Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your modern mentor. I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, where we help leaders activate performance and engagement without burnout.

Whether it's boot camps, keynotes, or pulse checks, we help teams achieve meaningful change.

If that's what your organization needs, reach out.

So let's talk about burnout. Because folks, it's 2025 and somehow the whole

overwhelmed and exhausted thing remains on trend. Actually, it's more than just working too much.

Yeah, overwork can certainly lead to burnout, but so can boredom or loneliness or uncertainty and confusion.

It's not just driven by one thing, and so maybe unsurprisingly, its solution also isn't just

doing or changing one thing. There are lots of small acts we can take to reduce or dial back burnout.

If you're starting the year already feeling drained, or you just want to avoid getting there,

then this episode is for you.

Today, I want to share five things that I think we all need to stop doing, to start saying

no to, if we want to keep those demons at bay. Okay, the first is stop going to

meetings where you have no unique value to add. So I'm going to kick off with some tough love here.

Sorry, not sorry, but here it comes. If you're overwhelmed by back-to-back meetings and you're doing any complaining

about it, then it's time for you to take the reins and to stop waiting for the meeting culture

to change. Meeting overload comes up in pretty much 100% of my activation boot camps, and I continue

to hear participants say things like, well, an invite

isn't really an invite. It's a mandate. It's expected that you show up. Or, well, what if I miss

something important? Of course I have to be there. Or, I never know if I'm going to be called on.

So I have to be there just in case. Friends, it is time to start changing

how we interact with meetings. Now, if there really is an expectation that you be at every meeting

you're invited to, am I suggesting that you suddenly stop showing up to everything? No, I am not.

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