What is burnout; information and understanding of the experience of burning out
The best indicator that burnout is on it’s way out is to regain a sense of humour. A sense of fun, light-heartedness is the antithesis of feeling life is beating you up and wearing you down.
Here’s a great example from our burnt out business owner’s email autoresponder–proof that burnout is fading and excitement is returning….”Thank you for your email. Please note I will be away from the office wearing Mickey Mouse ears from…. Happy Spring Break!”
Brilliant surprise to receive this.
Change it up!
Liberation from burnout is in large part about embracing change as an absolute constant in life.
When most of us think about change we think about changing stuff: habits, things, relationships, work.
But change is spiritual; it requires faith, trust, courage, beliefe, honesty, and love.
Change makes you reach inside yourself and be alone with your desires and your fears.
You have to find the courage to step off into the unknown if you want a new beginning.
You have to begin trusting and listening to yourself, rather than others.
You have to reach inside yourself and surrender to some guiding force, intuition, inner whisper or set of beliefs you can count on.
Change makes you confront the truth about your wants and dreams, your shortcomings and your strengths.
Then you have to reach inside yourself and take responsibility for it all.
Change means having the courage to let go of the outcome, be open to the unexpected, and as a consequence find serenity, strength, and eventually yourself.
Change doesn’t have to be scary, it is the process of constant renewal. When you discover that, you discover the point of being alive.
Seems like we hit ANOTHER highly sensitive nerve with our last posting! For many the £1 Million question is where to be perfect and where not to be? Now, obviously I use the phrase ‘be perfect’ with tongue-in-cheek since we all here know that perfect is not attainable…we do all know that, right? Good…moving on….
Make yourself a list of areas or things in your life where you want to pursue your perfectionism. Yes, you heard it right…you are allowed to pursue your perfectionism! Look over your list and question your values around each point and then add-in the realism factor.
Can you achieve perfection on any given point, have you the time to do that, is that important to you? If you find a task that you still want to do ‘perfectly’, go for it. Just set your limits and know ahead of time what is ‘perfect’ to you. Make so called ‘perfect’ work for you not against you.
ONE GREAT TIP: Don’t let others convince you that it is wrong to have a fabulous trait, like striving for perfect! Own it, love it, redefine it, and work it!
Well the talk about perfectionism really struck a chord with many of you.
It’s true, given the ‘right’ upbringing, pretty well anyone can become a perfectionist, but highly sensitive and creative women naturally tend toward perfectionism. Striving for ‘perfect’ is kind of part of the package that is ‘normal for us’.
No it’s not a flaw in the wiring! It is what we call an artifact of some other fabulous traits we have. First off, HSPs are exquisitely perceptive and sensitive to communications. So as children we often pick up messages about being perfect where others wouldn’t. Highly sensitive kids ‘read between the lines’, as I like to tell parents, however, they are kids so can just as easily get the message wrong. As a parent you may not mean “do it perfectly or you won’t be loved”, but that unfortunately can be what the HSP child ‘hears’.
Here’s another thing, as HSPs we are often ‘overly’ reliable, conscientious, and concerned about pleasing others. We have a tremendous focus on detail, are good at processing, thinking, and ruminating about almost anything and everything. We keep everything we do under a microscope and are pretty consistently hard on ourselves. As one HSP client put it, “I look for the flaws in my life where others tend to look past my flaws”. Exactly.!
HSPs are so cautious about making mistakes, one could even say terrified of making mistakes, that they believe they should do anything ‘only once and do it right’. What a trap this is since all learning is, in essence, built on trial and error.
The intensity that we HSPs bring to everything we do, be it trivial or major, combined with perfectionism can put us on the fact track to burnout.
Awake early Saturday morning and there was that delicious moment when my brain yelled in joy, “It’s the weekend!”…quickly followed by my brain singing “everybody’s working for the weekend” (It’s not easy having my brain). Then of course, I couldn’t get back to sleep because I was trying to figure out who sang that song…still don’t know…brain still singing.
However, this weekend is decidedly a work-free weekend for me. Have been choosing to work most weekends over the past few weeks with new projects, new website (! you’re here!), new everything, but I know my limit, and this weekend is definitely not going to be a working one.
Many of our clients, maybe you as well, are putting in longer and longer hours, skipping lunch breaks, coming in early, staying late, and working weekends. What with cutbacks, staff layoffs and downsizing, what 3 people used to do now comes down to one poor sod trying to do it all. And, because you are a burnout queen…trying to do it your absolute best.
So, can going in early, staying late, or working weekends ever be good for burnout? About now you are wondering, are they crazy? How could putting more time in at work, cutting into relaxation time, ever be a good burnout strategy? “It’s about control people, control!” (I couldn’t resist going for the drama, it’s sooo not me!) Seriously, one of the great contributors to burnout is lack of control. So think about it, if you are desperately behind on deadlines, drowning under piles of ToDo’s, your day is full of interruptions, and you have a line-up of people at your door waiting for your attention (whew, stressed just writing that) it makes sense to decide to work more! Oh yes it does.
Making a choice to dig in and dig out, to hunker down and get ahead, choosing to find those extra, quiet, interruption-free, focus-filled hours is the same as making a conscious decision to recharge your batteries. No longer will you be feeling the weight of every unfinished task resting on your shoulders. You may actually be able to breathe instead of feeling squeezed!
So, feel free, you have our blessing, tilt the balance for a few hours this weekend or next week. Face the extra work hours with a different mindset, see it as proactive. A “queenly” decision as we like to see them, taking back your power, making it work for you.
ONE GREAT TIP: If you are heading into the office on the weekend, make a point of dressing like the weekend: flip flops, sweats, baseball cap, shades. If you are working at home, keep the bunny slippers on!