What is the first thing that floats through your mind when you hear “It’s time to go to work?”. Are you filled with purpose, albeit a little exhaustion, or are you filled with dread, stress and, even, bitterness?
If you used to be really excited about your career and the changes you would make in people’s lives, or the difference you could make in the world, but now you just think about how there are only 5 more days until Friday, you are starting to experience bitterness. This bitter attitude towards your work and job can start out small, but, if not recognized and managed, can be the thing that makes you dream about quitting your job and leaves you feeling unfulfilled in your life.
A few years ago, bitter was all I felt about my work. It was like I was trapped each day and living a life I wasn’t happy in and my job was the thing to blame for it. Going into the same place each day with no flexibility to my schedule, no fresh air, and no freedom left me feeling drained. I grew so bitter each day that I really didn’t find any enjoyment out of the work, even when I had colleagues who were in the same field or other professions who were stressed and overwhelmed too. I felt like maybe I was in the wrong career. No matter what, I just felt bitter and eventually quit.
After I quit, I started doing mindfulness practices and learned about self-care, coaching, meditation and more. I taught yoga and mind-body fitness classes, and blogged about eating healthy and feeling good in your body. It wasn’t until after I cam back that I realized all fo that work was simply me trying to heal my bitterness. And it was only then that I realized my bitterness was caused by burn out.
Many don’t know, and I was surprised to find out myself, that bitterness is one of the hallmark signs of burn out. When you first start to feel stressed, your brain will see it as a threat. If the circumstance that stressed you out doesn’t go away, or if more stressful things happen, your brain starts to perceive more and more threats, leading you to feel chronically stressed, and your brain chronically threatened. When we feel threatened, many of us start to work into fight or flight mode. This means you’ll either retreat, or start to feel like you want to flee. Either way, it is impossible to do at your work.
Your entire job is based on you communicating with people, whether to improve their speech, articulation or even swallow, you have to be front and center and focused on them. There is no way for you to retreat and stay away from work or people, and there is no way to escape your work duties. Instead, you are left with the stress building, the threats piling up, and no way to avoid them. This is when you eventually start to think the job is the problem (and sometimes it is) and that turns into negativity, which breeds cynicism and bitterness. This bitterness in turn breeds burn out, which is nowhere you want to be.
If you are feeling this way, it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to quit your current setting or find a new career. You might be better off finding a few things that help to ease your stress and lessen your burn out, which will help you to kick the bitterness to the curb.
So how do you do it? By rewiring your brain to stop seeing everything as a threat, and instead focus more on the things that are good and working for you. This way, your brain starts to notice the good things in your day, rather than just looking for the threats. When this shift happens, your work can start to seem less draining and suffocating, and the bitterness starts to fade. It gives you space to start to enjoy the simple, powerful things you do on a daily basis, not just the things that take away from your day.
- Meditation
- This is a great way to start to rewire your thoughts, As you meditate, you train your brain to become more of an observer, instead of being stuck in those moments of anxiety, negativity and bitterness. This helps you to focus more on the present, which keeps pulling you out of the state of anxiety, stress and burn out. As you meditate, you focus on one thing, usually something grounding to the moment like your breath or a mantra. This gives your brain the space to let the negative thoughts be recognized, but also to acknowledge they are just thoughts and are not all of reality.
- Gratitude Journal
- A gratitude journal is a log of some of the good or positive parts of your day. As you build upon this practice, it helps to rewire your brain to see more of the positive things around you, instead of honing in on the negative. The more you are able to do this, the more you train your brain to focus this way. It not only helps to pull you away from the negative parts of your day, giving them less emphasis, but it also help to shed more light on the good parts of your day.
- Positive Shift
- Meditation and gratitude journals can help to make a positive shift in your thinking and awareness. Another way to take it further is to shift the language you use, in your thoughts and spoken word, to a more positive language and tone. One of the biggest examples of this is using “leader” instead of “bossy” to describe someone. Even if they do the same actions, the word leader is seen as positive, while bossy is seen as negative. If you start to make these small changes, they start to shift your view and create more space for positive thoughts and actions, which draws you out of the feelings of being stuck in anxiety and negativity.
It sounds simple, but the thing about this is that is can be very difficult to put into practice. You can research it, read about it and know exactly what you should be doing, but when it comes to figuring out how to make it work for your life, it can be quite hard to pull off. It is like your students that know what they need to do to produce a sound, and can explain it to you, but just can’t seem to do it when the time comes. Sometimes, in order to do the simple things you need in your life, it takes someone to be there, guiding you along, helping you to fix your errors and let you know when you find something that works.
If you are feeling a little stuck in the struggle of rewiring your brain or practicing more mindfulness and self-care, you don’t have to keep pushing alone. A lot of the time this only adds to the struggle and stress. Instead, reach out for some support along the way. Together we can find a way to help you look at what you are currently trying, what your struggles are and how to incorporate these practices (and more) into your life in a way that makes sense and lessens the stress, not adds to it. If you are interested, email jessi@jessiandricks.com to sign up for a free consultation, where we will discuss these exact things, or sign up in the form below or at the link here. You wouldn’t tell your patients to try work on their own, so you shouldn’t have to either. Let’s work together to bring balance to your life and rebuild passion for your career.
Error: Contact form not found.
Much Love,
