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Reduce Intensity in Your Life.
Examine those areas of your life which involve the most concentrated intensity and then work toward alleviating that pressure. This can involve both work and nonwork tasks. For example, if your anxiety increases with certain areas of work (meetings, long hours crunching numbers, etc.), see if you can either eliminate those tasks or take a new approach toward them. If you have to make dinner every night after a long day on the job, see if other arrangements can be made at least some of the time. Question whether you really have to watch the news on TV every night - or whether spending some quiet time with music or reading might be preferable.

Learn to Pace Yourself.
Like everything else in nature, our bodies need up times and down times - time to work and time to rest. We need moderation and balance. We can work intensely for a while, but then we need to take a break. Insert some quiet and relaxing interludes into your daily routine.

Minimize Worrying.
Worry solves very few problems, but it does increase our general anxiety. If you find yourself obsessing over your concerns, and perhaps losing sleep in the process, write them down, talk them over with a friend, come up with a real solution to the problem, take action - and then let it go.

Take Care of Your Physical Needs.
When our bodies are run down, we are more susceptible to burnout. Make sure you have a nutritious diet (especially a good breakfast), but avoid abusing yourself with rigid diets. Try to get as much exercise as you realistically can. Avoid addictive substances. And get plenty of sleep.

Nurture Yourself More Than Others.
Likely candidates for job burnout are those who are more concerned about caring for the needs of others to the detriment of caring for their own needs (this is why nurses, doctors, teachers and others in the helping professions are prone to job burnout). Some people seek the approval of others by agreeing to take on enormous projects and working long hours. Rather than nurturing others as your first response, try nurturing yourself. (If you are drained all the time, how can you effectively help others?). Learn to say "no." Try delegating responsibilities to others rather than taking on an overload yourself.

Take a Close Look at What Your Work Means to You.
Try sorting through what is meaningful in your life and separate it from those things which are temporary and fleeting. Learn what is essential, and what is nonessential, for your happiness.

Examine how your work can become a reflection of your essential self, and, if it cannot, consider ways to modify your current work or perhaps go into a new career altogether. Working with a trained therapist on these questions can open the door to a brand new way of living...with contentment, integrity and true satisfaction.

?????Burning out can be an awful experience. After all, many of us spend most of our waking hours on the job - more hours, in fact, than we spend with our families and friends. When this enormous part of our lives becomes so stressful, along with worry, self-esteem issues, anger, depression and withdrawal, a major personal crisis is generated. Our first impulse is to deny that job stress is finally getting the best of us. We persevere and keep doing the same things every day, working even harder as if that might be the answer to finding relief. But the cycle is futile. More work is not going to alleviate the problem of working too hard - and it further depletes our emotional reserves.

?????Think of a burnout crisis as a gift, one which helps inform us that something is out of kilter in our lives and we must look deeper within to find answers to its resolution. Without the burnout crisis, we may never feel prompted to finally answer some critical questions about our lives:

• What am I trying to accomplish with my worklife?
• What are my key interests - and does my work fit with them?
• What are my key skills - and does my work use them?
• What are my core values - about life balance, about family, about money, about the treatment of people? Is my work in synch with these?
• Am I overworking? If so, why?
• Where is the balance in my life between work and play?
• How would I live my life if I no longer had to work?
• What does work accomplish for me - and what is it preventing me from accomplishing?
• Can I shift the focus of my current work or should I look into another type of work?

?????While these are questions which everyone grappling with occupational stress should reflect on, we often don't have the self-discipline and structure to sufficiently explore them. A trained professional can offer a very focused exploration of worklife issues which can enable you to get your worklife stress sorted out and back to thriving in your chosen work and in your life.

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