Feeling tired, crabby, powerless – pretty much every day? You can recover – here’s how…

Do you experience any of the following pretty much every day?…

 

1.  exhaustion (mental, emotional and/or physical)

 

Do you experience depleted energy due to helplessness, futility or tiredness due to overwork?

 

2.  crabby 

 

Do you frequently have a negative or cynical attitude or loss of concern for something you have a responsibility for – this can include people you interact with fairly regularly?  Do you seek to remove yourself from these situations or people whenever you can?

 

3.  feeling powerless 

 

Do you feel incompetent, insufficient, discouraged or powerless to get done what you need to or want to accomplish?

 

Chronic exposure to any of these 3 experiences can unleash a case of burnout.

 

Burnout typically starts as a form of disengagement which may be triggered by perceived threatening situations, diminished returns on personally invested resources, enhanced demands, or lack of resources.  It can begin as mildly as developing a “wait-and-see attitude” towards aspects of your life – meaning you might hold back from investing too much time, effort or energy in something because you prefer to see how things “play out”.  But here’s what happens when we allow solutions outside of ourself to develop…

time + tired/crabby/powerless – autonomy = a magnitude of disengagement

 

Here’s what a progressing case of disengagement might look like…

 

• believing that everyone and everything around you is “wrong” and that you are the only one who is “right”
• a belief of “if only people would listen to me…”
• bonding with others or swapping negative stories (i.e. “she did that to you…listen to what she did to me…”)
• justifying your lack of involvement to make anything better – “why bother?” might be the script running in your head
• you have few (if any) suggestions on how to make things better when asked to contribute to finding solutions
• easily able to contribute lots and lots of evidence about what is wrong with a situation

 

Are you starting to think you might be on a slippery slope to burnout?  Doing nothing for yourself if you believe you might be on this path can eventually affect your…

 

1. health – cardiovascular, mental (especially depression), musculoskeletal disorders, common infections (cold/flu/gastroenteritis), inflammatory conditions, type 2 diabetes, weakened immune systems plus low physical activity and obesity
2. (sense of) fulfillment – injured self-esteem via lost feelings of mastery
3. productivity – decreased work capacity, decreased innovativeness

 

Feeling tired, crabby, powerless – pretty much every day?  You can recover – here’s how…

 

…you can get off this slope and recover from or prevent further disengagement or burnout.  In short, it’s about adopting a Personal Power Practice for yourself – just as you would start a diet and fitness routine to shed some weight or as you would have a wellness routine such as regular visits to a chiropractor, massage therapist, dermatologist to combat illness, sore/stiff muscles or acne (heck, even manicures/pedicures are a dedicated act to your well-being), a Personal Power Practice can help you to keep your attitude or mindset in top shape.

 

We all know how it feels to have our confidence shaken, feel directionless, be down in the dumps, or operating with a low grade of anger or frustration – terrible!  And everyone around us can sense it.  The trick is to have tools that can expand our awareness and our consciousness – just like you would have weights for a workout or the right sneakers to run a marathon.

 

So what you can do to get on a path to recovering from burnout and even preventing another round of burnout in the future?

 

All it takes to have  Personal Power Practice is:

1. an active decision – to develop and participate in exercises that can help strengthen your feeling of personal power
2. regular practice – at improving your personal power experience
3. sharing your practice experiences – teach others what you are experiencing and learning vs. relying on others to change

 

Why adopt this practice?

 

This is the ‘ole “WIIFM” question (What’s In It For Me?) – Here’s a few things that are in it for you…

 

• awareness of your talents – feel like you matter and make a difference
• improved relationships
• higher-performance
• easier ability to bounce back from set-backs
• energy
• improved creativity
• personal development

 

In short you can experience vigor vs. exhaustion, civility and dedication vs. cynicism, and a sense of accomplishment vs. powerlessness.

 

Next blog I will discuss a few things you can do to address tiredness.  In the blog following that I will address crabbiness followed by powerlessness.  Stay tuned!