5 Things I Did To Get Over Burnout
Burnouts, am I right? I think most of us have experienced it at at least one point in our lives, especially if you’re an adult and you’re often busy working and using your brain a lot. You might be suffering in a burnout phase right now. If so, I am so sorry that you are going through it right now, and I hope this blog post will provide you with some insight on how to make things better. If you’re not, I hope you don’t run into one anytime soon. But if you do, maybe this post might come in handy then, too.
I’m not writing this post because I have mastered the productivity x burnout cycle. Over the last two years that I’ve been working for myself, I have had my fair share of burnouts, big and small. If you’ve been around in the Chermibear community for any period of time longer than a month, you will remember at least one time I’ve had to take a very sudden mental health break away from streaming and content creation. So, I think I go through it just as much as the next person, if not more, sometimes. And, I am definitely still trying to figure it all out as I go.
As a person who really enjoys self-improvement, every time I come out of a burnout phase, I do take the time to assess what happened before, during, and after the fact. I like to try to find the patterns in the problems and make sense of it. I try to learn from my mistakes if I made any, so that I can try to prevent a repeat in the future. I am proud to at least state that no two burnouts of mine has ever been the same. Which makes me happy because it means that I am probably learning from my mistakes—and I’m just discovering new ways to drive myself into a burnout rut. Which is great in a sense, since I get to learn more about what not to do in the future. And now that I have this blog, I intend on sharing my learnings with you as I go as well.
Now, keep in mind, this is not a post about how to prevent burnout. I am also not going to teach you ways to be more productive when you’re in your burnout phase. In fact, I don’t actually believe that you should be trying to be more productive when you’re burnt out but let’s leave these topics for another time. I just wanted to get that out of the way.
My main goal for today is to walk you through how I got through my latest burnout. Because for once, I didn’t crawl out of my burnout-break still-bruised and still wishing for more rest. For once, I came out the other side more centered and more ready to pick my work back up again. I was filled with more inspiration and more clarity and brightness than I’ve ever had before. It sounds so dramatic, but I promise you it’s true. After all, I did launch this website, my monthly newsletter, and my Patreon page all within two weeks of coming out of said burnout.
All that to say, I think this burnout experience is worthy of learning from.
For ease of understanding, I have categorized my experience into five distinct steps that I took as I went through this burnout experience. But I want to highlight that I don’t think the experience of healing yourself while in your burnout phase is going to look this neat and tidy. Every single person is going to have their own experience, and heal at their own pace. I just hope that these 5 steps that I have pretty much stumbled upon can provide you with an idea of how you might want to begin to approach healing your own tired mind, body, and soul.
Step Away
The first thing I did, very intuitively, was to step away from everything. I halted all work. I cancelled all my scheduled streams. I postponed all my YouTube videos. Every bit of me was protesting against working. I just couldn’t anymore. It wasn’t that I was uninspired or feeling stuck. The weirdest part of the whole experience to me was that this time round, I still had my ideas, and I still had the motivation to work. But my physical brain—the part of me that could actually feel pain and fatigue—was essentially threatening to break down if I didn’t stop.
So I stopped. I gave work a wide berth. I did nothing that would remind me of work. For me, that looked like going off the grid, essentially—because the internet is where my work is. I also put a pause on my beloved self-improvement and productivity books and podcasts. They were my primary source of entertainment then. When I broke for lunch and dinner, when I prepped for the day, and when I prepped for bed at night, they were the only things that I would consume. On the other side of that burnout, I have now learnt that that was also work for me. I was just so tuned in to work, and wanting to become better at my work, that I literally occupied every waking moment with something that had something to do with my work. That’s bad. I don’t that anymore now, thankfully.
Indulge
After dissociating and stepping away from the source of my burnout, I allowed myself to do the enjoyable things that I’ve been putting off. Despite being so obsessed with my work, I was aware of a very tiny voice at the back of my brain that had really wanted to play the games that I had bought but never was able to find the time to actually sit down and enjoy. So, I indulged myself. I stayed up late. I gamed from dawn till dusk. I barely moved from my desk to do anything else other than play, because that was just what my tired brain really wanted to do. It definitely was not the healthiest lifestyle. But I only did it for about 5 days. And it took me, indeed, 5 days to have my fill of that indulgent lifestyle.
Gaming might not be your version of an indulgent lifestyle. For you it might look like devouring the series of novels that you’ve been putting off reading; or it might look like going on a spa-cation, staycation, vacation. Who knows. Whatever calls to you and lifts your soul, really. What’s important here, I feel, was that I did what I had really wanted to do but had put off doing because of my work, without judgement.
Listen
For a lot of the last few years, I feel like I’ve always tried my best to live up to this idyllic life of discipline and absolute productivity. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of value in living a disciplined life. In fact, I still believe in that. But I think one of the key points about this way of life that I have failed to grasp until this burnout experience is how there should be a balance to things. And that involves listening to myself.
To make it simpler, what works for Person A and Person B might not necessarily work for me. Or you. I think it took me multiple crash and burn cycles to finally understand that there is no cookie-cutter way of life to live for maximum success. If I try too hard to live one person’s ideal way of life, I fail to take into account my life and my body’s own needs.
If you know me, you know that I am a huge fan of The 5AM Club and its author Robin Sharma. He teaches the concept of “The 4 Interior Empires of History-Makers” in the book, and in a lot of his other works. Looking back, not really understanding what he is trying to teach with this framework really caused me quite a lot of work-related burnouts. The 4 Interior Empires are the Mindset, Heartset, Healthset and Soulset. In other words: your mind, your emotions, you health, and your spirituality. In a extremely condensed way of explaining this framework, you basically have to focus on all four areas equally if you are to thrive as a person. Obviously, I really focused on my mind, and not too much of the rest. No wonder.
I really want to go deeper into this topic at some point but not in this post. I did at least want to mention it here, because I think introducing you to Mr. Sharma is definitely going to help you one way or another. He’s helped me out a bunch.
Move
Yes. I mean work out. For me, working out means doing yoga. I try to keep my daily yoga practice going always. But I have a tendency to allow my practice to fall to the wayside whenever I start getting burnt out. So, needless to say, I had to exert some form of discipline to get myself back onto the mat—but only after I had listened to myself and understood with all the integrity that I can muster, that I am ready to be back on the mat.
If you’re not a very active person, I think you can understand when I say that trying to get yourself to workout is never the most pleasant experience. The inertia is strong, especially at the start. So, even though I was ready, there was still resistance, at least at the start. Blame my lazy bones, hurhur. Once I got back into the rhythm of my daily yoga practice though, I was able to pull my racing or numb mind—it really depends on the day—back into the present, into my physical body.
Mindfulness, the practice of being present in the body, really helped with bringing my focus back to the present. Sometimes. I get super stressed up thinking of what is going to happen in the future. And we all know that that’s not really healthy for the brain. So, I’m just here doing my part to remind you that if you move your body, you will be able to collect yourself better. Pull yourself back from taking that mental voyage into the past or future. You don’t benefit from being there anyways.
Wait
Finally, and most importantly, I want to make a case for being patient with yourself. As I was with myself, this time.
Usually, when I go on mental-health breaks, I like to give myself a time period within which I am allowed to take a break, but there has always been a definitive return-back-to-work date. What that did to me was place an unhelpful expectation on myself. Like, I was telling myself to feel better in a stipulated length of time. But, in reality, it does not work that way. We don’t know how long we need to recuperate from the damages that we have dealt ourselves.
So I say, be patient. Give yourself grace, just like how I gave myself grace. Once I completed my indulgent phase of the healing process, I did return to work while I was healing. The difference there was that I tried my best to be kind and gentle with myself. I attempted to establish a new relationship with myself where I do not push myself with unnecessary stress. I actively tried to listen to my Four Empires and made sure that I kept their levels high and equal. If that meant that I needed to take 3 days to do something that I would usually only require 1 day to do, I will allow myself to do that without judgement because that is being kind. I just trusted that I will, when I’m ready, return to my normal working capacity.
This burnout has taught me so much. But I don’t think this means that I will never burn out again. In fact, I still catch myself regularly working beyond my actual capacity. I scramble, almost daily, to prevent myself from getting close to burnout again. Bad habits are notoriously hard to correct.
I don’t really know if preventing burnout is something that anyone can really master—maybe if you’re able to be extraordinarily mindful most of the time. But I do know that this is something that is worth striving for. It is definitely healthier to try to keep yourself balanced and mindful than it is to work yourself slowly into the ground then try to dig yourself out of it, time and again.
If you enjoyed this topic and you’d love to read more about relevant topics, definitely do let me know down below in the comments section. If you read to the end, thank you so much, I hope it helps.
Sending you all my love.