The truth about job burnout and how to spot it

We’ve all been through the Monday mornings,

“Ohhh it’s Monday already? I want to go back to sleep…”

The Monday blues – the feeling of not wanting to go to work after a weekend.

It’s a normal feeling for everyone, but when every morning is a suffer to get up to work, and the 20-minutes drive to work seems so heavy, and the 9 (or what, 14?) hours at work is dreadful, and then even after coming home from work you can’t function after feeling exhausted physically and emotionally – it’s a job burnout.

A job burnout is an overloaded (or sometimes under loaded) feeling at work, which causes fatigue, first physically, and ultimately emotionally. Left untreated, it can cause exhaustion and the sense of overwhelming, loss in productivity, create a toll in relationships, and finally demolish mental health.

A job burnout does not happen overnight. It is a gradual process, with the causes accumulating the stress, until one day one feels overwhelmed and that none of their efforts seem worthy.

It is important to detect the signs of burnout and take actions to steer away from it. In this post, I will share the signs and stages of burnout. See if you have any.

3 interesting reasons why storytelling is a valuable skill

Remember those days back in school where we had storytelling competitions?

You had to stand in front of everyone on the stage, and tell that “Hare and Tortoise” story with those props – a rabbit stuffed doll and a tortoise figure.

Oh how we hated the sickening butterflies fluttering in our stomach. No one said there was going to be so many people in the audience. How we practiced and rehearsed until Mommy too remembers the whole story.

Little did we know that that story telling competition is one of the most crucial skills we need to learn to be a grown up. Here are three reasons why.

Unlocking the secret drive to success – and revealing the 3 questions to find it

Passion.

If there is one thing all success stories have in common, it is passion.

When you love what you are doing, you would go through all odds, in order to pursue it. It’s what drives you.

Everyone has heard that Thomas Edison failed at making a thousand light bulbs before succeeding to make one. We have heard failure stories behind every successful man, but it is the strength they have to come back and stand up and face the challenges, that brought them to where they are now.

Why do you need passion to succeed?

In every area, be it in life, or even career, we need 3 things to make it work.

knowledge, hardwork, and simple chance

In order to find that knowledge you need, you must want to learn it.

In order to do the tasks you need, you must want to do it.

And when chances come against our way, you must want to overcome it to stand up again.

There are also a lot of books around that I would highly recommend reading to charge up your passion.

This is a simple book that spells 3 things in order to be fully charged in life:

1. Meaning – this is finding out the deeper purpose in your life, a stronger reason than cash, to work, and what do you intend to do for the society and the world
2. Interactions – this is about keeping good relationships
3. Energy – this is about staying healthy

Rath talks about Meaning, in his book. This is basically passion. One must find out what he wants to do, in order to give his most effort and love, to achieve success.

This is a simple management book that is more than the title suggests. In his book, Peshawaria proposed 3 expectations of workers, which is simply put as RED – role, environment, and development.

In Role, Peshawaria suggests that every leader must understand each staff’s role, get to know what drives his passion, and give him the road to achieve it. If a person’s passion aligns with his job, he will most likely have the vigor to work hard to success.

In Japan, there is something called the ikigai. It is a concept of living a long and happy life, by creating a balance between what you love to do, and what you are good at. Ikigai is finding the optimum point with what you love (your passion), what the world needs (your mission), what you are good at (your vocation), and what you can get paid for (your profession).

All these concepts talk about finding what you love to do (passion) in order to succeed, but how do you find out your passion?

First, you need to sit down and spend some time alone to learn more about yourself. Believe me, it will save you a lifetime of unnecessary dissatisfaction in life, so do take a minute to do this.

Take a pen and paper and think deep. Answer below questions about yourself.

1. INTEREST – what do you want to do?
2. NEEDS – what do the society, the world need?
3. STRENGTHS – what are you good at?

When you answer these questions, you will know what you want to do in life. And you will know how you can contribute to the world, and I know you will agree if I say making other people happy, can be a huge self-satisfaction. About your strength, once you’ve found what you’re good at, invest to make it stronger. It is useless to learn things you were never good at (high likely because you never liked doing it), but investing to become a master in what you’re already good at, to learn more about something you already love doing, can be highly motivational.

I recommend everyone, especially young jobseekers, to sit down and do this self-exploration, before seeking jobs. You will know more about yourself, and find more suitable jobs for yourself. For the experienced, reflect on your past works, and see if you’re going the right direction.

Find a higher calling than cash, make work a purpose, not a place.

 

If you want to talk to someone about finding your deeper purpose in life, you can contact the author by whatsapp.