How to Deal With Burnout When Pursuing Your Goals

Pursuing your goals is easy when you are full of enthusiasm. But what do you do when the excitement fades and you’re overwhelmed by the reality of where you are?

It’s important we address this because it’s inevitable when pursuing your goals. You will hit a wall that will stop you in your tracks. What was once a raging fire of passion and hope, dies down to a smoldering flame.

This is when most goals die. It really is a make or break moment in your development.

It’s at this moment in time, that it becomes, not only easy to walk away, but also very logical. Your brain will start concocting all sorts of rational reasons to justify you quitting.

Check out the intro video:

Pursuing Your Goals

Your brain is awesome, but you need awareness to take control of that beast.

In this article, that’s what I want to do. I want you to realise what’s happening when you approach the inevitable point of giving up.

And if you haven’t got to that point yet, don’t worry you will. So save this article to your bookmarks. You will need to read it someday.

Please note, I do not want to ignore the fact that sometimes it is best to quit. That is of course in contraction to the idea of “never giving up”.

Knowing when to quit, is the difference between being logical and being wise. Wisdom requires the expansion of one’s awareness.

Why do You Feel Like Quitting

There are two primary reasons:

1. Your efforts are not getting results – Overwhelm
2. Your old way of thinking kicks in – Resistance

Let’s discuss both of these.

1. Overwhelm

Often we pursue our goals with all the right ingredients:

• Enthusiasm
• Good work ethic
• Commitment
• Consistency
• Strong vision
• Clear goals
• Great strategy
• Resources

I am sure there are others that you would add to the list as well.

It turns out this list of ingredients is not enough. If you’re putting in all the effort and look at your results and you see nothing or very little, it is inevitable that you will feel overwhelmed by the goal that you are trying to achieve.

You are doing everything right and coming up short. How demoralizing. You’ve realized that your best efforts are not good enough. What a big fat kick in the teeth.

The Problem IS The Opportunity

Here you have to realise the opportunity that lies within this failed attempt.

This is not a failure, this is an opportunity to learn, grow and move forward.

This moment of overwhelm is a gift.

It’s time for you to stop, assess, take what you have gained from your process so far, and refocus your efforts.

When this happened to me, I connected with someone that has achieved what I want to achieve. I explained to him that I’m working hard, but I feel my efforts could be best spent elsewhere. He recognised immediately, where I need to direct my attention.

Knowing that this is where he directed his attention to achieve the results that I want gave me a new lease of life.

Retrospect is a Beautiful Thing

Note that reaching this point would not be achieved without first taking the wrong direction. Meaning it was never the wrong direction. It was just part of my process.

This is a key insight. You realize that feeling overwhelmed is an essential indicator to keep you on track.

Most people will not realize this and instead of redirecting their efforts, they will quit.

Feeling Overwhelmed? You’re Lucky!

You’ve got to understand that feeling overwhelmed is not a bad thing. It is in fact an indication that you are on the cusp of a breakthrough.

Most people just react to it. However, becoming observant of it, stopping yourself and making a conscious choice of how to go forward, will help you evolve and get to the next level.

When you are overwhelmed you are ready for the next stage of your progress.

Seek those out, who have been where you want to go.

If you want to climb Mount Everest, seek someone who has done it.

Always remember this saying:

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear”.

2. Resistance

Resistance occurs when our central nervous system is on the brink of a fundamental change.

Our brains are designed to keep us alive. They have evolved incredibly well to do this.

Your brain knows what has kept you alive so far. Because of this, it is reluctant to change at your every whim.

The brain’s capacity to do this is a survival mechanism. One that you should be extremely grateful for.

Your brain does not care, that you want to be rich, famous, drive a great car, live in an amazing house. No, none of that matters.

Your brain cares about keeping you alive!

Override The Mechanism

In order to fundamentally change you have to learn how to override that mechanism.

This is incredibly challenging.

But let it be known, your ability to change will be directly reflective of your ability to be aware of resistance.

Resistance is sneaky. It won’t always be obvious. Sometimes it’s obvious. It appears in the form of anger or frustration. When it’s this apparent it’s easier to deal with.

Your brain is much more clever than that. Often resistance will come in any of the following forms:

• Tiredness
• Procrastination
• Repriortisation
• Distraction
• Lack of time
• Not having enough money
• Boredom
• Negative feelings and thoughts
• Listening to outsiders
• Your own logic
• Rationality

There are perhaps many more you could add to the list. Just understand that resistance will fit perfectly in with your narrative of how you see yourself and the world around you.

Resistance to Your Paradigm

Your paradigm is your map of reality. It’s how you see the world. Everything you experience is filtered through this paradigm. It’s your foundation, your beliefs, and your thought patterns.

Resistance will be seamless. It will hold you in a paradigm. And what you want is a different paradigm. You want a paradigm that is in alignment with your goals.

Your current paradigm has got you the results you have now. If you want different results you have to change your paradigm.

You can’t apply the same technique and expect different results. I think it was Einstein that referred to that way of thinking as insanity.

If you are not aware that you are experiencing resistance to pursuing your goals, then you will not have the ability to make one of the following choices:

• Do I allow this resistance to keep me in place
• Do I push back and bring myself one step closer to my goal

Looking Back Into The Past

We can probably all look back at our lives and reflect at times we wanted to achieve things and in retrospect identify the resistance that we gave into.

Perhaps you wanted to get six-pack abs. Resistance came at you from all angles. Fatty food, lack of commitment to the exercises, the logic of how it’s stupid and shallow to want such a thing, and so on.

Inevitably your narrative of the world came into effect to prevent you from getting those six-pack abs and pursuing your goals

You convinced yourself it wasn’t worth the effort. But in reality what you did was you allowed the resistance to dictate your results.

Accept Where You Are Now

When you are feeling your enthusiasm drain in relation to pursuing your goals, know that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

Recognize the overwhelm and the resistance to change.

Know that it is not you, it is just part of your process. Stop identifying with it and become the observer.

This is Where Your Story Begins

Now it’s time for you to be the star of your own blockbuster movie and turn this whole damn thing around.

Seek out the people who have gone where you want to go. Recognize the resistance and say “BRING IT ON, LET’S GO ONE MORE ROUND, ‘CAUSE I DIDN’T HEAR NO DAMN BELL”

Cheesy, I know. But you labeling this as cheesy, is exactly another example of resistance 🙂

Life is Communicating With You, Listen!

Overwhelm and resistance are life’s greatest indicators that you are on the verge of change.

Don’t back down now. Take a deep breath and jump back in. Let’s go one more round champ, you got this!

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Are you ready to go through the overwhelm and resistance to achieve the type of change you always wanted?

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It’s not going to be easy, but one day you’ll look back and say “Damn that was worth it”.