To overcome burnout, start with the "Brutal truth"

Resilience is the capacity to be robust under conditions of significant stress that often accompany life’s inevitable challenges. It is forged over time through determined effort.

The challenge is that your resilience is like a reservoir that is constantly being drained by a thirsty desert city – it’s not infinite, and the more demands placed on it, the quicker it gets depleted.

One of the signs that your resiliency has been stretched to its limit is the sense of "burnout”, a condition described by the World Health Organization as being “characterized by extreme tiredness, reduced ability to regulate cognitive and emotional processes, and mental distancing”

If you find yourself in this state, a powerful way to begin shoring up your resilience against burnout is by first painting a picture of the “brutal truth” of your current reality.

Painting this picture serves as the essential catalyst necessary to provide you with the activation energy required to adopt the habits you will need to change your burnout-causing reality and continue to do so in the long haul.

Here are 4 steps how:

1. Identify what the state of your current reality is by asking yourself some important questions like: Are you burned out? How did this happen? Is your workplace toxic? Will it ever change? Do you have too many things on your plate? What are the factors leading you to feel burnout?
   

2. Go for a walk and think and reflect on your answers to your questions. (Take a notepad with you to capture that spontaneous mind-pops)
   

3. Sit down at your desk, turn off all distractions and make a brainstorming list with creative ways (aim for 100) to address the factors contributing to your burnout. The goal is to stretch your thinking and creativity through lots and lots of ideas, as the ideas that surface first will probably be ones you have tried, and that have not stuck.
   

4. Create a list of potential habits you can easily incorporate into your life that address your top insights from your brainstorming. One trick is to “piggyback” your new habit on an existing habit like adding drinking a glass of water each time you have your morning coffee.

Remember, the power to create a better future, and handle the rigors of life is contained in the simple acts you perform each day, through your habits. In other words, the more resilient you make yourself today, the more options you will have available for yourself in the future.