Happy Labour Day! Refuel Your Emotion

"Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes ... including you."  – Anne Lamott 

It’s hard to drum up much enthusiasm when you’re burned out. Your once optimistic mood begins to fray due to a job that drains, family responsibilities, uncertainties or a combination of factors that has left you feeling depleted. What you are experiencing is burnout and it can be emotionally exhausting. 

Research shows that people suffering from emotional exhaustion experience higher levels of work-life conflict. Left unchecked, burnout can wreak havoc on your health, happiness, relationships, and job performance.  

Christina Maslach a social psychologist, describes burnout as a “response to long-term emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job.” This simply means that burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress. 

Burnout can be debilitating to your health and cripple your relationships when not managed properly. Several years ago, a colleague who was rising on the corporate ladder (he stayed late at work and took work home), wearing his workaholic lifestyle like a badge of honour and obsessively worrying about his performance and future began to blur the lines of having a balanced work-life. During one of his late-night works, he started to feel a tight pain in his chest. He was rushed to the hospital. The doctor revealed to him that he had had a minor heart attack. In the end, he was advised to change his lifestyle and take better care of himself. He opted to be transferred to a different unit in the company that did not require neck-break deadlines. 

While having ambitions and goals are fine, it is imperative to be mindful of your mental health. There are certain things to look out for to avoid a burnout situation: 

Exhaustion: This can be in the form of mental, emotional, or physical exhaustion whereby you feel tired all the time and completely spent. 

Lack of Motivation: When you find you keep dragging yourself to go to work you are exhibiting signs of burnout. It is a feeling of being unenthusiastic about anything anymore for a long time.  

Cynicism, Frustration, Declining Job Performance: This is a feeling of being disillusioned about everything. You lack the morale to put in your best at work thus, your performance keeps slipping. This can happen over an extended period and when unchecked can lead to burnout. 

Being Occupied With Work - Always: When you expend your energy always mulling over work even when you aren't at work, it can lead to you being burned out over time. You need to learn to balance your work life with your personal life. Set a limit and be determined to follow it through. Although there are certain times that you may need to take work home, this should be at a bare minimum and not often. 

Another option is to engage a professional that will provide you with the support needed. Since your well-being is important to us at Sanlam Nigeria, our health plans Smart Protection Plan and SmartHealth International Plan have been tailored with your full protection and medical treatment in mind. Smart Protection Plan provides full protection in the event of death and total permanent disability. One key thing about this policy is that it promises to ‘pay back all the premiums that you have paid during the policy duration’. While SmartHealth International Plan is a unique solution that allows you access to international medical treatment which delivers optimum healthcare whilst maintaining value for money. 

We know how strenuous day-to-day activities can get, so as you refuel your emotion on Labour Day download our Sanlam Nigeria App to get any of our plans right now without any hassle.  

Happy Labour Day!