Combating Burnout with Jo Muirhead Her Life Unscripted

Jo Muirhead is my guest today, and I’m so excited to bring you another sponsor for the Shine Retreat, which is coming up next month.
I met Jo at a business/work retreat in 2015, and she was one of the coaches at the event. We had an immediate connection, and I know you’re going to love her, too. Jo has a brilliant straight-forwardness that’s mixed with kindness, passion, and compassion.
 
She truly believes in connecting people to purpose through inspiration and innovation.
Some of the things we’re going to go over are how work is something that we DO, not something that we ARE. We’re going to discuss safeguarding against burnout when work is our only identity.
 
As a Rehabilitation Counselor, she is at the intersection of how we manage our health and the work that we do. After someone leaves rehabilitation services, people often wonder what they are going to do for the rest of their lives. This is where Jo steps in.
 
Jo is all about connecting people to purpose through inspiration and innovation. Author of The Entrepreneurial Clinician, she is also the Founder and Principal Consultant of PurpleCo - a team of specialist allied health consultants dedicated to helping people who experience injury, illness, and trauma reclaim their lives through work. Jo graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Health Science, Rehabilitation Counseling in 1994. Jo is passionate about the health benefits of work and truly believes that everyone has the right to meaningful and rewarding employment. PurpleCo grew out of this belief as a truncated form of PURpose for peoPLE. 
 
 
 
Show Highlights:
 
Allied Health Professionals - a collective of professions including occupational therapists, speech pathologists, physiotherapists, and audiologists. Rehabilitation services help people manage chronic health and chronic sickness. As a Rehabilitation Counselor, Jo helps people learn how to take back their lives. Over the last few years, Jo has been working with Allied Health Professionals, working out who they are, who they serve, and how to create a lifestyle that allows them to do good work. “Good work” - there is no clinical definition of it and it’s a path that everyone needs to go on and define for themselves. When we’re not respected, and don’t have control over our workloads, and when we don’t agree with the outcomes we’re asked to achieve, we burn out. Institutionalized thinking has created a culture of fear among health care professionals, particularly mental health professionals. When this happens, health care workers tend to feel less engaged with our work and question our decision to be a health care professional. When it gets harder and harder to keep going, some people jump into private practice, thinking it will solve their problems, when, in fact, it creates new ones. The day and age of the autocratic, dictatorial boss have come and gone. In the companies we love to support, we can see dynamic, enthusiastic workplaces, with a different approach to management. In companies that offer unlimited annual and sick leave and studies show that workers are not taking advantage of the extra time off, but are actually being more productive. How do you get the best out of me? Don’t undermine me; don’t disrespect me; give me some choice; if my ideas are good, let me own them. Nutrition, giving your brain a break, managing your emotions, managing your social and emotional intelligence, and constructively dealing with managers are all part of taking care of our health at work. Jo discusses 3 key indicators of burnout: Overwhelming fatigue (differentiated from just being tired) that is not resolved through rest Akin to walking through cement Fatigue can be confused with depression, as fatigue can be a depressive symptom  Incredible need to over-exert and over-work, for fear that somebody finds out that you don’t feel well. (Overcompensate by doing more, being more, i.e. microma