Beware The Early Warning Signs Of Burn Out

Ian Hawkins 0:02

Are you ready, ready to release internal pain to find confidence, clarity and direction for your future, to live a life of meaning, fulfillment and contribution to trust your intuition again, but something's been holding you back, you've come to the right place. Welcome. I'm a Ian Hawkins, the host and founder of The Grief Code podcast. Together, let's heal your unresolved or unknown grief by unlocking your grief code. As you tune into each episode, you will receive insight into your own grief, how to eliminate it, and what to do next. Before we start by one request, if any new insights or awareness land with you during this episode, please send me an email at info at the end Hawkins coaching.com. And let me know what you found. I know the power of this word, I love to hear the impact these conversations have. Okay, let's get into it. So recently, in probably a fifth year in the last few weeks in my main program security program, and people are talking about different things going on in their life. And what we talked about is how all of these different symptoms for one of a better word, symptoms of the early stages of burnout. Now, you might be thinking have not experienced burnout, what's burnout, and I'll get more to how it shows up. But just quickly explaining how burnout might look.

When we have a number of different flames burning actually two ways. Sometimes we have all these different flames burning, right. So what does that mean, we've got all these different fires with all these things on the go, we might have a project over here, we might have work on what a family, we might have our own health. And we've got all these different things we need to take care of. And we're trying to attend all these fires. Now the more that we bring in, the more that we feel like we have to do, the more we try to push and force and hustle and grind and all those words, then we've got so many of these fires, and there isn't an unlimited supply of willpower, you can't just pushing yourself forward to be able to attend to all these fires. So what ends up happening is that some will burn out, some will burn out of control. And mainly you're left exhausted, because you're trying to run all over the place trying to attend to these fires. Or the other thing that can happen is that you've got the main fire that you're focused on. But you're actually haven't got it contained, you haven't got boundaries there. And that flame that fire is burning all over the place. And you're struggling to contain the flames is struggling struggling to contain the fire. And again, it's exhaustion, you're chasing a bit over here, you're chasing bit over there, you're trying to put a bit out there, you're trying to keep the main part of the fire burning, and it's exhausting. And if you think of what that looks like in your life, it could be Well, one of the main symptoms is you are putting your work or your business or some other element of your life, you're putting that as the main area of your life the number one priority of your life, instead of prioritizing what is most important. Because when it comes to those really tough moments in life, and you ask what's most important like when, for example, you lose someone or you're going through a really dark stage. What's most important is your health. What's most important to the people closest to you, what's most important is those things that fulfill you. And if you're chasing work or money or pushing in an area, just the one area and that's your main focus and you're ignoring the others, well, then that's where burnout results because you're not attending to those other important files that are the most important parts of your life. So how can I else can that show up? There, there can be times where maybe you've had a weekend or you've had a week off or longer, you've had time off and yet you come back to work and you still don't feel fully recharged, you're still tired, you're still exhausted, or a couple of days in the glow of the holidays gone and you're back into the grind and you're feeling like it never can properly rest. There might be other times where the week goes in a blur that suddenly it's the end of the week and you're just wondering where it went. And short term memory loss is another big symptom of burnout. Remember The prior to a previous holiday, sending an email, not remembering sending the email only four or five days later getting a reply from someone and then just being curious of like, well, I don't even remember the original email. Because I was at that point where I was needed the holiday and needed the time off. And short term memory was gone. So you might be starting to relate to some of these. The other strange one is like you get a blur, or it looks like there's something out of your cornea or something streaking across your peripheral field of vision, then it's like, what, what on earth was that? If you need background music in the background, it's school holidays. So we've got teenage kids blurry music. So if you can hear that, I apologize, but I'll carry on.

So that's a strange one. But again, that's like the next stage. So are you starting to get closer to that point where you really kind of hit that burnout? So why do we end up in this state of burnout. Now, when we don't feel secure within ourself, when we don't feel like we're providing enough security, we continue to push to be more, to have more to do more. And we're pushing, pushing, pushing. With this belief that we're not enough. We don't have that sense of self security, we don't feel like we're providing security, we don't feel like we providing in a whole lot of different ways, whether it's from a financial security, whether it's a physical safety, security, whether it's a certainty in the future. And so we continue to chase all these different fires, and we don't contain what is most important, can also show up as doubt, the different times where you might start to doubt yourself, it's because you've lost that certainty, you've lost that security. When you're trying to control situations trying to control others, you wouldn't usually link these two things to burn out. But they're very much intertwined. And probably one of the biggest ones which showed up in this morning's call in the security program was around resistance. You're wanting a particular outcome so much you're holding so tight. And it's exhausting. That's keeping you stuck. So yes, we have intentions of where we want to head and what we're heading towards, and we can have goals. But when you're so focused on that outcome, instead of coming back to the process of what you need to be doing, then that's when you get lost, you get so caught up in it has to be this way, here's the outcome, here's the path to this outcome, here are the steps I'm going to take, and you lose track of all other possibilities that you could be that could be coming your way. So that's exhausting. It's just a, it's that fire that you're chasing, which isn't the most important fire, it's the fire you're trying to expand or grow. And you're not looking after those other fires, which are the most important thing in your life. So what do we do about it? Now, there's so many different ways to answer this question. But this has been one of the most powerful and the simplest for you to actually adopt immediately. And that's brain dumping. So the end of your week, or the end of your day, taking pen to paper, or a voice memo or typing out, just getting it out of your head, everything that you need to do that you still have left undone, anything that's open. So you can get it out of your head, get it down there, on to the paper or onto the page. And then you can organize your fires, you can see what's most important you have that clarity, there's no longer this spinning mess of thoughts in your head, the clarity comes there, you're able to get it in an orderly fashion so you can contain the fires and focus on the fire that's most important. So make that a habit. And it will completely change how you're feeling at the end of a week. And it'll help you to switch off on the weekend so that you're not constantly processing all of those different things, the analyst to do list. Import importantly, take the action. Use this process. Because otherwise it's just another piece of knowledge that you know, but you're not, you're not acting on and you're not getting the results from. If this is something you already do, I'd love to hear what impact it's had. If it's something that you've tried after listening to this, let me know how it impacted you. Have an awesome day. I'll speak to you very soon. I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Grief Code podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Please share it with a friend or family member that you know would benefit from hearing it too. If you are truly ready to heal your unresolved or unknown grief, let's chat. Email me at info at Ian Hawkins coaching.com You can also stay connected with me by joining the Grief Code community at Ian Hawkins coaching.com forward slash The Grief Code and remember, so that I can help even more people to heal. Please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform