Running on empty - or just dirt in the fuel line?

Do you feel like there is more energy, focus, and power inside you, but something is blocking it from coming through?

In this episode, John explores burnout, overwhelm, and the hidden blocks that stop men from operating at their full potential. Using the story of a tractor losing power because of dirt in the fuel line, he explains how men can have the energy, vision, and ability inside them, but still feel drained when fear, control, and pressure get in the way.

John talks about the difference between physical tiredness and deeper mental drain, why trying to control everything can leave you exhausted, and how people pleasing, proving, perfectionism, and protecting can quietly steal your energy. He also shares why trusting the process, accepting where you are, and giving energy back to yourself is the key to moving from burnout back into freedom.

For more on the Deru approach to leadership from the inside out, visit www.derunation.com

00:01:20 — Running on High or Running on Empty

00:02:30 — Dirt in the Fuel Line

00:04:15 — Burnout and Overwhelm

00:06:35 — Alignment and Energy

00:08:45 — Trusting the Process

00:10:30 — Control and Mental Drain

00:13:05 — The Four Cloaks of Fear

00:16:10 — Giving Energy Back to Yourself

00:18:20 — Permission to Trust Life 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And this allows us to be free. It allows us to be free to think what we want to think. It allows us to be free to feel how we want to feel and to do what we want to do and to have what we want to do. So literally, you get your freedom back. Because the reason you're burnt out or overwhelmed is basically you feel trapped by what what whatever it is that's outside of you. And you need to rise above that by giving yourself the energy first. And then nothing can stop you. Welcome to the Grounded Man podcast by Deru. I am your host, John Douglas, and founder of Deru. And this space is for hardworking men building businesses, carrying responsibility, and providing for their families who feel they should be freer. You see, the world has changed, and leading through hard work and long hours now limits a man's influence. The new way is mastering the inner game of leadership so you can carry it well, enjoy what you're building, and still feel free. Deru is leadership for the 21st century. Hello, it's John Douglas here, and you're very welcome to this week's episode of the Grounded Man Podcast. Are you running on high this week or are you running on empty? That's really the theme of this week's show. And I want to go back to 2025, last year. I want to tell you a quick story. So we bought a tractor off a friend of mine last year, and uh it was in good shape, low hours, brought in from the UK. And after about a month of driving it, I noticed the power started to slip in in the tractor. And uh and I took all the implements off the back of it, so I didn't have any anything else to uh kind of lose its power. So just to test it and see what it was like for itself, and I drove it up our hill here on the lane uh outside the house. And these tractors now like rev rev-wise should get up to like 2-2, 2-3. It was only tipping up at like 17, 1800 max, so it was losing power somewhere, and uh the tank was full. So um obviously it wasn't, you know, it wasn't because of lack of a lack of diesel in the tractor. Um before any of you make uh some quick jokes there, because I have I've had plenty of experience of that with chainsaws or lawnmowers and things that start smoking and spluttering before they run out of fuel. But uh thankfully it wasn't it wasn't the case in this this time, but it was uh there was dirt in the fuel line, and hence the title of this week's episode. And the dirt in the fuel line was blocking basically the fuel that was already there. So there was a power there, if you like, an energy there, potential ready to be turned into a horsepower, and uh it was getting blocked by just little pieces of dirt in the line, and they came out to fix it, to change the filter, that kind of thing, and it it went, it went back fine. It was uh it was running running like a well-oiled machine, as they say. But sometimes when we're thinking about ourselves in this, are we running like a well-oiled machine? Do we feel like that? Or do we feel like there's there's more in us, but we just can't seem to get it out of ourselves. You know, maybe we feel like we're operating in kind of second gear, third gear because we just feel tired or drained or overwhelmed. And we know there's fifth gear potential in us because we've been there before. We've had weeks where we've been really high, really positive, really energized. And we've had weeks then where we feel like you know, we don't even want to get out of bed. We're kind of maybe questioning what's it all for, and that's the opposite end of the scale. And so today I want to leave a bit of space to talk about burnout and overwhelm in leadership and in business because it's it's very common. It's very common because we take on so many different roles and responsibilities and different hats and different tasks, and we have a habit of just saying yes to things and doing more and maybe not setting boundaries like we should that protect our time and energy. And so what we find that actually happens, this is the problem that arises that we actually give out more than we get back. And I'm not talking about literally giving to other people and doing too much. If you're doing too much and you have too much going on, you can burn yourself out. There's no doubt about it. You can physically just be tired and burnt out. And in that case, you know, maybe it's just about taking a taking a weekend off, taking a few days, take a week just to be easy, do a bit of an integration week. You're not doing anything too heavy, just some light work till you recharge your batteries, and those weeks are good to you know, get back to the gym, do some meditation, get out for some walks in nature to revitalize and recharge yourself. That's one element of it. But that's there's something deeper here. That's I'm gonna say that's an easier problem to fix because that's just basically slow down and you know get some clarity and get refocused and get going again. But there's a different way of looking at this, that there's more of a constant, there's a constant under underperformance, if you like, constantly underperforming below your capability, below your level of potential. And uh you can feel it inside, but you can't quite put your finger on it. And so that's the problem. The problem is that we can't really see what the problem is, but yet we feel maybe drained or feel overwhelmed or burnt out. So we're putting too much energy outside of ourselves in this case, because it's just a simple sum. If we're if we're not feeling like we're energized and feeling like we're really positive and a positive energy and consistently out there, well then there's something blocking that. Because unlike a machine, this is the big difference between a machine and a human being or a machine and a living thing. Unlike a machine that can run out of fuel, we're living things don't run out of fuel. And that's when maybe we say they die, okay? That's when their their life has ended. But for us, we all as long as we're alive, we always have life in us, okay? Seems simple, okay, but sometimes we forget this. So as long as we're alive, we always have life in us. But if we don't feel it, okay, we can't access it. And so we have to allow ourselves to kind of feel into that uh into that power. And uh, we can't feel into that power if there's if if we're blocking it, basically. And so the whole process that I use in Deru working with my clients is alignment, aligning inside. So knowing where you're you know, what your purpose and vision is and aligning from that place to really energize your life. So you're not being pulled by problems, you're actually being led by something purposeful, and then aligning your identity and your standards and your your roles and responsibilities around that purpose. And your purpose is not just one thing, it's it can be multiple things. It can be at the weekend amount of a different purpose to Monday morning. So your purpose is is multidimensional, and so are you, but it's about knowing who to be at the right times and knowing how to show up at the right times. And you know, you have different seasons in life, seasons where you push hard, seasons when you slow down, seasons when you reflect, seasons when you recharge and cover, seasons when you enjoy. So it's about knowing, like knowing a good rhythm for yourself, where you you you're not in this burnout cycles, but you're actually in a consistently good energy. And yeah, from time to time you'll need an extra break, or from time to time you need to push harder, that's that's perfectly normal. But just you know yourself through the rhythm that you're living, basically. And that's where you want to get to. That's ultimately what freedom would look like when we're consistently be able to stay in that state. But if we can't get there, if we can't get into that good rhythm where we're looking after ourselves, looking after our family, looking after our business to the best of its ability because we're drained, what's happening? Where's the gap? And I've I've really defined from working with guys over the last couple of years, we've really defined that most of the energy is drained because we don't trust the process. And in order to trust the process, we need to trust ourselves, we need to trust others, and we need to trust life. So that's really making up trust the process. And so when we don't trust that, we don't have that kind of positive fate there. What do we have instead? Well, we actually have is we have we try to control everything. We become control freaks and essentially. But you know, it's good to have a sense of control. Your identity gives you a sense of control, your vision gives you a sense of control, your standards give you a sense of control, your structure gives you a sense of control, your strategy does. Your trust in other people give you a sense of control, but they're only a sense of control. There's no real such thing as control. It's just a sense of control. So when we become control freaks, we're trying to control too much. Things that we can't control, the uncontrollables, as I've spoken about before. We try and control other people, other events, the timing, the unfoldment, and trying to control everything is what drains us because what are we trying to do? We're trying to force something outside of ourselves to line up and come in, come to us or unfold in a certain way. And you know, that's that can come down to you know, you don't want certain people to say certain things, you don't want certain people to do certain things, you don't want certain things to happen. And so you're trying to control too much of life. And this is the gap from moving away from trying to control everything that you can't and move it to controlling what you can. Control your own thoughts, control your own emotions, control your own actions, your own behaviors, and you will find that you start to trust yourself more. And when you start to trust yourself more, you're actually able to communicate better. And therefore, you start to build stronger relationships with others, so now you can trust them. And then you start to trust not only yourself and others, now you start to untrust life itself and the unfoldment process and kind of surrender to it a little bit, not surrender to responsibility, not surrender the ambition, surrender the negative energy that it comes from draining it, trying to control it all, trying to kind of choke it and grip it too tight. You see, it takes a lot of energy to put up borders. Okay? So when I'm talking about setting boundaries, I don't mean putting up borders. Putting up borders is trying to when you're defending yourself, you're protecting yourself. You start to use almost battlefield language when you're talking about life, you know, it's a struggle, I'm in the trenches, I'm on the front line, it's a war out there. We start to use this kind of language, very protective language, like the way a country might put up borders. You know, there and you know, I think of customs and taxes, they're all a way to protect borders, to protect in a trade sense. Then there's physical boundaries to protect the geography, the geographical uh borders. Or there's in a courtroom, if you want to defend yourself in the courtroom, you have to pay solicitors an awful lot of money to defend you. So this whole defensive and protection, it costs a lot of energy. It costs so much energy. And where is it going? It's all going out, it's all leaving you, and there's no energy going into you. There's no energy, you're not putting any energy into yourself in thinking, what do I want? You know, you might feel bad for asking, but ask yourself, what do I want in all this? What about me? And not in a not in a selfish way, but in actually a way that you're true to yourself. Being true to yourself, being a man of your word, to you, not to anybody else, not for anyone else, for you. What do I need to be? Who do I need to be in this moment? And so what we need to let go of is we need to clear, we need to clear the air here. We need to release some things, and the things we're always releasing, it's always at the bottom of it, at the root of it, it's always a fear. And so there's four kind of identities that that we take on, especially as men in leadership, we take on these because we've grown up with them, and that's where they've come. They've came came from childhood, it came from how we're brought up and how we learn to be safe and feel supported and feel secure as children. And so we brought this into how we work. And the four things that we need to clear are is either people pleasing, so we're a pleaser. And I just to explain very quickly, this is when you're maybe saying yes when you should be saying no. This is when you tiptoe around people, you tread on eggshells around people, you avoid difficult conversations. We're pleasing people, we're pleasing other people, and that's a fear there. There's proving that's another fear. We're trying to earn our success, we're trying to deserve it, we're trying to feel worthy of it, whatever it is, success, money, time, enjoyment, whatever that might be. We're trying, we need to, we need to we feel a need to prove ourselves, to prove we can do it, to prove that we're worth it, and we seek external validation from others because of that. The third one is perfectionism. We're trying to do everything too perfectly, we don't give ourselves permission to fail. And ironically, even before I record these episodes every week, I have to tell myself, give myself permission to fail. Because if I feel like I'm trying to control what I'm saying every second, I just limit myself. And that's the problem with control. You limit your life when you do that, that's the cost of it. And so that's the third one is perfectionism. We need, and that's only fear wearing a cloak again. And the last one is protecting. And I've mentioned already protecting, but protecting is when you kind of trying to exclude yourself, take yourself away from people to protect yourself. Again, you might avoid some conversations, you might not speak up, you might suppress your inner emotions because of what other people will feel. Maybe they'll think you're weird if you say what's actually really going on inside. And so, in all these things, the pleasing, the proving, the perfectionism, or the protecting, they're all just four, they're four cloaks of fear. They're all fear just wearing different colored cloaks. We need to get rid of them because they all rely on what other people think and feel. And when I say other people, remember it's not just the man in the street. I'm talking about the people closest to you, your tribe, this is your wife, this is your kids, your parents, your brothers and sisters, your team at work, your peers, your family, your best friends, your neighbors. That's who I'm talking about. These are people who are real to you. We're afraid of what those people might think or say if we if we do something and it doesn't go to plan, and uh what what will they think of us? So we try to control everything. Using those kind of four different cloaks, we try and control everything, and we end up drained because all the energy is going out to try and put on a face or a facade or make something look a certain way for the optics, and inside we're we're torn, we're separated, we're not giving any energy to what to who we are. So we're living from the outside in, it's all from the outside in, and that that that's why it's pressure, and that's why it's draining, that's why it's it's overwhelming because there's so much outside of us. It's not just people, there's markets and events and politics and uh economics, there's so many things going on. Social media, the news, sport, music, there's so much stuff going on. When we're too focused on outside, we don't have a we don't actually literally put enough energy into ourselves. Because our our awareness, our consciousness, our attention, that's where our energy flows through. And if we if we don't put it into ourselves and say, What do we want? What can I do? What is something I can do for myself in all this? Well, then we're not giving ourselves energy. And so this is where we actually have something in the in the fuel line that's blocking that. So it's like, why am I not doing that? It might be just conditioning and habit that I'm used to putting myself last. That might be it, and that needs to change because again, it's like putting the oxygen mask, it needs to go on you first, because if you're not here, you're not much benefit to anybody else. So you need to look after yourself first and foremost, and that then you can show up at your best for other people. So, what do you need to accept? And this is the hard part in all this because in accepting something, it almost feels like you're portraying who you've always been. Because maybe you need to accept that you haven't got back what you put in. Maybe you need to accept that that everything I put into date, I'm actually questioning was it all worth it? That's hard to take. Your ego needs to hear this and needs to take it on the chin. Maybe you're not where you want to be. Maybe you think you should be further ahead, and you need to accept that you're not. You need to separate the facts from the story here. So the facts are you are where you are. The story might be I'm way behind. Separate the two of them. But in all this accepting this, things maybe are not the way I want them to be. You have to trust that the process isn't broken and that you're not broken either. We just need to remember. Remember what we can control, remember what we can't, and trust the process. You need to get yourself into alignment, having a good energy. How do you want to show up today? Do you want to feel drained? If you want to feel energized, think of ideas that energize you. What energizes you? Being with family and friends, doing something exciting in business, going on an adventure. Like it's it's it's child talk, but it's we're adults and we're at the center of it. We were all children, we were still coming from that place, so it's very relevant to us. Don't dismiss it because it's playful or because it seems childish. At the end of the day, these are the simple things we want in life. Think of what excites you, let your mind think of it because you'll get your energy back to that because it's what you want, not what you think other people want you to be. So you need to give yourself permission. Okay, you need to give yourself permission to trust the process. You have to give yourself permission to not take life so seriously. Because events happen in life. We don't control it all. If you think about it, we're we're one dot spinning around uh Earth, which is a whole dot in the solar system, in the galaxy, in the universe, we're spinning around here. Really, in some ways, we're insignificant, and at the same time, it's a bloody miracle we're even here. Okay? So we need to start thinking about that, giving ourselves permission to trust the process here. Um, life happens, events happen, but you experience them by how you choose to think about them. And so when you choose to tell a story that's negative, you create a negative experience for yourself. So start to choose a positive story, practice some gratitude, be grateful for things as they are, because you have expectations and you have what's actually happening outside. And if your expectations are way ahead of what's actually happening, that in itself will drain you. One guy I've been working with now for over a year, when we started working together, he was going through boom bush cycles. Every quarter he'd go through a high period, then he'd be burnt out and he'd he'd kind of have to take a break for a week, and then for another week he'd be getting back into it. So it's this boom bush cycle with his own energy. And to become consistent, he had to change how he was talking to himself, change how he's seen himself. Uh, he had to, you want, and now his his main aim is to stay in a positive, consistent energy all the time because he knows he can handle whatever, whatever's thrown at him in this state. But in talking to him on our one-to-one sessions, the burnout was coming from the mental drain, the overload. It wasn't from the physical workload, it was always the mental drain. And that's always because of what we're thinking about it. We're our stories that we're telling ourselves about our lives, they're the things that are even either bringing positivity to it or bringing negativity to it. So ensure you're bringing positivity to those stories and to your own life rather than negativity. Okay, we don't need to make it any more difficult than it already is. Um and it should be an enjoyable experience. Yes, we have pain points, but we shouldn't be suffering all the time because of that. But we will if we continue to burn out. So, what's the impact if we do change our ways, if we do accept this and give ourselves permission to accept, trust the process? Well, then we can surrender to life's flow. And that might be a little bit abstract or a little bit wishy-washy, but you you you've you've experienced this. You've experienced moments of magic when it's it's almost a symbiotic relationship with you and life. You know, you have those serendipities where things just happen, or you you think of somebody, and the next day they ring you, and you you have this kind of connection with life. We all have that. We need to remember that it's there. And when we trust the process, we're trusting that it's there, that it's always there. We won't we won't forget it. We build our fate on that. And this allows us to be free. It allows us to be free to think what we want to think, it allows us to be free to feel how we want to feel and to do what we want to do and to have what we want to do. So literally, you get your freedom back because the reason you're burnt out or overwhelmed is basically you feel trapped by what what whatever it is that's outside of you, and you need to rise above that by giving yourself the energy first, and then nothing could stop you. So, as a closing remark, I want you to remember that the energy that's inside you, which comes through your thinking, which comes through your spirit, it's inexhaustible. It doesn't matter what's happened in the past, you can choose to change your thinking today. You can think about whatever you want, and in doing so, that will start to create a new future for yourself. So give yourself the time and space to think about this, or else you continue to run on empty. So, to reflect on this week, where's the dirt in your fuel line? What's the thing that's blocking that power? Is it a lack of vision, a lack of clarity, a lack of standards, a lack of structure? Where do you need to protect your time and energy more so that you own it and not somebody or something else? Thanks for listening and have a great week. Thank you so much for listening today. I really enjoy sharing this wisdom because it doesn't come from me, it comes through me, from the work I do with men like you that I serve. So if the idea shared today resonated, be sure to like and follow the show. And if another man would value it, share this episode with him. Because the more men who hear this, the more of us can break free from pressure and enjoy what we're building. So let's enjoy the build together. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week.