Max Schneider - Creating new solutions for burnout

[00:00:00] Hi everybody and welcome to Resilience Unravelled, a podcast that examines all aspects of personal and organisational resilience. A huge all-encompassing subject that covers the ability to thrive in life by harnessing your cognitive, emotional, physiological and contextual abilities. I share

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[00:00:58] our work and contributing more proactively, you can find our new Patreon page at patreon.com then search for Resilience Unravelled. So let's get started. Enjoy the show. And welcome back to Resilience Unravelled. I'm so looking forward to this because

[00:01:16] I'm hoping at the end of this episode, I'm going to be chilled, relaxed, hung out, hanging loose. I think the phrase is hanging loose. It was in the 60s anyway. So I'm visited by Max Schneider who's sitting in front of me. I nearly got your name

[00:01:33] wrong there, Max. So welcome first of all. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Where in the world are you? I am in Los Angeles, fresh off of a plane from Costa Rica, actually. I've been down to Costa Rica. Oh, sorry. I know you say Costa Rica.

[00:01:49] Costa Rica and that's quite a journey, isn't it? It is. Yeah, it was about 12 hours of travel yesterday. We were deep in the jungle but yeah, so home base is Los Angeles and nice to be back home.

[00:02:01] What's the weather like over there at the moment because you've been having some terrible times, haven't you? In LA right now, it's actually pretty decent. It's a lot better than the 97 degrees in pure humidity that we were in 24 hours ago. So yeah, things are pretty good

[00:02:15] over in this area of the woods. We're starting to get ready for that May gray, June gloom that always comes in. We're right next to the beach over in Los Angeles and it's funny, I've from

[00:02:24] the Midwest of the United States, lived in Boston, lived in Chicago where there's proper winters and real weather but over here in LA, as soon as it gets a little bit cloudy, everybody just turns into hermits. So we're looking into that time of year where it's

[00:02:38] a little bit cloudy in the morning in May and June and everybody just kind of freaks out about it till about one o'clock in the day when the sun comes out. So we're really getting to some

[00:02:47] tough weather this time of year here in Los Angeles. And my heart beats for you. I know, right? Well look, tell us a bit about yourself. You sort of eluded the fact

[00:02:56] that you've got something to do with Costa Rica but tell me a little bit about the background. What are the things that you do? Yeah, so I spent about 10 years in consulting, working, doing a lot of the work that is familiar to you, working with organizations on

[00:03:10] strategy implementation, change management, jumping around the globe. I've worked in the technology and financial services sectors with some Fortune 100 companies. Microsoft is primary client and traveling about 200,000 miles a year for a number of years which ultimately that

[00:03:27] work led to my burnout and ended up leaving the corporate world and going out on my own and through a lot of therapy, through a lot of mindfulness of my own, really understanding more about burnout and then creating experiences that help people really tune back into themselves

[00:03:46] so that they don't ultimately go through the type of burnout that I've experienced and I know so many other people and so many of your listeners have as well. Yeah, well let's unpack the burnout bit first if you don't mind. Please just talk about what

[00:03:58] you want to talk about. Don't feel the need. This is not therapy or investigative journalism so just talk about what you want to talk about. But describe, if you would for me, this sensation of burnout and how you knew you had it.

[00:04:12] It took a while for me to actually understand what was going on. I am a person and I think a lot of us are in a wired this way where we push through things and you continue to

[00:04:28] shove things down. You don't pay attention to the signs that your body is showing you. I'm always someone who gives 100% to everything that I do and I go full send on everything. I didn't understand the value of rest so that really started manifesting for me at first

[00:04:45] in some physical ways. I got shingles when I was about 27 years old. It was actually about six months after my wife had got shingles as well. I was giving her a little bit of,

[00:04:58] I was making fun of her a little bit for getting shingles in her 20s and then about six months later I got mine. Got shingles as well so that was a first sign but in that moment

[00:05:06] we didn't understand really what was going on and then continued to push through things, continued to shove things down, started experiencing anxiety attacks at airports, on calls, in meetings and just had this physical manifestation of a lot of symptoms

[00:05:23] that ultimately kind of led me to a curled up ball in our living room one day in October of 2021 just in a total panicked state not knowing what to do. That was the moment where I realized that what was going on wasn't sustainable and something had to change.

[00:05:45] But yeah it's funny the body will continue to message things to you and unless we want to sit down and listen it'll keep coming back a little bit more voracious every time. It is all isn't it because the culture in organizations is very much pushed through,

[00:06:01] keep going and especially in America I'm thinking because you've got this sort of high needs for competition and being first and being the best and being the rightest and all that

[00:06:10] sort of stuff so looking back on it what sort of signs or triggers did you see I mean obviously the shingles is a big thing and let's put that to one side because that's a massive

[00:06:23] signal but what other signals, what other things did you notice now with hindsight which were you know leading you into this burnout state? Another big thing that I noticed was the apathy that I felt and I've always been someone who like I care. The things that I'm

[00:06:44] doing I mentioned give 100% and I really care and then when I started noticing this apathy and just not caring like truly at my core stopping caring about things it was this wild moment of like an identity crisis where you're looking at yourself in the mirror and

[00:07:03] going like why don't I care about things anymore and it wasn't just on the work front it was in the life front. I didn't care about going to the gym, I didn't care about all of these things that

[00:07:12] previously gave me energy, I didn't care about being social and it created this kind of identity shift and this identity crisis where I was looking in the mirror going I don't recognize

[00:07:24] who I am as a human being and I think the point you made before about like kind of the culture is really interesting too because high performance culture is oftentimes burnout culture. We just don't really draw that line of sight when we're seeing nutrition, we're seeing the

[00:07:40] churn at different levels of organizations and it's just kind of next person up, next person up and we don't solve for a lot of the root problem of it so it definitely is that cultural

[00:07:52] and organizational aspect of it but there's also the self-agency aspect of it too where I was the one making my own decisions and as I look at things in hindsight, really understanding what my role was in my own burnout which was very significant. I take full

[00:08:08] responsibility for that. I didn't at first, I was definitely at first trying to place blame and not taking responsibility for it but after getting some space for it really understanding that it was my own decisions, it was my own behaviors, my own mindsets that led to that

[00:08:25] burnout. And that's interesting without specifics but who were you burning? Was it the organization or the airlines or where was the, where were you lashing out at in the blame thing? Yeah at first I thought that it had to do with the organization and that just frankly isn't

[00:08:45] true. It was my own behaviors because there's plenty of people who can, who are surviving that organization. It's a great organization. I love the people there still and there's people who are thriving there and who have figured out how to balance that but through a lot of therapy

[00:09:00] work for me too and understanding how my brain is wired, understanding neurodivergence that I have and really working through that in therapy and then understanding also what are the behaviors that I'm exhibiting and showing up with that actually can change because some of that wiring of

[00:09:16] the brain just is what it is and you're not going to fight that so learning how to manage it, learning how to rest properly and then figuring out for me also what are the things that I can

[00:09:30] do differently? What are the things that I can change? That was a really big unlock for me to figure out okay this is how I can start preventing this type of burnout from happening again in the future. Did you need to dial back any perfectionism? Perfectionism is not

[00:09:45] something that I really have to navigate fortunately but definitely OCD and some other things too that yeah you just get so fixated and so obsessed with things that really aren't as important maybe as you think and also mindfulness and meditation have been huge tools for me

[00:10:05] to really build like that toolkit of things that I can use when I'm starting to experience things that might be a little more challenging to be able to slow down, to be able to tune in

[00:10:15] and connect with myself again. Yeah it's always interesting there are a lot of I think 25% of the population can't meditate or see visual images or bring to mind visual images so it's always interesting for those people to come up with a different option so that's always

[00:10:32] fascinating. So I'm guessing you went through some and please forgive me but I'm just I'm guessing this American story and I may be hideously wrong I don't believe that I don't know if I am. You went through this experience you saw the light and you decided to create

[00:10:46] something that would help everybody else? Yes that's it at the core. What I knew so after I experienced this burnout at the time my wife was starting her own she's a physical therapist

[00:10:59] was starting her own practice and we needed to have one income to survive in LA and we didn't know what to do so we picked up and we actually went down to Costa Rica for a month

[00:11:09] and the first night we were there I dreamt that I quit my job the second night we were there I dreamt that I quit my job the third night we were there I dreamt that I quit my job

[00:11:17] so I looked at my wife the next morning I said I have no idea what I'm going to do but I can't keep doing this to myself this subconscious was just so blatantly bringing

[00:11:26] this forward so she said okay great we'll figure this out when we came back. She's a keeper? She is yes I am so fortunate to have had her support throughout this entire process

[00:11:38] it's I wouldn't have been able to do it without so very very fortunate on that front and when we got back ended up leaving my job and as I was processing all of this what I knew

[00:11:49] was that in life particularly in the corporate world and with high performing individuals you go through these ebbs and flows it's my experience wasn't unique I'm sure people listening to this also have had their own moments like this as well and what I wanted

[00:12:05] to do was create something that helps people who are going through those ebbs and flows where you do feel disconnected from yourself you do feel like you've lost touch with what you're supposed to be doing or the things that are important to you or your own identity

[00:12:20] and I wanted to create an experience that helps people who are going through that so that's where just the original ethos of it was born was through my own lived experience and wanting to help others that are navigating a similar thing. Yeah and whether the situation

[00:12:37] whether the I don't know what to call it the word I don't want to call burnout a condition I'm trying to think of the right word anyway whether burnout's always been there and was just suddenly notes there has been defined properly now the fact is massively on

[00:12:50] the rise and much worse in the eastern cultures but very poor in the UK or in America as well so what was your solution then because there are many different solutions and the very best of them usually hold together psychology and physiology in some sort of way so

[00:13:06] I'm assuming you might have gone down that track. Yes so what I learned through my own experience was when you work really hard you also have to rest really hard and it's the end

[00:13:20] to the yang and that you can't avoid that because it's like if you're on your phone all day you're using your phone consistently you're draining the battery you're draining the battery you're going to have to charge your phone more often than somebody who doesn't pick up their

[00:13:33] phone that often so I wanted to be able to create a space for people to rest hard essentially is was the idea behind it so we started running retreats were purely focused

[00:13:45] on mindfulness and slowing down and tuning back into who you are so we do things like sound bass we do things like breath work a lot of we do mindful movement we do yoga we do

[00:13:56] meditation and we take care of everything from guests from the moment they arrive so they also don't have to worry about doing anything it's a half the challenge of going on vacation is

[00:14:07] when you have to plan all of these details so we just take that off the plate and allow people to just focus on themselves so we started doing that and we just mentioned we just got

[00:14:19] back last night from the 10th one in the last two years but as that's been spinning up we started to get interest from my network saying hey what you're doing is interesting how might we integrate that with our organization and so through some conversations

[00:14:34] and being really intentional turning down some opportunities and figuring out okay what's the right product market fit for this we started running off sites for executive intact teams that are what I love about it is we check titles at the door there are no formal business

[00:14:48] conversations it's just human beings showing up as human beings working on themselves as people and that to me is the most meaningful thing because that's like this stuff that I love is getting down deep into a the reality of the human experience and understanding that so

[00:15:03] it's just this idea of when you perform really well and you're pushing yourself how do we also push ourselves to rest in that same mindset it's really difficult because our culture doesn't

[00:15:16] teach us how to do that and rest for a lot of people is like okay I'm just going to sit on the couch and turn on Netflix like that's not really resting your brain is still so active

[00:15:26] you're getting all these images it's conjuring thoughts you're thinking about it when you get done but how do you empty those thoughts how do you turn off and that's where a lot of the

[00:15:35] beauty a lot of the rest and a lot of the regeneration and the rejuvenation comes into play and that's fascinating because if you're an organization that's going at 100 miles an hour and all your exec team is the last thing you can imagine is stopping and if you're

[00:15:50] you know stressed and burned out or not burned out yet and you're you're still jacked up on the emotional and physiological effects of stress and such like the last thing you want to do is

[00:16:02] stop so it's sometimes having the early warning signals or as important aren't they because that's that's the thing that leads you to think actually this because it's about taking corrective action before you get to that really depleted stage because what you've done is

[00:16:15] sort of empty talk about the battery it's a good analogy isn't it because you've you're emptying your battery of you know body chemistry you know good brain good chemistry which is going to make you iller in the long term so it's about stopping this process before

[00:16:31] you actually become burnt out otherwise it takes a lot longer to get back in the saddle again i'm mixing every single metaphor under the sun in that little sentence but you know they're beautiful metaphors now we've got horses i've never thought i'd get a sentence with hormones

[00:16:46] and horses in the same sentence but they go along with it but it's true isn't it how it's it's that thing about it's like top athletes isn't it we often you would never think that

[00:16:54] a top athlete would run until they were so exhausted they wouldn't be able to operate again you do see it in sort of team sports and football and soccer and such like you do see

[00:17:02] that where people are overworked and you notice their performance drop you notice on the field you notice how long it takes them to get to recover from injury and i think sometimes it's only looking at those sorts of physical sports that you can see it and think about

[00:17:15] how do i apply that to myself 100 and i think a lot of organizations think that they're doing things to prevent that where you see companies that are offering free gym memberships or healthy food in the break room but that stuff's table stakes and it's not changing

[00:17:34] anybody's behavior whatsoever when you offer discounted gym memberships the same people who are going to go to the gym are going to go to the gym they're just going to have

[00:17:43] to pay a little bit less for it when you put healthy food in the break room all you're doing is giving the people who are already going to eat healthy food access to free healthy food

[00:17:52] it's not shifting anything it's not changing anybody's behavior i think coming out of covid there's a huge shift in understanding of organizations responsibility in the way that they take care of their talent particularly their top talent because highly paid people

[00:18:09] should be highly cared for and i don't think a lot of companies you're seeing a move in that direction but a lot of companies haven't caught on to this yet yeah and i can see why because

[00:18:20] actually i'm thinking about this myself as someone who actually spends a lot of time evaluating programs and i mean it's obvious to me how we do it but for a lot of organizations seeing the roi in this sort of program is very tricky isn't that so how so

[00:18:35] so let's say you've got the choice so let's say the hr director of a company and you're thinking to yourself i've got to run a leadership program so i could send the people away on a retreat or

[00:18:45] an off-site or whatever you call it or i could send them away from professional development i mean they both have benefits don't they that's the problem it's but it's about how do you weigh up the the comparative benefits of each i suppose what would you your thinking be

[00:18:59] it is roi is such an interesting conversation in this space because we can sit here with we can sit here we can rattle off statistics like employees who feel as though their employers care

[00:19:10] about their own well-being are 69 percent more likely to recommend them as a place to work they're five times more likely to be engaged we can rattle off all those statistics the challenge is when we start talking we're talking about human beings with this we're

[00:19:23] not talking about professionals we're because at the core of everything we're doing we're we're they everything gets layered on top of that so when we start talking about roi immediately we're falling into this trap that has led us down the path that we've always been

[00:19:42] on and we have to start shifting that conversation and we have to start genuinely caring about our talent as people because we can talk about all the statistics and the roi is there but that's

[00:19:55] always for me a bit of a red flag when we're having a conversation with an organization when they immediately want to know what's the roi going to be on this the thing that we look for is leaders who already understand the importance of this work

[00:20:08] who already care they care about their people as people and they know that they give so much their people give so much to the organization and they want to create some reciprocity in

[00:20:20] that i'm sure you see it in your work it's wild the discrepancy in the importance that we place on work we spend 40 50 60 80 100 hours a week at work giving everything to the organization

[00:20:34] we identify as our titles we identify with our work and in a moment's notice as soon as something shifts in an organization there's a restructure the public company you have a bad quarter there's layoffs coming you're gone and the company itself isn't a living breathing

[00:20:52] thing that actually cares about its people it's going to do what's right for its shareholders and we have but the mismatch in the importance that we place on our work and the importance that our workplaces on us is really significant so what we look for

[00:21:10] for when we're doing this type of work is leaders who already understand this and they want to take care of their people as human beings and it's so inspiring that there's this shift that is happening in the workplace where we're having more people who are doing this

[00:21:28] because they have had more of these lived experiences and i love the point you made earlier about the word of burnout like this condition isn't new but now we have words to place on it which gives us the ability to actually do something with it because we

[00:21:42] understand the concept of it so that conversation about roi is really interesting but the moment that if that's the first question off the bat this type of work is going to probably be organ rejection within the organization because they haven't built the culture around it

[00:21:57] and the leaders don't actually care about their people as human beings you see i'm interested in that because i would actually push you back right back on that and say actually i would have thought this is relatively straightforward to figure out roi so maybe

[00:22:11] you and i should have a conversation off site yeah so i'm curious how would you articulate that roi for it well well you can calculate roi on a holiday so why would an off site because basically what you're doing is removing someone from the workplace and what you're

[00:22:27] saying is you send them away to come back better so it's it's possible to calculate the the financial effects of that it is and i think in in the lnd space or kind of the

[00:22:43] that that side of things roi can be a bit fluffier which as far as when you're measuring development programs so that for us is something that we're acutely aware of and when we're talking with organizations particularly generally the client for this type

[00:23:02] of work is like the ceo the of an organization that we're working with so when we're talking with like an hr leader that's a little bit different of a conversation but when the

[00:23:12] client is sitting in like the ceo seat those types of metrics do become a little bit more fluffy and so it becomes a challenging to kind of have that conversation versus finding the right leaders who do already understand the value of this because they

[00:23:28] have their own mindfulness practice they have their meditation practice they know the impact that it can have on an individual at the human level yeah and that's absolutely fascinating isn't because you often find this don't you often find that the ceo is interested in this

[00:23:42] but they're not prepared to pay for it for other people so you know i've i've seen that happen actually it's quite fascinating so tell me so tell me what happens on a retreat then

[00:23:50] what sort of things might people be getting up to yeah so at the is it always in costa rica sorry that because that's obviously a really good thing halt it so yeah we do host

[00:23:59] in costa rica we also have a location in california in palm springs where we bring organizations and their teams too so on at these events we take care of every detail from the

[00:24:11] moment from planning all the way through the end of it we have private chefs we have rent we work at stunning stunning estates and villas we have we start every day usually with either

[00:24:23] a mindfulness or a movement practice that can look like meditation we can it can look like different types of hiking getting out in nature and then during the middle portion of the day we have facilitated conversations and this always depends upon the organization what their

[00:24:38] objectives are because we very highly curate everything that we do so we're sitting around we're having conversations we're going deep as human beings getting a chance to kind of learn more about who we are as humans and things that are important to us and then

[00:24:51] in the afternoon we take another type of mindfulness class so we might do painting we might do breath work we might do sound baths and then we have private chefs on site who are taking care of all the meals throughout the experience as well so depending upon the

[00:25:05] organization and what they're really looking for we land the plane in different places but the whole intent of this is to give teams place to slow down and focus on themselves as human beings connect with themselves and connect with each other in very profound and

[00:25:19] different ways than we would do it a ropes course for example or doing trust falls or those types of activities yeah and they become popular haven't they you see a lot of this

[00:25:27] fire walking in glass shop John McDonough and all of these things have their place don't they they all have a you know beneficial effect because actually what you're not doing is working and what you are doing is is regenerating renewing you know and that's the point

[00:25:42] isn't it it's about using your brain in a different way it is yeah just creating space in your brain and allowing yourself just to slow down I think it's we live in a world that tells

[00:25:54] us that being bored isn't a good thing we have we can scroll on our phone on Instagram constantly you hear people say like oh god I don't want to be alone with my own thoughts

[00:26:07] no like that's what we should be doing spend time alone with your own thoughts tune in with yourself this but the world just doesn't teach us how to do that

[00:26:16] and I love to think of our minds as a pond and every input that we receive every day is like throwing a rock into the pond it can be small things it can be big rocks things like scrolling

[00:26:29] on Instagram things like when we're driving things like listening to podcasts things like having conversations looking to the news getting emails getting text messages right constantly inundated with these inputs all day throwing rocks into the pond kicking up

[00:26:42] the water kicking up muck at the bottom but when we start to slow down and we start to pull back on those inputs we find those moments of silence during the day we go for walks without our phone

[00:26:55] we meditate we just remove those inputs all of a sudden that water starts to calm and you can see reflections off of it then you might be able after a while to start seeing down into

[00:27:10] the pond itself and seeing into the water because that muck has settled on the bottom and you can start to notice the nooks and the crannies the logs that might be there the rocks

[00:27:20] that are sitting on the bottom and you start to see things about yourself and be able to tune in in ways that you can't when you're just constantly inundated and never bored so I

[00:27:30] like to think of boredom as a really good thing because that's what allows us to slow down and tune into our minds tune into our bodies and better be able to observe rather than

[00:27:40] this idea of like boredom is the enemy no no no boredom is not the enemy boredom is a good thing I like I love that that analogy as well that's some lovely hypnosis language going on there

[00:27:53] and I can see I can see what you're up to there that's very good I like it well look how do people find out more about what it is that you do where should they look

[00:28:02] how can they engage with you yeah so our website is sand and salt escapes.com sand and salt escapes so you can go there you can learn more about the work that we do we have treats for individuals

[00:28:14] off sites for organizations and yeah you can get in contact with me there too my email is max at sand and salt escapes.com you can always reach out to me directly but we have tons of

[00:28:24] videos testimonials and just brings to life the work that we do on the website so that's where I would direct people. I think it's really taken off you're not the first you're not the

[00:28:33] first person we talked to in here that has retreat so it's obviously a thing in zeitgeist isn't it it's happening and there's a reason that things happen in the states it's because

[00:28:40] they're effective in the work. It is yeah it's it's fun to be in this space it's just totally evolving there's so much white space and there's such a need for it because I yeah our world has taught us that we're just resources and it's taught

[00:28:56] us to see ourselves as titles and not as human beings and just to be able to bring some of that connection back to who we are not as our title at work not as our role in the family or

[00:29:08] in the community not as a parent or a sibling but as a human being it's deeply meaningful and it's really important because there's not a lot that teaches us how to do that in today's

[00:29:19] world so that's been I think for me the most rewarding part of all of this work. Well brilliant you see I told you I was going to feel better at the end of this and I was right

[00:29:29] look Max thanks for spending time with us today that's absolutely brilliant as you said we'll link to all the show notes and all the all the web domains and all that sort of stuff and take a look everybody that sounds absolutely amazing and I might be in

[00:29:43] the front of the queue so beating you all away so I can have a go myself I mean who knows there might even be a courtesy spot I'm just saying Max I mean just just as an idea

[00:29:54] let's have a conversation very good take care thank you so much for spending time with us today speak thank you for having me Russell it's been a pleasure. Hi everybody I hope you found that episode useful and interesting feedback is always welcomed

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[00:30:51] then search for resilience unraveled I look forward to being in your ear next time around take care