Jez Rose says Britain’s ‘keep calm and carry on’ mindset is fuelling burnout

High Wycombe behavioural expert Jez Rose says too many people are using weekends, spa days and holidays as pressure valves for lives they have stopped questioning.

Jez Rose works in the space between ambition and exhaustion.

A behavioural expert, broadcaster and award-winning author, Rose has spent more than two decades helping leaders and teams understand the habits that shape performance, change and workplace culture. His work has reached major employers including Ford, Audi, Marriott, Volkswagen and Philips, while his books include Flip the Switch and Leading Change.

In this exclusive interview with the Mental Health Speakers Agency, Rose discusses burnout, the cost of treating success as the default measure of a good life, and why people need to question the behaviours they have mistaken for ambition.

Question 1. How can people protect their mental wellbeing before they reach the point of burnout?

Jez Rose: “I wish we would stop referring to mental health and focus more on mental wellbeing, because everyone has mental health and the phrase is often used in a way that does not quite work.

“We are very good at weekend breaks, spa days and being desperate for holidays. People say, “I really need a break. I’m desperate to get away.” The better question is why we do not start creating a life, curated by us, by asking more questions and being more connected to who we are and what we really want, so we do not feel the need to escape from it.

“Then we would not have this cycle where we burn ourselves out because there is a holiday at the end of the year or because the weekend is coming. Pull back, be more in the moment and be more mindful of what we are doing and what we are not doing.

“I do not think there is anything that proves doing as much as possible and filling every hour every day gets you more successful, happier or content quicker. What you end up carrying is noise and chaos.

“My grandma used to say, “Just do less, but do it well.” Why have loads of half-arsed ideas and be burnt out by them when you have not got the right thing to show for it?

“There is still a huge conversation to have about mental wellbeing. It should focus on behaviours, the way I talk to myself, my boundaries, other people’s boundaries, and the things bound up in being human that help or do not help me live a happier or more content life.

“Most people I have met want to be happy and successful, but they do not know what success is. Success is different for everybody. For one person, it might be accumulating as much money as they can. For someone else, it might be getting to go home at 2:30 to pick their son up from school.

“We live through aspirational hope, and hope is not a very strong strategy for success because it has no parameters. We need to ask ourselves: What do I want from life? What makes me happy? What am I carrying that I do not need to carry anymore?

“That applies to teams as well. Everything I talk about has resonance with us as individuals at home and at work. That gets us closer to true mental wellbeing because very often we are barking up the wrong tree.”

Question 2. Why has success become the default measure of a good life, and what does that cost people psychologically?

Jez Rose: “I think this notion of prioritising success over happiness is endemic. I do not think it is conscious. We have a lot of legacy behaviour.

“Think about keep calm and carry on. It was a great piece of advice during the war, for obvious reasons, but it should have been left with the war because keep calm and carry on now kills people. It does not work anymore.

“Yet it is still in our vernacular. It is still the idea that we keep on. That differs around the world. The way white westerners think about death is different to people in the east, for example.

“We behave in ways that are not very conscious. It comes from legacy behaviour, from what we were taught and from what we see being done.

“There is also the wider culture of everything being available now. If everything is available now, we can get it now and move on quicker. With a laptop or phone, I can work 24 hours a day. Before, we could not do that.

“Technology has evolved and we have not really questioned it. Our behaviour has been modelled by that. We have been silently modelled to work more and more because apparently that means we are more successful.

“It needs addressing consciously, so we realise we have been prioritising success over our own happiness or contentment. The two are slightly different. You may want to be content rather than happy.”

Question 3. When someone can see their own habits are working against them, how can they identify what actually needs to change?

Jez Rose: “There is a clear model I have used for years to help us understand where in life we may be more burnt out and where we may not be prioritising the things that matter most.

“Take a blank piece of paper and a pen. On the left-hand side, write down all the things you love doing in life. Be really honest. It could be work, chocolate, a cup of tea in the morning before the kids are up, a walk in the woods, rainy days, sex, whatever it is.

“Once you have exhausted that list, score each thing between zero and 10, where zero means you never do it and 10 means you do it all the time.

“For me, I love walking my dog. Woody is a massive part of my life, so walking the dog would be on my list and it would score 10 because I walk him twice a day.

“I do not drink alcohol, so drinking alcohol would not be on my list. But if you like drinking alcohol, you might include it.

“Very quickly, you will see which things score lower. That list shows your core needs. Identifying unmet core needs is a very important part of preventing burnout. If you are feeling burnt out, I would put quite a lot of money on this list having a lot of low scores.

“You may say you do not have time. If you do not have time for those things, that is something only you can address. If it is an issue, you must address it.”

This exclusive interview with Jez Rose was conducted by Tabish Ali of the Motivational Speakers Agency.