July 28, 2025 • 30 mins
This week’s show featured business coach, therapist and author Scott Anderson discussing tips for dealing with burnout and stress at work.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is Community Matters, a weekly public affairs program to
inform and entertain you with some of the great people, organizations,
and events in and around Omaha. Now here's the host
of the program from news radio eleven ten KFAB.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
It's Scott for heats and thanks so much for being
a part of our program this week. We talked recently
with Jerry Slusky. He's the one behind the CRES Summit,
which is coming up on Friday, August twenty second here
in Omaha. This is the Commercial Real Estate Summit, but
it's more than just Hey, this property over here is
(00:40):
for sale. Have you thought about building this over here?
There is so much more for entrepreneurs, business professionals, and frankly,
people throughout the community as part of this event, including
one of your keynote speakers who joins us now. Scott
Anderson is a licensed mental health practitioner, certified executive, and
life coach. He is the founder of Doubledare, a business
(01:03):
coaching service, and the author of You're Not Toast and
joins us now ahead of the CRI Summit where he
is a big speaker there. Scott, thanks a lot for
being with us on Community Matters.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Well, thanks Scott. Great to be here to give.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Us some insight as to what you'll be talking about
at the summit. Tell me about your book, You're Not Toast.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yes, well, You're Not Toast is about a process that
I had to develop, initially for myself and ultimately for
my clients who were facing and recovering from burnout in
the workplace. And this issue is relevant not only in
the commercial real estate business, which is obviously a very
(01:45):
high pressure business, but really throughout the workforce. Our friends
that gallop down the street tell us that forty percent
of the American workforce says that they are either always
or mostly burned out. By that specifically, we mean wake
up exhausted and can't shake it. Are sort of like
(02:08):
dragging an anchor through the day. And so that's what
we're going to be talking about. Are some proven ways
that we've worked on for the last twelve years that
help high performance professionals not only feel a lot better
and get their energy get themselves back, but really perform
at the highest level of their lives, both personally and professionally.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Now, I'm not going to have you do the entire
keynote address here in order to in order to hear
that the website is attendcresummitt dot com. You can register
online and learn more about all the activities on Friday,
August twenty second. Attend cresummit dot com. But your topic
burnout proof success Ten quick and proven techniques for high
(02:54):
achieving professionals. And this is something that many of us
are leaning forward in our chair that we'd love to
hear more about this morning. Like I said, I don't
want to have you go through the entire ten, but
let me approach a few different aspects of this conversation
with a different way, And that is I think so
many of us have these unrealistic expectations about every single
(03:19):
moment of our day, whether at work or outside of work,
should be instagram worthy and something that gets lots of
likes and comments on Facebook. After all, I go on
social media, everyone else seems to be having a great time,
and I feel unfulfilled. Is it first have to do
with expectations?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
It's certainly part of it. Yeah, you've put your finger
on it. What it really boils down to for so
many people is that early in our careers, we compensate
for a lack of experience in whatever field, whether it's
radio or coaching or real estate, by working harder and
caring more than the people that were around. One of
(03:59):
the ways we distinguish ourselves is by being perfectionists and
holding ourselves to expecting ourselves to deliver at a standard
that is higher that, let's say, than other people. And
the other part of it is having no boundaries, being
willing to pull all nighters. Back in the day, you know,
outwork everybody else, and those two strategies working harder and
(04:24):
caring more than other people can really help you, whether
it's radio or real estate. It's just that as time
goes by, and so often we see this and people
in there they start to see it in their late
thirties and forties. In particular, is that working harder and
caring more and worrying more doesn't scale very well, especially
if you are successful and you start to acquire more
(04:48):
assets and your life becomes richer by maybe a significant other,
maybe children, maybe community events beyond work, and you suddenly realize, yeah,
I can't work any harder and I can't worry anymore.
That strategy doesn't work any anymore. But we have kind
of the superstitious attachment to it. Because it's really really
(05:10):
worked and our superpower turns into kryptonite. A lot of
us wake up very very much like the Bill Murray
character in the movie groundhog Day, where it feels like
the same day over and over and over again, with
the clock radio going off at six point thirty and
it's the same day over and over and we just
(05:31):
can't shake it.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Bonus Yeah, bonus points if you can tell me what
bonus points if you can tell me what song the
clock radio plays every morning in that movie.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
It's Sonny and Share, and I think it's you got.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Me, babe, I got you, babe, I got you babe.
All right, good, all right, wall there's uh you got
my movie references. We can be friends. So let's let's
let me let me push back on this idea of
you know that every day at work has to be
better and the last and we're all just you know,
doing great. Do we sometimes set unrealistic expectations, especially with
(06:06):
young workers, by telling them like, hey, follow your dreams,
follow your passions, it's going to be great. Look, Scott,
you and I have both probably worked in a number
of different jobs and had a number of varying degrees
of great days and bad days at work. Sometimes you
just got to go in and put in the work.
You clock in, your clock out, you go home, you know,
(06:26):
sing a loud song on the way home so you
don't take any baggage home with you and realize, hey,
you know, not every day is going to be you know,
skittles and roses every single day. Sometimes you just got
to put in the work and then try and leave
it behind.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Very true, Very true. You know, the main thing is clinically,
and I've studied as a as a therapist, i studied
the sort of all the resources that's been done on burnout,
and you know, one of the problems is that we
get into a state of high expectations where really expect
not only ourselves but those around us to perform at
(07:03):
an unreasonably high level. And this is true not only
for us as individuals, but it's especially true if you
do have employees and you're trying to coach people up
in whatever profession we're in. Not only do we hold
ourselves to unreasonable expectations, but we also begin to hold
others to those expectations. The biggest problem with burnout is
(07:24):
in where the term came from, is holding ourselves to
an expectation where we are sort of in the flow
or at this super high state of performance twenty four
to seven. It's very much like if you've ever been
in a near hopefully a near miss car accident, and
(07:44):
you catch a car coming to broadside you out of
your peripheral vision and in that moment, your cortisol, adrenaline,
nor a pernepron and all the stress foremones sturge through
your body, and time slows down, and hopefully we steer
out of because we have better reactions and times, we
steer out of this near miss car accident, and ninety
seconds after that stress event, all of those chemicals begin
(08:09):
to go back to normal. Our breathing goes back to normal,
our heart rate goes back to normal, and so forth.
And that's what's meant to happen in stressful situations. It
has beginning, a middle, and an end, and in most
people it has a cycle of about ninety seconds. What
a lot of us get stuck in. It's kind of
like an on switch we can't turn off. Is we
(08:29):
stay stuck in that stress state. In the post traumatic
stress disorder world, we would call hypervigilance and the idea
is that if we the sort of the superstition almost
that we get into, or really a habit, it's almost
an addiction, is that we must stay in this hyper
(08:50):
alert state in order to merely survive day to day
pressure of work. And that's just not the way that
stress works. So many of us will try to take
a vacation, let's say, or even a good night's sleep
or a long weekend, figuring best how I'll recover. In America,
we say every fifty weeks, we take two weeks of vacation,
and that ought to do it. But that's not how
(09:11):
stress works, and that's not how we recover from stress.
And in fact, one of the ten ways we're going
to be talking about in the CIRI Summit August twenty
second is about techniques where we can recover from stress
in the moment, because that's the only time when it's possible.
We can't postpone stress for months and months and then
(09:33):
expect a vacation to get us out of the exhaustion
and overwhelm a burnout. That's just not how the human
body works. But what we can do is recover in
the moment and take what we prescribe are mini vacations,
five second vacations that you might take five or ten
times during the day, because that really will reset our stress,
(09:57):
our stress clocks, and our stresses so that we won't
be exhausted and we won't wait cuts like Bill Murray
and grabhog Day.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
I love that idea. We don't just throughout the year
take two weeks just to eat, just gorge ourselves for
two weeks and then like, all right, I took two
weeks here of eating, and now I don't need to
eat the rest of the year. As you said, that's
not how the body sustains itself. And I think that
relating that to stress throughout the day is an excellent thing.
And that's part of what Scott we're talking here to
(10:28):
Scott Anderson, licensed mental health practitioner. He's doing the luncheon
address called Burnout Proof Success, hand quick and Proven Techniques
for high Achieving Professionals. This is at the CRE Summit
on Friday, August twenty second, the Commercial Real Estate Summit.
You don't have to be in commercial real estate to
go be a part of this because quite frankly, a
(10:49):
lot of the breakout sessions can be taken home to
anything else you have going on in any other line
of work, like what we're talking about here. But the
website for the summit is attend crsummit dot com, Scott
Anderson with us your author. If you're not toast so
you don't get burned out. Is kind of the relation
of that title here with the topic let me let
(11:11):
me get your temperature on this one, Scott, because either
we've all been this person or we've seen this happen
where you're at work. Everyone says, oh, you're doing a
great job, you're putting in the hours, you're doing wonderful,
and then one of two things happens. Because work has
changed a since when our parents were working, and certainly
their parents were working, we've got a lot more of
(11:32):
the people who sign your paycheck are sometimes several times
zones away. They don't know you, they don't know what
you're doing every day, your numbers in a spreadsheet, and
sometimes it doesn't work out in your favor. You get
let go, even though you've been doing everything the way
that everyone told you you were supposed to be doing it.
Or and sometimes this is worse, other people in your
(11:53):
division get let go and you're still there and they're like, hey,
you're doing a great job. We're going to ask you
to take on some of these other roles, and we're
not going to pay you much money, if if at
all more money. But hey, you still got a job.
Do three times as much work. You can do that, right,
And that's a that's a reality for a lot of
(12:14):
workers in this country anymore, isn't it?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Yes? Unfortunately, it really is. And both sides of the
equation are very tough, whether whether they you are terminated
or whether you're a survivor I'm not sure which is
worse than this scenario. You know, Again, it really boils
down to this, and this is this is tough for
a lot of people to hear. You know, if you
(12:39):
work in an environment that is genuinely toxic, if you
work in an environment that is uh, you know, unjust
or misogynistic or racist or whatever, or is otherwise toxic,
then I always advise my clients to run away screaming
life is too short. If that's really you know, this
(13:00):
situation that you're in where there's genuinely a toxic environment.
But my experience, especially with high performance people, and this
is hard for it was hard for me to hear,
but it's just as true as anything I know, and
that is, we cause our own burnout, and we in
ninety percent of the cases. There are definitely exceptions where
the culture of the environment or whatever is truly toxic.
(13:23):
And if that's the case, or it's unrealistic and you're
supposed to do the job of four people, I mean,
obviously that's impossible. But my experience has been and this
is actually it sounds terrible, but it's actually good news,
and that is that we cause our own burnout. I
would say eighty eight to ninety percent of us cause
our own burnout, and we do it mainly simply because
(13:45):
we don't I didn't know enough about how stress works
and how to relieve it. And also I was holding
myself to unreasonable expectations. The expectations that my boss had
of me, or my clients had of me, or my
business partners had of me were nothing compared to the
expectations I had of myself. And so the good news
(14:08):
is here, is that if we are causing our own burnout,
we can also cure it. And that's really the point
of the talk at CIRI Summit, is that with the
acception that I mentioned we really can't. We really do
cause our own burnout, and we really can cure it.
(14:28):
It's just that everything that we know to do actually
makes it worse. For example, I've had clients who have
taken weak vacations expecting to come back healed, or I've
even had clients take sabbaticals of ninety days and six months,
and they come back to work even more stressed and
exhausted and than they were before they left. So the
(14:49):
problem is that all of the things that we go
to intuitively to relieve burnout, both healthy things like vacations,
let's say, or unhealthy things like social media, food, alcohol,
other substances, shopping, et cetera, et cetera, all of those
things make burnout worse. It seems like they should really work,
(15:09):
but they really really don't. And unfortunately, it's very much
like you might have heard this expression of don't think
about pink elephants, don't think about pink elephants, don't think
about pink elephants, and it tattoos pink elephants on our minds.
And it's very much like that. With stress and with burnout,
we think I'm going to I'm not going to think
(15:30):
about berks. I'm going to shop or I'm going to
doom scroll or whatever I'm going to do. The science
of burnout says that we have to actually disengage from
burnout and or I'm sorry, from stress. And even if
that only takes five seconds, that's much much more effective
(15:51):
than trying to paper it over either with I don't know,
shopping or vacations or substances or whatever, or work itself.
Most of us try to solve our burnout by working harder.
That somehow makes the stress. It feels like if I
work harder, then the stress will be less, but of
course it makes it worse, just like Pink telephence right.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Well, and how much though are we putting you know,
the fact that we're working. I mean, you're not gonna
love every single thing you do at work every single day.
Most people don't. But by you know, focusing on I
gotta take this little mental break or I need to
walk away from this, or I need to have something
to look forward to outside of work, which is all great,
(16:32):
does it then kind of taint the work?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
I mean?
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Is there is there a way of I don't know,
either actually doing it or tricking yourself into believing that
the work you're doing is rewarding and find the joy
in doing your best effort even when you feel like
you can't. I mean, we got to at some point
do the work. And if that's the point of the stress,
(16:57):
we have to find a way to find someone ooyment
and putting forth that effort, don't we.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Yes, of course, But it's it's an inside job. This
is the thing so many of us, many people like
me anyway, overachiever, you have, professionist people are looking mainly
for affirmation outside of ourselves, and that ultimately is a
path to burnout. We're wanting someone or something outside of
(17:27):
us to say at a boy or at a girl,
And burnout is really an inside job, and so is
making sense of what we do at work. You're absolutely right.
We have to make sense and not make one up
because our minds are too smart, and we're too smart
as people. We know what the truth is. We can't
kid ourselves or somehow dilute ourselves into thinking that something
(17:51):
that has no value has value. But what we can do,
and weither, and we can evaluate the work that we
do against the standard or not, is to create what
we call a GPS system or a guiding principle system,
and the idea is to look at what we really value,
and not values in the sense of morals or right
(18:13):
or wrong, but values in the sense of what do
I love in life? And we if we confine in
the work that we do an internalized set of parts
of work that we genuinely do love, then that can
sustain us in times where external pressure or external validation
(18:37):
or the or the absence of external validation won't sustain
us or isn't available. At the end, it's really true
they as they say, to thine own self be true,
and we can't. There's no way to cheat that truth
that some mean it's absolutely true. But where most of
(18:57):
us get hung up is thinking externally that we want
external validation of some kind. And the only recovery there
is for burnout, and there is absolutely recovery from burnout
is inside ourselves and rediscovering in many cases what we
really love and doing whatever we do for that reason.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
You are it's like you're walking around inside my brain
and just pointing things out, going all right, there's an
issue he has. Let's address that. There's an issue. I mean,
one of the things that makes me laugh. When I'm
trying to deal with my own stress is I'll start
trying to give myself a pep talk, and then I
have this other voice in my head that tells my
pep talk voice, Hey, why don't you shut up right
(19:39):
now before I have to take you outside? And then
they start fighting, and I just kind of laugh at it.
Is like I'm trying to give myself a pep talk,
and I am immediately like, why don't you shut up
right now with your stupid pep talk? No one wants
to hear from you. And these are all just voices
inside my head. I probably need something stronger than a
business coaching service like Double Dare or a book like
(20:00):
You're Not Toast. But that's what Scott Anderson provides as
an executive coach, a consultant, a therapist, and a great
radio guest. I could talk to you for hours, Scott,
but I don't want to completely blow up your entire presentation,
which is coming up Friday, August twenty second at the
cre Summit that's the Commercial Real Estate Summit attends creesummit
(20:23):
dot com. But let me ask you one more thing
here about burnout and dealing with it, because a lot
of people really dealt with burnout by having other people
around the office to kind of either help shoulder the
burden of the job or commiserate with after work. Well
after COVID, with more and more people working at home
or fewer people coming into an office, and that whole
(20:48):
lifestyle has really changed. People have missed out on what
they used to enjoy is having a lot of coworkers around.
What about for people who deal with burnout and stress
us because of that lack of other interaction with their job.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Yeah, the community is just critically important and it's one
of the things I'll definitely be talking about at CIRI Summit.
But and one of the reasons why ci Ori Summit
is so great because community really is a big part
of the answer. When I was first working on this
with with therapy clients, we would I would come up
(21:25):
with something and kind of eat my own cooking that
worked for my own burna and then I would share
it with my One of our first clients with the
Orthodona was Orthodonos, who was going through terrible burno. I
shared it with him, he tried it, it worked for him,
and we decided, you know what we really need to
do is to get together, and so we created a
group of I stress by performance folks and got together
(21:50):
once a week. And what we found was that one
of the biggest problems with burnout, and in fact, one
of the clinical symptoms that's come out in the research,
is it's the feeling that no one understands what I'm
going through but me, and I barely understand it. I
can't even explain it to myself. I certainly can't explain
it to anybody else, and it causes this spiral of isolation.
(22:13):
We're not only isolated already with remote work, but we
isolate ourselves because it just feels like no one can
possibly understand what I'm going through. So community and the
CIRA Summit is a great place to do this. Community
is one of the three or four pillars that are
really essential to be with other people and to have
conversations that are as open as they can be about
(22:36):
exactly this topic, to defeat the idea that I'm the
only one in the world that's going through this. And
once you talk to a couple of other people and
they say exactly, they report the same groundhog day experience
you're having, it really does begin to break this all down.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yeah, community forgiveness, self forgiveness is big in this conversation.
This is all part of the the lunchtime session the
Scott Anderson is hosting at the CRE Summit, which is
coming up this Friday August or pardon me, this coming
up on Friday August twenty second here in Omaha at
CHI Health Center, attendcresummit dot com. You don't have to
(23:15):
be in commercial real estate to hear what Scott's saying
here with his lunchtime session, which is called Burnout proof
Success ten quick and proven techniques for high achieving CRE professionals.
And as you've heard in this conversation, whether or not
you're in commercial real estate, burnout is a real thing
dealing with some toxic things that either are president in
(23:38):
the workforce or that you bring into the workforce. These
are all things that Scott's going to be addressing. If
you can't make it there, his book You're Not Toast
and his business coaching service doubledare are both available. Scott,
how do we learn more about you and find you online?
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Go to Burnout Breakthrough dot com and you can find
out about our program, about the book You're not toast
and a lot of just helpful information that you know.
The thing I'd love to leave people with is this
idea is that when I was in the middle of
my burnout, I thought I would never get through it. It
really did feel like Groundhouk's Day. But what I've discovered
in the last twelve year years and having had the
(24:19):
really the blessing to work with thousands of people in burnout,
is that first of all, you really can recover quickly
and permanently from burnout number one and number two, that
life on the other side of that is there is
a life beyond burnout that is just so much better
than my best day prior. So yeah, go to burnout
(24:39):
breakthrough dot com and you can get all the information.
But I also hope that you'll consider coming to the
Ciery Summit August twenty seconds.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Absolutely, you got to deal with burnout before you end
up being in that Groundhog's Day loop and then punching out.
Ed Ryerson, just finish punting out, just to finish the movie.
Rep fference there, Scott, thank you so much for all
the time today, fascinating conversation and again it's a ten
Cresummit dot Com for all the details about the event
(25:10):
on Friday, August twenty second. Scott Anderson, thank you so
much for being with us on community matters.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Thank you, Scott.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
We'll turn our attention to another conversation that's related to
real estate. It comes from a recent edition of kfab's
Morning News. Here's the host of that program, Gary Sadlemeyer.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Welcoming our friend Mike McKnight from Channel six to the program. Mike,
I mentioned this story the other day. This couple up
in Washington County. Their homes were wiped out by the
Arbor Day tornado over a year ago, and so they
contracted with this custom builder, Davis Custom Builders. Splash this
out a little bit. How much did they spend? The
(25:47):
builder basically just said I'm out of business, and so they're.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
Stuck, right, and they're not alone. There's probably about I'm
guessing they come in every day, maybe up to what
are your fifty people building custom homes in both Iowa
and Nebraska. And they've actually got Facebook groups going, you know,
talking about what happened to them. There's law enforcement involved
(26:13):
in several counties and also been there's been contact with
the FBI. Federal authorities still look into this and what
happened to this couple of the Becklets up there. You know,
there is a great family. He's like seventy six. She's
assaulted the earth. She's seventy three. And they have two
homes with her daughter on one. And the tornado came
right through, you know, blast them both the houses out.
(26:35):
They survived, they were home, they made it out. And
then they contracted with this Davis Custom Homes that specializes
in barnuminiums, which are basically houses that are big open
houses basically, and according to him, and they've they've showed
me some paperwork and checks. They paid this custom builder
(26:57):
up to eight hundred thousand, four hundred thousand out of
their insurance settlement so far, and then another four hundred
thousand from his life savings. And he was like a
mechanic for Douglas County and that sort of thing. So
pretty traumatic, and this happened. I think what is really
sad and what makes their daughter angry, who also lost
(27:18):
her home in the same property, is that her dad
was going through chemotherapy when he was negotiating this home build,
and so he knew that and all they got right
now is a hole for a foundation. That's it.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
So I would think the insurance company would be involved too, right,
I think so.
Speaker 5 (27:39):
I think all angles, all angles are on deck here, Gary.
I think from insurance to local authorities, federal authorities, I mean,
you name it, they're just really people are really gathering
their information. They're getting together. Is sort of a groundswell
of people who had these homes in various Stagesits are
(28:00):
probably the worst off, but there are others that had
their homes seventy eighty percent completed. I did another story
in a couple of Gretna who had there's about seventy
five percent completed, but most of the construction one was
drawn on. And now they've got six lians and she
got seven kids, and they're kind of going, well, what
do we do now we're an apartment waiting and the
(28:21):
builder just close.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
Is that declare bankruptcy or anything or yet?
Speaker 5 (28:27):
That's the rumor, but we've not been able to find
that filed anywhere. There's probably about six company names being
used here, so you have to plus the fact that
he was based had offices in Des Moines, Omaha, and
also Houston, Texas, So where would he have filed it?
And that's probably coming. But all these people, it just
(28:48):
keeps getting bigger and bigger, all these liens, the subs
are not getting paid. Is basically last week I talked
to one gentleman Cardilaca as an ice Barnament name going
and they said they went in to look at Tyle
on Thursday and by Monday they couldn't get a hold
of them. They were gone. That's just how fast it was. Wow,
almost over the week, over the weekend gone. So we're
(29:10):
talking probably maybe three dozen homeowners. And these are small
houses either.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (29:18):
I think it's ongoing and there's still a lot more.
I'm going to keep bringing these stories of people with
their heartaches and they're literally their dreams broke and their
dream house broken. They thought a week ago they were
going to be moving into their dream hohome.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
Now so and so the Bequets are out four hundred
thousand of their own money and with nothing to show, nothing,
just a hold.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
This has been Community Matters, a weekly public affairs special
on CAT one of three Omaha's Greatest Hits ninety nine
point nine kg R News Radio eleven ten KFAB, Country's
Greatest Hits ninety three, three, The Wolf and ninety six
one kiss that them thank you so much for listening,
and enjoy the rest of your day and
This is Community Matters, a weekly public affairs program to
inform and entertain you with some of the great people, organizations,
and events in and around Omaha. Now here's the host
of the program from news radio eleven ten KFAB.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
It's Scott for heats and thanks so much for being
a part of our program this week. We talked recently
with Jerry Slusky. He's the one behind the CRES Summit,
which is coming up on Friday, August twenty second here
in Omaha. This is the Commercial Real Estate Summit, but
it's more than just Hey, this property over here is
(00:40):
for sale. Have you thought about building this over here?
There is so much more for entrepreneurs, business professionals, and frankly,
people throughout the community as part of this event, including
one of your keynote speakers who joins us now. Scott
Anderson is a licensed mental health practitioner, certified executive, and
life coach. He is the founder of Doubledare, a business
(01:03):
coaching service, and the author of You're Not Toast and
joins us now ahead of the CRI Summit where he
is a big speaker there. Scott, thanks a lot for
being with us on Community Matters.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Well, thanks Scott. Great to be here to give.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Us some insight as to what you'll be talking about
at the summit. Tell me about your book, You're Not Toast.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yes, well, You're Not Toast is about a process that
I had to develop, initially for myself and ultimately for
my clients who were facing and recovering from burnout in
the workplace. And this issue is relevant not only in
the commercial real estate business, which is obviously a very
(01:45):
high pressure business, but really throughout the workforce. Our friends
that gallop down the street tell us that forty percent
of the American workforce says that they are either always
or mostly burned out. By that specifically, we mean wake
up exhausted and can't shake it. Are sort of like
(02:08):
dragging an anchor through the day. And so that's what
we're going to be talking about. Are some proven ways
that we've worked on for the last twelve years that
help high performance professionals not only feel a lot better
and get their energy get themselves back, but really perform
at the highest level of their lives, both personally and professionally.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Now, I'm not going to have you do the entire
keynote address here in order to in order to hear
that the website is attendcresummitt dot com. You can register
online and learn more about all the activities on Friday,
August twenty second. Attend cresummit dot com. But your topic
burnout proof success Ten quick and proven techniques for high
(02:54):
achieving professionals. And this is something that many of us
are leaning forward in our chair that we'd love to
hear more about this morning. Like I said, I don't
want to have you go through the entire ten, but
let me approach a few different aspects of this conversation
with a different way, And that is I think so
many of us have these unrealistic expectations about every single
(03:19):
moment of our day, whether at work or outside of work,
should be instagram worthy and something that gets lots of
likes and comments on Facebook. After all, I go on
social media, everyone else seems to be having a great time,
and I feel unfulfilled. Is it first have to do
with expectations?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
It's certainly part of it. Yeah, you've put your finger
on it. What it really boils down to for so
many people is that early in our careers, we compensate
for a lack of experience in whatever field, whether it's
radio or coaching or real estate, by working harder and
caring more than the people that were around. One of
(03:59):
the ways we distinguish ourselves is by being perfectionists and
holding ourselves to expecting ourselves to deliver at a standard
that is higher that, let's say, than other people. And
the other part of it is having no boundaries, being
willing to pull all nighters. Back in the day, you know,
outwork everybody else, and those two strategies working harder and
(04:24):
caring more than other people can really help you, whether
it's radio or real estate. It's just that as time
goes by, and so often we see this and people
in there they start to see it in their late
thirties and forties. In particular, is that working harder and
caring more and worrying more doesn't scale very well, especially
if you are successful and you start to acquire more
(04:48):
assets and your life becomes richer by maybe a significant other,
maybe children, maybe community events beyond work, and you suddenly realize, yeah,
I can't work any harder and I can't worry anymore.
That strategy doesn't work any anymore. But we have kind
of the superstitious attachment to it. Because it's really really
(05:10):
worked and our superpower turns into kryptonite. A lot of
us wake up very very much like the Bill Murray
character in the movie groundhog Day, where it feels like
the same day over and over and over again, with
the clock radio going off at six point thirty and
it's the same day over and over and we just
(05:31):
can't shake it.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Bonus Yeah, bonus points if you can tell me what
bonus points if you can tell me what song the
clock radio plays every morning in that movie.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
It's Sonny and Share, and I think it's you got.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Me, babe, I got you, babe, I got you babe.
All right, good, all right, wall there's uh you got
my movie references. We can be friends. So let's let's
let me let me push back on this idea of
you know that every day at work has to be
better and the last and we're all just you know,
doing great. Do we sometimes set unrealistic expectations, especially with
(06:06):
young workers, by telling them like, hey, follow your dreams,
follow your passions, it's going to be great. Look, Scott,
you and I have both probably worked in a number
of different jobs and had a number of varying degrees
of great days and bad days at work. Sometimes you
just got to go in and put in the work.
You clock in, your clock out, you go home, you know,
(06:26):
sing a loud song on the way home so you
don't take any baggage home with you and realize, hey,
you know, not every day is going to be you know,
skittles and roses every single day. Sometimes you just got
to put in the work and then try and leave
it behind.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Very true, Very true. You know, the main thing is clinically,
and I've studied as a as a therapist, i studied
the sort of all the resources that's been done on burnout,
and you know, one of the problems is that we
get into a state of high expectations where really expect
not only ourselves but those around us to perform at
(07:03):
an unreasonably high level. And this is true not only
for us as individuals, but it's especially true if you
do have employees and you're trying to coach people up
in whatever profession we're in. Not only do we hold
ourselves to unreasonable expectations, but we also begin to hold
others to those expectations. The biggest problem with burnout is
(07:24):
in where the term came from, is holding ourselves to
an expectation where we are sort of in the flow
or at this super high state of performance twenty four
to seven. It's very much like if you've ever been
in a near hopefully a near miss car accident, and
(07:44):
you catch a car coming to broadside you out of
your peripheral vision and in that moment, your cortisol, adrenaline,
nor a pernepron and all the stress foremones sturge through
your body, and time slows down, and hopefully we steer
out of because we have better reactions and times, we
steer out of this near miss car accident, and ninety
seconds after that stress event, all of those chemicals begin
(08:09):
to go back to normal. Our breathing goes back to normal,
our heart rate goes back to normal, and so forth.
And that's what's meant to happen in stressful situations. It
has beginning, a middle, and an end, and in most
people it has a cycle of about ninety seconds. What
a lot of us get stuck in. It's kind of
like an on switch we can't turn off. Is we
(08:29):
stay stuck in that stress state. In the post traumatic
stress disorder world, we would call hypervigilance and the idea
is that if we the sort of the superstition almost
that we get into, or really a habit, it's almost
an addiction, is that we must stay in this hyper
(08:50):
alert state in order to merely survive day to day
pressure of work. And that's just not the way that
stress works. So many of us will try to take
a vacation, let's say, or even a good night's sleep
or a long weekend, figuring best how I'll recover. In America,
we say every fifty weeks, we take two weeks of vacation,
and that ought to do it. But that's not how
(09:11):
stress works, and that's not how we recover from stress.
And in fact, one of the ten ways we're going
to be talking about in the CIRI Summit August twenty
second is about techniques where we can recover from stress
in the moment, because that's the only time when it's possible.
We can't postpone stress for months and months and then
(09:33):
expect a vacation to get us out of the exhaustion
and overwhelm a burnout. That's just not how the human
body works. But what we can do is recover in
the moment and take what we prescribe are mini vacations,
five second vacations that you might take five or ten
times during the day, because that really will reset our stress,
(09:57):
our stress clocks, and our stresses so that we won't
be exhausted and we won't wait cuts like Bill Murray
and grabhog Day.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
I love that idea. We don't just throughout the year
take two weeks just to eat, just gorge ourselves for
two weeks and then like, all right, I took two
weeks here of eating, and now I don't need to
eat the rest of the year. As you said, that's
not how the body sustains itself. And I think that
relating that to stress throughout the day is an excellent thing.
And that's part of what Scott we're talking here to
(10:28):
Scott Anderson, licensed mental health practitioner. He's doing the luncheon
address called Burnout Proof Success, hand quick and Proven Techniques
for high Achieving Professionals. This is at the CRE Summit
on Friday, August twenty second, the Commercial Real Estate Summit.
You don't have to be in commercial real estate to
go be a part of this because quite frankly, a
(10:49):
lot of the breakout sessions can be taken home to
anything else you have going on in any other line
of work, like what we're talking about here. But the
website for the summit is attend crsummit dot com, Scott
Anderson with us your author. If you're not toast so
you don't get burned out. Is kind of the relation
of that title here with the topic let me let
(11:11):
me get your temperature on this one, Scott, because either
we've all been this person or we've seen this happen
where you're at work. Everyone says, oh, you're doing a
great job, you're putting in the hours, you're doing wonderful,
and then one of two things happens. Because work has
changed a since when our parents were working, and certainly
their parents were working, we've got a lot more of
(11:32):
the people who sign your paycheck are sometimes several times
zones away. They don't know you, they don't know what
you're doing every day, your numbers in a spreadsheet, and
sometimes it doesn't work out in your favor. You get
let go, even though you've been doing everything the way
that everyone told you you were supposed to be doing it.
Or and sometimes this is worse, other people in your
(11:53):
division get let go and you're still there and they're like, hey,
you're doing a great job. We're going to ask you
to take on some of these other roles, and we're
not going to pay you much money, if if at
all more money. But hey, you still got a job.
Do three times as much work. You can do that, right,
And that's a that's a reality for a lot of
(12:14):
workers in this country anymore, isn't it?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Yes? Unfortunately, it really is. And both sides of the
equation are very tough, whether whether they you are terminated
or whether you're a survivor I'm not sure which is
worse than this scenario. You know, Again, it really boils
down to this, and this is this is tough for
a lot of people to hear. You know, if you
(12:39):
work in an environment that is genuinely toxic, if you
work in an environment that is uh, you know, unjust
or misogynistic or racist or whatever, or is otherwise toxic,
then I always advise my clients to run away screaming
life is too short. If that's really you know, this
(13:00):
situation that you're in where there's genuinely a toxic environment.
But my experience, especially with high performance people, and this
is hard for it was hard for me to hear,
but it's just as true as anything I know, and
that is, we cause our own burnout, and we in
ninety percent of the cases. There are definitely exceptions where
the culture of the environment or whatever is truly toxic.
(13:23):
And if that's the case, or it's unrealistic and you're
supposed to do the job of four people, I mean,
obviously that's impossible. But my experience has been and this
is actually it sounds terrible, but it's actually good news,
and that is that we cause our own burnout. I
would say eighty eight to ninety percent of us cause
our own burnout, and we do it mainly simply because
(13:45):
we don't I didn't know enough about how stress works
and how to relieve it. And also I was holding
myself to unreasonable expectations. The expectations that my boss had
of me, or my clients had of me, or my
business partners had of me were nothing compared to the
expectations I had of myself. And so the good news
(14:08):
is here, is that if we are causing our own burnout,
we can also cure it. And that's really the point
of the talk at CIRI Summit, is that with the
acception that I mentioned we really can't. We really do
cause our own burnout, and we really can cure it.
(14:28):
It's just that everything that we know to do actually
makes it worse. For example, I've had clients who have
taken weak vacations expecting to come back healed, or I've
even had clients take sabbaticals of ninety days and six months,
and they come back to work even more stressed and
exhausted and than they were before they left. So the
(14:49):
problem is that all of the things that we go
to intuitively to relieve burnout, both healthy things like vacations,
let's say, or unhealthy things like social media, food, alcohol,
other substances, shopping, et cetera, et cetera, all of those
things make burnout worse. It seems like they should really work,
(15:09):
but they really really don't. And unfortunately, it's very much
like you might have heard this expression of don't think
about pink elephants, don't think about pink elephants, don't think
about pink elephants, and it tattoos pink elephants on our minds.
And it's very much like that. With stress and with burnout,
we think I'm going to I'm not going to think
(15:30):
about berks. I'm going to shop or I'm going to
doom scroll or whatever I'm going to do. The science
of burnout says that we have to actually disengage from
burnout and or I'm sorry, from stress. And even if
that only takes five seconds, that's much much more effective
(15:51):
than trying to paper it over either with I don't know,
shopping or vacations or substances or whatever, or work itself.
Most of us try to solve our burnout by working harder.
That somehow makes the stress. It feels like if I
work harder, then the stress will be less, but of
course it makes it worse, just like Pink telephence right.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Well, and how much though are we putting you know,
the fact that we're working. I mean, you're not gonna
love every single thing you do at work every single day.
Most people don't. But by you know, focusing on I
gotta take this little mental break or I need to
walk away from this, or I need to have something
to look forward to outside of work, which is all great,
(16:32):
does it then kind of taint the work?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
I mean?
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Is there is there a way of I don't know,
either actually doing it or tricking yourself into believing that
the work you're doing is rewarding and find the joy
in doing your best effort even when you feel like
you can't. I mean, we got to at some point
do the work. And if that's the point of the stress,
(16:57):
we have to find a way to find someone ooyment
and putting forth that effort, don't we.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Yes, of course, But it's it's an inside job. This
is the thing so many of us, many people like
me anyway, overachiever, you have, professionist people are looking mainly
for affirmation outside of ourselves, and that ultimately is a
path to burnout. We're wanting someone or something outside of
(17:27):
us to say at a boy or at a girl,
And burnout is really an inside job, and so is
making sense of what we do at work. You're absolutely right.
We have to make sense and not make one up
because our minds are too smart, and we're too smart
as people. We know what the truth is. We can't
kid ourselves or somehow dilute ourselves into thinking that something
(17:51):
that has no value has value. But what we can do,
and weither, and we can evaluate the work that we
do against the standard or not, is to create what
we call a GPS system or a guiding principle system,
and the idea is to look at what we really value,
and not values in the sense of morals or right
(18:13):
or wrong, but values in the sense of what do
I love in life? And we if we confine in
the work that we do an internalized set of parts
of work that we genuinely do love, then that can
sustain us in times where external pressure or external validation
(18:37):
or the or the absence of external validation won't sustain
us or isn't available. At the end, it's really true
they as they say, to thine own self be true,
and we can't. There's no way to cheat that truth
that some mean it's absolutely true. But where most of
(18:57):
us get hung up is thinking externally that we want
external validation of some kind. And the only recovery there
is for burnout, and there is absolutely recovery from burnout
is inside ourselves and rediscovering in many cases what we
really love and doing whatever we do for that reason.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
You are it's like you're walking around inside my brain
and just pointing things out, going all right, there's an
issue he has. Let's address that. There's an issue. I mean,
one of the things that makes me laugh. When I'm
trying to deal with my own stress is I'll start
trying to give myself a pep talk, and then I
have this other voice in my head that tells my
pep talk voice, Hey, why don't you shut up right
(19:39):
now before I have to take you outside? And then
they start fighting, and I just kind of laugh at it.
Is like I'm trying to give myself a pep talk,
and I am immediately like, why don't you shut up
right now with your stupid pep talk? No one wants
to hear from you. And these are all just voices
inside my head. I probably need something stronger than a
business coaching service like Double Dare or a book like
(20:00):
You're Not Toast. But that's what Scott Anderson provides as
an executive coach, a consultant, a therapist, and a great
radio guest. I could talk to you for hours, Scott,
but I don't want to completely blow up your entire presentation,
which is coming up Friday, August twenty second at the
cre Summit that's the Commercial Real Estate Summit attends creesummit
(20:23):
dot com. But let me ask you one more thing
here about burnout and dealing with it, because a lot
of people really dealt with burnout by having other people
around the office to kind of either help shoulder the
burden of the job or commiserate with after work. Well
after COVID, with more and more people working at home
or fewer people coming into an office, and that whole
(20:48):
lifestyle has really changed. People have missed out on what
they used to enjoy is having a lot of coworkers around.
What about for people who deal with burnout and stress
us because of that lack of other interaction with their job.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Yeah, the community is just critically important and it's one
of the things I'll definitely be talking about at CIRI Summit.
But and one of the reasons why ci Ori Summit
is so great because community really is a big part
of the answer. When I was first working on this
with with therapy clients, we would I would come up
(21:25):
with something and kind of eat my own cooking that
worked for my own burna and then I would share
it with my One of our first clients with the
Orthodona was Orthodonos, who was going through terrible burno. I
shared it with him, he tried it, it worked for him,
and we decided, you know what we really need to
do is to get together, and so we created a
group of I stress by performance folks and got together
(21:50):
once a week. And what we found was that one
of the biggest problems with burnout, and in fact, one
of the clinical symptoms that's come out in the research,
is it's the feeling that no one understands what I'm
going through but me, and I barely understand it. I
can't even explain it to myself. I certainly can't explain
it to anybody else, and it causes this spiral of isolation.
(22:13):
We're not only isolated already with remote work, but we
isolate ourselves because it just feels like no one can
possibly understand what I'm going through. So community and the
CIRA Summit is a great place to do this. Community
is one of the three or four pillars that are
really essential to be with other people and to have
conversations that are as open as they can be about
(22:36):
exactly this topic, to defeat the idea that I'm the
only one in the world that's going through this. And
once you talk to a couple of other people and
they say exactly, they report the same groundhog day experience
you're having, it really does begin to break this all down.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yeah, community forgiveness, self forgiveness is big in this conversation.
This is all part of the the lunchtime session the
Scott Anderson is hosting at the CRE Summit, which is
coming up this Friday August or pardon me, this coming
up on Friday August twenty second here in Omaha at
CHI Health Center, attendcresummit dot com. You don't have to
(23:15):
be in commercial real estate to hear what Scott's saying
here with his lunchtime session, which is called Burnout proof
Success ten quick and proven techniques for high achieving CRE professionals.
And as you've heard in this conversation, whether or not
you're in commercial real estate, burnout is a real thing
dealing with some toxic things that either are president in
(23:38):
the workforce or that you bring into the workforce. These
are all things that Scott's going to be addressing. If
you can't make it there, his book You're Not Toast
and his business coaching service doubledare are both available. Scott,
how do we learn more about you and find you online?
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Go to Burnout Breakthrough dot com and you can find
out about our program, about the book You're not toast
and a lot of just helpful information that you know.
The thing I'd love to leave people with is this
idea is that when I was in the middle of
my burnout, I thought I would never get through it. It
really did feel like Groundhouk's Day. But what I've discovered
in the last twelve year years and having had the
(24:19):
really the blessing to work with thousands of people in burnout,
is that first of all, you really can recover quickly
and permanently from burnout number one and number two, that
life on the other side of that is there is
a life beyond burnout that is just so much better
than my best day prior. So yeah, go to burnout
(24:39):
breakthrough dot com and you can get all the information.
But I also hope that you'll consider coming to the
Ciery Summit August twenty seconds.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Absolutely, you got to deal with burnout before you end
up being in that Groundhog's Day loop and then punching out.
Ed Ryerson, just finish punting out, just to finish the movie.
Rep fference there, Scott, thank you so much for all
the time today, fascinating conversation and again it's a ten
Cresummit dot Com for all the details about the event
(25:10):
on Friday, August twenty second. Scott Anderson, thank you so
much for being with us on community matters.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Thank you, Scott.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
We'll turn our attention to another conversation that's related to
real estate. It comes from a recent edition of kfab's
Morning News. Here's the host of that program, Gary Sadlemeyer.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Welcoming our friend Mike McKnight from Channel six to the program. Mike,
I mentioned this story the other day. This couple up
in Washington County. Their homes were wiped out by the
Arbor Day tornado over a year ago, and so they
contracted with this custom builder, Davis Custom Builders. Splash this
out a little bit. How much did they spend? The
(25:47):
builder basically just said I'm out of business, and so they're.
Speaker 5 (25:51):
Stuck, right, and they're not alone. There's probably about I'm
guessing they come in every day, maybe up to what
are your fifty people building custom homes in both Iowa
and Nebraska. And they've actually got Facebook groups going, you know,
talking about what happened to them. There's law enforcement involved
(26:13):
in several counties and also been there's been contact with
the FBI. Federal authorities still look into this and what
happened to this couple of the Becklets up there. You know,
there is a great family. He's like seventy six. She's
assaulted the earth. She's seventy three. And they have two
homes with her daughter on one. And the tornado came
right through, you know, blast them both the houses out.
(26:35):
They survived, they were home, they made it out. And
then they contracted with this Davis Custom Homes that specializes
in barnuminiums, which are basically houses that are big open
houses basically, and according to him, and they've they've showed
me some paperwork and checks. They paid this custom builder
(26:57):
up to eight hundred thousand, four hundred thousand out of
their insurance settlement so far, and then another four hundred
thousand from his life savings. And he was like a
mechanic for Douglas County and that sort of thing. So
pretty traumatic, and this happened. I think what is really
sad and what makes their daughter angry, who also lost
(27:18):
her home in the same property, is that her dad
was going through chemotherapy when he was negotiating this home build,
and so he knew that and all they got right
now is a hole for a foundation. That's it.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
So I would think the insurance company would be involved too, right,
I think so.
Speaker 5 (27:39):
I think all angles, all angles are on deck here, Gary.
I think from insurance to local authorities, federal authorities, I mean,
you name it, they're just really people are really gathering
their information. They're getting together. Is sort of a groundswell
of people who had these homes in various Stagesits are
(28:00):
probably the worst off, but there are others that had
their homes seventy eighty percent completed. I did another story
in a couple of Gretna who had there's about seventy
five percent completed, but most of the construction one was
drawn on. And now they've got six lians and she
got seven kids, and they're kind of going, well, what
do we do now we're an apartment waiting and the
(28:21):
builder just close.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
Is that declare bankruptcy or anything or yet?
Speaker 5 (28:27):
That's the rumor, but we've not been able to find
that filed anywhere. There's probably about six company names being
used here, so you have to plus the fact that
he was based had offices in Des Moines, Omaha, and
also Houston, Texas, So where would he have filed it?
And that's probably coming. But all these people, it just
(28:48):
keeps getting bigger and bigger, all these liens, the subs
are not getting paid. Is basically last week I talked
to one gentleman Cardilaca as an ice Barnament name going
and they said they went in to look at Tyle
on Thursday and by Monday they couldn't get a hold
of them. They were gone. That's just how fast it was. Wow,
almost over the week, over the weekend gone. So we're
(29:10):
talking probably maybe three dozen homeowners. And these are small
houses either.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (29:18):
I think it's ongoing and there's still a lot more.
I'm going to keep bringing these stories of people with
their heartaches and they're literally their dreams broke and their
dream house broken. They thought a week ago they were
going to be moving into their dream hohome.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
Now so and so the Bequets are out four hundred
thousand of their own money and with nothing to show, nothing,
just a hold.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
This has been Community Matters, a weekly public affairs special
on CAT one of three Omaha's Greatest Hits ninety nine
point nine kg R News Radio eleven ten KFAB, Country's
Greatest Hits ninety three, three, The Wolf and ninety six
one kiss that them thank you so much for listening,
and enjoy the rest of your day and
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Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.