Many of us have come to a point in our lives where we can’t and don’t want to push like before. It’s a big disappointment and a shame when you still find yourself momentarily, if not daily, crossing the limit of your resources.
When, after a well-gone workday, you no longer have the energy to do anything. When you don’t want to meet a single person and the phone feels frightening. When an evening spent dozing on the couch is followed by a restless night.
Concern is warranted at the latest when symptoms of stress begin to appear. Brain researchers say that the effects of long-term stress can extend 20–30 years into the future. The traces of experienced exhaustion are still visible in the brain after a 7-year follow-up. Once you have been burned out, you may no longer have the same capacity to cope, concentrate, remember, or handle stress as before.
“Endurance is like a rubber band that stretches and stretches until it snaps. Once broken, it is difficult to restore.”
Endurance is like a rubber band that stretches and stretches until it snaps. Once broken, it is difficult to restore. Therefore, it is good to tune in to the signals from your body and mind about your capacity to cope.
The following six steps, based on research and short-term therapeutic practices, help you notice the natural fluctuations of your energy and make the necessary adjustments before stress and burnout take over. Use them daily, much like a toothbrush. In just a few weeks, you’ll notice that the benefits are just as tangible.
How to prevent burnout?
1) Pause
The natural rhythm of life consists of alternating periods of activity and rest. In recent decades, everyday life has simply tilted in such a way that many people are barely aware of the rest phases.
After an overstimulating workday or week, slowing down and recovering is not automatic, even if you have the time. The harder you’ve been running in the hamster wheel and the more stressed you are, the more fiercely your brain demands stimuli when you try to slow down. A relaxing evening or weekend can turn into an agonizingly restless time. For many, the first week of vacation is spent entirely just calming down.
“When speed has become the norm, there are two options for slowing down: an abrupt stop or gentle braking.”
When speed has become the prevailing state, there are two options for slowing down: an abrupt stop or gentle braking. For some, breaking the pace with, for example, a vacation abroad works well. In the long run, however, most benefit from frequent and regular moments of calming down. This way, your level of alertness never stays too high for too long.
2) Face reality
There are two kinds of reality: external and internal.
External reality includes factors that either support or drain your resources, such as workload, changes, responsibilities, and feedback. In private life, external reality includes, among other things, your own and your family’s life stage and changes, losses, and crises.
Internal reality is a whole different matter, sometimes reflecting external reality only loosely. Your internal reality includes your own ways of experiencing, thinking, and acting, your strengths, skills, resources, and pitfalls.
Would you have believed that the influence of external reality on experienced positive emotions is only around 10%? According to research, our genetic makeup accounts for as much as 50%, which means that you too have your own personal scale of satisfaction and happiness, which you are unlikely to exceed or fall below.
The remaining 40% is within your control. This means that through your own thinking and actions, you can greatly influence where you fall on your personal scale of positive emotions.
“The most influential thoughts are our core beliefs and attitudes. These are the thoughts we don’t even think about, but which guide our lives.
Assumptions we take for granted, which we believe to be reality, even though in fact they are just thoughts.”
When you know that the impact of your own thoughts and actions on your state of well-being is four times greater than that of external reality, what you cultivate in your mind takes on a new significance. The most powerful thoughts are core beliefs and attitudes—the thoughts we don’t even consciously think, but according to which we live. Assumptions we take for granted, which we believe to be reality, even though in fact they are just thoughts.
Many of the assumptions we cultivate in our minds have direct effects on our endurance and resources. Pause for a moment. What is running through your mind right now? Does it support your resources, or is it driving you even deeper into the abyss of stress?
3) Find out what you truly want
We have a whole range of values and goals that, in practice, are in blissful conflict with one another. We want to come across as incredibly efficient and amazingly relaxed. We want to be both human and perfect at the same time. We want to give our all at work and still feel whole when we get home.
“Often our desires clash so sharply that anyone can understand: choices must be made. But on what basis?”
Often our desires clash so sharply that anyone can understand: choices must be made. But on what basis? How do you know what is truly important?
The question is relevant because you can only be powerfully and persistently motivated by something you truly consider important. On the other hand, it has long been known that hardly anything drains endurance as much as living in constant value conflicts and feeling pressure to act against your values. In other words: when you act according to your values, you may face difficult choices, but in the long run, your resources are preserved and freed up.
4) Put it into practice
No matter how well you know your values and needs, nothing truly changes until it is reflected in practical action. Until then, you are still operating only at the level of thought.
Acting in accordance with your values is easier when you create clear goals for yourself. The role of values is merely to show direction, while well-constructed goals lead to successes and encourage you to keep moving forward.
Starting to sound like work? Indeed, but this time it’s work you do only for yourself. So that you can be more and more yourself. So that you can express your best self with your best resources. And so that you avoid the exploitative overuse of your energy and abilities.
Goals aimed at your own well-being can be small. If you are used to spending your evenings on the couch, and turning over in bed has been your most significant physical activity, then three half-hour walks per week is a considerable change from that.
5) Prepare for obstacles and slowdowns
Professionals who monitor resources in their work know that most of the work of change is done alongside the obstacles to change.
Obstacles rarely take the form of open resistance. More often than not, initiatives that got off to a good start and new approaches simply fall by the wayside. Once the initial momentum has run out, there’s no way to keep things going. Motivation doesn’t hold up or renew itself until you’ve returned to square one, where, frustrated once again, you gather momentum for the next round.
It is precisely for this reason that thoroughly working through the first three stages is so important. You must make it absolutely clear to yourself what you no longer want and what you do want.
If this isn’t completely clear, it may be best not to try to change anything just yet. You don’t need any more unnecessary disappointments.
6) Embrace incompleteness
You, too, may have a veritable tyrant in your mind who tries to control you through shame, fear, insecurity, and other unpleasant emotions. Often, it succeeds.
“First of all: life involves incompleteness and outright failures. You wouldn’t be human if this didn’t apply to you.
Second: you have company other than your inner critic.”
You won’t be able to get rid of it. Instead, you can make peace with your inner critic. Let it have its say. After that, you can, in all friendliness, remind it of a couple of things. First: life involves unfinished business and outright failures. You wouldn’t be human if this didn’t affect you. Second: you have company other than your inner critic.
You’re in the same boat as thousands of others who are struggling to keep going and searching for the right path.
Let’s review:
How do these six steps help boost your resilience to stress and burnout?
If any of these sound familiar, burnout may be part of your daily life. Seek help without hesitation: talk to your supervisor or a student psychologist about how you’re coping. You can get therapeutic help without a referral, for example, through short-term therapy provided by a psychologist.
- Rest and relaxation revitalize the body and mind. An appropriate level of energy helps you see the forest for the trees
- Knowing your own strengths, values, and pitfalls helps you choose the right path and make quick adjustments in daily life
- Self-selected challenges of an appropriate level provide a sense of control and a sense of accomplishment
- Putting things into practice makes the change real for yourself and others
- Accepting that things are a work in progress gives the weary patience for what can sometimes be a slow recovery and for embracing the new
Together, these steps will help you provide clearer answers to the questions you’re probably mulling over in your mind anyway:
- How do you really want to live your life?
- What kind of results do you want to achieve in your life and in your work or business?
- What would you like to remember about this time, say, five years from now? Are you currently doing those things in your daily life?
- Do you have sufficient tools at your disposal to guide and lead yourself, or do you repeatedly stumble over something within yourself?
Learn more about the author of this article
My name is Liisa Uusitalo-Arola. I am an occupational health psychologist specializing in burnout and its prevention, a psychotherapist (KAT), a psychotherapy trainer, and a non-fiction writer.