Last month's article (linked below) examined identifying professional burnout. This month we are going to give you skills to put into place in hope of preventing burnout and if it has already set in, what you can do to take back control.
There are many different degrees of burnout from mild annoyance to intense anger or depression. Burnout sets in when negative energy out balances positive energy so the key in preventing and defeating burnout is to increase positive experiences.
Be more than a cop
Imagine your only choice for TV viewing is a monochromatic, black and white thirteen inch set; that television had never evolved into a world of vibrant colors, high definition, big screens and surround sound. This now sounds boring, maybe even frustrating, yet this is how a lot of officers come to live their lives. Their entire identity is summed up by who they are professionally... a police officer. While this identity should be a source of pride it is important to be more than a cop. When our identity is wrapped up in our career, professional burnout can be devastating as it strikes at the core of who we are.
Find ways to broaden who you are. Reconnect with old friends you knew from the days before you were the police, and seek variety in those you socialize with. Become involved in your community through civic groups, your church, or the local schools. Dust off an old hobby, or start a new one. Broadening who you are will not only make you more interesting to yourself and to others, it will help insulate you from those times when work is not going so well.
Play harder than you work
Ultimately a job is a means to an end. Granted, in law enforcement you are providing a needed service that helps keep the world and your community safe. If it weren't for cops society would not be able to function, however, for all practical purposes it is just a job. When people lose sight of this, the job becomes their identity and it becomes intense. In approaching our jobs we can either live to work or we can work in order to live. When people understand the second approach they know the main purpose of their job is to provide the necessary funds to support their time away from work. Use a portion of that money to play. Balance out the intensity of the job with activities that are fun. Go to comedy clubs or the theater, schedule a vacation to a place you've never been, ask your significant other out on a date, or join a sports team. Find activities that that increases your pleasure in life.
Challenge yourself
Do you ever feel you are responding to the same calls and the same people, and with the same outcomes, over and over? Does the idea of pushing a squad up and down the same streets for the next five, ten, or twenty years make you shudder? Boredom is a great predictor of burnout. It can also lead to complacency, the cop's deadliest enemy.
Challenge yourself every day. Develop and set goals for yourself above and beyond those your supervisors give you. It is more enjoyable to work toward goals you created, rather than those that are imposed upon you. They might be in the area of improved traffic enforcement and crash reduction, working more cases from start to finish rather than passing them off to the detectives, improving community relations, or professional enhancement. Remember when the job was fun and you couldn't wait to get to work every day? It can be that way again.
Connect with others
Stay connected to relationships, especially with those who are positive people. When people are burned out they tend to isolate and withdraw from others. This is acceptable as a short-term reaction, but over the long run isolation increases the negative feelings as well as causes conflict in our relationships. People around you will not know how to interpret you pulling away from them. Most will take it as though you are angry with them. In order to pull yourself out of burnout it is important to have minimal contact with people who are negative, those who see the glass half empty and to increase your contact with people who are positive or see the glass as half full. It's easy for someone in a bad mood to increase our negativity so we need to surround ourselves with those who will help increase our positive mood. Think of three positive people and spend time with them to help neutralize the negative effects of the job.
Dust off your sense of humor
Your bosses looked at a bunch of procedures that worked efficiently and were well-liked by the rank and file, so obviously it was high time they be changed. The great new software that was going to make the computer system run faster and better was installed, and crashed everything. And you've just cleared a domestic argument that started over who smoked the last cigarette, and they live across the street from a gas station that sells cigarettes. Face it, you work for the government and the people you serve do not always have the best life skills.
Your job is supposed to be fun! Remember to never take yourself too seriously. Are you still able to laugh at the nonsense people become entangled in? Can you keep the bureaucratic BS in perspective? It is normal to occasionally get frustrated with those we work with and those we work for, never let the frustration become permanent. Look for humor to gain perspective.
Burnout can strike anyone. The good news is burnout is both preventable and curable. By paying attention to our own emotional state we can identify when we are close to, or in the midst of, burnout. By taking proactive steps to counter it, burnout can be beaten and going to work can be fun.
