Burn out is a physical or mental state that anyone can experience at any time. It commonly happens to us in our jobs as well as with our health and fitness programs. When seeking restoration, it helps to uncover the cause so that you can get to the root of the problem and start developing an action plan of change.
Understanding why you have become burnt out is the first step to addressing it. Many things can cause us to land in this state of discontent and exhaustion including over doing it, not allowing ourselves breaks to recharge physically and mentally, continuously feeling dissatisfied with our results despite great effort and feeling as though those efforts and our work lack real purpose.
These are just a few causes and they can apply to the workplace as well as to those working toward a health or fitness goal. Although often unavoidable in many life circumstances, stress can start to consume us and zap our energy. Zapped energy means zapped motivation. For those who have reached this point, it can be helpful to start by journaling what activities and parts of the day stress peaks and energy plummets. Also, take note of what triggers stress and loss of energy and how it is changes your overall outlook. After several days of consistent logging, the underlying causes are more easily identified.
Once the source of burn out is identified, how can you fix it? First, don’t brush off the work you’ve already done. There are several therapeutic qualities to journaling our stresses, energy levels and emotions while exploring their causes. This provides clarity and even a release.
Next, isolate your stressors and their triggers by evaluating them independently and begin to analyze why it’s a source of stress as well as what could help relieve it. Oftentimes, this gives us the opportunity to re-identify our goals and review our “why,” which helps re-ignite the motivation and passion we once had. Take some time away to help work through this process and recharge your mental and physical batteries. Be disciplined in allowing yourself to disconnect completely. That includes emails, texts, social media and any other communication platform on your various devices.
If you have found that you are lacking the motivation you once had and feel you are missing out on the other important and enjoyable things in life, such as family and hobbies, then it’s time to re-evaluate and take a break. In order to achieve sustainable success in anything you do, there must be balance. Burn out is often a cue that something is off kilter and we need to re-establish harmony between downtime and working towards knocking out our goals.
Emily Young is a marketing manager for Affiliated Acceptance Corporation (AAC). For more information visit http://affiliatedacceptance.com/.
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