Welcome to Win Your Week - your weekly source for inspiration and guidance on motivation, mindfulness, life hacks, and more!
Do you feel tired and overwhelmed by life's daily challenges? If so, you may be experiencing burnout.
While "burnout" has become a common term lately, what does it actually mean?
Although burnout and stress are related, they are not the same thing. Stress can put a lot of pressure on your body, but it can also be manageable in the short term, and even beneficial in small doses. Think about the stress you feel before a big deadline. This pressure can sometimes help you push through and stay focused and motivated.
However, when stress is persistent and consistent, it can take a toll on your physical and mental well-being and lead to burnout.
Burnout is a state of complete exhaustion, both mentally, physically, and emotionally.
So, how can you tell if you're experiencing burnout?
Identifying Burnout: Watch for These Symptoms
The exhaustion from burnout can stop us from participating in activities that are typically enjoyable and meaningful. Sound familiar? Burnout can also include:
- Inability to perform basic tasks
- Loss of passion and drive
- Easily getting irritated by small problems
- Feeling emotionally empty
- Experiencing conflict or emotionally withdrawing
- For some, burnout can feel like the life has been drained out of them, making them incapable of caring about important things, making an effort, or staying motivated.
What Causes Burnout?
Burnout is often a result of several factors, not just one. Some of the common causes include:
- Working in a high-pressure environment
- Doing work that you don't enjoy
- Unrealistic expectations placed on you
- Feeling of little or no control over your life
- Taking on too many responsibilities
- Lack of sleep
- Insufficient time to relax and recharge
- Few close, meaningful relationships
- Once you have identified burnout, you can start to reduce and manage its symptoms.
How to reduce burnout?
There are a methods we can use to reduce burnout.
Lean on others for support
A great place to start when dealing with burnout is talking to people you love and trust. Whether it’s to talk, or just to connect with a loved one and take your mind off things, talking to someone can help you to start feeling better.
Check in with your workplace
If burnout is causing you to struggle performing to your best at work, a effective way to manage this pressure is to check in with someone who can help manage your workload and tell them about your concerns.
Set boundaries
A great way to overcome burnout is to learn to say ‘no’ to things you don’t want to do. Weather this is a time commitment or some type of emotional discomfort, we should learn to set boundaries and say no to things that cause stress and that don’t serve us.
Figure out what’s important to you
We should take some time to revaluate our goals and priorities to tip the balance back to including activities that make us feel happy and fulfilled.
Making a list of our daily tasks and activities we enjoy is a great place to start. Your week may consist of activities such as work, socialising, exercising and hobbies. Once we have figured out what’s important to us, we can look at what we are currently doing and make changes so that we do more of the things that make us happy.
Prioritise your physical health
Exercise and eating healthy are so easy to cast aside in times of stress. But maintaining a healthy routine not only keeps us accountable but it also has a host of positive outcomes.
Keeping ourselves physically healthy can help us think more clearly and manage stress better. A short workout or daily walk is a convenient way to make exercise a daily habit. We should also prioritise sleep and eating healthy.
Over to you…
Once our burnout symptoms are under control, we need to look after ourselves in the future to reduce the likelihood that burnout will happen again.Take regular time out. It can help to set aside 20 minutes every night to switch off, wind down and relax and set aside at least one night a week when you don’t have any plans or responsibilities.
We should also learn to identify our early warning signs. This might be pushing aside our hobbies, physical changes such as poor sleep or experiencing more conflict with loved ones.
Once we know our early warning sings we can get ahead of burnout in the future and minimise how much it impacts us.
We hope these recommendation help you if you are experiencing burnout or if you think you are on your way to burning out.
Now go ahead and win your week!
