Kristina Kiefer
Our Book Rounds topic this month was on Burnout. I learned quite a bit, in spite of the fact that I’ve been on a personal mission to avoid burnout even prior to vet school. I considered myself high risk. I get bored easily. I am an all or nothing personality. I get socially exhausted very easily. I care. I make other people’s problems my problems. I am a perfectionist. I am a resentful empath. Honestly and truthfully, I could feel the ebbs and flows of burnout during my pre-vet years. As I overworked myself to afford my education, overcommitted to college credits and grades to be a competitive applicant, became more and more socially isolated due to my schedule choices, and watched people in the profession I looked up to become blazing funeral pyres of sacrifice of their love of veterinary medicine, I got scared. I was already getting tired of the game, and I hadn’t even been officially accepted! I had a several month period where I critically analyzed whether I really wanted this journey. I legitimately thought about quitting vet med before I even arrived.
I chose to go on, after serious self-assessment and deciding I needed to be VERY pro-active about combating burnout. I wasn’t just on a mission to avoid it- I was on the warpath to combat it. I went on the defensive. It took many years to develop new behaviors and habit changes. And even over a decade later, I still consider myself in high-alert mode. I think because of my fright. Burnout didn’t attack with a nuclear explosion. It was one moment added to another, followed by ignoring stress and feelings, and poor choices. Year after year. It was an insidious virus, rather than a major event I could point too. I came to the conclusion that the cunning trap of burnout I watched people fall into required vigilance and cunning to avoid. It required proactive, intentional work.
The beginning of my journey was largely focused on personal choices and decisions. It is still legitimately a struggle. But along the way I’ve also come to realize an equally potent skillset: Recognizing my check engine light. Check engine lights are designed to warn us. To get our butt to the mechanic before the engine explodes. Often, the problem is minor. But if you choose to ignore it? That problem leads to another problem, which leads to you stranded in the middle of nowhere, several states away from home, out of money, and out of luck! The effort and investment it takes to solve the problem at that point may have become insurmountable. However, if I took my head out of the sand and looked into the matter, maybe I wouldn’t be trying to sleep in a room left in an abandoned part of the motel, without electricity, decorated by bats flying around the porch and full moon shadows, in the only accommodations for 200 miles, in the middle of the desert after a “helpful” local spent an hour telling me about the skin-walking Native American tribe whose reservation I had the luck to break down on. Yes, that happened. (Although, full discretion, I hadn’t ignored the check engine light- I did bring it in, get it fixed and was not believed that something was still wrong! I could write a book on the adventures this theme has generated throughout my life!)
Likewise, if you learn to recognize your check engine warning lights for your career, you have a better chance of avoiding burnout. I believe everyone’s check engine light is going to be different. I have several. There is the “I’m feeling like a horrible friend because I haven’t made time for anyone but myself” light. Cultivating and being present in my loved one’s lives is a priority for me. There was the ‘the husky chewed up all of my paycheck except the check number and left it in the middle of the living room’ light. Getting personal time with, and fulfilling my dog’s social needs is a high priority for me- the husky (god bless her soul) was very good at informing me when I was neglecting her social needs. There is the “Why does everyone need me to do this- why can’t they do this themselves!?” light. Boundary neglecting and over-socialization are an express train to destination Burnout for me! Your check engine light might come from within or from other people or creatures!
Challenge number one is figuring out what your check engine lights are, and challenge number two is getting into the habit of recognizing them early. It has made a world of difference for me!
What are your check engine lights?
Glad to be one of many visitors on this amazing site : D.
Muchas gracias Chris por esta reseña, personalmente a menudo no me gustan los negocios de MLM por su forma de dirigir sus empresas. Una de las peores cosas que no me gustan de ellos es su plan de compensación, que requiere que reclutes a otros miembros en el programa antes de que puedas ser compensado. Además, parece que se ha convertido en parte de su tradición. Todos los productos MLM son demasiado caros para comprarlos. Me pregunto cómo sus asociados son capaces de ir a vender todos estos productos caros a sus clientes. A menudo afirman que sus productos pueden curar todo tipo de enfermedades, especialmente las de la industria del bienestar y la salud. En cuanto a si eso es cierto o no, ellos son los únicos que lo saben. Sé que esta puede no ser una compañía de estafa, especialmente porque han estado en el negocio desde los años 70. Pero personalmente no se lo recomendaré a nadie tampoco. Prefiero recomendar el marketing de afiliados que cualquier negocio de MLM. Gracias por esta crítica. Stephen.
Never heard of task rabbit before. I think it sounds fun! I would love to get paid for walking dogs and putting pieces of furniture together! If you made a living using task rabbit your day would be different every day! I might give it a try and see what i think. Thanks for the great information
scoliosis
Hello! This post could not be written any better! Reading this post reminds me of my
old room mate! He always kept talking about this. I will forward this write-up to him.
Fairly certain he will have a good read. Many thanks for sharing!
scoliosis
Thanks for revealing your ideas right here. The other thing is that every time a problem takes place with a pc motherboard, folks should not take the risk of repairing that themselves because if it is not done properly it can lead to irreparable damage to the whole laptop. It will always be safe just to approach a dealer of any laptop with the repair of the motherboard. They have got technicians with an experience in dealing with laptop motherboard difficulties and can carry out the right diagnosis and perform repairs.
Today, with all the fast lifestyle that everyone leads, credit cards have a big demand throughout the market. Persons throughout every discipline are using credit card and people who not using the credit card have prepared to apply for one in particular. Thanks for spreading your ideas in credit cards.
Your style is very unique in comparison to other folks I have read stuff from.
Thanks for posting when you’ve got the opportunity, Guess I
will just bookmark this page.
Hey! This is my 1st comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and say I really enjoy reading your blog posts. Can you recommend any other blogs/websites/forums that go over the same subjects? Thanks a ton!
Thanks a lot for sharing this with all people you really recognize what you are talking approximately! Bookmarked. Please also discuss with my web site =). We will have a hyperlink exchange agreement between us!
With havin so much written content do you ever run into any issues of plagorism or copyright infringement?
My blog has a lot of exclusive content I’ve either authored myself or outsourced but it looks
like a lot of it is popping it up all over the internet without my agreement.
Do you know any ways to help stop content from being stolen? I’d really appreciate it.
Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems
as though you relied on the video to make your
point. You obviously know what youre talking
about, why waste your intelligence on just posting videos to your blog when you
could be giving us something informative to read?
I think that what you posted made a ton of sense.
But, what about this? what if you added a little information?
I am not saying your information is not good, however suppose you added something that grabbed people’s attention?
I mean Pssst. Your Check Engine Light is On. is
a little boring. You ought to look at Yahoo’s home page
and watch how they create news titles to get people to open the links.
You might try adding a video or a picture or two to grab people excited about what you’ve got to say.
Just my opinion, it might bring your blog
a little livelier.
Fantastic post but I was wanting to know if
you could write a litte more on this subject? I’d be very thankful if
you could elaborate a little bit further. Bless you!
Hi, this weekend is good in support of me, as this time i am reading this enormous educational paragraph here at my house.
Hello, i read your blog occasionally and i own a similar one and i was
just wondering if you get a lot of spam comments?
If so how do you prevent it, any plugin or anything
you can recommend? I get so much lately it’s driving me crazy so any help is very
much appreciated.
Touche. Solid arguments. Keep up the great effort.
Ahaa, its nice conversation about this paragraph
at this place at this weblog, I have read all that,
so now me also commenting at this place.
I cling on to listening to the newscast speak about receiving boundless online grant applications so I have been looking around for the best site to get one. Could you tell me please, where could i get some?
Hi my friend! I wish to say that thi article is amazing, nice written and include approximately all vital infos.
I’dlike to see moire posts like this.
We are a bunch of volunteers and opening a braznd new scheme in our community.
Your web site pprovided us with useful info to work on. You’ve
done an impressive task and our whole clmmunity can bee grateful to you.