No matter where we end up in life, we will periodically need to reset. Even in our jobs. Just like the seasons, we must also adjust and change to fully live our lives before we reach our breaking points. In this conversation with Stephen Jaye, Taylor Short, founder of Harmonious Return and author of Reset Your Relationship To Your Job, sheds some light on the different manifestations of burnout and how people reevaluate their lives when change becomes necessary. She also discusses the need to slow down, step back, and look inward, as well as how to do just that.
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Harmonious Return – Job Reset With Coach Taylor Short
A major component to our lives especially in the 21st century, although I would argue it has always been a major component to the human experience, is the idea of a reset, a time when you have to re-evaluate. I feel like New Year’s in its purest form is a natural built-in reset into our schedules. Every year, we take time to stop, re-evaluate and figure out what it is that we want. On the topic of reset, I bring to you my guest, Taylor Short, the founder of a wellness business as well as an author of the book, Reset Your Relationship to Your Job. Taylor, welcome to the show.
Thanks so much for having me. I’m glad to be here.
Let’s start off by talking about Harmonious Return, your wellness business. It seems like you have different types of events and coaching but all around this theme of resetting. Briefly describe what the business is about, what the goal is and what your methods are.
I love that you can see the overarching. We can even start with the book. The book is the catalyst and the most accessible way to work with me or understand the work that I do in the world but on a broader level of this reset. You’re so right. The whole idea around this was when I came from Corporate America. Extreme burnout on the inside but on the external, feeling conflicted because I had the corporate salary and title. All of the things that I thought should make me happy but I was feeling this incongruency within myself. Through my own journey, I started to say, “What is going on here doing this reset myself?” Mind you, this was a gradual progression over a few years but in my discovery, I looked around and said, “We are moving at this pace that is unnatural. Us humans, we are nature and nothing in nature moves and expels their energy 100% of the time.”
I started to dive deeper into the work that I do to help people. The first step is to pause like, “Is your life working for you?” Because we get so caught up in the days turn into weeks, months and years. I would revel in some of these people that were at the end of their lives. They have lived a long life and looking back at some of the advice they gave to us that we’re fortunate enough to learn from what they learned in an entire lifetime. Many of them had many regrets, “I would have paid attention to my life more. I would have done more things that I wanted to do.” The reset is around that intentional pause that we don’t normally do at this pace to say, “Is work working for me? Is life working for me? If it’s not then what do I need to do to reset that?”
To start off the story, what was this corporate job that you had?
It wasn’t necessarily just one. As anyone does, I think when we graduate from our undergrad studies, at least I didn’t question it. You get a job, work your way up and that’s what’s going to create your success or happiness. Along the way, I did that. I was successful at jumping promotions to getting salaries. I had been in different industries but in the end, I was spending time in the financial services world and was successful to all my family and people on the outside like, “You’ve got the salary and this title. This is awesome,” but inside it was like, “I am miserable. There is something significantly wrong here.” I’ve started to look at that like, “We’re pushing for more, harder and work faster. You can’t produce more out of these people.” That was the corporate world.
Nothing externally is changing. I’m changing. I really came to a point in my life where I was like, I cannot believe how amazing my life is now. This is the way life is supposed to be.
I brought this up in a couple of previous episodes. I often describe this state of being as living by the script, the script being what’s put out for you, “Go to school, get a good degree, get good grades then go to the corporation or go to some large organization and move up the ladder.” I’ve also experienced the whole, “Work harder, work faster.” It sounds like you ended up in a state that people refer to as burnout. It seems to be a couple of factors. One is the sheer amount of work and busyness but other factors often brought up are misalignment. For your story of burnout, which of these two factors do you feel was the primary contributor?
It’s a combination of both. Towards the end, I kept saying, “You can work at full capacity for a project, push or deadline.” When it’s consistently pushed on like you finally finished the sprint launch or something and then another project is just as urgent, that sheer volume and amount that was being requested to, output was a factor. At that same time, you are battling whether I was having that exhaustion and then not being able to do things that fulfilled me outside of my job because that burnout was like that misalignment too of, “I can’t even do the things that I want to do outside of work because of work.”
That seems like a tough state and a state that a lot of people are in. It’s a state that I’ve observed that’s part of the motivation for this show in the first place is, “How many people seem to be stuck?” When it comes to this reset and re-evaluation process, I often cite New Year’s. When I talk about New Year’s, I don’t talk about being drunk until 4:00 in the morning although I do have to acknowledge I have partaken in that. I talk about the process where you spend the last two weeks of the year summing up the year that just happened, “Where were you a year ago? Where are you now?” and then making resolutions. A lot of people make resolutions. I make goals and roadmaps but making these plans for what next year is going to be. In your view, is that sufficient? How often should someone be stopping, taking a deep breath and saying, “I need to pause?”
An annual reset is amazing. However, in my book and work, I talk about using nature in this sense and aligning with the seasonal changes is how I personally do it. It’s quarterly. I feel like three months is a sufficient time to practice what you’ve set up or how you want to be at the beginning of that season. Seasons also have different energies. We’re not going to have the same amount of energy every single season throughout an entire year. Maybe you have, traditionally, winter. For example, it’s hibernating and going inward. How do you want to be in winter? How do you want to be in spring? That’s one of the ways. Also, sometimes people like to go with the moon cycles monthly of like, “Maybe it’s a full moon. Maybe it’s a new moon.” Annually, it’s an awesome way to look at macro-level like, “This is how it was.” Looking back too is important, “What did I learn? What were some of those themes?” It’s easy to get carried away. Quarterly works the best for me personally.
Seasons are very important. It’s interesting that you bring up the moon cycles because I’m originally from Long Island and I spent a lot of my life in Chicago. One of the things I realized living in Colorado is I had never paid much attention to the moon cycles until I would be on a backpacking trip. It was a few years ago when we had that total solar eclipse and my group planned our backpacking trip around that eclipse. As a result, we planned on it during a new moon. Nighttime comes and I suddenly realized, “I can see all the stars so clearly as opposed to last time we were backpacking and happened to be a full moon. There were moon shadows everywhere.” I realized people in different places and areas used to have their lives impacted much more by these lunar cycles.
I got goosebumps with you saying that because it’s true. When you experience the night sky with uninterrupted light, it’s a jaw-dropping moment because I’ve experienced it too.
I imagined people like Galileo back centuries ago who was so excited to get out that telescope, record the exact position of stars every single night and eventually make these discoveries about how all the constellations work. It’s amazing. We take that knowledge for granted.
That is a secondary benefit. I teach with nature but the pace and need for reset go back to how disconnected we’ve become to nature. Not long ago, being in the wild was our home or the habitat of our ancestors. Even though technology has catapulted us far ahead, we’ve gotten to this point, which I believe that we’re out of our natural rhythm a little bit. Our brains haven’t caught up too. They’re still very ancestral.
It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, which says like, “We have primal brains, medieval institutions and godlike technology.” Our brains are not caught up to it and our institutions very much are optimized to a prior era. What do you think are the warning signs if someone needs a reset? What should you be looking for? You’re talking to all your friends or you’re thinking about all your friends and you’re wondering, “Is this person burnt out and in need of a reset? Are they just busy?” What is the difference between those two categories of existence?
I love that because it is so different. I’m such a big believer in balance but balance is not something that we get obsessed about like a daily thing. Life happens. We have to have some ebb and flow. Any signs for burnout and this is happening consistently over, I would say at least a month or more you can give yourself, “It wasn’t just a bad week. It wasn’t a bad day.” There are physical, mental and spiritual. I’m a holistic teacher. It’s looking at all aspects of that. First of all, a big thing with burnout is if you have work anxiety, a lot of people now they’re calling it Sunday Scaries heading to Monday. You’re physically starting to get anxiety and depression thinking about going to work that next week. That’s something that your body is telling you, “Something is not right here.”
Burnout can come not just from too much work but from too little of what you enjoy as well.
Another physical thing is interrupted sleep, insomnia. If you’re waking up worrying about work or your mind is racing and you can’t fall asleep, that’s another big sign of burnout. Physical too, this goes into the mind but this needs to numb out at the end of the day. You’re collapsing. It could be any type of choice. Mine tended to be alcohol or wine. A lot of times, it’s scrolling or looking at the TV. Your body is like, “I can’t handle one more sensory input. I need to numb out.” Mind, we talked about that. If you feel like you’re consistently stuck in work, replaying conversations with your boss or things you would have said or how can you bring this up that you need support. If you’re constantly thinking about it, that’s a huge hint. Spiritually or I call it purpose or passion is it looks on the opposite end. If you feel like, “Things are good in my life but it’s a sense of a void within.” You feel like there’s a piece missing. A lot of times, burnout can come not just from too much but too little of what you enjoy is a big part of it as well.
One real thing I wanted to touch on is because sometimes people who dive into entrepreneurship for the first time in their lives do end up experiencing some interrupted sleep/anxiety around a new experience. Is that something that should be treated differently, say, you just changed jobs or started at a new company a month or two ago versus, “I’ve been in this job for three years doing the same function for three years and I’m getting this anxiety.”
Yeah-ish. If you’re in somewhere for years and this has been going on, something needs to change. If you’re a new entrepreneur, it’s a little bit different but it’s equally as important. I don’t know the statistics around the success rate of people who make it but I can speak from my experience. The first year I was working for myself, I almost didn’t make it because the burnout nearly killed me. You’re passionate, wanting to bring it and putting everything into work. There’s a fine balance in specifically new entrepreneurs and making sure that you’re still doing things outside of your work that are important to you that you know you need in your life to be happy and balanced.
Without a doubt, I think of the phrase, “Filling up your cup.” One of the things I think of when I think of energy and you can tell me if you have a different perspective on it, is that sometimes we can get burned out by using too much of our energy. Sometimes we can improve our energy by doing more of the things that give us energy whether that be better alignment. One of the topics that are deep in my mind is the idea of community and interacting with one another because I see that as a gigantic problem in the early 21st century. Some people might naturally have more energy if they were to spend more time with their loved ones or in the community of people that encourage and support them rather than some of those more negative or cynical people out there. Is there a component of increasing the size of the pie as well as trying to spend less time extracting from yourself or having your boss extract from you?
Yes, that’s awesome. Your community aspect is important. It’s about working less or working smarter, not harder, to bring more. When we’re looking at not following the script, our minds start to go, “All right.” We take a step back, get out of that burnout and look at it like, “What are the areas that aren’t working for me?” Tweak bringing in some other areas of, “You’re exactly right. I haven’t spent any time in the community in the last month. Maybe that’s an area that I want to bring in and see how that shifts things.” It’s both. You want to have an overall balance.
You have to learn how to control your mind, or it’s going to control you.
In the coaching world, there’s this thing called the coaching wheel. It pulls out the eight pillars of your life. It’s things like work, finances, physical health and spirituality. It has got all of these different parts, family, relationships and community service. You look at a holistic view of your life and rate like, “Where are you as far as fulfillment in those areas?” and then, “I see my family life, for example, is rating low. That’s because I’ve been working hard. What can I do, maybe this week even, to increase that?” It’s balancing out overall and then bringing in things that do give you that life force energy.
You have eight pillars of your life. I do evaluate my life quarterly on six pillars. I decided quarterly but in your view, how frequently should someone be evaluating whether it be 8, 6 or 4 pillars? Is quarterly a good frequency for evaluating these? Is this something that needs to be thought about more frequently?
I’m working with people weekly, usually at the start of the week. Sunday is great because you’re about to go into Monday. It doesn’t have to be anything overhaul. Everything that I do is simple by design because we have way too much complexity to so many things. All you have to do is a quick five-minute snapshot of, “Here’s where I am. What are two things that I can do this week to be where I would rather be?” It’s simple like that and it can make a profound difference. I’m sure you’ve probably seen it where you want to be.
Can you go through these eight pillars and what they are?
Absolutely. I have one in my book that’s specifically for work. For life, it would be family, relationships that could be outside of family, work, finances, health, spirituality, fun and community service.
When people come to you whether it be for coaching or through your events, are there 1 or 2 of these eight that you tend to identify? Is there a mode in what people tend to have deficiencies?
Maybe it is one of the areas but it tends to be, the people that usually work with coaches are self-aware, trying to figure out where they want to be and generous in giving their time to others and their work. It’s typically focusing on their selves and what brings their own joy to themselves or fun. Not like, “This isn’t what your partner wants to do. This isn’t what your kids want to do. It’s not what your pet wants to do. This is all about what you want to do.” It’s sad how little people do in their lives to bring joy to themselves.
The reason I laughed about that is that I was editing a different podcast and my dog jumped up on me like, “It’s time to play and go for a walk.” For a point of reference, your customer base for your events and coaching service, do they tend to be certain age ranges or all over the place?
I would say midlife. This is just dependency. It’s anywhere from the late 30s or maybe even up to retirement age. I see a great need for people on the brink of retirement and entering that phase of their life especially with the Boomers and men specifically. I know this is generalizing. The Boomer men, their sense of purpose was work. When you enter into retirement, it’s important to be able to bring purpose and passion into that part of your life. What does that part of your life look like when you are missing something? That’s where I’m seeing a need. Traditionally, in work-life, it’s people who are midlife and in their mid-careers.
One topic I’m interested in that I have a couple of other episodes that touch on the subject of these generational differences and generational shifts because one thing that I have observed as a Millennial is Boomers of my parents’ generation do put a lot of their identity into their work. It seems like in that generation, working 60, 70 or 80 hours a week was a virtue and is a virtue that I personally decided I did not want to continue. Do you observe the differences between some of the older and the younger clients of yours a generational shift in that value? If so, what is the impact on how it manifests and what people end up struggling with in different points of reset in their lives?
It’s another cool question because I can see that exact scenario playing out. The Boomers, it was their purpose and passion. I see it as like the Millennials now like, “We want to follow our purpose and passion.” That was so they were fulfilling it that way. Maybe it did burn them out and they didn’t talk about it. Maybe it wasn’t acceptable to talk about it but I think the struggle for them is now, “What do I do at retirement?” It’s like what we were talking about. Gen X is stuck in between, I’m finding. They feel like they have some of that more so than Millennials. These are super general. They still have that loyalty to companies like, “I want to stay with the company. I want to have a passion and purpose and be happy.” They’re flirting with both sides there. The Millennials are like, “I need to have a job that’s purposeful to me that feels good. I don’t want my work to be my life. I want my life to be my life and then work to be a part of it.” It’s shifting as we go. It will be interesting to see what has to come.
With Gen Z entering the workforce, there will be some more discussions about this in some later episodes, hopefully. Gen Z people often try to first-glance characterize them as like more Millennials but there’s evidence showing that it may be something completely different than the Baby Boomers, Gen X or the Millennials.
That’s going to be so amazing to see what they bring to the table. We don’t want to shame the other generation like, “What strengths does everyone bring to the table? What a cool opportunity to have all of these different brains and passions together.”
There’s one more topic I wanted to get to as far as this whole burnout thing, which is what does burnout look like from a personal perspective? We talked about what we look for in our friends to decide, “Do they need to reset?” From a personal perspective, how would someone go about knowing they need, not just your standard quarterly or whatever frequency, relook at their tenets of life but a complete reset and re-imagining of what someone is doing?
We always tend to put ourselves last when it comes to looking at things. I think it’s just because of convenience. It tends to be that people usually shift or do a reset or a transformation of some sort because either something drastic happens to someone they love. Possibly, it could be a near-death or a death experience, a diagnosis or something or they hit like I did hit my rock-bottom and said, “There’s no other way.” Those are the two tendencies that I’ve seen. What I would love to see is people knowing their internal barometers, saying like, “Something is off,” and not have to get to those breaking points.
It’s putting some more empowerment back on yourself, “Are you happy?” Also, realizing that it doesn’t need to be a complete upheaval of your life. I did all of this in the same job with a family and a kid going to school. It’s possible to change your life while you’re living it. You don’t need to go on a 30-day silent retreat every few months. You can do it in a way that’s realistic. It’s looking at yourself like, “Am I happy?” It’s turning off the external noise too because a lot of times, the ones that are closest to us say, “You’re happy.” They have no idea what’s going on inside, “Am I happy? If not, is it time to adjust to that?”
There are two things in that one little section that I want to reiterate to my audience. One is the fact that we do often put ourselves last. Oftentimes, we put our jobs, other needs, your family, your pet. What about what I need? What they do in the airplane where they say like, “Pull the mask over your own face before you assist others,” because you’re not of any help to others if you haven’t helped yourself. The other thing I want to point out is this idea that a reset, transformation or something doesn’t necessarily always have to still follow the same formula of, “I went to Alaska and spent 30 days in the woods surviving off of leftover bear carcasses. I was able to do it while adopting a new, better attitude or a few new things every day like if I write a gratitude journal or something simplistic like that.” I do want to get into the specifics of your story. Unfortunately, you did have to hit rock bottom. Did something in that story inspired you to both start Harmonious Return as well as write the book that you put out?
We’re always looking for an external fix when it’s really an internal job.
Yes. I was following the script, as you called it, which I love. In my heart, I believed if I was financially stable and successful in a corporate job then I would be happy in life and that’s what I set out to do. It wasn’t overnight that this happened. It was this gradual thing. There were things like alcohol coming into play with my numbing out. There were maybe three years where I was not doing so well mentally. I was dealing with some depression, anxiety and that type of thing that was worsening. Also, having this feeling of guilt like, “Why am I not happy? I should be happy. I have all these things. I have an awesome family. I have everything that I could want. What is wrong with me?” I have this battle going on inside of me like, “You should be happy. You’re miserable.”
It came to where I had one night that I talked about in my book. Some people call it the Dark Night of the Soul. I call it my awakening. I was an atheist at that time. I didn’t believe in a God or anything. I remember hearing clear as day, “You have to learn how to control your mind or it’s going to control you.” That was such a profound message to me. I didn’t know what it meant but that was my turning point of like, “You’re putting all into figuring this out because there’s no other way. You can’t continue this way.” Through my own journey, getting support through working with a coach myself and finding meditation, yoga and nature, all these modalities, I started to put them into practice over time.
Nothing shifted on the external. I was still in the same job and marriage but I started to see these profound results. I was like, “Wow.” It is about yourself. Nothing externally is changing. I’m changing, coming to a place of this. I came to a point in my life where I was like, “I cannot believe how amazing my life is now.” I was from bottom to top like, “This is the way life is supposed to be.” That was my catalyst to say, “There has got to be a different way to help support these people.” From there, I developed my four-step process and then wrote my book with that and started this business to help support people because I think there’s no reason why we should hate the jobs that we’re in.
First of all, I love that statement, “You have to learn to control your mind or it controls you.” Once you began this process, it sounds like it starts within. I’ve read this in other places too, “The first wave is internal. Every change you want to make, you can’t wait for something outside to change you. You have to change yourself first.” What were these internal changes? What were the external manifestations of these changes that you experienced over this period when you said your life went upside down from the state of depression to the state of better alignment?
I think too it’s almost radical for us to say like, “We should be focusing internally,” when we live in such a global society that tells us that all of these other external things will fix us, the get-rich-quick or a pill that you can take. We’re always looking for an external fix. It’s an internal job. Internally, when I first started out, my mind was such a mess, which I’m thankful at this time for that moment. I remember thinking, “I’m going to try this meditation.” Meditation is one of the very first places that I started. I was terrified to sit with my thoughts. There’s no way especially coming from someone who suffered from anxiety and depression. That is torture. You have all these fears in the back of your mind that are behind you. They sound like they’re so powerful and strong.
You start to turn to look at them. It is a powerful process to be able to start to see the things that are being said to you and how small they get. You start to look at them from a place of curiosity of like, “This is fascinating to understand these thought patterns and why these things are coming up.” Internally, turning the dialogue from trying to just put all of my energy into shutting out these voices that wouldn’t go away to then turning and listening to them and then allowing that to dissipate. The internal chatter quieted. Externally, you’re awakened to the world because you’re not just stuck in your mind and you can see life outside. As simple as it is, the amazing beauties that are outside and you have the mental capacity to bring in things that I loved.
I never thought of meditation as a fear-facing type of activity because it is. A lot of us are afraid of our own thoughts, which is why we feel the need to perpetually be busy, take part in the booze or any of the other list of distraction techniques. We’re all facing our fears and it sounds like you faced a lot of fears. It also sounds like meditation, yoga and nature are a big part of your business in Harmonious Return.
I’m a big proponent of coaching and working with people. Even though I do have a process that I take people through, it’s more of a container. I’m not a big believer in forcing any type of tools or modalities on anyone. For example, in the third pillar that I have, one of the components is, “It’s important for all of us to find daily quiet practice.” For many of us, that could be meditation but for many of us, meditation does not work. My husband, for example, meditates when he is mountain biking. He feels that same sense of calm and quiet and can hear his internal voice when he’s on his bike.
A lot of people get stuck, even though I will preach about meditation all day, any day, just based on the science behind it. It’s important for us to find quiet and a lot of that is being in nature. Nature is different than going on a hike because I feel like you can still be in your brain space if you’re walking fast and going to a destination but sitting in nature. What you want to practice is sitting in nature in your backyard for ten minutes a day and it will change your life. I promise. Finding some sort of quieting within yourself can be through yoga, meditation, mountain biking or sitting in nature. Whatever that modality is for you, it doesn’t matter as long as it’s working for you.
One thing I love about this is, first of all, it’s individualistic in the sense that there’s no one solution for everyone. Second of all, for those that are in the state of burnout, where you feel like you don’t have any spare time or energy, it’s not this gigantic undertaking. There are these little 2 or 3 minutes a day of things you can do to start getting on the path to a better mindset to allowing space for yourself. I am so happy for you, for your business and that you got a book out. I want my audience to know how to get a hold of you. What’s your website? How to find out more about your book, services and company?
Thanks for the opportunity. My website is HarmoniousReturn.com and it’s linked to everything in there. My book and social handles are all on there. You can learn more about me there.
I want to wrap up by getting a little sense of what all goes into writing a book. I read a lot of books and I’m sure a lot of people here also read a lot of books. In this world, we take for granted how many books are readily available to us at our local bookstore or on Amazon. I prefer ThriftBooks.com. How in-depth of a process do the people that write all of our favorite books go through?
It’s mind-blowing because I thought I would just write a book and that was that. I like writing so I’ll write a book. It was like, “That’s not how it goes.” There are so many different genres. I have a creative style of writing as well that I didn’t bring into this as much. I do have some. Informational books are different, too. From start to finish, it was about nine months. I always knew that I had books in me. It’s such a fascinating process. Even being a prior project manager, first of all, I learned that I’m good at sprint projects but a long-term project was challenging to manage for myself. Going from having this idea that is intangible and pulling that into then something that you can create and put into words.
Another fascinating thing that I discovered was how lonely the process of writing a book is because you are consistently by yourself, truly writing and writing. I remember once I started to have people read through it, you felt like you’re on stage naked because you didn’t know if they’re going to shun you. It felt very vulnerable. The process, the one thing that I loved when I took a writing retreat was she taught us about, “You have to balance the magic with the mundane.” I talked about that in my book too because you will feel these moments of bliss like writing. It’s your heart that you’re writing from but then you have to organize the book and put it into different ways that people can understand it. It’s balancing. That’s in life too is balancing the magic with the mundane of things that we have to do. It was a process. That’s for sure.
Life isn’t a trip to your favorite amusement park. Even though at your favorite amusement park, you’re going to be on the ride and wait for the ride for 45 minutes. There is going to be the mundane. The book is titled Reset Your Relationship to Your Job. The business title is Harmonious Return. Taylor, thank you so much for joining us and for telling us all your story. Hopefully, we’ll also all be encouraged wherever you are to do those little 2 or 3 minutes a day where we can bring ourselves into a better mindset where we’re taking care of ourselves as opposed to only taking care of our jobs, employers, families and pets. Also, hopefully, we all can have a chance to reset next time that we truly need it.
Thank you so much for having me.
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About Taylor Short
Taylor spent a number of years in standard jobs, most recently in finance. Her transformation involves both writing a book and starting a wellness business. Her book is titled Reset Your Relationship to Your Job. Her business focuses on achieving alignment and helping people reset.