At some point in their careers, most business professionals will experience some form of burnout. As is too often the case, people who overextend themselves at work will quickly find themselves struggling with feelings of exhaustion and irritability.
So how does a person recover from such feelings and regain their energy and enthusiasm for their job? Each person responds to burnout in their own way, of course, but there are a few common paths that people take to pull themselves out of the burnout slump. Here are just a few tried-and-true methods for bringing the color into life again.
Know When to Take a Break
When people value working hard, James Crickmore understands that it can be difficult to know when to take a well-deserved rest. Sometimes, however, it’s important to use up that spare vacation time for a family trip to the outdoors or even take some personal hours away from the office for a relaxing coffee break.
Practice Assertiveness
For the most part, burnout arises when people do not set good boundaries at work or at home. Indeed, being able to tell people when we’re feeling overextended is an important quality to have. If we struggle to say no to the demands of others, we’re going to have serious issues with burnout throughout our professional lives.
Put Things in Perspective
Overcoming burnout is never easy, but reframing how we look at our lives and problems can seriously help our mindset in the long-term. For example, James Crickmore has seen situations such as a person who is frustrated with their coworkers examining why they feel that frustration. Perhaps they feel that their coworkers “should” or “shouldn’t” do certain things or “should” or “shouldn’t” behave in a certain way.
Taking words like “should” and “shouldn’t” out of our vocabulary can help us to understand that what other people choose to do with their lives is up to them, and that when we worry about the actions of others we will feel drained. By reframing how we look at the situation, in other words, we can devote our energy to things that we can actually control.
While everyone experiences burnout to some degree, it should not be an insurmountable obstacle in our lives. With the right approach, James Crickmore believes that we can build up our energy reserves again and learn to appreciate the good aspects of our careers and personal experiences. Truly, that is self-care at its best!