Burnout - The Hidden Opportunity
Burnout as an opportunity?
Sure, there’s plenty to gain, even if you’ve gone way down the burnout rabbit hole of depletion, disengagement from work and life, and decline in performance.
But first, the warning.
Burnout keeps corroding your wellbeing until you arrest its development. If you don’t, you may eventually find yourself in paralysis, grinding through each joyless day, existing.
Yet whether your burnout has the ‘slightly smouldering’ quality of early-stage depletion, or is more at the crisp end of ‘totally fried’, there’s something important to gain from this awful experience.
If you’re listening to your burnout, you can learn a lot.
That’s right - listen to it. The symptoms and emotions are helpful signals, like an internal ‘smoke alarm’ that alerts you to the potential for danger or loss.
Your internal smoke alarm noise can be subtle at first, and completely overlooked or dismissed as temporary or trivial.
But ignore it, and it gets louder.
Smoke alarms demand action. Which action you take depends on what’s happening for you, and how you got there. I’ll talk a lot more about specific helpful strategies in other editions.
But please remember: wise, intentional action is powerful and can free you from burnout.
The point is to first figure out what your internal alarms are alarmed at. As you progress, you’ll honour the signal with valued action - the wise moves that honour the best of who you are.
Here’s a small example of what I mean.
A client of mine was overwhelmed recently by losing her phone case along with every card she uses. Already experiencing burnout, she was paralysed and upset by the thought of all the action she needed to take, and the inconvenience to her in the meantime. It just seemed too much.
We discussed the series of small steps she needed to take, and reviewed her ability to just get started.
She told me two weeks later that she’d moved past the overwhelm and reordered every card, managing cash for every transaction until her new debit card arrived. It was the first time in her young life that she’d done this, but was pleased with having listened to her inner smoke alarm and taken useful action, despite the temptation to follow her overwhelm into a state of paralysis and despair.
Straight afterwards, someone put the phone case with all the old cards into her letterbox, by the way.
This action was a big and positive step for my client. Why? Because as you burn out, mistakes become more likely, and dealing with them gets harder.
So the earlier you address the causes of burnout, the faster and easier it is to recover and move forward with energy and joy. You probably won’t need to take drastic steps because you’ve caught it before it's become a full-blown crisis.
But even if you have lead weights in your limbs and a spaghetti brain, progress is still easier than you think. The actions may need to be very small at first, but momentum builds sooner than you’d expect.
Consistency wins when progress matters and energy is low.
So don’t ignore your internal smoke alarm. Resist the temptation to soldier on just because the next meeting or report has a manufactured ‘urgency’ about it.
Consider the true cost of ignoring your burnout and be a wise leader of your Self. Your health and wellbeing are surely higher priorities that needn’t be traded off for something as low value as yet another email.
That kind of bad deal can bankrupt your system if you do it often enough.
And consider the alternative…
On the other side of recovery from burnout you’ll have learned a lot about yourself - what truly matters to you, what depletes you, the mental processes that hold you back from acting, how to stop being held back, and ways to deal with the demands of life that free you ‘do you’ with joy and style.
In other words, you’ll learn how to live centred in your values, creating a life that’s rich, satisfying and meaningful.
Burnout is less likely because you’ve stepped up and developed a mindset and lifestyle that resists it taking hold.
Don’t delay this journey, because you can have these benefits sooner than you think. The steps to vitality and success are often surprisingly small and simple. Progress can be fast. And in many ways, your life may remain outwardly the same.
But inwardly, you’ll have transformed. This is what burnout can offer you - the motivation, insight, and moves that open you up to a splendid life, on your terms.
So start the journey today. The next step is small. And you can do it.
Want to journey out of burnout with me as your guide, cheer leader, advisor or wing-woman?