Over a year ago, I wrote a series of articles about recognizing symptoms of workplace burnout and how you can manage that with self-care. I described that burnout often looks like depression: you have trouble getting out of bed, you don’t enjoy the things you used to, you disconnect from the important people in your life.

There are a lot of things you can do to replenish yourself if you realize that you’re having these symptoms. You can immerse yourself in outside interests that make you feel good. You can ask to take on a new project to revitalize your enthusiasm about your job. Or you can set better boundaries about what you’re able to take on, or go on a vacation to restart your mojo.

But what happens when none of that works?

Because sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you’re burned out because, simply put, your job is awful. Maybe it’s the perfect fit for some people, but it’s just terrible for you. Your boss is critical, your work/life balance is off-kilter, or the work is ungratifying. So, okay, find a new job.

But it’s not that easy, and here’s why:

There is a Burnout Catch-22

You’ve decided that your job isn’t a good fit for you anymore, and you decide to see what else is out there. While looking at jobs in your field, all you can think about is how miserable you are at your current job. So you look at jobs in adjacent fields and you imagine you’d have to begrudgingly drag yourself out of bed for those too.

Like depression, burnout tells you a lot of lies about yourself. The most prominent lie pops into your head at the very moment you’ve decided to take action:

“Maybe I’m just a lazy person who hates work.”

And if that’s true – if you’re just a lazy person who hates work – then what’s the point in job searching? Everything’s going to make you unhappy. Nothing will make you excited. So you give up the search and resign yourself to staying unhappy at your current job. At some point, you decide your current job is intolerable, you go back to the want ads, and the cycle starts all over again.

Oof.

So how do you stop this cycle?

Action Comes Before Motivation

We tend to think of motivation as an elusive and mysterious thing that bestows itself upon us at random intervals. In reality, that’s not the case at all. Motivation comes from a combination of external factors, such as hearing someone else’s success story, and internal factors, such as a sense of empowerment and hope that things can get better.

When you’re externally motivated, the shelf life on that is usually very short. A friend calls you, for example, and tells you that they got a new job and they’re much happier.  You think, “ah, that could be me!”  But without feelings of hope and empowerment, that news will motivate you for a few days.  Then you find yourself back at that burnout catch-22 thought of “well that’s them… that’s not for me. I’m just a lazy person who hates work.”

The thing that keeps you motivated to work and change and grow is an internal sense of hope and potential. Sometimes you stumble into this, but a lot of the time, you have to build it yourself. Here’s an example of an internal dialogue that tells you how to do this:

“Job search, okay, hate my job, have to find another… well this sounds just as awful as the job I have now. Ugh. Maybe I’m just a lazy person who hates work, and no matter what I do, it will always suck.”

“But I read that article Jennie wrote that said that action comes before motivation, so I’m going to send out a few resumes and see what happens.”

“Why? This is all stupid. I’ll never be happy anywhere I work.”

“Just do it.”

“Okay, fine… hey, that wasn’t so hard! Maybe there’s a slight chance that I can find a job that’s better than the one I’m at now.”

And then, suddenly, you’re taking the steps that are within your control to rectify your situation. Pretty great, yes?

Talk Lovingly to Yourself

The other important part of this is talking to yourself in a compassionate way. When you hear that voice in your mind that says, “maybe I’m just a lazy person who hates work,” question it. Here are some tools you can use to do that:

Find Exceptions

Can you think of a time in your life when this wasn’t true? When you had a job or a class (or a hobby!) that you were excited to go to, that made you feel fulfilled and energized? There’s a part of you that is excited by things, that does love to take on a task head-on.

When you leave your job, it might take a little while to recover from the experience that turned you into someone who hates work and feels apathetic.  Give it time.  The right environment can help you get back to that motivated person who’s still inside you.

Write a “Dear Friend” Letter

Write a letter to an imaginary close friend who is going through the same things you are. Speak to this hypothetical person in your situation with a combination of empathy and guidance. Acknowledge their humanity, and the idea that we all struggle sometimes. Express confidence in them and compassion for the fact that they are ambivalent and on the path to figuring it all out. Most of us are much better at being kind to other people than to ourselves.

Act As If

There is a concept in the field of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy called “acting as if”. The idea behind it is exactly what it sounds like: pretend something were true, and then act as if it were. If you wish you were more confident in social situations, ask yourself what someone who is confident in social situations would do.  Then do that.

This is different from being phony.  As Amy Cuddy describes in her TED Talk, sometimes if you use this tool, before you know it, you’re more confident. So how does this apply here? When you tell yourself, “maybe I’m just a lazy person who hates work,” ask yourself, “but what would I do if I weren’t?”

Talk to Other People

If the story you’re telling yourself is that you’re a lazy person who hates work, that’s a pretty strong negative message about yourself. That kind of internalized negativity usually comes with a pretty hefty dollop of shame.

The antidote to shame is empathy. When you talk to someone else and they say, “oh man, I’ve totally felt that way” or “oh man, I bet if I were in your situation I’d feel that way too,” it mitigates the loneliness of the situation and the shame evaporates. This is vital to normalizing what you’re thinking and feeling, which helps you to put it into context.

And then, when you know you’re not alone, you can move forward to better your circumstances.

Featured photo courtesy of normalityrelief – CC 2.0