Burnout Prevention for High Performers: Practical Steps to Thrive

Do you ever feel like you’re running on empty, even though you’re crushing it at work? High achievers are more susceptible to burnout than ever—a struggle that often goes unnoticed until it derails your health and happiness.

As a high performing businesswoman, Jeannette’s two biggest challenges were stress from an overloaded work schedule coupled with being sleep deprived. She was unaware of the roles that stress, and lack of sleep played in holding her back from a healthy lifestyle. What happened to Jeanette was remarkable. Together we created a plan that became the foundation for her success at becoming fit, healthier, and losing weight.

With this blog post we focus on how to solve Jeanette’s problem of feeling depleted from stress that is more common than you may think. I’ll also show you how managing stress can give you the Golden Key to peak performance without burnout.

What is Chronic Stress?

Daily chronic stress from small stressors is common and may not be recognized. In a February 2023 Harvard Business Review article, “The Hidden Toll of Microstress,” by Rob Cross and Kane Dillon, the authors identified microstresses as the small, invisible, fleeting, stressors that seem like “small bumps in the road.” These microstresses can be as small as taking fifteen minutes to help out a coworker. The authors noted that, “Microstress may be hard to spot individually, but cumulatively they pack an enormous punch.”

How Microstress Leads to Burnout

During interviews with high performers from thirty global companies, Cross and Dillon discovered that these high performers “were powder kegs of stress” and most of them didn’t realize the extent of their struggles to keep up their work and personal lives. Neither did they realize that it was an accumulation of small events that was leaving them feeling overwhelmed.

These microstresses can accumulate from lack of self-care that add to work or financial stresses that can lead to burn out and exhaustion.

Simple Daily Practices to Manage Stress

Regular practices that elicit a relaxation response can keep stressors from accumulating that lead to chronic stress and interfere with peak performance. These regular practices include breathing exercises, better eating habits, and physical activity. Example: what can you do to overcome the tendency to overeat when stressed? A good place to start is with the awareness that your body is trying to protect you and discover situations that trigger you to overeat.

When your brain signals danger, one of your body’s natural responses is increased appetite. What else can you do not to cave into food cravings that come from chronic stress?  My high coaching recommendation is to eat when you’re hungry and pay close attention to what you eat. What else can you do instead of eating when you’re not even hungry? Click here for my 5 Steps to Stop being Controlled by Food blog post on how to stop soothing yourself with food.

Thrive by Managing Stress

Arianna Huffington, author and founder of the Huffington Post, is a good example of someone who recovered from collapse from stress and burnout. According to Huffington and co-author Marina Khidekel, we need to change the way we work and end the delusion that burnout is the “price we must pay for success” as described in their book, Your Time to Thrive, End Burnout, Increase Well-Being, and Unlock Your Full Potential With the New Science of Microsteps.

Your Next Small Step

Where to begin? I recommend you take one tiny step at a time and take a stand for your health and well-being. Why start small? Making a wholesale lifestyle change at once can create a boomerang effect and be counterproductive. Think of it this way: when you succeed with a tiny daily change, your confidence grows as you tackle each change that can compound to yield big results.

Reflection Questions

1. What problems do you have with stress that interfere with being energized and feeling refreshed throughout the day?
2. How do problems impact your life?
3. What is one easy, tiny step you’ll take this week bring to refresh yourself with managing stress?

What can you do now to remove roadblocks and thrive?

Take my interactive quiz and immediately receive ideas and strategies tailored to your challenges: Top Inner Roadblocks to Weight Loss success: https://www.sweetlifewellness.com/roadblock-quiz/

Source:

Happy Life at a Healthy Weight, Creating a Shame Free, Healthy Relationship with Food and Life. Kay Loughrey, RDN, MPH. Authentic Wellness Publishing Company, LLC, 2024. Available through Amazon in eBook and paperback formats and through other companies where books are sold.