Are You Fired Up About Being Burnt Out?

What is burnout? Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. 

But burnout is not just about stress. If excessive and prolonged stress was the only factor, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela would surely have succumbed to the immense political pressures they faced. Albert Einstein might have collapsed under the mental strain of exploring what would happen if one rode a light beam, and Larry Page and Sergei Brin could have crumbled at the weight of organizing the world’s information.

Clearly, the description of burnout above is not the full story.

Nor does it give us the tools we need to objectively recognize or diagnose burnout.

Instead, it might be more accurate to approach burnout as a syndrome, a constellation of symptoms that commonly occur together. Symptoms such as sleep disruption, exhaustion, and feeling drained both physically and mentally. A sense of hopelessness and a lack of control.

But what causes these feelings? What might contribute to you being ‘burnt out’?

In our experience, it is the result of internal stress that occurs when you perceive that what you are doing in life is not giving you what you think you want. Every case of burnout we have seen fits this profile, and more importantly, this definition gives you the power to fix your problem.

Burnout is not caused just by workload or by the system. If we attribute the cause of the problem as being external to us, we also have to find a solution external to us. We become dependent on others to solve our problems, effectively disempowering ourselves.

So let’s dissect this definition, and put you back in the driver’s seat of your life.

Burnout is a feeling. It is your experience. Just as the only true definition of pain is the private sensation of hurt, the only true understanding of what is going on inside yourself comes from you - the person experiencing it.

The pain of a runner completing a marathon is in so many ways similar and yet completely different from the pain of someone dealing with arthritis. So the cascade of outcomes that come from your experiences is defined entirely by how you perceive them and the meaning you give to them. And this can change from one moment to the next. The pain and exhaustion of childbirth have a very different meaning for a mother during labor compared to immediately after her baby is born.

People experiencing burnout invariably feel that they are doing, or being ‘compelled to do’ something they don’t want to. And it is this lack of choice or lack of agency, that is frequently blamed for the sensation of being drained, powerless, and hopeless.

Burnout, and all its associated symptoms, are merely a feedback mechanism alerting you to the disconnect between what you think you want, and what you are currently doing.

So how do you fix it?

Let’s begin with the end in mind: “not giving you what it is you think you want.”

We work with our clients to get clarity on what they want to achieve and uncover their unique ‘why’. The important question to ask is: If you did achieve exactly what you wanted, what would it mean for your life? It is vital to seek out the perceived positives and the negatives of accomplishing your goals. There are always two sides, even to achievement.

And just thinking about the drawbacks of getting what you wish for can help soften the infatuation, and so reduce the ‘desperation’ that is sometimes associated with a goal.. This simple exercise has led many of our clients to loosen their attachment to the outcome they thought they wanted.

Sometimes, what our clients want is to avoid some outcome. Then too, consider the benefits and drawbacks if that unwanted outcome does materialize. You can’t always avoid the things you resent. And this exercise helps you remain centered and poised if you do get what you don’t want.

So let’s assume that you know what your target is and you know exactly why it is important to you.

Every action has consequences; ripples. And it is understandable that you might not be able to see clearly how doing what you are doing right now is moving the needle toward what it is that you want. This is, unsurprisingly, frustrating, and can lead to feelings of disconnection.

So firstly, it is important to recognize that you always have a choice. Even Viktor Frankl had a choice, in the depths of a concentration camp. And consciously or unconsciously you are choosing your current course of action. It can be extremely instructive to consider what your real motives are for doing whatever it is you are doing now, and your real motives for tolerating whatever it is you feel you are tolerating.

Secondly, it is important to question yourself. To interrogate how what you are doing is in fact getting you to what it is you truly want. Everything we do in life is a strategy, and if you are taking action, it is because you perceive that it will result in a net benefit. People do things because they perceive it will get them what they actually want - not what they say they want. If you are doing something, it is because you feel there is more benefit than drawback to you in the currency you value the most.

So make the unconscious conscious. Ask how what you are doing gets you to your desired outcomes. You might find that what you say you want isn’t what you actually want after all.

At the Chintan Project, we aren’t in the business of picking for you or making judgements about what you choose as your target. We are committed to helping you achieve clarity on your own individual target, and helping you discover and execute the most effective and efficient strategy for achieving it.

Every time we have helped our clients work through these steps, they have come to the conclusion for themselves that burnout is all about them. It is their pain and their perceptions, their decisions, and their actions that have led them to where they are. This realization empowers them and helps them perceive their pain differently, often resulting in no pain at all. It gives them the power to make different choices, and change their lives and their outcomes.

One of the first things we ask clients experiencing burnout is: what are you fired up about?

For us, this term does not signify riding high with fist pumps and rah-rah. It signifies a state of being certain, of knowing that you are on track. It is the connection you make with the fire within that drives you.

And from their responses, it is clear that what many are most fired up about is being burnt out. They are fired up about external things that are wrong which condemn and hold them in their current state. And as we have said before, if you attribute external causes to a problem, you are reliant on an external solution. Something over which you have no control.

We invest most of our energies in helping our clients to recognize and leverage the fire within. When you tap into this fire the loads you bear can transform into the fuel that drives you forward. The very challenges that we find stressful become the reasons for us to keep climbing.

It is no wonder that Gandhi, Mandela, Einstein, Page, and Brin were not burnt out, but rather fired up. And we are committed to helping you see your load as fuel too.

Until the next perfect time,

Amit Chintan Ramlall

Dr. Kumar Ramlall