Hello hello hello welcome to this latest episode of Frazzled with me your host, Kelly Swingler, welcome back to those of you that are regular listeners. W welcome if you are new um today we're going to talk about life, work, balance, life work balance. That's where I want to that's where I want to take us today. uh We'll see what comes. Again, a reminder whether you are new or whether this is your first time here. Frasled is my uncut unscripted, unedited podcast. There might be noise in the background. There might be stutters, there might be stammers, there might be pauses. But this for me was my um I don't know, like my I was going to say healing, I don't know, I don't know if that' necessarily the right word, but this was my permission to do the podcast that I wanted to do without having to worry about editing and professional sound and and everything, right? I am still uh, I think I still still very much still class myself as like a recovering perfectionist. The perfectionist tendencies that definitely contributed to burnout number one and burnout number two. My first burnout made me seriously ill. My second nearly killed me. And, you know, part of that was this perfectionist people pleasing over achieving high performing self. and tens of thousands of hours of learning and changing and therapy and coaching and self-work and deep dive and and all of that stuff where I have have got me to this point. And I love the fact that I just get to, you know, kind of, I suppose sit sit here with you for 20 minutes, just gabbling away, not having to worry about anything. Whatever happens in the background, whatever happens with the recording, the stammers, the stutters, right? letting go completely, right? This was my permission slip to be enough and to say that being enough was good enough and I suppose I I I share that again. I know I I talk about the kind of unedited, unscripted part every week, right? Just as a reminder, because I never know what's what's going to go on in the background. But I do think it is a healthy reminder for us all right? I think, you know, I love my yoga practice as as I've said many many times before I uh you know I've meditation has has really helped me on my journey to to where I am today. But there's a big difference between like practicing yoga and and like being able to be in the moment whilst I'm on on my mat and then living in complete chaos for the rest of the time. And and I think that's what a lot of us do. We don't necessarily take the learnings and again over the last few years, how can I really like be taking yoga off the mat into everything that I do? What am I learning in my meditation whilst I'm meditating that I can then take into my everyday life rather than living in chaos constantly and then just expecting five, 10 or 15 minutes of the day to fix everything for me. I did a webon yesterday talking about why we need to call BS on workplace well-being initiatives. And it's not that the initiatives are wrong, but I think for lots of us for lots of leaders, lots of organizations, for lots of us of how we're living our lives. Right. We're living in total chaos. We're living in high stress. We're living in chronic stress. And we just then expect these this well-being stuff to just be like a sprinkle on the top. And then we wonder why none of it's working. And what I mean by that, I've I've talked before to you about like the burnout scale, right? If we imagine a scale at one end we have wellbeing and at the other end we have burnout Most of us are living like 99% of our lives moving closer and closer toward burnout and then we might do a yoga class or we might go for a run we might go for a to the gym. We might do one thing a day or a week that is the wellbeing thing. and then we just wonder like we wonder why it's not making a difference. Workplace well-being has has apparently been at the top of the the the leadership agenda since like 2021, right? Since we started to come out of the pandemic in 2020 Workplace wellbeing has apparently been at the top of the leadership agenda and yet more of us are becoming ill as a result of work. More of us are experiencing burnout, more of us are living in a state of chronic stress. And so it's all very well saying it's top of the agenda, but what are we seeing change? And again, for those of you that are regular listeners, you'll know that I I talk a lot about all this change. Everything that we are focusing on and talking about everything that we want, if we want workplace well-being, we need to be well, right? We need to be wellbeingings. I talk about this in in a lot of detail in in my latest book. We need to be the change. The change needs to change needs to start with us. Right? The change has to start with us. and that can be really difficult when we can see as individuals what it is that needs to change, what needs to be done differently. And yet there is that niggle. There's that the kind of devil sat on our shoulders telling us that we can't possibly change because our leaders won't like it uh teams won't like it. Our people won't like it. Our partners won't like it. Our kids won't like it and we we just end up in the fear yet. I'd love to change that but it's not possible. I'd love to change that but I just can't do it with where I work. I'd love to change that but my family wouldn't get it. I'd love to change that but I don't have the time. I'd love to change that but and we are living in this cycle of yeah butts and we've got we've got to change a lot of those things. The butts are always going to be there if we allow them to be there. We can continue to make the excuses. We could continue to say yeah it's you know all right in your world, but not in mine. We could continue to say not in my workplace not in my life not in my family, not in my diary, not in my control, but nothing changes unless we do. Nothing changes unless we do. and get right that's why this this podcast is a prime example. If I had stayed in there, I'd need depression editor. I'd need to do this. I'd need to do this. I need to bulk load. I'd need to bulk record. I'd need to I don't know do all sorts of stuff right I'd need a proper recording studio. I'd need all of the tech. I'd need to invest in there so they need to invest in an editor. I'd need to do this. I'd need to do this, I do do this. I didn't want to do any of that. I didn't want it to feel like a full-time job in itself. I have I do full-time work but they're doing the work in the burnout Academy. I'm doing the work in the burnout club. I'm I'm coaching clients. You know, I I have a life to live. I'm doing all of that. I didn't want the podcast to become a full-time job in itself. That didn't resonate with me. And yet if I had paid attention to what everybody else was saying about podcasts, I've done podcasts before if I'd have stuck with that mentality, you wouldn't be listening to this right now. I had to be the one to say I'm going to do it differently and again, I get an appreciate this might be very different. You know if you are employed there may be different rules, different parameters, different things that you need to stick to. And at the same time we still need to recognize that nothing changes unless we do if we continue to allow other people to tell us what to do, they will continue to tell us what to do if we continue to allow other people to tell us that this is not possible. We continue to believe it's not possible. And today life work balance. I there's been recent reports hasn't there? I think it was uh James Watson brewog, wasn't it, that that kind of got in the got in the news talking um about how you know we basically lots of stuff about work life balance. And I'm gonna say I have over the years considered that actually like I've I've I have believed that work life balance is a myth. Because even if we take just the hours of our day, the hours of our week, if we work work takes if we just look at balance from being ours in the day, most of us, the majority of us are spending more time working or at work than we are doing anything else. If we take a 24 hour day, you've got, say, I mean, I'm I'm going to be generous here, right? I'm going to say an eight hour working day. Most of us are not working just eight hours. Right? You might be 10, 12, 14, particularly if you're at the state of feelings fragled and stressed or on the brink of burnout, right? You're not just doing an eight hour day. And that's just like the paid job. Let's say then being generous, there is then seven hours of sleep. That's 15 hours taken out of your 24 working and sleeping. nine left some of those might be commuting time. some of those might be eating time. some you know when when do you spend any time with your family, with your friends? When do you time spend any time on yourself? How long have that day is it taking you to get ready? How long is it taking you to eat? How long is it taking you to prep meals?, we've been we've been generous here, right, in terms of some days that I'm saying if you're only working eight hours a day so for me, it was like life balance and not so much in terms of units of time, but actually about feelings. I know throughout my in-house career and even now with my business, there are some days, some weeks, some months, where we are like we're full on, like work has to be the priority, right? That's what we say, what we have to we have to get this done. We need to focus on this project, we need to get this work done, we need to get through this. We've we've got to do what it is that we want to do. So we we put pretty much, right? All of our energy into that and then the life stuff is the stuff that we're trying to mop up in between the hours that we're not working or sleeping. So I've always kind of considered that it's not so much work life balance, but just life as a whole work is part of our life. And for many of us, it's's you know, it's it's a very big part, whether we love what we do and we're doing it from a purpose- driven perspective or whether we're doing it because we have bills to pay. And again, I think over the last definitely over the last 10 years, probably even longer than that. We've almost been kind of made to feel that if like we're just going to work for a pay slip, then there's something wrong with us, that we're not engaged that we're, you know, that that we're not invested, that there's something wrong with us, right? There need to be a purpose. We've got to have a bigger mission. We've got to have a bigger Y. And the truth is, not everybody is in a position to be able to do that, whether it's life circumstances, whether it is finances, whether it's just time, whether it's the time of your life, whether, you know, there's so many different factors. Some people are doing the job to earn the paycheck to fund the lifestyle that they want, right? There is no big purpose. It's just it pays me, it funds me, it allows me to do what it is that I want to do because it's the stuff outside of work that's important. So I've always just considered that it's it's about life balance. But the news, the media, social media, everybody's out there telling us, we it's about it's about work life balance, right? And how we need to be taking all of all of that forward, right? It's it's work life balance and that somehow through some magic ingredients, apparently somebody's got the key to tell us what this looks like. Work life balance looks and feels a particular way. But actually it is going to be very individual for each of us. But as I sat thinking about this the other day, I just wondered at what point did it become work life balance at what point did work come before life at what point did we start to think that work was more important than everything else? And what could be different for all of us if we almost kind of went back like work is about supplementing the life stuff. What if life came first? What if we put life first I for those of us maybe for those of you that maybe are doing work because of a bigger purpose, a dip a deeper meaning, uh a bigger thing. And work has become the thing, the all encompassing all just like all inclusive power of life. What happens to the other stuff? Again, I think I've I've shared with you all before. When I when I and I you know, I I chose to leave my in-house career voluntarily. At the time and I would you know, I would still say kind of thinking about it right I didn't leave my in-house career because of that first burnout. I didn't even acknowledge. I wouldn't admit to that first burnout. I'd had these seven months of really excruciating pain. I was being a rush to and admitted to hospital because I was passing out, my body wasn't working. I wasn't functioning. Still never took a day off. I was working from my hospital bed on my laptop, never took a day off you know seven months. Two operations in 48 hours and in the recovery phase of that, that was when I first started to take the time off and that was where it was like oh god like well I' allowed myself to get to this point. And did make some changes and I went back to work and it was in those like it was the first week of being back well like oh my god like how have you put up with this for so long? How have you stayed here for so long? I could the like the toxicity was glaring at me. and I started to look for other jobs. I started to look for opportunities, but all of the jobs, like that kind of board level HRD job, they all looked at the same. They were all asking for the same thing and I just thought, oh, it's just I'm just going to be jumping from one organization into another. I couldn't see anything. Couldn't see any of these jobs that were like really lighting me up. I couldn't see any that was like that's what I want to do. They all looked exactly the same. And I just knew that they were not for me. So I kind of thought, well, I'm just going, you know, I'll have to stay where I am until I find the right job. and then it was part of my ongoing coaching training that I heard myself when I was asked that who are you questioned, that I still love so much? It was an exploring that that I heard myself say for the very first time I was going to start my own business. I was going to start my own consultancy and I started that first consultancy and that consultancy is still very much going. I'm not in it anymore. But a couple of months into leaving that in-house role and setting up on my own. I was then asked if I would deliver a talk. It's was for a Nat West women in business event. It was going to be a huge event and I felt really like really grateful, really lucky that I'd been able to bag something like that so early on into starting my business. Like this could really put me on the map, if you like And I'd done lots and lots of speaking and lots and lots of events before, but on my way to that first event, I had almost like a full-blown panic attack in the car, driving my driving myself to this event because I was no longer the big board level HRD. I no longer had the big name and the big brand behind me I was just Kelly and in that moment that didn't feel enough big like who would want to listen to me? Who would want to speak to me? I that became a huge part of me realizing that I had become my job had become me. Who was I if I wasn't Kelly the HR director, who was I if I wasn't Kelly that sits on the board? Who was I if I didn't have the status and the salary and the company behind me? And I hadn't realized just how much of my identity of myself identity didn't realize how much of that had been wrapped up in my work My work life balance was pretty much work as much as I can Monday to Friday, live as much as I could at the weekend all of that time that I wasn't spending with my sons during the week. I would go full into wanting to give them every single minute of every single day of my weekend when they could. My exercise routines were taking place at five or 6 o'clock in the morning so that I could get that done and then be present and visible for my sons all day. Now when I got to my second burnout, you know, my sons were in their teenage years. My sons are now in their 20s. They don't need me or want me in the same way. You know they're looking at their own houses now. We have very, very different relationships than we did when I was working, all of those hours in my own house career. You know, I've been I've been out of that space now for 11 years. I've been a business owner now for 11 years. I have over those 11 years really got got clear on who I am and what I do and why I want it and why it matters. And in starting again my business, it was like my business. I thought my business was me. and it's not. my business is the mechanism that allows me to, if you like achieve my mission, right to banish burnout to to stop other people getting to the point of burnout. And my business is what allows me to live to enjoy, to live in the house that I live in, to have the holidays that I do, to spend the time with my family. to take care of myself We continue to focus on work, life balance. We're always putting work first. What if we flipped it and we spoke about life, work balance and we started to put life first. How could that stop us feeling as fr as Frasled as we feel? How could that help us to remove some of this stress and some of these chronic stress? And how could that stop us being on the brink of burnout? What if we got clear on who we are and put life first our life first and then we found the work to feed our life. What if we could just flip that switch and make it life work balance instead of always putting work first? What could be different for you? I am going to leave you there for today. I'll leave you there with those thoughts. I hope that's been a helpful one for you. um if you've loved this episode, if you found it helpful, if you think that anybody else might enjoy it, please do give it a share, let them know that you had lists and let's see if if we can grow our listener base this year and and stop even more people reaching Burnett, right being on the brink of Burnett? Let's see if we can help more people go from Frazzled to fabulous and just keep this momentum going. As always, if you need any help and support with anything that I've been talking about today, do head to Kelly Swinkler.com. Again, you know, kind of growing resources. I've got some some additional kind of burnout schoolc cards and the burnout assessment, all of that stuff is there. But for now, I am going to say thank you very much for joining. Thank you very much for for, yeah, just listening, being part of it. And I will be back with you again next week for another episode of Frasold. Go and have an amazing day an amazing week and I will speak to you soon. Take care for now bye-bye.
