**Burnout & The Nervous System: When Our Lives Don't Match Our Inner Worlds — Transcript & Summary | SozAI**
Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/burnout-nervous-system-when-lives-dont-match-inner-worlds/

Heidi Priebe explains that burnout stems from how our nervous system responds to our goals, not just workload, and offers questions to realign with meaning.

## Key Takeaways

- Burnout is driven by meaning and nervous system response, not just the quantity of work
- Check whether you chose a goal with your body and mind, and whether you will enjoy the daily process
- Pursuing goals requires bringing your full authentic self, not a masked version
- Maintain balance across life areas so one pursuit does not deplete your whole system
- Honor your nervous system's signals rather than resisting them

## What the video covers

- Burnout is largely a product of how the nervous system responds to activities, not only how much we do
- Resisting one's experiences accelerates burnout, even when physical workload is modest
- A friend's coworkers with families seemed to burn out less because their job had a clear sense of purpose
- Heidi's own burnout as a ghostwriter came from high effort and low meaning, despite fewer hours and higher income
- Physical limitations are real, but overdoing things is only one path to burnout; the other is expecting things our nervous systems resist
- Choosing goals with the mind alone, focused on outcomes, can ignore what the process will demand of the body
- The cost of keeping an achievement is the same as the cost of getting it, so the process must be sustainable and enjoyable
- Feeling forced to hide one's authentic self in pursuit of a goal is a fast route to burnout
- Neglecting other life areas for one passion can undermine overall balance and lead to burnout
- Suppressed needs eventually surface forcefully, creating the worst burnout loops; the nervous system carries wisdom worth listening to

## Chapters

1. 00:00 Introduction to Nervous System Regulation and Burnout
2. 01:05 Burnout Versus Purpose: The Friend's Story
3. 02:21 Heidi's Ghostwriting Burnout and Shifting Needs
4. 05:26 Physical Limits and Other Paths to Burnout
5. 06:41 Question One: Did You Choose the Goal With Body and Mind?
6. 08:05 Question Two: Are You Being Your Whole Self?
7. 11:03 Maintaining Balance Across Life Areas
8. 13:43 Nervous System Wisdom and Closing Thoughts

Answers

## Questions about this video

What does Heidi Priebe say burnout is really about?

She argues that burnout is largely a product of how our nervous system responds to what we are doing, not just how much we do. Resisting our experiences makes burnout happen faster, even with a modest workload.

Why did Heidi burn out even when she was working fewer hours?

As a ghostwriter, she felt out of place, had to mask her personality, and her work felt high effort with low meaning. Her growing desire for authenticity and independence made the work feel misaligned.

What two questions does Heidi suggest asking when heading toward burnout?

First, whether you chose the goal with your body and mind, meaning you enjoy the process and not just the outcome. Second, whether you are being your whole self in pursuing it rather than hiding important parts of who you are.

## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:00

Speaker A

Hey guys, I'm Heidi Prib. Welcome back to my channel or welcome if you're new here. This week on this channel, we are talking about nervous system regulation.

00:10

Speaker A

And today in particular, we're going to be doing a deep dive on burnout. Now, this is a video I've been wanting to make for years because for a lot of my own life, I struggled really intently with burnout, but I couldn't figure out

00:23

Speaker A

why that was happening. So like most people for most of my life, I had this idea that the only way a person could burn out was if they were constantly doing stuff and getting stuff accomplished. And a reframe that really

00:37

Speaker A

helped me in this department, which we're going to go into today, is that burnout is not always about how much we are doing or what we're doing. Burnout is largely a product of how our nervous system is responding to what we're

00:51

Speaker A

doing. And the more that we are resisting our experiences, the faster we are going to burn out even in the scenarios where we are not physically doing that much. And so a big aha moment around this for me came a couple of

01:05

Speaker A

years ago when I was talking to a friend who is feeling really burnt out at their job. And they were saying, you know, it takes so much out of me every single day to get up and go to work in the morning.

01:16

Speaker A

And I cannot imagine how my co-workers are doing the same thing, but waking up 3 hours earlier every day because they have kids and they need to get those kids fed and clothed and off to daycare or school or whatever it is. And then

01:32

Speaker A

they come in and put in the same 8 to 10 hour workday as me every day. How are they managing all of that when I am as burnt out as I am? And we kind of sat with that question for a bit and then

01:43

Speaker A

had this really cool mutual aha moment where we realized that actually the fact that their co-workers had families that they were doing this for might actually be a key reason why they were not burning out as fast because that gave

01:58

Speaker A

their job a clearer sense of purpose. Feeling like they were going in every single morning so that they could put food on their children's plate in the evening gave the job a very different meaning than it did for someone who did

02:11

Speaker A

not feel like there was any clear purpose as to why they were working that hard, which was in some ways my friend's situation. They could have just as easily been working a job that paid a little bit less, but that gave them a

02:23

Speaker A

lot more fulfillment. And so we realize together that a big part of burnout is not about what we are doing but it's about our relationship to why we are doing it. So a good example of this when I was in my teen years I was so

02:39

Speaker A

determined to get out of my hometown and to gain financial independence. That was a humongous driving goal for me. And so I took on menial job after menial job.

02:50

Speaker A

At some point I was working three or four jobs at a time in my late teen years and early 20s, but I felt really energized at those jobs because I saw them as my ticket to freedom and independence. So I had a very clear

03:05

Speaker A

purpose behind them. But flash forward several years when I was in my mid20s, I was working less than I ever had in terms of hours and earning more money than I ever had. And yet I hit the biggest burnout point that I had ever

03:21

Speaker A

experienced. So at this point I was working as a ghost writer. So I was working with a whole bunch of authors and entrepreneurs and I was traveling to conferences with them and listening to their speeches and helping them tighten

03:32

Speaker A

their messages up. And for a long time I'd really enjoyed that work. But I noticed as my career progressed that a couple of things started happening.

03:42

Speaker A

One, I started feeling really out of place at the conferences and events that I was going to because as I got better and better at my work, I also started working with people who were in higher and higher income brackets. And I felt

03:57

Speaker A

really uncomfortable and out of place in a lot of the environments that I ended up in. And so I felt like I was constantly having to kind of mask who I actually was and show up with a fake

04:09

Speaker A

personality. And even though I wasn't clocking that many hours at the job, I was spending a lot of time thinking about how I was going to present myself in the most perfectly inauthentic way in order to keep my career going. And two,

04:26

Speaker A

I found that the more I spent time working for other people and helping them hone their messages, the more I started wanting to do my own thing. I wanted to be writing in my own name. I wanted to be the face behind my own

04:39

Speaker A

work. And so this job that I had once been so excited to have because there was a clear sense of purpose behind it for me. It was giving me more of that independence and that freedom that I craved. Once I'd achieved enough

04:52

Speaker A

independence and freedom to be reasonably happy with what I was doing, new needs started coming online. And now it was feeling more important to me to feel like what I was doing was authentic and aligned with my true personality.

05:05

Speaker A

And so I was hitting burnout points, not because I was doing too much. Again, I'd gone from working three or four part-time jobs while going to school full-time to working one part-time job and traveling with most of my spare

05:17

Speaker A

time. And yet, I was feeling more exhausted and depleted than I had ever felt because the work that I was doing had started to feel high effort, low meaning, which is the recipe for getting burnt out. Now, what I want to get clear

05:33

Speaker A

on here is that of course we all have physical limitations. So, it's not that you can't get burnt out by simply doing too much stuff. That happens all the time. But I just want to draw our attention to the fact that that's not

05:46

Speaker A

the only way to get burnt out. It's just the most commonly talked about way to burn out. But the other way to burn out is to consistently expect things of ourselves that our nervous systems feel resistant to. And so at this point in my

06:01

Speaker A

life, if I feel like I'm heading down the path towards burnout, there are a couple of questions that I like to ask myself to get realigned with what meaning I'm making out of what I'm doing. So the first question I like to

06:15

Speaker A

ask myself when I'm feeling like my energy is getting frayed is, did I choose this goal that I'm pursuing?

06:23

Speaker A

Whether that is a professional goal, whether that is a relationship that I'm in, whatever it is that I'm gunning towards, did I choose this with my body or my mind? So, what do I mean by that?

06:37

Speaker A

Essentially, when we choose something with our mind, it means that we are looking at the outcome we want, but not being super attuned to what it is going to require of our bodies and our nervous systems to get there. So, let's say I

06:51

Speaker A

just want to be rich and famous. that is my only goal and I decide using my mind that probably the quickest way to get rich and famous is to become an actress.

07:00

Speaker A

But maybe I don't actually like acting that much. And so I might be consistently moving towards this goal that I actually just do not enjoy the process of pursuing. And the mistake that we often make when we set goals

07:13

Speaker A

like this is we assume that we're just going to have to get through a certain period of doing things in this way that we don't like. And then once we achieve fame and fortune, of course, we'll just be happy forever. But in reality, the

07:25

Speaker A

cost of getting something is identical to the cost of keeping it. Which is why we have to be really careful when we're goal setting about making sure that we don't only want the end result. We also feel aligned with the process of what it

07:41

Speaker A

is going to take to get us there. So the shest way to make sure that a goal is going to be sustainable and that we're not going to burn out either on route to it or once we achieve it is checking

07:52

Speaker A

with ourselves as to whether or not we're actually going to enjoy the process of moving towards that goal on a day-to-day basis. So if you want to be rich and famous, what do you genuinely enjoy doing so much that you're willing

08:05

Speaker A

to just keep persisting at it over and over and over again until you achieve what you want out of it? Which things do you like doing even on the bad days, even on the hard days? What feels intrinsically rewarding? That is what it

08:20

Speaker A

means to set goals from a bodybased state. And when we set goals from a bodybased state, it means that we're taking the whole of ourselves with us on route to those goals. which means that the likelihood we're going to burn out

08:33

Speaker A

is much much less because our nervous systems are not going to be resisting what we are doing in terms of process in order to get to the end result that we want.

08:45

Speaker A

The second question I like to ask myself if I feel like I'm heading towards a burnout point is, and we just touched on this, do I feel like I am being my whole self in the pursuit of this thing? And

08:58

Speaker A

the important thing to pay attention to here is that who we are changes. So something that I've had to confront over and over again in my life is that I've gone into one career or one relationship of some sort feeling like I'm being

09:13

Speaker A

totally authentic and expressing myself in the most clean and direct way possible. And then as life goes on, my circumstances change and I change with my circumstances.

09:25

Speaker A

But if I'm still approaching my work or my relationships using the approach that worked for a different version of me, I am going to start experiencing resistance to my own approach. Because even though it may have worked really

09:40

Speaker A

well for a really long time, it's just no longer working for me in the same way. And so what I need to do is update my approach to the rest of my life to reflect the changes that have happened

09:54

Speaker A

inside of me between the time when I first chose those things and where I'm at now. Feeling like we have to hide major parts of who we are or what matters to us in order to do something is one of the fastest recipes for

10:09

Speaker A

burnout out there. Because what our nervous systems crave more than almost anything else is alignment. So the way that we are feeling inside being congruent with how we are expressing ourselves in the world. The closer we get to that alignment, the better an

10:27

Speaker A

experience our nervous system has of being us. And so this is one of the key things you want to look at if you feel like you're gunning down that path for burnout. How do I bring more of myself

10:39

Speaker A

into what I'm doing if I'm sure that it's what I want to be doing? And if the path I'm on requires me to very frequently abandon parts of myself that matter to me, is it possible that I need

10:51

Speaker A

to re-evaluate that path? The third question I like to check in with myself on if I feel like I'm getting burnt out is the question, what else might be needing my attention right now?

11:03

Speaker A

So sometimes even if all the conditions that we just talked about are met, even if we have a strong sense of meaning behind what we're doing, a really strong and aligned why, and even if we feel like we are bringing our full selves to

11:16

Speaker A

the table and we are not holding back who we are in the pursuit of that thing, every once in a while we find something that we love doing so much that the other areas of our lives start to

11:27

Speaker A

struggle out of us neglecting them. And if this is the case, it does not matter how much we love doing that one thing.

11:35

Speaker A

Our bodies are eventually going to start tugging on our sleeves, demanding some attention in the other areas. So, personally, I love doing creative projects. It is the joy of my life to be working on a new YouTube series or a new

11:48

Speaker A

book. But sometimes I can get so engrossed with whatever I'm working on that I start to neglect my health or my relationships. And then suddenly I'll be feeling drained and I won't be able to pinpoint why because the work that I'm

12:03

Speaker A

doing that I love so much might be going super well. But if I am neglecting the other areas of my life that keep me whole and balanced in the pursuit of one area that I really love, I am

12:15

Speaker A

nonetheless going to hit my own natural limits. I am going to need to stop and pay more attention to what it is that keeps me stable and regulated enough to do that work in the first place. And so

12:29

Speaker A

this is something we especially want to check in on if we have recently made room in our lives for something new. So if we have recently welcomed in a new relationship or a new project or a new job, those things have real demands on

12:43

Speaker A

our time and our energy. And if we are meeting those demands at the expense of things like spending the amount of time we normally spend with our family and friends or cooking homemade meals and getting exercise and getting enough

12:56

Speaker A

sleep at night, it might be that we're starting to feel resistance to this thing that we know we love not because it's wrong for us, but because there are other things that need our attention more.

13:08

Speaker A

And so the point of all of this is the simple idea that our nervous systems have wisdom to them. And when we are burning out, if we have a resistant relationship to our own burnout, it is the fastest way to burn out even harder

13:23

Speaker A

and for even longer. The way to reverse this trend is to assume that there is deep signal in the part of ourselves that is feeling that burnout and that is asking us to stop. Brianna Wuest, who is a brilliant author, has a quote in one

13:39

Speaker A

of her books that goes, "The universe whispers until it screams." And the same thing is true of our bodies and our nervous systems. If we are neglecting our needs for either practical things like rest and replenishment or mental

13:56

Speaker A

things like stimulation or time to let our thoughts in our mind wander freely or social things like being close to our family and friends, whatever it is, if we are neglecting those parts of ourselves for long enough, they will

14:10

Speaker A

whisper at us. We will start getting signs that maybe we need to be paying attention to those parts. And if we keep hitting override and keep doubling down on whatever it is that we have decided with our minds we should be doing

14:23

Speaker A

eventually those parts are going to come out screaming. And this is ironically how we end up in the absolute worst burnout loops. Because let's say I really just need rest and time to let my mind wander and be unencumbered with

14:37

Speaker A

stressful thoughts. And I just keep hitting override on that thought and shaming myself for having it while trying to double down on whatever work I'm trying to get done. Now I have not only the stress of persisting with my

14:50

Speaker A

work on my nervous system, I also have the added stress of shaming myself for having perfectly normal needs. Something I really had to learn the hard way as someone who is self-employed is that a day off of work where I spend the whole

15:06

Speaker A

day thinking about work is not a day off work. It's only a day off work if I truly put no expectation on myself to get anything done or to even think about getting anything done. Because now I'm giving my nervous system the day off as

15:24

Speaker A

well as my body. I need to take time off from those thoughts that are telling me get stuff done, think about this, work on this. If I'm engrossed in those thoughts, even if I'm not physically doing anything about it, I'm putting my

15:38

Speaker A

nervous system in a stressed out state that is going to lead to burnout down the line.

15:44

Speaker A

So, what we want to keep in mind here is that burnout is not just about what we are doing. It's about what thoughts we are having about what we're doing and how our nervous system is responding to those thoughts. And to counteract this,

15:59

Speaker A

we have to believe that there is a wisdom to the parts of ourselves that are telling us to stop, pause, take a break, and let the nervous system lead for a little while.

16:13

Speaker A

Even though in the short term it might lead to things like decreased productivity, in the long run it's going to help us stay aligned enough with what we are doing and the direction we are moving in with our lives that it is

16:26

Speaker A

going to make those short-term stopping points seem really valuable in retrospect. All right, that's all I'm going to say on this topic for today. But as usual, any thoughts, questions, comments that you have coming up as you went through

16:41

Speaker A

this video, please leave them in the comments section below. I love you guys. I hope you're taking care of yourselves and each other, and I will see you back here again really soon.

16:54

Speaker A

All I need.

Topics: burnout nervous system regulation meaning and purpose authenticity work-life balance goal setting self-care Heidi Priebe

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