Burnout isn’t just about feeling tired—it’s the slow erosion of passion, purpose, and energy that can take even the best coaches out of the game. If you’ve ever found yourself drained, disconnected, or questioning if you can keep going, you’re not alone.
In this episode of Coach 360: Beyond The Game, Host Colton Leonard visits with Coach Stephen Mackey as they dive into the real causes of burnout and outline a four-step process to help coaches finish strong instead of flaming out. Whether you’re a veteran coach or just starting your journey, these principles will help you stay energized, focused, and in the game for the long haul.
Key Takeaways from the Episode
- Burnout happens slowly and then all at once. Recognizing the early warning signs—like emotional exhaustion, detachment, and a low sense of accomplishment—can prevent total burnout.
- Rhythm and intention matter. Without daily habits that fuel you, it’s easy to run on empty and lose sight of why you started coaching in the first place.
- Reflection combats recency bias. Bad weeks don’t define your career—taking time to reflect on your progress and wins keeps you grounded in reality.
- Refueling is non-negotiable. Just like a truck pulling a heavy load burns fuel faster, the more responsibility you carry, the more intentional you need to be about recharging.
- Focus on what truly matters. The best coaches aren’t just busy—they’re focused on the right work. Avoid distractions, set priorities, and align your efforts with your greater purpose.
MORE ABOUT COACH MACKEY
Stephen Mackey is a keynote speaker, and founder of 2Words Character Development. Building on the Six Pillars of a Championship Character – Toughness, Integrity, Belief, Excellence, Effort, and Service – he helps equip players, teams and organizations elevate their performance by building a culture of character. If you would like to connect with Coach Mackey, invite him to speak at an event, or receive his weekly encouragements texts, click here to visit Stephen Mackey's Zaap page with all of his most current related links and information.
COACH 360 IS PRESENTED BY: 2Words Character Development
Interested in connecting or taking the next step with 2Words Character Development? Let us know! Email Colton Leonard at: Colton@2words.tv
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Hey everyone. My name is Colton and I'm the host of the coach 360 podcast here. Our goal is to come alongside and equip coaches with the resources to help develop character through sports and raise up the next generation of leaders. Not only do we do that through this podcast and interviewing coaches from across the nation about character, culture, and leadership, but we also do it through our two words character development curriculums. If you want to learn more about these or anything else that we offer, visit our website, 2words.tv. That's the number two, words.tv. Or you can always drop me an email, colton at 2words.tv. Thanks for listening today. Let's get into the show. PMX Pro Maxima is your one-stop shop for the ultimate fitness equipment solution. Are you ready to take your workouts to the next level? With their state-of-the-art equipment, you can achieve your fitness goals faster and more effectively. From strength to cardio, they manufacture a wide range of high quality products made in the USA to maximize your performance. Experience the difference with PMX Pro Maxima and see why thousands of athletes and fitness enthusiasts trust them. Visit ProMaxima.com today to explore their catalog and elevate your fitness journey. Coach Mackey and I have personally gotten the opportunity to train with their equipment in our home gyms. Many of you know of our strongman and powerlifting backgrounds. From big bench presses and deadlifts, we have spent thousands of hours under a barbell and can personally tell you PMX Pro Maxima is one of the best manufacturers of strength equipment we have put our chalked up hands on. And they're made right here in the great state of Texas. PMX Pro Maxima. Find your strength from within. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Coach 360 We got Coach Mackey on the line again today. Mac, what's up, brother? Hey, buddy. How you doing? Man, it's another beautiful day in the hill country. We're finally getting out of some cooler weather. Got some blue skies going on this morning. It's pretty great. Yes, sir, man. Excited. Excited, man. It's a good time of year. We got... A lot of, a lot of excitement happening. Track season is coming. Baseball's going. Softball's going. We got soccer wrapping up. Basketball's wrapping up. There's a lot. That's the thing about the spring is You know, the fall is very rhythmic. Yes, there's a lot going on, but it's Tuesday. It's Thursday. It's Friday. We've got volleyball. We've got, you know, cross country football, very limited. Water polo is in there, you know, but it's very limited. Man, you get to the spring and we are doing everything that doesn't get done in the fall gets done in the spring and it is absolutely crazy. It really is. And speaking of that, uh, Mac, when, when I'm talking with coaches right now, that's, I'm, I'm hearing a lot about that. Just the, the craziness of the spring and, you know, when I, When I get them on the line or I'm talking to them, that's usually one of the first things that they say is just things are crazy right now. And so I was thinking about it as coaches are walking through This spring semester, right? They're starting to get a little tired. Maybe they're counting down the days till spring break and then to summer. What would be just maybe a message of encouragement or something that they can do to just Keep that fire stoked, finish strong, get through the end of the year, um, and do it really, really well and not lose that, that momentum that maybe they started with at the beginning of the school year. One of the things I think about when it comes to finishing strong is that the there's some misconceptions the thought that I have to finish the same way that I started and the reality is is that's just not gonna happen. Like you're, there's no way that you're going to be as strong at the beginning of the workout as you are at the end. And that's not to say that your last set's not your best set or any of that, but it's to say when I, when I'm really strong at the beginning, I've got more reps to give when I'm strong at the end. It's like, Hey, I've crossed the finish line and I've got nothing left to give. And so I want to maybe just encourage folks to go. It's okay. That you are getting to empty. It's okay that you're getting to your last set and you only have so much left to give. The challenge is to make sure that you cross the finish line And before you run out of something to give, you get to the destination before you run out of gas. And, and I think what keeps us from doing that. Is, is burnout and this idea that we, we burn out, we flame out before we get there. And, and that's really what we're trying to protect against or fight against is, is burning out as opposed to finishing out. Hmm. When you describe like the. Finishing out burnout, um, avoiding burnout and finishing strong. I just, I, I imagine like you want to get to that place like, like in, in, in, in the sport, in a sport. At the end of the game, you want to get to that moment where you didn't like, as you said, you didn't burn out before that last moment of the game. But man, at that at that very moment when the game is over, you go, hey, I can look back and say I left it all on the field. I had nothing left in the tank. How do they how do they balance out that mentality? And what does that look like for for a coach walking through the spring semester? But one of the things that we'll say often is that burnout happens slowly and then all at once. And so there are some things that we want to look out for. And in the example of Leaving it all on the field. Versus being exhausted is a good, is a good comparison. So, um, burnout's going to happen when we're emotionally exhausted. That's where we feel drained all the time. We can sleep. We could rest. We could have a weekend off and we are still just exhausted from the inside out as opposed to that sense of I finished the game and then I had nothing left to give. One is this nagging. The other is this almost like an accomplishment. Other signs of burnout include things like detachment. Where you just start to feel indifferent. You don't have any excitement. There's no fulfillment in what you're doing versus the idea of yes, this is hard. Yes, this takes a lot of me. But I am willing and excited and glad to do it. Um, you know, another sign of burnout is a low sense of accomplishment. That no matter how much you do, it never feels like it's enough. Versus That finish strong is gonna have a sense of I did today's work and though there is work to do tomorrow, I'm proud of today's work. Um, and we can even start to have physical symptoms in burnout, um, things like headaches, ongoing fatigue, getting more sick more often. These are all ways of your body saying, hey, hello, um, something's not right here. And so as we think about finishing strong, we've got to see some of the signs of burnout. And when we see those things that we need to pause, just like we would see a kid limping, Off the field, that would be a flag or a signal to say, hey, I need to, I need to check on, on that kid. When we see, or we experience things like emotional exhaustion, detachment. Low sense of accomplishment, physical symptoms. We need to hit pause and look internal. And the reason we've got to do that is because if we don't, we will burn out. And when coaches burn out, there's big consequence, not just for your job and your ability to provide for your family. But also on the impact that we can make on, on students. And so there's a lot on the line here. And that's why we've got to take care of ourselves as coaches so that we can be in the game for the long haul. We can finish strong. Instead of burning out and falling out. Hmm. What would you say to the coach that's listening to this and they just, they heard that description of burnout and they're thinking to themselves, oh man, that's either me or I'm right there. You talked about what we need to do is we need to pause and look inside. But what does that, like, what does that actually mean? What would be your practical advice for a coach that is feeling that way right now? So there are four things that we teach when it comes to preventing burnout or being in this for the long haul. And the first is, and you can almost look at it as like an internal checklist to go, okay, where am I at with this? Um, and if I'm not in a good place with it, I'm probably going to be on the path to burnout. Is that you need a rhythm and an intention for your day. Which is to say, I know that it would be perfect if you could wake up slow, no kids screaming at you, no practice to rush to before the sun gets up, um, no lesson plans to finish up. It would be great if you could take an hour, maybe even two hours. Thank you. Start your day at nine o'clock after a nice cup of coffee and a great breakfast. And you could have a very peaceful morning like that. That would be amazing. And I wish that for everybody. Um, but I don't know anyone who's not retired that has a morning like that. And so when I say have a rhythm and an intention, what I'm not saying is you got to be on vacation. What I am saying is that given the requirements of your life, You have got to take control and say, if I don't pour into me first, I'm not going to have anything to pour into other people. And so the first and most important relationship that I can have is a relationship with myself. And so to help put some rhythm and intention on your day, I teach what's called the daily seven. Seven habits that will keep you grounded and balanced and ready to give Your best, uh, because you can't give what you don't have. This list helps you. Get right and take care of yourself so you can go take care of others. And so here's what the daily seven is. Number one, you need to take care of your faith life or your inner life. Um, and whatever your faith is, you need time every day to To ground yourself in that. It can be prayer, reading scripture, meditation, journaling. It's not about having an hour or two hours a day at this. It's about having an intentional grounding. So that you know where you are anchored. You know why you're working, why you're living, what you're doing. And you begin with this thing that is bigger than yourself. So we start there. And the second is to take care of your body or your physical needs. So I'm not asking you to be a collegiate athlete, go compete in the CrossFit Games, or be model ready, right? Asking you to do seventy-five hard, though you may do any of those things. What I'm saying is you've got to take care of your body. And the, your health because the stress and the hours that coaching puts on the body It would be like never changing the oil in your truck or never, uh, changing your tires or getting your air conditioner looked at. For a while, you'll be okay, but eventually, Your car is gonna break down. And the same thing will be true with your body. So you gotta take care of yourself. Look for an intentional way, whether it's in the food you choose to eat, the movements you choose to take, the disciplines you have, take care of your body. The third is to uh, connect intentionally with your spouse or your loved ones. Those people that are most closest Move beyond the logistics and the daily task and just be together. Find five good minutes to laugh or dream. Just remind each other why the relationship you have matters. Um, the next is very similar and that's to connect with your kids or your friends. Um, that's to be intentional about connecting with them by doing something that, that makes y'all's relationship special. When life gets busy, It is really, really easy, especially for coaches when you're busy doing good things that you spend more time with other people's kids than you do with your own. Uh, and so you want to make sure that your kids and your friends, if you don't have kids, That they know that they matter to you and that they're not an afterthought. Gameday with Coach Mackey is an SEL teak space character program for K through fifth grade. Here we connect character lessons with learning about the world while playing fun and active games. Each game day lesson includes an engaging six to eight minute video, trivia questions to warm up, serious questions to cool down, and a game inspired by different places of the world. Learn more at 2words.tv slash PE. Number five is this, is that you need to do something to serve another person with no expectation of reward. Um, and, and in coaching, of course, this is like, well, you know, this is just fundamental to what coaches do. But I encourage you to find something outside of your job to serve someone. Hold a door open. Encourage someone. Help a person that's stuck on the side of the road. Change a tire. Do something to care for another person. And it will remind you of your greater purpose as you get into the classroom and on the field. And it becomes an antidote to entitlement, um, into bitterness, into resentment. Which are all things that burnout bring up, especially in coaches. Number six is to do something personal just for you every day. You give and you give and you give to so many people. Every day you need to do something just for you. Take a few minutes to read a book. Keep a streak going on a crossword puzzle. Have a pour over coffee instead of a quick Keurig. Do something just for you. That, that you can pause and say, hey, I am worth taking time to celebrate and to take care of. And then finally, You've got to do your work. And that's to focus on today's work. Create a task list and tackle it and then move on. You can't do a season's worth of work in one day. You can't do a year's worth of work in one day. You can only do today's work today. And so, uh, do that work and then move on. So these seven things, this service as a framework, the daily seven. A framework to find rhythm and intention in your day. And it's that first step towards fighting against burnout. Love it. You know, uh, Mac, I have learned and picked up those daily seven habits from you, uh, in our time together and whatnot, and it has made a. Huge impact to me. And when I, when I first, and even just taking some notes on this list, it seems overwhelming, but coaches and people, we can do this in five minute spots. Um, you know, you mentioned a great example, something for yourself, just taking a few extra minutes, ten minutes instead of two to make yourself a pour over coffee. Cause you enjoy that just a little bit more and taking that little moment of. Something for you, but being intentional with those things, it doesn't, it doesn't require um, a ton of time. It can be in these little moments that just make all the difference in the world. Would you agree? Absolutely. And, and this is the perfect example of, of quality over quantity. Love it. Will really make the difference here. And it will make it doable. Because if you make it big on quantity, lots of time, really robust, It's going to make it hard as the seasons, because let's face it, coaches don't just have one season. They have multiple seasons that they're coaching. As the seasons go on and you get tired, it becomes really hard to do. When you have a quality over quantity and you can have one small, simple practice, simple is sustainable. And so, uh, we encourage that. Take us to number two. Yeah, the next piece is... As, as you get going, we have this recency bias where we can start to think of our whole year, our whole career, our whole life. Based on what's happening most recently. So if you're having a bad string of weeks, it gets really easy to start going, well, maybe this school isn't the right fit for me. Maybe this career isn't right for me. And it's not because you're, you're taking all of the evidence in. It's just the last few weeks have really stunk. And so one of the things that we can do to combat burnout and stay in the game for the long haul is to have a practice of reflection. It will help us grow and learn, but it'll also help keep us grounded so that when we are in some hard times, we don't let a bad three weeks Cause us to jump ship and go look for greener grass on the other side. Do you know as well as I do, the grass ain't greener on the other side of the fence, right? It's greener where we water it. And so a few questions for reflection. Number one, what did I do well? Take time to celebrate your wins. Big, small, it doesn't matter. When you work from a mindset of pride and progress, you are going to get a lot further Than if you are chasing some unattainable perfection out of shame or guilt. Um, and so too often we overlook what we do well. Because of how far we still have to go. And, and that's just, that's the, that's the toxic trait of a high performer. But I've got to, I've got to keep beating the drum. Take time regularly. To celebrate what you've done well. Two, ask the question, what do I need to keep doing? Because there are some things that though you're making progress on them, you're not there yet. I E you are in progress of improving your patients, but you're not where you want to be yet. You are getting better at the language you use or being positive or in quitting a bad, but you're not where you want it. So you've got to keep going. Right? So what habits or strategies are working well for you? Keep doing them. And then the third reflection question is to say, what are some things that I need to stop or start doing? What's no longer serving you? You used to do things a certain way, but now you find that it's not really helpful anymore. And so you need to stop doing it. Or you know it's time to start taking care of your body. Well, Get to it. And that process of reflection allows us to kind of see things 360 not just what's been recent or not just old victories that we're hanging on to. Now we get to see things as they are across a semester or across a month or across a year so that we can have a good clear picture of where we're at. Like that recency recently biased biased. Yeah, I really like that. Take us to number three. Number three is this. You've got to refuel. Okay. And you've got to do this, uh, every day, every week, every month, and every year. Um, you think about, uh, you know, for, for a long time, my family traveled full-time in an RV and I drove beast of a truck, F-350, Dually, four-wheel drive, I've Lariat, the big rig, right? And when I wasn't hauling our forty-four foot fifth wheel, I would get an impressive twelve miles to the gallon. Right. And I want anybody to be jealous on that. But I mean, I, I was getting some, some good gas mileage on this bad boy. Right. Uh, but the moment that I hooked up the trailer, my miles per gallon dropped to six. Six miles a gallon when I was hauling this bad boy. Now, it would have been easy, right, to say, well, something's wrong with my truck. I take it back to Britt Murray Ford and say, man, my truck's broken. I want a new one. But if I would have done that, he would have said, man, your truck's not broken. It's just when you carry a heavier load, you've got to refuel more often. And the heavier the load you carry as a coach, as a spouse, as a parent, as a friend, The heavier load you carry, the more often you got to refuel and you can say, well, I don't want to. Well, that's fine. I didn't, I didn't want to pay $4 and fifty sixty cents a gallon for gas at six miles a gallon. But if I didn't, I would end up stuck on the side of the road 301 miles later. And the same thing is true for you. You can say, I don't want to refuel. Okay. You don't have to for a while. But eventually, even if you're a Prius, a Tesla running on, you know, getting hundreds of miles, eventually you're going to have to refuel. And so we think about refueling in the moment. That's something like a four count breathing or taking a deep breath or even pulling out a little Hershey's kiss out of your desk in between classes. Just a little moment to reset. Every day you want to take ten or fifteen minutes to have, uh, you to work through your, your daily seven, fifteen ten fifteen minutes in prayer, reflection or quiet time. Each week, you want to take a day to disconnect from work or screens. And it may be you only get a half, you only get Sunday morning. You only get Saturday night. Again, it's quality, not quantity. But on this rhythm, you want to disconnect. Same thing each month. You want to take a weekend. Each semester, you want to take a three-day weekend. And each year, you want to take a week. Okay, again, that doesn't mean that you're unplugged for three days. You go, man, I can't get that in a semester. I get it. But you can still be intentional on that three-day weekend. Again, I can't say this enough. Quality over quantity. And you want to take that time to refuel so that, just like that vehicle, you can keep on doing what you were made to do. Yeah. You know, I've, I've noticed in my family when it comes down to refueling and in my life, That that's something that I have to plan. If I don't plan it, I will absolutely miss it. Or I'll, or I'll pull one of these numbers where, hey, I'm going to take some, some downtime this week. So on these days, I'm going to just, you know, I'll be around I'll check my email and I'll kind of be present but I'm gonna take some downtime and we all know how that goes it. It's like I don't do I don't rest and I don't work very well on that moment. And so it's really something that you have to be intentional to use your word. To plan those rhythms out and in order and what you need and what that looks like or else you're just not going to get it. 100%. And Jennifer Fraser, she's the Executive Director of Athletics at McKinney ISD. She shared at the Texas High School Coaches Association's Leadership Summit. About the importance of balance and work, um, about taking the time to put in boundaries. And she said something talking to me backstage that I thought was so powerful, which was, Very few people need 24-7 access to you. Especially as a coach. And she said the number of people that have that kind of access needs to be very limited. And, and I would encourage, encourage listeners to go check out the THSCA website and you can navigate through there. We'll try to link it where you can find. Uh, video from her talk and she was just so, so encouraging as someone who wears a lot of hats like all coaches but is, is really at the top of, top of the game to say, We've got to make sure we are refueling or we will get burned out and we'll disqualify ourselves from the game. What's our fourth point for the day? All right, the last piece here is going to be this, is that we've got to take time to refocus. That's why we have rhythm. That's why we reflect. That's why we refuel. It's so that we can refocus on what matters most. You're not going to be able to do as a coach everything. But you can do the right things. And when we find rhythm and we reflect and we learn from those reflections and we refuel and we have our best to give, we can focus our energy on doing the things that are most aligned with our purpose, that are Prioritize what matters most. We can avoid distractions and we can make the biggest impact. Um, this is not about not working. Uh, man, and you know this well, you know me better than anybody. Mm-hmm. Is if there's one thing that you could, that you could give me a compliment on that would mean more than anything else, it's about my work ethic. And, and there's so much value in work and I celebrate work, but I want, I want us to be able to focus in on doing the right work. Um, colon, general colon Powell, secretary of state and his book, um, it worked for me in life and leadership. It's one of the few books I read every year. Um, one of his rules is don't be a busy bastard. In other words, don't just be the guy that runs around doing stuff just to do stuff. But do the right stuff. Um, and, and when we learn to find rhythm and to reflect and to, to refuel, we can learn to focus in on what matters most. Um, And it, and it takes all of those things to do it. Alan Cohen said, there's virtue in work and there's virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither. And I think that, that sums this up really, really well. Sure does. That's a great point to end on. Uh, Mac, man, thank you so much for your time. Did you have anything else for our listeners or anything, any updates or anything like that you need to share with them? Oh man, just so thankful for, for coaches, you know, talking to, talking to coach after coach and hearing their schedules, hearing the time you put in, the work you're doing. Man, I know, I know it is a lot. But, but please know that what you do is worth it and the work that you're doing, the impact that you're making on kids. Um, you know, something we've been teaching recently is this idea of don't wait till you know why you need the lesson to learn the lesson. I would say for coaches, don't wait until you know what impact you're going to make to go make the impact. Just go do it and take the time to take care of yourself. So you can make the impact and we'll figure out later, uh, just exactly what that impact ended up being. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time, Mac. All right, Bob. Appreciate you. Hey guys, one last note before you head off for your day. Over 1400 schools across the nation have or are using one of our curriculums. Are you ready to jump on board? If you want a turnkey program to develop character in your athletes, give us a call at 281-723-9943. We will work with you and your budget to make it as easy as possible. Thanks again for listening to the coach 360 podcast. Now let's have a good one today.
Hey everyone. My name is Colton and I'm the host of the coach 360 podcast here. Our goal is to come alongside and equip coaches with the resources to help develop character through sports and raise up the next generation of leaders. Not only do we do that through this podcast and interviewing coaches from across the nation about character, culture, and leadership, but we also do it through our two words character development curriculums. If you want to learn more about these or anything else that we offer, visit our website, 2words.tv. That's the number two, words.tv. Or you can always drop me an email, colton at 2words.tv. Thanks for listening today. Let's get into the show. PMX Pro Maxima is your one-stop shop for the ultimate fitness equipment solution. Are you ready to take your workouts to the next level? With their state-of-the-art equipment, you can achieve your fitness goals faster and more effectively. From strength to cardio, they manufacture a wide range of high quality products made in the USA to maximize your performance. Experience the difference with PMX Pro Maxima and see why thousands of athletes and fitness enthusiasts trust them. Visit ProMaxima.com today to explore their catalog and elevate your fitness journey. Coach Mackey and I have personally gotten the opportunity to train with their equipment in our home gyms. Many of you know of our strongman and powerlifting backgrounds. From big bench presses and deadlifts, we have spent thousands of hours under a barbell and can personally tell you PMX Pro Maxima is one of the best manufacturers of strength equipment we have put our chalked up hands on. And they're made right here in the great state of Texas. PMX Pro Maxima. Find your strength from within. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Coach 360 We got Coach Mackey on the line again today. Mac, what's up, brother? Hey, buddy. How you doing? Man, it's another beautiful day in the hill country. We're finally getting out of some cooler weather. Got some blue skies going on this morning. It's pretty great. Yes, sir, man. Excited. Excited, man. It's a good time of year. We got... A lot of, a lot of excitement happening. Track season is coming. Baseball's going. Softball's going. We got soccer wrapping up. Basketball's wrapping up. There's a lot. That's the thing about the spring is You know, the fall is very rhythmic. Yes, there's a lot going on, but it's Tuesday. It's Thursday. It's Friday. We've got volleyball. We've got, you know, cross country football, very limited. Water polo is in there, you know, but it's very limited. Man, you get to the spring and we are doing everything that doesn't get done in the fall gets done in the spring and it is absolutely crazy. It really is. And speaking of that, uh, Mac, when, when I'm talking with coaches right now, that's, I'm, I'm hearing a lot about that. Just the, the craziness of the spring and, you know, when I, When I get them on the line or I'm talking to them, that's usually one of the first things that they say is just things are crazy right now. And so I was thinking about it as coaches are walking through This spring semester, right? They're starting to get a little tired. Maybe they're counting down the days till spring break and then to summer. What would be just maybe a message of encouragement or something that they can do to just Keep that fire stoked, finish strong, get through the end of the year, um, and do it really, really well and not lose that, that momentum that maybe they started with at the beginning of the school year. One of the things I think about when it comes to finishing strong is that the there's some misconceptions the thought that I have to finish the same way that I started and the reality is is that's just not gonna happen. Like you're, there's no way that you're going to be as strong at the beginning of the workout as you are at the end. And that's not to say that your last set's not your best set or any of that, but it's to say when I, when I'm really strong at the beginning, I've got more reps to give when I'm strong at the end. It's like, Hey, I've crossed the finish line and I've got nothing left to give. And so I want to maybe just encourage folks to go. It's okay. That you are getting to empty. It's okay that you're getting to your last set and you only have so much left to give. The challenge is to make sure that you cross the finish line And before you run out of something to give, you get to the destination before you run out of gas. And, and I think what keeps us from doing that. Is, is burnout and this idea that we, we burn out, we flame out before we get there. And, and that's really what we're trying to protect against or fight against is, is burning out as opposed to finishing out. Hmm. When you describe like the. Finishing out burnout, um, avoiding burnout and finishing strong. I just, I, I imagine like you want to get to that place like, like in, in, in, in the sport, in a sport. At the end of the game, you want to get to that moment where you didn't like, as you said, you didn't burn out before that last moment of the game. But man, at that at that very moment when the game is over, you go, hey, I can look back and say I left it all on the field. I had nothing left in the tank. How do they how do they balance out that mentality? And what does that look like for for a coach walking through the spring semester? But one of the things that we'll say often is that burnout happens slowly and then all at once. And so there are some things that we want to look out for. And in the example of Leaving it all on the field. Versus being exhausted is a good, is a good comparison. So, um, burnout's going to happen when we're emotionally exhausted. That's where we feel drained all the time. We can sleep. We could rest. We could have a weekend off and we are still just exhausted from the inside out as opposed to that sense of I finished the game and then I had nothing left to give. One is this nagging. The other is this almost like an accomplishment. Other signs of burnout include things like detachment. Where you just start to feel indifferent. You don't have any excitement. There's no fulfillment in what you're doing versus the idea of yes, this is hard. Yes, this takes a lot of me. But I am willing and excited and glad to do it. Um, you know, another sign of burnout is a low sense of accomplishment. That no matter how much you do, it never feels like it's enough. Versus That finish strong is gonna have a sense of I did today's work and though there is work to do tomorrow, I'm proud of today's work. Um, and we can even start to have physical symptoms in burnout, um, things like headaches, ongoing fatigue, getting more sick more often. These are all ways of your body saying, hey, hello, um, something's not right here. And so as we think about finishing strong, we've got to see some of the signs of burnout. And when we see those things that we need to pause, just like we would see a kid limping, Off the field, that would be a flag or a signal to say, hey, I need to, I need to check on, on that kid. When we see, or we experience things like emotional exhaustion, detachment. Low sense of accomplishment, physical symptoms. We need to hit pause and look internal. And the reason we've got to do that is because if we don't, we will burn out. And when coaches burn out, there's big consequence, not just for your job and your ability to provide for your family. But also on the impact that we can make on, on students. And so there's a lot on the line here. And that's why we've got to take care of ourselves as coaches so that we can be in the game for the long haul. We can finish strong. Instead of burning out and falling out. Hmm. What would you say to the coach that's listening to this and they just, they heard that description of burnout and they're thinking to themselves, oh man, that's either me or I'm right there. You talked about what we need to do is we need to pause and look inside. But what does that, like, what does that actually mean? What would be your practical advice for a coach that is feeling that way right now? So there are four things that we teach when it comes to preventing burnout or being in this for the long haul. And the first is, and you can almost look at it as like an internal checklist to go, okay, where am I at with this? Um, and if I'm not in a good place with it, I'm probably going to be on the path to burnout. Is that you need a rhythm and an intention for your day. Which is to say, I know that it would be perfect if you could wake up slow, no kids screaming at you, no practice to rush to before the sun gets up, um, no lesson plans to finish up. It would be great if you could take an hour, maybe even two hours. Thank you. Start your day at nine o'clock after a nice cup of coffee and a great breakfast. And you could have a very peaceful morning like that. That would be amazing. And I wish that for everybody. Um, but I don't know anyone who's not retired that has a morning like that. And so when I say have a rhythm and an intention, what I'm not saying is you got to be on vacation. What I am saying is that given the requirements of your life, You have got to take control and say, if I don't pour into me first, I'm not going to have anything to pour into other people. And so the first and most important relationship that I can have is a relationship with myself. And so to help put some rhythm and intention on your day, I teach what's called the daily seven. Seven habits that will keep you grounded and balanced and ready to give Your best, uh, because you can't give what you don't have. This list helps you. Get right and take care of yourself so you can go take care of others. And so here's what the daily seven is. Number one, you need to take care of your faith life or your inner life. Um, and whatever your faith is, you need time every day to To ground yourself in that. It can be prayer, reading scripture, meditation, journaling. It's not about having an hour or two hours a day at this. It's about having an intentional grounding. So that you know where you are anchored. You know why you're working, why you're living, what you're doing. And you begin with this thing that is bigger than yourself. So we start there. And the second is to take care of your body or your physical needs. So I'm not asking you to be a collegiate athlete, go compete in the CrossFit Games, or be model ready, right? Asking you to do seventy-five hard, though you may do any of those things. What I'm saying is you've got to take care of your body. And the, your health because the stress and the hours that coaching puts on the body It would be like never changing the oil in your truck or never, uh, changing your tires or getting your air conditioner looked at. For a while, you'll be okay, but eventually, Your car is gonna break down. And the same thing will be true with your body. So you gotta take care of yourself. Look for an intentional way, whether it's in the food you choose to eat, the movements you choose to take, the disciplines you have, take care of your body. The third is to uh, connect intentionally with your spouse or your loved ones. Those people that are most closest Move beyond the logistics and the daily task and just be together. Find five good minutes to laugh or dream. Just remind each other why the relationship you have matters. Um, the next is very similar and that's to connect with your kids or your friends. Um, that's to be intentional about connecting with them by doing something that, that makes y'all's relationship special. When life gets busy, It is really, really easy, especially for coaches when you're busy doing good things that you spend more time with other people's kids than you do with your own. Uh, and so you want to make sure that your kids and your friends, if you don't have kids, That they know that they matter to you and that they're not an afterthought. Gameday with Coach Mackey is an SEL teak space character program for K through fifth grade. Here we connect character lessons with learning about the world while playing fun and active games. Each game day lesson includes an engaging six to eight minute video, trivia questions to warm up, serious questions to cool down, and a game inspired by different places of the world. Learn more at 2words.tv slash PE. Number five is this, is that you need to do something to serve another person with no expectation of reward. Um, and, and in coaching, of course, this is like, well, you know, this is just fundamental to what coaches do. But I encourage you to find something outside of your job to serve someone. Hold a door open. Encourage someone. Help a person that's stuck on the side of the road. Change a tire. Do something to care for another person. And it will remind you of your greater purpose as you get into the classroom and on the field. And it becomes an antidote to entitlement, um, into bitterness, into resentment. Which are all things that burnout bring up, especially in coaches. Number six is to do something personal just for you every day. You give and you give and you give to so many people. Every day you need to do something just for you. Take a few minutes to read a book. Keep a streak going on a crossword puzzle. Have a pour over coffee instead of a quick Keurig. Do something just for you. That, that you can pause and say, hey, I am worth taking time to celebrate and to take care of. And then finally, You've got to do your work. And that's to focus on today's work. Create a task list and tackle it and then move on. You can't do a season's worth of work in one day. You can't do a year's worth of work in one day. You can only do today's work today. And so, uh, do that work and then move on. So these seven things, this service as a framework, the daily seven. A framework to find rhythm and intention in your day. And it's that first step towards fighting against burnout. Love it. You know, uh, Mac, I have learned and picked up those daily seven habits from you, uh, in our time together and whatnot, and it has made a. Huge impact to me. And when I, when I first, and even just taking some notes on this list, it seems overwhelming, but coaches and people, we can do this in five minute spots. Um, you know, you mentioned a great example, something for yourself, just taking a few extra minutes, ten minutes instead of two to make yourself a pour over coffee. Cause you enjoy that just a little bit more and taking that little moment of. Something for you, but being intentional with those things, it doesn't, it doesn't require um, a ton of time. It can be in these little moments that just make all the difference in the world. Would you agree? Absolutely. And, and this is the perfect example of, of quality over quantity. Love it. Will really make the difference here. And it will make it doable. Because if you make it big on quantity, lots of time, really robust, It's going to make it hard as the seasons, because let's face it, coaches don't just have one season. They have multiple seasons that they're coaching. As the seasons go on and you get tired, it becomes really hard to do. When you have a quality over quantity and you can have one small, simple practice, simple is sustainable. And so, uh, we encourage that. Take us to number two. Yeah, the next piece is... As, as you get going, we have this recency bias where we can start to think of our whole year, our whole career, our whole life. Based on what's happening most recently. So if you're having a bad string of weeks, it gets really easy to start going, well, maybe this school isn't the right fit for me. Maybe this career isn't right for me. And it's not because you're, you're taking all of the evidence in. It's just the last few weeks have really stunk. And so one of the things that we can do to combat burnout and stay in the game for the long haul is to have a practice of reflection. It will help us grow and learn, but it'll also help keep us grounded so that when we are in some hard times, we don't let a bad three weeks Cause us to jump ship and go look for greener grass on the other side. Do you know as well as I do, the grass ain't greener on the other side of the fence, right? It's greener where we water it. And so a few questions for reflection. Number one, what did I do well? Take time to celebrate your wins. Big, small, it doesn't matter. When you work from a mindset of pride and progress, you are going to get a lot further Than if you are chasing some unattainable perfection out of shame or guilt. Um, and so too often we overlook what we do well. Because of how far we still have to go. And, and that's just, that's the, that's the toxic trait of a high performer. But I've got to, I've got to keep beating the drum. Take time regularly. To celebrate what you've done well. Two, ask the question, what do I need to keep doing? Because there are some things that though you're making progress on them, you're not there yet. I E you are in progress of improving your patients, but you're not where you want to be yet. You are getting better at the language you use or being positive or in quitting a bad, but you're not where you want it. So you've got to keep going. Right? So what habits or strategies are working well for you? Keep doing them. And then the third reflection question is to say, what are some things that I need to stop or start doing? What's no longer serving you? You used to do things a certain way, but now you find that it's not really helpful anymore. And so you need to stop doing it. Or you know it's time to start taking care of your body. Well, Get to it. And that process of reflection allows us to kind of see things 360 not just what's been recent or not just old victories that we're hanging on to. Now we get to see things as they are across a semester or across a month or across a year so that we can have a good clear picture of where we're at. Like that recency recently biased biased. Yeah, I really like that. Take us to number three. Number three is this. You've got to refuel. Okay. And you've got to do this, uh, every day, every week, every month, and every year. Um, you think about, uh, you know, for, for a long time, my family traveled full-time in an RV and I drove beast of a truck, F-350, Dually, four-wheel drive, I've Lariat, the big rig, right? And when I wasn't hauling our forty-four foot fifth wheel, I would get an impressive twelve miles to the gallon. Right. And I want anybody to be jealous on that. But I mean, I, I was getting some, some good gas mileage on this bad boy. Right. Uh, but the moment that I hooked up the trailer, my miles per gallon dropped to six. Six miles a gallon when I was hauling this bad boy. Now, it would have been easy, right, to say, well, something's wrong with my truck. I take it back to Britt Murray Ford and say, man, my truck's broken. I want a new one. But if I would have done that, he would have said, man, your truck's not broken. It's just when you carry a heavier load, you've got to refuel more often. And the heavier the load you carry as a coach, as a spouse, as a parent, as a friend, The heavier load you carry, the more often you got to refuel and you can say, well, I don't want to. Well, that's fine. I didn't, I didn't want to pay $4 and fifty sixty cents a gallon for gas at six miles a gallon. But if I didn't, I would end up stuck on the side of the road 301 miles later. And the same thing is true for you. You can say, I don't want to refuel. Okay. You don't have to for a while. But eventually, even if you're a Prius, a Tesla running on, you know, getting hundreds of miles, eventually you're going to have to refuel. And so we think about refueling in the moment. That's something like a four count breathing or taking a deep breath or even pulling out a little Hershey's kiss out of your desk in between classes. Just a little moment to reset. Every day you want to take ten or fifteen minutes to have, uh, you to work through your, your daily seven, fifteen ten fifteen minutes in prayer, reflection or quiet time. Each week, you want to take a day to disconnect from work or screens. And it may be you only get a half, you only get Sunday morning. You only get Saturday night. Again, it's quality, not quantity. But on this rhythm, you want to disconnect. Same thing each month. You want to take a weekend. Each semester, you want to take a three-day weekend. And each year, you want to take a week. Okay, again, that doesn't mean that you're unplugged for three days. You go, man, I can't get that in a semester. I get it. But you can still be intentional on that three-day weekend. Again, I can't say this enough. Quality over quantity. And you want to take that time to refuel so that, just like that vehicle, you can keep on doing what you were made to do. Yeah. You know, I've, I've noticed in my family when it comes down to refueling and in my life, That that's something that I have to plan. If I don't plan it, I will absolutely miss it. Or I'll, or I'll pull one of these numbers where, hey, I'm going to take some, some downtime this week. So on these days, I'm going to just, you know, I'll be around I'll check my email and I'll kind of be present but I'm gonna take some downtime and we all know how that goes it. It's like I don't do I don't rest and I don't work very well on that moment. And so it's really something that you have to be intentional to use your word. To plan those rhythms out and in order and what you need and what that looks like or else you're just not going to get it. 100%. And Jennifer Fraser, she's the Executive Director of Athletics at McKinney ISD. She shared at the Texas High School Coaches Association's Leadership Summit. About the importance of balance and work, um, about taking the time to put in boundaries. And she said something talking to me backstage that I thought was so powerful, which was, Very few people need 24-7 access to you. Especially as a coach. And she said the number of people that have that kind of access needs to be very limited. And, and I would encourage, encourage listeners to go check out the THSCA website and you can navigate through there. We'll try to link it where you can find. Uh, video from her talk and she was just so, so encouraging as someone who wears a lot of hats like all coaches but is, is really at the top of, top of the game to say, We've got to make sure we are refueling or we will get burned out and we'll disqualify ourselves from the game. What's our fourth point for the day? All right, the last piece here is going to be this, is that we've got to take time to refocus. That's why we have rhythm. That's why we reflect. That's why we refuel. It's so that we can refocus on what matters most. You're not going to be able to do as a coach everything. But you can do the right things. And when we find rhythm and we reflect and we learn from those reflections and we refuel and we have our best to give, we can focus our energy on doing the things that are most aligned with our purpose, that are Prioritize what matters most. We can avoid distractions and we can make the biggest impact. Um, this is not about not working. Uh, man, and you know this well, you know me better than anybody. Mm-hmm. Is if there's one thing that you could, that you could give me a compliment on that would mean more than anything else, it's about my work ethic. And, and there's so much value in work and I celebrate work, but I want, I want us to be able to focus in on doing the right work. Um, colon, general colon Powell, secretary of state and his book, um, it worked for me in life and leadership. It's one of the few books I read every year. Um, one of his rules is don't be a busy bastard. In other words, don't just be the guy that runs around doing stuff just to do stuff. But do the right stuff. Um, and, and when we learn to find rhythm and to reflect and to, to refuel, we can learn to focus in on what matters most. Um, And it, and it takes all of those things to do it. Alan Cohen said, there's virtue in work and there's virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither. And I think that, that sums this up really, really well. Sure does. That's a great point to end on. Uh, Mac, man, thank you so much for your time. Did you have anything else for our listeners or anything, any updates or anything like that you need to share with them? Oh man, just so thankful for, for coaches, you know, talking to, talking to coach after coach and hearing their schedules, hearing the time you put in, the work you're doing. Man, I know, I know it is a lot. But, but please know that what you do is worth it and the work that you're doing, the impact that you're making on kids. Um, you know, something we've been teaching recently is this idea of don't wait till you know why you need the lesson to learn the lesson. I would say for coaches, don't wait until you know what impact you're going to make to go make the impact. Just go do it and take the time to take care of yourself. So you can make the impact and we'll figure out later, uh, just exactly what that impact ended up being. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time, Mac. All right, Bob. Appreciate you. Hey guys, one last note before you head off for your day. Over 1400 schools across the nation have or are using one of our curriculums. Are you ready to jump on board? If you want a turnkey program to develop character in your athletes, give us a call at 281-723-9943. We will work with you and your budget to make it as easy as possible. Thanks again for listening to the coach 360 podcast. Now let's have a good one today.
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