The Burnout Gamble by Hamza Khan

Author:Hamza Khan [Khan, Hamza]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781773700465
Publisher: Hamza Khan
Published: 2018-04-23T21:44:28+00:00

CHAPTER 4

THE BURNOUT GAMBLE

Only those who risk going too far can possibly figure out how far one can go.

T.S. Eliot

By not being mindful of the frequency and impact of stress on my life, I was trusting my health and well-being to a coin toss. At my worst, stress manifested itself like Anton Chigurh’s character in No Country For Old Men—it would show up in my life seemingly randomly and apply pressure I wasn’t equipped to deal with.

I came face to face with this predicament in December of 2014 while I was recovering from burnout. I saw, in the clearest of terms, why I had been destined to burn out—why this beast and I were going to do this dance until the end of time. Every single day, for the last however many days (and, by extension, the years prior to that), I’d been tirelessly working and overwhelming myself. I was gambling. I was gambling with my health and my well-being. I was chasing a level of success that came with stress for which I hadn’t adequately prepared.

This is the Burnout Gamble:

Success requires effort.

Effort induces stress.

Stress can lead to burnout.

Now, some of the variables weren’t going to change: I still had a lot to accomplish, and that was going to take a lot of effort. Therefore, I willingly accepted the first component of this premise—that I was going to have to continue to exert myself. The second part of this premise needs no further explanation: effort induces stress. It is not only inevitable but constant. But, the final part of this premise—that stress can lead to burnout—allows for some maneuverability. The operative word here is “can.”

In the aftermath of my burnout that December of 2014, I looked at the Burnout Gamble for hours on end. I finally asked myself the question that would inspire the solution:

What are the actions that I need to take in order to prevent stress from turning into burnout?

Maybe I could change my response to the stress that came with this gamble. Could I, in fact, reduce the impact of stress on my life? Could I control its frequency in my life? With these questions in mind, I looked at the data and models I’d collected with a fresh set of eyes and started from Stage 1 of Freudenberger’s 12-stage model.

I asked myself, “Where did things start to get ugly for me?”

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