When Greg Ross flew home to Australia following his beloved uncle’s funeral in Auckland in 2008, he looked out of the aeroplane window at the clouds, and by the time he landed in Perth, he had reached a decision: “I thought, I’m going to quit.”
He had realised on the flight that he was burnt out – in his job as acting CEO of a theatre company, and after decades as a marketing executive for prestigious cars. The delayed acknowledgment of burnout, he thinks, “is probably very specific to my age group, the baby boomer thing. We are never allowed to cry, we are never allowed to give up, we’ve got to be tough. You battle within yourself. You think there is something wrong with you – ‘I’m a failure.’”
