REALTORS® often operate with a high-performance mindset, much like professional athletes. It’s a powerful tool in business, but it can also be a slippery slope to burnout. Psychotherapist Jhanelle Peters, former mental health clinician for the Toronto Raptors, joins REAL TIME to explore the pressures of entrepreneurial careers like real estate. Listen in to learn about the gradual building of burnout and how to spot it early, the importance of reframing “work-life balance,” how integrating joy and recovery into your daily routine fuels both your career and your well-being.

Transcript

Jhanelle Peters: Before you say yes to anything, make sure you are not saying no to yourself. I'll say it again. Before you say yes to anything, make sure you are not saying no to yourself.

Shaun Majumder: Okay, so here's the thing. You know, for the amount of time I've been doing this amazing podcast, the one thing that I've always felt kindred with is the kind of work that all of you do, and how it aligns with a lot of what I do as a creative person. But I'm self-employed. I'm always out there trying to generate leads. I'm always out there trying to boost the brand, try to keep the promo going. Trying to book jobs. Trying to close deals. I mean, it is a never-ending process of keeping things going. I mean, it's really, really intense. And, you know, I would ask all of you, when was the last time you took a break? What was the last time you felt like, “Okay, I'm super relaxed”.

It's very difficult. But, you know, it's so important to explore ideas about how we can find a balance, right? And not just work-life balance. We hear about that a lot, we're going to talk a bit about that today on the podcast. But, not allowing all of this pressure to affect our mental health, which in the end becomes a detriment to the work you're all trying to do. And that's why I'm so excited today to talk to Jhanelle Peters, Registered Psychotherapist. I'm not going to lie, this one is as much for me as it is for you. But, she's amazing and we're so excited to have her on REAL TIME. She's the Clinical Director of Jhanelle Peters Psychotherapy, and she was also the mental health clinician for the championship-winning Toronto Raptors.

So, I'm going to try to convince her to become a mental health clinician for the Toronto Maple Leafs. We'll see, I know that's not going to hit well with everybody out there watching, but either way, we'll see if we can get her to help them out. You're going to love this conversation. Let's get into it with Jhanelle Peters, Registered Psychotherapist, to talk about how to avoid burnout.

Shaun: Jhanelle, this is so good. I love that you're here today on REAL TIME. I am so excited. Your energy, it feels right today, it feels positive, it feels great. Where are you located right now as we speak?

Jhanelle: Right now, I am in Florida. We're in Miami.

Shaun: Nice. And how is it? Like, we're in - you know, as we record this, we're in the middle of summer, must be very hot.

Jhanelle: Oh, it's still summer. It is all forces of summer still be beaming down at you, 34 degrees of it, okay.

Shaun: Right, right. That is hot. That is very hot.

Jhanelle: How about you?

Shaun: I'm in Nova Scotia, where it has been blazing hot with no rain all summer long. And, so I'm feeling good, like we're coming up to a shoulder season now, It’s going to be nice. But, you know, it's pretty easy to feel happy and joy when the sun is out. I'm just seeing now, you know, having just moved my entire family from sunny California, where literally every day, a little tiny robot comes out of the lab and flicks to switch and the exact same weather happens every single day.

Jhanelle: I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought that when I was there. Like, it’s “Do I need to check the weather anymore? No. It's VR. It's all VR. It's not real.”

Shaun: And so we're getting into some dark times, like a winter in Nova Scotia is going to be a challenge of mental health, which is something you specialize in.

Shaun: Tell me a bit about yourself. Jhanelle Peters. Who are you? What do you do?

Jhanelle: I am a Registered Psychotherapist. What does that mean? It means I'm somebody that you can sit and talk to, to uncover things, to understand things, and to feel better about life altogether. And I've been really lucky to take all of those things and work with various high performing individuals, including my role and title as the Mental Health Commissioner for the Toronto Raptors, which was a great experience.

But now I get to spread that energy and work to everywhere else, as I have a practice in Toronto, called Jhanelle Peters Psychotherapy.

Shaun: Jhanelle Peters Psychotherapy. That sounds amazing. And so anybody can go. I mean, obviously.

Jhanelle: Yeah, anybody.

Shaun: Right, right. You're probably super busy.

Jhanelle: So, I mean, you know, I'm busy, but I'll make room for anybody that you send a referral for, Shaun, if they say that you referred them, I'll make room.

Shaun: Well, look, I know today we're supposed to be talking about only real estate and all that, but I'm going to be one of your clients. So we're going to start because I'm very high performing as well. Sorry. I don't know, I started laughing when I said that.

But either way, I am, very, you know, I'm an independent person. I am constantly on the move, I am hustling all the time, I am self-employed, I am always looking for new opportunities, I'm trying to do the work in the background to prepare myself. I'm aware that my industry is filled with all these different kinds of arms that I need to develop skills in, in order to excel.

But I also have a family. I have my personal life. You know, so a lot of it can be consuming. And so, by saying all this stuff, I think that a lot of REALTORS®, a lot of real estate agents out there have a very similar kind of approach to how they're trying to, you know, they're not like on a team like the Raptors, where I've been hired to play for the Raptors. And, you know, I'm just going to play my position, but we're all going to work together as a team. Being a self-employed, entrepreneurial actor-comedian, it's very similar to the REALTOR® world. So, you know, I've felt burnt out in my life. You know, that's something that you probably specialize in. What do I need to know?

Jhanelle: Well, you need to know that you check, check, check, check, check almost every box, what a high performing person experiences, and why burnout might surface for them. And I think a lot of people are probably like, “Okay, Shaun, like, I get you, I do that and I do this, and I do that”. Like, they're counting all the things that you said. And they're like, “Well, how do I know that I'm burnt out, right?”

Like, I think that's the question that most people would say because they're like, “Well, I'm used to doing a lot of things. That's just part of what my job looks like, and it's my personality to do”. Exactly, right. Yeah, I always want to be the best at things, and I'm used to stretching my arm 75 different positions. But, does it hurt? Are you tired of doing it? Do you wish you didn't have to do it all the time? And these are some of the questions you might start thinking about when it comes to burnout. Because really, what that is, it's a prolonged amount of stress on your body that almost feels like it has nowhere to go. And so a lot of people hold it and go, “I just gotta do what I gotta do”. That's just what this looks like.

Shaun: Yeah. Head down. Keep going. Don't let the feeling of shut down get in the way of moving forward. Like, I feel like there's a bit of that that happens, especially when you're under the gun, right? There's so much stress and so much, so much expectation. Self-expectation.

Jhanelle: Yeah.

Shaun: You know, what do you see across the board when you're thinking about high performance athletes, entrepreneurs, C-suite executives? And now we're talking about REALTORS®? Is there a commonality? Is there just a human thing that happens or are they specific to each?

Jhanelle: No. You are so right when you say, is there a common thread for sure. I think these are the types of individuals who feel like in order for me to get to the highest peak in my career, or in order for me to get to the end point and be celebrated beyond measure, I don't get a break.
I'm not allowed to stop because the minute I stop, somebody else can come in. The minute I stop, you know, there's not enough gas in the tank. What if somebody blows past me? What if I don't do as well as I'm supposed to if I take a break? And I think a lot of people have that in common.

But, one of the things that I've learned in working with athletes that I think everybody can take from is, they don't do anything by themselves. And so, yes, they may work individually to work on their bodies and things of that nature. But they have a nutritionist, they have a dietician, they have somebody that focuses on their body. They have somebody that focuses on their mental state.

And I say this to not say, spend all your money on all those things, but who do you have reminding you about, like the basics, like you were talking about, like resting and eating properly and taking that time out so that you can get to the end and not feel burnt out. Like who is helping you? What is helping you?

Shaun: Right. Like I have a whole team around me when like for my slow pitch, beer league, like I have a stylist, I have a nutritionist to basically gets me beer and pretzels. And I have a person who comes and just tells me how awesome I am all the time. But you know, that only cost me, like, 60 bucks.

Jhanelle: Yeah, but we got to the university for your dietitian, and you got, you know, Planet Fitness. You got- I call it the