How to cope with burnout and return to normal life
Unfortunately, many people today forget that we work to live, not vice versa. Devoting all of their time to their professional duties, people forget about relatives and friends, missing out on other areas of life.
But everyone is well aware that sooner or later any excessive enthusiasm for something leads to disastrous consequences. In case of fanatical work, this results in burnout. This is not a myth or psychologists’ invention. This is a syndrome that is officially recognized by the World Health Organization.
But there is good news: burnout can be treated! It is possible to return to a normal, fulfilling life (https://anywhere.epam.com/en/how-to-deal-with-burnout-and-win-your-life-back) if you approach this systematically and responsibly.
What is burnout and how to distinguish it from fatigue?
To begin dealing with a problem, it must first be identified. Many people in the initial stages of burnout believe that they are simply tired.
There is a very simple way to distinguish fatigue from a more serious problem on your own. To understand what is happening, you need to ask yourself the question: when was the last time you were satisfied with your work? If the answer is yesterday or last week, then everything is not so bad. Everyone has bad days at work. But when you are burned out, there are simply no good days! If a person cannot say what tasks they solved a few days ago and remembers only the negative aspects of their work, this is an alarming signal.
With burnout, both professional and personal sides of life turn into a chain of identical bleak days. You need to admit to yourself that it’s time to do something before it reaches an extreme point.
Causes of burnout and ways to prevent it
Every disease has its causes. Emotional and professional burnout is no exception. To effectively overcome the problem, you need to find the causes of burnout and use methods that will help to cope with it.
Stress at work
If the complexity of work itself creates stress and drives burnout for you, then you need to find courses, workshops of other types of training and fill the gaps in your knowledge and skills. After that, tasks of increased complexity will start bringing joy, because the realization that they can be easily solved increases self-esteem.
Competition
A common cause of burnout is that other applicants for a “place in the sun” interfere with climbing the career ladder. A change of priorities often helps. Set yourself a goal not to take a certain higher position but to achieve excellent results in your current professional field. You can suggest interesting solutions, look for non-standard ways out of difficult work situations, and add a little creativity to your routine work. Then, even if you decide to change jobs, more doors are opened for an employee with extraordinary qualities.
Workaholism
Overtime, working at weekends, having no lunch breaks — these are clear signs of workaholism. It is workaholics, whether by nature or out of necessity, who most often end up having a burnout. There is only one way out: planning your time for work and rest. Workaholics often find refuge in hobbies. When they find an extra activity they enjoy, their drive to do all the work in record time decreases.
Other causes of burnout
Causes of burnout can be very diverse and vary from person to person. For example, the routine and monotony of tasks can lead to burnout for someone. A change of priorities might unsettle others because of the need to keep everything in check at work, in one’s personal life, and at home. Others struggle at finding work-life balance because of their excessive sense of responsibility. The first step in the fight against burnout is to find its cause and have the determination to overcome it by breaking the vicious circle.