Feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and as if one more thing (step, mandate, responsibility, deadline) will break you? You're not alone. If you feel like you're swimming in mud just to get out of bed to face the day, you may be experiencing burnout. It's not uncommon if you're an educator, thanks to the increasing demands on your time and decreasing time to get things done. Personally, I love what I do, which means I often don't separate work from "life"—and therein lies the road to burnout. To keep burnout at bay, I run through this checklist of self-care and self-preservation strategies. Go through this list, one element at a time, to discover areas ripe for just one small change.
- Monitor connectivity. Studies show that we touch our smartphones 2,600 times/day (heavier users nearly double that). That amounts to about 20 hours a month. Digital detox is a "thing" now, an official term, and moneymaker to boot. Google it to find (ironically) detox apps like Mute or actual digital detox retreats if you need to pay someone to take your phone away from you. I find that when I'm most stressed, I've also spent the most time online. To recharge, I unplug, disconnect, and get outside. Lately, I've worked with my son to instill a "digital sunset" in our household. We try to turn off screens by 8:30 or 9:00 p.m. It doesn't always work, but we are slowly building the habit.
- Create. I've always loved creating in all forms: writing snail mail to someone, hand lettering, drawing, crafting, and sketching. Creative pursuits quiet my brain to focus on the task in front of me and allow me to achieve a state of flow. When I'm feeling overwhelmed, creating something is like a cleanse for my burdened mind.
- Get back to nature. Whatever natural space you can find—from parks and forests to simply looking up at the sky or sitting under a tree in your backyard—breathe it in, do nothing, and simply be in nature. Leave your phone inside and look and listen to what the outdoors has to offer.
- Review your diet. What are you eating? When I'm stressed I may eat differently, but I also look to what I've eaten in the past couple of days, because that may have led to my feelings of stress. We have 100 million neurons in our gut, hence its nickname "the second brain" and our guts produce 90 percent of our serotonin! If you're not feeling your best, drink more water and cut back on added sugar. I notice near-immediate differences when I make these small changes to my dietary habits.
- Sleep. I doubt any of us get enough of it. Positive psychology author and lecturer Tal Ben Shahar says the root cause of fatigue and burnout is insufficient recovery. Experiment with the number of hours you sleep to determine what your body needs to feel refreshed in the morning. The National Sleep Foundation provides age-specific guidelines for a starting point. Also, consider how diet (recommendation #4) is affecting your sleep habits.
- Choose your frame. I've learned that much of my burnout results from how I respond to challenges or the frame I put around frustrations. Psychologist and author Victor Frankl wrote about the power of how respond to our circumstances in his book Man's Search for Meaning. He argues that between stimulus (frustration) and response, there is freedom—the freedom to choose how we respond. Frankl famously applied this concept as a survival technique in concentration camps during the Holocaust. So, when I feel frustrated, instead of responding with negative self-talk, I think about how I can embrace the challenge as an opportunity to grow. Listen and talk to yourself without judgment, as you would a dear friend. Burnout is not grounds to berate yourself for "not being tough enough," nor is it grounds to feel like a failure.
- Enjoy friends. They're golden. Forget all those Facebook friends. Instead, who are your five closest friends in real life? Motivational speaker Jim Rohn once claimed our personalities are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. Whether or not it's true, the statement begs us to consider how our mental and emotional environment is shaped by those around us.
- Practice gratitude. Connect to something bigger than yourself, whether it be religion, spirituality, or service to others. I find that shifting my focus by thanking people in writing with specifics, or checking on or helping others directly, reframes my thinking in very positive ways.
Don't let this list be one more set of items to conquer or cross off. Take your time and see which idea or activity fits with what you value or are already doing. According to the Buddha, optimizing our life occurs like filling up a bucket, drop by drop by drop. Addressing burnout can happen the same way, step by step by step.
