As educators, it is important to focus on your mental health to prevent stress and burnout.
Educators are reaching career exhaustion at increasingly alarming rates.
Educators want to connect with their students and make a positive difference. This requires skillful teaching and creativity, the ability to navigate the challenges of education, and always making your students the focus. The pressure of making sure that you are doing what’s best for your students can lead to burnout.
Here are a few things you can look out for as indicators of burnout:
1. Exhaustion and lack of sleep
2. Developing a cynical perspective towards important things in life
3. Detachment and distancing oneself from your job or social activities
4. Lack of engagement and energy
5. Lack of creativity and emotional dysregulation
How can you combat burnout?
• Strongly consider the concept of Triage. Triage is a workflow process that enables you to accept the fact that you cannot be all things to all people in a finite amount of time. It means prioritizing your attention to tasks in order of importance.
• Try to implement task distribution. This way, you don’t deplete all your energy doing too many things all at once.
• Self-care is elemental to avoiding burnout. Find an activity that helps you rejuvenate and reconnect with yourself, such as meditation, yoga, jogging or reading a book.
• If you are feeling triggered, be compassionate to yourself and forgive yourself. Don’t beat yourself up over feeling exhausted.
• Take a breather in between tasks or whenever you feel overwhelmed. Step aside for 60 seconds to regulate your emotions, then resume the task.
