Self-awareness and preventing BURNOUT
Vertical growth is the answer to overcoming feelings of burnout, and becoming self-aware, says author, wellbeing and leadership coach Michael Bunting.
Author of the bestselling title The Mindful Leader and co-author of Extraordinary Leadership in Australia and New Zealand, Michael and his team help leaders and organisations around the world to fulfill their highest potential. Having worked with global brands such as Qantas, Novartis, HSBC, Kellogg’s, OMG, Swarovski, Hilton Hotels, CSIRO and the big 4 accounting firms, he believes that less than 1% of the population is truly self-aware, a character facet needed for vertical growth.
Michael’s interpretation of vertical growth means having the self-awareness to take a “bird’s eye view” on life, to step back and observe the negative, self-sabotaging behaviours that are holding you back, and learn how to overcome them and move towards a more enlightened version of yourself.
Some of Michael’s key pieces of advice for implementing vertical growth in your life include:
Self-awareness: The essential foundation for vertical growth, without which all the other steps are not possible. Self-awareness gives us the ability to consciously regulate our behaviour. We cannot deliberately live a values-based life, nor can we learn to see, accept and compassionately take accountability for our shadow without first properly developing self-awareness.
Fast brain, slow brain: The fast brain engages the parts of the brain that act impulsively, habitually, and with short-term comfort in mind. The slow brain, on the other hand, engages parts of the brain that enable us to act with intention and awareness before our fast-brain reflex response takes over. To shift from our fast to our slow brain, we need to have clear intentions and deliberately choose our values and responses, rather than being held hostage by habitual responses formed in our past.
Find your vertical growth edge: Between our comfort zone and our terror zone is what Michael calls the growth edge. We can become comfortable in patterns that don’t serve us. So, in order to grow again, we first must disrupt our sense of order and move outside of our comfort zone to build a new, more functional order.
Be values-driven: Are your values a living practice? What practices do you use and what actions do you take daily to align with what you stand for? If you need to think about it, then it’s probably not operational in your life.
Commit to daily action: It’s pointless to choose values without a daily commitment to deliberately cultivating that value in action. It’s the daily commitment that gives you the opportunity to notice your habitual fast brain patterns, then to engage the slow brain by consciously regulating out of those patterns into a more values congruent, self-aware state.
