Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free right now.

Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

This is the 10% Happier podcast.

I'm Dan Harris.

Music I'm Dan Harris.

Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how are we doing today?

Burnout characterized by chronic workplace stress that is not effectively managed is, I am sad to say, on the rise.

A recent study found 22% of American workers rated their level of burnout as high or very high.

And globally, according to another survey, levels of burnout are at 43%. So what do we do about this? Well, today we've got two of the pioneers in the field

of self-compassion. That is a term that, as I have often joked, can sound variously soft or gauzy or

vaguely auto-erotic, but there is hard data suggesting that self-compassion can have compelling,

psychological, physiological, and even behavioral impacts. And my guests today have been

responsible for leading many of those studies. These two humans have had a huge impact on

my thinking about human flourishing and my own personal well-being. And they've recently put out a book

called Mindful Self-Compassion for Burnout, Tools to Help You Recharge when You Are Overwhelmed by Stress.

Said guests are Dr. Kristen Neff, an associate professor of education psychology at the University of

Texas at Austin,

and her longtime compadre Christopher Gürmer, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and lecturer on

psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. We talk about how to know if you are burnt out,

the three main symptoms of burnout, their causes and their health consequences,

the three components of self-compassion and how they can help here, the inner critic and why

we kick our own asses, how to draw appropriate boundaries with your boss, the difference between

...