Preventing Burnout
Feel like you're experiencing burnout or just don't have enough time in the day? This episode will give you tips and strategies to help avoid burnout in your life.
Links & Resources
Transcript
Scott DeLuzio: 00:00:03 Thanks for tuning in to the Drive On Podcast, where we talk about issues affecting Veterans after they get out of the military. Before we get started, I'd like to ask a favor if you haven't done so already, please rate and review the show on Apple podcast. If you've already done that, thank you. These ratings help the show get discovered so it can reach a wider audience. And while you're there, click the subscribe button so that you get notified of new episodes. As soon as they come out, if you don't use Apple podcasts, you can visit Drive On Podcasts.com/subscribe to find other ways of subscribing, including our email list. I'm your host, Scott DeLuzio. And now let's get on with the show. Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us today. My guest is Bunny Young, who is an Army wife and founder of A Better Place Consulting, where she teaches burnout prevention strategies to military and law enforcement personnel. So welcome to the show. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?
Bunny Young: 00:01:03 Yeah, so I think you nailed it with Army wife. I'm a third generation, actually fourth generation Army wife, granddaughter daughter, and great-granddaughter. So, we have a Fort named after our family. I'd say it's definitely the Army in my blood. I'll be the first one to harass anybody who's not Army. And the first one to stand up for anybody who messes with any of us. I often tell people I hold the highest-ranking position in the United States military and that's wife. I can speak to anyone in any certain manner and the repercussions will be pushups upon my spouse, not upon me. So I went to school to be a therapist. That's when I got my master's degree; I lived in China for about a year. I volunteered in Ecuador at an orphanage and just really through those experiences was exposed to a lot of trauma.
Bunny Young: 00:02:05 And when you grow up in a military family, there are certain things that seem par for the course for you. And when you're asked to give a sit rep, it's like just the basics. It's no feelings, no emotion. The worst thing my father ever told me was that he was disappointed in me and that's just because of the trust and respect that was built. But my entire childhood was definitely built on these core values and service to a purpose higher than yourself. And I have a heart condition. So, I know everybody's going to give me a hard time about this in my family, but the Air Force turned me down because of my heart condition. I'll have I scored really high on my ASFAB and so the way that we figure it out is if you're brilliant, you can go Air Force or Chair Force, as we like to call it. If you're brilliant and strong, then you can go Army. If you're not brilliant, but strong, you got Marines. If you're not brilliant, not strong and you can swim, it's Coast Guard. And if you're not brilliant, not strong and you can't swim. It's the Navy.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:03:16 That's an interesting hierarchy there. I like that.
Bunny Young: 00:03:19 That's how the recruiters figure it out. That really brought me to this aspect of an organizational psychology approach, where a lot of people were burning out because of their professional demands and then having marital or familial issues because of the stress of their professional demands, whether it be first responders or military, or just a job in corporate America and also being able to tie the purpose. I don't know a corporate situation that puts you through the brainwashing that the military does in order to say, the life that you had prior to when you step foot off of that school bus with your rucksack and everything is over, we own you now. And here's your new definition, here's your new identity, here's your new call to life. And I think that's also something that a lot of families struggle with because as a spouse, you're supposed to be the most important thing to your loved one. And as coming into this, I understood that it was going to be the Army before me and the Army before our children. And it all changes in a matter of a moment. So, just the two people that laugh when I make plans are God and the Army. That's really my background and kind of the approach that I took was how can we bring basic training and the thought process around core values, purpose, mission, vision, and your abilities and your MOS into a work-life alignment.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:05:07 So, how do you do that? What does that process look like where you bring these values together and work towards the goal of ultimately reducing the amount of burnout and the overall stress and creating a better wellbeing for these individuals.
Bunny Young: 00:05:29 So, if you go past six years in the military, PSY OPs is going to show you that if I asked you what your core values are, they're going to be the military branch that you serve, core values, you have fully adopted that identity, which makes transition back to civilian life very difficult. It's very difficult to find a company that stands at that high level of core values. And so from a civilian side, we help individuals identify what their core values are. What's going to make them feel fulfilled in life. And from the military side, being able to hear the only time that I really feel fulfilled is when I'm flat on my belly, looking through a scope and how do we apply that to the civilian side to say, basically that's a career in law enforcement or special ops within law enforcement and first responders, or as a trainer, but even that sometimes doesn't fulfill you.
Bunny Young: 00:06:33 And so it's that constant analysis and self-awareness and that's really something that is difficult when you're transitioning out of the military is that self-awareness. Nobody asks you what you think. And so, to be able to say, how do you feel about this, is very difficult and in the civilian life, believe it or not, we're not asked what we want to be when we grow up anymore. We're not asked what we think. You're given this onboarding procedure that is like drinking out of a fire hose to say, here's all the boundaries. And here's all the things that are important to our company, but nobody says what's really important to you and that's supposed to be what your therapist deals with. And so, when we infiltrate companies, we say, no, you're a human and we have to address the human aspect of it.
Bunny Young: 00:07:25 And even from the military aspect of it, we're doing more proactive planning. So, to hopefully decrease the amount of military and veteran suicide and to combat post traumatic stress, because that's really where you're supposed to be fine. Well, on the therapeutic world fine stands for F’d up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional. And we've found even from the structure of support groups sometimes where you're coming in and it's like, well, I had this blow up next to me and I was shot 15 times. And then you've got somebody who just suffered the trauma of just watching somebody die. And it's like, your broken arm doesn't necessarily hurt any less than my splinter, but the structure of the current support groups or the support groups of the past can feel a little bit like I want to use an inappropriate word, but like a pissing match.
Bunny Young: 00:08:25 That's not what we want. We want to create an environment where it feels open and we can share, and we're not retraumatized by sharing and not feeling like our feelings are valid. My husband and I had this conversation the other day because I was in a car accident last year and I have posttraumatic stress around driving. I had post traumatic stress from a sexual assault prior to that. And my neural pathways didn't differentiate those two things. They just process them together as if in the car accident somehow I was retraumatized and our daughter was just messing with me and I walked out of her room and she jumped on my back and I immediately had a reaction that most of you probably can empathize with of I got her off of me and was not in my body at that moment.
Bunny Young: 00:09:22 And so I had to sit down and have a conversation with my husband and he's comparing that I was just in an accident. I know people who are blown up but my body and my brain don't know that. And so how do we approach it from the human perspective and identify that each human is different. And regardless of the fact that we're all going to have the same uniform, we're all going to have the same haircut. We're all going to have the same credos; we are different humans. And how do we process that?
Scott DeLuzio: 00:09:49 Right. And so, I appreciate you sharing the story of your experience and how different situations can create some sort of post-traumatic stress in different individuals where one person may have had post-traumatic stress from watching someone blow up or themselves getting injured, or even in your case, a car accident or a sexual assault or something along those lines, those all are traumatic events. And if you were to take any one of those and look at them in and of themselves, they're all traumatic. It makes sense that there would be some sort of post-traumatic stress that happens during those. And so, just because you weren't blown up in that car accident, it doesn't mean that you aren't deserving of, I don't want to say recognition because that's not the right word, but the treatment that comes with the posttraumatic stress. Maybe it comes from some sort of counseling or therapy or whatever the case may be but you're just as deserving for something like that as someone else who was in combat and saw atrocious things happening as well.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:11:14 It makes that that type of thing happens. I appreciate that you shared the differences between the different levels that people might think of, but they're not really different levels; they are really one in the same.
Bunny Young: 00:11:31 Yeah. And one of my favorite therapeutic sayings is, I have not walked in your shoes, but I'm willing to sit here and listen to you helping me understand what that felt like. And sometimes that's just a magical space. And for Army families that are listening to this and military families that are listening to this, there is something called compassion fatigue, or secondary trauma, where no, you were not there, you were not deployed with your loved one, but you are experiencing secondary trauma from watching your loved one go through the struggle of this trauma. And so those are both very real things and whatever route you feel necessary in order to get support, my encouragement would be to get support. It doesn't make you weak. In fact, I think for the most part I've experienced, it takes more courage and bravery to sit down and say, I've got stuff going on, then it does to say, I’m fine.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:12:33 For sure it does. Yeah. The easiest thing you can do is just ignore things and keep doing what you've always been doing, but it's not always the right thing. And sometimes it's hard to admit that you have a problem with some post-traumatic stress or whatever your individual case may be and to go get that type of help that you need. It's not the most comfortable thing to do. I will say from my own personal experience, once when you do pick up the phone and make that appointment, and you actually verbalize saying that whatever the problem is, it does feel like a weight's being lifted off your shoulders. It did in my case anyways, where I picked up the phone, I called and I immediately felt like I'm no longer carrying this weight by myself.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:13:26 I now have somebody else who's going to be there. I haven't necessarily met with the person yet, but I have that person who's going to be there. Who's going to help me carry some of it and figure out what to do with it too, so it's not constantly sitting on my shoulders. So, that's another analogy that people can make as well, whether or not they are in the midst of trying to decide whether or not they want to go to therapy or whatever treatment type thing that they need. It could actually be very beneficial. We're here really talking about burnout and how you help people with the strategies that they can use to prevent burnout. Before we started recording, I was looking at your bio and you have quite a lot going on between running four companies currently, I think is what your bio was saying. If you run four companies and you're also a mother with two kids and an Army wife, and I have to imagine there's probably other things going on, but I also imagine that at some point you felt burnt out yourself. Have you ever dealt with the burnout and how did that look?
Bunny Young: 00:14:45 Oh, I would say dozens of times I think I have a PhD in burnout just from experience. We did an analogy of how many tours of burnout I've had. It would be a lot; so, I think a lot of that goes to not being able to differentiate what my emotions are versus what I'm experiencing from others. And as a therapist, it was very difficult for me, especially in social services to separate my emotions from that of my clients. I cared too much and that some people will be like, that's not possible. Well, when it negatively impacts your health, your wellbeing and your ability to function. Yes, it is possible. And so, there's five stages of burnout and the first one's that honeymoon stage. And so, if we want to take it through a military analogy you're going to be deployed to Kosovo, right?
Bunny Young: 00:15:46 And so there's that initial dump of adrenaline. It's like, yeah, we're going to go do this, and it's your body's natural reaction to be like, yes, this is going to be hard. This is going to be stressful, but I'm doing this with my brothers and sisters. And let's go do this. And then we get into the stress phase of burnout, and then we get into the chronic stress phase, and then we get into actual burnout. And so this is where you start to see the disengagement. And this is where you start to see more of the agitation and more of the person's not who they once were. And then you get into the habitual burnout, which is not a place that you can never return from, but it's a place that ends up having possibly permanent impact on your mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional wellbeing, and a person who is in habitual burnout, is not fulfilling their potential in a way that is prioritizing their own health.
Bunny Young: 00:16:58 And so, I often tell people when you think about burnout; you think, Oh, it's the worst thing in the world? Well, burnout is something that we all experienced at certain periods of time, I'm sure after watching Princess Bride for the 15th time with my daughter, I'm a little burned out of it. Like that's okay. And just to be over it. But if I'm sitting there and start to just not even have those associations or feelings or responses, and I'm not even engaged with the movie anymore, I'm not even engaged with her and I'm not laughing. I'm not experiencing the emotions. And after the movie's done, I'm just kind of a shell of myself. And all of my reactions are pretty extreme. Like it's either zero reaction or extreme. That's a sign of habitual burnout, and you can see that with multiple tours and multiple deployments in quick and rapid succession.
Bunny Young: 00:18:00 Then you can also see it in individuals that have been at a job that they don't feel fulfills their calling and fulfills their purpose. And they end up applying themselves initially with that excitement and honeymoon phase of, Oh, this is going to be such a well-paying job. And then very quickly years, if not sooner down the road, they're in habitual burnout. And it doesn't always have to go in that order. I mean, this is an order that some therapists somewhere put together and said, here are the phases of burnout, but you could easily jump into habitual burnout, and then find some kind of vacation and get back into just chronic stress.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:18:48 So, you can jump between these stages, but these are the different degrees of burnout that you might be experiencing. And the honeymoon stage that you're talking about that first stage actually sounds pretty fun to a lot of people. This is like, yeah, it's going to suck, but I'm going to enjoy it. It's almost like the basic training. If you're looking forward to going to that, it's like, it's going to suck, there's going to be people screaming in your face or you're going to be tired and dirty and all this stuff, but when you're going through that, it sucks, but you can look back on it later and be proud of the thing that you accomplished, whatever it is. I use basic training as an example, but there's plenty of other things that suck. There's “embrace the suck” mindset.
Bunny Young: 00:19:39 There you go.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:19:41 And it's perfect. It's a perfect analogy. That's for the honeymoon stage. I can definitely see how people slip into these other stages that I wrote down here, and especially with the disengagement that you're talking about when you get to that burnout stage, that is definitely a thing that people deal with. So, how do you balance these things? Everybody has a lot of things going on in their life. They oftentimes don't feel like they have enough time to do all of the things, whether it's their job or their family or other things in between that they don't have time for all of this stuff. How do you balance all of these things so that you can avoid burning out?
Bunny Young: 00:20:30 So I don't balance anything. I align it. I think balance is BS because if you think about a Teeter Totter, somebody down somebody up, I've never been on a Teeter totter where we've been able to perfectly balance it. And me being six foot three, I'm normally the one who is sitting on their butt on the bottom as the person is teetering high up in the air. So, I like to think about alignment when you wake up. Your first priority is always to yourself, even as a soldier as you know, a military service individual, your first priority is to yourself. You cannot be the best that you can be without being the best mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. And so, we're bringing a lot more meditation ironically enough, starting with the Marines on the meditation and being able to have that self- awareness and self- awareness is different than thinking for yourself.
Bunny Young: 00:21:35 And because we would never ask a Marine to think for themselves, but it's an awareness of what's going on. I know the comments you're going to get on this podcast, and I just can't wait for it, especially from my own Marine friends; they know I love them. So, being able to be aware of your physiological reactions to stress and to emotions and how you wake up in the morning, and then also what you're saying to yourself. So that moves into self-management. So, you go self-awareness and self-management, and then after you have those abilities, and you've taught that to everybody on your team or your unit, then you go into team awareness and team management. And this is where I can look at my battle buddy and know when there's disengagement, when there's habitual burnout and when I know that they're not going to be the best for that day.
Bunny Young: 00:22:36 And then I need them to get their shit straight so that we can move on. And so we have this culture of suck it up and we're changing that, and that is being changed because there's only so many times that you can suck it up. And so being able to move through that self-awareness, self-management team awareness, team management. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing that I'm going to do is make sure that I'm doing a meditation. I have a journal; I'm doing some fitness. I try to fill all four parts of the self, which are physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, and whatever spiritual means to you, even if it's just, this is my rifle, there are many like them, and this is the only one, this one's mine, that's spiritual for some people.
Bunny Young: 00:23:32 For others, it may be prayer. And so that's the four parts of the self, and that's really to make sure that those are in alignment and then the rest of your day align it around through that focus. What gets you through the day? I'd imagine, because I have not been there in anyone's boots on the battlefield, but what gets you through the day and pulling that trigger are your battle buddies. And in knowing that ultimately, you're fulfilling a higher purpose and that's what gets you through all the rest of the tough crap. And so if you can align your day on, I'm going to get through the tough stuff and not say that my whole day is going to go to crap because I had this bad experience, but that I'm still here and I'm going to go home and today's going to be a better day.
Bunny Young: 00:24:20 We have this amazing capacity to change our minds and our attitudes in the blink of an eye. And so you choose what you're going, what your perspective is going to be. And that is how you can wake up and say, today's going to suck. I need a cough drop and I need some tissues because I'm not feeling well. No one's going to bring you cough drops and tissues in the sandbox, it's not going to happen. So what are you going to tell yourself so that your day can get better from there?
Scott DeLuzio: 00:24:54 There's something I heard a little while ago, to kind of put what you were saying into some sort of perspective about not letting your day just go to shit because something bad happened. If someone wants to give you $86,400, and I know that's an oddly specific number, but bear with me. If someone gave you $86,400 today, I'd imagine you’d be very happy with receiving all of this. So you'd be very happy, but then all of a sudden someone came around and stole a hundred dollars from you. Would you throw away the rest of the $86,300 to go chase after that hundred dollars? No, you wouldn't. That wouldn't make sense because you're leaving a whole lot on the table to go chase after that hundred dollars, but we all have 86,400 seconds in a day. And if someone stole a hundred seconds of happiness from you in that day, would you throw away the rest of the day? Just because someone decided to take away a couple minutes of happiness from you? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And so, to what you were saying about how you can't just throw all that away, while you're going through your day.
Bunny Young: 00:26:19 Remember that the six inches between your ears is precious real estate, and don't let somebody live rent free in your head. Also, when somebody says something to you that pisses you off, chances are the meanest voice that you have ever heard on the face of this planet comes from that voice in the back of your head. And so, take stock in and why what they said pissed you off, and either agree that they don't need to be a part of your life or deal with the trigger that just happened in the back of your head.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:26:52 Yeah, absolutely. And how could people deal with some of those triggers that come up?
Bunny Young: 00:26:59 I mean, for me, sometimes it's so funny. I have a variety of exercises for this, but sometimes I tell people to imagine that the voice in the back of your head is just that shitty roommate. And you just tell them to go to the room, shut the door, and you don't want to talk to them anymore. And it's a funny analogy, but at the same time, that's fine. For Harry Potter fans, I often think about the Albus Dumbledore scene where he takes this memory or whatever, and he pulls his wand and pulls it out of his brain and throws it away. And I've literally done this at a stoplight and the guy next to me looks to see where the litter was that landed out of that. And so, what I say to the person is, thank you for that feedback.
Bunny Young: 00:27:49 I'm going to need some time to process that, or I don't necessarily agree with what you said, but I respect your ability to have that opinion. And we went through this with the Kaepernick situation. I was hot. We have a thing in our household that says, we interrupt this marriage to bring you football season. I am the football fanatic. My husband, not, he doesn't really care. So, my husband and my dad are over and it's Sunday afternoon and I watched this go down and I am just fricking hot. And my husband and my dad just looked at me and they're like, Nope, that's why we do this so that he has the ability to take a knee. If he wants to, it's his freedom. And I'm like, “Oh my gosh, that's human perspective. Little did I know, come to find out that he actually went to a veteran and said, “I want to make the stand, but I want to do it in the most respectful way possible.”
Bunny Young: 00:28:48 And I don't think sitting on the bench is, and he actually received that feedback that taking a knee would be the most respectful way to bring awareness to that. So, just when somebody says something and you want to react, it's okay to react, but don't react with emotion, react with information. I needed more information in that moment rather than just getting totally hot. First off, I'm sitting there ready to go to blows because it's my family that you're disrespecting. And my family has a completely different perspective than I do. Secondly, I didn't know this person's story who is doing this. I knew why he was doing this, but it wasn't his intention to disrespect our flag or disrespect our country. And so, I think that there's in this world, it's a really incredible time to be able to just say, what did you mean by that?
Scott DeLuzio: 00:29:46 Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, especially these days, it needs to happen more often because people are very quick to jump to conclusions on all sorts of issues, whether it's political or social issues that are going on, people just jump to conclusions. They assume that the other people have the worst of intentions and they don't. I have to imagine that most people are probably pretty good people. There are definitely some people out there who have bad intentions, and they actually want to see the world burn, but I don't think that that's the vast majority of people.
Bunny Young: 00:30:22 Well, and with burnout, to your point, as far as the hundred dollars, how much money did I just burn and how many seconds did I burn going to coaching Kaepernick, first off, he definitely didn't hear me; none of my teams have ever heard me, but I'm the best coach in the world. That's the thing, check your emotions and how much you're dumping into that, because that can significantly save you time and energy in the burnout space.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:30:55 Exactly. Yeah. Because you end up losing more than that in that analogy, you ended up losing more than that hundred dollars, because someone stole that hundred dollars from you, but you ended up losing 200, 300, 400, 500 as you're chasing it down and trying to, like in your case, yelling at the television about whatever was going on, you ended up losing more than whatever was initially lost, instead of the flip side to that is, Hey, I don't really agree with that. That sucks, whatever the thing is and just let it go.
Bunny Young: 00:31:35 And what are you modeling for your children and how many seconds are you stealing from other people? Because how many of us leave work pissed off and come home and take it out on the closest things to us. So, my husband calls me on it all the time because I'll come home and have a shit day. I'm in a crappy mood, but then here's the service dog behind me. I crawl in bed and just cuddle with him. He's the best thing since sliced bread. My husband's like, why does he get that treatment when you have a crap day? But I'm having to deal with everything else. And I'm like, well, you know, I don’t know, he's cuter. So, just think about that from a real estate perspective, from your own brain and then how it impacts those around you.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:32:26 So some of the things that you were talking about earlier, the morning routine, maybe the meditation, the journaling, the spiritual, whether it's praying or whatever the case may be; all those things are good ways to start the day. What about for somebody who already feels like they don't have enough time in the day and it feels like that's just adding more things onto their plate and that might sound a little cumbersome to them. What would you say to people who feel like they don't have enough time in the day for really anything?
Bunny Young: 00:33:04 So what are you going to say no to? Your calendar is yours. There's a magical white space on your calendar sometime in the next few weeks or months or whenever it is. And so, if that's where you start by planning to wake up at 5:00 AM, New Year's resolutions, it doesn't matter. You can start tomorrow. So, when I was diagnosed with my heart condition, if you knew that your time on earth was limited, what would you stop doing? And stop wasting time on right now? And I guarantee you, if you're like me, Facebook would be the first thing to go. If you have a digital wellbeing app on your phone, how much time you waste on social media and email and all that kind of stuff, I check my email once a day, once every couple days; you emailed me, there's an autoresponder that just says good luck and Godspeed,
Bunny Young: 00:34:06 if you're going to get a response to this. And so, it's like email doesn't make me happy. Facebook really doesn't make me happy. And so what are you going to stop doing? You have the same amount of time as Elon Musk, Dwight Eisenhower, any of these individuals that, yes, I'm an Ike fan. Go ahead and leave your comments on that too, but he's a better golfer than you. So, that's the thing I had a friend of mine, my company sent me journals and different kinds of professional and personal development products to try out. And ironically enough, I had this journal that was sent to me and then a lawyer friend of mine was like, you need to start using this journal. And I had the same response of, when would you like me to start taking the time to write down my thoughts and put little, pretty hearts next to it.
Bunny Young: 00:35:01 This is not middle school, I'm an adult. I'm not doing this. The key thing about the journal is that every morning and every night there's gratitude. So, every morning and every night I'm starting and stopping my day with what I'm grateful for, huge mindset shift and in today's targets, there's only three instead of a to do list that's a mile long. And so, I think that asking yourself what you're willing to stop doing in order to prioritize what you want to be doing and what you want to be left with that legacy. You know, they talk about the dash on your tombstone. So do you want that dash to be that you pull 8,020 hour weeks? Or do you want that dash to be that you never miss a softball game or baseball game that you’re staying frozen too.
Bunny Young: 00:35:55 This is me personally at the top of my lungs to my kids last night. I'm so glad that you weren't there to record this. Those are the things that, what was I actually doing at night that prevented me from doing that watching, I don't know what we were watching, drunk history, I think is what we were watching. It's hilarious by the way, if you ever want to waste some time on your life, but like at the same time, drunk history versus my kids stop telling yourself that you don't have time for it because you do have time for it. You have the same amount of time as the rest of us. And remember that you may have some more time than other people around you. And so it's not so much about making time. It's about making an impact.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:36:39 That's a great way to put it. When you're talking about people who are working 80 hour weeks, or long hours and they're just slightly slaving away in killing themselves, basically just through this work; they don't wind up any happier, they maybe have a bigger paycheck than you or I or somebody else and that's fine. That's nice. I might be able to buy a fancy house and fancy cars and clothes and all this other stuff, but when do they get a chance to enjoy any of that stuff and actually sit down and relax and just be present in that moment. And so, that doesn't necessarily contribute to their happiness. They may feel like it's going to, but it doesn't always.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:37:36 So some people have their happiness strictly tied to money and more power to them, but not in the military. They probably don't have a family of their own or not a great family life to begin with. And so, where they're not focused on building their relationship and spending time with their kids, singing songs from frozen or whatever the case may be, they're not there present in that moment. So, I love how you put that, that was really well put.
Bunny Young: 00:38:17 Quick trick is, I guess now it's your OCP is slide journal, and when you're sitting there waiting, because you never sitting around and waiting in the Army, right? Just write notes to yourself, to your kids, to your family, get the stuff that's in between your ears out on a piece of paper. The other thing is switch your cell phone, the black and white mode. It makes it less attractive. And it's a huge psychological shift when you open your phone and it's in black and white, and it reminds you that you're trying to break up with that relationship and that codependency on your phone. It's very easy to make phone calls in black and white, because remember we used to do it when cell phones first came out and all the way back when we had landlines and rotary phones and all that kind of stuff, but switching your smartphone and turning it into a dumb phone by making it black and white and shutting off the mobile data, you can still make phone calls and texts. And then what else do you really need to be doing in that moment? What else could you be doing that would be making an impact instead of just wasting time?
Scott DeLuzio: 00:39:30 Yeah, that actually hits on a point that I've been toying with, the idea for myself of ditching my smartphone and just going back to an old dumb phone that flip phone, you can make phone calls. And if you needed to text someone, you sat there and tapped the numbers 27 times to get through the letters and everything like that. That would really reduce the amount of screen time that I have in my day. I haven't pulled the trigger on that yet and made the switch, but it's been something that I've been considering for a little while now. But you're right. We do spend too much time doing things that don't matter, Facebook, games on your cell phone, Angry birds, whatever people are playing on their phones; it's stuff that just doesn't matter.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:40:23 And so when you do that, it takes up time and time is a valuable resource and once when it's gone, you can't get it back; and so when you find how much time you're actually spending doing these things on these screens and devices, you're absolutely right. I don't it could hurt to reduce the amount of time that you're spending on these things. So, is there anything else that you had that you wanted to talk about? I do want to give people a chance to find out more about where they can get in touch with you and things like that, but, was there anything else that you had that you wanted to cover before we wrap up?
Bunny Young: 00:41:08 You know, as we're recording this for five or six months into COVID and this pandemic, and also a lot of civil unrest. And so, we put together the team, and I put together this e-book called “How to Stay Sane During Insane Times.” The one thing I want you to know about that book is that it's free and it's an eBook. You download it; it has video content in it from my life. And it's there to try to help you cope with whatever it is that you're going through. And I know that this is not going to be the last insane time that we have. And so, being able to offer you that resource is an honor and a pleasure to be able to do that. And I hope that thousands, hundreds of thousands of people take advantage of it, because sometimes when you feel like you're in the foxhole and you feel like you’re totally alone, if somebody just handed you a shovel, you can either stop digging, or you can figure out how to get your way out. And so, if that eBook is not your resource, find your resource,
Scott DeLuzio: 00:42:19 And this episode is scheduled right now anyways, to be coming out a couple of weeks after the election in the U.S. So, hopefully the eBook is not needed in response to that election, but you never know, these are crazy times 2020 has been crazy. And you never know. So, anyways, thank you again, it's been a pleasure speaking with you. Could you share where people can go to get in touch with you, find out more about what you do, maybe a website or things like that?
Bunny Young: 00:42:52 So, A Better Place in Consulting.com or BunnyYoung.com. Will both take you straight to that eBook. And you can hear Guinness dreaming in the background. If you want to connect on Instagram, it's @ bunnyhassixlegs because I have a service dog. I'll also make sure that I give you all the links for the social, for those that are driving while they're listening to this and just want to be able to get it afterwards. But, if you message me, if you comment on something that's on social media, I'll be there for you. I have no problem making sure that I'm that person that you can rely on.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:43:34 I will have links to all of this your website, social media, where to find the eBook, and everything else that you do. I have all that linked up in the show notes. So, everyone can find that, please don't crash while you're driving trying to write this stuff down. It'll all be there for you later. So, thank you again very much. It's been a pleasure and I really do appreciate the information that you had to share with us today.
Bunny Young: 00:44:04 Thank you so much for having me.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:44:11 Thanks for listening to the Drive On Podcast. If you want to check out more episodes or learn more about the show, you can visit our website, Drive On Podcast.com. We're on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Drive On Podcast.