Burnout cases are on the rise

Recent news shows that burnout cases are on the rise again as more people return to the office. With this in mind, leadership development consultancy Impact International has provided an expert comment on this which might be useful for any upcoming pieces you have planned – please see below.

Stuart Kelly, Performance Psychologist at Impact International, commented:

“The three things that cause us the most stress are uncertainty, uncontrollability and unknowns. Do they sound familiar? Humans are highly resilient but sometimes the best thing to do is to sit down, put on Netflix, have a takeaway, turn off your phone and take a deep breathe. 

However, it should never get to the point of wanting to collapse on the couch and escape from reality. We should have the ability to take a ‘break’ before we really need one. This is self-care – it’s self-compassion. Sometimes self-care is tough, but it shouldn’t be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need a reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure. It needs to be a habit that we do without thought and effort. 

An analogy I use is a frog in boiling water. Place a frog into boiling water and it will jump straight out, but place a frog into cold water then slowly heat the water to boiling point and the frog will not realise it’s in danger until it’s too late. This can easily happen to us.”

For more information on the advice provided, please visit the Impact International website.