COPING WITH BURNOUT
The 'Matchstick Effect' - what's in your matchbox?
By Mike Hallam
We all know how easy it is to break a match with your fingers, but a hole box of them… A very different matter!
This is how dealing with life's problems can be. Completely overwhelming when there are so many matches in your box of life that you just can't cope.
This old and trusted analogy is wonderfully simple and the answer is pretty obvious, but just breaking one match at a time is not really the right answer at all either.
Let's face it, if it was so simple. We'd all be able to deal with life's troubles much more easily and regularly!
Here's my detailed version on that old piece of advice for dealing with burnout…
…Don't just set alight to the whole box!
That is the worst thing to do, even though we may want to just burn the whole damn box and run away. Doing so will leave us empty and more lost than before.
…The Box itself.
We must learn to accept it that life IS the matchbox itself and that in accepting that, comes the realisation that matchboxes are meant for matches.
And so by design, life is meant to have lots of troubles in it.
After all, the matchbox would be pretty empty and useless without the matches!
This takes a minute to understand but a lot longer to really accept.
…We don't want to break every match.
Some of these matches are needed and wanted. Relationships, Children and Work are the most obvious examples of matches in our box that is life that we don't want to break, no matter how many troubles they do bring.
But even some of the less good matches are needed too, it's what makes life interesting and makes us all unique. And when having a burnout, we just can't see the light at the end of the tunnel enough to always remember that.
…Overflowing matchbox… The breaking point.
So now we know that the box is going to be at least half full before we've even started looking for ones to break; other matches just keep being added to this fragile, little cardboard box we call our lives.
After a while, we can't tell the difference between the matches and they begin to make the box stretch and overflow until BANG! We crack! No longer can we cope with it all, the ones we want, need and the ones we need to break are indistinguishable from each other we just can't cope. We start to single out certain matches as ones that are worse than they really are and even decide to ignore that ones that are just too difficult to deal with and pretend they are good ones.
…Before breaking the matches - label them first.
In order to cope, in order to not burnout, we need to know what they all are individually.
Take out all the matches, line them up and label them all: Work, finances, health problems, depression, kids, partners, friends, family but right down to the smaller ones too: Car troubles, housework, that garden project, beer guts, athletes foot… The whole lot of them! Also include ones like things you want in your life: Horse riding lessons, painting, reading more etc.
…But NEVER label the box anything but: My Life.
Don't make the common mistake of labelling the box itself. It's all too tempting and most of all, when burning out, easy to do. Even if work or kids are huge problems in our lives, remember they are still only ONE MATCH EACH.
Don't blame any one match.
It's all the matches (good and bad) that create the overfull box and therefore the burnout, whatever the trigger.
…A bigger box.
Now that the matches are all labeled, those beer gut or DIY project matches don't need to be the ones we set aside for breaking, and certainly not the ones like: family, kids work and partners either. No matter how easy or even tempting.
The bigger box itself is the key. And can be achieved firstly by breathing a little (which is easier to do when not surrounded by the smell of burning matches!) then by talking to others, friends and family, loved ones, support groups etc. Making our capacity bigger to deal with all these matches is essential and not always easy. Nothing worth having ever is easy. The bigger box is our new life from now on.
…Organise the matches before putting them in your new box.
With real matches, and tape or just on a piece of paper, slowly, calmly simply select the obvious matches to break later on and set them aside not to go back in the box.
The ones labelled: health problems, lack of exercise, car troubles and financial problems are good examples of this. We'll mark them for dealing with and come back to that later. There really shouldn't be many though. And don't worry about the rest not fitting back because your new box is now bigger.
…Top to Toe the rest of the matches..or try to.
We now understand that the matches for keeping are obviously going to be a mix of one's that are just good and others that are not so good or even pretty bad at times but nonetheless needed.
Yes they are all for keeping, but don't let's pretend they are all going to be mixed together ignoring imperfections and even major problems.
The idea here is that we can admit that we need to keep them all but some of them need working on to be turned back the other 'good' way round eventually.
We can now also notice that even the good ones are hard work sometimes and have their bad points. There will be very few or no perfect ones turned one way and most turned the other.
That is so we know what to work on later.
…Think about each one as you put them back in.
It's already been decided to keep them. But now that decision is made, just spend a few minutes writing down what needs fixing for each one to be eventually turned the 'good' way round in your box and leave that list for another day.
We now have a new and bigger box that is more organised and accepted as being part of the matchbox that is life.
…Back to the ones selected for breaking.
Take each one you want to break. As before, spend a while thinking about each problem and writing down:-
• What needs to be done to make it better?
• Why the problem exists at all?
• Is the problem linked to other matches in my box?
and then ask yourself: "now my box is organised and has more capacity, am I sure I should, not need or want, but should break them?"
Some will go back, some won't. Obviously the athletes foot match won't!
But we can now go back to the old analogy and realise that as they are now really recognised as individual matches, they can be broken now, or later, with ease. All with the room to breath easier now because, they're not burnt, they're more understood and the box is organised and a bit bigger.
:)