How to Avoid Becoming Burnt Out
January 29, 2018
By Sade Harrison, Service Coordinator
There are few things that are more satisfying in your personal, professional world than gaining and maintaining momentum. You begin to feel very productive. You’re picking up new projects and tasks. You’re feeling accomplished. Then it hits you. You’re burnt out.
We all know the feeling when we become surrounded by exhaustion and negative emotions about our positions. It almost seems that once it starts, it is impossible for it to go away. The important thing to remember about being burnt out is that it is possible for you to feel good and energized again. It won’t last forever, but you will have to put some work into pulling yourself out of the slump.
Self-Care is exactly what it sounds like. It is extremely important for you to take care of yourself as often as you can. We sometimes get so carried away with work, school, or our social lives that we do not have the mindset of sitting down and letting ourselves decompress. And self-care looks different from everyone. For some, it means that you spend time on vacation, somewhere warm or somewhere cold, to just get away from your usual settings. You can use this time to reset yourself. For others, self-care means to take a bath and listen to music while you are relaxing. Some people look to their friends and families to assist with their self-care experience, as they enjoy the social interaction and the support they receive. Again, the most important part is to care for YOU.
Another tip is to prioritize. Sometimes we forget to organize our work and we end up with procrastination blues. When we don’t prioritize our workload (as well as our housekeeping at home), we begin to feel the doom of deadlines and the overwhelming feeling of not being able to finish anything. You can prioritize in any way that helps you best. You can organize by deadline date, by how large the assignment is, or by what will take the most effort to do.
To me, the most important way for me to avoid burn out is to affirm myself. We all get overwhelmed throughout life and it is important to remind ourselves that we are doing well and that we are capable of reaching our goals. I like to write my affirmations down, so I can review them. Here are a few affirmations: I am successful, I am a productive worker, and I enjoy my job.
Lucas says, “I stay calm. And then I tell someone about it.”
Kate says, “I try to find a positive and find something funny around. And then I laugh, a lot!”
Next time, when you start to feel the burn out coming, remember that you are in control and that you have the resources to take care of yourself.