First of all, what is burnout?

There are numerous definitions, but the one I like best is the one from Maslach & Jackson who extensively researched the condition in the 70′s: it is a combination of exhaustion, cynicism & inefficacy – leading to a reduced sense of personal accomplishment.

For them, the contrary to burn out is engagement.

How engaged to do you feel? At work? At home?

What if you could have and do it all? What if your burnout “just” means that you haven’t figured out the proper support structure to actually help you achieve your ambitions?

Like most people, I believed in the need to compromise, build a sequence or give up some things, especially the trivial, non-serious stuff. It is commonly expected that doing too much will lead to doom and gloom.

And doom & gloom came when the “big one” hit me… It was after the birth of my second daughter. I was under the care of a midwife so I know it wasn’t baby blues. It was deep mental & physical exhaustion.
Before, I had had the “usual” getting up in the morning feeling exhausted. Dragging myself through the day. Wondering what on earth I was doing in that job, in that company, in that life. Collapsing in front of the TV after my daughter’s bedtime. Feeling numb in my brain & body. Feeling useless and weak. The “others” managed so why couldn’t I?!

I kept hearing my best friend’s voice repeating to me over and over and over: “You should take better care of yourself…”

Then it occurred to me: what if this specific cause and effect duo is not the Truth?

An alternative perception could be that to achieve big you need to prep big on many levels. Your mind needs to be at its top but so do your body and your soul/spirit. You should take care of yourself as if your life depends on it – because it DOES!

That is when my journey toward optimum self-care started. Here is what I did:

• I learned to ask for help, and to receive it
•  I changed my food – I got rid of overt sugar & gluten
• I exercised gently – I first set up a simple & gentle workout routine to to from home, then I took Tai Chi classes
• I hired professional help – a nanny, a good holistic physician, a masseuse & an osteopath
• I changed my thoughts – I let go of anything creating negative thoughts in my mind – and for the first time I really read an Oprah magazine from cover to cover :-)
• I brought the fun back – Sundays were disco time at home & I delighted in the mess of paint and playdough

Having decided that I wasn’t going to give up on my ambitions of: being a successful working mom, finding my passions and getting closer to my childhood dream of “changing” the world. And all of that required a significant support system. After only a couple of months I saw incredible results.

I went back to work after my maternity leave and I was engaged – seriously engaged.

My job hadn’t changed, neither had my schedule & travel requirements. I had 2 young kids (one seriously ill for the past 2 years), 2 stepchildren and a husband traveling 4 days a week.

But I started being interested again, had creative ideas, and took advantage of all the available development opportunities. I also dedicated energy to initiatives promoting women’s progression in the company and even received a European D&I award.

Best of all, I still had energy to play with my kids and plan fun adventures for the weekends.

Let’s have a closer look at the steps:

1) Learn to ask for help
A lot of people – and in particular over-achievers – think that they have to do it all themselves, by themselves… And it does feel strange at first to ask your friends, relatives, etc. to do your groceries or go to the postoffice for you – but the more you do it the easier it gets. And it teaches the art of receiving.

2) Change your food
Hippocrates summarized it beautifully over 2,000 years ago: “Let your food be your medicine”. The food you eat can really bring you down. It can make you experience “brain fog”, disrupt your sleep, impair your mental abilities, etc. The simplest compass is: eat real food, eat green food. Real means foods that are as close to their original, natural state as possible. Regarding the green food, let me just say that you mother was right, once again!

3) Get professional support
If you want professional results, get professional help. Your money should be spent on professionals that: make your life easier (nanny, personal chef), make you more performant (doctor, chiropractor, etc), make you more efficient (training and courses).

4) Control you thoughts
This one is tricky because you have over sixty thousand thoughts a day, so “controlling” them all is impossible. But what you can do is achieve a better balance by consciously and actively filling your mind with positive thoughts instead of negative ones. Read bios of inspiring people, get a book of inspirational quotes, skip the serial killer books and shows for a while…

5) Bring back fun
It sounds easy, but it is not quite so. Having children, the opportunities for fun were readily available to me. But actually embracing the fun required a lot of focused attention. I had to train myself to be able to immerse in the activity. I banned access to my blackberry, committed to not lose myself in planning and other distracting thoughts during “fun time”. Now I can switch from work to complete foolishness in a matter of seconds!

Adding just one of these strategies will help you significantly increase your engagement level, so imagine how you’d feel if you actually implement them all!

May 2013 Issue