Signs You're Burned Out

We live in a fast moving world, and that makes it easy for us to push ourselves far too hard while neglecting to make any time to take care of ourselves. It’s a wonderful thing to have a good level of ambition, but when ambition becomes an obsession, it can tilt the balance of life. One moment you’re just thinking about all of your goals, and the next your goals are pushing you towards a burn out. Burn out is a state of chronic stress that can lead to illness, a poor mental state and exhaustion.

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You may think you're relaxing because you're buying up the pre-roll packaging like nobody‘s business, but it’s not so relaxing when, even after you’ve had your evening smoke, you still feel wired. We need to avoid burn out where we can, and understanding the signs will help you to do that. But what, exactly are those signs? Here are some of the common ones:

• You’re having way more sick days lately. When you're burning out, and the stress is getting to be too much, you'll notice that you have far more sick days than you normally do. When you’re not taking care of yourself, you’re going to feel it in your body. It’s so much more than feeling under the weather or catching a cold. When you burn out, your body depletes and your immune system becomes weakened, making you very vulnerable to infections, colds, flu and other problems that your immune system normally fights off. Chronic fatigue is often the first sign, but if you're finding that you're missing too many days of work, then you need to take the time to refresh.
• You no longer have any motivation. When you're burned out it’s very common to lose the motivation to tackle all of the tasks that you have on your list. This doesn't just pertain to your career, but your personal life as well. The things that used to inspire you no longer do, and rather than feeling excited each morning about the new day, you just feel a sense of dread. If you’re unmotivated by your own success, it may be worth talking to a doctor, because this feeling of apathy may not go away.
• You are simply unhappy. Being unhappy can be a sign of many different things, but burn out can also be the reason. If you're feeling unhappy when you're normally a happy person, then you need to find out what’s going on. Are you too busy at work? Is your home life too stressful? You need to find a way to ease the stress and make yourself happy again. 
• You keep procrastinating. This one is a double edge sword, because when you procrastinate, you add to your growing pile of tasks. When you’re burned out, however, you can't help but procrastinate because you don't have the motivation you need to get things done. 

Burn out is a never ending cycle that goes around and around. And until you find a way to break that cycle, it will never change.

 

 

This is a contributed post.