You're facing burnout from challenging clients. How can you use mindfulness to protect yourself?

Begin by recognizing the signs of burnout. Symptoms can include physical exhaustion, emotional fatigue, and a sense of detachment. Acknowledge your feelings without judgment, and understand that it’s okay to feel this way.

Mindfulness empowers you to identify early signs by the awareness of your thoughts and emotions. Irritability, criticism, disrespect, etc are the signs of burnout... If you are aware of your thoughts and emotions are changing then you can face it smoothly!!! What do you think?

Something that I find very interesting with Mindful actions is that you learn to listen to yourself and see the signs of fatigue or uneasiness. Listen to your body and emotions and what they tell you. You don’t always have to act directly but journal about them and prepare yourself so as to be able to manage your clients while working to get out of the burnout

I can tell you that mindfulness can be a powerful tool against burnout. By taking a few minutes before each session to focus on your breath and observe your thoughts and feelings without judgment, you can create a buffer between yourself and your client's challenges. This allows you to approach each interaction with greater clarity and compassion, reducing stress and preventing burnout.

Personally I've experienced burnout but I didn't know it at the time. Unfortunately, it wasn't until I was diagnosed with depression that I had to take a serious look at my life. Looking back I can see the signs of burnout. All I did was work. I worked overtime to meet unrealistic job expectations. I didn't want to socialize because it felt like too much work. Weekends were mainly recoup time by watching Netflix. Then come Monday it began again, Work. Eat. Sleep. Repeat. If any of this resonates with you, I invite you to take some time to reflect on your life. And then ask yourself if this is how you want to live. This is the first step of mindfulness which is becoming aware. If we're not aware, we can't change. With Love, Stephanie

Setting boundaries is an act of self-respect. It signals to ourselves and others that we value our time, energy, and well-being. When we enforce our boundaries, we reinforce our self-worth and build confidence in our ability to manage our lives. This self-respect also encourages others to treat us with the same respect, creating a positive feedback loop that enhances our overall sense of self-esteem.

Establishing clear and manageable boundaries with clients to protect your time and energy not only sets a precedence for your peace of mind, but also let's the client know that you find importance in time management. Once you communicate your availability stick to it. Make sure you take at least 3 15 minute breaks throughout the day - not including lunch. Most people strive for work/life balance, but I prefer a more realistic approach and focus on work/life integration due to building a relationship with clients, etc.

Establish clear boundaries with clients to protect your time and energy. Communicate your availability and ensure you take regular breaks. Setting boundaries helps prevent burnout and maintains a healthy work-life balance.

Setting boundaries is critical to deal with client and give them more value. Communicate clearly, like I can help you this or that way, share with them what to what extent you can help... Assertive communication plays critical role here. I often practice this with dealing with clients. Commit less and give more. By commiting, I am setting my boundaries and giving more value that help to build trust with clients... Bottom line is set your boundaries!!! Right?

Setting boundaries is necessary to accept and tolerante your own and any other individuals needs. If everybody finds a balance between beeing self-reflective and looking after others, working and living together would be more healthy, open-minded and diversity oriented. Your needs might not be mine and mine might not be yours but acceptance - as an important clue in mindfulness - and especially acceptance of boundaries is an important skill in communication and empathy towards your own mind and body and other individuals.

Keep a gratitude journal to remind yourself of the positive aspects of your work and life. Reflecting on what you’re thankful for can shift your focus away from stress and towards a more positive mindset.

To build resilience against burnout, mental health issues, etc, make the mindfulness part of your Lifestyle. Ideally you should adapt mindful Lifestyle. That includes, Mindful smile as you wake up, Mindful gratitude, Mindful intention for the day, Mindful journaling, Mindful talking, Mindful listening, Mindful walking, Mindful eating, Mindful breathing, Mindful mobile scrolling, Ha... Ha... Ha... List is very long... It's not mandatory to practice all, but adapt 3-4 practices that you will enjoy doing and that resonates with you the most. What do you think?

Going into a mindfulness certification course, it touches on the concept "Embodiment". It makes valid sense as if we as the practitioner do not walk the talk, it is difficult to embody the benefits of mindfulness practices and truly believe in it. I try to incorporate mindfulness in my daily routine such as driving, eating and running. Furthermore, I try to do 3-5mins awareness of breath every night before I sleep and do occasional loving kindness meditation. Doing these practices on a daily basis has progressively allowed me to be able to focus better, be non reactive to challenges/situations, more aware of my thoughts and feelings. Hence, increasing my resilience and better management of challenging situations.

Part of my daily mindfulness practice involves embracing detachment, especially following a period of burnout from challenging client interactions. Detachment allows me to maintain a healthy emotional distance, fostering resilience and clarity in navigating difficult situations. It's about cultivating inner peace and perspective, enabling me to respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively. This practice not only protects my well-being but also enhances my ability to serve clients effectively with renewed energy and focus.

Just like with physical exercise, daily practice builds your mindfulness muscles. Just a few minutes each day can help you reduce stress, improve focus, regulate emotions and boost creativity. Create a toolbox of mindfulness practices you can go to when feeling the effects of burnout. Your toolbox may include journaling, meditation, breathing exercises, walks in nature, making bad art, prayer, grounding your bare feet in the grass, etc. The key is to find something that works for you and commit to it, so it is there when you need it most. Over time you will see that you are less triggerable and more grounded in your body's response to the pressures of everyday life.

The empathy of others towards you and your empathy towards them are important skills for tolerating ambiguity and meeting each other humanely. Each person comes from a specific context with various experiences - positive and negative. With empathy we see the context from which the person comes and can recognize wishes, dreams, skills and needs that should be achieved or fulfilled with the respective actions. This means we have a deep understanding of our counterparts, and the same applies to ourselves. In addition, you always try to recognize yourself in the other person; there are always recognizable similar structures in thinking, feeling or acting that allow us to react empathically and avoid accusations towards ourselves and others.

To paraphrase the Dalai Lama, "Everyone wants to be happy." I believe that we should recognize that at the heart of the matter, people want things done a certain way because they believe it will bring them happiness. We do not have to agree with them all the time, but we can take time to better listen to their needs and wants, and see if we can bridge the gap between what we have to offer and what they need. Mindful Listening helps to put some emotional distance between what is heard and how we respond to things. We can build empathy when we are not so reactive to what is heard.

Just as it's important to empathize with our clients it's just as important to give ourselves empathy. We're human too and we're not perfect. Far from it. Giving ourselves space to recognize we're having difficulty being present and non-judgmental with our clients provides a great opportunity for us to cultivate empathy for ourselves. Learning how to be kind and gracious to ourselves and can help us in providing the same care to our clients. With Love, Stephanie

We are humans, and we get emotional sometimes too much in response to things that transpired. It's okay, we have to give ourself time and space to reflect on how we can be better, if any. We may be correct too, in our response, at the moment. Let's take any and all unpleasant encounters as a chance to further deepen our practice. Only with regular reflections, we can be more mindful of how we can and should respond in the future.

Reflect by trying to take a meta perspective. Here too, the respective context from which people come is relevant. Why is my client reacting this way? At what level can I understand the actions and how can I deal with them so that I still feel good? Setting your own boundaries is again important here. Reflecting on your own work and your own well-being is central to developing a healthy attitude towards work, including work-life balance, and thus preventing burnout. Others can help with reflecting because we are never alone with our experiences.

It’s very important to recharge fully after such a period. A battery half charged can never serve the same purpose as one which is full. You will come back with a renewed mindset and ready to handle the challenges that will obviously come your way. Partaking in healthy activities that help you relax completely and come back afresh is a great formula to handle all the stress that came your way

We need to allow ourselves to relax and recharge - even those Power Banks for our phone would need a good full discharge from full use before we recharge it fully. What helps you to unwind? For me, YouTube or Netflix would be a good distraction for me. It also doubles up as an inspiration for my articles, as I like to draw wisdom and insights from movies to put into my writing. So I get to recharge and ideate for the future, win-win situation for me!