Avoiding burnout through core values

Too Much or Too Little?

Sometimes we experience burnout from doing too much, but did you know you can also burn out from doing too little? Specifically, doing too little of the activities you enjoy, those that give you purpose, or those that align with your core values.

Living a life misaligned with your core values is more common than you think; loads of us are spending way too much time mastering things that don't really matter to us. Reflecting on the period leading up to my burnout, I can see there was a gradual widening of the gap between how I wanted to live my life and my actions. This wasn't because of a single decision, but rather many small, seemingly insignificant choices, until suddenly I found myself having crossed a line without knowing how I got there.

Core Values

A core value is a principle that guides your personal behaviour and helps you identify what is most important in your life. Examples might be kindness, compassion, integrity, family, accountability, ambition, prosperity, status – there are no right or wrong answers, core values are individual to you. If you are doing something that aligns with your core values, you are much more likely to feel engaged and content. But if you wake in the night with an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach it may be because one of your core values has been challenged.

The problem is that most of us are just living our life, rushing from one thing to another, completely oblivious to whether our actions are aligned with our core values or not. If you don't know what your core values are then its more likely you will violate them, where as if you spend timing understanding them, you are much more likely to notice when something is out of alignment.

The path to burnout

In Freudenberger and North's 12 stage model of Burnout, Stage 5 is called “Revision of values”. The theory is that when you come up against something that challenges your core values you have a choice. You can either make a change and re align yourself, or you choose to ignore the discomfort and make a small tweak to one of your core values to make that feeling disappear. Sometimes, this isn't even a conscious choice, its just your brain's natural reaction to feeling uncomfortable. This is how all those small seemingly insignificant decisions resulted in me one day waking up going “how did I get here?”.

The issue is that chipping away at your core values results in more uncomfortable feelings and if you chip away too much, you progress on the burnout journey. Alternatively, if you know what your core values are and proactively use them when making decisions, you are much less likely to fall into this trap.

Re-align, Re-align, Re-align

Once you understand what your core values are, you need to check in with them on a regular basis. Re-aligning to your core values is not a one time thing, you need to treat it as essential maintenance. This is an important part of reducing your risk of Burnout and the Anti-Burnout Mindset.

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