Gita’s visit to the doctor, who was also a close friend, wasn’t going too well. Sitting across the table, Gita knew that her friend’s anger was justified. She had lost a lot of weight, was looking totally rundown and was highly anaemic. To top it all, her friend had also told her that she was suffering from high blood pressure. These were all symptoms of stress, a side effect of holding a full time job, along with looking after two children and an ailing mother. Her friend had warned her strictly to take it easy. She had given Gita a stern warning about learning to compromise, taking a break once in a while, and not to wear herself out trying to please everybody.

One more perfectly normal day of incessant demands, neglected children, and unfinished work and you feel you can’t take it anymore. Balancing work and life then becomes a problem. And you head towards a condition called burnout – A common syndrome that afflicts all women at some time or the other.

Burnout is a condition caused by unbalance: too much work or responsibility, too little time to do it, over too long a period.

Often you think that burnout is something that happens to other women – to workaholics and perfectionists.

But ‘careaholics’ are also at risk – women who care deeply about their children, work, relationships, parents, siblings, friends, communities, and issues. In short every woman you come across.

Burnout often begins with illness – anything from a bout of ’flu you can’t shake to chronic fatigue syndrome – and is usually accompanied by depression.

It’s burnout when you go to bed exhausted every night and wake up tired every morning – when no amount of sleep refreshes you, month after month.

It’s burnout when everything becomes an effort: combing your hair, cooking dinner, visiting relatives for the weekend.

It’s burnout when you find yourself cranky all the time, bursting into tears or going into fits of rage at the slightest provocation.

It’s burnout when you feel trapped and hopeless, unable to dream, experience pleasure, or find contentment.

It’s burnout when neither big thrills nor little moments have the power to move you – when nothing satisfies you because you haven’t a clue what’s wrong or how to fix it. Because everything’s wrong. Because something is terribly out of place.

It’s burnout when you feel there is not one other person on the face of the earth who can help you.

And you’re right.

When you’re suffering from burnout, you are the only person on earth who can help because you’re the only one who can make the lifestyle changes that need to be made: to call a halt, to take a slower path, to make a detour.

“Things do not change; we change.”
                          –Henry David Thoreau

Downshifting: Living life in lower gear

One of the conscious decisions that you have to take is to live life a little slowly.

Not to allow work to ride roughshod over your life.

To slow down in order to devote more time and creative energy to your families, and your personal needs.

If you are working, don’t allow your job to eat into your weekends and workdays. Set a limit on your free time.

You need to give up the quest for perfection. You need to realise that you have limits. Learn to say, ‘Thus far and no further’.

There is a link between how you perform at work and your personal happiness. For example, when you do much work, your health suffers and you fall sick, which in turn adversely affects your work. When you have troubled relationships because you can’t devote enough time, you get distracted and your work suffers.

Neglecting your personal needs can create a negative impact on work.

In order to achieve a sense of harmony between your work and family life, You need to practice the balancing act.

You need to adjust and compromise.

You need to accept that it’s not possible to do everything at the same time, all the time.

You also need to realise that it is impossible to do things perfectly.

You have to let go of the desire to be popular with everybody, at the expense of your own life.

You need to give up pleasing each and everyone. However hard you try, this is one feat that is impossible to achieve. You will only end up making yourself unhappy.

Be flexible about breaking the rules once in a while. Learn to bend a little and have fun. Take a few days of from work and do something that you were planning to do for a long time.

Ask your sister or a family member to have the kids for a while and give yourself a holiday.

Remember that you need to define your own boundaries. If you cross the limits, you will be answerable to no one but yourself.

Keep repeating to yourself, Health is wealth. Nothing must come in the way of it.