Resting is an essential part of your lifestyle. You need to move up on your priority list. No, I do not only mean go to sleep early. I mean proper rest. In the post, we are going to discuss ways of rest to prevent burnout, being overwhelmed, and sleeping better.
Rest as defined by the Oxford Dictionary is a verb that explains it as a cease work or movement to relax and recover strength. It would help if you took note of this meaning actively. In today’s society, we are encouraged, pushed, and driven to be always on the go or work like machines. We are not and never will be. As humans, we need moments to recharge and develop a resting point for ourselves.
Burnout
Burnout is one of the fallouts of not understanding that you need rest. As people, I see more than ever we are pushed into this stage of development in our bodies. It’s a crash that your body is telling you enough is enough. It can be physical or mental. It does not mean something is wrong with you. Remember, you are not a machine.
Symptoms of burnout: headaches, body aches, dizziness, exhaustion, loss of brain activity, tired, alienating yourself from others, trouble with concentration
The first step you can take is to say openly to yourself that you have been burnout. Many people tend to be in denial when they have it until the point of a hard crash that their bodies have. The next steps are to reduce your load of work by delegating or moving its priority. Yes, this may seem simple. However, the Westernized culture encourages the idea of perfectionism in its citizens and always performs their best. In the Industrial Revolution, there were where schools created to train young children in the times and environment of a factory to gain more workers. Depending on which school you went to growing up, this may affect you still today.
Take action by delegating. Delegate a task to someone you trust or hire temporary help to get you over the problem. You are not going to be good at everything. I had to do this for myself when my website crashed the day I launched my fragrance classes. After 6 hours of struggling to do it myself later, I went to find some temporary help that fixed the problem in 3 hours. Delegating the task helps me feel less overwhelmed.
I want you to develop the habit of asking yourself (and your work) a few questions:
- How high is this task on my list of priorities?
- What is the actual task?
- How long would it take for me to do it?
- Do I need others’ help on this task or to complete it?
- What part of this task is making me feel overwhelmed?
- What part of this task that you don’t like? (Delegate)
Using these questions to ease your mind on what are your next steps are. Understanding where your path is reduces the anxiety that you may face and calms your brain down from overacting.
Overwhelmed
Your brain is spinning in circles. You see so many options that you can take but you can’t choose. People always seem to you like they are pushing you to chose quickly so, you feel rushed. Being overwhelmed is not a fun situation. It leads to mistakes, anger, and resentment.
The first thing you can do is to start setting more boundaries. Stop saying yes to every single task that you don’t need to help with or do right now. Delegation is key here. It is vital if you are working on a team (school or work) and you have other teammates in the same roles or equal role as you.
Boundaries can come across as things like:
- Putting your OOO email on as an automatic response that explains what days you would be available to read the email.
- Not answer work messages after hours or on days off. (These are your days. Do not become the person that is overworking and underpaid).
- Immediately taking charge of another project even as you have three others to do. Let someone else take charge or move it down the list.
Sleep Better
We all could be sleeping better. As people, we are always using devices that can mess up our sleep cycle. Phones, laptops, televisions, reading machines, etc. Our bodies need to recover from the day and sleep gives that to you. I’m here to tell you enough is enough. You are slowly killing yourself because you aren’t getting enough rest.
If you begin to feel yourself crash around midday, take that as a sign from your body. We encourage ourselves to push through the day on the 24-hour clock. However, our bodies are telling us what exactly we need. Naps are not only for young children. You need it too.
Actionable steps you can take:
- Not touching your phone or any device two hours before bed
- Using blue light glasses or screen to protect your eyes
- Turning off the tv before you sleep. You need to get used to the quiet as you sleep because your brain needs the quiet to recover
- Developing a nighttime routine for your mind to begin the resting process once you start it.
- Avoiding being a Night Owl or up for 24 hours
- Take naps if you can. Do it in small sections of the day or use a bedtime clock like Sleepyti.me to measure your sleep cycles.
All of these things teach you the art of resting and restoring one’s self. You are not your school nor your company. You are a human being. In this pandemic, we are seeing a rise of companies and schools being online. It makes it difficult for those to have a separation between work, play and rest. You deserve to be treated well by others and yourself.
Remember you are a human being. You need to speak out about what you need in this crisis. Take care of yourself.