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Burnout: the silent killer

By Innocent Mwangi

Sayings of the Wise

Picture this! John was a very successful businessman. Whatever he put his mind to do, he did with zeal and passion. As years went by, however, his interest and passion for his business started to wane.

It started with negligence to perform easy routine tasks. This did not affect the business in the short term. However, as lethargy and boredom settled in, John found himself neglecting to market his internet business. It wasn’t long after this before his company ground to a penniless halt – broke and with bills piling up!

One day, dejected and frustrated, he got into his now aging convertible and hit the highway at top speed. As his mind raced through the events of his life, oblivious of the oncoming truck and the fact that his car’s speedometer was steadily edging towards 180 kilometres per hour, John did not know what hit him. He did not even see the truck as it rammed into his convertible – reducing it into a mangled wreck of twisted metal and broken glass. He died on the spot!

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Well, the above story is fictitious. However, I think I have made my point that burnout can have disastrous ramifications. What John was experiencing was an acute attack of burnout that finally killed him. According a Chambers Dictionary to burn out is to burn until the fire dies out for lack of fuel.

Every entrepreneur must be fired up with passion. Passion is the fuel that fires the engine of personal development. Passion nudges us to wake up in the morning with hope and determination to tackle yet another day’s challenges. Irrespective of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, passion dares to believe that success is nonetheless attainable. With this in mind, we wake up every morning determined to achieve our goals for the day. And as we toil to realize our goals, passion cheers us on saying: ‘You can. You will. Just do it!’

When passion dies out, lethargy creeps in. Slowly by slowly, our zeal to be successful dissipates and we start neglecting the very processes that made us successful in the first place. As burnout slowly settles in, we go through life in motions, daily wandering without purpose and zeal. Like zombies, we walk through life while in the real sense our desire to live died a long time ago.

Burnout eats at the very core of human survival. It reduces one into an ineffective worker whose only claim to success lies only in the pages of history.

Almost everyone has at one time or another suffered from burnout. Some have succumbed to it while others have reengineered themselves and fired up their engines with far much better results than John had.

How can one avoid or overcome burnout? Thanks for asking. I will give you a few strategies you can employ to avoid or overcome burnout. Here we go:

1. Learn to recognize the signs. If you find yourself losing interest in what you do, this is an indication that you have been doing the same thing for far too long and you are now getting bored. The remedy is simple: stop doing what you have been doing and look for a new cause, a new challenge. Reengineer and reinvent yourself by channeling your energies into something that you really believe in. As you do this your passion gauge will start going up and you will look at every day with hope and gleeful expectation.

2. Change! Change is a small but a very loaded word. There comes a time in life when you must reevaluate your life, and, if not satisfied by the findings, have the guts to own up and change! To overcome burnout, you must be ready and willing to change some things in your life. If what you have been doing has brought you to your current state of burnout, then it’s time to start doing something new. Someone said that ‘change is as good as a rest’. This is true! Change reenergizes and prods us to reach out to a higher calling, a better life. If you find yourself at a pity-party with burnout, turn around and CHANGE your perspective. You will be glad you did.

3. Diversify! Doing one thing over and over for too long kills ones passion. In the absence of passion, boredom reigns supreme – and burnout is as near as your next-door neighbor. Learn new things or new ways of doing things. Redefine your vision and mission statement if changing circumstances dictate that you do so. Adopt new strategies and reevaluate you goals as old ones are attained. If current realities necessitate a paradigm shift, by all means shift. If living a certain lifestyle no longer grabs you, change it for a different one, or infuse new styles to spice it up.

4. Finally, learn to hold on! Resist the temptation to end it all. The problems you are facing today may appear insurmountable, but if you hang in there, for as long as it takes, the tide will pass; the storm will calm, and the sun will rise. Get out and smell the coffee!

The good thing about a new day is that it comes with renewed hope, and another chance to live a better day. You may not be able to change the past, but you can, without doubt, positively influence your tomorrow. So, don’t hit the road, Jack!