From Burnout to Bliss: The Formula for Sustaining Success in the Workplace

You’ve had a long day at work; you come home to a messy house and enter a staring match with the dishes and laundry, but your mind is too clouded to even think about doing it – never mind actually doing it – because your to-do list for tomorrow is pulsing in your mind and everything feels chaotic and completely out of your control.

Sound familiar? If so, you may have reached burnout.

There are various reasons we get to experience burnout – everyone’s threshold for stress is different.

The reason I say, ‘get to experience’, is because in some ways, burnout can be a blessing: it teaches us that we have reached our limit, and that something in our life needs to change.

It is our body, and mind, signalling us to stop¸ take a deep breath, and reset.

‘It’s like driving a car in second gear on the motorway, you can do it, but there’s ultimately going to be some damage’

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Dr Julie Smith, a licensed and practicing clinical psychologist, suggests we can detect burnout in ourselves by noticing these four signs:

You experience a disconnection from the people around you – this could involve arguing more with friends and family.
You are procrastinating to the extreme, for example, you are putting off even the smallest and most achievable tasks due to feeling overwhelmed by everything.
You abandon self-care – diet, sleep, exercise, and emotional check-ins go out the window.
Physical and emotional exhaustion can look like feeling really tired, but being unable to sleep.

Happiful is a YouTube channel dedicated to helping those struggling with mental health cope with their day-to-day lives. They interviewed Dr Julie Smith to ask her what to do when we get to the point of burnout, she offers this advice:

‘Take it seriously, as you would with other health issues’.
Ask yourself: what all the demands that I’m facing? Think about which of these stresses are in your control.
Take small breaks, off screens, to replenish. For example, ‘wonder off to your car, set a timer on your phone, and close your eyes for 10-minutes…we tend to fill all those gaps, those in between moments, with more stress…it’s about stepping back’.
‘Values check-in…write down the things that are important to you right now’

There's no easy fix

Ultimately, there is no easy fix to turn burnout to bliss, it takes time and commitment to re-evaluate your workload, decision-making, and stress intake.

It is worth sitting down with yourself, and/or your superior, with these evaluations. Success is not sustainable during burnout.

What in your life can give? Do you need to cut down on social interactions to prioritise sleep and self-care? Do you need to remove yourself from a project at work? Do you need time off work to reset completely? Perhaps you are setting unrealistic expectations for yourself? Write down your observations to visualise them and notice patterns.

Some of us may actually invite burnout as an avoidant strategy – being so busy we physically don’t have the time to spend with our own thoughts. This is again, not sustainable, and if you are struggling with this avoidant strategy, it is worth speaking to a mental health professional for more directional and actionable support systems.

Only you can know what you need; you are the pioneer of your own ship. It’s okay to feel burnt out sometimes, but your fire will eventually extinguish from lacking the fuel and energy that it needs, and it is a lot harder to ignite ashes than embers.

Always be kind to yourself and look after your flame.

ProspHER can support you in evolving your story and progressing professionally with passion, purpose and power – find out how here.

This article was researched and written by Bronte Littlewood, Freelance writer at ProspHER.