Secure in Burnout

1. Instructions for Maximizing Stress

Even if you only say these phrases in your head – your subconscious is listening! Such phrases are also called suggestions; they influence your thinking and feeling. With this autosuggestion, you're right on track because you reinforce the feeling of total overwhelm and powerlessness. You subject yourself to even more stress and feel like your life is slipping away from you and you have no control.

A good decision! Do more of it! – It makes you sick and unhappy and brings you a step closer to your goal of leaving the working life behind.

Especially in times of highest demands, you can even extract significantly more stress in this way: your attention is distracted from the subject, you tense up your body, which leads to greater wear and tear, minor near-errors increase tension, maximum effort combined with maximum tightened handbrake.

The predicate "hardworking person" is definitely yours, too.

It's important to realize that it's not the objective demands of a situation that stress us out, but how we interpret the situation – and that's a matter of mindset. So, it's a matter of choice – your choice:

This allows the potential stressors to increase infinitely, and you alone can choose what to incorporate into your repertoire, isn't that wonderful? Just think about traffic alone, what a wealth of opportunities to raise your blood pressure a little, and not just your own, but possibly also that of your passengers, who then help to amplify the effect in a feedback loop...

In addition to the usual red lights, other road users, also use perceptions for traffic management, not only temporary ones like construction sites and the like, but also consider the politics behind it all, where lanes have been narrowed in favor of bus lanes or bike paths, and that where there is already too little space and cars are getting bigger. Who came up with this absurd traffic planning ...?

Or are you more of a user of Deutsche Bahn? Here, too, there are ample opportunities. Do not let yourself be disturbed by the fact that it is always the same circumstances, the construction site before Karlsruhe can be used as an occasion on every trip.

Since we're talking about traffic lights, use the traffic light system!

Let me explain how:

2. Creating Good Conditions through Favorable Self-Influence by Prioritizing: How the Traffic Light System Works

For this, we'll take a cue from medicine:

The traffic light system was originally developed in the UK for doctors in the emergency room under the name Manchester Triage System.

Here's how it works:

For each new patient, a decision is made: does he belong in the RED, YELLOW, or GREEN category?

RED – life-threatening situation, immediate action is required!

YELLOW – serious injury, no acute danger to life

GREEN – not urgent

This way, despite the high workload, doctors could remain capable of action, and patients were treated in a meaningful order according to urgency.

Interesting: A study has shown that people who always put everything on RED in their daily lives have a cortisol level twice as high as the average population. So:

Prioritize, but do it right! Golden rule: Put everything on RED. See RED!

This way, you kill two birds with one stone:

Firstly, you experience everything up close and in real-time, letting yourself be rolled over unfiltered, and YOU decide on the assignment to the category – thus gaining the ability to act.

Secondly, from the clear assignment of the systematic overall priority of everything to RED, you gain the desired feeling, something like "Help, I don't even know where my head is anymore!" Bingo! Perfect disaster scenario!

Easier said than done in everyday life – but practice it.

Tip:

Step 1: Use Your Body

First, make RED clear to yourself – these are really few situations. How does it feel in your body? Attention: Energy up to just before the limit, shallow breathing, even hold your breath for a while, clench your teeth, raise your shoulders. With this, you can manage your nervous system and stay in the red zone. You are the boss in your body – remember that – react to every demand as if it were RED!

Also good: Make the demands visible – use a large red sheet of paper and write everything on it – this way, you relieve yourself if you forget to always remember everything. You can take out the red list anytime to remind yourself.

After you have correctly prioritized the demands on you in the first step, the second step is about preparation - how can you make the demands even more complicated and with an additional stress effect

Step 2: Preparation

Always call up all options, multiply daily decisions! Because - research shows - the more options we have, the longer each decision takes. And the more decisions we have to make, the more strained our brain becomes. Do you feel it too? Here we go back to red again!

Here are two no-gos, so you don't miss any important "basic stress" sources anymore:

No. 1: Planning - just don't

Here, for example, with eating: Decide spontaneously when, what, and where you eat, and who prepares it, and do it anew every day. Hunger is excellent as an accelerant for red situations.

No. 2: Automating - definitely not

Automating - lists, routines, automated repeat purchases, etc., that's for boring people and unnecessarily simplifies decisions, so: leave it.

You see that prioritizing and preparing can generate a lot of additional stress.

And the beauty of it: YOU HAVE IT IN YOUR HAND.