Are You Having Burnout? Here's the Solution by Bro. Bo Sanchez

Burnout is expensive. 

I know from personal experience.  I experienced one over fifteen years ago.  It cost me my health, my relationships, the vibrancy of my faith and happiness of work.

Today, I try to stay clear from burnout by watching for the signs that I had during that difficult season of my life.  See if you have any of them…

·      I was always tired.  Even after waking up in the morning after supposedly a good night’s rest, I wake up already exhausted and drained.

·      I dreaded to go to the office.

·      I felt depressed.  Many times, I felt helpless at the difficulties and conflicts that I was facing at work.

·      I doubted myself so much.  I lost confidence and wondered what in the world was I doing in my job.  I wanted out.

·      I was more susceptible to psychosomatic illnesses, like frequent colds, stomach problems, etc.

Researchers state that there are certain professions that are prone to burnout, such as high-pressured business positions as well as the helping professions: doctors, nurses, clergy, missionaries, counselors, social workers, and teachers.

When you see these symptoms and if you’re in these professions, you know that you’re a prime candidate for burnout. 

Watch Out For Causes Of Burnout

      

Let me share with you the causes for my burnout and find out if any of them look familiar to you.  Remember that this is simply myexperience and therefore other factors may trigger another person’s burnout.  But sharing these circumstances to you will give you an idea and spur you on to explore your own life for possible causes.

As I reflected on my ordeal, there were internal and externalcauses—and this is important to know because healing our burnout by changing our environment won’t solve our problems if your burnout has internal causes.  You could change jobs and even go to another country and still experience burnout in your next job and company if you don’t deal with the inner attitudes that need changing.

Internal Causes:

·      I had low self-worth.  I used my achievements to cover up my need for affirmation and love from others, but no matter how much success I had at work, my broken self-image kept asking for more.

·      I had ambition, driven by my low self-worth.  I had so much drive, I could work for sixteen hours straight.

·      I had an overwhelming fear of conflicts and rejection, and so avoided problems and conflicts.  I needed love so much, I didn’t want anyone to get angry with me—so I tried my very best and exhausted every means to please everyone.  Naturally, that goal was impossible and will always be impossible.

External Causes:

·      According to psychologists, working for either extreme—an authoritarian, demanding boss, or a vacillating, wishy-washy boss—will produce burnout.

·      I had chronic conflicts with co-workers.  Conflicts are normal in our world but when they become prolonged and unresolved, they can cause burnout.

·      Low moral in the office was pervasive.

·      There was poor communication between the different parts of my organization.

If you are familiar with these causes, you have more chances of avoiding burnout.

Deal With The Two Sides Of Burnout

How did I get over my burnout?

        First, I had to deal with the internal causes.

I had to change my attitudes toward my work and myself.  I was depending on my work to prop up a poor self-image.  So I needed to heal that poor self-image.  Now note that healing low self-worth and taming fears is a life-long process, but recognizing them within you is already a first step in the right direction.  Remember that any addiction is a way of escaping feeling the most painful emotions of life.  In this case, a burnout victim is using his work as the escape hatch so he won’t feel the fears, the loneliness, the sadness, and the traumas in his past.  By entering into these feelings of pain, acknowledging them, embracing them, accepting them, and allowing yourself to feel their fiercest storms within will shrink these monsters to their true size.

A burnout victim doesn’t genuinely love himself, and he needs to learn this virtue before he experiences healing.  By allowing himself to feel his emotions as is, no matter how painful they are, he is giving a message to himself that “you’re worthy” and “you’re normal” and “I respect what you’re going through.”

Loving himself will also mean developing healthy boundaries between himself and his work and the people around him.  Because the burnout victim has blurred his identity with the success or failure of his work and what other people say about him, he needs to distinguish his own worth from these two separate realities.  He needs to learn that his life is more than his professional reputation and the bottom-line of his financial statements.  This “more” are his values or moral code and his spirituality.  From this deeper self, he should then craft a higher purpose for living that is beyond career goals or financial objectives.

Finally, loving himself means adapting practical self-care habits—developing exercise, meditation, healthy diets, engaging hobbies, and other wonderful stuff that burnout victims and workaholics neglect.

       Second, I also had to deal with the external causes.

My working environment was so awash with indecisiveness (mine) and the resultant disorganization, low morale, disorganization, and chaos; it was definitely causing my burnout.  So for the first time in a long, long time, I faced my fears by meeting people I had conflicts with.  I made hard decisions at work, no matter how unpopular they were.  I “created” a few enemies by doing what I believed was right.  I removed staffers who were hindering the mission of the organization.  Believe me, healing my burnout wasn’t popping a few pills into my mouth; it was major surgery!

I did this by asking help from people I could trust.  Having a group of friends around you, assisting you and praying for you, was a real gift from God to me.

Don’t Burnout, Burn-up!

After a bout with burnout, some people think that the way to go is to coast along and be boring.  In other words, be monotonous so that you won’t burnout again.

But that’s not true.  The antidote to burnout is to burn-up!  Ferdinand Foch said, The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.

Let me give you an illustration.  Think of an oil lamp.

A burnout victim is simply a lighted oil lamp that didn’t have oil.  The result?  The flame burned and consumed the entire wick rather quickly.

The solution is not to keep the oil lamp unlighted.  It will not serve its purpose.

The solution is to put oilin the oil lamp and to light it again.

You and I were created for a purpose.  For a sacred mission larger than us.  We need to live and be consumed by this higher vision!

But to be aflame by a vision for the long term, we need oil.

And that oil is the core values written in the fabric of our soul.  We need to live by those values: love for self, for our neighbor, and for our God.

And love for self will include the virtue of balance.

Because I don’t need to borrow worth from my achievements as a crutch for my own self-value, I work in my job without the pressure.  I work for love and the happiness that I feel in my work.  There’s balance!  My oil is constantly replenished.

       And when my day of departure comes, when my body reaches its end, I shall gladly allow the fire of my sacred mission consume the last dregs of me.

       Don’t burnout, Burn-up!

       May your dreams come true,

Bo Sanchez

Do You Reject the Rejection by Bro. Bo Sanchez

You won’t close every sale, no matter what you do.

 

       Because some people won’t like you.

 

       In fact, along the way, you’ll get lambasted, criticized, ridiculed.

 

       In a word, you’ll be rejected.

 

       Well, I have another word for you: Reject the rejection.  Because somewhere near that door that just shut, you’ll find a door that is open.  So keep on looking. 

 

Eleonor Roosevelt was right when she said, No one can make you feel inferior without your consent…

 

Some Great Failures You May Know…

 

       One day, a man was taking a train ride feeling dejected because he wasn’t accepted in a writing job he was applying for.  The editor who evaluated his work said he “lacked creativity.”  In that train ride, this man was doodling in his little note pad and a little mouse was born on that piece of paper.  That mouse’s name was Mickey, and that man’s name was Walt Disney.

 

       Do you think Albert Einstein was esteemed by all his teachers and classmates alike?  Think again.  As a kid, one professor said Albert’s grades were very mediocre, he was the most likely student to amount to nothing.

 

       Thomas Edison had more than a thousand failed experiments before he invented the light bulb.  A thousand!   It was he who said, Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.  The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.  He reaped the fruit of that principle as he has, aside from that light bulb, 1,092 inventions under his name.

 

       I’ve failed more times than Edison.  In the past twenty years, as a leader of many organizations, I’ve made many mistakes, and some people hated me for them.  (I’ve also made a lot of good decisions, and some people hated me for them as well!)  At any one point in my life, I simply could have given in to my fears and hung the towel and said, “That’s it.  I’m quitting.”  But I don’t have to follow my fears if the deepest voice in my heart says, “Go on.  Do what’s right.”

 

       In any job, whether you’re a salesman meeting hundreds of people a day or an accountant locked up in your cubicle, rejection is a given.  It’s just merely a question of when it will come, from whom, and how you’re going to respond to it.

 

       The best response is to keep on looking for the open door.

 

       If you’ve got something that people need, and you advertise it, people will be opening their doors to you.

 

       You don’t have to close every sale to succeed.     

      

Have you experienced some rejection?  They’ve lost a wonderful opportunity to work with you and gain your services.  Keep walking.  Keep searching.  There’s a lucky person out there, a fortunate company out there who will receive your blessing. 

 

Write down now a long list of other doors you can look into!

      

       May your dreams come true,

 

 

       Bo Sanchez