“Am I in the driver’s seat, or am I being dragged behind the car?”

A virtual coffee with Subira Jones.

Last week I had dinner with my friends, who are heading into their third year of their degree, and all the dissertation chat was enough to stress me out, never mind them.

Fast forward a week, it’s Tuesday morning, a lovely 20 degrees outside, one of the first warm mornings of the season. I don’t work Tuesdays, usually I have university, but since I’m done for a very long summer, it’s my ‘day off’. I’ve spent the past few weeks at 100mph, trying to tick everything off of my to-do list, but nothing seems to be getting done. As the clock on my laptop turns 11:00 the Zoom call connects, and I’m greeted by Subria sitting outside making the most of the sun.

Subira Jones is an Award Winning Keynote speaker, also known as the Corporate Hippie, who specialises in burnout and fireproof careers. Subira is trusted by companies such as Soho Works, Sky and Channel 4 and won the “Young Businessperson Award” in 2023. I first came across Subira and her work in December 2023 when I attended a PR conference in London.

For half an hour we spoke about burnout, entering the real adult world after uni, dissertations, burnout-free lifestyles and stepping out of comfort zones.

In the spirit of this story, grab a cup of tea, a handful of biscuits and get ready to learn about yourself, and how to take care of you.

A really important question, that I think we all need to know the answer to, kick-started our interview:

How can we determine if we are burnt out or run down?

“They do present very similarly in terms of the physical, emotional, and mental symptoms of them. So for example with being burnt out or run down you can feel irritated, your tolerance may be shortened, you may feel like you get headaches, or your body feels a bit weaker. You may feel like you’re a bit overwhelmed with all that you have to do. Both of them can make you feel like that.”

With both presenting the same, but the treatments, approach and recovery being extremely different, Subira has created a triage of two questions to help us decipher where we’re at.

“The first question is do I feel like I’m in control of my life? Am I in the driving seat, the passenger seat or am I being dragged behind the car? When people are experiencing burnout, they tend to find that they need a sense of agency and autonomy. They no longer feel like they are in control, and that’s one of the main differences between being run down and burnt out.”

“The second question that people can ask themselves is, do I have a clear sense of purpose, vision and direction for my life? If you know why you’re working, what you’re working towards, what your goals are, what your ideals are and you’re feeling maybe overwhelmed, irritated, achy, you’re just run down, it’s fine, you’re still in control. You still know where you’re going, what you’re doing.”

Subira has coined the term “Fireproof Career”, something we should all strive for.

How would you best describe a ‘fireproof’ career?

“Having a ‘fireproof’ career is intentionally creating a career that fuels you and doesn’t consume you. So a couple of ways to do this is to have an idea of why you’re doing that career, even if it’s not your dream job or dream role, how does it fit into the bigger picture of the career you’d like to have. And that’s really important because as I said, to prevent burnout you need to retain your sense of control. even if you don’t know how it fits into the bigger picture, think of: what can I get from this experience?”

“Even if you don’t know what you wanna do as a career, I didn’t, I had an investment job. I had a job in the investment world, which for some people might have been a career but for me, it wasn’t because I was just doing it, I didn’t know how it fit into the bigger picture”

“When I first came out of uni I threw myself into waitressing because my life was an absolute shambles and I was just tryna keep myself going, keep myself moving”

When Subira burnt out, she had the opportunity to reflect back on her previous jobs, and what she enjoyed during her waitressing and investment days. She enjoyed working with people, making them feel amazing, having variety and autonomy over her work but also enjoyed creating reports, using analytics, and using her academic brain.

“No matter what was happening in their world, when they came in that restaurant, I was going to give them a five-star dining experience and make them feel really important.”

Subira is full of career advice and priceless knowledge. As students it can seem daunting, going into the real world: “I also would say for uni students start building your LinkedIn profile. It’s so important to build a professional network, even if it’s just your classmates now because they’ll go to different industries and organisations, so you can stay up to date with what’s going on in that company, that industry, what opportunities might be around, what new things are happening, start looking at connecting with people who you admire”

Do you think social media and technology have a role in burnout?

“I think it’s a yes and no response, I think we have seen that during the pandemic for example, that kind of access, technological advancement enabled us to stay connected to the world, which meant we could still attend online lectures or still attend online meetings. Business kept going. I think the real issue with technology is not actually technological problems, it’s a human problem. Are you giving yourself permission to switch off? Are you having working hours?”

Since COVID-19, humans have become accustomed to a hybrid lifestyle, meaning the fine line between work and play becomes even more blurred. Not knowing when to switch off can signify your work becoming where you find your identity.

“Are you working all hours that God sends us because that’s where you find your identity, and you’re lost without work because you don’t feel like there’s anything productive in your own personal life that you can do? You’re not happy with your personal life so you’re throwing yourself into work. Which was definitely my story.”

“There are periods and seasons in my life where I will prioritise work, but it doesn’t define me or define who I am which means I can then switch off and do other things. But because I also am a business owner, work is always on my brain. Because of the line of work I do, which is work by success, it naturally will come into play. The difference is I no longer am defining my self-worth, my value, my identity on the work I do and the outcome of that work.”

Is there anything Universities / Workplaces can put in places to bring awareness of burnout?

“Actually hold talks or webinars that teach people what burnout is because it is a condition, it’s really hard to acknowledge its happening until you’re in the midst of it. So think of a house fire. Burnout is like a housefire, in that house fires don’t instantaneously combust, they are creeper phenomenon’s. They go from room to room, flame to flame, furniture to furniture. You don’t realise it’s happening unless number one you have a smoke alarm installed, or you are in the midst of the flames. So you have to be preventative, to make sure that you don’t get  engulfed.”

“Even in second year how do you start creating the apprenticeships, the internships all these opportunities before you even graduate. There are things we can do as students going into the working world to put us a cut above, maybe our peers. That separates us from those who are just going with the flow and those intentionally actually trying to create a life. I see your life as your lifestyle plus your career.”

“For the staff I think it’s really investing in the staff and just letting them know actually you are important, we’re investing in you by helping you understand what burnout is and how to prevent it.”

I know you resigned in 2019 from the investment industry, have you got any advice for someone who is struggling to leave somewhere they are ‘comfortable’?

“ I’d say the first thing is do you want it? It’s not gunna happen if you don’t want it. If you wanna stay comfortable where you are, that is fine. Some people have a job, some people have a career.”

“If you wanna have a career then you need to put yourself out there and be willing to expose yourself to that risk. In doing so, find the people who have already done what you’re doing, see if you can have a virtual coffee with them. Get to know  their journey, their experience, and learn from their experience.”

“If you’re someone that’s thinking about doing your own business, then you need to have a really clear understanding of where financial stability falls in your core values. So if financial stability is in your top three core values, in that you need to know how much money you’re having every month, and that money needs to come in reliably every month for you to feel comfortable, and not overwhelmed and stressed , then you are not an entrepreneur.”

Subira is strong on core values, and says if financial stability is one of the main ones, then the uncertainty can be a huge factor of burning out. It is so important to know what you want.

You found yourself ‘stuck in the cycle’, what signified the end of that cycle?

“I got sick and tired of the cycle, I was aware that I was living in the cycle, and I thought there has to be more to life.”

“ I was constantly in a state of fight or flight and then I got diagnosed with MS. I might [have been] performing really well under these circumstances, i.e. did my dissertation, getting promoted in the investment world but it’s clearly not working for me, there has to be more to life than this.”

Did you find that after your diagnosis of MS that finding the resources was more difficult than before?

“ Absolutely, resources being my own  internal resources, my energy levels weren’t there. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t stay awake, I was experiencing chronic fatigue. I couldn’t control my own body, so my internal resources weren’t there. But externally they weren’t there either.”

“ I just found in my research that those people without a disability, the unemployment rate was 5% in 2019. For those with a disability, the unemployment rate was over 50% so I knew it wasn’t a me problem, I knew it was a stigma around having a disability. The resources, the opportunities just weren’t there, I had to create my own and that’s how I happen to this line of work that I’m doing now, working with different corporates and so forth.”

I know you mentioned your dissertation, is there anything I can include in my story:

“My final year of university I studied economics. I got a phone call from my younger sister who was living in London, I was studying in Wales, that my mum had just had a heart attack and the paramedics are trying to resuscitate her on the kitchen floor. My mum was my best friend, so naturally my world fell apart underneath me, and I had a decision to make. Do I stay in London with my mum who’s now in a coma and there’s nothing I can do to control the situation, or do I decide to go back to university and complete my economics degree because at that time, it was the only thing I had control over, and it was my final year.”

“I was a bit of a stress addict, so I preferred doing things that kept me busy, kept the adrenaline going, that I had control over. So I went back to university in Wales, I completed my degree which included my dissertation.”

Subira wrote her 10,000 word dissertation in 48 hours whilst her mum was in a coma, starting on Sunday and finishing one minute before the deadline.  

“I had no hypothesis.”

“It is Sunday it is 11am. So I’m sitting there wracking my brain going what do I do, what do I do , what do I do. I have no hypothesis I’m literally sitting there praying saying God give me a hypothesis , like I need you to give me a hypothesis because I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m so glad that God is real because I got a hypothesis out of nowhere and I called my sister, my older sister in London with my mum, excited like I got a hypothesis, she went that’s great, now go and write the bloody thing.”

Some parting advice from Subira was, make sure to care about the subject you’re doing, remind yourself why you’re doing it, remember the bigger picture and focus on your purpose.

Your mind matters, your body matters, and being in control matters.

Subira has a website where you can discover her services : https://www.subirajones.com/ .