Rekindle The Passion In Your Job

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* A collage of distorted clocks, sxc.hu/ba1969.
- Recall The Time When We Went To Work, Not Because We Had To, But Because We Wanted To
- As a child, one often wondered: while we have the doctor to go to when we have health problems, where do the doctors go when _they_ have health problems? If a recent study is to be believed, looks like the doctors have nowhere to go. No really. Especially when they are suffering from burnouts and fatigue that sap all enthusiasm.


Ever witnessed the slow shuffle of the feet and the don't-care listless airs that comes over the medicos and healthcare professionals as they immerse themselves into their daily routine? Patients can sense the indifferent attitude, bordering on the callous, devoid of any empathy --- of the people whose job it is to heal. Whatever happened to the talk of the good doctor establishing meaningful relationships with patients that is a necessary contributor to the healing process? Patients return home wondering what the world has come to.


Patients who in their turn might be in the same boat themselves. For, burnout is a feature not restricted to the health industry alone. Step into any job sector nowadays, and the ghost of burnout looms over the heads of the workers everywhere. Peep into the mind of the support desk employee of a BPO handling an irascible customer who takes perverse pleasure in debasing the executive. No sooner does she disconnect the call than the beep flashes for the next caller, who picks up the debasing exactly from where the previous one left. Can you imagine what this young executive's state of mind would be at the end of her duty hours? The next time you walk into the terminal gate of a busy airport, observe the balding, portly customs officer at the gate waiting for you along with the entire planeload of passengers at peak hour. That is the time when he can't even open his cell phone to wish all the best to his daughter who is on the way for her first job interview. For who knows what the person walking past them, undetected, might hold in their pocket and in their mind? Just imagine - this alert watchfulness continues for planeload after planeload, and I haven't even mentioned the fracas with some irate passenger in between --- what his state of mind would be when his duty hours end?


You get the drift. This is how burnout happens. Here's yet another example. See the obviously-fatigued patrol officer there? The one who has just returned from the beat? He has had to help paramedics pull to the kerb a few mangled bodies left splattered on the road when a speeding car ran over them. This was the third such case of hit-and-run for him today. Yesterday night, he was involved in a shootout with two masked robbers who raided a liquor store and held the pregnant clerk hostage. And he has just no idea what new "excitement" the next moment will bring. And to think that he grew up reading those superhero comics, dreaming of becoming a superhero himself one day, and save the world from the bad guys.


If there were some portable device that could measure non-intrusively and unobtrusively their health parameters, then a consistent thread of the most common conditions would be found to link most if not all of these people: and the conditions are the all too familiar fatigue, insomnia, depression, hypertension and premature aging. Not to mention more exotic conditions such as carcinogenesis, obesity and diabetes. Probe one level deeper, and chances are that you will find another consistent theme of low morale, consumption of alcohol and / or drugs in their story arcs. Probe gently another level, and you will most likely find a host of family or relationship problems. Oh how did we allow things to come to such a pass? This was definitely not how we had envisioned life would happen when we had started!


Remember the first day at the job? The chest bursting with boundless enthusiasm, eager to take on the world, to "do something" in life, to make "a name" for ourselves, to "make a difference" in the society? We set ourselves a regimen that now in hindsight seems so punishing, yet in those days was just the right thing to do? We gave up the casual carefree days of academic studies, and when we dived straight into the first days of our job or vocation, we turned our back towards the social support networks that we used to find such joy in indulging, and we began saying no to invites from friends & relatives to attend social meets, and we began abrogating our responsibility towards the family. We began judging ourselves by our performances on the job and / or by the number of back-pats and positive appraisals that our seniors gave us. If the performance slipped due to any reason, then forget the seniors and the peers, we were the first to self-criticize.


Yes, we did all that and more because we were so fired up by our ambitions and by our aspirations and by our yearn to give of ourselves and to do good. Our outlook towards life got skewed because our priorities were skewed in one single direction - to make headway in our chosen calling and vocation. This made us forget our innate need for familial and social bonds. This made us forget our ingrained urge for spiritual solace. And accomplishment in our profession, whether it was providing healthcare to a patient or writing realms of Java code, became our sole mantra.


So what has this skewing finally evolved us into? Slowly, our own personal needs became inconsequential in comparison to the urgency of the task at hand. Somewhere along the way, the poison of self-sacrifice took over and began driving our moments. The pressures of the job began becoming too much to cope with and handle.

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* Symbol used in Maslach's Burnout Inventory Manual - wiki.
Emotional exhaustion set in. Cynicism set in. The very same clients and recipients of our care and service - who we were all fired "to do something for" - become our butt of derision. Fatigue sapped all enthusiasm. Apathy took the place of empathy. Indifference replaced compassion. Meaningful relationships with clients or customers or patients? Oh, that was replaced by callousness and indifference long ago. And what about one's own evaluation of performance on the job? There is no sense of accomplishment whatsoever, for we are now utterly disillusioned, thoroughly dissatisfied, and do not give us your talk of inspiration and motivation, please, we have seen it all.

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* 'A Work Psychological Model that Works: Expanding the Job Demands-Resources Model', by Depoina Xanthapoulou, Doctoral thesis, Utrecht University. Job burnouts have consumed the attention of organizations and their HR personnel. Managers are (supposed to be) alert about the state of mind of their star performers. So they have come out with models such as the Job Demands-Resources (JDR) which seek to identify and allocate the amount of "resources" - such as social support and autonomy and empowerment - that will be required to offset that component of the job that "demands" attributes from a worker, such as physical and / or mental stamina and attitude, which the worker may not be trained in.
If only somebody taught us, or we learnt on the way, that there is such a thing as self-awareness and self-monitoring? That there is something called balancing one's professional and personal lives? That nurturing familial and social bonds is as much necessary for getting ahead in one's job as is actual performance on the job? That meeting friends and taking vacations and enjoying spiritual retreats is what the good doctor has recommended for us for our mental health and wellbeing? If only we hadn't skewed our priorities so, then perhaps this burnout wouldn't have happened.

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* 'Reclaiming the Fire: How Successful People Overcome Burnout', by Steven Berglas, Amazon.com. We overcome burnout, and we become successful, by understanding what it is that is driving us.
It is in this backdrop that research being carried out in complementary therapies to cope with on-the-job stress and burnout becomes important. While the healthcare professional groans under the load of the cases being piled upon their shoulders without let and who the system does not expect to complain; while the BPO support executive cringes at the sight of the screen beeping another incoming call and who does not have control over how the next client is going to behave with her; while the customs officer cannot afford to blink as passengers move through the turnstile, lest he should overlook what the x-ray machines are trying to tell him about the innards of the passengers' luggage and also about the innards of their bodies; while the patrol officer is stretched to the limit after handling the scum generated in the society and who cannot predict which crime and what criminal will next face him like a joker suddenly springing from the box --- while these situations are not under their control, what is under their control is how to respond to these stress-producing moments. Not react, respond. A very calibrated response that is cultivated at the level of the powerful mind, with the help of complementary therapies whose efficacy is now well-established.


One of these complementary therapies is MBSR (Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction). Developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn and his colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, this is an eight-week program comprising weekly 150-minute classes and a whole "day of silence" interspersed somewhere in the program. Research literature is replete with findings that demonstrate the benefic impact of MBSR on coping with job-stress and burnout, besides other, non-job related conditions. (For example, this paper in the May 2009 issue of Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice summarizes the findings of research done on the effectiveness of MBSR on trainees and clinicians in hospital setting. This paper here reports the outcome of a study conducted exclusively involving nurses and nurse aides.)

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* Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn, Univ of Mass. Medical School website.
In the field of psychology, a widely-used measure of job-related burnout is the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) (downloads as PDF). This scale arrives at one's stage of burnout by measuring our responses to three parameters: how emotionally exhausted we feel, how depersonalized we have become or what cynical depth we have degenerated to, and our sense of personal accomplishment.

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* 'Maslach Burnout Inventory Manual', Consulting Psychologists Press.
Participants attending the MBSR have reported a significant drop in the three parameters of MBI. They have experienced a marked improvement in psychological markers such as stress, anxiety and depression, a corresponding rise in empathy and spirituality, and an improved sense of control over one's self and one's course of life. All combined, this leads to ebbing away of the burnout feeling, and the return back of the passion for doing one's best in one's chosen calling.

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* MBSR Program on Google TechTalks, YouTube / Google.
For the practicing healthcare professional, this translates to a more sensitized approach towards patients, more tuning-in to the non-verbal cues coming from the patients, and the establishment of a better therapeutic relationship with them, leading to faster recuperation. For the BPO executive this translates to a more detached and professional response to the difficult client, keeping the conversation focused on solving their problem alone and be done with it. For the customs officer this means learning to relax and at the same time not lowering the guard, to maintain one's calm and poise in the face of angry and hassled passengers. For the patrol officer this yields to maintaining one's sense of optimism and good cheer when confronted with all that is negative in the society.

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* The 'Big Five' Personality Traits - courtesy signalpatterns.com. Job burnout situations do not elicit the same responses in everyone. One's personality disposition too plays an important role in determining how one reacts - responds - to stressful and debilitating and high-demand situations.

We look at human personality nowadays as extending five major dimensions - Neuroticism (easy tendency towards neuroses and negative emotions such as anger, irritation, anxiety, etc), Extraversion (sociableness, gregariousness, assertiveness, etc), Conscientiousness (sense of dependability, thoroughness, non-spontaneity, etc), Agreeableness (warmth, friendliness, empathy in social interactions, etc) and Openness (openness to new ideas and thoughts, creativity, etc).

According to a research paper reporting the outcome of a study conducted on employees in the hospitality industry, the personality trait a person predominantly possesses determines whether he or she will be able to endure the demands of a thankless job, or whether he or she will go under.

So a person predisposed towards neuroticism is likely to burn out faster than a firecracker (sounds obvious, doesn't it?). You will find this person reporting for duty one day, and the next you know, they are already AWOL.

A person who tends to be agreeable and eager to please has greater empathy and will treat their clients / patients with the humaneness they deserve, and not as objects, and therefore such a person will derive much job-satisfaction at the sight of a happy smile on the face of the recipient of their care and attention. The happy smiles offset whatever negative feeling that might rear its head in their innards.

Extraverts are less likely to feel the drainage of emotions and therefore are more rugged when it comes to bearing additional loads of cases on their shoulders; their DNA neutralizes whatever toxic cynicism that might threaten to overwhelm at times.

The conscientious amongst us usually take pride in the orderliness and discipline with which they execute their jobs, and this pride sees them through the long hours of the day.

(This particular research did not find any correlation between Openness and burnout; quite possibly because the setting was hospitality industry where the front-desk employees are required to perform a set of well-structured jobs and the trait of openness to new things is therefore not tested.)

The conclusion? Work on your personality to eliminate all neuroses! Inculcate positive thoughts, search for interesting elements in the dullest and dreariest assignment, and walk home with a sense of having completed your tasks to the utmost of your abilities under the circumstances. The next day, you will arrive at your job not because you have to, but because you want to.

The take-home message is: Are you involved in a high-stressed job which is burning away your enthusiasm? Do you feel you are going through the phase of burnout, or that you will shortly come down with burnout sickness? If so, then in case you haven't already, would be worthwhile considering undergoing some complementary therapy such as the MBSR.