ahead, check that out. I’m sure it’s probably going to take you a couple of minutes to just go through it and say you might be depressed, you might also be out. So, again, Susan, thank you so much for being on the show. Appreciate your time.

00:33:25:06 – 00:33:37:06

Susan Landers

Oh, thanks, Mark. This is fun. I enjoyed talking with you.

00:33:37:06 – 00:34:03:26

Nick McGowan

Another great conversation on today’s episode of The Mindset and Self-mastery show. Burnout is a real thing, folks. It’s not some bullshit that someone came up with because they just didn’t want to do something. Well, all right. Sometimes maybe that’s the case, but that’s really because you’re not processing through what’s going on in life. But either way, burnout can and should be dealt with way before it consumes you.

00:34:04:07 – 00:34:23:01

Nick McGowan

So what did you think about today’s episode? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic of burnout and what else we got into today. If you enjoyed the episode, please jump over to iTunes. Subscribe rate and leave a five star review. And if you really enjoyed the show today, go ahead and share it with some friends and family and people that you care about.

00:34:23:01 – 00:35:02:29

Nick McGowan

They’ll appreciate you for sharing that with them. Check out the show notes for more info. Contact info for Susan and check out other episodes on the mindset and self-mastery show AECOM as well as our YouTube channel. Let’s go to YouTube and look up the mindset and self-mastery show. You’ll see hundreds of videos, clips on there, all waiting for you and thanks again, Susan, for being real, for being honest, for being vulnerable with us and sharing some strategies that have helped you to get away from burnout and continue on your path to self-mastery and thank you to you for spending some time with us today and for being interested in learning how you can stop yourself

00:35:02:29 – 00:35:17:07

Nick McGowan

from being burnt out. And with that, remember, your mindset matters and so do you.