Becoming Resilient and Avoiding Burnout

Ircel Harrison, Coaching Coordinator

How resilient are you during these stressful times? Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. If a leader does not have resilience, a consequence may be burnout. Burnout is “a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion caused by long term involvement in emotionally demanding situations.”

What are some signs of burnout?

• You have a critical attitude toward your ministry, and you seek to disengage from necessary responsibilities.

• You experience changes in your normal life functions—difficulty sleeping, extremes of eating (loss of appetite or bingeing), headaches or backaches.

• You distance yourself from co-workers, family, and friends.

• You become irritated easily and lash out in anger.

• You have low motivation and blame others for your mistakes.

You can avoid burn-out and be more resilient by leveraging your social and emotional intelligence competencies. Daniel Goleman has suggested we become resilient when we are self-aware, socially adept, and empathetic. He writes that this allows a person to “survive and thrive on the other side of a life crisis because they have the social and relational skills to be able to handle unexpected and unfortunate circumstances.”

If there is one thing that ministry leaders need right now, it is resilience! In a rapidly changing environment, the ability to bounce back and keep moving forward is essential.