How to stop burnout and regain energy for a career change

I’m guessing you landed upon Escape the City’s website because you’re looking for a new job. You want a more purpose-led career and you’re feeling stuck in your current position. 

It’s easy to think that the solution when you’re feeling knackered, stressed and generally detached from work is to start looking for something new. Maybe you can resonate with this happening in the past. You handed your notice in, you finally feel like relief is coming…yet months later, you are back to feeling exhausted, unmotivated and stuck. 

Let me ask you this - would a change in job really solve those feelings at this exact moment? 

Starting a new job can be incredibly stressful: 

• New colleagues
• New responsibilities
• New computer systems
• New commutes
• New working hours

A whole lot of ‘new’. And let me tell you something, our brains don’t actually like ‘new’. They are wired to create habits and patterns, in order to conserve energy rather than expend it learning new things.

And so, any ‘new’ness can lead to even more pressure than you’re already feeling. If that pressure is left unresolved, what I see happening time and again is people job-hopping. Jumping from role to role, in an attempt to find something that is actually going to make them feel less knackered. 

But here is the thing, rather than jumping straight into the job search, the first step is actually about addressing how you’re feeling, creating some coping mechanisms and building resilience so when you are ready to start the job search, it’s from a place of enthusiasm, excitement and ambition, not from a place of ‘I just want to make this feeling go away’. 

So, what actually is burnout?

Some symptoms of burnout include: 

• Physical and/or emotional exhaustion
• Detachment from work 
• Withdrawal from responsibilities
• Decreased productivity

Burnout can often happen in stages. So whilst you might not be experiencing total burnout, you might be in a pre-burnout or progressed stage, where you’re feeling some of the overworking, early stress signals and emotional strain without the complete inability to function as with full burnout. 

And of course, any stage of burnout is a sure signal that something needs to change. Yes, it might be a sign that a new job is needed, but rather than rushing into that, facing how you’re feeling first is a much more sustainable way to change careers. 

It will also offer you a lot more longevity with your decisions. You’ll be choosing a new job from a place of calm, clarity and confidence not from desperation. And the reason why the desperate job-hop rarely works out is because you aren’t thinking clearly about what you actually want, so you’ll likely find yourself in the cycle again, in a few months. 

Why burnout follows you and always plans an escape route

The reason why the option that shouts the loudest is to ‘escape’ your current job by looking for a new one, is that our brains are constantly scanning for threats, and an escape route to that threat. It will associate the relief that you feel when you hand in your notice as an appropriate escape route (even if that relief is short-lived). And so the next time you’re experiencing exhaustion, overwork, stress signals your brain thinks ‘aha’ we’ve been here before and the thing that relieved these negative feelings before, was to look for a new job. Cue, the relief as you hand in your notice, and the cycle starts again. 

When you are experiencing the stress and associated negative feelings, your nervous system is in a dysregulated state and so has limited ability to engage in any choice, higher cognitive processing etc - it’s only thought is to ‘escape’ from the perceived threat. 

Feelings associated with burnout have both internal and external factors. Of course, the stress and pressure can be built up as a result of external factors like your environment, which is why a new job might be the right option for you, but it is also about the internal systems.

Therefore, focussing on building your capacity to manage some of the internal factors can really help to break the cycle. 

What actually breaks the cycle 

Of course, everyone’s experience of feelings relating to burnout are totally unique. However, most of the time, it’s not just about being in the wrong job. It’s about how we relate to that stress and pressure, how we self-lead and our own expectations of ourselves. 

If you don’t take some time to address what the internal factors might be, this is when those same patterns appear later on.

Here are 2 internal shifts to help you work towards breaking the cycle. At the end of this article you can download your free workbook to try some of them out!  

1. Learning to regulate your emotions & nervous system

Burnout produces a physiological experience. Your body is stuck in survival mode and so even the smallest tasks can feel exhausting. Understanding how you can switch from survival mode to a state of rest is key to being able to navigate, regulate and build resilience against feelings of burnout. Things like:

• Breathwork - Try box breathing to calm your nervous system. Breathe in for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, breathe out for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds. You can imagine going round the sides of the box to help. 
• STOP method - STOP in the moment, slow down and give space to how you’re feeling, TAKE a breath, OBSERVE what you can see, hear, touch in your surroundings, PROCEED, when you feel ready.

1. Language is powerful - how are you talking to yourself?

What are the internal expectations you’re putting on yourself? Things that you say to yourself you ‘have’ to do…Often time the drive to prove ourselves, to hyper-achieve and to hold everything together alone is exhausting. Building awareness of how you’re talking to yourself in moments of stress can really help give you more of a choice in how you want to respond to a situation.

A couple things to help with this: 

• Keep a self-talk diary for 2 weeks. Every time you experience any of the negative feelings associated with burnout, note down the types of things you are telling yourself. The idea here is to observe, not to judge. 
• Reframe some of this self-talk: I can’t let people down → I’m trying my best. You can even make this into a post-it, phone lock-screen as a visual reminder

The real career change starts with you

Yes, it might be time to start looking for a new job, but the real change starts with looking at how you can support yourself through the transition. A new job isn’t going to miraculously help you be better at regulating your emotions, or hand you new self-belief on a plate. 

These things come from within and starting here, is going to help you to be able to make intentional changes to your career, from a place of clarity, so you can create the impact you want to create in the world, in a sustainable way. 

You can download the Leaving Burnout Behind Workbook here to start working on those internal shifts with a couple extra bonus strategies! 

And if you want to explore these ideas further, I’d be happy to talk to you about how you can put this into practice in your work over a coffee! Send me a DM on LinkedIn.