Are you in retail and have already started to burn out? If yes, ask yourself whether you have trouble getting up in the morning and go to work. Don't you ever feel able to unwind from work? Do you feel that your customers and coworkers are interruptions? To all these questions if your answer is yes, you are experiencing burnout. Stress, fatigue and disillusion are common in the high-pressure retail world.
Caution
Once you enjoyed the challenges of retailing. Now you are experiencing burnout. The cause for it may not be the job; it may be the result of how you are handling the stress at the job. Hard workers are at risk because they completely involve in the job, spend more time at the work than others, care about what they do and put in a lot of effort in making it good. It is natural that energy vanishes and stress appears. To avoid this situation, you have to make an effort to change stress into a positive force or at least convert into a neutral force.
The don'ts
Sometimes your effort to cope with burnout will only intensify the problem. For example, if you work longer hours to sell more doesn't give you any relief; you feel more miserable. Your effort to outperform may drive you to think of quitting.
If you want to get out of the stress, don't bad-mouth clients or colleagues, don't let self-talk become a grumbling session, don't talk about things you can't change, don't resort to drugs, alcohol, tobacco, TV or to overeating and don't bottle up stress. Of course this advice looks good. But how do you fight out stress?
The solution
Here is how you can fight burnout in a healthy way:
- Set realistic goals
- Change your routine. For instance, drive to workplace from a different route instead of the usual one, conduct meetings differently, put on a funny hat etc.
- Ask your manager for more variety of tasks at work
- Look for humor in the workplace. Don't be cynical
- Exercise. It needn't be strenuous
Erase from your dictionary words and phrases like 'hate' 'can't stand it' 'no way' etc. It means avoid negative attitude.
Better change the job if you aren't enjoying it. Even thinking of options, sometimes, help you forget a feeling of being trapped in a job you don't want.
There is no uniform solution the problem of burnout. Every strategy won't work for everybody.
It is hard to get rid of familiar attitudes and habits even when they make you sick of them. In effect overcoming burnout means control, control and control only. You can't change the environment and you can't quit it either. Then learn to take control of your attitude and behavior within that environment. If you can't, you are stuck with misery.
