Burnout Part 7: Persistence

"And still she persisted." It's so much more than a quotable, meme-able political moment - it's also a truth for many people and for most women. I feel this deeply. When things get tough, what do I do? I try harder! There's beauty to this persistence, and I value my own doggedness. I also can look back in my life and see times that letting go would have been much wiser and healthier for me. 

My challenge to you is to admit, in one small corner of your heart, that unending persistence isn't always the road to success. 

But "no!" our hearts scream back! If we let go, what are we? We're failures! We're quitters! We can't do that! 

Those feelings are real. Many of us value grit and persistence so much that we see letting go of a goal as equivalent to weakness or failure. So, if we get frustrated or if more obstacles arise, we persist even harder. As Emily Nagowski asks in her book Burnout, when we feel like our two choices are "frustrated rage and helpless despair," maybe there's a third option. Maybe there's a quiet voice within us suggesting that we've done all we can and it's time to move on. 

If you need a little help determining whether it's time to persist or release a particular goal, you can try evaluating your options through a quick exercise. Take four quadrants of a piece of paper and list, both for the short and long term, some:

• benefits of continuing
• beneifts of stopping
• costs of continuing 
• costs of stopping

It's not failure to consider where in your life letting go could be success. That's wisdom, and that's burnout prevention. 

I'm a persister - I'm good at holding on and bad at letting go. And I recognize that there are areas in my life that have left me exhausted and depleted. Sometimes holding on is beautiful. Sometimes it is foolish and a waste of energy and passion you could invest in so many other places.

Where do you need to consider letting go?

Burnout Part 6: Dealing with Stressors

Last week we talked about dealing with stress - how do we help our bodies discharge the energy and anxiety we're holding internally? Now, let's continue to follow Emily Nagowski's Burnout advice and figure out how to manage our stressors better. 

Stressors can be categorized into two main groups: those we can control and those we can't. 

The way to manage stressors we can control is planful problem-solving. As professionals, we're generally pretty good at planful problem solving - identifying the goal and creating a plan to fulfill that need, and the stressor is diffused. Now, we may still need to deal with residual stress in our bodies, but at least the stressor is addressed. 

The harder stressors to manage are those we can't control or abstract, intangible, long-term goals. At the end of the day, these end up feeling the same to us: they're too complex, uncontrollable, or far away for us to get our hands around. 

We have three basic tools to deal with these stressors:

1. Positive reappraisal - this is the process of finding value in the journey. The key here is that we're not trying to silver-lining the challenge. We are trying to find ways that dealing with all of the stress actually feels worth it. An example here could be, "there is no way I'm going to find my 1 hour commute motivating or worth it, but I can enjoy the time to decompress and listen to a podcast or call a friend."
2. Change expectancy - that means redefine winning in this case. This is appropriate for goals that are too squirrely or long-term to really feel motivated by "finishing." So, instead, you get to find an incremental, specific, concrete outcome that is personally motivating and rewarding to you. Perhaps completing the year-long goal feels way to far away to be rewarding, but a goal to come away from our next planning meeting with achievable goals for the next two weeks feels more controllable and tractable.  Great, that's your new definition of winning!
3. Redefine failing - for stressors that are super challenging and perhaps unwinnable, how can you redefine failing to identifying inadvertent benefits along the way? There's more to success than just winning. Perhaps as you job search, you've found a bunch of places that don't feel like good fits and you're feeling defeated. But perhaps redefining those "failed" opportunities as chances to learn about the industry and/or identify what you *don't* want in your new company feels motivating to you. This is a way to quiet those stressors that are nagging at you so loudly. 

Abstract and uncontrollable stressors are hard work to find your way through, yet it's so worth it. These can be some of the biggest drags on our lives and our mental health. Through positive reappraisal, changing expectancy, and redefining failing we can satisfy our goal-seeking brains and find relief from the burnout of unsolvable stressors.

Burnout Part 5: Dealing with the Stress

 After four solid weeks of writing about burnout, I thought I was done. This was clearly a very silly notion - burnout (and stress management to prevent burnout) has played a profound role in my life. I keep learning more and then I get so excited that I just have to share it with you. So, let's keep working with burnout! 

In Emily Nagowski's Burnout, she draws a careful line between the effects of stress and the effects of stressors. Stressors are the things that cause us stress - an impending deadline, friction at home, fear of underperforming, etc. We spend a lot of time and attention on our stressors; these are the problems we seek to solve. 

We also need to pay attention to the stress itself. The why is locked deep inside our evolutionary history: way back when our stress skills developed, stressors almost always required a physical response. The wolf was attacking us and our stress response got our bodies ready for the big expenditure of energy needed to run or fight (the sweating, clammy hands, pounding heart, dilated pupils, etc). Stress got us ready for big movements, big responses, fighting or fleeing.

However, in the present day, the story becomes more complicated because our stressors are usually not things we need to physically fight or run from - they don't require physical exertion.  We don't get to stand up and punch a deadline in the face or flee it by running as fast as we can back to our village. Yet our bodies still rev up the same way that they did when we were running from wolves. 

It turns out that dealing with the stressor isn't enough to discharge the stress. We all experience some version of this - we made it through the performance review, yet we still feel anxious and agitated. We have to work through the physical stress just like we had to work through the mental and emotional work of processing the stressor. We must discharge the stress that's stored in our bodies - simply removing the stressor isn’t enough. 

What do our bodies need in order to process stress? Here are a few options:

• Exercise, especially with more intense intervals
• Breathing mindfully
• Progressive relaxation exercises, tensing and releasing different parts of the body
• Positive social interaction, even just exhanging niceties with your barista
• Expressing and receiving affection
• Crying (yes, a good cry is cathartic!)
• Expressing yourself through creativity

The stress doesn't automatically go away just because the stressor is gone. Our bodies need to process stress just like our minds need to process the stressors. Engaging in these activities consistently will help gradually release the body's stored stress. And, eventually, the anxiety that came with the stress will also be released. 

For me, I think this is a reason I enjoy mountain biking so much - not only am I outside in nature's beauty, but there are tough moments that get my heart pounding when I can almost feel the stress working its way through and out of my body. What releases stress for you? What do you notice when you work to process the physical stress in your body in addition to working through the stressors?

Burnout Part 4: Reduced Personal Accomplishment

The burnout research continues to emerge, and I find it compelling, so I want to share it with you. I am more susceptible to some of the indicators of burnout - for example, I find emotional exhaustion particularly challenging. Yet the granddaddy of them all tends to be Reduced Personal Accomplishment. 

Reduced Personal Accomplishment is that persistent sense that you're simply failing at work. It's not about any specific interaction or project, but rather a loss of the sense of professional competence. Work takes energy and active involvement, and the less effective you feel, the more you'll sense nagging doubts about your self-worth and personal accomplishment. And the downward spiral continues...

The way through Reduced Personal Accomplishment is to get specific. Identify where your personal accomplishment is being eroded and identify what is within your control to change in that area. Fight that general sense of failure by identifying specific areas where you are accomplishing meaningful things, as well as specific situations where you are underperforming.

• In areas where you are underperforming, get detailed - do people you trust think you're underperforming in those areas? Are there skill gaps you could address through training or mentorship? Could you negotiate the amount of that type of work that you have to do or the timing of that work? Could you trade work with a coworker who is strong in that area? 
• What areas of work are within your control? What are your opportunities to make choices autonomously, solve problems, or contribute to fulfilling goals?
• Are there areas at work that feel unfair, such as inconsistent or inequitable rules for everyone, or a lack of quality justice and respect at work? If you identify areas that are eroding your sense of accomplishment, how can you address those?
• Where is your work having a beneficial impact on people? What fuels a sense of accomplishment for you at work and how could you do more of those activities?

The markers of burnout are emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. Each of these is challenging, and together they create a toxic burnout soup. You can get through burnout with careful attention over time to what you need to refuel and reset. Remember, it took months or years to get here, and it will take time to get through it.