Dealing With Exhaustion
We all know that feeling when life piles up and the lack of sleep starts to hit us like a ton of bricks. But exhaustion is more than just the lack of sleep. Exhaustion is emotionally charged; it’s the feeling that you don’t have time to sleep because you have so many things to do. It’s the feeling that you can’t take a rest because the world would fall apart without you. So, the answer isn’t as simple as taking a nap.
Being Exhausted vs. Being Tired
What’s the difference between being tired and being exhausted? At first glance, the two terms feel interchangeable. Both fatigue and exhaustion come with similar symptoms: sleep-deprived frustration, physical illness, the desire for a week-long nap…
As it turns out, however, exhaustion is much more serious than simply feeling tired. That’s because exhaustion comes from a place of emotional burnout — it’s that wired-tired feeling you get where you feel like you don’t even have time to sleep because you’re stressed out about everything you need to do.
That’s why exhaustion is much more difficult to deal with than sleep loss. And it’s also why you can’t heal your inner exhaustion by just taking a nap. On the bright side, there are real, concrete ways to deal with burnout-related exhaustion, all of which can be implemented into your daily life for a healthier, better approach to fatigue.
How to stop being exhausted
1. Start by logging the problem
When we’re exhausted, we usually understand the culprit of our fatigue. Most of us who are dealing with high-grade exhaustion work high-profile jobs, take care of an entire family or work in a similarly intense environment that causes sleep debt and burnout to pile up like a ton of bricks over time.
The first step toward combating this kind of exhaustion is looking at exactly what’s causing you pain, and logging it in a journal or in another space. If you work in the financial sector and you’re deep in mergers and acquisitions, maybe the problem is that you’re staying up until 3 AM each night working on a deal. Or, maybe your problem is that you’re dealing with a newborn child who won’t let you sleep. Either way, start by writing down everything that’s contributing to your exhaustion right now.
We’re not going to talk about fixing the problem just yet — simply write it down and we’ll come back to it in a moment.
2. Next, think of a time before your exhaustion
This is a small step, but one that will help contextualize what you hope to achieve by removing your exhaustion. Think about a time before you were this emotionally and physically tired. What did that feel like? What did that excess energy allow you to do that you don’t have the capacity for right now?
Once you’ve got your answer, write that down as well. Again, this step is small, but it helps create a “North Star” of sorts in your journey toward exhaustion relief. It’s a reminder of why you need to make some changes down the road that will allow you to reclaim parts of your life that you’ve lost touch with recently.
3. Now, examine your lifestyle beliefs
Okay, here comes the hard part: it’s time to start thinking differently about what you’re doing. You now know what your exhaustion problems are, and you also know what life without them will be like, so it’s time to create some solutions. Those solutions will look different for everyone, but all of them start with reexamining your beliefs about your current situation.
For example, let’s look again at someone who’s constantly staying up until 3 AM to get their work done. It might be impossible to tell them to start going to bed at 9 PM sharp (“Are you crazy? My boss will kill me!”), but it’s both possible and probable that they could realistically go to bed starting at 1 AM from now on without seeing their job performance decline tremendously.
Similarly, for the parent taking care of a child who won’t let them sleep, it’s possible to envision a scenario where they could hand over that responsibility to a spouse, family member or friend starting one night a week — a night where the parent can sleep, uninterrupted.
The point here isn’t necessarily to come up with these exact solutions, but rather to illustrate that a change — albeit a small one, to start — needs to happen in order for exhaustion relief to begin. Thinking differently about the situation you’re in will start to help you come up with small but meaningful ways to combat exhaustion.
4. Start planting yourself in the change
Once you start making small lifestyle changes, you’ll start to become more comfortable with making those bigger, more impactful changes that can really stop exhaustion in its tracks. In order to do this, though, it’s important to remind yourself to “plant” yourself in the change — that means taking responsibility for the new beliefs you have, sticking to them, and acting accordingly.
So, if you believe it’s important not to be exhausted, then it’s important to stick to your guns when it comes to turning out the lights by midnight… and it’s important to relieve yourself of the feeling that you’re a “bad parent” if you abdicate responsibility for your child for one night a week.
Again, remember that the more of these decisions you make, the better off you’ll be. In fact, making decisions like these is what separates true leaders from those who might not have the wherewithal to make and uphold new beliefs. You may initially feel guilty for your new lifestyle habits, but remember that ultimately, the changes you’re making are going to make you better at what you do, not worse.
Of course, it’s hard to give specific advice about your current struggles with exhaustion without knowing what they are. If you want personalized coaching on how to end the fatigue cycle and reduce burnout for good, send us a message.