Work is part of our lives. In fact, for many of us, it’s a major and often primary aspect of our lives. We spend an average of forty hours per week at work over a period of forty-eight weeks a year out of fifty-two. Considering the average fifty years of work, it is no surprise that it often ends up defining us: who we are, how important we feel, how successful and happy we consider ourselves.
Of course, working is necessary and of course many find purpose and fulfilment in doing what they do for a living, but for the majority of people and for most people at times in their lives, work is simply boring, repetitive and does not bring so much joy or fulfilment. But even in the best of cases, shouldn’t work just be a part of our lives rather than being the only and major aspect of our time on earth?
The history of work
An interesting approach is to start by looking back at the reason, need and importance of working. In the beginning of the human race, work was – simply put – the time dedicated to finding food. There were the game hunters, eventually in came the farmers who learned to work the land and many other traders that allowed us to make tools bringing comfort to our houses and lives. Interestingly, working hours have increased since our homo sapient days. It is believed that game hunters only needed to hunt for approximately four hours a day to find food, but nowadays not only do we work double but we are also certainly not just worried about the food. As a species we seem to want more than just food, but sadly it also appears that what we most spend our earned money on are things that we do not really need as well as various upgrades to goods that we already own. We buy bigger and more, but it often leaves us feeling empty as the initial purchase related happiness fades away. Along this somewhat bizarre process we also start to resent working long hours or being in a job we don’t love as we tie ourselves down with yet bigger mortgages and wish lists of things we think we need in our lives.
Of course, the world we live in today offers us a more comfortable lifestyle and longer life expectancy, but it seems that along the way we lost sight of why we work. It is important to remind ourselves that we are many things, not just who we are and what we do at work. We are husbands/wives, parents/ sons and daughters, brothers/sisters, friends, artists, musicians, we have hobbies, interests, things we feel are worth fighting for and we should therefore always ensure that we do not put all our eggs in one basket. We are not defined by what we do for a living. This is also very important because if anything fails (for example if we lose our job) we are not crushed by a sense of total loss as we can rely on the other things that define who we are. We are many things and it is important to remind ourselves that we work to live and not live to work.
Work & Life balance
We have a responsibility to ourselves to find the right work/life balance.
It is normal to get into a job full of hopes, ideas and to think that this new opportunity offers many solutions to a lot of our problems: gratification, fulfilment and financial security – for example. Unfortunately, the higher the expectations and hopes, the more we become perfect candidates for disappointment. This is because we often fool ourselves with unrealistically high aspirations and nearly impossible goals. Sometimes we are naïve when we fail to understand the efforts, time and energy it takes to achieve things. Of course, there is nothing wrong with being an idealist, for dreaming and hoping, for wanting to be an overachiever, for being a hard worker and even a perfectionist (which by the way did play out well for many athletes, celebrities and historical figures), but it’s important not to lose track of who we are, where we are at and what we really want from life. We all start with good intentions, but if we are not to grips with our core beliefs and if we are not careful, this can become a slippery road to burnout.
The stages of Burnout
Burnout is known as a state of chronic stress that leads to physical and emotional exhaustion often characterized by cynicism and detachment. It creeps up slowly and in stages, which seemingly merge with one another, meaning it often goes undetected until too late.
Let’s look at the identifiable stages. The number of stages varies from one Psychology textbook to another but we can simplify them in five stages as suggested by the A.P.A. (American Psychological Association):
- The Honeymoon: we love our job. We are smitten with it and all that comes from it. We have plenty of energy and have a big desire to learn and get involved.
- The Awakening: the realization that the job is not the answer to all our problems alongside a sense of disappointment, loss of fulfilment and disillusionment.
- Burnout: fatigue and irritability grow leading to eating and sleeping changes. We become increasingly frustrated and angry. We become more and more detached, critical of ourselves, our colleagues and superiors and of the organization. This is when depression, physical illness, drug and alcohol abuse can start to develop.
- Full Scale Burnout: despair and a deep and overwhelming sense of failure leads to a loss of self-esteem and self-confidence as well as a growing sense of loneliness and emptiness. Doesn’t sound pretty, does it! Life seems pointless and the future doomed. As physical and mental exhaustion sets in, we start seeing the signs of a breakdown. Suicide, stroke and heart related problems are no strangers in this scenario.
- The Phoenix Phenomenon: the Phoenix is a mythological figure: a unique bird that lived for five or six centuries in the Arabian desert, after this time burning itself on a funeral pyre and rising from the ashes with renewed youth to live through another cycle. Amazing! This phase makes a reference to the mythological creature because as for the Phoenix, yes, it is possible to arise from the ashes created by the burnout, but it’s not easy and it certainly takes time. We have to allow ourselves time, to give ourselves space to reflect, go back to our core beliefs and analyse them, challenge them and learn from experience. In coming back from a Burnout, we have to learn to be realistic in our job expectations as well as readjusting our aspirations and goals. This is why it is so important to get back in touch with our core beliefs, because we need to ensure that while we build a new self we do not put anybody else’s goals as our foundations. That we are not choosing according to what people think or want from us or according to what society requires of us.
It is important to reconnect with our loved ones, to find joy in social activities and hobbies and to learn to spread ourselves out so that our job does not become the one and only aspect of our existence, with superpower like influence over our self-esteem and self-achievement.
Managing Burnout
Let’s take a look at some of the preceding sign of Burnout and how we can manage them:
- Be watchful of the signs of burnout such as insomnia, detachment, feeling physically and emotionally exhausted, drained and depleted. Holding negative thoughts about the future and feelings of cynicism at work.
- Develop a social support network. Do not underestimate the benefits of talking and sharing. It can release tension and make us feel like we are not alone. It can help us sorting through our feelings, getting a different angle and putting things into perspective.
- Don’t be afraid and be honest with yourself. Is the job fit for you? Is it too challenging or not challenging enough? Discuss your concerns with your manager or Human Resource department.
- Ensure you also have a life outside work. If you let your job be the major and only part of your life, you allow for your self-esteem to be far too dependent on your success at work and when you fail in your job, you fail too as an individual. Look at getting a hobby, something that is completely different from what you do at work and remember to be socially active by spending time with family and friends.
- Implement some control techniques. Learn from experience what you can compromise on and to what extent. Remind yourself that you can only do what you can, while you can, until you can’t. When you can’t – you can’t. Learn to say no when too much is too much. Consider exercise, yoga, meditation or even deep breathing exercises to increase your outlets for reducing stress.
- Consider a change. If your job is jeopardizing your health and compromising your values, then you might need a change. What good is staying put in a job that is harming your physical and mental well-being?
- Seek professional help. Seeking professional advice is also very important as the therapist can help us shed new light on the problem and provide us with the tools to better understand and fight the problem. There is, however and unfairly, often a stigma about seeking professional advice. Seeing a therapist is also often seen as a form of weakness. What we should ask ourselves is: if we go to a GP for a cold, a cough or a pain in our tummy, why is it different to go to a therapist when our mind goes through a period of instability? Shouldn’t it be viewed as the same?
How organizations can foster Burnout
In “The Truth About Burnout” Dr. Maslach, 2009, contends that organizations unknowingly foster burnout. She believes that when one or more of the following conditions exists in an organization, workers end up suffering from burnout.
These six conditions are:
- Work overload. Cut back of workforce is a well-known technique used by companies to cut costs, but this leads to an increase of workload on those remaining. When these conditions exist, often the pressure and the workload become too great and generally productivity and quality decreases. Burnout thrives in this condition.
- lack of control. It is important to have a certain amount of control over how we perform our job. When our hands are always tied by the company policy and when we feel constantly watched over by our manager, we often feel powerless and eventually we stop caring.
- Inadequate compensation. If we don’t feel adequately compensated for our services, with time our productivity and interest tend to diminish.
- Breakdown in community. Not feeling part of a community or team can often make us feel alienated and it can end up in compromising our enthusiasm.
- Unfair treatment. We all want to be treated fairly but, in some organizations, favouritism can happen and salaries not always match our level or years of experience.
- Conflicting values. We all have different values and this is why people can do the same job and yet experience different levels of stress. The problem is that when our values conflict with the company’s values, the outcome is an inability to cope with the level of pressure we put on ourselves. Can you imagine a marine biologist working as a plasterer or an animal activist working in a slaughterhouse? Align your career path with your core values.
Practical techniques for dealing with stress
Most people believe that the reason we are stressed is due to events and circumstances that we have no control over. For example: a bus being late, a photocopier being broken, a traffic jam on the way to work, a boss being unfair or too much work impairing our ability to do our job well. As previously mentioned, people have different parameters and values and because of this, our level of stress can vary from person to person. That is why people can go through the same difficult and testing circumstances yet experience widely different levels of stress. However, it’s important to remember that our thoughts can be the source of our stress, and in most cases it is actually our attitude and our thoughts about these events and circumstances that we can control. We do have power over how we react to events. “We can’t choose what experiences come our way, but we can choose how we deal with them” Jaap Bressers.
Thoughts like “this is just so terrible”, “I’ll never finish it on time”, “The traffic is always bad”, “My boss is awful” are what psychologists refer to as negative self-talk.
If we actually stop and think about it, that one thing that we thought was “soooo terrible” isn’t really that terrible after all. That’s an exaggeration. We are also not able to predict the future, so taking wild guesses in difficult times with sentences like “I will never, she will surely….” is not at all helpful and we would be better off concentrating on the problem at hand. Generalizing is another one: probably the traffic is not “always bad” and if it was, then that would be by definition the normality and we should start taking it into account as simply that. Similarly, acting logically could spare us a headache. In the example “My boss is awful…” it is likely our boss is just trying to manage us and better results would be achieved if we were to talk about it in a calm adult way rather than carry the anger and grudge.
It’s important to understand that we do have some form of control over stress and this is rather empowering. Our minds tend to exaggerate the severity of the problem and we are often too quick at dooming and putting down any chances of success even though the future has not been written yet. These negative thoughts make us even more upset and while we get more and more flustered and angrier with it, our now irrational thoughts do not offer us any help in finding a solution to the problem.
In a stressful situation, our ability to solve the problem is our key to avoiding stress. To achieve this, we need to keep focused and positive.
So here are some practical stress management tips and exercises.
- Plan ahead. Probably one of the most useful pieces of advice to avoid stress. If you know the traffic is bad at a specific time, seek alternative routes or, for example, consider starting work an hour earlier and finishing an hour earlier. When feeling overwhelmed by the number of tasks ahead, make a list and prioritize.
- Take the time to train and teach others so you can delegate. This is an effective way to allow others to grow in the workplace, it can be a rewarding experience for both parties and help building relationships. Needless to say, it can provide you with the help needed when required.
- Organize your life. You’ll be surprised how therapeutic and empowering this might feel! Use this as a chance to review your values, achievements and future goals. Take time to declutter your mind…and perhaps even your house… to make space for new opportunities.
- Look after yourself. This is to me one of the most important and most disregarded bits of advice. Simply put: if you do not look after yourself, who will? If you run yourself down with worries or overload, your immune system will not be able to function at its best either. When this happens, your body becomes more susceptible to viruses, colds, illnesses. Early symptoms such as cold sores, cystitis and frequent colds is simply a way for your body to tell you that it needs some rest and some TLC. Learn to listen to your body and ensure you give it the care it needs. Treat yourself to something relaxing like a hot bath, reading a good book, making time to paint or taking a walk. Ensure your body gets its nutrients. Let me repeat this again: ensure your body gets it nutrients! And allow for a nice little treat for yourself from time to time.
- Take time off. Concentrating on the same problem over and over will only weaken our ability to think clearly. It helps to take some time off and refocus at a later stage with a clearer and rested mind. Remind yourself that you owe it to yourself to have time off and have some fun even during difficult times. Remind yourself that even if you were to continue worrying over someone or something, that someone or something is not going to get any better just because you continue worrying. Consider physical exercise, yoga or meditation to de-stress and channel your energies.
- Talk to friends. Don’t let the anger and grudges eat away at your soul. Don’t underestimate the power of social support. Your trusted network of friends might well be the most valuable and powerful stress management tool you have at your disposal. Talking helps clear our thoughts. It can release tension and make us feel like we are not alone.
- Leave work problems at work. Do not bring them in your house or your personal life. Not only do you not get paid for that time, but it also does not help you detach: a process that is needed in order to be able to look at it with a fresh and clearer mind the next day. Remind yourself that work is work and you also have a life outside work that needs enrichment and attention to flourish.
Juggling work & family demands
Isn’t it quite amusing that, when people meet, they often introduce themselves by what they do for a living? “My name is Anne and I’m a lawyer, I waitress at such and such in town, I’m a sales manager, a recruiter etc…etc….” Of course, we are making conversation and getting to know each other. Yet, isn’t it funny? Not only we are many things, for example a mother, a daughter, a painter, a volunteer at a local animal shelter, etc …etc but shouldn’t it be more about whether we are happy or not? Curiously, we often talk about what we do for a living as if that takes priority over anything else.
“Everyone you meet always asks if you have a career, are married, or own a house as if life was some kind of grocery list. But no one ever asks you if you are happy”
Heath Ledger
Maybe this is because work provides us with the means to live our lives. We of course need to pay bills and provide for ourselves, so it’s understandable. Yet if we think about our work as what defines us the most, we might find that our life as a whole gets out of balance. This is especially important when we justify to ourselves working long hours sacrificing our personal needs such as physical exercise or social interaction, when we rationalize doing extra work in the weekend in the name of a promotion, when we miss family occasions because we think if we work more we will be able to provide our family with even more things and money. When we do this, we are unknowingly choosing to live our lives out of balance. We tell ourselves that there will be more social and family events, that we have plenty of time to exercise and plenty more chances to make healthy choices.
A little story…
I was once sitting at a company meeting where I was consulting.
The CEO was very eager to gather everyone around to share the big news of a company success. There was palpable excitement in the conference room as the employees poured in. The CEO started her speech by thanking everyone for working so hard in the last year. For taking time off from their families and friends, for working long hours and for working many weekends. As the speech went on, I was looking at some of the people I had been working with and I too was starting to feel very excited and expectant for them. I knew some of them had been putting an enormous amount of time and effort at very high personal costs. I had been working with this guy who had told me he had been putting in extra unpaid hours from home every single night and weekend that year to help revamp the company’s website. I also knew that this had taken him away from spending time with his family and costing him cracks in the relationship with his wife. I really wanted for him and for all the others who had made such a sacrifice to be rewarded. After a long speech from the CEO, however, it became more and more clear to me that it was not going far. The ‘thank you’ was all they were going to get. Meanwhile the company made millions. At the end of the speech we were enthusiastically told that as a thank you we would find pink and blue cupcakes on the table.
Needless to say this particular event played on mind over and over that day, and that night I made myself a promise: that I would never ever live to work, that I would never let someone (let alone a big multi-billion dollar company) get rich at my expense with flimsy promises and ghostly rewards and that I would empower people to free themselves too.
I am very happy to report that I subsequently talked to my colleague and through understanding his values and beliefs I secretly worked out a plan to build up his self-esteem and empower him. He left the company a couple of months later to start his own web design company and I can report that he is a very successful business man who has also understood the importance of work/family balance. He and his family are in a very happy place now.
It’s so important to find our balance. To not let society, peers, or the media and advertising tell us what we need. It is important to review our choices from time to time to ensure they are still in line with our values and needs. To learn the difference between our artificial needs (a bigger house, a nicer car, more clothes…etc…etc) and our real needs. In the end, what we really need are very simple things such as adequate alimentation and shelter, health, exercise, love, friendship…
Rising from the ashes like the Phoenix!
- Come to familiarize yourself with your core beliefs. These are the beliefs you hold of yourself, the people around you and the world.
- Make a list of your values. The person you want to be and your priorities.
- Set your goals ensuring these are your own set of goals and not dictated by old core beliefs, by advertising or a society that has its own set of rules.
- Take time to enjoy your life. Are you just living to work or working to live? I always tell my clients that time is my currency. More money cannot buy me time. Are you spending your currency (time) by making healthy choices?
- Understand the meaning of urgency. Don’t run around every time the word “urgent” is used. Some things are truly urgent, others are really not. Ensure you take care of the big fires, but learn to say no when things are not really urgent. Understand the real meaning of urgency.
- Seek to work with employers who respect and value you and that appreciate your need for balance. It is important to feel valued and work for someone who has similar work/family time principles. Also find out if they offer flexible hours, child care, fitness facilities etc that you might benefit from.
- In the worst-case scenario, leave a job that puts you in conflict with your top values. If you are a vegetarian, for example, working in a meat factory will only crush your soul.
