“My company recently had a reorganization, we are in a stage of growth, and we are experiencing high turnover. It doesn’t seem as though there is a clear strategy or plan for the rapid pace of changes being implemented. Communication has been lacking from the top down and I feel stressed and burnt out.”

Anyone who can relate. . .raise your hand.

I am increasingly hearing from you about your level of burn-out, especially now as we move into another phase of the pandemic and things just don’t seem as though they will ever get back to normal (whatever “normal” might be). It seems as though burnout is so high it is having an impact on your behavior and how you show up. A cycle you can’t seem to break.

What is burnout?

Job burnout is not a medical diagnosis. As described by the mayo-clinic, “job burnout is a special type of work-related stress — a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that also involves a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity.” (article linked in resources below)

As you know, the real challenge is -

How do you break the cycle?

Breaking the cycle is not easy. It takes awareness, willingness to change, and intentional effort. The first step is awareness. Lao-Tzu, the Chinese philosopher whose name literally means, Old Master, said “Know yourself and you will win all battles.” Once you have created awareness, you need to be able to acknowledge the situation for “what is” without rating it as “good” or “bad” - acceptance. Finally, you have to be willing to choose to do things differently. When you are stressed and distracted, your focus is divided and your access to information is limited. You need to create a place where you can be aware and accepting of things as they are, and able to see the possibilities available to you - choice.

Awareness > Acceptance > Choice

Here is an exercise that can help you create your own awareness so that you can move to acceptance and make choices based on the best information available to you.

1. Create a document (paper or electronic) with 3 columns labeled with the following headings:

   • Control

   • Influence

   • No Control

2. Brain dump everything you are dealing with and place it in one of the 3 columns - things you can control, things you can influence, and things you have no control over.

3. Share your document with someone who can challenge your thoughts on items you have in each column, making sure you have identified them correctly. You will likely move some things to different columns as a result.

4. Focus your energy on the first 2 columns. In fact, go ahead an cross out the third column - stop wasting your energy on things you cannot control.

Here is the two week check in from the client I introduced at the beginning of the blog, based on doing this exercise:

“I am feeling much better! I have been able to identify areas in which I have the control to stop doing things which has provided me with needed bandwidth. I have a new approach to handling slack communications. I have also discovered that I don’t have control of the cadence of some meeting but, I do have control over the time of day when they are held. Moving weekly meetings to the morning keeps me from ending my day with a meeting and gives me planning time at end the day. Overall, I am in a much better place.”

*details edited for privacy / confidentiality

Other Resources

Let's Talk About Burnout and Your Money

Job burnout: How to spot it and take action

Do I Have. . .Burnout?

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