Why Lying to Yourself Is Leading You Straight to Burnout
I regularly hear my clients say, “I am so damn tired, I want to collapse. I don’t really want to do anything, I could sleep for a week. But I just need to hold it together until (insert key deadline or activity here), and then I can take a break.”
I bet you’ve said it too, or some variation of the like. I know I have.
The words typically come out with almost a hint of surprise. Surely the laws of time, energy and space don’t apply to you…right? And yet, like a good soldier, you do push on, even when it seems impossible, even when that key deadline or event blends into the next five and you don’t get that break you were dreaming about. You burn the candle at both ends, neglect to pay attention what you put into your body, you run on little-to-no sleep and forgo investing your time in things that will feed and rejuvenate you. You hope and wish that magically this time it will be ok. You’ll get through this next push and then there will be … time… energy….space…motivation… to…
And then we realize the break we’ve been dreaming about isn’t coming.
Let’s face it – this is the modern lie that keeps on giving. “Once I’ve done X then I can start doing the things I want and need to do in order to be happy and healthy.” It’s a lie that’s contributing to increasingly pervasive chronic disease, it’s helping to drive the decline in employee engagement and its encouraging a culture that regularly Googles “how to be happier.”
Waiting for life to slow down in order to live your life is a losing battle. It keeps us focused on tomorrow but the only time we can really do anything is NOW. When we put off taking care of ourselves until later we are less resilient to life’s stressors, less able to surmount whatever comes our way. In fact engaging in this particular conflict practically guarantees you are headed for burnout. Time and time again I’ve seen colleagues fall into this trap, only to end up exhausted, miserable and suffering.
It’s time to stop lying to yourself.
The truth is, it is much much much easier to do something for yourself before you become burnt out than it will be after. Stop deluding yourself that you need to wait for the next milestone to be over before you catch up on sleep (go back to the gym, start eating healthy food again, etc).