What is Burn Out?
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Burn out is a feeling of being unable to call up enthusiasm or motivation for our work and a lack of pleasure in what we do. Who doesn’t feel overwhelmed sometimes? When work stress relentlessly pushes you into a debilitating state we call burn out, it’s a serious problem, affecting not only your own performance and well-being, both at work and outside, but also your team and organization. If you feel exhausted, start to hate your job, and begin to feel less capable at work, you are showing signs of burnout.
Recognizing the Signs of Burn Out
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If Burnout Left unchecked, burnout can wreak havoc on your health, happiness, relationships, and job performance. In order to catch burnout and combat it early, it’s important to know what to look out for. Here are the signs of burnout that you might experience:
Negative emotions, frustration, and cynicism
You may be disillusioned with everything and notice that you feel more generally pessimistic than you used to. Everybody experiences some negative emotions from time to time, it’s important to know when these are becoming unusual for you.
Declining job performance
Try to compare your current job performance with your performance in previous years. Because fatigue tends to occur over a long period of time, taking this long-term view can reveal whether you are experiencing temporary burnout or experiencing more chronic burnout.
Not Taking Care of Yourself
When suffering from fatigue, some people engage in unhealthy strategies such as smoking, eating unhealthy foods, not eating enough or not getting enough sleep. Self-medicating to muster the energy to drag yourself to work in the morning will actually have a negative impact if the way it is done is wrong, such as drinking more coffee and taking sleeping pills.
Being Preoccupied With Work When You’re Not at Work
If you spend mental energy thinking about your work, then your work is interfering with your ability to recover from the stresses of your day. To recover, you need time to yourself after the actual task stops and a time when you stop thinking about the task altogether.
Generally Decreased Satisfaction
You feel less happy and satisfied with your career and life. Also, you feel trapped in whatever is going on in your social environment.
Ways to Overcome Burn Out
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With this in mind, it’s important to understand the stages of burnout before you can work to prevent it. With burnout, it’s important to take regular steps to prevent it and we’ve highlighted four stages of burnout to help you understand how you can prevent it from interfering with your life.
Recognize the cause of your burnout
Do you recognize the signs of impending burnout or are you past the breaking point? If you try to get past the burnout and continue as you are it will only cause further emotional and physical damage. Now, it’s time to pause and change course by learning how you can help yourself overcome burnout and feel healthy and positive again.
Reframe the way you look at your work by asking why the work matters to you
- Try to find some value in your work. Focusing on aspects of your job that you enjoy can help you regain purpose and control.
- Find balance in your life. If you hate your job, look for meaning and fulfillment elsewhere in your life and focus on the parts of your life that bring you happiness.Â
- Try to take a complete break from work. Use free time to recharge your battery and pursue other recovery methods.
Find support to boost your mood and energy through friends, family, and healthy lifestyle
Having support to boost your mood and energy with friends and family can help reduce and combat the effects of burnout. Having a friend to chat with and joke with during the day can help relieve stress from an unsatisfactory or demanding job, improve your job performance, or simply help you get through a tough day. In addition, healthy living is very important to reduce burnout because if we are healthy then we can do a job well and not feel disappointed and tired anymore.
If needed, take a long break and get away for your work life for a while
If burnout seems inevitable, try to take a complete break from work. Go on vacation, use up your sick days, ask for a temporary leave-of-absence, anything to remove yourself from the situation. Use the time away to recharge your batteries and pursue other methods of recovery.
Writer : Salsabila Rahma Az Zahro
Source Featured Image: Freepik – Titaporn