7 Ways To Avoid Burning Out Pursuing Your Vision

Every one with a vision usually starts the day highly motivated. We jump off the bed early in the morning, put a few things together for the day, and off we go. We hit the road with enthusiasm which vitally energizes us to achieve every day’s goal.

We do this year in, year out. Sometimes, we forget that the human body is like a machine. It gets to a point when it feels over worked. When that happens, it is followed by a breakdown of the system.

We begin to feel burnt out.

Burnout — is the mental and physical exhaustion you experience when the demands of your work consistently exceed the amount of energy you have available.

It is a state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It occurs when you feel overwhelmed and unable to meet constant demands. As the stress continues, you begin to lose the interest or motivation that led you to take on a certain role in the first place.

Our fuel dries up and our energy exhausted. If you are like me who’s excited about pursuing every great vision with full tenacity, you’ll easily identify with this.

Even if you love what you are doing, it’s common to feel burnt out from time to time.

When that happens you begin to feel exhausted, lack of motivation, frustrated, negative emotions. You will also notice that you are slipping off in your job performance, and not taking good care of yourself.

I am sure you have big plans for the coming year. No matter what it is you want to achieve, you need to know how to avoid burning out. If you truly want to achieve that vision, you need to slow down, take some time to think and re-adjust.

So, here are some of the things that can help you avoid burning out.

Focus on the things that matter

When you are up and about everything without setting the right priority of the things that matter most in your work and life so you can focus on them, then you are preparing yourself for burnout.

Get organized, clear your head, put together a to-do list (or an electronic task list) then prioritize. Re-evaluate your goals. That way, you don’t have to keep thinking about those things because you’ll have systems in place to remind you.

Learn to say no

Trying to be nice is one sure reason why many burn out quickly as they try to life a life of their dream. Because you want to please everyone in your life, you keep saying yes to every request even when you know that saying no is the best thing to do.

The truth is that if you are not there to say yes, the work will still go on. They’ll find someone else to do the job. Do not allow the false feeling that you are the only one who can do it push you into saying yes all the time.

Ensure work-life balance

One thing I have tried to maintain is never to bring home any leftover work from the office. At the same time, whenever I am at work, I ensure that there is no or minimal distractions from home.

Finding something outside of work that you are passionate about that’s challenging, engaging and really gets you going — whether a hobby, sports or fitness activities or volunteering in the community can also help to cool you off from the daily office workload.

Avoid procrastination

When you do not do the things you were meant to do at the right time, they will keep accumulating until you get to a point where you have so much to do by have a very little time to do them.

Because you now have a pile up and backlog of assignments. You’ll then figure out that you will have to put in more than you have to clear your table. This will definitely result in stress.

Take some time off for vacation

When you begin to feel overwhelmed by the pursuit of life both at work, or on a family or personal level, one of the best thing you can do to regain your saneness is to take some time off for a vacation.

Travel away from your current location. Go to where you don’t know anyone to distract you. Turn off your emails and phones so you can concentrate on your relaxation time. Whatever you do at this time, make sure you take relaxation seriously.

Get support

When you’re burned out, the natural tendency is to protect what little energy you have left by isolating yourself. But your friends and family are more important than ever during difficult times.

Turn to your loved ones for support. Simply sharing your feelings with another person can relieve some of the stress. The other person doesn’t have to ret to “fix” your problems; he or she just has to be a good listener.

Opening up won’t make you a burden to others. In fact, most friends will be flattered that you trust them enough to confide in them, and it will only strengthen your friendship.

Go put these to work!

Have you experienced burn out before? How did you reverse the process? Share in the comment box.

This post first appeared on INTENTIONAL EXCELLENCE blog.