What To Do When Feeling Burnt Out?

Burn out, its a term that has been used consistently over the last five years especially. According to the Queensland government, burn out is a state of complete mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion.

You may feel as if you are tired all of the time, or simple tasks that use to be easy actually feel extremely overwhelming. You may be feeling irritable and find yourself feeling frustrated at small things more often than not. You could even feel symptoms of anxiety and even depression due to being burnt out.

There are of course varying degrees of burn out, but sadly Australians in 2021 and beyond have been experiencing burn out more than most other countries according to a global study completed by Global Consultants McKinsey. In fact, 61% of Aussies were experiencing stages of burn out, which is the highest rate in any other country.

Now, we could blame plenty of outliers and situations that are causing said burn out, but today we want to focus on what you can do when you are feeling burnt out and what coping mechanisms you could put in place to help you in your every day to day life.

Burn Out Remedies -

1.Take it easy on yourself and stop expecting so much of yourself (You may not feel it, but to this point in time, you are truly doing an amazing job).

Admittedly, this is not so much a remedy, but just a reminder to be kind to oneself. You are doing the best you can, with the resources and skillset you have right now at this point in time. Therefore, putting more and more pressure on yourself is only going to cause more mistakes and that is when the burn out will increase significantly.

2. Take the breaks you are entitled to!

You cannot sustain long periods of constant work for months and years on end, your body and mind are actually not suited to consistently working on the one task or sitting at a desk for ten hours straight. You need to make sure that you are taking the break’s where you can, such as your lunch breaks, annual leave/holidays, sick days when you are feeling too ill to work. In Australia, we are known for always battling through, but when it gets to the point where you are battling through for years on end, your going to burn out sooner or later.

3. Go on little sabbaticals, or short-term retirements.

A weird one and not overly used in Australia, but something that is catching on a little bit more these days…

People are quitting their work and deciding to not work for 3-12 months at a time, to re-energise themselves and build up that battery that has been so depleted from working for years on end. Something that is truly worth thinking about if you can do it financially and have been burning the candle at both ends for years at a time.

4. Take up a hobby and go to the gym.

Of course, an ex-personal trainer/gym owner is going to tell me to go to the gym… I know that is what you are thinking, but truly, we all know the benefits of keeping fit and staying healthy. However, taking up a hobby and exercising your creative juices are also just as important. Now everyone has different tastes and hobbies, so if you do not have anything that you do outside of work that makes you feel good, please go out and try a few new things. You will definitely find that having an outlet is going to be a massive win against burn out.

5. Find Your WHY!

The last and probably the most important remedy to burn out comes down to simply understanding why you do what you do.

The great philosopher, Aristotle said, “Knowing thyself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

To know ones self and why you wake up each day is the simplest and most under-rated of all things that you can do to reduce burn out and increase your own success. However, it is the hardest one of them all, because most of us do not dedicate the time needed to actually understand YOU!

Finding your why and understanding yourself takes years of reflection on your values and priorities, working out your strengths and weaknesses, and even when you have done all of the work it is on going, because we are forever shifting and changing. Therefore, you have to dedicate your life to personal development and carve out time each week, or month at the very least, to STOP and REFLECT.

Burn out can have mental, physical and psychological ramifications that can be detrimental to your health and the health of your family. According to the stats, you are most likely going to be burnt out in one point in your life.

Hence, by being able to create coping mechanisms and understanding yourself, you will be able to catch it when you are starting to burn out and hopefully save yourself from going over the edge.

Truly I hope that this can help, even if one strategy above can help you get through a tough period at work or in your family life, that means that you are slightly better off and you can go out and make the world a slightly better place because of it!

Until next time,

Take Back Control