[SPEAKER_00]: you deserve more than feeling constantly fried to a crisp.

[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Fried, the burnout podcast, where you get the understanding, the community, and the information you need to end burnout for good.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host Kate Dunovan, and all of my work focuses on hashtag ending burnout culture.

[SPEAKER_00]: Outside the pod, you'll find me on stages at conferences, giving keynotes, in offices, providing corporate trainings, doing virtual VIP one-on-one work, or supporting our group program on Friday that is run by my right-hand woman Sarah Vosen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Both Sarah and I have been through burnout and came out stronger, happier and more fulfilled.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we want that post burnout growth for you too.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, Fred, fam.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have no notes for this one.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're just going to spit ball because I had a conversation today that really made me think about how often we are judging ourselves for not being able to do things that we're not supposed to be able to know.

[SPEAKER_00]: How to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought, well, that is just such a waste of energy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the things that came up was this idea about or at surrounding behavior change, like I know I need to do this thing differently, but I haven't been able to do it differently or I learned how to do it differently.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I went back to work and I fell into my old patterns.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we tend to get really self-judge about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's [SPEAKER_00]: silly because that's not how behavior change works.

[SPEAKER_00]: So today I'm only talking about this one research study that I'm going to open in front of me and it's a paper titled why behavior change is so difficult to sustain by Mark Bootin.

[SPEAKER_00]: And here's the things that really matter about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, when you're changing a behavior, it's not like the old behavior gets erased from your brain.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you think about behaviors and habits, like pathways through [SPEAKER_00]: your brain and picture your brain as a wild jungle.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you have a habit that you've done for 25 years, that's like you walking through a wild jungle for 25 years on the same exact path over and over again, day after day, the first few weeks you probably used a machete or some sort of support to get some trees and branches out of your way.

[SPEAKER_00]: But over time because you walked that path over and over and over again, you just have a path.

[SPEAKER_00]: So now you can walk on it and it's very simple.

[SPEAKER_00]: So your habits and your behaviors become like these pet well-worn paths that you just have.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now say you now supplement it with a different behavior.

[SPEAKER_00]: Doing a behavior change.

[SPEAKER_00]: This behavior change.

[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, requires a massive amount of energy.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to get the machete back out.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to have other supports.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to wear thick or sold shoes.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you've got to stamp things down.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you have to pay more attention.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you have to look for rocks.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you have to do all this extra work to make this behavior change.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then you have to repeat that work over and over and over and over and over and over and over again until that pathway becomes easy and clear.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the initial pathway, while you're building the second one, might be a little overgrown.

[SPEAKER_00]: There might be some weeds in it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some trees might have started to collapse over the top of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But if you look, that pathway is still there.

[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't completely disappear for a very, very, very long time.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the first thing that I need you to understand about behavior change and being human and having a brain and just, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: is that the new behavior does not eliminate the old behavior.

[SPEAKER_00]: The old behavior is still in your brain and in your body.

[SPEAKER_00]: The next thing that is really cool about this article is it explains that the new learning is environment-dependent [SPEAKER_00]: an experience dependent.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what that means is that if you say you took three months off for a burnout recovery and you were learning how to set boundaries.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so you did some things at home with your family because you were at home with your family, you weren't at work, you know, or so you're setting new boundaries and you're setting them with your child and your husband or your child and your wife or whatever.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just because you learned the new behavior in this environment doesn't mean that it automatically translates to a new experience in a new environment.

[SPEAKER_00]: So often in the burnout recovery pathway, we say, we hear from people, yeah, but I was doing really well and then I went back to work and everything fell apart.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, nothing fell apart.

[SPEAKER_00]: The things that you learned in the environment that you learned to them are still useful and applicable and wonderful in the environment that you learned them, but now you've got to go through that learning.

[SPEAKER_00]: almost all over again in the new environment until it catches hold.

[SPEAKER_00]: The good news is you've already crushed some of the pathway, so building it in a new environment will be a little bit easier than building it in the initial environment, but you still have to go through that process.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like doing it all over again.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you've been around here for a very long time, you'll know that a couple of years ago, I went back to school, did another degree.

[SPEAKER_00]: and I had gone through burnout recovery and I felt really good about where I was and then when I was in school, I found myself banging my head against my desk actually physically.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't mean metaphorically.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was physically banging my head against my desk during a statistics class because I was so stressed out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't until then that I thought, oh my God, all of my perfectionist, people pleasing bad boundary behaviors are still active in this part of my life because I haven't been in school since I went through burnout recovery because I'm in a new space in a new environment.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I had to take all of those learnings and apply them to this new situation.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the first thing that I need you to know is that the new behavior doesn't eliminate [SPEAKER_00]: Not how our brains work.

[SPEAKER_00]: The second thing is that the new behavior when you learn it is context-dependent is environment and experience-dependent, and you will need to apply it over and over again in new spaces in order for it to take hold in multiple spaces.

[SPEAKER_00]: The next thing that I need you to understand.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is the last one we'll go over today.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a quick one today.

[SPEAKER_00]: The last thing that I need you to understand is that it is really normal to relapse to an old behavior.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if the pathway for the old behavior is still clear and you are on machete day five on the new pathway and you're like my arms are so tired from swinging this machete.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's really normal to go back to the old pathway.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not even bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually part of the behavior change process.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is to try the new, try the new, try the new, get tired, give up and go to the old.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then say, oh gosh, that really doesn't work for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then try the new, try the new, try the new, try the new.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it might be working.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my God, I'm really tired.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had a cold.

[SPEAKER_00]: I might, you know, somebody something happened to somebody in my family.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm too overwhelmed to think about this new pattern.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna go to this old pattern.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then you go on the old pattern and then a week later you say, Oh gosh, this really isn't working for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I got it.

[SPEAKER_00]: The new pattern.

[SPEAKER_00]: But by now, the new pattern again requires a little more care because you didn't punch down all those plants enough to create a clear path yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: So now you've got to sort of do it again.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it feels like all of this effort because it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: your brain is constantly making these connections like new neurons or coming together and old neurons are falling apart and we need to continuously create the pathways until they stick.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's normal to jump onto the old open, comfortable pathway in times when you are fatigued when you are stressed, when a lot is going on in your life, when you're in grief, when all sorts of different things can happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, [SPEAKER_00]: behave your change, any model that you're looking at.

[SPEAKER_00]: You do need to understand the old doesn't erase, the new doesn't erase the old behavior learning has to happen in multiple environments.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just one is not going to allow it to spread through your life just randomly.

[SPEAKER_00]: And also that there's going to be relapses and that that's normal you should expect that and be okay with it because that is part of the change process.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so the next time you find yourself in this place where you're thinking, I can't maintain this change.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just remember those three things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then remember, I'm human and that's just how we do things.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a you thing, it's a we thing, it's an us thing, it's a human thing.