Burn Out, or Burn Bright?
- Brainz Magazine
- Jul 2
- 10 min read
Written by Gareth Edward Jones, Visionary Technology Leader, Environmentalist, And Social Impact Advocate
Gareth Edward Jones is a visionary technology leader with 20+ year of digital success, CIO Times Top 5 Business Leader, Executive Contributor for Brainz Magazine, UN SDG Advocate and Co-Founder of Lightrise, and Trustee of the Lightrise Foundation
The brain is the most expensive organ in the body, not in terms of pounds or pence, but in terms of calories. It burns through more energy than anything else we carry around.
At 5ft 6 (and a half), I was always acutely aware that size would not be my strong point. My mind was always my sharpest tool. I realized early on that if I continued to feed it information, I could go a long way. The world has never been short of knowledge, and that’s never been more true than it is now. If you want to do something, you can learn how from books or the internet; it’s all there in the most extraordinary library humanity has ever jointly created.
So when people talked about “mental health,” I assumed it was just a polite way of saying weakness. A breakdown? Not me. I couldn’t imagine a scenario where my mind would break.
But it can. Mind, body, spirit, each one can fracture, and I learned that the hard way.
The first time anxiety hit me like a freight train, I was shaking, stuck in bed, and haunted by thoughts I never thought I’d have. I was a wreck. And worse, I was ashamed. My strongest ally, my mind, had failed me, or so I thought. The truth? I had failed it. I’d bought into the Western illusion that health is all about the body. I’d neglected the rest.
So I started again. Slowly with self-care, DIY, and personal boundaries. I began to rebuild my path to mental strength, with respect to mental health, focusing on mind, body, and spirit as one. I spoke with a local counselor, someone assigned through a workplace mental health scheme. If you’re ever in that place where it feels like there’s nowhere to go, there is, always. You just need to look.
When our sessions ended, I asked myself: was I healed? Partly. She said something that stuck with me:
"You may not understand it all, but next time, you’ll have the skills to walk around the hole."
And I had, through that journey with her, through CBT, I’d reclaimed a version of my mental strength. Had I released the anger? No. But it didn’t live in me in the same way anymore.
A few years passed. I grew wiser, more experienced, stronger. Then came another challenge, this time, at work, once again, a perceived power play between senior managers. One day, a new line manager asked if I was okay. I wasn’t. I fell into the hole I thought I’d learned to walk around, and I burst into tears.
I’d broken again. I’ve always been a man of science, with a spiritual streak. So I asked myself: why? What triggered this? I wanted to go deeper than before. I sought someone with clinical credentials, someone grounded in science. I reached out to a few female practitioners, hoping for a gentler approach, but they were full. The world was still reeling from the pandemic, and mental health professionals were overwhelmed.
I’m a believer that whatever came before this life, I helped write the story I’m on today. I’m a follower of Paulo Coelho’s work and teachings. I look for signs to guide me, and then one appeared. Colin wasn’t someone I’d sought out. But the signs were there. He had the background I was looking for, and he’d once been a Microsoft consultant. He knew my world, and even knew some of the people in it. I remember thinking: Only I could’ve written that.
“Why are you here?”
“I’ve had a breakdown. I want to understand why.”
“Why are you calling it a breakdown?”
“What?”
I’d never questioned the word before. Mum had a “breakdown” before I was born. She told me about it. It was just what we called it. But that word, breakdown, implies failure. Weakness. Like something snapped. But the truth is, when we hit those moments, it’s not because we’re weak. It’s because we’ve been strong for too long. Some call it burnout.
Colin, my therapist, picked up a glass of water.
“This is you,” he said. The glass was full.
“What happens if I pour more in?”
“It spills,” I said.
And just like that, the lightbulb flickered on. I started to wake up.
“What are your red flags?”
“What are those?” I asked.
“They’re the things that shift you from a positive state to a negative one.”
So I made a list.
Lack of values in those around me
Lack of personal growth space
Lack of reward and recognition
Toxicity
Barriers to learning
I was joining the dots, and I was glad I’d found a clinical scientist with expertise in existential coaching to talk to. The depth of our conversations went far beyond the counselling I’d had years before. I wasn’t just healing; I was gaining a deeper understanding of myself and what I saw as my purpose.
What is burn out?
After years of reflection, I’ve come to think of burnout not as a breakdown, but as the moment we realise we can no longer be our whole selves in the face of personal adversity, and by adversity, I mean those red flags, the ones we ignore until our body steps in and says, “No more.”
The brain, being the most complex and expensive organ in the body, requires a strong support team. Just like your team at work, if you overload your mind, you won’t get the best results. That’s a decent metaphor for the mind-body connection. When one part of the system is overworked, the whole system suffers.
The clinical view
Since 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recognised burnout as a syndrome caused by chronic, unmanageable workplace stress. It’s characterised by:
Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion
Increased mental distance or cynicism toward one’s job
A sense of ineffectiveness or lack of accomplishment
According to a Forbes report, 66% of U.S. employees are experiencing some form of burnout. To put that into perspective, that’s 2 out of every 3 people you meet in the U.S. Western societies often teach us to treat the mind and body as separate entities. In contrast, many Eastern philosophies actively promote a unified view that encompasses the mind, body, and spirit as a single entity. This holistic approach offers a stronger foundation for wellbeing, and it’s one we’d benefit from adopting.
The biology of burnout
Science is catching up with what many of us have long suspected. Burnout isn’t just “in your head”; it’s in your nervous system, your hormones, and your immune response.
Chronic stress disrupts the autonomic nervous system and messes with cortisol levels.
It increases allostatic load the wear and tear from being “on” all the time.
It can lead to inflammation, immune dysfunction, and even structural changes in the brain.
Emotional regulation becomes harder. Stress becomes a cycle, and the cycle feeds itself.
Coping (or not)
Ant Middleton, a now disqualified director, yet respectable former member of the UK Special Forces (SAS), once said that you can use negative people like batteries. I disagree. You can’t do that.
Surround yourself with negativity long enough, and it doesn’t charge you; it drains you.
He was right about one thing, though: negative people tend to dislike positivity. They’ll try to tear it down. Watching them squirm while you focus on self-care? It’s oddly energising. Bemusing, even.
Some people turn to drugs, alcohol, or medication, and look, I’m not here to judge, the Cannabis industry, for example, is providing challenging science to the pharma-based medication as an example. These things can have a place. But they’re often crutches, not cures. They don’t rebalance the mind-body-spirit axis; in some cases, they just numb it. Are pharmaceuticals the same? I’ll leave you to evaluate.
The pharmaceutical industry would have you believe that burnout needs a pill, and sometimes, yes, medication is necessary. But let’s not pretend there isn’t always pressure behind those prescriptions. Sales targets don’t always align with well-being. In the words of Pink, “You’re just like a pill, instead of making me better, you keep making me ill”.
There's another approach that’s no longer considered fringe. For centuries, Eastern philosophies have explored the concepts of balance, breath, movement, and energy. Science is only now catching up. Medical practitioners like Dr Rangan Chatterjee offer a different approach to wellness. Check it out, and if it’s too far-fetched, just think about where Kellogg started his career with wellness retreats in Battle Creek. These concepts are not new, but somewhere we’ve forgotten our options.
Tools for your red flag list
You don’t need anything fancy. I started with a blank sheet of paper and a pencil. It worked!
However, if you want to go digital, there are now tools that help you track your emotional patterns, reflect on your triggers, and even sync with your body’s natural rhythms. Health watches are great for that.
1. Entry level tools
Pen & Paper: Still one of the best. Especially if privacy and that personal touch matter to you.
Viva Insights: Use templates to track emotional shifts across work and life. Practice mindfulness, schedule focus and quiet time, and unwind with a virtual commute. I used all these tools (after the paper), and they were part of my healing.
Ebb via Headspace: Ebb is your empathetic AI companion who helps you feel seen and understood as you experience life’s ups and downs. Built by clinical experts with your safety and privacy in mind, Ebb can guide you through relationship challenges, work stress and burnout, sleep issues, and more.
Journal by Apple : iOS lovers, make it a Journal to protect your digital notetaking securely.
2. Self-assessment templates
Always seek help from a professional to guide you through your journey of self-awareness and discovery, but if you want to explore a range of different science-based questionnaire tools, check out the scales and measures from Psychology Tools. With a range of science-backed tools for surveying Anxiety, Depression, and PTSD, you may find your first footsteps to self-reflection are supported here.
3. Habit and mood trackers
Smart watches and rings. Look for patterns between mood, sleep, and stress. You might be surprised what you find!
Smartwatches and bright rings have evolved far beyond step counters—they’re now powerful tools for tracking mood, biological rhythms, and stress patterns, offering insights that can genuinely transform your self-awareness and wellbeing.
Most modern wearables now include features that help you correlate emotional states with physiological data. Here's how they work:
Heart rate variability (HRV)
HRV is a key indicator of stress and recovery.
Lower HRV often correlates with stress, fatigue, or poor sleep.
Apps like Samsung Health, Oura, Whoop, and Apple Health use HRV to estimate your readiness or resilience.
Sleep quality
Devices track sleep stages (light, deep, REM) and disruptions.
Poor sleep often precedes mood dips or emotional reactivity.
Over time, you can spot patterns, for example, “I feel more anxious after two nights of poor REM sleep.”
Skin temperature and blood oxygen
Subtle changes in skin temperature can signal illness or stress.
Blood oxygen levels (SpO2) can reflect respiratory health and sleep quality, making them especially useful for individuals with anxiety or sleep apnea.
Activity and movement
Inactivity or erratic movement patterns can be early signs of low mood or burnout.
Some wearables nudge you to move or breathe when stress is detected.
Using your red flag list
These red flags were the holes my counsellor talked about all those years ago. But now, they weren’t metaphors. They were tangible. Real.
I grouped them. Most were work-related. No surprise there, most of us spend a considerable chunk of our lives at work.
So what do we do about them?
In my HR career, I’ve heard it all, but this one particularly sticks out. “If you don’t like it, you can leave.” But there’s another option besides flight: fight.
Now, I’m not talking about fists. The last fight I was in ended with a beer bottle over my head. Not a strategy I recommend, and one from which I still bear the scar.
Fighting can look like engaging with a company policy or a legal statute. Knowing your rights, using your voice with strength and bravery.
Sometimes it’s a survey. Sometimes it’s a review site. Sometimes it’s the pen. Yes, the pen (or keyboard) can still be mightier than the sword!
But these are personal choices. There’s no right or wrong, only what’s right for you. These are your boundaries, and your well-being; how you manage them is up to you. Both take energy. Fighting demands more energy, but when we stand up for what’s right, we drive progress forward at a much faster pace.
If you choose to walk away, know this: It’s rare to hear someone say they regret it. In fact, I can’t think of a single person in my long career who has told me they wished they’d stayed. But like all stats, there’ll be exceptions.
Consider blending your journaling with your health technology. Once you spot patterns, you can start experimenting:
Try adjusting your bedtime, caffeine intake, or screen time to see if it improves your sleep quality.
Use breathing exercises or supplements when HRV drops.
Track how these changes affect your mood and energy.
It’s like having a personalised emotional dashboard, and the more you use it, the smarter it gets, and the wiser you get too.
How to burn bright?
Remember those red flags? Now it’s time to flip the script. Those are the things you need to nurture. When you do, your energy starts to return.
However, first, let’s examine boundaries. Every one of us, from royalty to people experiencing homelessness, gets 1,440 minutes a day. Use them wisely. Balance them between mind, body, and spirit.
Not sure where to start? Look inward.
What led you to be this way?
What do you want to do with your life?
What’s that thing that quietly calls to you, even if you don’t know why?
Try it. Explore it, and if you don’t know your path yet, that’s okay too.
As Baz Luhrmann once said:
“The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.”
Need another? This one is from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland:
Alice: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
The cat: “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”
Alice: “I don’t much care where.”
The cat: “Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.”
Alice: “So long as I get somewhere.”
The cat: “Oh, you’re sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.”
If you’re goalless in a goal-obsessed world, maybe just enjoying the ride is the best place to be. After all, not all those who wander are lost.
It warrants a whole other article, but maybe we’ve got our entire concept of productivity wrong? Cal Newport’s book on Slow Productivity introduces us to the lost art of accomplishment without burnout.
Reach out to Lightrise for guidance and support in building a stronger business with a culture driven by positive impacts, or to Gareth personally.
Read more from Gareth Edward Jones
Gareth Edward Jones, Visionary Technology Leader, Environmentalist, And Social Impact Advocate
Gareth Edward Jones is a visionary technology leader, environmentalist, and social impact advocate with over two decades of experience at the intersection of people, purpose, and digital transformation. A CIO Times Top 5 Business Leader (2024–25), and Executive Contributor for Brainz Magazine. Gareth is the founder and CEO of Lightrise, where he champions ethical innovation, ESG-driven strategy, and inclusive technology solutions.
