Are You Overwhelmed? with Ana Melikian

In This Episode

• [02:12] – Ana Melikian explains her personal experience with burnout, triggered by a cancer diagnosis in 2016.
• [11:02] – Ana introduces her four-quadrant framework for identifying burnout levels within teams and individuals.
• [17:21] – Stephan and Ana discuss tips for individuals to take care of themselves and avoid overextension.
• [23:25] – Ana recommends the Maslach Burnout Inventory as a tool for assessing burnout levels.
• [25:41] – Ana underscores the necessity of shifting organizational culture to address and prevent burnout effectively.
• [39:25] – Ana introduces the P.I.E. method while emphasizing the need to cultivate a workplace culture focused on sustainability.
• [49:17] – The role of leadership in fostering a culture that values employee engagement and purpose is emphasized.

Jump to Links and Resources

Ana, it’s so great to have you on the show.

Oh, it’s a pleasure to be here.

So, first of all, why are you so focused on burnout and overwhelmed? Did you have a burnout moment that you needed to address yourself, and then you became an expert in it while you were digging out of your own hole?

Yes. In many ways, I think we have to have that personal experience. What I realized is that as we arrive at a certain age in our lives, it’s rare for a person who doesn’t have a burnout experience, and that moment can be different from person to person. In my case, I was facing a cancer diagnosis that made me rethink everything.

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Wow. So tell us more about that. What happened, and how did you get through that?

So, in 2016, as an active person, I tried to be active, exercise, eat organic food, and do everything that is supposed to be good for us. And I was doing that. And in 2016, I got diagnosed with a rare form of breast cancer called inflammatory breast cancer. And it was really a shock. I didn’t. I never thought that I would suffer from cancer because I had a healthy lifestyle. And that made me really reevaluate. It’s one of the things that that type of diagnosis and the treatment that comes afterward that I’m so thankful that the advances in medical treatments around cancer have allowed me to be here today make us have to reevaluate.

Because I could not keep going at the same speed, I was going at the time. Yes, I was, in general, having a healthy lifestyle, except for sleep. I was cutting my sleep very much. And that was one of the things that I changed afterward. I was already working with a lot of mindfulness and mindset, which made me feel the power of using our mindset even more. So it’s all that transformation. And in my personal story, I really took the first time as, “Okay, I’m going to beat this thing.”

And we managed to get it in remission. Great. And two years later, in 2018, I had another cancer in the other breast. So that made me. I cannot be postponing this. I really have to be living the moment and living, yes, with cancer, with all this. And I will go over the treatments again; I will go to the arena again and put this in remission again. But I have to change my attitude, mainly towards my body.

That, in the first time, was a little bit almost like the enemy that I had to fight with. The second time, I had to realize, no, the fact that I’m healthy otherwise is an amazing thing. My body is me, and the moment is now. So, I took a different attitude about the way that I went through the treatments. I think that was more empowering and that all that journey made me understand. Okay.

I think so many of us want to make a positive impact out there. So one of the ways that we live our purpose and the question I thought that I could make a big impact if I work hard, really hard, and then become the question is it possible to make an impact without working so hard? Because physically I could not do it.

Overextending yourself is a sign you’re not at full potential.

That is what led me to burnout research. I realized that if we work so hard that we are pushing our limits to exhaustion, we are not making the full impact that we can make. So, if we overextend ourselves, that is a sign that we are not at our full potential. So how can we create the conditions and mindset for ourselves and for the others around us to be in the flow of optimal performance that allows us to have more leverage and a bigger impact while taking care of ourselves and preventing burnout?

Please differentiate between burnout and being overwhelmed for our listeners.

Yeah, because burnout is now a word used to define everything and nothing. The problem is when we start to overuse a word. But if we look at my background—my PhD is in psychology—that is my default mode. I look at the research that we have done in psychology since the 1970s. We are looking into burnout, starting with healthcare, with doctors and nurses, and now overall. And the way that we define burnout is in three dimensions. 

There is a dimension. I call it the energy dimension. You feel a lack of energy, and you feel exhausted, physically and emotionally. So that is one of the things that people feel as I’m burning out. 

Then, there is another dimension that I would like to call the connection dimension. That is when people feel disassociated and cynical about what they do; they feel disconnected. That is another characteristic of the burnout. You can think about the nurses or the teachers who went to their profession because they love to help others.

Now, they are at a point where they are looking to become a real estate agent because they don’t feel that the work they do has any impact. So they are disconnected from their purpose and exhausted from the hours, so why bother? 

So those are the two big dimensions of burnout, of the full burnout. And then usually what happens when that happens is that there is also a sense of lack of personal efficiency. Those are the three dimensions of full burnout, which the World Health Organization even recognizes.

But there are these other forms of lighter burnout that people say, “I’m feeling burnout,” that are not as serious as this one. That is the overextension. They are exhausted, but they are still connected with their purpose. They think that that prevents them from really going to the burnout, the full burnout area or zone. 

And my big thing for the overextended people is you are a frog in a pot of boiling water. Yes, you think that this is part of your job description. It’s part of life. And you keep going and going and pushing and pushing and pushing, but be careful; the temperature of the water where you are is increasing one degree at a time.

And before you notice, you are going to be tipping into the zone of full burnout. And then you take some days off, recover, keep pushing and pushing and pushing, and then go to the zone, that darker water of the full burnout. Eventually, you wake up one day and are fully there, but it takes time to recover. If you are overextending yourself still with resources, you can do something about that. You see the results quicker than falling into full burnout. That takes time, a long time to recover.

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Then, you also have another zone: you still have the energy but are disconnected and disengaged. So why bother? Do more than you have to do in your job description if you don’t see a sense of connection or sense of purpose. And that is also a form of burnout. In an organization, something that makes this kind of cycle happen is that you have people who are overextending themselves, people who still have some space capacity but not using it, and it creates resentment and imbalance between those two groups that leads to more burnout and less impact.

Yeah. So, this is a framework you’ve created with these four quadrants, where somebody has the energy or not energy, they’re connected or not connected, and thus they’re either burned out, disengaged, overextended or healthy.

Yes. The four quadrants were the way that this work is based on the research of Dr. Christina Maslach, who has more than three decades in her research team on burnout, has a quite well-known assessment. It’s like the golden standard, the Maslach Burnout Inventory, that allows us to see where people are in these three dimensions. And they produce a very comprehensive report. 

When I was doing this with groups, professional groups, and when I was speaking to organizations or two companies, I noticed that for people who are overextended in burnout, that report was difficult to consume. So, I started to do these debriefing sessions, and I explained things in these four quadrants. So, the four quadrants are my contribution in the way of explaining this.

And suddenly, I start to see, “Oh, this makes sense.” And they see that they can move. They have the power to move from one zone to the other. And then, I start to use this often in the way that I explain burnout.

Right. So if somebody is potentially burned out, they feel burned out, but they’re actually in an overextended quadrant, what would you have them do to turn things around and not end up fully burned out?

Don’t wait for the big thing. Be aware of where you are now and embrace the power to change your life.

Yes. So technically, maybe they are not in full burnout, but they are on their way to it. That is my sweet spot, where I love to work with people because of our power to get results. The first thing is the awareness component, like in so many personal and professional development things, and the self-leadership went off. The more effective way to do this work is by developing self-awareness.

To develop self-awareness, we have to create moments to pause, to press the pause button, because otherwise it’s difficult if we are in the rut of the day on the treadmill or juggling whatever metaphor represents better the experience of somebody that is overextending themselves they have or by the needs of others around them, or by their own health or by something they have. Sometimes, good things. When going to a conference or speaking, I try to create a moment where they fulfill the survey, and then they are there as an audience. When I’m speaking, they are pressing the pause button.

And suddenly, when I put these four quadrants, these four zones, they have an insight. They realize they see themselves as that frog in the pot of boiling water and say, “Oh, maybe I can do something about it.” So that pause allows them to create awareness about where they really are and also hopefully gives them the power. So, what can I experiment with that allows me to try a different way of doing things that is not overextending and still has an impact? 

The other important insight is understanding that they do not have their full impact by being there, and it goes a little bit against some core beliefs of certain generations that you put your head down, and you work, work, work, work, work. And so there is some resistance there.

But when they start to see that there are other people that they admire, that they respect, that are making a bigger impact, that is really their motivation force, making a bigger impact for themselves, for their organizations, for the people around them, they start to be more open to try something different, to sleep more, to take care of themselves, to be more effective in a strategical way.

Right. So how did you get more sleep and turn your health around, your mindset, and all that? What were some of the most powerful tools in your tool set?

In my case, initially, as you say, you don’t have a choice, or do you say there is a choice? There is always. I always say that the life circumstances, me having cancer, was not the choice, it was the life circumstances. I call the lemons that life gave us. And sometimes they are not lemons. They are full of big watermelons that are thrown at us. But then we have a choice. The other choice that I could take was not to do a treatment, or there are different paths that I could choose. But I chose to go with conventional medicine, plus all I knew about mindset, positive psychology and psychology to be my partners and allies in my journey.

That was the big life circumstance that made me pause. But my message to others is that you don’t need to wait until I have something as serious as a diagnosis of cancer to change your life. Learn from others. We have this capacity for vicarious experience. We can learn from other people. So don’t be waiting for the big thing. Become aware of where you are at the moment and really embrace the power that you have to change your life.

One of my favorite quotes from Joe Polish is that some people are in our lives just to be a bad example.

Yeah. And we can learn from it. We don’t need to. We can learn from everybody, from ourselves, from our experience, and from other people’s experiences and life odysseys. Life gives us lemons and watermelons, as we have lived on this planet for many watermelons. It’s just the realities part of the journey. What we learn from it is always the question.

So let’s say that our listener has a team, maybe under them, that reports to them, or they have a team that they’re a part of, and they’re colleagues at the same reporting level. How would this listener address the fact that they almost certainly will be burned out or at least overextended and potentially disengaged colleagues on the team? And how do you identify who those are? And then how do you address that?

A culture of burnout makes it difficult to be sustainable.

So that is one of the things when I speak with people in companies, and I present the four quadrants, these four zones that people go, “ah,” so because they managed to differentiate, full burnout usually is turnover. They are out. So, a small percentage skips. But MO is never a big number. But you have the big numbers in the overextended and sometimes in the disengaged, and not how many people you wish to be in the engagement that is in the flow of the optimal performance and connected with the purpose.

So, differentiation for a leader gives them options and a roadmap. It also makes the art question because does your company, if you are a leader of the company of the hard organization, have a culture of burning people out? And we can think about the tech world in Silicon Valley they used to have. I don’t know if they still have, but I know that it was a tradition there to have these Burnout workshops where they would have the programmers compete with each other to program until the wee hours and days after days until out, and then comes the next one and try to beat each other.

So, what’s a culture of burnout that is difficult to be sustainable? So, if your industry or organization has a culture of burnout, it is really hard to change that. However, I will argue that the companies that are brave enough, the leaders that are courageous enough to make that change, will be able to create more sustainable success and sustainable innovation.

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That is one of the keys for me, as we speak so much about environmental sustainability nowadays. And it’s very important because this planet is the best one for living. I don’t like the idea of going to Mars or the moon, to be honest with you. So I love the planet Earth. So let’s take care of it. We also have to speak about work sustainability and what that looks like.

Mainly now, with the introduction of AI technologies, this can be a great opportunity to create a bigger impact out there, minus the burnout. But if we are just reacting to it, we can be 10 times more productive. Oh, we can put 10 more things on the table. We are going to be creating more burnout. So it’s really important that we create for leadership people who can make the decisions in these moments where they can pause and think about what work sustainability looks like. Otherwise, we are just reacting to everything that is happening, and we are not going to be making the impact that we can make, creating even more burnout out there in the world.

Yeah. As you said earlier, some of the structures inside companies are actually creating burnout, like hackathons.

Yes, yes, that is the word. Yes.

I never liked the concept of a hackathon. I was never into it. I never really fully understood it. I’ve never been a part of one. I’ve never tried to create one in my company. And now I’m glad I never did because it seems so obvious. It’s a hacking marathon, code till you drop sort of situation. I guess it just doesn’t make any sense.

And it’s like using people like matches, which they spend, and then we throw them away. And I think it’s much better if we see that all of us have these beautiful flames inside that we can keep nurturing and connecting with. The purpose is so important that we can make a bigger impact. I also realized that the burnout issue is a symptom of something else. So in the old days, when the coal mine was being built, they used to take the little bird, the canary, down in the little cage to the mine. And when the canary started to be dizzy and not singing, they knew there were fumes. And then everybody was out of the mine until they cleared the fumes. The canary is like the symbol of the person who gets in full burnout.

So, does it make sense when we see people really getting burnt out, just keeping people with the same toxic fumes that create burnout? But that is what we are doing. We are just spending people and then, “Oh, the turnover is so expensive.” Yeah, but you can do something about it. You can. But it’s the systemic causes, and it’s not just the overload of work, but more than the capacity that we can do. Yes, it’s one of the root causes of burnout, but it’s also the sense of lack of control and that things are unfair. There are other dynamics that contribute to burnout. Full burnout: we can do something about it.

Yeah. So, what assessment would you recommend folks take to determine whether they’re burned out, overextended, or what? Is it the Maslach Burnout Inventory, or is it some other simpler assessment?

Honestly, I love that one. And this, the one that I use in organizations, there is a little fee to do it, and I always suggest doing it to somebody that knows the assessment quite well because you can take more out of the results. And it takes like 10 minutes. So, they have two scales in the toolkit: the burnout toolkit. There is one to assess the levels of burnout in the three dimensions I spoke about. Exhaustion is the dimension of exhaustion, the dimension of this connection, and then efficiency. And another scale is about the root causes, the mismatches creating the conditions for burnout. So we can have a good indication of what the most effective thing to address is to change the dynamic in the organization.

It takes about 10 minutes for somebody to fill out that form, so it’s not. It’s a short, effective tool with tons of research behind it. What I advise people is to have somebody who has experience help them with that information to create a pathway to get them out of where they are. Yes, awareness is number one. And then how can you boost your choices and opportunities to create a different path that will lead to cultivating work sustainability?

Yep. And do you help folks create that path?

Yes, that is part of what I love to do: create awareness. And then, okay, let’s see what we can do to solve this.

Okay, tell me more about this mismatch that can happen when a person’s job responsibilities don’t match their strengths and the things that they enjoy doing. The person ends up getting disengaged, unhappy, and exhausted because of that mismatch.

So that is that systemic thing. So if we see burnout is felt at the level of the individual, but the root causes usually are systemic. If we think about the online world, entrepreneurs and small teams, a lot of the thing is the workload; for leaders, it is a lot of workload. They have more than in their plight that is humanly possible to do.

Burnout is felt individually, but the causes are systemic.

Even when introducing things like AI, they can immediately see the impact. “Oh my gosh, now I can do more.” And then my question is, what will you use the time you release? If it’s going to put more on your plate, you’re just going to create even more workload problems and more mixed fit there. If you use the time that you release to be more strategic, then you are speaking my language, and you are going to be creating a bigger impact.

So that is the more evident. Another one, mainly when working with teams and organizations, has to do with the sense of control when micromanaging. Typical people don’t feel that they have a sense of control. If you use technology, even AI, to be surveillance and micromanaging, I think that will not be a good thing. But if you use these tools and other things to give people more of a sense of self-control, humans have human nature, which is very important for us to have a sense of control. We don’t like to feel that we are robots doing things. So have that also in consideration.

And that can be one of the mismatches that it takes to burn out. Then, another one has to do with the sense of reward. And it’s not just money. Yes, it is great if we work hard and get rewarded with a bonus. But other times, for some people, mainly younger generations, their reward can be more inflexible time, more in the opportunity of having four weeks or more quickly. So, the reward is different from group to group and individual to individual, and we have to take this into consideration. And even there is a sense of community.

Suppose they feel that they have a community in a workplace. And now, with the hybrid workplace, how can we build that community? Or it’s a toxic community. So all of these things are important. Do they feel that the promotions happen in a fair way that also can contribute to burnout?

If you stop a weekend without working, the world will keep spinning. So give yourself grace.

For instance, sometimes the manager changes, and they feel that that person is not being fair in evaluating things. That absolutely can lead to disengagement or other forms of burnout. And the sense of values, if their values are not aligned with the company values, what they see happening in action also can generate disconnection that can lead to burnout. So we have some flexibility, obviously, even in the workload, because sometimes I work in organizations. Oh, but we must work hard when doing a lounge.

Absolutely. But do you have a light at the end of the tunnel where people can breathe and recover? That is the key, too.

So if someone is, let’s say, completely burned out, it could be you, the listener, someone on your team, or a loved one. What’s the first, second and third thing you want to do for that person, whether it’s themselves or somebody else?

Hope. You don’t have to be there. And there is another way of doing things. So, I think a sense of hope is really important. Doesn’t have to be this way. And some people have been there and recovered. So, full burnout can take time. If you let things arrive to a point that you present your resignation, go out of the door, sell your company, and if you mainly have the luxury of having the resources to allow yourself some time, take advantage of that, because there is a time element there to let your body recover, your mind recover.

And, of course, you can get the help of a professional to help you through that journey from coaching. They are coaches who specialize in burnout and doing things in personal development. Reevaluate your core values, those things. But full burnout takes time. If you are aware of the overextended zone and tip your toe in the full burnout, you rest a little, and there you go again. The world will keep spinning. If you stop a weekend without working, the world will keep spinning. So give yourself grace and take advantage of nature and the seasons.

Suppose it’s close to the end of the year. One of the beautiful things about the holiday season and then the end of the year is that it’s almost a sign of our culture restarting. We are restarting a new year, starting again on January 1st. So use that little bit of breathing room that society culturally gives us towards the end of the year to reevaluate what is important for you. And you don’t have to end the year to do that. Think about the end of the quarter; companies work a lot by quarter. So take that as a cue to restart. And why not take that every month? Every month, we start with the first of the month.

So take that last day and first day as a way of restarting. Or why not every week? Why not every day?

So, how much time would you say for somebody fully burned out? Do they need to recover?

Most people, most coaches who work to recover, people of full burnout, speak about 12 months to 18 months to recover the average. So it’s a long time.

Yeah. If somebody is fully burned out, I’d say that their first instinct is to quit their job.

Correct.

And then they’ll take another job somewhere else. But won’t they end up burned out at that place, too? Because they haven’t solved the root cause of their burnout, which is their bad habits and choices. As far as putting their own, maybe mental health or physical health secondary to whatever their job duties are.

Absolutely. They can be very lucky to go to a company that has a different culture, and they start to see people doing things differently. But most of the time, they are in that cycle. They get some relief, but then they have to pay the bills there again, and they keep repeating that cycle.

Yeah. And somebody who’s maybe burned out because they’re a full-time parent and homeschooling their kid, you can’t quit that job and start over somewhere else with a new family. So I mean, I guess technically, some fathers could do that. They could abandon their family, but it’s much harder for the mother to do that. But that’s, of course, dysfunctional and horrible. So what would a parent who’s burned out from parenting?

Ask for help and really tap into the resources. Hopefully, they will have resources around them, and they are not leveraging those resources. There are cases in which people don’t have resources, but there are organizations out there that maybe can help them. But he’s recognizing that, like any human, we have our limits, and it’s okay to ask for help. One of the more transformative things for me when I read the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.

Yeah, it’s a great book.

It’s a great book. It is a classic for very good reasons, and we deserve it. One of the big mindset shifts for me was one of the diagrams that he uses in the book to describe the seven habits. It is speaking that first, we go from being dependent. A child is dependent on an adult. That is just how we need somebody to help us with part of our development. And then it’s all about helping that child become independent. Wonderful.

We can do more together than we can do alone.

But then many of us stay stuck in that independent for independence sake syndrome. And our self-worth is about being independent. I have to be able to do this by myself. That is what society praised. What I was raised with and what I love about the work of Steve Cave in the 7 Habits is that they show “no, if we stop there, we are stopping short of our potential. If we want to have a bigger impact, we must learn to be interdependent. We can do more together than we can do alone.” So, human beings are connecting beings.

Even with all the group friction, we can do more together than alone. So, let’s learn healthy forms of interdependence. And as a parent, yes, you have your partner. Suppose you are lucky to have a good partner who can help you release the load. And you have to ask, and who else out there in your environment can help you have a little bit of breathing room? Otherwise, you are going to get burned out.

Yeah. So if somebody is seeing a colleague or a friend who’s seemingly burned out or at least overextended or perhaps disengaged, By the way, I remember some study that was done, I think it was by Gallup, where they found that a large percentage of employees were either not engaged or actively disengaged in their companies. More than 50% or something. That was just crazy. And if that’s the new norm, or maybe it’s been the norm for a while, that’s pretty scary to our listener, who might be a business owner or a manager of a team, because that means the bulk of their team is either not engaged or actively disengaged and not engaged. That’s not workable.

Absolutely. And we have the numbers. Gallup does a beautiful job of getting those big numbers together. We know that in the United States, if a company has around 30% of its employees engaged, it is a healthy company. 30% means that 70% are not engaged. Thinking about that is really, “Whoa, okay.” In Europe, the numbers are even worse. If they are lucky, the numbers are in the teens and 20s.

So, this is a big problem affecting all big organizations that I think we have the power to do something about. But we have to change the culture of work. And that is where the resistance happens. And that is where I go back to work sustainability. Why are we working? What is the meaning of our work? What is the purpose of our work? How can we do something meaningful together? You will get more people engaged.

Yeah. So, how do you change the culture to align people with more meaningful work that matches their core values?

I’m not saying that is the only way, but starting with a leader makes a huge difference. It’s very difficult to change this if you don’t start with the top leadership. So, if people at the top realize that maybe there is another way of doing that and leading their organizations to a different place, they have the power to allocate the resources to make that happen. If it’s just the HR department wanting to make a difference, they don’t have the capacity. They usually have more on their plates than is humanly possible. And they don’t have the resources necessary. They feel frustrated and can get burned themselves because they feel that they are just putting band-aid over Band-Aid and Band-Aid.

Yeah. One thing that we do in our companies on my SEO agency is to have each team member do the Demartini Values Determination Assessment. Dr. John Demartini. Yeah, yeah. He’s been a guest on the podcast. He’s phenomenal. And yeah, that gives us a hierarchy of their highest values. Then, we look at their job description, duties, and responsibilities, and we try to match them up to their highest values so that they feel like they’re doing meaningful work.

Yeah. And this part, when I wrote my book Mindset Zone, I was looking for, and I was speaking about this. How can I explain this for the individual or for a leader in an organization in a way that is really impactful and stick? So I came up with the acronym PIE. I call it the PIE method, and PIE. Who doesn’t like a good slice of pie? 

So “P” is for pause, and what you are describing in terms of your organization, you create this container of pauses for people to look inside and what, in this case, and take us to the “I.” That allows them to increase their self-awareness. Wonderful. Now, you can experiment with something that is the “E,” embracing that experimentation mindset. Like, why let’s try to give. If this person has this as a core value for them and they have these strengths, why don’t we give them something in their job that is leveraging that? Let’s see the results and go from there.

So, this PIE pause increases self-awareness and embraces the experimentation mindset, which works at the level of organization and works at a personal level. When the organization gives us, “Oh, you have X amount of funds to do coaching or do a wellness program or use this app.” Take the opportunity to pause to do that work. Allow yourself to increase your self-awareness, and maybe it will not work, but it will work well in the first couple of days or first week, and then you forget to do it.

Give yourself a break, learn from the experience and see how you can experiment differently to take advantage of those resources.

Yeah, and this is an ongoing process, for example, with Demartini’s Values Determination assessment, which is completely free on Dr. Demartini’s site that is best done at least every quarter because your values change over time. If you only do it once and have been at a company for five or 10 years, your value stack has almost certainly shifted around. Perhaps you had a child, perhaps you had a spiritual awakening, perhaps you suffered from a divorce or some other loss, and you’re reevaluating that’s going to shift your values, and then that means your job duties need to shift to match those highest values now, too.

Absolutely. And sometimes, it’s the hierarchy. One value that was there becomes more important now in this phase of our lives. And I love that. I love the quarterly. Another system that I love in terms of high performance is the 12-week year that is all about instead of seeing the year as 12 months because, okay, when you start January, December is so far away. But if we think, okay, let’s take each quarter. A quarter is 13 weeks, but let’s look at 12 weeks, which is 12 weeks per year.

Each week has the value of a month, and each day of work has a week’s value. How much more can we achieve with that kind of mind frame to look and give us the magic that gives us the opportunity of not waiting until the end of the year to reevaluate everything? But every quarter, pressing the reset button, pausing, looking back, looking forward, resetting, and starting again is really powerful.

Yeah. Is that Todd Herman? I think his program is called the 90 Day Year.

90 days. So, it is from the same spirit of it. This one is from a book called The 12 Week Year of Brian P. Moran.The spirit is the same and goes back to. I know that Brian Pimaran got inspiration from sports; in high-performance sports, the periodization of training, you focus on a specific skill that you are going to do for a while to improve. Then you focus on another specific skill, and even if you go to software, you have the sprints, you focus on one project with a limited time to get it done, and then you have the opportunity to evaluate and restart. That is the power. It is the power of restarting. That is one of the secrets there.

Yeah, right. Brian P. Moran wrote the 12 Week Year. It’s got almost 8,000 ratings on Amazon and 4.7 stars on average. That’s pretty good. Todd Herman, who was a past guest on this podcast, wrote The Alter Ego Effect.

Correct.

And that one is a good one, too, with about 1400 ratings and an average of 4.6 stars.

Absolutely. And if you go. Because I think all these systems are pulling out from these things that we know that work. And even if you go. Another coach and author, Marshall Goldsmith, is very well-known in this active leadership world he speaks about. He’s a Buddhist practice, so he goes to Buddhism. And each breath is a new breath. It’s almost to the extreme that we can use every moment to restart.

So it’s really powerful.

Yeah. His books are What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. Right. And then Triggers.

Yes, Trigger is amazing. Trigger is a great book; his last one is Life while living something around. Oh, The Earned Life. The Earned Life is an amazing book, too. So I love his things, too. He’s so good and so recognized for a reason. There is a reason why we see all these people: Brian Pimaran, Todd Herman, and Marshall Goldsmith, and we spoke before of the classic Covey, Stephen Covey. There is a reason why they are so recognized.

One other assessment or program that I want to mention: I just recently interviewed Dr. Gary Sanchez. He has the WHY.os, and the book inspired him, Start With Why and Simon Sinek, of course, the author of it. And he took a whole program with Simon and was really transformed by it. And then he created a whole system. And that’s actually something that my team is in the process of doing now. They’re going through the why assessment, and then we’ll see what we can do to implement some changes so that their why, what, and how, which will all be determined from taking this assessment, are optimally matched to their job duties. So, we’ve already done the Demartini’s Assessment. Now, we’re going to do the WHY.os.

And yeah, I’m very excited about that. It’s really a cool program. Are you familiar with it?

Yes. It’s another powerful tool. So, from these tools, during the 12-week year, I did the training, and I was certified to use that as I know a Todd Ehrman program. I never was certified on it, but I know the program, the results that he gets, and why I did OS as a user, and the results are very, very powerful. Really is different. It’s complimentary to the other value work but really powerful. What are the insights that you can get from the assessment?

Yeah. So if somebody’s doing, let’s say, quarterly performance reviews of team members, or they’re just in their career getting performance reviews every quarter, if they ask their manager to start assessing them not just on their work output and whatever their typical KPIs are for the job, but also take into account things like their highest values and their why, then their raison d’etre for being alive and then making sure that they’re getting meaning out of the work. That’s such a crucial component of a performance review.

Absolutely. We go back since we are speaking about classics to Man’s Search For Meaning of Viktor Frankl, and the key was about exactly that, the purpose, the meaning. I will add a burnout survey to that list to ensure you know the levels there and give you the burnout engagement to continue. What I love about the MASLAS tool is that you have an idea of how many are burned out, overextended, disengaged and engaged and how you can bring more to that engaged zone.

Yeah. Awesome. And I know we’re getting close to time here. You mentioned earlier in this conversation about not being reactive because, of course, if you’re overextended, you’re overwhelmed, you’re burned out, you’re disengaged, you’re going to be more reactive, you’re going to be more on edge, you’re going to be grumpier. So how do we change behaviors that might be well-worn ruts in people’s brains of being reactive and not responsive or being reactive instead of proactive? How do we change those behaviors? Maybe with some new habits.

Understand that we have the power to change our habits. I like to call mindsets habits of mind, which we have the power to change. These may be habits that serve us well during a time in our lives. But maybe we have to let them go into a new phase in our lives.

And I go back to that famous quote that I would like to say. “Between a stimulus and a response, there is a space. In that space lies our power to choose our response when we can learn and our freedom.” So, I’m not saying the quote is exactly as it is. So let me see if I can remember in more exact words. “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space, we have the power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. “

We have the power to change our habits of mind.

The issue is to press the pause button, which allows us to be the space between the stimulus and the response. Usually, it’s because it’s the way that humans are wired and we react. We are used to a trigger that reacts in a certain way, that responds to a certain way. And we do this to save mental energy. Sometimes, once in a while, it’s good to press the pause button and choose a different response.

That is the secret of stopping the reactive mode and being more proactive.

This reminds me of an episode from 2017 and a course I took on Kabbalah. The episode is with Yehuda Ashkenazi, who was my Kabbalah teacher. He gave everyone a little card that you put in your wallet. The title of it was The Proactive Formula.

I’ll just share what this card says after the proactive formula. It says a challenging situation or obstacle appears. Step one: Pause. Observe your reactive nature. Step two is to become aware that your reaction is the real enemy, not the person you’re in conflict with. Right. But your reaction. Number three, step three, is to realize that the situation is actually coming from the light, from the creator, from your higher power. Step four: Ask the light for help finding the best proactive solution to the situation or solutions. Step five, finally, takes the proactive action. 

And it’s so simple. But when we are in reactive mode, and our anger has hijacked our higher senses and sensibilities, and we’re no longer acting from wisdom but from the reaction, then the card is very handy to have in your wallet.

Absolutely. And give yourself the grace. Because we are, how do you say? It’s always easy to go to the old patterns. Our wire is like the road more traveled. We go there easily. But if you are starting to be aware afterward, I didn’t like how I reacted. Just the pausing. Thinking back about the situation and then asking yourself what you would like to have done differently, you are starting to rewire your brain.

Your reaction is the real enemy, not the person you’re in conflict with.

So wherever you are, you are giving yourself grace, and you have the power of change. And just by increasing that self-awareness, we go back. It’s the pausing that all these systems speak about—increasing self-awareness. And why not experiment with something new?

I love this quote from Jaiya, who was actually my first guest. In episode no. 1 of Get Yourself Optimized she explains that habits, bad habits, and patterns become grooves in the brain, kind of like grooves on a record. I remember the days of records; I’m that old. Then grooves without getting addressed and changed become ruts and ruts and graves. And that’s going to be the end of you really if you let these things, these well-worn grooves in your brain of bad habits, whether it’s smoking, whether it’s talking badly about others or about yourself or self-loathing in some other form, it’s terribly toxic.

And it’s possible to change. It’s not easy. Being possible doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it is absolutely possible. And change is not the switching of a switch is not on and off. There is a process. It’s usually to have some sit-backs. It’s part of the journey.

But if you keep trying and you keep creating new pathways, that can become your new normal.

Change is not the switching of a switch. There is a process.

Awesome. Well, it’s a great way to end this episode. So, if our listener or viewer wants to learn more from you, you’ve got your book, the Mindset Zone. You have your podcast, the Mindset Zone. I believe there’s working you one-on-one in a coaching capacity as well. So, talk a bit more about how they might take the next step to learn from you and work with you.

My website, Anamelikian.com, is probably the best place to contact me, and of course, on social media, LinkedIn is where you can contact me directly. I’d love to speak about this to organizations and groups. So this is one. I think by spreading this message, we really are allowing people to create that new, better world out there.

Yeah. Awesome. Well thank you so much Ana and thank you listener. And do something with this information now. Don’t just passively listen to it and then listen to it in the next episode. Take some positive proactive action so that you can make your life better, the people you care about’s lives better, and your workplace or your company better. I’m your host Stephan Spencer signing off.

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Your Checklist of Actions to Take

Take a moment to pause and reflect throughout my day. This simple action can clear my mind, reduce stress, and increase self-awareness.

Practice living in the moment to improve focus and reduce anxiety. Mindfulness can help me become more resilient to stressors.

Use tools like the Maslach Burnout Inventory to identify burnout signs early. Regular assessments provide a clearer picture of my well-being.

Align my job tasks with my core values for greater fulfillment and engagement. This leads to increased motivation and job satisfaction.

Reach out for help when needed, be it from community resources or professional guidance. Collaboration can enhance my strength and support network.

Move from independence to interdependence by collaborating with others. Teamwork often leads to bigger and better achievements.

Develop proactive habits rather than reactive responses. This shift can prevent burnout and help manage long-term goals effectively.

Take intentional breaks throughout my day to recharge. Short breaks can boost productivity and creativity.

Embrace the P.I.E. method: Pause, Increase self-awareness, and Embrace experimentation. This encourages growth and adaptability in personal and professional spheres.

Visit Ana Melikian’s website, anamelikian.com, and explore the various resources she offers, such as her book and podcast, Mindset Zone.

About Ana Melikian

Ana Melikian, Ph.D., is a speaker, author, and host of the MINDSET ZONE, a Top 1% podcast. Ana supports leaders and organizations in increasing impact while avoiding burnout!

LeadersHum selected Dr. Melikian for their PowerList 2023 for her work on Human Potential and Self-Leadership.