Pushkin.

When it comes to feeling happier, the approach we take to work really matters.

The average Americans spends about half of their waking hours on the job, which even if you're

lucky enough to love what you do can feel like a lot. But work doesn't always stop at the end of

the work day. And I'm not just talking about all the unpaid sorts of work we have to do, the

cooking and cleaning and caring for family members. I'm talking about the paid work that winds up creeping into the little free time we do have.

The metaphor I use is a pinball machine.

The work shoots out and then it starts dinging to your relationships,

to your personal life, to your thoughts, to your leisure, to your ability to recover,

to your self-care. And then when those become

compromised, it makes things worse at work, which makes things worse outside of work, which makes

things worse at work, digging back and forth. And that stress then stays in play for so much

longer, which is why we're getting burnt out. This is psychologist, podcaster, and best-selling

author Guy Wynch. Guy is an expert on

managing all kinds of tough emotions. But his latest book, Mind Over Grind, How to Break Free When

Work Hijacks Your Life, is all about strategies we can use to create a healthier work-life balance,

something Guy admits he wasn't always great at. Literally a year into my professional career, I was totally burnt out.

I recognized that in an incident where I was in the elevator with a neighbor and it stalled

between floors and the neighbor went into a panic.

And here I am a psychologist.

I wasn't panicked.

I knew what to say to calm him down, but I just was incredibly rude and cruel even to him. He was just like hitting all the buttons and I was like, oh, this is going to take forever to get upstairs now. And then he was going, this is my nightmare. This is my nightmare. And my response is I looked at him and I said, and this is my nightmare. And it was so, I mean, it was funny in my head, but it was terrible. And when I saw his face, I felt such remorse. And I was like, why did I do that? And that's when I realized, oh, because I am drained. I'm so exhausted. I have like nothing left. And then I realize, wow, I'm a year in. And I'm burnt out. And that was a moment of what I know people call depersonalization where you're kind of annoyed at the intentions of the people around you. Talk about what this feeling of burning out at work did to your socialization, your self-care, the other parts of your life. So when you're burnt out at work, but you have to keep going. I'm self-employed, so I have to keep going. Really, one of the survival mechanisms psychologically is you numb. You just put your head down and get from task to task to task. You're not enjoying what you do. There's no passion for what you do. You feel jaded about what you do. It doesn't seem important. It doesn't seem meaningful or fun, and you're not doing a great job, for sure.

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