Why You're Feeling Burnt Out At Work, And What To Do About It: Finding Freedom From Inner Tension

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Why You're Feeling Burnt Out At Work, And What To Do About It: Finding Freedom From Inner Tension
The Deep Roots of Burnout

(1) You Don’t Understand WHY You’re Storing Inner Tension: When you’ve ended up in burnout hell, the road to there was paved in task resistance, stress, overwhelm, and inner pain. In summary: your (1) biological battery and (2) inner world is fried. You’ve drained the battery, and burned your psychological foundation down. How? It’s the many days, weeks, months, pushing through, and expending your inner energetic resources, that cause you to open up the cellar door, and walk down into the dungeon of burnout, one step at a time. Eventually, as Dr Gabor Mate says, the body says NO. Burnout can be thought of as a sort of defence mechanism, where the organism starts to shut down, to make you respect nature’s law. It will put the breaks on, and tell you: you’re abusing me – STOP. Your body holds all the cards. How you think, and how you operate, and how you do, or do not recharge your biological battery, are why you’re storing a build-up of inner tension. Do not blame yourself. Our society is a little frenetic and insane. It’s fixable, so don’t sweat it. This is a journey that is about both loving yourself, other humans, and life again.

(2) You Don’t Understand The Deep Truths of Burnout: If you’ve ended up in burnout hell, it’s because you have not, at this time, understood how to solve your own performance equation. And that’s OK. But if you are going to achieve consistent performance, and joyful productivity, without suffering, you will need to understand how you got like this in the first place. Burnout leaves clues: stress, tension, the search for alignment and meaning, and the deeper parts of our humanity that are in pain and lack, are pointing at your wounds and the real issues that block your human potential. Addressing these, will help you.

(2) Inappropriate Conditioning & Learned Helplessness: Repetition, is how our brain learns. It’s the mother of skill. As you repeat ways of being, you lock them into your nervous system as behavioural memory, and create internal anchors that will pull on these behavioural responses, when certain stimuli are presented. When your body is producing internal tension, and tasks seem like a mountain to climb, you begin to build negative subconscious associations with work, tasks, and the feelings occurring in your inner being. It becomes an internal habit loop. Conditioned by you. No one else. YOU. Not before long, this can become the norm. If you’re not finding flow states, then this is a bad sign.

(3) Coming From The Wrong Place: To stop the cycle, it’s about UNDERMINING the patterns your brain and body are trying to use, using a multifacted, holistic approach to driving brain change. We need to re-pattern our behaviours and undermine them, replacing stressed and tense ways of responding to the world, with calm, composed, engaged ways of being, coming from a place of acceptance, letting go, and releasing your inner tension. Operating from here, and using baby steps, will help you make the longer term shifts necessary.

What To Do About It
(1) Contraction Vs Expansion: Firstly, you will have to make peace with the past, and see the next chapter in your journey as a fresh start, and you will need to learn how to truly, deeply, and from your core, let go. Accept. Allow. And allow your wound up, overly sensitised nervous system (Dr Claire Weekes’ ideas still ring true) to be wound down, and for you to go from being contracted, guarded, and defensive, to expanded, abundant, and enjoying life and being in the world again. This is a crucial aspect of the work, and without finding joyful productivity, and healing your inner being, you will be prone to ending up in the dungeon again. Trust me, I know. No one shirks the work in this game. But you already knew that……

(2) Inner Work: You will need to find the beliefs that are activated within you, that may be creating negative emotions, and learn how to do inner work in integrating and healing your core. Success in any endeavour really is an inside job, and requires us to change how we think. Journaling, talk therapy, group therapy, coaching/mentoring, exposure therapy, visualisation, meditation, affirmations and breath work are all tools I used extensively for 14 years of my own transformation. I’d encourage you to use your intuition to go towards what you’re called towards, and heal your inner world, AS WELL as your actual biological base!

(3) Lack of Clarity: In burnout recovery, total clarity is your best friend. You need to know what actions will truly move the needle for you, and how to implement these in a sustainable, easy, fun, and enjoyable manner. Yes, we do have to “push” to some degree, take action and get out of our comfort zone. But, the subtle layers that matter, are coming from the right place, and falling in love with the process, which should NOT induce suffering. If it is, we’re doing it wrong, and need to calibrate it. Once we’re able to hit the needle movers, with consistency, and let go of all else, have balance in life, and feel joy, it’s game over. We bravely walk out of the dungeon, and close the cellar door behind us. It’s done. This is how we condition our inner being and heal.

(4) Minimum Effective Dose: Small steps, are king in this process. Making absolute peace with the process, and understanding that your outcomes and success, depend on your consistent performance. And that, is a by-product of the healthiest brain and body we can build, plus the correct approach to performance and overall life. Understand your MED, and then, I just want you to focus on hitting this each day. If you can do more, great, but until we’re out of burnout – just take SMALL, baby steps, and do what you can to move the needle on your (a) Biological Base and (b) Inner World each day.

(5) Slight Edge Thinking: Dig into understanding the power of small steps, micro habits, and empower yourself by realising that small steps, taken with consistency, are enough to beat 99.999999% of people. Don’t worry, people aren’t doing SH*T. Many aren’t doing a whole lot. And yet, they succeed. Why? Consistency. Iteration. Course correction. Period!

(6) Depletion of The Biological Base: I will leave you on this, as its the FIRST thing I recommend. People need to first stabilise themselves, and FEEL better. When they feel better, they do better. Feeling better, is a sign of the systems of the body running more optimally. They’re signs of brain chemistry running well, adequate cellular health, You’re running off fumes, and you know it. STOP THIS MADNESS, NOW. The game of performance, is no joke, and your outcomes depend on it. The only constant, is you, and your ability to perform. To rebuild your biological base, you will need to take sleep SERIOUSLY. You will need to take your hydration, your diet, your exercise, and your healing work, seriously. These, are your joyful, loving tools, and these are the healers that will support you in being a joyful, happy, consistent peak performer, who WILL realise their human potential. My first step for you, is to go and watch the sunrise each morning, watch the sunset, and then, 2hrs before your bed time, which I expect to be the same every night, I want you to turn off all lights, and use candles or salt lamps only. Devices should be on night shift mode always pretty much. Stabilise this for a month, and if you’re starting to get proper restorative sleep, you can then implement other ideas that build mitochondrial robustness and vigour.

GOOD LUCK!

I send you this article, with love and compassion, and I am happy to answer any number of questions you may have.

Human beings, deserve to be joyful and to unlock their human potential. It makes our world better.

-Ravi