The Philosophers Zone

It's 6am. Your alarm has just gone off and it is time to get up for work. Do you instantly wake up ready for your day, or do you groan and moan, feel sick to your stomach, and curse all the way to the bathroom? Another 4 hour sleep night? Piles of incomplete work waiting for you on your desk at work? The thought of a hundred emails to be answered sending sharp pangs of pressure behind your eyelids?
When was the last time you had a vacation?
How many people do you know that end up in jobs not even related to the field in which they trained for? They work their fingers to the bone, bills to be paid, children to feed, no time to think about the fact that their dreams have long since been abondoned. Career burnout is becoming a wide spread epidemic in the 21st century. It is the killer that no one has time to prepare for until they are knocked off their feet and immobilized. Don't let you or one of your loved ones become a statistic. Stop the insanity before it has a chance to take a hold of you and bring you down.
The following article provides some useful tips on how to help you prepare yourself so you can avoid the pain and anguish of a career burnout that could cause irreversable damage to your health,wealth,and family.

3 Keys to Managing Career Burnout
Copyright 2005 Ann Ronan

I recently gave a presentation on this topic at an Annual
Conference of Human Resource Professionals. The room was
full! So I thought the information might be timely for
some of you.

What is burnout? What are the symptoms and causes? And if
you're experiencing it, what can you do?

The dictionary states that burnout is "exhaustion of
physical or emotional strength or motivation usually as a
result of prolonged stress or frustration." I put usually
in italics because even when you love your work like I do,
you can overdo and find yourself burned out.

Symptoms of burn out can be physical, behavioral and
spiritual. Here are some signs that you're heading for burn
out:

• fatigue
• muscle tension
• headaches
• insomnia
• not keeping commitments
• lack of effectiveness
• irritability
• anxiety
• sense of emptiness-nothing left to give
• lack of joy
• not able to laugh

Causes of burnout can come from within ourselves or from
our organizations. Some common causes are high expectations
of ourselves, denial of our basic needs like food and
sleep, poor time management skills, inability to set
boundaries or to say no.

Organizational causes can be a culture of competitiveness,
or one in which being constantly busy and overworked is
prized with email and phone calls taken along on
"vacations." Insufficient training in new job roles or
cramped, noisy environments can also contribute to burnout.

Here are 3 ways to manage burnout: change the stressful
situation, reduce your vulnerability to stress and/or
change the way you react to stress that cannot be changed:

1. Change the stressful situation if you can. If there are
some high stress aspects of your job, see if you can rotate
this task with others. Limit the number of hours you are
under stress. Spend some time on career/life planning. Set
your priorities and live by them.

2. You can reduce your vulnerability to stress by taking
care of your physical self with good nutrition, exercise
and enough sleep. Avoid nicotine and don't overdo caffeine
and alcohol. Surround yourself with supportive people, work
with a coach who will listen to you deeply and help you to
create a good balance of work and other aspects of your
life.

3. Finally, change the way you react to stress. You can do
this by modifying your self-talk and self-criticism.
Learn techniques to calm yourself - a few deep breaths can
bring you right back to a centered place, able to face
whatever stress is in front of you. Become a self-care
expert and have some fun.

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Join Ann for a weekly study group by telephone that will
“Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life. Register here:
http://www.authenticlifeinstitute.com
Ann helps others to acknowledge what they love to do and to
do more of it. As a Religious Science Practitioner, she
provides spiritual coaching to help others disarm their
worries, doubts and fears.

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