According to a recent University of Phoenix survey more than half (55 percent) of employed U.S. adults say they have experienced burnout. Of those who experienced burnout 68 percent experienced fatigue, 65 percent experience anxiety and 48 percent experience depression.
Feelings of burnout can be brought on by a number of things including a heavy workload, workplace stress, caregiving, and competing demands (i.e. from personal/family life). While our culture is slowly understanding the importance of mental wellness in the workplace, we need to take steps to manage our burnout. If we don’t, it not only reduces our productivity, it spills into area of our lives such as home, social and our physical health.
Here are 3 tips to help you start working toward overcoming burnout and achieving work-life balance.
1. Change your viewpoint on stress
Stress is neither good nor bad, it just is. It is what we make stress mean that becomes good or bad. You get to choose. Often times we stress over a circumstance we cannot change instead of concentrating on thinking or feeling differently about the circumstance. We get to choose our thoughts and feelings. Stress is the most basic kind of resilience. For many of us, stress is a catalyst to jump-start our performance. You give stress meaning, so you need to ask yourself what are you making stress mean in your life? Your thoughts and feelings drive your actions.
Change your perceptions about stress. Even the positive events in your life like a new job, participating in a sport or taking a vacation cause a degree of stress. Stress can make you feel alive and engaged in life or even provide a breakthrough on something you been stuck on. You can use stress as a motivator or recognize it as a warning sign that you need to make a change. By changing our mindset, you can control what stress means and how you react.
