Links to the other episodes I mentioned on this episode:
- How to avoid burnout
- How to do a 45-day Unstoppable Beast Mode Challenge to double down
- How to deal with crisis and adversity
Harvard Business Review defines “burnout” as when relentless work stress pushes you into a debilitating state. On the last episode, we talked about how to AVOID the state of burnout.
On our last episode, we talked about how to live a more proactive life and what you can do to avoid burning out in life.
This ended up being one of our most SUCCESSFUL and SHARED episodes — and I got a flood of questions with people asking… TOO LATE. I’m burnt out. Forget avoiding it, I’m in it. What do I do now?
The problem with burnout, or feeling sad, or feeling depressed, or even feeling melancholy is that it is hard to figure out the root cause of things.
Is it that your job sucks and you are ready to move on?
Is it that people are being unfair to you and you’re the victim?
Or is it something within you that needs to change and these feelings are a way of your body signaling to you that something is wrong…
In my life, there has been several times I’ve found myself burnt out, or sad, or depressed about my current situation. In those situations, I recognized that I need to pause and reflect and take massive corrective action to get out of it. Whether it was my choice to leave my marriage, or leave my finance job, or change careers, in all of those cases, they started with cases of feelings of burnt out, or sadness or depression.
Those are ways for our bodies, our mind, and our environment to communicate to us that something is WRONG. On this episode, I talk about about the THREE things you can do if you find yourself in a bad situation like burnout.
Part of living a proactive life is being able to pause and reflect when this is happening and then take massive corrective action. Through all of the crazy situations in my life, when you find yourself in a sad, depressed or burnt out situation, you’ve got THREE options.
LEAVE
DOUBLE DOWN
Or DECLARE A CRISIS OF ADVERSITY
Let me explain.
For all the different permutations of situations that exist, your job is to pause and reflect on where you are (this is where practicing Unstoppable Sundays) comes in really handy and figure out which of these three buckets you fall into.
The first bucket, is that you’re in a situation that is bad because of a number of external factors that you cannot change or control. And whether it is today, or tomorrow, or a plan to execute over the next 6 months, you need to leave.
The second bucket is a situation where the situation is fine, but you yourself are having trouble coping. In this scenario, this is a YOU thing and you need to take steps to get back on track.
And for the last bucket, this is where it’s a combination of two. External factors are bad, internal factors are bad, everyone is overwhelmed. In this scenario, you are in a CRISIS of ADVERSITY. This is your classic “shitshow” of a life situation (I’ve had plenty of these).
The question becomes, what do you do once you’ve identified where you are…
If you are in a situation where you need to leave a bad environment, whether it is today, or over the next 365-days, you need to formulate a plan to slowly exit out of it. This is where getting proactive about your next 365-days like we teach you in our guide can help.
If you’re in a situation where it’s a YOU thing, even if you are tired, and you cannot take a break right now, and you’re in the middle of a massive project deliverable, what you need to do is kick off a 45-day challenge where you push hard on the ONE most important thing and then give yourself a break after those 45-days to recover from the burnout.
And if you’re in this unfortunate 3rd bucket, where you are truly facing a crisis of adversity, well… you’ve got some work cut out for you. We did a VERY LONG episode a few months ago on how to deal with crisis and adversity that I’ll link to below so you can check it out.
So.. In conclusion, If you’re feeling sad, depressed or burnt out, the first thing to do is assess your situation and create a proactive plan on how you’re going to get out of it.
The next thing to do is get proactive about your life so it never happens again.