So, what is fatigue actually and how does it develop? Fatigue arises when your limbic system (LS) is triggered by internal and external cues associated with your work and/or occurring during your work day. What do I mean by that? Let’s look at an example to illustrate this: When Mary was 13 years old, she moved with her mom to a new city. At the new school, she got bullied by her classmates. You may ask yourself, what does bullying have to do with work performance and fatigue? Well, your behavioral patterns today are just the result of your emotional reactions from past experiences. During that period in the new school, Mary’s limbic system (LS) learned that her peers are mean and may harass her without reason, and also that she is less worth or not good enough (because of remarks they made about her appearance). As she wasn’t able to handle that situation, she developed a dysfunctional coping mechanism – a pronounced need for achievement. Keep in mind the process how this mechanism was construed – during the episodes of bullying, Mary felt sad and hurt, as well as ashamed when hearing comments about her looks. When she got picked on, she would be choked up, let her head down and have teary eyes. She would not be able to fight back and felt helpless. Only later she would replay the scenario in her mind and thinking about ways how she could have better reacted. Because of the harassment, she inferenced that something is wrong with her or that she is insufficient. These inferences, along with the emotions she felt, were consolidated in her LS because they were interpreted as important for her survival and became her beliefs about herself. Due to these new beliefs, she made modifications in her behavior. She compensated her lack of self-worth with an increased desire to get good grades and to please her teachers. The praise that she would get was very gratifying for her.

Fast forward to the present day. Mary is 25, fresh out of college and starting her new job at a large firm. She did good all those years. Her need for achievement drove her to graduate as one of the top students of her class. At her new job, there are eight colleagues that she has to work with on a daily basis on various projects. They are an established team already, and she is the new team member. Mary knows already that these situations are problematic. Even the night before her first day at work, Mary is nervous and she can’t sleep. She feels anxious and has unnerving headaches, while she is ruminating about the moment, she’ll meet her colleagues in person. “Maybe they’ll think I’m awkward” is going through her head. After two hours, she finally got too tired and fell asleep. She woke up extra early to have enough time to arrange her hair and her make-up perfectly, as she is insecure about her looks. As the moment to drive off comes closer, her headaches start to emerge again. She takes an aspirin. Also, she has this uneasy feeling in her stomach, like a rock is stuck there. In those moments, it’s her sympathetic nervous system that is causing these symptoms. Her adrenaline is increased, her blood is distributed away from her digestive tract to her arms and legs, her breathing is constricted. Her LS is actually preparing her for fight or flight. Remember, her LS registered her experiences with 13 as essential for her survival. It recorded all details of the bullying situations to be able to look out for them in the future (and in a very generalized way). Her LS is anticipating a similar experience. For her LS her colleagues are equal to her fellow classmates and the new workplace equals school. With this anxiety, she drives through traffic, while playing out the moment when she’s introduced to her colleagues. When she finally arrives there, her colleagues seem nice. She survived it. Or she thinks at least. Through classical conditioning her feelings, thoughts and physiological sensations got associated to her work place. Her LS defined her work place as an environment with high probability of Mary reliving her bullying experiences. And this association will get strengthened because Mary will keep getting triggered by her colleagues. Remember, it was not just her “arrival in new, unknown groups judging her” that was defined as a dangerous aspect by her LS, but her colleagues (for her LS = classmates) as well. Every time Mary is interacting with her colleagues, her LS is on the lookout, because they could notice something in Mary’s appearance. Every joke that is made by her colleagues will be scanned for signs of negative evaluation. And you can bet, a lot of these cues will get misperceived by her LS, triggering a fight-or-flight response. And it doesn’t end there. Every time Mary gets an assignment, her need for achievement will kick in. Mary will do anything that is in her power to get praise from her superiors. Her LS will propel her into an alarming state and drain her energy to avoid that feeling of worthlessness and insufficiency. And if that isn’t enough, let’s say, her boss is a douchebag and gets on her occasionally for no apparent reason – just like her classmates did. In those moments, just like with her classmates, she wouldn’t answer, being choked up and having teary eyes. Nothing would come to her mind as she would feel helpless. She would then go on and ruminate about that situation, thinking of hundred ways how she could’ve stood up more for herself.

You see now how Mary’s LS plays a trick on her? Her whole work day is a minefield for her LS, reminding her subconsciously of her bad experiences from the past. When she gets home, she feels exhausted, like she was fighting for her life the whole day. She just wants to chill on her sofa and watch Netflix. Sometimes she does not even have the energy to cook, let alone pursue her hobbies or do anything that demands her cognitive capacities. And this happens five days a week, for 50+ weeks in a year. She craves her weekends and vacations. She loves her profession but the work just stresses her. Her need for achievement got her far but also took a major toll on her. She is constantly nagged by pain in her back and lack of energy. She admires the people that are able to pursue additional endeavors beyond their job or the people that can work relentlessly for 12+ hours a day. Mary thinks, these people must only be grinding more than her. Sometimes she pushes through the pain, thinking that is the answer, only finding herself having her body ache or her immune system weakened. Mary doesn’t know how and why this happens. She doesn’t understand how her LS works. This way, Mary might go through life unknowingly without ever realizing how much more potential she has.

And that’s also why grinding and hustling just isn’t the answer. For a lot of folks, the emotions that are attached to tasks necessary to achieve your goals are just too strong. The weight that you are caring with you every day is just too heavy. You might be able to do it for a while, but you are wearing yourself out. At some point, you will reach your threshold, be it in your 40’s or 60’s, and health consequences will arise. Every time we try to do something and it doesn’t go smoothly, it’s an indicator that your LS is at work and that something about the task triggered it. This, by the way, applies to everything you cannot achieve in life – for example, if you want to approach a girl or ask her out and you can’t, perhaps due to fear of rejection or shame, guess what, it’s your LS triggering a feeling that you’ve picked up in your past. If you want to go to the gym but can’t pull yourself together, guess what, it’s your LS that is in your way. If you want to resist alcohol, but are not able to do this, it’s your LS that is blocking you. Basically, everything that you can’t do in a heartbeat, without hesitation, it’s your LS that is in your way. Regarding fatigue and work, the following examples would be more appropriate: writing an article, coding, making a presentation or a webinar, memorizing some material, or just sitting in front of your computer and trying to accomplish stuff in the shortest amount of time.

In order to eliminate this, you first need to make the subconscious conscious – you need to understand what triggers you and how your patterns developed. And then you have to systematically extinguish the information from your LS through limbic hacking. Before I accomplished that, I wasn’t much different from Mary. I procrastinated, wasn’t able to focus and just wasn’t very efficient, even though prior to my autoimmune disease and my depression, I was hyper-productive. Back then (prior to my 14th birthday) I went to school, went to my football practice, played football for the rest of the day and studied a little bit, but did it in an efficient and focused manner and still only got straight A’s. After my disease and mental problems no habit-forming, self-help, high-performance tactic, and especially no therapeutic strategy could change my low performance. That is, until I started experimenting and developing limbic hacking. For me, the initial event was a phase of rumination (when I was 17-18 years old), when I thought a lot about the consequences of my colon disease and my depression, as well as about me being in a futile situation. I thought every scenario through. Back then, when I got to the realization that I’ll never be able to escape this state, my body reacted with severe anxiety and a shutdown. I couldn’t think anymore and was blocked. During that moment, my LS learned that engaging intentionally in thinking, or trying intentionally to solve a problem or accomplish some task is dangerous. From then on, every time I tried to work on something, I was blocked. I couldn’t focus on the task at hand. As that happened in my room, closed spaces became a trigger for me – pushing me on a never-ending road of mind-wandering and distraction. It wasn’t until 10 years after that initial event, that I solved the problem. Within 8 weeks I made a quantum leap in my ability to focus and get things done. I saw the improvement when I was able to write a scientific article for my PhD in about 6 days. For some experienced scientists that might be nothing, but keep in mind my performance prior to that. Before that, I wasn’t able to finish another article in 1,5 years on a subject that I was well versed and that would’ve required a lot less time. And it wasn’t a fluke either. I repeated the feat on my 2nd and 3rd PhD articles needing only 4-5 afternoons for each. I improved even more after that and still keep improving.

And you can do that too. If you want to hack your limbic system and achieve peak-performance, you can book a free strategy session on the following link. Chances are, we might be able to uncover hidden patterns that are holding you back even in that first session.