Burnout, Part 2

Yesterday I introduced the topic of burnout by telling you the story of Moses, an Old Testament hero, and the story of Larry, a teacher who may be your next-door neighbor.  Both men were committed workers and both men loved people.  As admirable as it may seem for a person to be a lover of work and a lover of people, one of the debilitating dangers for such individuals is the danger of burnout.

Your first thought may be that burnout doesn’t belong in a series of messages about making worship a way of life.  What does burnout have to do with worship?  Nothing!  And of course, that’s the point.  Burnout is positively negative.

Before we begin to fight this enemy, let’s define this enemy.  As the experts explain it, burnout is a condition of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion.  We become vulnerable to burnout when we are continually involved in situations that are emotionally challenging. These emotional demands are often the result of elevated expectations and sustained situational stresses.
         
Burnout captures people in various professions: Dentists, nurses working with terminal patients, business executives who define themselves by their work, lone pastors of small inner-city churches. It creeps up on social workers trapped in bureaucratic hassles, endless rules and meaningless paperwork.
         
Its most likely victims are those who see their work as a "calling," who are idealistic and highly motivated. When people like that give a nonstop 120% effort to their calling, and then do not get the expected results, they begin to sink slowly into the quicksand of futility.
         
This is a tragedy: The person most often burned out is the kind of person you and I want in a significant helping profession.   They’re on fire, eager to make a positive contribution. But when the fire goes out, everyone working in or served by that profession is poorer because of the loss of that person.
         
What does this have to do with worship?  It has to do with what 1 Peter 5, verses 8 and 9 say about Satan: 
Be sober; be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. 9Resist him, steadfast in the faith…

He encourages burnout because he wants to discourage us.  He tried it with Moses, as we saw yesterday.  He tried it with Elijah, many generations later.  He’ll try it with you, too, if he thinks it’ll neutralize your lifestyle worship of the The Most High God.

Here are some ways we can resist the devil’s fiery darts so we don’t burn out:
1.      
A s\\ level is professional expectations, and includes achievements which are profession-specific: improving the organization, discovering a cure, solving the problem, bringing opposing forces into agreement, building a better widget, saving more lives, rescuing the world....
         
The \\ level is personal expectations. These are idealized expectations you or I have of the person we will become. It includes the dream that our work will be visibly significant.  We may dream of being an important member of a competent group, that we’ll be allowed to perform our work the way we think best. We envision ourselves in an environment of continued challenge that stimulates our self-actualizing growth and that we will be compensated adequately.
         
Does this mean that all high expectations are wrong? No. It simply means high expectations have to be managed.  We need to recognize them and control them.

A poor job fit can also lead to burnout. This happens when a person's work does not allow for the expression of his or her giftedness and frustration builds up to that person's burnout point. Another way of saying this is that under-utilization can lead to the same destination as overload.
         
Another contributor to burnout is over-supervision. (Managers, take note.) One of the blessings of adulthood is control over choices. We want to choose where we'll live, choose where we'll work. We cherish our privilege of driving where we want to go. One of the more difficult rites of passage for an elderly American is to give up that driver’s license (or have it taken away against our will).
         
This same dynamic emerges in our work environment. If we have reasonable decision-making authority, we feel better able to cope with the stresses and challenges of work. If too many of those decisions are made instead by our supervisor, we begin to feel that everything we do is governed, observed and/or evaluated by our supervisor. Then what happens? You know if you've been there: Morale and motivation plummet faster than the Titanic sank.
         
It can, of course, get worse. We can lose our job. Studs Terkel, in his book entitled Working, reported that being fired is one of the most extreme forms of loss of control. Some of us know about that, don't we!

© 2007 John Garmo. If you would be interested in using this article, please contact us at Info@MissionToChildren.org.