Let’s be honest, our relationship with stress has become increasingly skewed.
We go to work (or start working from our beds when we first wake up…), look at our emails, our KPI’s, have meetings, work towards goals and then we come home only to re-do that process again.
For a lot of people, on top of their so-called “9-5”, they have family commitments. They have relationships. They have friends, which at the end of the day, is also putting a lot of pressure on them.
It might not be a relaxing place to be when we come home. A lot of our lives have become stressful.
The other problem that we have is how we perceive and manage our goals.
If things don’t go to plan at work, then we beat ourselves up. Our inner voice can throw insults that makes it near impossible to switch off. All the should, could, would haves come into play.
Then on the other hand, if things go well at work, we feel pressured to maintain that element of success. Even if we have run ourselves ragged. Maybe to achieve that goal we made sacrifices. Sacrifices to our diets, exercise regime or our downtime to hit that goal.
It’s not sustainable.
We tie our self-worth and our view of success on how we are performing at work, which is creating an incredibly hostile environment internally.
Which can and does lead to burnout.
Burnout isn’t just destroying our physical health, it’s also destroying our mental health and emotional health.
What does burnout do in those three categories? Let me tell you:
Physical health:
- Lower our immunity
- Increase inflammation
- Cause fatigue
- Digestive issues
Mental Health:
- Reduce mental clarity
- Increased forgetfulness
- Reduce comprehension
- Decrease in productivity
- Easily distracted
Emotional health:
- Increase apathy towards job or life situation
- Increase in frustration and anger
- Become reactionary instead of proactive
- Increase in anxiety
At the end of the day, stress and burnout can really ruin our potential. And not only at work. It can really impact all the relationships around us.
It’s doom and gloom, isn’t it? However, it doesn’t have to be.
I was fortunate enough to speak to the lovely people at Hunted and talk about what are the warning signs and what you can do to prevent burnout.
Have a gander at an article I wrote to follow up from that talk: https://www.hunted.com/industry-content/how-to-spot-stress-in-yourself
Get Your Sh*t Together – Literally and Figuratively.
If you’re interested in how to Get Your Sh*t Together, then download the GYST protocol here.
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