In this ever-changing, covid-plagued era, many people today are experiencing unprecedented pressures and stressors. As the stress builds up over time, these individuals suffer from burnout and feeling as if there is no time for their lives.

Burnout is a term that has made the rounds in business and general literature over the last decade and a half. It’s actually a unique type of stress that involves:

* diminished personal accomplishment,
* emotional exhaustion, and
* de-personalization.

Although researchers are still exploring the nature of burnout, it is widely regarded as a distinct type of stress related to demands on the job.

At Risk

Who is most susceptible to burnout? Those in helping professions, or in positions that have significant amounts of interpersonal contact. This includes people in customer service departments, municipal services, and health care.

While burnout is costly to organizations, unfortunately, those organizations in which employees feel the effects of burnout, often do little to be of service. How do you know if you’re heading for burnout, or are already there?

Have you been evaluating yourself negatively lately? Does it seem to you as if you’re not making any progress or have even lost ground? If you feel as if you are not as competent and successful doing your job as you have been in the past, you’re experiencing the sensation of diminished personal accomplishment.

Depersonalization

Another clue to burnout is depersonalization. This occurs when you rotely do what you’re supposed to, but withdraw emotionally from what you’re doing. In the health care industry, this could be characterized by a nurse who follows correct medical procedures, and is cordial with patients, but no longer cares about them on a personal basis.

In business, depersonalization can be seen as detachment, a blase attitude towards peers, clients, or customers, and perhaps to one’s organization in general. If you begin to see others as objects rather than human beings, beware, you could well be on the burnout path.

The third component of burnout is emotional exhaustion. Here, it feels as if you don’t have the capacity to respond emotionally to others. Your energy level is low. You are irritated or tense. You know that you can’t give of yourself like you have in the past. Following a long weekend, or time away from work, you still loathe the thought of going back to work.

Emotional exhaustion often is the first of the three characteristics to appear when you’re in danger of experiencing burnout. Long hours and heavy demands can drain your emotional resources. People who may have been optimistic about what they could achieve on the job, and had high expectations for themselves, are particularly susceptible to burnout as they begin to experience set-backs and frustrations.

Antidotes

Among the emerging antidotes are 1) the ability to know, observe, and be involved in the outcome of your efforts, and 2) the opportunity to engage in a self-evaluation.

The first remedy allows you to maintain a mental link between what you do and what results occur. Said another way, it’s highly stressful to work at a job all day long, perhaps interacting with many, many people, and not know if what you’ve done has been of value, or been appreciated.

The second remedy, self-evaluation, involves looking at what you do with some measure of objectivity, perhaps using a chart, checklist, or scale developed during less trying times, that includes most of the key components of your job description and responsibilities.

One of the best safeguards for not falling prey to burnout is to accept the input and advice from others. Your spouse, co-workers, and friends often are able to notice changes in your behavior that may be detrimental to your well-being, long before you are aware of them. Please, listen up when somebody says “take it easy.”

If you’ve ever saw Star Trek: the Next Generation, you know that when Counselor Troi told Captain Picard to take it easy, at first, he always resisted. Then, he relented, and followed her advice. Captain Picard, I postulate, never missed a day on the bridge due to burnout.

Tune Up the Old Bod

Particularly if you’ve been putting in long hours and facing high-expectations, schedule a regular preventative medical exam, complete with cardiovascular and cancer screening tests. Many people who appear to be in good shape find out the hard way, either through a heart attack or sudden death, that all was not well internally. You and I don’t have the capability to determine how well everything is going on inside, solely based on the way we feel and perform.

Some top athletes in our time, among them Pete Maravich, Hank Gathers, and Sergei Grinkov were in top physical condition, but perished at an early age because of long-standing coronary problems that went undetected. In some cases, well-conditioned athletes who act with unknown coronary problems, actually live years past the time when a non-athlete in the same condition would have lived.

By the time you reach your forties, and certainly mid-forties and fifties, heart disease becomes the leading cause of death. Heart disease is brought on by a variety of factors such as a sedentary lifestyle, smoking too much, experiencing too much stress, getting too little rest and so on. Curiously, as more women rise to higher and higher ranks within organizations, the risk of heart disease rises as well.

Surrounded By Workaholics?

Despite the well-known, high prevalence of stress and burnout in the contemporary working world, and the resulting dangers, some organizations still maintain a culture in which employees have it tougher than it needs to be. Too many managers have the misguided notion that only wimps are stressed. These are the same managers who tend to give out stress in abundance. If only they knew that stress is real, and exacts a cost on both individuals and the organization.

Someday, organizations will be held responsible, both socially and legally, for the mental health and well-being of their employees. Until that day, you’ll probably need to accept it as a given that if you want to flourish in an otherwise potentially stressful environment, there are not many places you can look for help. You’re going to have to help yourself.

Suppose you work with a boss who unduly heaps piles of stuff on your desk with little or short notice? What are some of the strategies you can employ to keep your job, maintain your relation with your boss, and yet not be overwhelmed?

When Your Boss Wants You to Be a Workaholic

With great tact and professionalism offer these words, “I’m really over-committed right now, and if I take that on, I can’t do it justice.” Other appropriate responses:

* “I appreciate your confidence in me. I wouldn’t want to take this on knowing my other tasks and responsibilities right now would prohibit me from doing a great job.”

* “I’d be happy to handle this assignment for you but realistically I can’t do it without foregoing some other things I’m working on. Of tasks a and b which would you like me to do? Which can I put aside?”

* “I can do that for you. Will it be okay if I get back to you in the middle of next week? I currently have blank, blank, and blank in the queue.”

* “The number of tasks and complexity of assignments I’m handling is mounting. Perhaps we could look at a two or four week scenario of what’s most important to you, and when the assignments need to be completed, versus what I can realistically handle over that time period.”

Flexibility Matters

All the while, stay as flexible as possible. Frequently, your responsibilities and assignments will change. Your ability to adapt to your boss’s needs will go a long way in helping you flourish at your position,  and diminish the feelings of being overwhelmed.

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Pandoras box seems to be a well-known metaphor in today’s culture. It is often used to represent unknowingly opening a box of wop-ass. The Greek origins are a little more complex.  Pandora was the first human woman, a gift from the gods. She was made from earth to be lovely as a goddess. With the gift of speech to tell lies, and the mind and nature of a treacherous dog. She was given a golden crown of animals and sea creatures. Pandora was blessed with grace, desire and caring to weaken her limbs.

Pandora was the first woman to live among mortal men, first bride and great misery. She was destined to live with men in times of plenty and to desert them in hard times.  Her name means both “she who gives all gifts” and “she who was given all gifts”. In the mythology she opened a jar that belonged to her husband that contained every misery that affects man to today, but managed to close it before hope was able to escape the jar.

Which brings us to the latest document leak from the International Consortium of investigative Journalists or ICIJ. This is the latest of leaks following the Panama papers and the Paradise papers. ICIJ claims this is the largest leak of tax haven information ever. The 11.9 million financial records include information on 330 politicians and high level leaders, including 35 country leaders. For two years over 600 journalists from 117 countries helped to follow up leads exposed by the leak.

Top leaders with homes in Malibu, Monti Carlo, and high rise towers in Dubai. Investments in sugar plantations, polluting factories, and even a hospital. Secret companies and Trusts to hide assets from taxes and their people. ICIJ likes to point out that this money could have been used to help build roads, hospitals, and schools. They also imply the money comes from ill-gotten gains. Pointing out that hiding money is also used during drug smuggling, human trafficking, bribery, and international terrorism.

In an effort to seem like actual investigative journalists they do mention that nothing they were fed was illegal.  They failed to mention that the tax regulations in every one of the countries involved are written by the rich themselves. Mostly by those not uncovered by the Pandora Papers. Something the 600 seemed to have over looked during their two year investigation is any tax avoidance from the United States. Funny thing that.

To find out why you need to look at who the International Consortium of investigative Journalists is and who finances them. It turns out the group was founded in 1997, they claim to take no public funds only donations. Their largest donors happen to be Soros, thru the The Open Society Foundation. Now needless to say Soros is not going to admit what each one of these people did to stop his march towards one world government headed by Soros and company, but we can speculate.

Tony Blair, supported the American action in Afghanistan. King Abdullanh met with and supported Israel. Vladimir Putin would rather not have a one world government telling him how to run Russia. Shakira no stranger to wokeness had the gall to disagree with the Conovirus imprisonment and demanded children be let outside into the sun and air. You can bet that each one of the targets of this dump had somehow displeased those supporting the great reset.

Each one of these thought they had found a beautiful tax haven not knowing it was she who gives all gifts and conversely she who is given all gifts. By selectively revealing that it is worthwhile to spend money to hide income from those who did not earn it is telling. Besides highlighting that taxes are too high for the services provided. Telling that not one American is mentioned. Telling that the “journalists” didn’t discover how politicians in government get rich on civil service salaries. Not one mention of the heads of NGO’s (non-governmental agencies) have found that the poor are very very good for them. How about a peek into how many of the 1.5 million tax exempt organizations in America are just a tax dodge.

We will wait with the patience of Job for the International Consortium of investigative Journalists to do some real investigating.