“Mommy! What happened to Daddy?”, asked the curious 5-year-old kiddo when she saw her father feeling uneasy in the middle of the night. Though it wasn’t an anomaly to see her father drained & fatigued daily, today seemed like an exaggeration. “Nothing, you just go to bed, it’s your school tomorrow”, her mother convinced her while maintaining the perfect balance between a doting mother & an empathetic better half.
Nothing
It was actually nothing that she hadn’t seen before. For, she had witnessed all the angst, frustration, distress & burnout, brought home by her husband from his job. Hardly a day went by when his job stress didn’t accompany him from his office.
Today was even special, the 31st of March, the highly celebrated financial-year-ending ceremony.
On the contrary, it was quite unceremonious for her husband. Despite burning the midnight oil, he had fallen short of his target achievement which was apparently, a recipe for disaster in his line of work. To add salt to injury, he was ‘cordially-invited’ to the infamous review meet the next day.
Presenting – ‘The Review Meet’
Oh Gosh!
The meeting room appeared nothing short of entering a haunted house where blood-sucking vampires desperately awaited the non-performers to feed on. He had been a witness to numerous such ‘morale-boosting’ review meets which decided the fate of non-performers with an added attraction of public humiliation. Tomorrow was perhaps, his ‘lucky day’.
Given his medical history of blood-pressure tussle, his stress only served the purpose of fanning the flames. Rest assured, he wasn’t the only one who was paying the price of his affliction but his entire family.
As poignant as it may sound, the story mirrors the stress & burnout in corporate jobs, which is not uncommon nowadays. Employees succumbing to the job pressure is no longer a solar-eclipse occasion but a frequent occurrence. The ambitious & ever-demanding performance targets coupled with the perfect ingredients of office politics & work-life imbalance have dimmed the sheen of white-collar jobs in the corporate world lately.
Woefully, ‘The Great Corporate Burnout Show’ is not restricted to the junior levels but also to the senior management levels in all uniformity. For the freshers, the glamour of working in the erstwhile sought-after corporate world is deglamorizing at an early stage. Perhaps, the majority of the workforce might still be physically fit on paper, but they are degenerating mentally adagio. Nevertheless, as they say in corporate lingo, “If it can not be documented, it does not exist.”
That brings us to the most burning questions of the hour, A flaunting corporate job, an influential visiting card to boast of, a fully-loaded workstation with awards & certificates, an envious LinkedIn profile, an admirable social image, swanky gadgets & automobiles…..BUT,
• Are we really happy?
• Are we mentally at peace?
• Do we get a good sleep every day?
• Are we satisfied with how we live each day?
• Is anything missing from our life?
• Are we adding happiness to our near & dear ones?
• Can we gladly say, our dreams have been fulfilled?
The seed of a take-charge-of-your-life mindset originates from here. To grow this seed as the ‘Tree of Life’, let’s have a quick meet-up with the 3-commandments that are critical in managing stress & burnout in Corporate jobs:-
• Draw a line – Easier said than done, setting clear boundaries requires taking a firm stand on your priorities. To begin with, avoid bringing work to your home regularly as it is the first nail in the coffin of work-life balance. Agreed, you are overburdened with the workload or you lack the audacity to deny your boss to work after office hours.
But go back to your memory lane & revisit the first instance when you stretched yourself. You will realise you were an accomplice in kickstarting this suffocating trend by quietly consenting & camouflaging your discomfort to please your boss & colleagues.
Now ask yourself, “Can you work like this for the rest of your life?”
& now look at your family & ask yourself, “Why should they live with your absence even in your presence?”
The hunt for these answers will navigate you to the path of Life 2.0. The Sooner you find it, the better it is. However, if you are already deeply stuck in your Life 1.0, restart your work life before it’s too late to restart.
• Yes, you deserve it – When was the last time you took leave for a vacation without worrying about your boss’s approval or pile of workload? When was the last time you set your mail auto-reply to “Hi! I’ll be on leave for a week.”
If you are taking long to recollect, you probably have been too hard on yourself. In my decade-and-a-half journey of corporate safari, I have been a spectator to numerous instances where employees are wary of applying for their legit leaves for fear of their boss’s wrath or crushing workload. Even worse, even such a recommendation by their family sends jitters down their spine.
Then how different is it working compared to working in the British colonial era?
That being said, even if a few somehow cross the first level of the ‘Fear Factor Show’ (aka taking leave), they spend more time on their official calls & team meetings during their so-called family vacation. Wow, do you really call it a vacation?
• The sooner the better – Blame the corporate culture or our self-created world, once we enter the corporate circus, we are no longer our natural selves. In a bid to stay competitive & secure our future, we start living with autogenous notions as if we are running the entire show all by ourselves & the entire organisation will come to a standstill if we don’t sacrifice our lives for the honour of our great organisation.
If you also happen to dwell in such a fantasy land, you might want to read these bitter-but-true eye-opening facts:-
• To begin with, Sorry to disappoint, but you are no more than just an Employee code for your organisation.
• No one is irreplaceable in the corporate world. If you think you are, check your replacement in the last organisation.
• Should you sacrifice your life for the honour of your great organisation, your replacement will be working in no time,
• The only ones affected by your stress & burnout are your family & friends, not your boss & colleagues.
• Reality Alert – Nothing is permanent in the corporate circus.
“Are we really work-happy?”