High Achievers and Burnout Risk

Every person who is a High Achiever in the workplace, and in life, will indeed, without doubt, experience burnout at times.

Burnout can get the best of you, even when you have great passion for what you do. It results from imbalance of input and output – when you feel like you’re putting more into it than you are getting out of it.

This can happen when a job isn’t rewarding for various reasons, but most often it actually comes down to you, and not taking care of yourself.

Here is an example, albeit extreme – Arianna Huffington almost lost an eye from burnout….really. She was so tired at work that she passed out, face first on her desk. She broke her cheek bone, and received four stitches on her eye….

Recognizing the warning signs is crucial, so that you can know when it is time to take action. Here are some, but not all.

  • Fatigue
  • Taking your work home with you
  • Decrease in satisfaction
  • Decrease in motivation
  • Lack of Self – Care
  • Performance decline
  • Negativity
  • Confusion
  • Health problems
  • Unexplained anger and frustration

Once you can learn to recognize these symptoms early, you can fight burnout quite quickly. It’s a simple matter of self-care. Find ways to separate yourself from your work, so you can find your comfortable, and ultimately, your most productive balance again.

Pay attention to your body signals, disconnect from work once the day is done ( otherwise we never really leave work ), make a point of scheduling time for relaxation, get organized, lean on support systems when possible, and take regular breaks during the workday, where you can actually ‘break’ from thoughts of your work.

If a change for the better isnt noticed by these strategies, then it could well be that you in the wrong job. This can cause burnout in itself. In this case, you will need to decide which is more important – work, or heath?

But most times, when we are aware of ourselves, and recognize the above systems, we can bring it all together and recover from burnout, and shine like the stars we are…… until the next wave hits, and it will. But when it does, we’ll be ready to counteract, and reduce the turn around time to a better version of ourselves once more.

(This article was previously published at Online Web Admin, which is now Mindset Marketing Services)

About Connie Manning

Connie has years of proven skills in sales, sales training, e-commerce, social media marketing, and writing persuasive copy for clients.