The Magic of Changing Your Mind

How to Unlearn Our Culture of Overwork

I want to be clear. If you can’t give yourself the gift of thinking in new ways about the world of work and what you’ve been taught, you will not break the burnout cycle. 

Okay, that was the tough love part, this is the part where we show you how to do it (and remind you that self-compassion is essential throughout this journey).

If learning is about addition, you can think of unlearning as subtraction. It is an active process of reframing the things we’ve been told about work that lead us to overwork, stress, and burnout. 

In our workshops and workbook we share eight examples of that in an exercise we call “The Lies We’re Told.” Things like organizations that insist to employees that “we’re a family,” or the idea that hard work is virtuous and the only path to success. “You just need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” 🙄 Some of them are insidious but some were meant to help protect our wellbeing, like the immigrant parent refrain, “you have to work twice as hard to get half as far.” 

To unlearn these kinds of ideas and habits you need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Because it requires letting go of long held beliefs that no longer serve you. It is also a biological process. For a long time scientists believed that once our brain stopped developing around 24 years old, it was set and unchanging. Evolving understanding has shown that we can create new synapses (connections between neurons in our brains) into old age. The concept of neuroplasticity–that our brains are plastic and shapeable is a new one. But it’s important for people like us trying to do something new because it means it’s possible. 

Unlearning is good for you too and your organizations if you run a business or lead a team. Organizational psychologist, Adam Grant, has written a whole book about it. In Think Again Grant explains that the pace of change in the world demands that we have the capacity to rethink if we want to thrive as individuals or businesses–in other words to question our beliefs and be open to changing them. Unlearning allows individuals to learn, grow, and evolve and helps companies innovate. Change is an inevitable force in life on earth and resisting it is like holding your breath to prove a point. 

Rethinking is hard to do though. “We favour the comfort of our convictions over the discomfort of doubt,” explains Grant. Which is why this part of Re-Working can be so difficult for some folks. Especially because we are wired to revert to our automatic beliefs and responses under stress. 

So how do you do it?  

Okay. That’s where the practice comes in. Like many things Re-Work this has come out of a combination of trying it ourselves and research what others have learned. So I want to encourage you to be open to experimenting.

It’s a five step process and I’ve included some prompts to help move you through each step until it becomes habit.

1. Recognize and name ideas and beliefs that are no longer serving you 

Ask yourself: What outcome am I attached to that is making me work in a way that is harmful to my health? What are some of the beliefs about work I’ve held throughout my life? What are some of the beliefs my culture has about work? What is success and what is your default understanding of how to achieve it? 

2. Acknowledge/identify how these beliefs are holding you back 

Ask yourself: Why don’t these ideas serve me anymore? What unhealthy habits are they leading to? What might you gain from a new way of thinking about this thing?

3. Replace the old thinking with new ideas 

This is the hard part but also where Re-Work comes in. Ask yourself: What if something different were true? (this is a Re-Work power question we use it in our creativity workshop to help folks begin to actively re-imagine what work can be for them) What might something different look and feel like? What might serve me instead? Why is making this shift important to me?

4. Practice your new habits and ideas

It takes around 400 repetitions to create a synapse in the brain unless it’s done in play which brings it down to 20 (another Re-Work power notion and why we are true believers in play. So know that it will take time to change your mind and be kind to yourself. Practice and experiment to see what approaches work for you. Ask yourself: what might I try to do in order to bring to life my new ideas in my life? How can I make it part of my daily habits and rituals? What will success look and feel like? What triggers might alert me to when I'm falling back into old ways of thinking?

5. Celebrate your progress

It’s not going to happen overnight. But those rare magical moments when you notice a new ways of thinking supporting you in your approach to work. Or when you realize you haven’t felt exhausted in weeks or months, hold onto that feeling. Remember that you did that. Ask yourself: How far have I come? What did I do to get here? What has changed in my life? How can I maintain it. 

And please please please, be kind to yourself as you try this. This is not an overnight shift but a recalibration of thinking and it takes time. If you need help with it, consider joining our free Re-Work online community and reach out to us there anytime. If you want to go deeper on some of the workshops we mentioned, our monthly membership includes access to all of our Re-Work (Connect) program workshops and resources. You don’t have to do this alone. And work doesn’t have to suck.