Mental Exhaustion and Three Tips for Managing It

We’ve all been there…struggling to get out of bed in the morning. And even before you hit the shower, your mind is already racing with the pressures ahead at work and your social life.

Brain fatigue can leave you feeling overwhelmed and emotionally drained, making your responsibilities and problems appear unmanageable. Unfortunately, this kind of detachment and apathy can hurt all aspects of your personal and professional life.

Sometimes, you may feel trapped in your situation and powerless to change it. Luckily, with some assistance, you can overcome mental exhaustion. Which is why, especially after all the holiday fuss, I thought it important to share a few tips to help you alleviate it.

Let’s get started!

So, What Is Mental Exhausion

Mental exhaustion is similar to physical exhaustion, except, it affects your mind rather than your muscles. It usually manifests itself after a period of intense concentration on a mentally demanding task. If you are constantly alert or stressed, you may experience this sort of brain drain or burnout.

This mental wall tends to manifest in various ways, including physical, emotional or behavioral aspects. You start noticing that you have a significantly lower emotional resilience; you are less motivated to work or keep procrastinating things.

Three Tips on How to Manage Mental Exhausion

Just like physical exhaustion, mental exhaustion also has remedies that we can adopt. That said, here are the top three tips that you can incorporate to deal with your burnout.

1. Rest

When you feel that your mind is working overtime and there’s a slight degree of burnout, your job is to slow it down and do whatever will make you relax for a minute or so. Be it taking a walk, having a nap, or simply reading a book, all these ideas should help reduce your mental exhaustion.

2. Boundaries

More often than not, we keep pushing our minds despite the indications that we might be suffering from burnout. And in such instances, we believe that our minds will catch up, or really, we’ll work ourselves out of the mental exhaustion. In reality, what we need to do is pause and re-establish our boundaries. It is essential to understand where your limit is, especially when it comes to your mental health.

3. Reset

Reset is almost similar to rest. We can say it’s sort of the reboot your mind needs to push past your burnout. You need to start making decisions on what will help you recover and what you need to do to maintain a healthy mental balance.

Before you Go

Mental exhaustion can make it difficult for you even to complete the most basic of tasks. And that’s completely fine. There’s no shortcut to mental fatigue – that’s because we are all humans and we burn out sometimes. Therefore, the only probable cause of action is to find ways to deal with it. The above tips should help you get out of that mental state and reduce the burnout effects. Remember, the key is to take care of your mental health.

Things can feel overwhelming at times, but these techniques should help make your stress more manageable and bring a sense of calm to your daily life.

If you want further support around your happiness and well-being, you can find my book Ten Times Happier here.

If you want to explore slowing down and feeling grounded, you can find my book Ten to Zen here.

Take care, look after yourself and I’ll speak to you soon.

Owen

P.S. For regular tips on looking after your mental health, follow me on my social media, Facebook, Twitter & Instagram.