At the recent Empowering Minds: First Identifiers Training hosted by Kent County Farm Bureau, speaker Ian Hill made one thing clear from the beginning:
“Put on your own mask first.”
Anyone who has flown on a commercial airplane is familiar with the part in the pre-flight safety demonstration when they show how the oxygen masks drop from the ceiling in case of a loss of cabin pressure and tell you to secure your own mask on before assisting anyone you’re traveling with—even your children.
Hill repeated “Put on your own mask first” several times, emphasizing that you are to do it no matter what you do for a living, no matter who you are caretaking for.
So before he taught us how to step in for neighbors and loved ones before they are in a mental health crisis, he taught us a Burnout Immunity Plan. He said, “Burnout is the gateway to depression, which is the gateway to despair, which is the gateway to making a decision you can’t come back from.”
Burnout Immunity Plan
The Burnout Immunity Plan depends on a few basics: that you are getting enough sleep, eating and drinking to properly fuel your body, and spending time with people who positively affect your mental health. These are basics to address before you do anything else.
Each of the following parts of the plan are individual to you. Take some time to go through each category. Think about your unique values, personality, responsibilities, what feeds you and what drains you.
What is your WHY?
What are the values behind your actions? What helps you navigate when life is complicated? What keeps you steady?
Write down why you do what you do.
Make a NOT-TO-DO List
We are familiar with writing a To-Do list, but this is a tool to help you determine what you’re doing that is not bringing redeeming value to your life and your family’s life. You have only around 100 usable hours a week for working, volunteering, family, and fun.
Write down ALL your responsibilities.
In a second column, write down which of them could be done by someone else. Hill said, “You think you’re the only one who can do what you’re doing. But someone will step up. If they don’t, that task or role might not have been as important as you thought.”
Write down your Not-To-Do List and then don’t do those things.
Set real BOUNDARIES
For example, if you run a volunteer organization or you are a supervisor at work, set a boundary about contact hours. Either do not contact people (text, email) after a certain hour, do not reply to contact after a certain hour, or preface after-hour contacts with “Do not respond until business hours.”
If you struggle with not responding to phone contact, turn your notifications off during certain hours. The plan here is to create structures to help you resist falling back into habits that keep you from resting.
Write down your boundaries. Make sure people know about them. Follow through.
Make a SIMPLE RECHARGE PLAN
Imagine that your energy is like your phone battery: when it gets low, you will do what you need to get it recharged.
What could you do once a day to get your battery from 1% to 30%?
What could you do once a week to get your battery from 30% to 70%?
What could you do once a quarter to get your battery from 70% to 100%?
Write down your unique recharge actions.
Your timings may be different than the rhythm above. The idea is to identify how frequently you need to recharge so you do not get drained. Ian described it as, “Do your recharge the hour before you’re noticeably grumpy.”
Identifying what you need to do/not do to recharge also involves the more difficult task of identifying the barriers to your recharge strategies—and negotiating with the people in your life to help you remove those barriers.
Write down who will have your back to make sure you can recharge. Talk to or message them to set the plan in motion.
Especially if you’ve been ignoring your battery, Ian said you need “an all-out commitment to keeping your battery charged. Don’t start changing the world until you’re solid.”
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We hope that you do write down your Burnout Immunity Plan and then put it somewhere you can see it regularly—and involve the people in your life to help you follow it.