Burnout to Brilliant: A practical guide to recharging, resetting and redesigning your life

by Dr Marny Lishman

Noticed that you're dragging yourself to work lately? Feeling cynical all the time? Exhausted throughout the day? Productivity reduced? Ready to quit? Passion you once had all but disappeared?

You might be suffering from burnout.

Written by psychologist and life coach Dr Marny Lishman, Burnout to Brilliant will give you the knowledge, mindset and motivation to create a satisfying, fulfilling and successful life post-burnout.

From understanding your values to learning how to communicate boundaries, this easy-to-read guide will give you greater self-awareness about your mental health, strengthen your ability to manage your stress levels, assist you in designing a healthier personal and professional foundation from which to operate and reignite a passion for your career.

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Psychology

288 pages, Paperback

Published December 27, 2023

Reviews

[Thomch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was simple, easy to understand and apply to your own life.

I feel that suffering from burnout can be a broad, vague issue amongst the population. Most people would have different causes to everyone else. Therefore, it’d be difficult to write a book that has umbrella solutions, and covers everything and includes everyone.
I feel that this book does a good job at balancing all the major reasons for burnout, and how to approach each issue, without being too specific or unrelatable to the reader.

I loved the practical questions in each section, helped with sorting out which issue was important to my situation.

[Leanne Shelton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a great read! I felt very seen... And the journalling prompts at the end of every chapter are fantastic!

Highly recommend this book to help you through the hardships affiliated with burnout.

[Carmel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certain books often only resonate at certain times in our lives or at least our engagement and enjoyment of them is tarnished or embellished by the situation we are in at the moment of reading them. And so I can say that this book is probably only worthwhile if you are feeling burnt out or on your way to being burnt out and want some practical views and skills provided to turn things around for the better. This was a modern easy to understand and digestible book full of great questions and answers and suggestions. I enjoyed the very practical and pragmatic way it was written. It wasn’t preachy and I appreciated such a book being written by an Australian ( as an Aussie myself) which provided a tone that I don’t normally see or feel in self help style books. I may not be on the way to brilliance but I do feel better!!!

[Megan]

Thanks to Dr Marny Lishman and Affirm Press for the review copy ahead of the 27 December publication.

This book focussed on preventing burnout through a range of practical strategies such as recognising the signals, attending to physical matters such as sleep, food and exercise, understanding your values, having important conversations about boundaries.

Set out with workbook elements at the end of each short chapter this is a useful self help guide to understanding where you are on each element and has guidance to put in place strategies for the future.

This book covers a lot of ground quickly to get you up and running with a more resilient life design. And if you want to go deeper into any issue there are a plethora of books that you could follow up with.

[Susanna Bloderer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr. Marny Lishman is an Australian psychologist who has helped many of her clients suffering from burnout to relieve their symptoms.

I genuinely wish I had come across this book much sooner, but better late than never, right?

There are many books dealing with burnout in general and what the individual person can do - putting the onus solely on that person rather than taking the enviroment into account - and I always felt that was an insufficient approach. I am glad that this author took a more wholesale approach to the very complex subject of burnout.

I thought the various examples from her clients were well-chosen, the struggles they were facing were very similar to what myself and many others are/might be going through, so just reading about other people dealing with identical/similar issues already helped me a lot in understanding that I wasn’t alone.

The advice the author gave was mostly similar to what your own Doctor would tell you: get enough sleep, eat healthy, exercise, meditate - yes, I rolled my eyes at that part - but she also acknowledged why some people just cannot sleep no matter what they do (which is what I had been struggling with for months).

Dr. Lishman explained the evolutionary background of stress, that used to be handy for surviving in dangerous situations - which is supposed to be a temporary defense mechanism. Nobody is supposed to be miserable over a period of months or even years, because your body being in chronic fight-or-flight mode will inevitably come with physical symptoms and even a change in personality (cynicism, aggression, overwhelm/brain fog etc.)

I found myself nodding along with all of it and then the author suggested what on the surface seems to be an obvious or simple solution, that didn’t occur to me when I was in the thick of it: chronic stress indicates that an issue has remained unaddressed for a long period of time and/or that boundaries weren’t set. The author explains when/how to set boundaries, to say “no” (shocker!) and to communicate issues early on.

You can see a therapist, eat healthy, exercise and meditate until you’re blue in the face - if you don’t resolve the issue at hand you’ll eventually burn yourself out - and that really hit home with me and helped me so much.

I also liked the part of being vulnerable with people (yes, she referenced Brené Brown here) and that she, as Dr. Marny Lishman herself, also has her struggles (belonging to the human species, same as all of us).

If you were only going to read one self-help book on burnout that will actually help you rather than put you in a blame-shame spiral, I highly recommend you read “From Burnout to Brilliant”.

[Emily Careri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall this is a great book that anyone can relate to or learn something from.

Dr Marny Lishman does an excellent job at defining what burnout is, illustrating different ways people experience it, and explaining how to identify it in your own life. The book not only discusses actionable steps that people can take to reduce the risk of hitting burnout but also provides reflective questions and a challenge at the end of each chapter, making all recommendations easy for readers to implement.

I think everyone should read this book. We all experience stressful and high-pressure experiences and environments at some point in our lifetime and this book provides great tools to deal with such situations. Whether you are a boss of a big corporate firm, a high school student, an employee, or a parent, there's something you can learn from this book.

[Emily Skelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

A light read for what could be quite a heavy topic. I found the content quite repetitive and the stories shared (to drive home an example or point) where often unresolved and left behind. But the take-homes were strong and inspiring, and the book is designed to support your own journey in 'redesigning your life'. Overall, fell kind of flat. With the stories almost too fluffy and solutions proposed as quite simplistic, it doesn't dig deep into the bigger complexities of how our society and how our personal complexities drives burnout in the first place.

[Maddie Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

You’re not supposed to binge this book, but I couldn’t help myself. A thoughtful and clear insight into symptoms of burnout and clear and valuable strategies to kick-start a healing journey. I highly recommend for anyone who is in a similar leaky, sinking boat.

[Cam Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the challenges this book gives. Some real life examples to help put things into perspective. At the beginning of each 'chapter' was a quote and some resonated deeply with me. Lots of lessons to take with me moving forward.

[Georgina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Affirming. A great guide to recognising and understanding burnout, moving through it, and practising learned strategies to avoid it in the future.

[Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book with excellent life and situation advice.

[Christos · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was alright.

[Xrysa Ser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some nice ideas but it may be for people that hear about burnout for the first time, so perhaps not for me

[Vanessa Collars-Price · Rating 2 out of 5]

not as helpful as I anticipated, needs more strategies instead of prompted journaling

[Vi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why I picked up this book:
Saw it at the Avid Reader non-fiction section

Review:
- Book was written in a way that it was easy to read, and the tips/tricks are easily extractable.
- That said, I think because I have read other books regarding burnout, this book bored me. I have already encountered a lot of what’s in this book either during my counselling sessions or other books on burnout, so I’m confident that many of the tips and tricks work. But I can still see the value of this book for someone who is just starting to read up on burnout and techniques for addressing it.