What Are the Best Solutions for Workplace Stress and Burnout?

There is a solution to workplace stress and burnout in compassion. That is, if you feel stressed, bad, or exhausted, help someone else. Show compassion, and you will find yourself feeling better. The act of showing compassion not only meets no resistance but also heals you first and foremost.

But how can we treat others with compassion if we feel ourselves to be stressed and burned out? To treat others with compassion, we first need to develop compassion toward ourselves. Without self-compassion, there is no motivation to act kindly toward others. We need a foundation and a reason to develop a positive attitude toward others, which starts with understanding that compassion is essential for our own well-being.

Compassion then becomes a form of self-preservation. When we are stressed, our bodies activate a “fight or flight” response, which strains our systems. However, when we show compassion, our bodies relax and operate in an entirely different way, one of calm and balance.

In addition to compassion, empathy is important to alleviate stress and burnout. Empathy in this case means engaging with others and understanding their situations.

But once again, how can we develop an empathetic attitude to others when we are in a struggle within our own boundaries? The problem here is that we never learned how to give in a fulfilling way when we were growing up. It thus turns out that we never learned how to develop compassion and empathy, qualities that involve our extension from ourselves toward others. We learned how to work in a technical fashion to get a job, to earn money, and to competently complete tasks and take what we need. By doing so, we developed a disconnection between the work we do and our inner desire for fulfillment, turning work into a source of depletion rather than one of satisfaction.

To counter this, we need to learn a new approach: to work with a mindset that giving can be fulfilling. If we feel that we give through our work and simultaneously fill ourselves, we will experience joy and contentment throughout the day. However, developing such a mindset requires a change of our nature. Regardless of the job or role, we need to learn how to find fulfillment in giving.

Giving, in its purest form, means working for the benefit of others with the same devotion as we would for ourselves and our loved ones. For example, when we work for our children, we do not feel depleted because our giving is driven by love. The big challenge we face in our lives is to extend this feeling of devotion out of love to strangers. Doing so requires connection-enriching education, i.e., learning that helps us understand that we live in an interconnected and interdependent system, an integral network, where by fulfilling others, we become fulfilled through them in return.

When we unravel our interconnectedness and interdependence in a positive manner, we start to feel a new desire to give, love, and positively connect with others. Then, the distinction between giving and receiving disappears and the difference between strangers and loved ones also dissolves. We come to realize that we are all part of a unified whole, and in giving, we experience the greatest fulfillment.