11/30/2025
Things I would tell you as a burnout expert if I wasn’t afraid to hurt your feelings.
1. Alignment reduces stress. Stop chasing what you thought would look or sound good, tune in, and shift slowly toward the life you truly want. This will require building the alignment muscle. It’s annoying, repetitive work that will take longer than you want.
2. Be good with a C grade. Alignment doesn’t mean that you don’t haven’t to do or experience sh*tty things. If you can get to 60% matched up, 20% sort of matched, and 20% mismatch (read: sacrifice), you’ll be good.
3. Unless your workplace has frequent: bullying, harassment, ostracism, or incivility - it’s not toxic. It might be a mismatch for you in speed, hours, skills, values, workstyle, knowledge or more but those things aren’t toxic. They’re misalignment.
4. If you want a completely personalized workplace that is totally aligned with you - stop trying to work for other people. Learn how to build a business and then take all the associated risks and stretches to make it happen. Most people don’t actually want this. See #2.
5. Burnout isn’t your fault AND your normal operating mode allowed it to happen. That is a paradox you need to learn to hold. You cannot live the same life (or a different life) the same way and expect to avoid burnout. It’s why so many people have burnout relapse.
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