Behind The Bio: The Real Story of my Mission to Prevent Burnout

Sal, photographed by Suzanne Blanchard

My bio is a snazzy little snapshot that outlines my expertise on burnout, wellbeing and making workplaces healthier and happier. But the real story goes far beyond my achievements or my highlight reel. It’s much deeper – and far messier – than a few bullet points.

Today I’m going to share my backstory with more vulnerability. Not just the glossy accomplishments, but also the rock bottom moments, the failures learning opportunities that have shaped who I am, and what I do now. Because I haven’t stopped chasing success, I’ve just drastically changed my definition of success and my approach to achieving it. And I know I’m not alone in this journey of turning challenging to insight.

Corporate Ascent & Collapse

After growing up in country South Australia, I graduated from law school with little idea of what I wanted to do. While others around me were already on their first steps towards law firm partner status, I travelled and held temporary roles in banks and law firms in London. After a short stint at a Japanese company, I landed – by complete coincidence – a role in corporate finance at the Amsterdam offices of a top UK (now global) firm.

Immediately, I was entranced. It all appeared so glossy and glamorous. And for a while, it seemed like I was thriving in this high-stakes environment. Working on multi-billion dollar transactions, pulling all nighters, clocking countless billable hours. The firm demanded, and I gave, enjoying the external validation that this magic-circle role afforded.

On the inside, I was hollow. I was constantly overwhelmed by my workload and the demands on my time and energy. I’d close the door to sob at my desk. Every time I came close to acknowledging how bad things were, I’d tell myself to ‘harden up’ and get over it. I’d figure ‘it’ll get better after this next deadline’, or ‘I’ll rest in the summer time’. Neither ever happened. I masked brilliantly. Until, eventually, late one night, I collapsed in the arrivals hall of a regional airport. I started crying and I couldn’t stop.

Finally, I could no longer deny the fact that something was drastically wrong.

The Pivotal Shift: A Search for Deeper Understanding

There was much I loved, and still love, about the legal profession, but at that moment I knew I needed to leave. I needed the objectivity that perspective demands. Over the course of a year, while my body and mind healed from the effects of burnout, I retrained as a yoga and meditation teacher. I sought a deeper understanding of myself and started to unpack the beliefs that had propelled me into burnout. I sustained myself with copywriting and translation work, travelled extensively, and enjoyed brilliant conversations with new friends and old. When the opportunity to teach retreats in Morocco and Portugal presented, I leapt.

Eventually, I started to study the root causes of burnout and develop the frameworks for burnout prevention that informed my books. As I delved deep into the tomes of research on burnout, an insight dawned that changed everything. Burnout was not my fault. All the research confirmed it: burnout was not weakness, or failure, or a lack of trying on my part. Burnout was simply my body’s intelligent response to chronic workplace stress.

This insight helped me let go of the shame and self-blame I had been holding onto for years. In doing so, I freed up energy, focus and authenticity I’d only dreamt of.

Personal Discovery to Professional Expertise

Delving into the research into burnout brought came clarity, and a higher level understanding of the roots of burnout. It was like I was zooming out from the day-to-day lived experience I’d had working in a highly stressful environment, and seeing the bigger picture, including things like:

• Why chronic stress feels like the baseline of modern life (yet does us so much harm).

• How our societies have shifted towards work as our sole source of self-identity in recent decades – and what makes this dangerous to our health.

• How modern technology means we can always be working, so many of us are always working.

• That many of us are taught from a young age to focus on external accomplishments as a means of measuring self-worth, and the impact this has on our ability to set boundaries around our work lives.

It wasn’t until I was living in California, mid-pandemic, that I poured all of this research, plus my own interviews, conversations and experiences, into what ultimately became two short, powerful books: Protect Your Spark and Relight Your Spark. My intention was to create a friendly, accessible and expert guide to anyone looking to avoid or heal from burnout. Both became instant Amazon bestsellers.

Naturally, it wasn’t long before all this highly nerdy research translated into me contributing to the oeuvre by co-authoring the annual State of Workplace Burnout report. Delving into this research, starting to lead my own burnout prevention programs, and cohosting the We Are Human Leaders (soon rebranding to Live+Work More Human, watch this space!) podcast formed a healthy focus as I navigated divorce and moving back to Amsterdam amid pandemic lockdowns.

In retrospect, my burnout feels like a professional reckoning, and divorce a personal one. Between them, they’ve forced a great deal of learning, integration and growth. While I would never wish either experience on anyone, with the wondrous benefit of hindsight, I’m grateful for where they’ve brought me now.

The Core Mission: Embedding Wellbeing at Work

Over the years my mission has become incredibly clear to me: how can I help and empower others to avoid going through what I went through. By embedding wellbeing in who we are as individuals, and in our workplaces themselves. It is very much an and/and approach. Focusing exclusively on individual resilience is like handing people an umbrella and expecting them to survive a tsunami. We need to ensure workplaces foster sustainable, healthy systems and cultures that nourish wellbeing.

The business case is simple, and, thankfully, backed by abundant research. Embedding wellbeing at work creates a culture of high performance, reduced absenteeism, higher retention, and increased productivity. Some people –including some senior leaders – still believe, consciously or otherwise, that high quality work and personal wellbeing are mutually exclusive.

Hearteningly, an increasing number of organisations – including those with whom I work – are shifting to a focus on wellbeing knowing that wellbeing is the seed, not the inhibitor, of sustained high performance and amazing collaborative outcomes.

Ending Burnout: A Lifelong Journey & Mission

I’m not too far off 48, and it’s been an incredible life so far. Today, bringing my stress management and burnout prevention programs to councils, law firms and other organisations around Australia brings me an enormous amount of meaning. Having been to the depths of burnout myself, partnering with leaders seeking meaningful change in their own organisation is inspiring, heartening, and purposeful.

I can’t undo the burnout I experienced. But I can support individuals to chart a path towards wellbeing, and organisations towards a healthy, thriving culture.

Work with me.