“Emptiness or Full of Thoughts,
just Intentions or Actions delivered,
Destructive and Constructive Comments,
All of them depict a colorful life with Ups and Downs!…”
Have you ever once fallen into a mess in your life? Completely get stuck in the dilemma and cannot find a retreat or any way back. Shouting WTF is the only thing you can do in the situation. Bewildered, Burned out, and Bursting might best describe how you look physically and mentally in that sh*t of your life.
Breaking free is your overwhelming desire when coping with that version of yours. Normally, any impromptu decisions or actions in this dark time often lead to bad or worse tragedies. It sounds ridiculous, but really true. What are you supposed to do to get out of that trap?
When drafting the ideas for this blog, I slowly recalled and connected all the events causing the burnout feelings that I have experienced up to now. My life footage over the last 39 years gradually appeared, was meticulously arranged, and presented in front of my eyes. Scene by scene passed on the background music of my favorite songs passed, the uncomfortable feelings started arousing inside me, and then made me think hard.
The failures in life, the mistakes of my youth, the enthusiasm at work, the sincerity towards my beloved people, the betrayal on my back, and the promises in my ears are still there as part of me. I raised my hand, grabbed the eraser, and tried to clean all of them; however, they cannot be wiped away. They are engraved in my “Memory” zone and stay there forever. Getting exhausted with my intention to delete the past helped me recognize my past boundaries, my current boundaries, and perhaps my future boundaries.
COVID-19 spread widely over the world at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, and I lost my job after 6 months of coping with the bad impact of COVID on business performance. I had no choice due to the very bad financial outcomes of my company. I had to agree to cut my position and rearrange the operations for my team at that time. Earning 38 million VND of Net Salary came to Zero in the blink of an eye. Burnout was irresistible and was subject to encounter after that arrangement was made.
“Bad Luck comes in threes” happened to me. I lost my income, got stressed with my family issues and my house mortgage, and struggled with finding a new way of living and a new life and career direction. Bewildered, Burned out, and Bursting were what I actually felt at that moment of life. I might have a house to live in, but I couldn’t feel safe while staying in my house. The lessons learned naturally formed in my mind and stimulated my limbs to do something to survive.
Lesson 1: Be as much Ordinary as possible
Leaving the crown of a Head of Studies behind, getting back to an ordinary person without legitimate power, reward power, and coercive power made me feel uncomfortable and incredibly weak, and sometimes vulnerable. I didn’t get used to it. I wanted to get back those sorts of power because they brought me the feeling of being superior and important in others’ eyes. It was so bad and unhealthy. I miserably burned out when I saw people start changing the ways they treated me. I immediately realized that life was so hard and full of surprises. It was more dramatic than you could imagine. I began questioning myself with a dozen WHYs as if I could help myself accept the reality of my failure.
I forced myself to find the way out, get back to the race, and prove myself again as a STAR talent. I failed from time to time, and burnout really came to me after so many “Tries”. My inner voice echoed in my mind and gave me the hint of “Boundary”.
“It is enough, Derek. You are not as talented as you think. There are thousands of people like you out there. You might have been a star in the past, but you are growing old. You are now called a Middle-Aged Worker, you have used up your talent for years. Nothing new over the years can be generated. You are burning out to prove your out-of-date stuff to the changing world. You fail, Derek!”
The words kept echoing until I forcefully accepted my tragic situation. Learning to be Ordinary in an extraordinary manner was the best remedy for me at that time. I had to accept my failure in life, I had to accept that I had more Crosses than Checks in my skill list, and I had to accept that I had little time to get back to the race of life. Yes, I accepted my boundaries and respected them before taking any further actions to deal with the trap of failure. I shook hands with my Burnout. I smiled and said: “I am Ordinary, I am reaching an ordinary person with Referent and Expert Power.”
Lesson 2: Regulate yourself if you want to touch others
Struggling with myself for months, I gradually calmed down and refreshed my mind to reorganize my life plan. I started reading research and studies on the Internet. I was completely a newbie, I didn’t know where to start. Indeed, no clues were sent to me at that moment. I understood my situation and how bad it was. I accepted even the worst things coming to me on the following days, but it didn’t concern me at all. My attention was laid on how to deeply and truly understand myself and how to attract and influence others so that I could survive that tough life challenge. The trap of Power didn’t make me burn out anymore, but my true self did.
Luckily, I found the theories of Myers-Briggs about Personalities and the Wheel of Emotions of Plutchik. They helped me explain further about the mechanism of running myself and managing my personal emotions, and then direct my attentions and sensitivity towards others to make better guesses about who they are and how they feel.
With Myers-Briggs’s theory, the authors remind and instruct us of the 4 key insights, including 1) How individuals get their energy, 2) the Types of information they prefer to use, 3) How they process information to make decisions, and 4) How they deal with the world around them. Getting to know these aspects will give individuals a new lens for looking into themselves and upgrading their self-knowledge. From the concepts, it’s easy to claim that realizing the focus of attention will help much in task and time management to avoid burning out. Accepting that you prefer facts derived from practical experiences or big ideas for future possibilities will support you to adjust your reactions and divert yourself to a more creative status. Considering that you often make decisions by logic or personal values can stop you from falling into the traps of indulging feelings and acting as an “Icy Queen”. Enjoying planning or being open to new options can reflect the levels of organization and flexibility you are demonstrating daily. The theory pulls me back to reality and forces me to adapt to the diversity of life. Better knowledge of how people form their characteristics partially helps me stay away from burning out with stupid questions regarding the unavoidable differences among individuals.
Stepping out of one trap, I continued dealing with another. It’s called “Emotion”. I felt burned out again with Feelings and Emotions. Are they different or the same? What am I supposed to do when looking at an individual’s physical expressions and make an accurate prediction? “Oh My God” was shouted out loud from my mouth in a silent bedroom. What complicated humans are!
I roamed online with the hope of finding relevant information to answer my concern. I accidentally encountered a study by Dr. Kinga Mnich. He explained that emotion is the result of how your brain receives signals from the external world and then interprets the signals and creates chemical reactions in your physical body. Emotions reflect what you like or dislike, emphasize the importance of the external stimuli, and prepare you for an action out of discomfort or danger. According to Dr. Kinga Mnich, he stated that feelings include 2 extra factors, such as individuals’ experiences and evaluations based on culture and situation. Therefore, feelings will direct you on how to live, remind you of the importance of your emotions, and help you anticipate discomfort and danger, come up with proper actions and ensure long-term survival of body and mind. The keyword of INTERPRETING INPUTS is important a hundred times since we are wearing different lenses and we are 110% dissimilar from each other. We share different knowledge, different backgrounds, and different brains and bodies. 
Source: Dr. Kinga Mnich’s Website
I kept learning more about emotions. The theory of Plutchik with a Wheel of Emotions enlightened me with its significant insights. The 8 basic emotions of 4 groups depict how humans interpret the outside world and external stimuli. The external signals yield distinctive emotions in different entities. The level of emotions varies from person to person. It depends on their desires and expectations. It is tremendously complicated to see the root of each individual’s emotions. Life gives us hard tricks all the time. Human emotions are not simply how they theoretically interpret the external stimuli. Their emotions can be influenced and controlled by morality, and then generate feelings. The feelings can be surface acting or deep acting. It means that they can choose to hide their feelings or modify their true inner feelings based on display rules. It is hard to fathom an individual’s emotions if you don’t have enough courage and patience. You cannot apply your mechanism to others. You will fail and burn out.
Lesson 3: Start with the real concept of Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence is the hot topic in every conversation in life and every meeting at work. Emotional Intelligence is not simply about how to understand and control or manage your self emotions. It is indeed just a part of Emotional Intelligence, and you are required to do further steps to train yourself over time. I am not an expert in this topic so I just introduce the matrix of Emotional Intelligence. However, the key is “to start everything from yourself”.
Read and interpret it by using the aforementioned information in Lesson 1 and 2. Hope that you will recover and stay away from “burning out”. Good luck, my friends!
