Just over a year ago, nearly 48 million people quit their jobs during what was called, the Great Resignation. Today, we’re seeing people staying in their jobs and instead, languishing in their roles—what we’re calling quiet quitting. At least 50% of the workforce is adopting this practice, according to a Gallup poll of more than 15 thousand workers. Quiet quitting is a sign of burnout.
Overcoming burnout happens because we are using up our emotional energy at work. Ask yourself: Do you walk away from a meeting, conversation, or work task feeling drained? Are you simply going through the motions at work? Getting just the bare minimum done? If the answer is “yes,” then you are likely emptying your emotional gas tank at work, causing your mind and body to shut down.
If you’re not sure, ask yourself how often are you reactive, defensive, or irritable at work. These are sure-tell signs that you are using up your emotional gas at work. Save that gas for the rest of your life when that energy is better spent.
At work, we want to stay in our roles so that the energy we’re spending at work is productive and not depleting our internal resources. When you do that, you are not taking what’s happening personally or internalizing it as if the issues you’re experiencing have to do with you. It’s about the work, not you.
What You Don’t Want: Emotional Hijacking
Here’s what’s happening inside you when you’re coming from your emotional self. Your nervous system detects danger and sends a message to the brain’s limbic system where your threat detector (amygdala) perceives what’s happening as an imminent threat to your existence; your emotions (also in the limbic system) get involved and translate what’s happening into a catastrophic thought (e.g., “screw this,” “someone’s got it in for me,” “I want to move,” “this sucks,” “I can’t do this anymore,” or “they’re going to fire me.”) and the body responds by choosing your best survival strategy to cope. This process takes milliseconds but the draining effects on your emotional and physical energy have already been depleted.
What You Do Want: Whole-Personed Empowerment
Instead, you want to focus on your role and take the personal aspects of yourself out of the game. If what you’re doing is anything but role-focused, you’re likely in that reactive part of yourself. You want to be responsive, able to think logically, take initiative, own the direction of your career, and from a whole self that has enough capacity to navigate daily stressors with resilience and capacity. There are a few things that will help you get to this place…
Steps toward liberating yourself from burnout:
- Take up a simple, conscious breathing exercise (if you want a guided, 5-minute breathing exercise, use my “Conscious Breathwork” recording on Insight Timer or Spotify). This will help you build your awareness of how things are affecting you.
- Using your improved, somatic awareness, notice how tired or burned out your body feels—80% of change is awareness. Where in your body do you notice these experiences?
- Journal about those relationships at work that are most difficult. Can you start to see if the other person is in a role? Can you see yourself in your role? Now pay attention to when you’re “in role,” how much energy does that take up as opposed to when you’re “in person?”
- Focus on what you can control and “manage up” so that you are owning your career path and proposing what you see are better ways to contribute to the organization.
- Lastly, make sure you are practicing good self-care so that work isn’t the sole focus of your life. Join a social group, exercise for fun, listen to music, spend time with those you love, and do something you enjoy outside of work. This will give you more perspective—that life is much more than what we do but instead who we are.
Over time, I hope that you will find the burnout subsiding and that what is left feels far more empowering than what you were experiencing before.
Stay true to you,
For more information, I encourage you to pick up my book, The Paper Tiger Syndrome, or sign up for notices when workshops will be available later this year.