Every year, just as a new year unfolds, I sit in front of my desk and contemplate my resolutions for another year. I am a person of high ambition. So, naturally, all my resolutions are a tad bit over-achieving and in the process of achieving them, I take upon loads of pressure and stress on myself. But in recent years I have observed something. Even after successfully fulfilling my resolutions, I did not get a sense of accomplishment. There was a void of emotion that made all of my accomplishments feel meaningless. So, as I always do when I feel the blues, I started to surf Google in the hopes of self-diagnosis myself. And I learned a new term- “burnout.” I need to come clean, even though I read tons of articles on managing burnout, I was not quite clear on the root of the problem. And as a result, I took somewhat misinformed decisions to deal with the burnout situation. I left my part-time job, stopped engaging with any new challenges, and took a break from everything I was able to take a break from in the hopes of curing my burnout. But to my surprise, I was still not enjoying life. I was rather stuck in a monotonous routine with no new adventure or challenge to anticipate. It took me nearly two years to understand that both the reason and solution to my problems was stress.

What is Positive Stress
All the articles I read on stress portrayed it as the villain of my life. A popular view about stress is that it is an outdated survival mechanism. As a result, we are influenced to believe whenever we feel alert, our hearts pound, or have sweaty palms, there is a fault in our system, a disorder that needs to be fixed immediately. But the reality is not so black and white. Yes, stress can be bad for you. But you also need stress to have a meaningful life.
When it comes to stress, it is important that you keep the Goldilocks’ formula in mind- too little stress and life is boring, too much and you will get paralysed by the overwhelmingness. Just enough and life will be engaging, fun, and challenging.

Positive Stress for Optimal Performance
In the short term, stress has many positive effects. For instance, the release of adrenaline in the stress response helps to fight both bacterial and viral infections, increases heart rate, sharpens cognitive functions, and improves focus. Moreover, the stress response is a major tool in enabling us to reach our goals. It is often the things that are most important to us that have the potential to bring the most stress. Without stress, one cannot reach one’s goal. Experiencing stress is an indication of a purpose-driven, meaningful life.

Therefore, it is important to know when to increase the dial so that you can get out of your comfort zone and start working toward your dream. As the graph above shows, the foundation of healthy stress management is to know when you need to turn down the dial and when you need to ramp it up.

What is Negative Stress
Stress is good as long as it is short-lived and limited. When stress sustains over a prolonged period of time, it creates a bunch of negative impacts. For instance, your brain becomes habitual toward behaviour that demands less energy, your memory decreases, your ability to control your impulses reduces, and you are unable to take a decision. Moreover, due to the continued stress response, an overproduction of adrenaline and an abnormal pattern of cortisol can shorten your life expectancy (Kumari et al., 2011).

What is Burnout and How to Manage It
One of the common symptoms of chronic stress is burnout. Burnout describes the response to prolonged and excessive stress. People who are suffering from it often report emotional exhaustion, feeling detached from everyone, a lack of competence, and no longer having the feeling of accomplishment. To simplify, burnout happens because the short-term stress response is repeatedly triggered over a long period of time without enough chance to rest and recharge in between.
Burnout is a serious health issue and needs appropriate attention. But unfortunately, all the articles I have read so far lack a realistic solution for it. It is not possible for everyone to just leave their jobs and go somewhere for a holiday. Not all have that luxury. Moreover, there are many stresses that are indispensable such as stress for exams, and stress for providing food and shelter for your family. In these cases, you cannot just shut down your stress or avoid the situation.
Lucky for you, managing burnout does not necessarily need to look like a holiday postcard. Different things work for different people; therefore, it is tough to narrow it down to five easy steps. However, all you need to keep in mind is that you need to create a balance between the incoming demands and replenishment. The more demand on you, the more replenishment you need. To use an analogy, the more stress pouring into the bucket, the more release valves we need to process it and make room for the upcoming demands so that the bucket does not overflow.
However, if you are still unable to detect chronic stress, you can use some tools to primarily identify it. Dr. Julie Smith has eloquently offered some toolkits to identify chronic stress as well as some exercise to manage burnout in her book ‘Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before.’ One exercise that she mentions repeatedly is practicing mindfulness.

Basking in Mindfulness
One of the trigger points for my chronic stress was all the unfinished tasks. To finish a task at hand, I needed to put all my focus on it. But my mind kept on wandering off on the fact that I had a series of unfinished tasks. This made it hard to focus and as a result, I was struggling to finish in time. And in return, my stress was further elevated.

To stop your mind from wandering and improve focus, practicing mindfulness is an effective method. It is also quite easy and practical to include in your daily routine. You can incorporate it with all the daily chores you perform such as cooking, walking, brushing, showering, etc. All you need to do is focus on the task you are performing at the moment. For instance, when you are cooking focus on the sound of chopping vegetables, how the water splashes when you wash fruits and vegetables, how the hot oil sizzles when you put spices in it, or the sound of boiling water and the changing colour when you put tea leaves in it. Whenever you catch your mind wandering off to another topic or the pile of unfinished tasks, redirect it to the task you are performing.
Remember, wandering off to some other imaginative place is normal, but the more you practice mindfulness, the easier it will be for you to stay present at the moment. This will eventually improve your focus and help you calm your nerves.

Author-Nayeema Nusrat Arora