How to prevent burnout with body and mind wellbeing routines

Burnout is a mental and physical health affliction that has become rampant in the modern workplace and can cause serious and long-lasting health issues. Burnout occurs due to factors such as:

• Excessive pressure to perform
• The loss of a loved one or important relationship
• Harmful narratives, such as perfectionism and people-pleasing or over-achievement drives
• An increasing and constant pressure to succeed, driven by trends of:

1. The social media “window effect” (seeing primarily the best snapshots of other peoples’ lives and not the struggles)
2. Globalization and remote working, where people are able to take on jobs anywhere, but are also in competition with a greater number of people
3. The expansion of knowledge and opportunities in the digital age, where anyone can become just about anything

This constant pressure to work has created intense levels of stress which ultimately overwhelm our ability to cope, which creates the conditions for burnout. In the 5 stage burnout model, burnout occurs when a period of chronic stress becomes too prolonged or intense.

In order to prevent burnout, therefore, it is important to build and stick to mental and physical wellbeing habits, which can help prevent your stress levels from reaching the chronically elevated state that leads to burnout.

Physical wellbeing routines that can help prevent burnout

Stress breaks down your ability to think critically or creatively, to learn, worsens mood, and impairs decision-making.

Once your body is impacted by chronic stress, your body and brain no longer function properly, which breaks down your ability to make changes necessary to prevent or recover from burnout. Therefore, successfully solving burnout requires a successful approach to stress management.

One of the most important parts of stress management is to complete your body’s stress cycles…