In the customer support/service world it is very easy and quick to succumb to burnout. Reason being, you deal with customers (real people)and it can be emotionally and mentally draining. You have to make sure you give 100% empathy even in the situations where you want to freak out or be more rationale! Giving out all this empathy means you have to refill it too which is why self-care is so important!
In order to be successful in the long run, you got to make sure that you stick to taking care of yourself — each day every day!! I am going to list down the things I do for self-care which keep me cheerful (oh yes!) when helping customers and otherwise too :)
- Workout: I start my day with a daily routine of exercising. When I realised that I might not be giving that much time to my health and it started to show up too…I decided to stick to it as a daily routine and its going good so far…I keep bringing in variation and seeing the results adds to your happiness!
- Challenge yourself: Trust me when you challenge yourself and achieve it…it adds to your confidence. I take it as indirect way of self-care. Being someone who loves going out/travelling and then having to wait on friends and family for plans to finalise would mean I would shun it altogether. But then I decided to start small and do things on my own…even a simple thing like going to movie without having to wait for someone can cheer you up! This adds to my list of self-care for I go and treat myself to a nice movie with some nice food!
- Variation in your work: I know! I know! You would say this is still work though!? Yeah, but believe me when you bring in variety to your mundane schedule (as I did in my case), it prevents you from burnout and saves you from getting exhausted!
- Talk: It doesn’t have to make sense ;) …join community channels on slack…make friend-groups on whatsapp etc..I have realised having groups to chat can bring in more fun that 1–1 chats with friends…obviously you need the latter at times…but you get the gist! So, just talk your heart out to your friends!
- I love cooking! I use that as my stress-buster at the end of the day.
- Watch TV series: My weekends have to include either a movie or a tv series for sure (Prison Break, Game of Thrones, House of Cards..its a long long list) along with some book reading!
- Another thing that I would like to add to my wish list is travelling…I do travel as of now too but I want to do more and more of it..and I am already working towards making that happen!
This is pretty much my way of practicing self-care and its been amazing so far! I keep switching gears just in time when I see things leading towards burnout and you should do too!
