Do you know the symptoms of work burnout? If you are having new aches and pains or sleep disturbances, have you considered that your job may be the cause of this stress?

You may have your own business, or work for a company, corporation or non-profit, or even do volunteer work. It doesn’t matter. If you are the type of person who is not satisfied until the job is done properly to YOUR high standards in your time frame, you may be putting yourself in jeopardy of burnout.

I’ve found that the most responsible, caring and passionate people take short lunches (or skip lunch entirely), rarely take a sick day, end up helping or redoing co-workers projects are the most vulnerable to burnout.

What is burnout? It is chronic stress brought on by overwork. Burn out can have many different symptoms including chronic fatigue, susceptibility to colds, headaches, muscle aches, and quickness to anger and irritability, and difficulty sleeping.

If you are your own boss, you have two choices about how to deal with burnout: prevention (preferable) and/or treatment. Hopefully you will chose to prevent burn out by taking good care of yourself and being aware of your own needs for time and space away from your work. Those breaks refresh you and can even be the times when new innovative ideas come to you.

If you overworked and neglected your need for personal time, your body will let you know. You may start feeling new aches and pains. If you ignore those mild signs they will get stronger until you finally pay attention and take care of the stress you are feeling.

Taking medications for symptoms is like putting a bandaid on an infection. Your symptoms improve until you listen to your heart and do some re-evaluating about the way you are working. Are you taking on too much?  Do you need to learn to say “no”? Is it possible that others can do a job well even if it isn’t done the way YOU would do it? Are you being a perfectionist?

If you are working in an organization, is it possible that you are enabling others NOT to do work because they know that you will do the job? Have you thought that perhaps you would receive more appreciation for the job you do correctly when you step back and allow others to learn from making mistakes?

I have a friend who finally had to go on a disability leave from getting stressed and burn out from overwork. It was only when he was gone, that the managers realized what a great job he had been doing, and didn’t want to lose him. When he was finally able to come back to work, his bosses rearranged his schedule to help prevent him from getting stressed and burned out again! That is a smart manager.

It’s important for you to realize when work is getting to be too much and causing you stress, pain, worry, sleep disturbances. If you have a boss, it is important for you to communicate your feelings and needs.

If you are the business owner or supervisor, a good manager must be aware of his or her employees needs to avoid employee burn out. It costs a LOT of money to lose a good, responsible employee. It will take a lot longer time to hire, re-train and hope that you have someone as motivated as the person you lost! By taking care of your employees with good communication and wellness programs you can avoid losing your best workers. Happy employees are also more productive, and a pleasure to work with. It is imperative to realize it will be your best workers who burn out first.

If you are your own boss, you might want to think about yourself as your best employee! Give yourself credit, always using positive language and affirmations to be supportive of how much you care and the effort you put into doing the best job. But sometimes doing the best job is taking a break from work. Reconnect with your friends, spend time in nature, play, have fun! Even if it’s for a short time, it can make all the difference.

Remember you can’t be in alignment with your values of running a successful conscious business that helps others if you don’t take care of yourself! And you won’t be happy and healthy in your personal life unless you are living in alignment with your heart’s values.