Here’s what I think: the more competent you are, the more likely you are to experience burnout. If that describes you, read on and learn about my burnout quiz, and ways you can achieve burnout recovery.
It is great to be competent! We spend a lot of energy, years of practice and study to become an expert, earn a reputation for being good at something, and get the rewards we expect from our competence.
It doesn’t matter if your competence relates to parenting, caregiving, sport, art, financial management or working an assembly line. Your competence probably brings expectations to always deliver, constantly be available, and march ever upward on the road of excellence. Others look to you to solve it, fix it, or make it happen. These unrelenting expectations can create burnout.
When you end up feeling as parched and rough as this desert scene, it’s time to prioritize burnout recovery. What does that mean?
Burnout Recovery
Often we tell ourselves “Things will get better when _____ is over.” We think the answer to our depletion and fatigue is a weekend escape or a dream vacation. Those things are great! Do all the weekend get aways and vacations you can! I like them too.
Sustainable burnout recovery, in contrast, means building habits and rituals in your daily routine so you refresh and nourish yourself as you go along. Health and wholeness most often come from small steps that you stick with, even though they might seem insignificant compared to impressive big makeovers like cutting out three major food groups or training for an hour every day. In my book “De-Stress Your Life: Turn Chaos Into Calm” http://bit.ly/DeStressbook I call the appeal of a drastic change “Big Step Syndrome.” We like the idea of a quick fix and the excitement of a new program but in reality it’s hard to stick with those drastic overhauls.
Author James Clear writes about the importance of mastering small steps in his best-selling book “Atomic Habits.”
"People often think it's weird to get hyped about reading one page or meditating for one minute or making one sales call. But the point is not to do one thing. The point is to master the habit of showing up. The truth is, a habit must be established before it can be improved. If you can't learn the basic skill of showing up, then you have little hope of mastering the finer details. Instead of trying to engineer a perfect habit from the start, do the easy thing on a more consistent basis. You have to standardize before you can optimize."
Burnout Quiz
My burnout quiz is designed to help you identify areas of your life where your current way of living puts you at risk for burnout. If you ignore your body’s basic needs for nourishment, rest, movement, connection with yourself and other people, you’ll dry up and burn out. There might be good reasons why you push yourself to the limit. You’re competent, and people count on you. Yet if you suffer a mental, physical, or emotional crisis, you can lose the competence you worked so hard to gain, and with it your ability to do the things that are so important to you.
I invite you to click the link below and start the burnout quiz. When you get your results, try not to fall into “Big Step Syndrome.” As James Clear said, show up for yourself in a small way. That might mean drinking a cup of water first thing every morning, spending ten minutes to prepare breakfast for three days https://deborahrankinrd.com/dark-chocolate-health-benefits/ or shutting down screens thirty minutes before bedtime.
Do the easy thing first and be consistent with it.
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