Digging Deeper into Burnout (Creative Status: Episode 71: Hiba Khaled)

by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness

Creative Status is a podcast about using creativity as a vehicle for improving your life by deconstructing ego, integrating the shadow self, and designing and manifesting a real life.

Every episode explores how the creative process can help you GROW REAL by moving towards wholeness in yourself by making the unconscious conscious.

Join us as we delve into the complexities of burnout with the insightful Hiba Khaled, co-founder of Embers.

With a background as a physician in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and a Master’s degree in Medical Education from Harvard Medical School, Hiba brings a wealth of knowledge and personal experience to the conversation.

In this episode, titled “Digging Deeper into Burnout,” Hiba guides us through an exploration of what burnout truly signifies and how understanding it can lead to personal growth and authenticity.

Meet Hiba Khaled: Discover the journey of Hiba Khaled, a curriculum designer, leadership coach, and burnout specialist. Drawing from her own experience of recovering from burnout, Hiba is passionate about empowering clients in demanding careers to recover and thrive in both their work and lives.

Unveiling Burnout: Hiba sheds light on the multifaceted nature of burnout and its underlying causes. Explore how burnout serves as a symptom of deeper issues, and how understanding it can be a catalyst for personal growth and transformation.

Recovery and Empowerment: Learn from Hiba’s expertise as she shares practical strategies for recovering from burnout and building resilience.

Embracing Wellness: Discover the holistic approach to wellness advocated by Hiba, who finds solace in surfing, tea, and literature. Explore how embracing activities that nourish the mind, body, and soul can be instrumental in combating burnout and fostering authenticity.

Creative Status: Where Understanding Ignites Transformation

Tune in as we uncover the underlying causes of burnout and explore practical strategies for recovery and empowerment.

This episode is your guide to understanding burnout and embracing wellness as a pathway to REALNESS and fulfillment in both work and life.

Stay real out there,

Oli Anderson

—————————–

Leave a voice message to share your thoughts and to be (maybe) featured on future episodes of the podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠anchor.fm/creativestatus ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Episode Links:

Hiba’s website: ⁠https://www.emberscc.com/⁠

Hiba on Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/iamhibakhaled/⁠

Hiba’s newsletter (Feel it to Heal it): ⁠https://feelittohealit.substack.com/⁠

Creative Status Links:

The Creative Performance Transformation Lab: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠olianderson.co.uk/creativeperformance⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Follow me on Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/olijanderson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

My YouTube channel: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/olianderson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Get my books on Amazon: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠amazon.com/author/oli⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

7-Day Personality Transplant System Shock for Realness and Life Purpose: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠olianderson.co.uk/systemshock⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Free one hour creative workshop to take your creative brand or project to the next level:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠olianderson.co.uk/creativeworkshop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Free 90-Day Journal Challenge: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠olianderson.co.uk/journal⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

The Law of Attraction for Realness (mini-course): ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠olianderson.co.uk/lawofattraction⁠

Digging Deeper into Burnout (Show Transcript)

This podcast is about using your creativity to improve your life

Intro

Oli Anderson: Oh, hi there. Oli Anderson here. You’re listening to Creative Status, this podcast about using your creativity to improve your life by diving into the darkest parts of yourself, the lightest parts of yourself to some extent, so that you can make the unconscious conscious and integrate whatever it is that you may have been hiding from yourself behind false identities, false beliefs, false loyalties, all those kind of false things that we identify with and attach to that can hold us back from real life.

Every episode of the show, I like to interview somebody who has something new or interesting or deep to say about the human condition so that we can understand it more. Because at the end of the day: real always works. And if you can have a better understanding of reality and the human condition and what it means to be human, then you can improve your relationship with your own humanity and get better results from it.

Today’s interview is with Hiba Khaled. She is an expert, on burnout. She’s a coach that helps people to figure out why they’re feeling burned out in the first place, what the burnout is a symptom of. Maybe it’s a symptom, for example, of some deeper, disconnection from themselves. Maybe they’re pushing too hard because they’ve got some beliefs that they think are, going to save them or whatever it is. We get into all of that.

Hiba has some amazing analogies that she uses to help you understand and simplify the concepts. And hopefully by the end of this, you’ll be less likely to get burned out because you understand the mechanics of it. You’ll keep flowing, you’ll keep growing, and you’ll live the life that you want to live.

So, Hiba, thank you so much for this conversation. Everybody else, hope you get some value from this and that it helps you with your own goals and your own growth. To realness. Here we go. Thanks a bunch. Boom.

Interview

Oli: Oh, hi there, Heba – thank you so much for joining me on today’s episode of Creative Status.

We’re going to be talking about burnout, which is your area of expertise. before we get into it, do you feel like introducing yourself, telling people how you ended up working in this area in the first place, and also maybe sharing what you want to get out of this conversation that we’re about to have?

Hiba Khaled: Sure. Thank you so much for having me. So I’m Hiba Khaled. I am a former physician in the NHS. I used to be an anesthesiologist or anesthetist in the UK, and now, through my own personal experience of burnout I am now helping individuals and organizations recover from and prevent burnout.

That’s the short Cliff Notes version of the introduction. yeah, I’m super excited to talk to you and, maybe explore how burnout is just a symptom of a much deeper, of much deeper issues and much deeper consciousness, I guess, in some ways.

Oli: Wow. I’m, happy that you say that, because I like exploring these deeper issues. Before we get into it, what is your definition of burnout?

Burnout is defined as chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed

It seems like a lot of people these days are talking about how burned out they are. Like, all over the place, everyone’s burned out. What exactly do they mean normally when they say that, if that’s not too simple of a question.

Hiba: Yeah. So the WHO (World Health Organisation) has its own definition of burnout as an occupational phenomenon. So it’s defined as, resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. And they define it using three dimensions: feelings,  energy, depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one’s job. So disengagement, feeling, cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy.

So that’s the official, definition of burnout. But burnout itself manifests in many different ways. So there’s obviously the physical manifestations of feeling, exhausted, not sleeping well, kind, of reduced quality of sleep or having trouble falling asleep – it’s really a spectrum, where it starts and kind of like where you could end up. And it could encompass anything from anxiety. If it’s really severe, it can lead to depression, and then it could also just be, like, feeling irritable.

Cynicism is actually one of the biggest predictors of, burnout, which I was kind of surprised to see. But then it kind of makes sense that when we’re not feeling engaged or when we’re feeling exhausted, we can tend to be more cynical than normal. So that’s kind of one of the earliest predictors of burnout in a lot of the research.

Oli: Right. I better be careful, then, because I’m quite a cynical person. I don’t want to end up burning up. That’s interesting in itself, because it seems to me like, actually, people are a lot more cynical these days, just in general, about the state of the modern workplace, which is where a lot of your work, I’m assuming it’s focused, but also just the state of the world in general. It seems like cynicism is on the rise.

And I suppose there’s a question there about sometimes, is cynicism justified? If that makes sense, like depending on what’s going on externally or is it always just one of these things where our mindset ultimately is going to affect the levels of stress that we’re feeling and all that kind of thing? It seems almost like if cynicism is built into the definition, then it’s kind of externalizing…Sorry, it’s internalizing everything and it’s putting responsibility on person, if that makes sense.

Hiba: No, I want to address that question in a second. I just want to make a comment about, what you said. I’m cynical. What you were just saying about yourself being cynical. I lived in the UK for twelve years and I noticed the cynicism is part of the culture in the UK and I wondered about that for a while because when I first moved there, I was very joyful and kind of positive and upbeat. And then by the time I left, twelve years later, I was like, I think it’s the weather.

Oli: Yeah, I think the weather contributes to it. We can blame the class system as well, to some extent. Also though, I think we just think it’s cool to be cynical if we’re too idealistic and trying to bring, I don’t know, love and peace and all those kind of things to the human race. That is kind of frowned upon in the UK for some reason.

But I think in the heart of every cynic is just an idealist that’s been disappointed. So maybe it’s that like the UK is just very disappointing because of the weather and then everything else kind of, stems from that. Something like that.

Hiba: Yeah, that could be it. So to answer your question about, cynicism, like putting the responsibility on the individual rather than some of the external factors, I think it’s both. Obviously, the way we approach kind of burnout is not, we cannot control.The external factors around us. There’s no way we can control what’s happening outside of us. But the thing that we can control, that we have control over, is our reaction to the stress around us.

Oli: Yes.

Hiba: So for example, in this moment in time as we’re, we’re, we’re living in a moment in time where climate change is super real and the effects of climate change are extremely relevant and we see it every day. I’m here in New York. There’s a tiny bit of snow, but it’s like February. It can be a lot snowier than that and a lot cooler temperatures. So we can see and sense the effects of these very serious issues.

There’s currently like a war in the Middle east, there’s, really people in, parts of Africa and Asia are going through, displacement. And there’s always something happening around the world that’s going to cause us to feel like despair, a sense of despair, and feel like, a little bit hopeless about the state of the world. And I think those things we can definitely question and definitely challenge. And it’s not necessarily our responsibility.

Well, it is like we all have individual responsibility to all of these things happening around the world. But it’s not, for example, each of our individual responsibility that the war broke out in, the Middle East. But we all have, obviously, a connection to that, event, wherever we are in the world, because it is like a human thing that’s happening but we can control our reaction to our external circumstances.

And that’s really, where the individual responsibility comes in. And how do we build capacity within ourselves to withhold the pressures outside of us and to stay grounded in and to, be able to have the capacity to see, more options available to us instead of when we are feeling burnt out. We tend to have very low capacity to see a wider perspective. We tend to be really binary in the way we see things. Like it’s usually this or that, and it’s usually at the extremes of the spectrum. So whether it’s like the fight or fret flight response, because we don’t have enough capacity to process or, see more, if that makes sense. So then we tend to lose our sense of curiosity, our sense of empathy, and then our decision making tends to be affected, too. So that’s why it’s really important to build the capacity within ourselves, because we can’t control everything happening outside of us.

Oli: I totally agree with you. And even though I was kind of joking about being a cynic, I think we can train ourselves to stay grounded in that sense of self or realness that you were talking about, where we’re not just reacting to everything that happens and filtering it through our identity, but we’re staying grounded in the truth, ultimately.

And the truth is that all those cognitive distortions that we keep experiencing when we are reacting to all this stuff going on in the world, like black and white thinking or catastrophizing and all that stuff, all those things, if we keep, filtering everything through our identity and our attachment to the cynical things that we perceive in the world, they’re holding us back from the flow of life, ultimately.

And I think if we hold ourselves back from the flow of life in that way, that’s when we end up becoming burned out, because I think burning ourselves out is when we cling to some conceptual idea or ideas about ourselves, the world, and reality. And by clinging to those ideas, we end up creating more stress than is actually necessary. I think some stress is good in life because it keeps us growing. If we can find the sweet spot and we’re not making ourselves panic, but if we filter all of our stress through the ego and then create more stress for ourselves, then we just end up making the problem way worse.

And I think there’s something there when it comes to burnout, which is exactly what you said. It’s about our reactions to life, ultimately, and how it’s causing us to cling to those kind of unreal ideas, or maybe even an unreal relationship with life, if that makes sense.

Holding on to certain identities can contribute to burnout.

So if it does make sense, maybe it’s a good time to bring in, the deeper problems that you talked about of, consciousness and all that kind of thing. It seems like burnout, ultimately, is the symptoms we get when we’re not accepting life actually something like that, or we’re not being as present as maybe we could be?

Hiba: Yeah, I think, burnout can happen basically without our awareness of it happening. I think sometimes it just kind of creeps in on us, and we just get to a point where, things just don’t feel right. We feel a lot of tension and then maybe start to feel a little bit more anxious about where we are in life. And at least that’s what I see with a lot of my clients is like, anxiety is actually a pretty prevalent symptom that I see, or this feeling of disconnect, of, like, this is where I want to be, but this is where I am.

And I don’t know if it’s possible. I’m sick of feeling tired or I’m sick of feeling undervalued. and those are things I also experienced in my own experience of burnout. I think I was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. And, I felt a little disconnect between, wow, when I thought about becoming a doctor and when I was in medical school, I had a different vision of, what it looked like versus what I’m experiencing in this moment. And I was just kind of told to kind of hold on and wait for it to get better.

It will get better eventually, and I’m sure it would, but it just felt like a long time to kind of stay in the suffering or stay in the feeling of, like, okay, I must feel bad for x amount of years, and then it’ll eventually get better. It just felt like I was like, is that the way to live life? I don’t know if this is what I want to wait, to feel excited again or wait to feel rested again, or wait to feel joyful again. I was just like, I think I want that sooner than in a few years’ time.

And, I think what you said earlier about kind of us holding on to certain identities and, loyalties to certain ideas or beliefs can contribute to burnout, for sure. I think for me, this is a lot of the work we do with embers is, really trying to, once we help you feel grounded. So our first step of our coaching program on the one on one is to kind of centre you and make you feel grounded in your wellbeing and in your health.

Really, the foundation of everything is health. So how do we ensure that you’re feeling healthy? Because health is really the real wealth. And we reconnect you with the things that make you feel good within yourself or make you feel deterred and grounded. And after we kind of build that foundation, then we start going through the process of. I don’t want to call it destabilizing you, but it’s almost like challenging you to really think about the identities, loyalties and hungers for validation, belonging, significance, that really, reinforce or protect you from burnout.

And through that discovery process of all of those things, we can then usually conserve, like, 90% to 95% of everything because it served you in your life and it continues to serve you. But then there’s the five to 10% of those identities, loyalties and hungers that are reinforcing your burnout. And those are the ones then we work through to renegotiate and really let go of or reinvent, because, yeah, they’re no longer serving us. And that process of letting go and of releasing some of those things can be quite a challenging one for most people.

Oli: That’s really interesting. So the way that I like to think about all this stuff is when people are disconnected, from themselves because of underlying shame and guilt and trauma and emotional stuff, they end up creating this false identity that they take out into the world. And that leads to the kind of feeling of the void, like an existential kind of itch that they don’t quite know how to scratch, that just follows them through life.

And it’s exactly what you said: It’s because their expectations haven’t been met and they don’t have the energy that they feel they’re going to have. And there’s just something missing. And we try and fill that void with things in the world. Like we try and fill it with our career or with a partner or whatever it is. The things that we try and fill it with, they can be good things if we have a healthy relationship with them, but if we put them on a pedestal and treat them as been the most important thing, then it just creates more friction and it can lead to more burnout.

And so it’s really interesting that your coaching program starts with just that reconnection, because actually, that’s why I think the void exists. We become disconnected. And so the first step is always to reconnect. When we do reconnect, we get this feeling of realness. We put ourselves back in the flow of life that I was talking about earlier: we’re moving with the natural drive that we all have towards wholeness or actualization or individuation, or whatever you want to call it. And we start to feel a, deeper connection to ourselves, but also to life itself. And we can see in that state that some of the things, like you said, that we’re trying to fill the void with are actually completely unreal, or we have an unhealthy relationship with them.

And exactly like you said as well, it may only be a small percentage of the things that we’ve got in our lives that we’ve tried to fill the void with, but the impact that they’re having in terms of our energy and our general feeling of cynicism or wherever else as we go throughout the day is massive.

So that five to 10% of things that you’ve noticed, people kind of struggling with that, are causing a lot of these problems. Are there any patterns? Like, what kind of things normally would you say? Is it that they’ve kind of added to their lives to fill the void, which is actually making it worse?

Hiba: I just want to touch on something you just said and then I’ll answer your question. I think what you said about people putting on false identities to go out into the world, I think that has a purpose, right? Like, that has a function and a purpose. I think most people are like, it’s human nature to want to feel like we belong to a group of people, right?

Like, this sense of belonging and this hunger for belonging is really real and necessary. We’re social creatures, and I think many of us in our lives, we go through life, seeking that sense of belonging, whether it’s through our careers or our social circles or communities, our, families, right? And that can make us kind of compromise some of ourselves in order to fit in with a group, which is like, again, just a survival thing in some ways, because we need that to feel like we belong to someone or to something. and that can cause us then hide parts of ourselves in a way that makes us feel disconnected from ourselves.

To get back to your original question of what are the five to 10% of things that I see patterns in? And I think that’s one of them, is this disconnect from who we are. I feel like I had dreams. This is often what I hear. Like, I had dreams to be this and that, and now I’m just doing this. And another thing that becomes, prevalent through these stories that we tell ourselves is it’s not possible for me to be beyond this point or that point.

I don’t feel this feeling of imposter syndrome, of like, yeah, I had one client who, when she came to me, was being encouraged to go for a promotion, and she was hesitant because she felt like she wasn’t ready. And within four sessions of working together now she’s just like, I’m going to get this promotion, and this is the next promotion I want to work on in the next year and a half. That’s what I feel like I want to do.

So what we were able to do, or what she was able to do, because really, I was just facilitating the process, is, build this level of trust within herself again. And that was one of her biggest goals, is, how do I create trust within myself to not take everyone’s advice or expectations and make it my guiding star or my North Star?

How do I reconnect with myself in order to gain confidence and trust that I’m making good decisions for myself? And she was able to do that, and it was incredibly inspiring to witness. so that’s another thing. It’s just like this feeling of disconnection from self, this feeling of not being good enough, or this impostor syndrome of like, this is kind of like, I’m going to settle for these things because this is as far as I can go in life.

Or another pattern, like I mentioned earlier, is just this increased sense of anxiety where it just feels like. But I think it’s just a symptom of this disconnect and this desire to reconnect with ourselves. And I think a lot of the things we do in life are, whether it’s like, the jobs we do or the people we meet or the friendships we have or the relationships we have, it’s just we are on this everlasting journey of learning more about ourselves through other people and through experiences that we have.

So all of it is just kind of like we seek these things, whether through relationships, experiences, or work, to really just learn more about ourselves and reconnect with who we are at our core. So I think that’s just kind of like one of the things that.

Oli: Yeah, totally. I think that is the main issue. I would say if people are getting really burned out, they’re getting really stressed, then they’ve lost balance somehow. And the only way we can lose balance in many ways is because we’re chasing things that are not aligned with who we really are or, what we’re all about. And that always comes down to that fundamental disconnection.

I would go so far as to say that that is the only problem, really, in most people’s lives. Anything else is a symptom of that. So it can still be a problem, but it’s not the main problem. And it’s really a journey for everybody of returning to themselves in the way that you’re talking about so that they can trust themselves and to believe in themselves to go and get the things that they actually want, because they’re not being held back by self-limiting beliefs caused by shame and the false identity and all that kind of stuff that puts a limit on people and it caused them to hesitate and hold back. But also, once, they’ve learned to trust themselves, they can learn to trust life as well.

I think that’s the next level. First, we trust ourselves, which means that we can just do our best. We can take all the actions that are within our, remit of control, but then eventually we’ll realize that we can’t control life 100%. So we have to let go a little bit and trust life. And I think a lot of the time when people are getting burned out, it’s because they need to recalibrate those two relationships with themselves at the level of trust, with life as well.

So, for example, if we don’t trust life and we think it’s all up to us – that’s when we can become really neurotic. And we just end up trying to force everything by ourselves. Like, we think that we’re basically omniscient and omnipotent. We know everything, how everything’s going to work out. We have full power over our lives, and we’re just kind of like attacking life constantly, like a pneumatic drill, trying to get it to change, but actually we can’t.

There’s a big element of living a real life that is about letting go and surrendering. And if you’re too attached to those false identities and those false loyalties and all of the things that we’ve built on top of the void to try and fill it, like an unhealthy relationship with our career or whatever it is that we think is going to give us that feeling of peace, then we end, up kind of burning ourselves out. That’s what I think.

And so it’s all about friction and too much tension and too much stress. And if we can understand those basic building blocks and mechanics of how that works, then we can let go of a lot of stuff, basically. I think that’s the solution. So if that is aligned with your experience, what kind of things do we need to start letting go of in order to still get results, but to avoid burning out?

Hiba: I think this need for control that you’re describing, like forcing things or trying to foster trust with life, I think it’s a lot harder to do for a lot of people when they’re feeling, stressed. Because when we feel stressed, we feel like we’re out of control, have control over things. So we then try to overcompensate and try to, try to regain control and then try to really try grasp at forcing things a certain way or controlling what we can.

Because when we feel stressed or burnt out, things are feeling so out of control. And so again, it’s like a very natural response to. I’m not saying it’s like a healthy response, but it’s a very natural response to the stress people feel because none of us like to feel like we’re out of control or a lot of us really struggle with navigating uncertainty and nothing really is that certain in life. I think we tend to think that there’s more certainty in life and we can get more certainty in life than we actually have. I think that’s like, a false illusion, but for an illusion, I guess, to, how we view life. so, what was your original question? How do we let go of?

Oli: Yeah, well, what do we need to let go of? And, well, you’ve kind of started answering it actually with the illusion thing. So one thing we need to let go of, definitely is the illusions.

Our natural reactions to life are to avoid uncertainty and to try and control things and all that kind of stuff. But like you’ve kind of suggested that is an illusion. Because actually the nature of life the nature of reality is that we can’t control everything. There’s more uncertainty than certainty. And if we try and treat life as we’d like it to be rather than how it is, that’s when we end up reacting instead of responding, like you were saying at the start of the conversation.

And so letting go of our illusions, I would say, is one thing that we need to train ourselves to do, and obviously it is hard, which is why you have to train ourselves to do it. But yeah, the question was, what kind of things like that do we need to let go of so we can start living in this way you’re talking about and still get results, but not burn ourselves out by forcing everything.

Hiba: I like what you said about developing trust with life because I think that’s an important component of it. Letting go of the need to always be right, letting go of the need to always feel like I need to be the one who controls this or make this happen to me. It’s really like, I don’t believe personally, necessarily, that we should do nothing and allow the life to happen to us.

Yeah, I think it’s more like, how can I be clear about what it is, what my purpose is, how can I be clear about the direction I want my life to be? What are the things that bring me joy? Because really, joy is the antidote to burnout – so what are the things that bring me joy?

What is it that I want for myself in my life, and how do I want to be of service in this life? And I think that’s our job, to be clear on that. And then really, I think without clarity, it’s hard for us to, have direction once we’re clear. I think we need to let go of the need of. I think the what and the why of why we do anything in life should be our main objective on gaining clarity on the how. I think the how becomes a lot easier to figure out once you’re clear on the what and why and the how. I think that’s when we need to really be flexible on, how things happen and how things kind of unfold for us.

I was an anesthesiologist or anesthetist, sorry, in the UK. I’m, now living in the US. but in my experience, I picked that specialty because I had a lot of control. I picked that specialty because I knew that every medicine I gave, every drug I gave had a reaction that was predictable and more or less predictable. Obviously, you get the once off, allergic reaction and that’s like, unpredictable.

But even still, I can predict that that isn’t a, ah, possibility, and I know what to do if that happens. The fact I had control in my, for any physiological parameter that went off, I had a drug to counter it, or I had a drug that would make something happen in a predictable way. I like the fact that my patients were asleep for general anesthetics during surgery, and I had control over their breathing.

Like, I put them on a ventilator and control the settings where I was, like, delivering a certain amount of oxygen and controlling how much pressure, each breath gave them. So in that sense, I had a real need for control, and that’s part of the reason I chose the specialty. I felt like I had a great sense of control, and then realizing kind of like, I’m just using that as an example for how much I wanted control in my life, and to the point where my specialty decision was affected, becoming an emergency medicine doctor, was not an option for me, because I didn’t like the chaos of emergency medicine.

You couldn’t really predict exactly what was coming in. And it’s also funny, because when things were unpredictable at work, that’s when I felt the most in tune and the most alive, in terms of an emergency came in, and I had to be the anesthetist to sort it out. It was, like, the most exciting part of my work. It was also nice to have 95% of the job be boring and predictable in that sense, because a boring day is a good day for patients, right?

Like, nothing bad happens. You don’t have anything to discuss, or notable to discuss. But in terms of those emergencies that came in, it just made me really sharpen my focus in a lot of ways, because it made me then just kind of think in a different way and show up in a different way.

So it’s like, if I were to use that analogy of when I didn’t have full control over the situation or when things were unpredictable, that’s when actually work got a little bit more interesting. And I think, in general, from my life experience in the last 38 years, the times where I had the most fun and the most fulfilment and the most joy were times when I was more relaxed and at ease and kind of like, let go of the grips of controlling everything, because life surprised me in ways I couldn’t have imagined. And, yeah, I think the process of learning how to let go is one of the most important things we could learn as human beings.

Oli: Wow, that analogy is really powerful because it shows, in a way, that we’re built for the chaos. It’s all about balance, really what we’re talking about. I guess we don’t want so much chaos that it just destroys everything that we know and care about. But we need a little bit of uncertainty so we can kind of bring our own need for order to it and kind of ride with reality instead of against it.

And I think what you said about, we have to take some action. Like, we can’t just leave everything to the universe and be so open minded that, our brains fall out, because that is a lack of balance as well. It’s finding the sweet spot between the order and the chaos, which sounds very pretentious, but basically, if we do nothing, then we’re going to end up stressing ourselves out because life is going to keep moving around us, and then eventually we’re going to have to catch up. But if we do too much, then we’re going to end up forcing life in the way that we’ve been talking about.

And all of the constructs that we’ve been forcing life through are eventually going to get shattered, and we’re going to end up in the same place as if we do nothing, which is hitting rock bottom to some extent, and having to get back into that natural rhythm and rebuild. And so we as human beings, feel most alive where, when we’ve got some control, even if it’s just knowing where we want to end up, like our ultimate vision for our lives.

But we kind of let go, like you were saying, of the how that’s going to happen. And we just kind of navigate reality day by day and keep moulding it in alignment with that vision that we’ve got for ourselves. And if we can do that, then we’re not going to be passive because we’re still moving forward, but we’re not going to be so forceful with the action that we do take that we end up stressing ourselves out and burning ourselves out because we’re trying to act on our identity instead of acting on becoming whatever it is that we’re trying to become, if that makes sense. And so is it fair to say, ultimately, that burnout is a sign that we’ve lost balance in one way or the other? Something like that?

Hiba: Yeah, I guess you could simplify it in that way. and, yeah, I think what you were saying about, having kind of a balance between order and chaos is kind of reminded me of a concept we teach in adaptive leadership. So, adaptive leadership is a course I took when I was a grad student at Harvard and then a course I helped teach and continue to use the concepts and frameworks of adaptive leadership in my work now. But one of the things we talk about often in adaptive leadership is this, zone of productive disequilibrium.

Oli: Wow.

Hiba: So in any given system, there can be heat at any level. So if you imagine like a thermometer or something, if the system is too cool, then people are bored and they’re disengaged and they’re not really participating or m engaging in whatever the issue is, whatever the issue that you’re trying to work.

If there’s not enough heat in the system, people are disengaged and bored. But we need to get them up to a zone of productive disequilibrium, where there’s enough heat in the system that it makes people uncomfortable to want to solve the issue, but not too much heat, where it also is overwhelmingly, it’s like the fight or flight response, like the exit.

Oli: Wow.

Hiba: So it’s like a very narrow, zone, I guess. And it’s like, how do you build capacity within this zone to keep as many people as possible there to work? The important issues that you’re trying to work, and I think we can look at that within systems, whether it’s like an organization or, a family or whatever kind of system you want to look at and the players and stakeholders within a system and solve whatever issue needs to be solved.

Or you can look at it from your own personal system, like your n of one. on the micro scale of, like, how can I, If the goal is like personal growth, how can I make myself uncomfortable enough to want to make the change but not too easy, that it’s too comfortable and I’m never going to move from this space or too hot, that I’m going to feel so overly activated that I’m going to just want to exit. It’s figuring out where that zone is and how to stay there.

Oli: Yeah, I think that’s the sweet spot. If we find that zone, then our relationship with life is real in the way that you’re talking about. Like, when there’s an emergency – in a & e or wherever it was, sorry – then, you feel more alive. Like, we feel alive in that sweet spot. And we’re actually built for that sweet spot, I think.

And so if we detach from our purpose, so we become too passive and we get bored and we start to stagnate, that gives us a sign that we need to start heating things up a bit. If we’re burning out so much that we’re panicking and stressed and we just can’t take life anymore, then that’s a sign, in a way, that we need to cool down, to use the analogy that you use. And, if we can do that, then that’s when we’re not going to be held back by identity and all the stuff we were talking about.

We’re going to be flowing and growing and we’re going to keep learning rather than filtering everything through what we think we already know, which, if it’s burning us out or it’s causing us to stagnate, is kind of misaligned with life in some way. So that’s awesome. I love how you shared that.

If you were going to sum up this whole conversation, if that’s even possible, what would you say? Have you got any final words of wisdom? And, also, can you let people know where they can find you and learn, more about the embers projects and all that kind of stuff?

Hiba: Yeah, sure. How can I summarize this? Yeah, I guess, the first step to realizing, the first step to anything, the first step to any sort of change, is going to be the hardest one. The first thing that needs to happen is really having an awareness of like, “Okay, something is not quite right, I need to make a change in my life, or I don’t want to continue living my life in this way, or whatever it is”, whatever the realization is, that’s really the first step.

And then taking action on that step is probably the hardest thing to do, because often we feel, okay, we know something’s not feeling quite right. But what do I do about it? I don’t even know how that can also be a source of overwhelm. And so I think one of the important things I’ve learned, especially in the last few months, because I am directly affected by everything happening in the Middle East, I’m Palestinian.

Realising, that, you don’t have to do things alone. Realising that you really can lean on support systems to help you navigate moments of uncertainty, moments of discomfort, and that you can actually do this in community with people. And then I think especially, what I notice from high achieving people is we really struggle to ask for help because we want to, evolve, and we are the one people look to for help. So how dare we ask for help? And if I were to give maybe one, wisdom is like, it’s okay to ask for help. And I know we hear this often, but really.

Think about when someone comes to you asking you for help. Most of us receive that with a lot of gratitude and appreciation. That, wow, how wonderful that someone trusts me enough to want me to help them. Think about the gratitude and the good feelings that you get when you ask for help. And, give yourself permission to give that good feeling back to someone else to allow them to help you in the way you like helping others.

So that would be kind of like, the way I would say is, no matter how accomplished you are, no matter how good you are at managing your own pain, allow others to hold you through it, too. And, it’s okay. And it’s recommended that you don’t navigate it on your own. Just really identify your support system, get professional help if you need it. And yeah, there’s no shame in wanting and living the life of your dreams. And it is possible, and it’s possible to do it within a community or within the right support systems. So that would be kind of like what I’ll leave people with.

Oli: Yeah, I love that. And it’s so true because it goes back to what we said about control. If we’re too extreme with that, forcing life through our own terms, we think it’s all up to us and we think we’re separate from everybody else. And just asking for help when we need it connects us to our humanity. Because at the end of the day, we’re tribal creatures and we do need each other. So that’s really important. So thank you. Where can people find you? What’s your website and stuff like that?

Hiba: Yeah, so you can find me on emberscc.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn, and I’ll share the link with you, Oli. So you can put it in the show notes or wherever you put it. And then you can also find me on Instagram at I am hibakhaled and I just launched a blog today. so you can also now found me on Substack, and it’s called “Feel it to Heal.

Oli: Really?

Hiba:Yeah, really excited about my new blog, and I’ll be sharing kind of my own personal healing journey on there on a weekly basis. So please subscribe and, yeah, let me know what you think.

Oli: Yeah. Awesome. Well, I’ll share all that stuff in the show notes, but Hiba, thank you so much for this. It’s been a good one. And, I just really appreciate your time and energy and insight and everything. So thanks a bunch.

Hiba: Thank you, Oli. Thank you. Have a great day.

---

If you want to work on figuring out your own REALNESS and moving towards LIFE PURPOSE then join my mailing list and you get full access to the 7-Day Personality Transplant System Shock (with 158-page workbook):