Beating burnout and finding balance with Melo Calarco

We talk about the absolute imperative of self-regulation, and we talk about the need and imperative of consistent self care. If this sounds like something that's gonna help you perform at your best to perform even better and to unlock more opportunity for you in work and in life, make sure you listen in.'cause we're about to talk about all things, balance, wellbeing, health, and managing burnout.

Where we've both been following each other's work online. And then finally we were in the same organization, literally one room across from each other. And it was like, we've been friends for life. So what I love about Melo's work is the passion, and the smarts around how to. Beat burnout and why it's more important than ever to focus on our health and wellbeing.

Now, listeners, you've been asking me for this. You've been sharing with me, Janine, how do we build, how do we create, how do we serve when I'm so exhausted, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Throw in all the stuff that goes on in life. It's not surprising. And offline, Melo and I were just talking about. How for entrepreneurs particularly and senior execs, this, concept of serving other people without looking after ourselves first and foremost, becomes prevalent.

Melo: I am. Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited about today's conversation.

Janine: and it's an important one, right? I mean, you've, written a book about this, you speak about this.

I love, by the way, love your book. Love the storytelling in it. Gosh, I can't, you know, the amount of times I had to put this down and just pause because you were, the home truths that were coming through were just loud and clear, but can you share with our listeners why this is. Such an important part of your work, why you are on a mission that you are to help people really start focusing on their health and wellbeing and finding balance in their everyday lives. Why does it matter to you?

And I. I saw some brilliant minds in there also with, you know, amazing capabilities and they were just burning themselves out and suffering poor mental health. So I thought I'm gonna make it my mission to prevent people coming to the psychiatric links to start with. And that's when I started doing a lot of this corporate work and, you know, working with entrepreneurs and CEOs and athletes and.

Executive doctors, uh, companies, just to help as many people as possible perform at their best. 'cause it really saddens me when I go into a workplace and I look around the room and I see there's some amazing people in that room, but they're just exhausted. They're just running on, you know, low batteries.

They're burning the candle at both ends. They're working late nights, looking after families or whatever it is, and it. It saddens me to see that, and there are ways that we can actually prevent that, and I've got some tools and techniques to do that, so why not share it?

Melo: Well, I think it's multifactorial there. There's many, many factors that affect this. Number one, I think, is this always on attitude, like we're just always on. We're always accessible, we're always reachable. We have our smartphones and so many platforms and social media to always be on, so we don't have the permission to turn off, you know, when it comes to the brain, we have different frequencies in the brain.

It's a bit like, I always use the analogy of those, um. What do they call those? Um, not thermo mixers, the other one. The, the NutriBullet? Yeah, the nutri bullet. You, you put it, it's, it's designed to oscillate at a very high frequency and you put all your fruits in there to make your smoothie. What would happen if we left that NutriBullet on for five minutes or 10 minutes?

It's gonna burn out. Same as us. Our brain's not designed to be switched on all the time. So that's one factor is that always on attitude. And this, you know, no permission to, to switch off. So always on, always stimulated. Overstimulated. One of the most common words I hear these days is overwhelm. Just overwhelmed with so many things.

Epidemic and suddenly everything's fine again. You know, there's a lot of mental health issues that are residual from that, including children that went through, you know, the covid period there. So that's number two, I would say. And, and number three, as entrepreneurs also, we're talking about this a little bit offline.

There is, we have this passion and drive just to perform at our best and give to everybody else. And this always on, and we always sometimes do that at the sacrifice of ourself, of our own wellbeing. And it, it's a bit of a trap that we fall into as entrepreneurs and business owners is we wanna do the best and we love what we do.

We have so much passion and mission and drive and vision, but that comes at a price if we don't find that balance. And the, the biggest thing I see with entrepreneurs and, and also executives also, is they don't give themselves permission to stop.

Janine: And I think many of us are reading about health and wellbeing, about yoga practice, about slowing down, whatever it may be, but that reality of putting it into practice is hard.

We we're okay. That's, that's their problem. When you talk about burnout. because I think a lot of people don't realize they're there. And so I'm curious for you as an expert, what, what are some of the symptoms of either in burnout or that place of, actually it's time for an intervention? What sort of things before it gets to the extreme, like you were saying, coming across people in the psychiatric ward, what are the points beforehand that we're all potentially missing?

So, you know, when I was writing for my book here, you know, beating Burnout, when I was interviewing for this, I actually interviewed about 200 thought leaders, professionals, CEOs, executives, and it was surprising to me that 90% of them did not realize they were burning out. Until it was too late, you know, they sort of saw the signs.

They sort of, they sort of thought something wasn't quite right, but they, they a either ignored them, they just said, I'll just keep pushing through. Everything will be all right. Like you said, to your point, it's that other person, you know, it's not me, it's gonna be that other person or the other ones didn't know, you know, the other five or so percent didn't know what to do about it.

Do you know what I mean? It's actually starting to manifest in our body. So some of those more subtle signs might be. Just tired, just a bit exhausted, you know, unmotivated or a bit flat, that we can still ignore those signs and keep pushing through.

So it's these subtle ones that we just keep ignoring, ignoring, ignoring. I often use the analogy of the car, and I know that you use the analogy of a car for some, sometimes too. It's like, it's a bit like driving the car and you, you're on a big road trip and you've got a, you know, eight hour road trip and the oil light pops up.

Ah, that's fine. That's okay. Don't worry about the oil. I'll just keep going. I'll just keep pushing on and then the next light pops up. Oh, that's okay. That's fine. And then before you know it, the car burns out and it's, it's too late. So we often see these little signs and we recognize them. We just ignore that.

This is like fatigue, exhaustion. You've just got no energy. It doesn't matter how much sleep you get. I. Number two is that feeling of detachment. So you're feeling a bit detached from your work or from your colleagues, or from your team, from your family, and maybe complaining a little bit more than usual or being a bit more cynical.

So that's another sign if you feel that you're complaining a bit more or you know, sort of just a bit negative about things you not normally are. And number three is that lack of efficacy. Professional efficacy. So a job that would normally be easy for you is hard, or you know, you get a little task or an email pops up and it's all just too much.

So those are the three criteria there. So, exhaustion, detached, and just not efficient. So if you're seeing any of those signs, you know, they might manifest as just feeling a bit snappy or a bit, anxious or a bit out of ordinary. You know, if you're normally someone that's cheery and bubbly and you're, and you're a bit flat.

Janine: Gosh, you, you just blow my mind away. 'cause I'm thinking, oh my God. As a young mom, I was definitely there as someone that's been made redundant. I was definitely there as someone in startup land, definitely there as someone writing books. Definitely there as someone trying to turn a business around, losing 80% of revenue through covid.

Definitely there you're like, you just go, oh my god, life is, life is full of it. Right. Do you think, given what is going on right now in terms of the, the world that we're in and all of the, you know, without getting into the, the politics, the economy, the fear of what's going on, do you think there's a risk that we're going to see an increase in this over the next few years?

So there's a fear, there's an underlying fear that I'm going to burn out. So that's, it's, it's definitely prevalent and it's not going away, and we need to put in some mechanisms around

Janine: around that. Let's talk about those mechanisms. 'cause as I said, I have read your book. I'm gonna have to write a blog about how I got hold of your book 'cause it is quite hilarious.

I honestly did the, my dog has Eaten your book Melo. I need another copy. But there is so much in your book around self-regulation, how to get, back on purpose, gratitude, passion, compassion, et cetera. for our listeners. what would you like to say to people? 'cause as you said, 90% of your 200, so let's just assume 90% of listeners are going, that's me.

I think that could be me. What, what would you advise, what tips, what thoughts have you got around helping people navigate this?

But the very first point of emotional intelligence is knowing yourself on a deeper level, like really knowing yourself on a deeper level, getting to know yourself. So developing your self-awareness muscle. So, and that can come in the way of training yourself, your, your attention training, mindfulness training.

Listening to your body, listening to your cues. The very worst case of burnout that I've seen in my work that I do is a, a switched on entrepreneur running multiple businesses across multiple time zones. So he was doing the uk, US at Australian time zones and he wore it as a badge, as like, I'm so busy, you know, I didn't sleep at all last night.

With his body, it shut down, like it totally shut down. Pancreas, spleen, liver. His endocrine system, his hormone system, his um, nervous system shut down. He was actually hospitalized. In intensive care with multiple organ failure and has to still to this day, rub testosterone cream in his body. 'cause his body stopped producing testosterone.

So total lack of self-awareness. Like not aware at all, so, His body says, uh uh, I've had enough. I can't keep going like this. And he was in, he was months in hospital and still hasn't recovered fully, but he is got smarter of us obviously reading the signs. So that self-awareness muscle is first. We need to develop that. I always say this saying over again, I've probably said it a thousand times now.

So listen to the cues of your body and that mind body connection. You know, really listen to those cues. So self-awareness is number one. Number two is the ability to self-regulate. So developing some tools in your toolkit that you can self-regulate in the moment. You can self-regulate on a busy day.

You can self-regulate in a stressful meeting. You can self-regulate through the day, so that way there you're not exhausted at the end of the night. I. So athletes have a, a, a good way of doing this. Athletes are, you know, when you, I coach a few elite athletes, Olympic athletes also, they're really good at self-regulating.

'cause we've been in this beta mode all day. So developing tools to self-regulate, I teach what's called a 92nd breath break. 92nd breath break literally takes 90 seconds, but it changes your physiology and your psychology instantly. It deactivates the amygdala, the fight and flight center, and it activates the parasympathetic nervous system to take you outta that fight and flight response.

So our body is not designed to be in the stress response all day long, like that NutriBullet thing. It's not designed to be switched on all day long. So we need mechanisms to switch it off. Some of the work that I do, to be honest, when in my coaching work, when I'm coaching surgeons or lawyers or athletes, is all I do with them is actually teach them meditation and get good at self-regulating.

10 breaths or something, just to sort of, sort of put that behind you and then go into that home place more mindfully. So to create that space. So that's the self-regulation piece. So number one, self-awareness. Number two, the ability to self-regulate. And a third one is not negotiable and consistent self-care.

Now that doesn't mean self-care, just going to the beauty spa and you know, having a massage that's, that's nice, that's beautiful. But I mean, your daily self-care rituals and your daily ones should be exercising, of course, you know, moving the body in some way. I. Nutrition, keeping up your nutrition. You know, we all know what's good and bad for us, but sometimes we don't always make the best choices.

And number three is your sleep, of course, your sleep hygiene, which I can talk about forever. And then also on the mental side, to give yourself permission to have those renewal breaks through the day. Regular renewal breaks. Then also creating some boundaries around that. am I working or am I homing?

You know, when we're creating new ideas. Driving new business, getting some vision. But unfortunately, when we're stuck in beta mode, thinking, planning, problem solving, and putting out fires, there's no capacity for new ideas. So we start losing touch with our why, why we're doing our stuff in the first place.

So having a little dip into those alpha states through meditation practices, through mindfulness practices, you know, activating that parasympathetic nervous system is the best. So consistent, non-negotiable self-care.

so not just noticing it, ignoring it, but taking that action, that piece about self-regulation. so you talked about this 92nd breath break. the 90 seconds, is there a frequency to that? Is there a trigger that sets that off? are there other things when you think about self-regulation, what sort of, other ideas, concepts have you got in there that people could play around with?

Melo: Sure, sure. The, the 92nd breath break is a game changer. It really is. It, it helps so many people, so I would recommend to punctuate your day with periods of. practice. So it's, you know, you work, work, work. So the research says that we can only really operate at our best as a high performer for periods of 90 minutes to two hours.

So punctuate your day with about four or five, 92nd breath breaks. You could also do it, let's say you've got your computer open, you've got too many windows open. You dunno what you're focusing on anymore. Just stop, pause. I have a golden rule. Every time I stand up, I have to close five windows at least, and then, you know, reset my focus.

Do a practice, come on in. It's also a great, tool to use that 92nd breath break is. Between meetings or before after meeting. So you finish one meeting instead of taking that stuff from that meeting into the next meeting, 90 seconds to reset. So that's a really powerful tool and I honestly get emails weekly about that being a game changer for my clients.

All of this pressure that we're putting on ourself and stuff that we love to be able to do that. It's actually prioritizing the regulation to be able to do that. That's what I'm loving about what you're talking about. It's, it's, this will unlock more of the things that you are actually pushing against.

It's like this push, push, pull tension that you are unlocking. I love that. Love That's right, and I, I like the word that you use intentionality. So you, you could have a 10 minute break and you can, you can waddle that away by scrolling on your your telephone or, loading the

Melo: different. Yeah, exactly. You could, you could waffle away your 10 minute break, but it's being about intentional and doing something that might lift you up a little bit.

What have I done for me today? What have I done that that fills up my cup. So your breaks can be little things for yourself. Just go out for a little walk, you know, get a stretch, go for a swim, go for some exercise. Making sure we're more intentional with our breaks and with our time. You know, really, really important.So many people can waffle away.

Janine: I'm just, I'm just thinking, Melo, as you're talking about some of my days in the last few weeks, I'm going, oh my God. I get to the end of the day and go, what did I do today? Because you are, you are racing through it. So it is that intentionality about and discipline to some extent. it's deciding that actually it's deciding that this matters because if it doesn't matter to you, you won't be disciplined.

'cause you don't wanna end up like that client of yours that suddenly it's all fallen over. but I wanna talk about this consistent self care because, you know, I've been looking into, like so many of us, we explore this stuff, we read about this stuff, we know this stuff.

And then life gets in the way. Um, you, nutrition gets buggered because you're traveling, 'cause you are fulfilling your dream, speaking internationally or traveling the world. your sleep, discipline falls. Because suddenly, as you said, you've got that demand from that client for something for the next morning.

I'm curious to hear about these renewal breaks from your perspective, but what do you do? What do you do around the nutrition and the sleep and then the renewal breaks that if you could help someone literally take that and put that into their world, you know, would create a shift.

So three things that have happened before my day's even started. That's just for me, that fills up my cup. The other thing that I do, which you, you touched on a little that I heard the word you said about reflecting there is I do a reflection at the end of the week. I. So I actually measure my own performance in a way at the end of the week.

So, reflecting on it is a really good way to measure it. So what I, what I typically, typically reflect on is the three big things that happened in my week. So that could be a good, you know, client interaction or a. A new person that's come on board or something nice that's happened. So three big things.

Then I look at three challenges that happened in my week. So three things that didn't go so well. Or maybe I can change them so I can actually grow and learn. But I also measure my personal life too. I measure my, my vitality, my energy, my performance, my focus. And I just do that with a little measure, like uh, five outta 10 or seven outta 10.

Is it your exercise? I won't go to the gym tonight. I'm too tired. Or I won't go do Pilates 'cause I just don't have the energy. Is it? Is it your nutrition? Is it like, I'll grab takeaway tonight because I'm just too tired to cook? Is it your sleep because you're staying up late? So that's the first sign to realize, hey, I notice that every time that I get busy, that's the thing I let go of.

So my idea is to actually reverse that equation when you get busy up that one. Like reclaim that one. So the, for example, for me, I get really busy during are UIK month and Mental Health Awareness month. I probably do too many seminars than I should. Like, there's just so many workshops and you know, I'm in demand at that time.

So instead of me neglecting my self-care, I almost like put self-care in the bank and do more of that. And the busier I get, the more self-care I do.

And the other thing I'll say around that is too, you, you may have heard of it through. You know, other, um, literature around atomic habits, for example, they talk about habit stacking. So those three rituals that I do in the morning, they're three habits that are stacked together. So I do that walk and I think, well, since I'm doing that walk anyway, I'll do my meditation after that.

So let's get one of those things right, make it a habit. Make it a ritual and then start anchoring other healthy habits to that. And then it becomes just part of your life. You don't have to think about it anymore. You don't have to think, oh, it's Monday, I've gotta do my exercise. No, it's just every day.

So making that self-care consistent, diligent, but looking at the patterns of when you get busy and stressed. 'cause it's all well and truly easy when it's when life's cruisy and easy. But when you get busy and stretched, making sure you keep those self-care

And that balance between that and then constantly being on, 'cause what I see is in my world, so many going, Yeah.

I'm at the gym. I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, and I'm working and I'm working. And then it's like, and one of the, one of the practices is that I'm trying to follow this year, two amazing people introduced me to it last year, Reaper Patel, who's based in Melbourne and Marie McPherson, and they were talking about this concept of slow travel.

I, I'm thinking that's what you're talking about when you talk about this renewal break, mindfulness, sleep, it's that counterbalance to the movement, the energy. They're keeping things going.

Melo: Yeah. Yeah. You just reminded me of, um, I was recently doing a, a seminar, a workshop actually, to a group of CEOs. it was about 13 or 14 in the room, and there was one lady that was exactly what you mentioned, and she was. On the top of the table. She, you know, she was sort of together and she was pretty sharp, but I could see underneath the table, her legs were constantly nervously going nonstop.

And every time I mentioned something, but I do the gym, but I get up every morning, I get up at five, I go to the gym every single morning, and it's all these things, all of them are just creating more and more stress. You know, it's just constantly adding that stress to her. She needs the opposite. In fact, she needs to do that downtime and downtime.

So it's again, developing that deeper relationship with yourself, getting to know, you know, your. Intimate sort of details and who you are and, and your triggers also and what triggers you. 'cause it's really easy to distract yourself with more busyness. I'll go to the gym in the morning at five o'clock, I'll, you know, do these meetings and that's just a recipe for disaster.

Absolute recipe. So when it comes to mindfulness, you know, you mentioned there, there's two main ways to practice it and one is the, the formal practice where we stop. We pause, we close our eyes. We do a meditation practice. Now that can be two minutes, it can be five minutes. I do typically 20 minute practices, two times a day.

Janine: And

Melo: all these things that you do.

This comes back to your slow travel talk that you're saying and being more present with that. You know, so everything you do, talking to people, listening to people walking, washing your hair in the morning, washing the dishes, cooking, all of these are opportunities to practice mindfulness. And all of these will at train your attention muscle to be more present.

So when I was, I was cycling around the world on my mountain bike. I mentioned my book a fair bit there. You know, I was in a monastery state, in a monastery in Vietnam. And the whole practice there was to be present with what you are doing. So if you were chopping the vegetables, for example, for the, for the evening meal, you could only chop the vegetables and only talk about the vegetables.

We are with all the things that we are doing. And it took me at least probably two weeks to really, you know, be more present with that. And it made me realize that everything is a meditation, everything is a mindfulness practice. And so we need to train ourselves. 'cause you can be on at work all day long and then you get home and you're not even present with your kids, or your family.

And I always say this state statement too, the best compliment you could ever give somebody is your full attention.

But it actually takes work to give people your full attention. It takes training and discipline because research says that 47% of the time, our mind is elsewhere. It's thinking about something else.

Janine: you endlessly for it. It reminds me your whole just story there, which I'd forgotten about even though it does run through your book. Okay. 'cause I remember you talked about, didn't you, didn't you get a flat tire or something and you were lost in the middle of nowhere for days, but managed to survive it because of your, your mindfulness.

I remember that. Story. but it reminds me, I was up in Byron Bay running a retreat and one of the exercises we did was forest therapy. And I had that same moment that you ex you experienced of going, oh my God, how much am I missing? Because the walk that we went on, I dunno if any listeners have, experienced it, but highly recommend it as that wake up call.

The walk that we did, I'd done for three days prior. Exactly the same walk, but I'd done the walk either with a podcast in my ear or with a friend and chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat. And, and we'd, we'd done it and it.

And we started doing this forest therapy, which is essentially, you, you can, you have to walk slowly and then you stop and you have to look through the trees and just start noticing what's going on. The instant sort of calmed down and the stuff that I hadn't noticed in the three days prior for me was a, a massive reminder.

Melo: Exactly that. There's another form you mentioned before about ways to self-regulate. That's another form of self-regulation. So a very simple practice that I teach people is exactly what you said there, to tune into the sensors. So, you know, just popping up, going outside, what do I see right now?

What do I feel right now? What do I hear right now? And your senses are a portal back to the present moment. 'cause very often we're in our head and we're thinking about so many things, we're not even present with our body. So what do I see right now? What do I feel right now? What do I hear? What do I smell?

Will bring you back to the present moment and help you to self-regulate. So the moment you come back to the present moment,

or your thoughts come back to your body, you know, really, really simple practice. And we can know these things theoretically, but

Right? but can you share a, from your experience where someone did actually start being much more intentional about their self-awareness, their self-regulation, the consistent self-care, and do you have an example of how doing that actually unlocked more for them? That you can share with our listeners?

Melo: Sure, sure. There's many examples that I can share and, and sometimes they're the smallest things, like the tiniest things. So for example, I was running a workshop in a, in a large company and I taught some techniques in that. In that company it was a really simple practices that I taught and talking about mindfulness and someone months later actually.

Bumped into me and said, Melo, you're that guy that did that lunch and learn at at that workshop. I've gotta tell you, I took that practice home and it saved my marriage. I was in, I was in the middle of, I was running a business and you know, working too much and doing my corporate work, plus I was running a business on the side.

So there, you know, there's many examples that I, I hear later. There's another, another fellow who bumped into me and said, you know, that, you know, that thing that you taught me about anxiety and dealing with anxiety and dealing with uncertainty through mindfulness practices, not long after that. Training that you did with me, I got cancer I had to deal with cancer and those practices that you taught me helped me get through cancer and, you know, helped me, you know, to prevent this.

So there's so many of those examples that I see and the most classic example that I'll share with you, the last one I. Is is gonna touch on how we know it, but don't do it. So one of my clients is a, a professor, professor in cardiovascular surgery. Very sharp guy, very smart guy. And when he, it was actually his wife that referred him to me.

Like, he's far smarter than me. He's gonna know all, all these things. And it was true, like when I coached him on the first session, he said, he said, Melo, I wrote a paper on that. Melo. I, I did a research on that. I, I've got a, a published a journal on that. I, I've written a book on that. So he was a classic example of somebody that knew these things already.

Far more than me, but he wasn't doing the practices. So it became very evident that we just needed, needed to reinitiate some simple practices in his life, put some boundaries in there, reinitiate self-care practices. He started doing the 92nd breath breaks, started doing some of these simple practices, and now he's thriving, like absolutely thriving, running a thriving practice and.

Janine: Oh, Melo. I could talk to you all day. my brain is ticking in terms of things I've got to remember that you've shared.

And I'm gonna pick up your book again and read it as the reminder, and that's the sign of a really good book. There's a couple of things that have stood out for me, and it was linked to that habit stacking. I've been trying for years to make regular meditation part of my daily practice, and it, that's the first thing that goes for me when I'm off and I'm on holidays.

and you know, you're just so generous. You live and breathe the stuff that you teach and you share. So, Please reach out, connect with Melo. I'll put his contacts in the show notes. Melo, thank you so much for joining us today. I am your host, Janine Garner, and I look forward to our next episode. See you soon.

Melo: Thank you.