Exceptional Accomplishment
Book Excerpt - Snowden McFall page 129-130
Attention Achievers: Beware of Burnout
There is a fire inside you that ignites and burns brightly when you do what you love and you share that joy with others. As you accomplish more and more, living the life of your dreams, your contagious enthusiasm spreads from person to person. When you're Fired Up!, you can overcome any obstacle and succeed in ways that you never before thought possible. When you're Fired Up!, you have incredible energy and vitality, and you can continue to accomplish great things.
But every once in a while, that fire starts to flicker and die, and what douses the flame is often burnout. All "doers" face the potential of burnout: overcommitting, doing too much, and losing your drive and energy. If you're Fired Up! about life and accomplish much on a regular basis, it's surprisingly easy for burnout to occur. It often starts out as a prolonged period of stress. Or it happens something like this.
You're working hard, balancing your family and your community obligations, and you're happy about your life. Because of the adage, "give a busy person something to do and it will get done," you are asked to take on another big responsibility. It might mean a raise or major growth for your company, so you say "yes". For a while, everything is fine. You're putting in more hours at work and getting less sleep, but you can handle it. Your fire is still stoked, although it begins to burn from both ends. And then your father is diagnosed with Alzheimers. Emotionally distressed and guilt-ridden, you spend more time and money taking care of your father and less time taking care of yourself. Pretty soon, you're rushing around from place to place, feeling harried, worried about what you may have forgotten to do, and you fall into bed completely exhausted. You're eating poorly, just to have fuel in your body, snapping at loved ones and co-workers, dreading the next meeting. Your creativity and resourcefulness have vanished and you have trouble getting up in the morning. You wonder how long you can go on like this. Your fire went out a long time ago, and you have no idea how to reignite the flame. This is the beginning of burnout.
It's an interesting phenomenon. Burnout rarely happens to procrastinators; it happens to doers. Doers live with a fair amount of stress anyway. Good stress occurs when we get excited about a new challenge. Bad stress occurs when a crisis or trauma takes place. Either way, it has a big impact on the central nervous system. Those of us who are already substantial achievers are the ones at the greatest risk. It takes very little to upset that delicate balance of easily juggling lots of different balls. All too quickly, added demands and pressure can force you into overload.
©2000, Snowden McFall, Exceptional Accomplishment