How to avoid being your own worst enemy – owning your journey to beating burnout.
Unusually Tired?
Drained by mid-day?
Take Your holidays and after only a couple of weeks back at work you’re totally exhausted and running on empty again?
Wonder why?
Wonder how to break out of the cycle?
Many of us have assumed a position which damages us and damages others. A position that wears us out and drains us of joy and energy and passion. A position that takes simple tasks and makes them exhausting and unfulfilling.
That position? It’s called “YOUR OWN WORST ENEMY”
Have you ever been in the position of being your own worst enemy?
I think at some point we all have. It doesn’t need to be a big thing, it doesn’t need to be a single event or two; more often than not, for most of us, it’s a series of small things. A repeated set of small decisions where we fail to prioritise what is good for us, what is important, and instead let life run us into the ground with its urgent things. That way of living never works out in the end, and for our own longevity we need to end living like that.
If you answered “yes” to some or most of the questions I asked at the start then you should consider if you are heading for “Burnout” , or maybe you’re already there. Global levels of “stress” and “burnout” have been increasing rapidly for more than a decade and they seem to be hitting record highs each year.
According to pollster and market research agency Gallup, three out of five people said they felt consistently exhausted at the end of a working day, and that it was getting worse. Also, according to the research, common factors reported were, more intense working hours, an increase in “immediacy” and “urgency” as the use of technology has increased, the ability of that technology to invade our down time, and peer pressure due to social media output.
In other words, it’s becoming harder and harder to disconnect and simply be.
A more recent Deloitte report (1) found that 77% of respondents had experienced “burnout” in their current job. In the face of all these facts, why aren’t we paying more attention to what our body is telling us? Why do we keep on making those same decisions over and over again and expect things to get better? Why are we often our own worst enemy?
There are a few reasons to consider:
We are great at selling ourselves the wrong answer. When we don’t want to face up to what we see in the mirror, or think that admitting we may be struggling is a sign of failure, we are great at convincing ourselves that things will get better. The most common “little fib” we tell ourselves is “this is just a busy period” or “it’s just for a season”. We may be right of course, but when that scenario has persisted month after month with little change we need to wake up and realise we are deluding ourselves.
Busyness and stress have become “normalised”. It’s a fact that in our society we have come to view high stress and constant busyness as ‘normal’. For many careers it has become a ‘badge of honour’. We think well ‘it’s inescapable’ or ‘it’s the same for everyone, that’s life today’ (with the unexpressed implication of ‘what’s wrong with me, why can’t I manage when everyone else seems to be ok, why am I so weak?”) The truth according to the surveys is that its not true, other aren’t managing, they are struggling too – but they aren’t telling you for the same reasons as you aren’t telling them.
Unwillingness to take ownership of our problem. The first two factors have an unwelcome accompaniment. Because we don’t want to feel a failure or weak. Because we are afraid to admit we are struggling. Because everyone else seems to be ok from their ‘public face’ we just soldier on – we don’t take ownership of the outcomes of our own many small decisions and instead we blame others for how we are feeling – we blame the boss, the family, our spouse, our colleagues, that horrible person at the coffee machine and even the
government or that eternal culprit ‘the system’.
So, having read this far where do you begin to find help and recover?
The first thing you must do is TAKE OWNERSHIP OF FINDING THE SOLUTION TO HOW YOU FEEL AND THEN ACT ON WHAT YOU NEED TO DO.
The second thing is to REALISE YOU ARE NOT ALONE FEELING LIKE THIS, INFACT YOU’RE THE MODERN MAJORITY.
That’s what I’m here to tell you in this article – you are not alone, there are answers and you can feel better, permanently. I’m also going to tell you that some of the traditional answers you have tried, are not solutions at all but are only ‘temporary sticking plasters’ that ultimately can end up allowing things to become much worse. So, if you want to understand why the good things you’ve been doing haven’t stopped you getting worse you will need to stick with me for a little while as we follow through on giving you the resource you need in these ‘Beating Burnout’ posts.
So, the first step to stop being your own worst enemy and taking ownership of the solution is to understand whether what you are experiencing is just a temporary blip, a bug you might have picked up, just getting a little older; or might be something where you need to change your way of living, reacting and perhaps coping.
Why do you need to do this now?
Psychologist Dr Emily Anhalt (2) explains that “stress and anxiety that is not mitigated and supported always becomes Burnout – and that if it is not recognised, puts your body through stress that eventually leads to (physical) illness”. That means you need to do something now, and the first thing you need to do is know what you are dealing with – simple tiredness, illness or age, or something more difficult. Burnout is more than a bad day, or a difficult project you are in the midst of. It is more than a few sleepless nights while you finish off some important piece of work. It is more than feeling hassled or upset because of a family problem. Berkeley UC psychology experts identify three distinct components that indicate more than a passing tiredness and which instead ring the alarm bells on ‘Burnout’.
Exhaustion – that is, you are consistently and for a significant period of time feeling wiped out emotionally, physically or cognitively (or all of the above). Rest or sleep don’t help you feel better for very long at all. When I went through ‘burnout’ some years ago the biggest indicator for me was that sort of exhaustion. I remember the last Christmas before I woke up to what was happening, thinking if I can just make it to the Christmas holidays I can reset and rest up and will feel better. Unfortunately, nothing was better. That Christmas I could hardly get out of the chair and remember thinking I’m shuffling around like and old guy and I’m only 48! I was also unable to get more than an average of 1-2 hours sleep, and some nights none at all, as a few essential systems in my body had gone into overload. Don’t let yourself get that far – I let things go on for too long before I realised I needed to act and own what was happening.
Cynicism – You find yourself getting increasingly grumpy, more critical than you would like, you might even be getting short tempered. You find yourself irritated by your work, your colleagues, and your team. Worse still you can’t see anything positively, and suspect that peoples motives are much worse than you are able to understand.
Not Up to it (inefficacy) – You used to be able to stay on top of things, nail great solutions and inspire others to achieve more; now, well, you feel the opposite much of the time – you are drowning under the demands of your workplace, weighed down by the demands of your homelife when you get home, and despite the fact you know you haven’t lost your ability to do your job well, you suspect that you really aren’t doing it that well anymore.
If you recognise yourself in one of those you might be ok. But you might not.
If you see yourself in two or three then you need to do something now… You need to TAKE OWNERSHIP OF RECOGNISING YOU MAY NEED TO MAKE SOME CHANGES and then YOU NEED HELP IN FINDING OUT WHAT HELPS YOU.
The other sessions in this resource contain some hopefully helpful content, so stick with us and watch out for the next post.
Life is complicated. You want to get it right. We want to help.
1 www2deloitte.com - Workplace Burnout survey2 Dremilyanhalt.com
Notes:
Whilst we want to help you, it is important to recognise that our thoughts are not those of medical experts and as such you may also need to seek the help of a professional counsellor or medical practitioner
