Noticing Your Warning Signs

Do you ever find yourself pushing through the week, waiting until the weekend, hoping to relax and recover only to find yourself back in bed Sunday evening dreading the week ahead? What about when every decision seems difficult to make and all the tasks you normally could do seem like an uphill battle? Sounds like you may be experiencing at minimum, elevated levels of stress and at maximum, potential burn out. Most of us have heard about burn out and we may even hear from our doctors that we need to limit stress. But how? 

Oftentimes we feel we need a complex answer to solve a complicated problem. However, a simple solution is the most effective. Let’s start with that. Implement one very tiny positive habit into your routine. Drink a glass of water in the morning. Limit screen time. Wake up at the same time every day. Stop watching SO much trashy reality TV. That last one might just be me..

What tends to happen is if we do the one small task consistently, it tends to snowball into healthier, better choices which help get us back on track. The key is to make the task as small as possible. Once we can do that, we organically start to build on it over time. And then we enter into phase two which would be noticing your warning signs.

You know the ones.  “Do Not Enter.”  “Speed Bump Ahead.”  “Road Closed.”  In our life, we have these warning signs that pop up in our day to day life informing us that we are headed down the road to burnout. Take inventory of what you notice when you’re stressed. How difficult decisions become. How you respond to loved ones. What happens to your sleep and diet. How much time you spend on your phone or TV trying to numb out from the day. For me, it looks like dirty dishes piling up in the sink. Annoyed when another notification pops up on my phone or a loved one asks for my help. Unable to decide what to eat or what clothes to wear. And way too many episodes of you guessed it- trashy reality TV. 

Once you recognize these signs, you’ll get better at turning around. You’ll start to identify those warning signs with more ease resulting in that lovely Michigan U-turn happening sooner and sooner. So take a pause, identify one small task to start, and look around at what warning signs are popping up.

~Caitlyn Hannum, LLC