#47 | Mindfulness of burning out
Hello friend -
How do you know that you need rest?
How does it feel when your body is exhausted?
When do you know that you are losing interest, motivation, drive?
What is your self-talk when you feel behind, stressed, anxious?
How do you feel when you permit yourself to rest?
I have never had a burnout, or maybe I had, but I was unaware of it. I remember weeks and months at work when I felt like all my world had zoomed in, and all I could see, feel and talk about – was work. I was driven by fear and competition. There was a lot of anxiety that things may go wrong at any moment. And when things did go wrong, there was a lot of self-blame. My escape was relatively primitive: a couple of glasses of wine or an exhausting workout.
Burnout is like a fever, while there is already an ongoing infection. Burnout does not happen overnight. It develops week by week, month by month. And while it develops, we are usually blind, incapable of seeing the signs of it coming closer. Burnout is exhaustion – mental, physical, emotional. It can happen at work, but it can also occur because of how things are at home. And when it happens, there is despair, collapse, and fear.
Mindfulness practice is a great tool to help us notice early signs of burnout and perhaps take action. Here is how:
We develop mindfulness of the body.
We learn to feel our breath; notice built-up tension in the upper back. We become familiar with the sensations of sleepiness, restlessness, pressure, contraction, pain, and much more. Next time your body reaches its red line – you can notice it earlier than later and pause.
We develop mindfulness of emotions.
We learn to see the floating nature of what we feel. Usually, anxiety is followed by restlessness, fear, anger, resistance, or sudden joy. We learn to identify emotions that feel good, expansive and those which feel bad. We also learn to see how these emotions express themselves in our bodies. This means that we can spot tension in our bodies very early. Things start making sense.
We develop mindfulness of thoughts.
We start noticing repeated thoughts and all that negative self-talk we are so good at. We start seeing how our mind constantly produces worst-case scenarios. We learn to see how specific thoughts cause emotions which then cause certain sensations in the body. We develop a capacity not to believe our own thoughts – many of them are empty.
With time we learn that:
Nothing is personal.
Nothing is perfect.
Nothing is permanent.
See if you could develop your regular mindfulness meditation practice. Find a teacher, use an app. Eight minutes a day can be enough. And be sure that this training will support you when you need it most.
Click here to learn how I could help you make your first step
Enjoy your day. Enjoy being.