Fatigue, loss of energy, loss of interest in work – these symptoms accompany an increasingly common human condition called emotional burnout. Of course, you won’t be able to “burn out” in a day or two; it all starts with a bad mood and a slight loss of energy. Your productivity can drop, and people around you at work and at home begin to advise you on how to deal with laziness. Ignoring those first worrisome signals and continuing to live as if nothing is happening, you only delay the very moment when you realize that it cannot continue this way. It’s time to seek help from a specialist and radically change your life. But why bring your physical and emotional state to the boiling point? In the article, I’ll try to give you some tips to help you deal with the unpleasant and unsafe state of burnout. Or rather, prevent it from spoiling your life.
How to Deal with Burnout on Your Own?
It should be noted that people of absolutely all professions can be subject to burnout. First of all, those whose activities are related to the social sphere, such as doctors and teachers, are at risk. Such work requires a lot of emotional involvement in people’s problems, which cannot but leave its mark. Also, the emotional state can suffer from irrationally organized work and excessive workload, which can be pinned to most office workers today.
Start your burnout prevention with the following. Delegate extra workload to colleagues or take more time to perform, not forgetting to rest between tasks. People striving for the ideal and those who want to please everyone have every chance to quickly lose their primary fuse and not even feel satisfied with the result of their work because of overwork. Don’t take on more than you can do without hurting yourself. You need to learn how to adequately assess your efforts and balance them with your responsibilities.
If you understand that your emotional stress is already at the limit, you need to take even a small break and eliminate the trigger for a while. So you can get distracted, concentrate, and better understand what factors have driven you into a dead end. After a well-deserved rest, do not hesitate to talk with your bosses or colleagues about optimizing your work, voice what does not suit you, discuss your motivation system – you will see, you can find a compromise.
So yes, about the rest. It is better to make small scenery changes but often rather than take a long vacation once in a long time. You should not really hope that going on vacation in a state of emotional burnout can significantly change your state and affairs after your return. It is not necessary to create unnecessary stress for yourself when traveling somewhere far away. Take a trip to a neighboring city you haven’t been to, enjoy its views for a couple of days, and you will see that it is not so difficult to dissipate the tension before it becomes a chronic phenomenon.
Stop Repeating Old Mistakes
Use the timeout to look at the root of the problem. Is the impending burnout related to organizational or other rules in your place of work or your profession in general, or is it possible that you suffer because of your personality traits? Be prepared not only to seek solutions to your problems from the outside but also to make efforts on your part. No one can teach you how to plan your time and stick to deadlines if you don’t make it a habit that makes your life easier. Also, it is worth identifying and working on some syndromes that are inherent in most of us, such as low self-esteem, communication problems, a desire to please everyone, excessive perfectionism, etc.
If it seems to you that it was your profession that disappointed you, try reinventing your interest by regularly strengthening your skills and expanding your competencies. We live in a rapidly changing world, and perhaps you simply did not have time to find out about all the interesting opportunities in your professional field?
And, of course, don’t ignore the mundane routines that can be said to be the foundation of your well-being, both physically and emotionally. It is about eight hours of sleep, a rich diet, and having a physical activity or a creative hobby.
Learn to be loving and respectful of yourself, and then it won’t be easy for you to allow yourself to hurt yourself by overworking, being nervous for no reason, or letting others do it. In most cases, self-care and proper organization of work and rest can significantly reduce and prevent burnout.
