Burnout is a form of self-sabotage.
It is the invisible finishing line for people who are doing,
Giving and being too much while depleting their body,
Mind and spirit.
It's invisible because
those who tend to get burned out get some warning signs about running out of fuel
but they don't see the end until they're no longer able to run.
Burnout is a dirty word.
People just don't talk about it.
Most people feel it can kill their career so you don't
recognize it until you're unable to think clearly,
Bed bound for a few days or very ill.
That's when you're forced to give up your power,
Yield to the unknown and leave everything and
everyone behind.
I deliberately made this book short and easy to read and I included some clarity
prompts,
Life jackets to guide you to reflect on what is important to you.
Begin the healing
process of your old habits and learn how to stay afloat in life.
When the pond is still,
The reflection is clear.
When the mind is still,
The reflection of life brings clarity.
Burnout by definition is a state of exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation,
Usually as a result of prolonged stress or frustration.
The term burnout was first introduced
in the 1970s by the American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger.
He used it to describe the conditions
he found in professionals such as doctors and nurses who overworked and sacrificed themselves for others.
These days we use the term burnout to describe the physical and emotional conditions found in
overworked professionals as well as stay-at-home mothers.
Those who are burned out are either fleeing
or fighting life.
The beliefs they have about life lead them to excessive giving,
Defending
and controlling.
It also takes away their ability to live life as it was intended on purpose.
There are a few reasons why people drive themselves to be burned out,
But I have found that the root cause is a lack of self-trust.
When we don't trust ourselves or life
in general,
We tend to overdo to compensate for what we believe we lack or perceive judgments of
other people about us.
The levels of burnout.
I experienced burnout on a few levels.
Level one
was feeling bored.
That's the polar opposite of being burned out.
It's when we're unengaged with
life.
We tend to experience boredom at the end of the burnout cycle because we're so accustomed
to overdoing when we're in recovery mode.
It feels like something is missing.
I'm not describing a
teenage girl who can't find anything on TV to watch or can't get a hold of her friends to talk.
We burned out people will feel boredom when we're in the relaxed state we need to recover.
Level two is feeling overwhelmed.
That's when the accumulation of what is happening in life
affects our attention and we lose focus,
Often making elementary mistakes that are atypical of
us.
Great cooks will burn important meals.
Detail-oriented people will misspell simple words.
Mothers will lose their car keys on the way to the school play or a top executive will
ignore the financial reports.
Over time most of us who get burned out learn how to function
relatively well when we're overwhelmed but we often become short-tempered,
Slightly angry,
And impatient.
Level three is feeling worn out.
That's when we become emotionally,
Mentally,
And physically exhausted after we pushed our threshold a bit too far.
We pump ourselves with
highly caffeinated and sugary drinks throughout the day to meet a deadline,
Keep our word,
Not disappoint anyone.
Then we crash.
Level four is full burnout.
That's when we become
incapacitated,
Unable to carry on with life.
Our passion becomes our aversion and often we give up
what used to be a source of accomplishment and joy.
We may experience high anxiety,
Bed-bound migraines,
Panic attacks,
Heart attacks,
Or other illnesses that keep us from doing what
we planned.
After a number of years living the addictive cycles of moving from level one to
level four over and over,
Feeling angry with myself,
Swearing not to repeat it,
And just finding myself
continuously mastering the symptoms of each level,
I have come to understand that people become burned
out for the reason I stated.
We lack trust.
When we don't trust life,
Ourselves,
And the people
around us,
We begin to attempt to control every aspect of our days.
We tend to defend our actions,
Which in itself is exhausting.
We also overthink every area of our life to protect ourselves from
possible harm.
To avoid disappointment,
We tend to have negative views of the world and dedicate
our actions to work or other areas where we believe we can be successful.
We believe that
something outside of us,
Job,
Money,
Success,
Grades,
Or anything that depletes has a greater
power than our own,
Which leads to chemical imbalances in the body.
Dopamine,
Oxytocin,
And cortisol,
Which are chemicals that were designed to help us,
Now become our destroyers
when they're underproduced or overproduced by the stress we cause with our thoughts,
Even if the cause of the stress isn't real.
We don't usually see ourselves as negative people
who can be overbearing.
We don't see ourselves as control freaks,
And we don't believe we make big
mistakes.
But we can't see the label from inside the jar,
And these behaviors are not who we really
are.
They are our reactive default behaviors orchestrated by our subconscious to protect us,
And they're only temporary conditions that can be changed.
There is hope,
But to overcome,
We have to change our thoughts,
Beliefs,
And actions.
