It’s official. The World Health Organization (WHO) now places burnout in its International Classification of Diseases diagnostic manual. It’s no longer just a stress syndrome but rather “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” It is characterized by three dimensions:
• Feelings of energy depletion or mental exhaustion
• Increased mental distance from one’s job or negative feelings toward one’s career
• Reduced professional productivity
Let me phrase these dimensions in more common terms. Consider these questions:
• Does the job that turned you on now seem to turn you off?
• Are you working more but enjoying it less?
• Have you lost who you are because you lost the work you loved?
• Does life seem to be leading you rather than you leading a life?
• Are you so exhausted that you can’t even sleep?
• Are you struggling to handle the demands of too much to do and too little time?
• Are people telling you that you look tired all the time?
• Have you lost your sense of humor?
• Does it seem that no matter how much you work, there’s no completion, no recognition, and little intrinsic or extrinsic reward?
• Do you find yourself short-tempered?
• Are you feeling anxious, unsettled, and circling on a merry-go-round that’s no longer merry?
Whether you answered “yes” to one or all of these questions, this book is for you. My intention is to help you not only to “successfully manage” work demands but also to make even larger strides in understanding how to put together a life by design and not by default. In order to recharge, refuel, and reclaim what matters, we need to make a journey of self-discovery. It will require honesty, courage, and a willingness to do exactly what we’re warned about at a railroad crossing: Stop! Look! Listen! If we don’t follow that warning, we can find ourselves flattened by an oncoming locomotive.
You did not consciously choose burnout. No one does. That’s why it’s so insidious and, as you will see in chapter 1, you are not alone. This is the Age of Burnout. To be honest, organizational cultures and systems are also to blame for some toxic environments. With that in mind, chapter 3 will offer actions for leaders to take to counteract workplace burnout plus ideas to ensure that an organization breeds well-being, community, and resiliency. I debated long and hard about putting this chapter first because you, the reader, might find this a reason to point to the organization and say, “See, I told you so.” You might cross your arms and wait for the organization to change. Don’t do that! Share the chapter as appropriate, but start working on YOU!
My primary intention is to put you in command, to have you take control of what you put in your twenty-four-hour day.
• First, you’ll explore what burnout is, what its symptoms are, and what the potential triggers are that ignite the “flames.”
• Second, you will learn to stop, look, and listen deeply to what is happening in the critical parts of your life. What really is going on? What are you doing, saying, or thinking that is exhausting your mental and physical energies? This is breakout—the understanding—the “Aha” moment.
• Third, you will discover that breakthrough comes when we break out of energy-draining thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and consider more powerful options to refuel, recharge, and reclaim what matters. That’s breakthrough! Ahhhh.
Breakthrough comes when you build resilience skillsets and mindsets and realign energy flows. Yes, energy! That’s really what this is all about. Energy is the core of resilience. Resilience is not about “bouncing back,” as the dictionary insists. Rather, for humans, it’s about growing through this period of our life to a better place. Building resilience is like building a muscle. It takes persistence and patience. With use, it becomes easier for us to refuel, recharge, and reclaim what matters. This is not an overnight process. It takes time.
I’ll also offer a series of options to move you across the track and into breakthrough. I’ll explore four sources that hold the possibility of giving us energy or depleting our energy. These are:
HEAD Our thinking affects all aspects of our energy.
HEART Emotions rule our actions and our relationships.
HANDS In addition to thinking and feeling, doing creates real power. Carl Jung said, “Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.”
HUMOR Life needs laughter and the perspective of humor.
Note that word breakthrough. Breakthrough is not “balance.”
Who are we trying to kid? There’s no such thing as balance. This is why I have objected to the term “balance” as the end goal for people experiencing burnout—although I admit in my earlier work, I was guilty of using that term. If I asked you to hold up your hands to show me what balance looks like, inevitably you would hold up your hands in some replica of the scales of justice, with the implication that balance means equality.
Wouldn’t it be nice if everything in our home and work life demanded equal attention, delivered equal rewards, and prompted an equal feeling of well-being and calm? Our energy could be equally distributed. Alas! Life is never going to be “equal.” Let’s get real here. The very word “balance” conjures up an image that sets up a false expectation and is not sustainable. Stuff happens.
Breakthrough, however, happens when our energy is consciously distributed to what REALLY matters most at this specific period of our life. At different periods of our life, what matters most will change and energy requirements will shift. Our task is to consciously realign our energy flow so we can recharge and refuel.
We move into burnout when we don’t make that shift, when our energy is exhausted at the expense of other parts of our life. In this book, you’ll read stories of folks who did not make the shift and became fried into the bargain.
I’m grateful for the people who candidly shared their burnout stories with me. You might recognize yourself in their stories. In some cases, their names have been changed for privacy, but their experiences, insights, and admitted challenges are all real. And I use their exact words—some pretty graphic—to honestly report their experience.
Whether you picked this book up for yourself, a friend, your spouse, or your team, my hope is that you’ll find answers here to help you craft a life and a workplace that nurtures and supports your best self. Please take your time. I ask many questions that invite introspection and reflection. You might decide to read with a notebook at hand. Be warned: I am a huge believer in the power of putting pen to paper. Recent studies from psychologists and neuroscientists alike have found that writing by hand boosts your ability to retain information, comprehend new ideas, and be more productive.1 Get a journal and make notations as you read.
The activities in this book are designed to help you identify where more powerful, energy-enhancing choices might be made. You didn’t pick up this book because something happened yesterday. The good news is that building resilience and the ability to respond in more powerful ways to potential burnout scenarios in our life can be learned. You will find ways to move from burnout to breakthrough and refuel, recharge, and reclaim what matters. Consider this your blueprint, your diagram, for moving from burnout to breakout to breakthrough by building your resilience muscle to refuel, recharge, and reclaim what matters.
Caveat. Some events in our life may leave us with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can require medical attention and psychotherapy. On the flip side, there is also PTG—post-traumatic growth. According to the Posttraumatic Growth Research Group at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, PTG can be understood as positive change resulting from an individual’s struggle with a major life crisis or traumatic event.2 This book does not address PTSD or PTG. My focus is on helping organizations and individuals deal with the stresses of everyday life and work and to cultivate resiliency while learning to refuel, recharge, and reclaim what matters.
The best resource I have found with expertise in the full continuum of trauma, resiliency, and post-traumatic growth is the nonprofit National Resilience Institute. Their working definition of resiliency is “the capacity to prepare for, adapt to, and grow through trauma, disruption, or loss.” Dr. Mollie Marti, the founding CEO of the Institute, emphasizes that many skills that help grow resiliency are teachable. She notes that research shows that posttraumatic stress symptoms and post-traumatic growth are not on opposite ends of a spectrum, but rather can coexist over time as people make meaning of their experiences. For more resources, visit the National Resilience Institute at http://www.NationalResilienceInstitute.org.
Let’s get going!