Well Entrepreneur: Deepening Our Awareness to Prevent Burnout
“Today’s society makes us believe that we can only be successful when we work incredibly long hours, and ‘sacrifice’ our health, our personal time, and our relationships. This can’t be further from the truth, for what is success when we lose our health, our inner connection, and our relationships with others?”
Genny Ghanimeh, Understanding Entrepreneurial Burn-out (And How To Deal With It)
When we first started talking about wellness at the LEC, one of the most common topics that came up in many conversations among students and community members was burn-out; chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed (World Health Organization), or a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress.
The path of entrepreneurship can be incredibly rewarding, yet the endless demands of startup culture can often lead to unhealthy lifestyle habits despite the level of passion for our work -- late nights, not enough sleep, poor food choices and lack of social interaction, among others.
In this second edition of Well Entrepreneur, we wanted to start to scratch the surface of this topic and focus on supporting you in your ability to identify signs of burnout, while also offering a practical tool for deepening awareness as a skill to cultivate healthier lifestyle habits and choices.
Common signs of work related burn-out may include:
Attaching sense of self worth to accomplishments
Overworking and inability to “switch off”
Difficulty concentrating and/or being productive
Lack of joy in your work
Feelings of energy loss or depletion
To cultivate healthier ways of being in our work and in our lives, we first have to be willing to meet ourselves exactly where we are in the present moment. Awareness is the first step to change, and the power of our awareness as a tool to create new habits and patterns can guide us along the way. By developing and deepening awareness of our physical, emotional, mental and energetic states of being, we not only build resilience towards stress, but we can empower ourselves to make choices that are transformational for our health, wellbeing and entrepreneurial endeavors.