Over the past few months I have been struck by the number of people I have met who are running on empty! When meeting these people, they are physically exhausted and mentally drained
From my own experience I have been in such a similar position about twice in my life and both times have been fantastic learning opportunities to add tools to my own kit bag that will hopefully prevent returning to that territory. It’s a place where if you find yourself entering you need to quickly act before the feeling of exhaustion becomes your norm and then if left for long enough often results in the body saying enough is enough and stopping you in your tracks with a serious enough illness where you need to take time off to recover.
Some possible signs to watch out for in either yourself or team members are
- Do you wake up and feel tired routinely?
- Are you living off endless cups of coffee, sugary snacks or processed convenience food?
- Loosing or putting on weight we all react differently some people emotionally eat more when feeling stressed while others forget to eat under pressure
- Are you thinking about work all the time even during leisure hours?
- Would you struggle to be away from your phone or email for a few hours or the weekend?
- Are frequent colds or headaches now your norm?
- Is it difficult to concentrate?
- Have you given up any hobbies or exercise routine you previously enjoyed
- Are you forgetting or missing deadlines?
- Are you making mistakes?
- Do you have little time or patience for those around you?
- Do you feel guilty about taking time out for yourself?
- Are the people who know you well worried about you or making comments that you look tired or unwell?
We will look at what corrective and preventative action you might consider in the next blog post.
Hopefully you won’t be experiencing all of these at once and you will know yourself well enough to know what your normal state of wellbeing is. It is important to recognise what do you feel like when you are thriving and completely aligned with what you are doing and what you feel like when you are moving in an unhealthy direction in need of corrective action. Learn to recognise your own personal signals.
Sandra works as a professional coach for both Businesses and Private Clients. More about coaching can be found at http://www.sandrawebbercoaching.com . She is also author of the book Own It – regain control and live life on your terms which is available from Amazon http://bit.ly/1JhAkst
OWN IT 