What is Stress Really Doing TO you?
Let’s be honest, our relationship with stress has become increasingly skewed.
We go to work (or start working from our beds when we first wake up), look at our emails, KPI’s, have meetings, work towards goals and then we come home only to start the process anew.
For most of you, on top of your so-called “9–5”, family commitments exist, as well. You have relationships. Friends who also provide you with stress.
Coming home doesn’t always mean rest and relaxation.
Our lives have transcended into a new form of stress.
Yet another problem we have comes from how we perceive and manage our goals.
If things don’t go to plan at work, then we beat ourselves up. Our inner voice can throw insults that make it near impossible to switch off. All the should’s, could’s and would have’s come rushing in to play.
On the flip side, if things go well at work, we’re pressured to maintain that element of success. Even if we’ve run ourselves ragged. Maybe to achieve that goal we made sacrifices. Sacrifices to our diets, exercise regime or our downtime to hit that goal.
It’s not sustainable.
We tie our self-worth and our view of success on how we are performing at work, which is creating an incredibly hostile environment internally.
Which can and does lead to burnout.
Done!
Burnout isn’t just destroying our physical health, it’s also destroying our mental health and emotional health.
What does burnout do in those three categories?
Physical health:
Lower our immunity
Increase inflammation
Cause fatigue
Digestive issues
Mental Health:
Reduce mental clarity
Increased forgetfulness
Reduce comprehension
Decrease in productivity
Easily distracted
Emotional health:
Increase apathy towards job or life situation
Increase in frustration and anger
Become reactionary instead of proactive
Increase in anxiety
At the end of the day, stress and burnout can really ruin our potential. And not only at work. It can really impact all the relationships around us.
It’s doom and gloom, isn’t it? However, it doesn’t have to be.
Get Your Sh*t Together — Literally and Figuratively
