Resilience Coach for Men, Mandy Gibbons, Shares Her Tool for How to Operate Beyond Burnout
As a resilience and anti-fragility coach for men, one of the things that I see often is men operating beyond burnout.
To put it simply, burnout and stress have become the 'norm'. Men continuing to keep pushing beyond that, wondering why they lack energy. Why they’re losing mojo. Why they have to push so hard, mentally, emotionally and physically, to keep going. Exhausted, yet not able to sleep. Often living in that state for months, years and even decades. Because, let’s face it, men (and women too) have had it drummed into them that operating in a manic state is what’s required to prove you’re driven to succeed.
What was once worn like a badge of honour, living up to what you feel others expect or perceive of you has backfired, big time. When you’ve created your lifestyle around this. When you’re operating from this place of 'beyond burnout', it becomes your identity. You start to lose yourself within that.
You’ve trained your mind and your body that this is what is has to do to survive. Every single day. You’ve got a couple of choices here:
- Start making the changes you need to NOW, to help prevent a crash and burn.
- Or keep going, until you crash and burn.
The latter is inevitable if you procrastinate on the first one.
A powerful component of Resilience and Anti-Fragility is being able to regulate your nervous system. When you’re operating in burnout, you lose clarity. You lose peace. You lose your capacity to think outside of the box, and creativity goes out the window, along with your innate ability to optimise decision making, resolving issues and making powerful moves in your life. Both in how you lead for yourself, and how you lead others because you’re moving through life with the blinders on. Feeling like you don’t have time for new conversations, opportunities, possibilities in your life and those close to you. When you’ve chosen to actually slam the door on those because you don’t have the energy to deal with them it makes for a life that feels like it’s slipping through your fingers, flying by, and what you thought was meaningful to you 5, 10 years ago feels kinda empty.
Now, here’s what’s key here for you to know and accept:
A man's core values can shift throughout life and that's a good thing! Because it means you can re-assess, change direction based on what YOU want in life, for you and those around you. Taking responsibility and ownership of your own self-respect, direction, energy and peace, building upon your resilience, your anti-fragility during challenges, wins and every day life. That might seem like a lot to transform in your life, but the truth is, you can create it taking small steps, that create larger wins.
It’s called leveraging time and energy.
With my own clients we go 'all in' on designing a Man’s Inner Resilience Compass. This goes beyond a handful of 'fluffy' core values. You divide your life up into sections. You choose how you want to be and operate from in life… NOW… versus what you want out of life.
Because what you want keeps you in scarcity mindset. Wanting is something far off in the distance.
Whereas deciding to operate from where you choose to be NOW shifts how you think, move, talk, feel, your emotions, and the actions you take.
To operating with more conviction, more self-trust, more drive, vitality, connection, freedom, honour, purpose, adventure and compassion towards yourself.
When you design your Inner Resilience Compass based on how you choose to operate NOW and reverse engineer it, you create a gauge, a compass. If something isn’t congruent with that it makes it a simple “yes / no” decision.
So you take action, create wins quickly while also bringing more peace and freedom into your life. You’re grounded in that.
Here’s what pretty freaking cool, in my opinion, about this.
When you operate from your Inner Resilience Compass, your growth is exponential. Because you’ve created it that way. So in 6 months, 12 months from now, you’ll redesign it. And you’ll be excited about doing that. Because when you create consistent small steps and wins, even through the challenges, you build a track record within yourself of incredible self-rapport and self integrity. Which hands down wipes the floor with existing and surviving to meet others expectations, right?
For Men, more than ever now, we need men to powerfully take ownership of how they choose to operate in life. For this generation and the next.
It’s an honour to stand by your side.
WRITTEN BY MANDY GIBBONS
Resilience and Anti-Fragility Coach for Men
