I Feel Burnout, What Can I Do? - S02 E04

S2 E04: I Feel Burnout, What Can I Do?

Outline

Burnout prevention through self-compassion, detachment, and recovery activities.

• Burnout affects individuals, colleagues, and families globally.
• Research suggests optimal activities for renewal and rejuvenation.
• Detach from work to avoid burnout by creating non-work zones in the home and separating work from relaxation.
• Leave work devices outside of sleeping areas to fully disconnect and recharge.

Burnout, relaxation, and recovery strategies.

• Finding relaxation activities that work for you, such as vacuuming or working with your hands, can help reduce burnout.
• Pausing, learning, and connecting to overcome burnout.
• Break the cycle of burnout to reignite mind, body, and spirit.

Transcript

As we navigate the complexities of our roles, it's crucial to remember that the journey to overcoming burnout begins with a single powerful step: self-compassion and action. Burnout is a big deal, and it often goes along with mental health challenges like depression, anxiety, and exhaustion. However, you can reduce burnout by shifting elements within your work, your mindset, and recovery activities outside of work. So stick around for today's episode, where we learn more. 

Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of Rat Race Reboot. This is episode four in a series around the topic of burnout. New research suggests that there are optimal activities for renewal and rejuvenation so you can make your best choices in reducing your experience of burnout and exhaustion and increasing your levels of energy and well-being. Burnout is a big deal. It's a big problem. Not only does it affect you and me, but it affects our co-workers, our family, and our friends, and it can make it seem impossible for us to be our best selves. In fact, people are suffering globally from burnout. I'm going to read off some stats here, but 70% of people experienced burnout in the last year, according to a study by Asana, which examined 10,000 knowledge workers across seven countries. In addition, multiple generations are struggling with it. 84% of Gen Z's, 74% of millennials, and 47% of baby boomers reported that they were feeling burned out. Also, so many people said they just overall felt bad. According to McKinsey research, specifically, 25% of Gen Z, 13% of millennials, 13% of Gen X, and 8% of baby boomers reported feeling emotionally distressed with low levels of well-being. And 40% of workers believe that burnout is an inevitable part of success, according to the Asana report, and that's sad, right? 

So, you know, it's our collective responsibility as leaders to recognize and prevent burnout from happening in our organizations and on our teams. But the truth is that overcoming burnout and transforming your life begins with you. So, where do we begin? I just want to share some optimal activities. This is from a journal article on applied psychology and health and well-being. This article offers some suggestions about optimal activities that you can do to navigate burnout and remove yourself from that feeling of burnout and decreased levels of well-being. One of those things that they recommend is detachment. So, make space physically to detach yourself from your work and your daily routines. Now, that might seem like an impossible task because there's so much to do. But the truth is, you've got to break from the cycle. So maybe you start working late into the night, and you start working on weekends because you have so much to do. 

And then your stress level starts to build. And then your emotional and physical well-being starts to suffer, but you keep working because you have more to do. And then you get more and more exhausted. So you keep working because you still have no end in sight, and your energy continues to get depleted. And then the quality of your work begins to suffer. So you need to feel like you need to put more into it. So you work harder and try to work harder, try harder to make up for the deficiencies. And you continue on this never-ending cycle, and it spirals out of control into just the danger zone. Right? And this is, you know, we've got to break the cycle. So, I like to think of detachment as when I work from home. 

So there are places in my home where our nonwork zones are, and there are places where, you know, I have my family meal, so I'm not going to bring my laptop into those spaces. CES and work, like when I'm finished for the day, I close my computer, I put the phone away, and I enjoy family time; if I'm in the living room, relaxing and watching a movie, I'm not bringing my laptop with me, you know, I, I, it's like I have segments in my life. And I kind of detach from that work. 

This is an area where it's a no-work zone; my office is the place where I do my work. And when I leave the office, I leave it behind. So there are ways that you can detach yourself physically from the work that can help your mind sort of turn off because I've been that person who has, I'm going to watch this movie, but I've got to do a few other things. And I'm just going to bring the laptop, and on a commercial, I'll just do this. But then what I find is at the end of the day, when I need to wind down and go to sleep, I can't turn off my brain. And I just start ruminating over things. So you know, I talked in the last episode about leaving our devices in another room when we go to sleep. But having a time where we hold ourselves accountable to that where we shut things off. Because we need that space to recharge, we need to separate our work from our relaxation. 

Going into relaxation is another aspect of really breaking free from this burnout. What does relaxation mean to you? What activities do you find deeply relaxing? They might be different things for different people. You know, I had a client who said I don't know how to relax. But when we started talking, her relaxing for her was vacuuming that meditative vacuuming. That sound of the vacuum, that repetitive action. It was refinishing furniture and things like that, working with our hands. So, while that might feel like working for one person, it might be relaxing for another. It could be walking in nature, sitting and meditating, reading, or taking a nap. So finding what is relaxation to you. 

And if you're the type of person who needs to be doing things, and it's hard to like Boo, tone it down, then do something physically that's relaxing, like the walk might be a good thing. Finding a hobby where you can work with your hands might be something that's really helpful. Here's something interesting. This is also some research done by the Applied Psychology and Health and Wellbeing journal. There's new research around recovery that also can help you relax. Specifically, when you do activities on weekends or on vacations, which provide you an opportunity to get away from your work or connect with others or, you know, experience effectiveness, this helps reduce burnout and increase your energy. So connecting with others, going for coffee, doing something an activity, like a workout that makes you feel good that you've conquered it that that can help you, you know, just feel better about your effectiveness and get you to connect with others. 

But that can have a huge impact on recovery. So, another way that we can really overcome burnout is through mastery. Now this might sound surprising, but learning new things, developing mastery in things that you care about, and doing things that are already related to things that you're currently doing things that you're already good at. But you just want to get better at those, build confidence, build your energy, and build your emotional strength. 

So, in this way, it can help you overcome feelings of inadequacy and feelings of effectiveness that are often associated with burnout. So, if there is something that you're excited about learning, then learn it, follow your intuition, and let it guide you. It is not a waste of time. It's helping you recover. And it's helping build your confidence so that you feel less the effects of burnout and you feel energized. Another aspect of this is control. So, feeling trapped is another common aspect of burnout. You know, remember we talked about that vicious cycle, so you might feel like there's no way out? Stop. Take a deep breath. And consider the opportunities that are all around you to help you get involved on your own terms and in a way that's meaningful to you.

So, pause is critical when you start to feel like you're losing control. It might feel counterintuitive because you want to just get in there and get it done. But stop, breathe, take a walk, and then come back with a fresh perspective. Then ask yourself, instead of asking why can't I do this? Why am I stuck? Think, how can I? What are the other opportunities out there? What are other options here? And the last aspect of this is relatedness burnout. If we don't feel like we're relating to other people, that relatedness or lack thereof can be correlated with depression. So, feelings of social disconnection and loneliness, loneliness, are also closely related to depression and burnout. So make it a point to spend time with people you love and to fill you up. Right. So transformation isn't possible without change; we have to be willing to change some of the things that we're doing, which I love. You know, I'm bringing the awareness here. And you've got to bring the willingness; I learned that from a colleague of mine and mentor and partner SHINee. 

So I've been coaching with her and getting my second level of ICF certification and neurolinguistic programming, but she always talks about that awareness and willingness. If you bring those together, that equals change. So I'm bringing the awareness, you're bringing the will and willingness, and together, we can create transformation. But to begin that transformational process, you have to break that cycle of burnout and actually apply some of the things that we've been talking about. You can reignite your mind, your body, and your spirit by giving your brain and body the opportunity to get away and reset, whether it's like in your mind by taking a breath, going outside physically and removing yourself from work or removing the work from your place where you normally would want to relax. But the more distance and detachment from work you have, the better when you're trying to reconnect and reignite your mind, right? 

The greater the connection to you and the people that you love and who fill you up, the better. You can create positive change in your well-being in all kinds of ways, and your choices for recovery outside of work can also make a big, big difference. So, if you are ready to step out of the shadows of burnout, embrace these strategies and try them to light your path toward rich rejuvenation. 

Share your journey. Share these strategies that worked for you in our social media, go onto rat race reboot.com And leave us a review. Leave us a message I read those I want to hear. Let's inspire each other so we can together navigate out of burnout toward well being. I want to thank you again for listening today. Remember, everything is created twice, first in our mind, and then in physical form. We'll see you next week.