Why Successful People Burn Out
Success, does achieving more bring you burnout at the cost of peace? Reclaim the fire of how successful people overcome burnout.
Burnout is the familiar buzz term you’ve been hearing lately. Some personality traits play a role in how burnout affects successful workers under the same stress levels.
Burnout has now spread across different careers and was previously considered a syndrome linked to professions that help people. Given these points, being exposed to repeated work-related stress or other types of chronic stress can lead to emotional fatigue, exhaustion, cynicism, and negative attitudes. These symptoms reduce your competence.
There are ways to adapt preventive measures to support the risk of burnout if you feel this speaks to you. A few ways to begin include mindfulness, work-life balance, setting boundaries, and nourishing yourself with a healthy diet and exercise.
Understanding Burnout
Back to basics, what exactly is burnout? According to Psychology Today, burnout is:
Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress. Though problems at work most often bring it on, it can also be driven by stress in other areas of life, such as parenting, caretaking, or romantic relationships.
Prolonged stress causes mental and physical exhaustion, initially manifesting as a syndrome among helping professions such as nursing, healthcare, and social work.
In modern times, culture has shifted toward high achievement, resulting in feelings of being overwhelmed by responsibility and of failing in the current role, as well as a lack of resources or support.
There is a difference between stress and burnout. Stress is usually related to a short-term event or temporary situation. Your mood, performance, and outlook improve once you complete the stress event.
Burnout is prolonged stress with feelings of irritability, and no end in sight, no improvement for the future, which leads to your mental health declining and low productivity.
Therefore, stressful feelings take a toll on you emotionally and physically, putting your ambition and inspiration into a downward spiral, leaving you completely depleted. It’s time to reclaiming the fire how successful people overcome burnout.
Highly Successful Burnout and Personality Traits
Personality traits are associated with burnout, especially among those considered successful or who care deeply about their role. Several personality traits lean toward burnout more than others, such as those with “aggreableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness,” as described in the Big Five Model in a systematic literature review.
Let’s break this down more to understand the different personality traits, a point often overlooked.
- Agreeableness – being cooperative, sympathetic, tolerant, and avoiding competition or conflict
- Conscientiousness is being precise, organized, disciplined, obeying all rules, and working hard to achieve success
- Extraversion connects with the quantity and intensity of individual social interaction, as seen in assertiveness, self-confidence, and socializing more intensely
- Neuroticism is the loss of emotional balance, impulse control, and the frequent display of negative feelings and anxiety. Uses non-adaptive coping strategies that may lead to alcohol or drug use.
Successful people often demonstrate remarkable conscientiousness, setting high standards and fully engaging in their goals. In the same fashion, strong dedication can lead to stress and fatigue; their passion drives them forward. High achievers hold themselves to extremely high standards, sometimes impossible. The drive to constantly improve is self-exhausting.
When striving for this constant excellence and perfectionism, it backfires. If you relate stress to recognition, this creates ongoing stress cycles, and you guessed it, the path to burnout is straight ahead.
People who care deeply for their work are more likely to burn out. Another key point is that some people are more vulnerable to chronic stress than others, which connects to personality traits associated with burnout.
Risks of Burnout
Some of the risks leading to burnout may include higher-achieving personalities that are competitive and driven by burnout fuel. Review your emotional investment, passion, and purpose, which can blur the lines in your work-life balance.
Signs That You Are Approaching Burnout
Be on the lookout for specific signs that you are approaching burnout to reclaim your fire and overcome burnout. To list a few:
- Emotional exhaustion – no joy
- Mental fatigue
- Irritible
- Detaching yourself from the work that you used to love
- Decreasing your performance and sense of inadequacy, regardless of your effort.
- Physical symptoms that include sleep disruption, headaches, and always being tired
Let’s discuss how to practice reclaiming your fire to help avoid burnout and set some healthy boundaries for your well-being. The first step is to evaluate your self-awareness by regularly assessing your stress and emotional health.
Practice Techniques for Overcoming Burnout Successfully
Set healthy boundaries and schedule downtime on purpose. Intentionally, to provide you with rest and avoid overloading yourself so you can function instead of running on fumes.
What is success to you? Redefine if needed to shift from doing more to serving your well-being.
Technique Examples
Mindfulness techniques will help you reset your energy and focus. Deep breathing, similarly, square breathing, is a wonderful way to begin taking a few moments for yourself anytime you need to pause. It is a practice, so give yourself grace.
Consider work-life balance and how some adjustments can help you reduce the stress load. In addition, a flexible work schedule or remote work reduces stress and help you reclaim your peace.
Include time blocking to accommodate unexpected items that pop up during the day. Having a “free space” allows you to add unplanned surprise items.
Take your scheduled breaks and stop eating lunch at your desk. Incorporate some exercise and walk on your lunch break for 20 minutes after you’ve eaten your food. Exercise is a powerful tool that is often overlooked.
Plan ahead and prepare meals in advance for lunch or breakfast to avoid wandering around the kitchen trying to decide what to make or eat.
TIP: A wonderful time-saver: have next day’s lunch prepped or prepare a week ahead. Works for breakfast too! Use your crockpot or Instant Pot to make batched meals for the week.
Try some gentle stretching or yoga poses. First, taking 10 minutes is a quiet way to set your tone for the day or release before bedtime. There are many free programs on YouTube. Browse around to find someone you resonate with as an instructor.
Wrapping It Up
To summarize, take the time to develop self-care. While some personalities may be prone to burnout, it can happen to anyone. Reclaim the fire and move forward to gently overcome burnout.
Research shows burnout is strongly linked to chronic workload, emotional distress, and poor work-life integration. These factors often affect high-performing professionals who consistently operate under sustained pressure. You don’t have to feel frazzled.
Burnout is not a weakness. It is a response to prolonged stress and unsustainable work environments. Redefine your successful transition today!
This is for educational purposes only. If you are in a crisis or have any thoughts to hurt yourself or anyone else, please call the crisis hotline 988, 911, or go to the closest emergency room for evaluation. This does not replace professional help.
References:
