Burning Out From Chasing After Your Dreams

Turning your dreams into reality can feel like a lot of work.  You’re pushing yourself to take action and work to make progress towards your biggest goals in life.  But, sometimes that can lead to burn out.  Especially if you feel like you’re the constant hamster wheel of setting bigger and bigger goals for yourself.  Having goals is an important part of your life but not the point where you work yourself to the brink of exhaustion.  You must learn to balance taking care of yourself while still making progress towards your goals in order to avoid burning out from chasing after your dreams.

Your Identity

Working to achieve your goals can become a part of your identity.  You’re known as an overachiever, ambitious, and hard working.  The moment you achieve one goal, you’re onto the next.  You’re constantly looking for how you can achieve a higher level of success just to see how far you can go.  You have this desire to learn and grow while goals give your life a sense of purpose.  It’s an exciting way to keep elevating your life.  But, you have to wonder when it will ever be enough for you.

Define Your Dream Life

Take time define your dream life.  Sit in the quiet stillness and reconnect to your goals and dreams.  Envision your dream life and what’s most important to you.  Visualize what you’re doing on a daily basis.  Perhaps that’s having time for a morning routine, starting work at a certain time and ending work at a specific time to enjoy the rest of the night with your significant other.  Take a look at your time off and see what you’re doing in these moments.  Perhaps that’s traveling or just exploring locally.  Maybe you’ve taken up a new hobby that you’re passionate about.  This could be volunteering, learning to garden, etc.  Spend time truly visualizing what you want your dream life to look like.

What Would You Regret?

Next, ask yourself what would you regret at the end of your life.  That could be not spending enough time with friends, family, focusing on self care, traveling, or even just fully living life.  You’re so consumed with achieving your goals, it’s easy to lose sight of the important things in life.  Give yourself permission to slow down and be present.  Take in the sights and smells around you.  Spend time with friends and family.  Do things that matter most to you so that you don’t get to the end of life with regrets.

Be Present

You don’t always need to be chasing after the next goal or dream.  Allow yourself to live life where you’re currently at.  Be proud of yourself and take in what’s gotten you here.  Celebrate the success you do have.  The future success will still come but in it’s own time.  Hurrying through life trying to achieve the next level of success can leave you feeling burnt out.  The key is finding a balance between being present in life and still working towards your goals.  Sometimes you’ve got your head down, focused on achieving your goal that you forget what truly matters.

What Matters Most

It’s hard to believe, but life is not about how hard you worked or all the goals you achieved.  It’s about knowing what matters most to you in your life so that when you get to the end, you don’t look back with regret of what could have been.  Take time to be fully present and spend time on what’s most important in your life.  Put down your phone, eliminate distractions, and prioritize scheduling in uninterrupted time for the things that matter most in your life.  Determine what matters most to you at the end of the day.  The truth is, this isn’t always making massive huge progress towards your goals.  Sometimes it’s just one small action step so that you leave room for other important factors in your life.

If you don’t define your dream life for yourself, you’ll be on the constant hamster wheel of setting bigger and bigger goals for yourself.  Continuing to run towards your goals until you’re feeling burnt out.  Begin by defining what your dream life looks like for you.  It will be different for everyone so focus on the dream life you want to be living.  Next, determine what you would regret not doing at the end of the day.  Choose to be present and focus on the things you decide matter most to you.  Ultimately, this is how you will feel fulfilled and accomplished at the end of the day.  It won’t be by burning yourself out recklessly chasing after your dreams.