It’s that time of year again. You know the one I’m talking about. It’s cold, and it has been for months. You can’t remember the last time you saw blue sky instead of grey clouds. Daylight seems to last for about twelve minutes, and you feel like you might develop a case of adult rickets if you don’t get some sun on your skin soon. Have I mentioned there’s a pandemic going on? And on top of all of this, you’re supposed to dig into some secret reserve tank (because your reserve tank emptied out weeks ago) and find the motivation to get a workout in? It seems impossible. I know, I get it, I’ve been there, I am there. While there’s not much we can do about some of the factors listed above, there are a few things you can do to help combat your mental burnout, now and any other time of the year.
This is the first in a series of 3 blogs which will address the most efficient and effective ways to get yourself out of the mental-burnout slump, and to ensure that you don’t get there in the first place.
The following is my first suggestion on this topic: Get a community.
I have seen it proven time and again - with myself, my clients, and my friends - if you have a community, it will be easier to get motivated, stay motivated, and get back on the horse when you sometimes fall off. It is crucial to have someone asking where you’re at, what you’re doing, and giving you a loving kick in the ass when you don’t show up for your workouts or for yourself. Your community should be people who support you, but who also stretch you. People who support you will tell you things like, “It’s ok, you can do this, everyone has a bad day.” People who stretch you will tell you things like, “I think you can do better, you can’t skip this workout, you need to suck it up.” Do your best to find a community, whether that be one person or one hundred people, who will do both.
It also helps if these are humans that you actually like; people whose faces you want to see at your 5:00am or 9:00pm training session when you’re exhausted and sore. Community can be tough in our current world, but it’s absolutely possible and necessary. Go virtual, or get Mrs. Next Door on board, or join a team or a club or a gym. Do what it takes to surround yourself - physically if you can, but virtually and emotionally at minimum - with people who will support and motivate you, and who you can support and motivate in return.
This is step one to combating mental burnout. Do you have a community? If you don’t, challenge yourself to get involved in one this week. Some ways you can do this are by asking someone to be your workout/accountability buddy, joining an online group with similar fitness goals (a yoga or running club, for example), or recruiting members of your family. If you already have a community, challenge yourself to lean on them more, and to be a person they can lean on in return. Set the example for how your community should lift up and show up for each other. In the words of Geri Weitzman, “Sometimes you gotta create what you want to be part of.”