Beat Burnout with Mindfulness: A Conversation with Melo Calarco

Melo Calarco , award-winning author of Beating Burnout, Finding Balance (Wiley), is a mindfulness and high-performance coach, keynote speaker, and corporate programs facilitator.

His work has helped many CEOs, leaders, corporate executives, medical professionals, elite athletes, and other high achievers perform at their absolute best without burning out.

Personally, Melo has trekked and cycled around the world on his mountain bike over 30,000 km across five continents, where he learned to manage highly challenging and stressful situations, build resilience, and develop mental endurance.

Special gifts from Melo

Free sample chapter of the book: https://www.melocalarco.com/the-book

Free meditations on Insight Timer: https://insig.ht/mindfulmooves

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Key Takeaways

• Self-Care and Mindfulness: Prioritizing self-care and cultivating mindfulness can transform performance and well-being.
• Managing Stress and Preventing Burnout: Effective stress management techniques can halt the progression towards burnout, fostering resilience and optimal functioning.
• Practical Mindfulness Practices: Simple daily practices such as mindful breathing and attention training can significantly enhance focus, productivity, and overall mental health.

This episode is brought to you by the Resilience Assessment

Leadership intelligence. Personal action plans. The world's best toolkit for proactively reducing workplace risks like burnout and increasing performance and well-being.

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Interested in learning about burnout? Find out more in this Resilience Institute article .

Episode summary

In a constantly changing world, finding a balance between productivity and self-care can seem like a perpetual struggle. However, award-winning author and mindfulness coach Melo Calarco offers a refreshing perspective on how mindfulness and self-awareness can be the key to sustainable high performance. Drawing from his extensive

experience working with corporate executives, medical professionals, elite athletes, and more, Melo shares profound insights into how mindfulness can not only boost efficiency but also prevent burnout.

Prioritizing Self-Care through Mindfulness

Melo's core message is crystal clear: "Make yourself a priority and give yourself permission to look after yourself." In the face of relentless demands, it's easy to neglect self-care, but Melo emphasizes the importance of daily check-ins to ask, "What have I done for me today?"

This simple question encourages individuals to include self-nurturing activities in their routine without feeling guilty. He explains, "Paying attention to the present moment with open awareness and curiosity, we activate the parasympathetic nervous system," which contrasts the fight-or-flight response and promotes relaxation and recovery.

By embedding these practices in our daily lives, we can foster a state of open awareness that not only improves our mental well-being but also optimizes our performance. Melo states, "Just being fully present with where you are and what you're doing" can transform mundane tasks into mindful activities, enriching our everyday experiences and providing a buffer against stress.

Managing Stress and Building Resilience

Melo likens unmanaged stress to a slippery slope, leading to burnout, emphasizing the crucial role mindfulness plays in self-regulation and stress management. Mindfulness cultivates self-awareness, enabling us to recognize when we've exceeded our stress thresholds and need to take a break. He notes, "The first step is self-awareness... the only way to realize that is actually to have awareness around that."

By developing this awareness, individuals can better manage their responses to stress stimuli. He advocates implementing self-regulation techniques, such as mindful breathing, taking breaks, and engaging in physical activities like walking around the block.

Melo breaks down the stages of stress into several zones, from the green zone of optimal functioning to the red zone of burnout:

• Green Zone: Thriving and managing stress effectively.
• Yellow Zone: Overwhelmed and overstimulated, struggling to keep up.
• Orange Zone: Chronic stress and physical symptoms begin to manifest.
• Red Zone: Full burnout or severe mental health issues.

Addressing stress in the green and yellow zones through mindful practices is paramount to preventing its escalation to the orange and red zones. For instance, during the height of the pandemic, Melo notes an increased need for his guidance as people struggled with anxiety and the psychological toll of prolonged lockdowns. His holistic approach incorporating body and breath awareness has proven highly effective in mitigating burnout and fostering long-term resilience.

Practical Techniques for Everyday Mindfulness

Implementing mindfulness doesn't require grand gestures or extensive time commitments. Simple, actionable techniques can seamlessly integrate into daily routines, producing profound effects. Melo emphasizes both formal and non-formal practices:

1. Formal Practices: These include structured meditations, such as Melo's "90-second breath break," which can be as brief as a few minutes of focused breathing or longer meditation sessions. Regular practice of these techniques can ground individuals and facilitate a shift from frantic multitasking to focused present actions.

2. Non-formal Practices: These occur during daily activities, promoting mindfulness in routine tasks. Melo recalls an enlightening experience at a monastery in Vietnam, where even mundane actions like eating or washing dishes were performed with full attention and mindfulness. He says, "The way you do something is the way you do everything," underscoring that practicing mindfulness in small tasks builds a foundation for applying it in more complex situations.

Equally important is striking a balance between consuming and creating mental space. Melo challenges the pervasive habit of constant distraction through technology. He suggests setting boundaries with devices, such as not checking phones first thing in the morning or before bed and engaging with them intentionally rather than reflexively. He draws a vivid comparison, stating, "Opening your telephone in the morning in your bed is like letting 100 people into your bedroom," illustrating the chaotic mental clutter it can cause.

Melo Calarco's insights shed light on the transformative power of mindfulness in our high-paced lives. By prioritizing self-care and leveraging mindfulness to manage stress and build resilience, we can perform at our best without succumbing to burnout. His book, "Quitting Burnout, Finding Balance," structured around his global adventures and practical techniques, offers a compelling guide for anyone seeking to enhance their mental well-being and performance.

Whether through formal meditation practices or mindful engagement with daily tasks, the essence lies in consistently applying these techniques. As Melo succinctly puts it, "You can read all the books you like about mindfulness, but you have to do the practices."