Cara de Lange is the founder of Softer Success – How to Change your Mindset to Prevent Burnout and learn to Be more Gentle with Yourself. Helping clients create a more harmonious, peaceful and productive life. She runs workshops and gives talks that focus on relieving stress, overwhelm and how to prevent burnout. She shares powerful tools and tips on how to slow down, increase energy and become more resilient. Cara is the voice of experience having survived burnout herself. Her book Softer Success – How to be more Gentle with Yourself – with tips to prevent burnout will be out in 2019.
www.softersuccess.com
3 Simple and Effective ways to Prevent Burnout
Stress and overwhelm seem to be part of so many people’s lives these days. The pace of life, business, our world have changed rapidly. Advances in technology have created additional stress and activity in our lives. We’re bombarded with communications, messages, information, news. Should we be surprised that Burnout and stress have become an epidemic? It’s time we started to take action – but in a gentle way!
We often run at full speed in life, ticking off that to do list and pushing ourselves, rarely taking time out. But it’s so important to take time for yourself and to learn to slow down, so you can find balance, peace and tranquillity and prevent burnout.
I’d like to share with you 3 Simple but effective ways to avoid Burnout:
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Breathe
Deep breathing provides many health benefits, for example a reduction in stress and blood pressure; strengthening of abdominal and intestinal muscles and a reduction in general body aches and pains. Deep breathing promotes better blood flow, releases toxins from the body and aids healthy sleep. In turn these benefits result in increased energy levels and being more focused.
It’s important to breathe really deeply and often. Once you get into the swing of it, it feels great! So practice deep belly breathing several times during the day. And at any moment you start feeling stressed.
Go on – Try it now!
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Be Kind to Your Mind
Don’t try to do it all and then get stressed or overwhelmed. And especially do NOT berate yourself.
Here’s my suggestion: write a list of all the things that are making you feel overwhelmed. For each thing you’ve written down note whether you can delegate it and who to. Then take action to offload those items to the appropriate person.
As to that little voice in our heads – the one that berates us – the one that says ‘I should have’ or ‘I shouldn’t have’? When you start to hear it, don’t listen to it, switch to positive affirmations. Your brain will start to listen to them. When your inner critic says you should have answered an email in a different way or you should have stayed at work longer because your colleague did turn it around and say ‘I answered that email in the best way at the time’, ‘‘I needed to leave work for some ‘me time’. Be forgiving and understanding of yourself.
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Listen to your body and Take time for yourself
Our body is smart – sending us signals that we’re stressed and overdoing things: headaches, back pain, indigestion, gastric reflux, IBS to name but a few. Listen to it. Treat your body with kindness and respect.
When you feel overwhelmed take some time out to take deep breaths and notice what’s going on in your body. Think about what you really need at this moment in time. Do you really ‘need’ to go out with your colleagues tonight or would a nice relaxing evening at home work better for you?
Plan time for YOU in your schedule. I know, you’re thinking how can I do that when I have to get up at 5.30am travel to a business meeting, run a workshop, then travel back to be home by 7pm and start cooking. It could be something simple like reading a novel or meditating during your journey; going for a short but relaxing walk at lunchtime; having a candlelit bath when you get back home. Whatever you choose make sure it’s something that restores you and leaves you feeling rested afterwards. Reserve that time for YOU. Be in that moment and enjoy it.
Learn to be more gentle with yourself. It can help you live a happier, healthier and ultimately more successful life. You really can change your mindset and avoid burnout if you start to take care of your needs first.
There’s so much more I’d love to share with you to help you avoid or recover from burnout. Get in touch with me to learn more – I’m only an email away: [email protected]
