Ep. 52 - How to Avoid Burnout (Rejuvenate Your Mindset and Performance)

What's up guys welcome back to the Psych Athletes Podcast. It's your host Ryan and today we're talking about how to avoid burnout and rejuvenate your mindset and performance. If you want to support me my work in the Psych Athletes Podcast you can go ahead and subscribe to the Psych Athletes Patreon, the link is in the description below. By choosing to become a patron you'll get access to a patron only bonus episode every single month, access to a library of mental resources and techniques, priority support from me and early access to weekly episodes. For example today's episode actually came out for patrons on Monday. Remember to follow us on Instagram @psychathletes if you haven't already. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and I'll see you guys in the episode. I hope everybody said a great start to the new year. Last week I recorded an episode talking about setting goals and building habits and I thought it was perfect for everyone's new year's goals, new year's resolutions and a great way to start off the new year. So if you haven't listened to that check it out. I published it last week. But today we're talking about athlete burnout. We're talking about burnout in general and it's something that's very personal to me. Just like everything on this podcast is, everything on this podcast I talk about with such an energy and such a passion because I've struggled with all these things. I've been in your shoes. I know what it feels like to struggle with anxiety with self-doubt, depression, low confidence, frustration, sadness, anger. I know what it feels like to be in your shoes and to be in an athlete that struggles mentally. That's why I'm so passionate about these things and one of those things is being burnout. And it's such a real, real, real thing. Especially in today's hyper competitive sphere of sports. Sports requires so much from athletes of all ages, not just at the professional level, not just at the collegiate level, but at the amateur level as well. And it just requires so much from us physically and emotionally. It gets to be a lot sometimes in college. I had workouts at 6 a.m. I had a team meeting at 8 a.m. I had classes. I had three or four classes throughout the day and then I had four-hour practice and then I had a team meeting again. And then I had homework and on top of all that, I'm trying to balance a social life so it gets to be alive, gets to be emotionally and physically draining. Especially if you're a perfectionist like me, I had this idea that I had to push through sadness, through frustration, through anger and fatigue in order to start playing well again. I thought that I would feel better once I played well. And you did. But that's what, that's what riding the mental roller coaster is. You ride the highs and you ride the lows really, really hard and that's not good for our mental health or well-being and especially not for our performance. I started associating my happiness with my performance in sport. I told myself if I'm not happy, then I'm probably not playing well and that's fine. I have to play well to be happy and that's such a dangerous mentality to have. And I know a lot of athletes, I don't know if it's to the level that kind of severity, but I know a lot of athletes kind of have the same mindset that that perfectionist mentality and burnout, prives on perfectionism and high expectations. Okay, so today I want to talk to you guys to kind of inform you guys about athlete burnout. How do I identify it? What the symptoms are and some things that you can start doing to either avoid or eliminate it and start getting back to yourself. Start playing the game like yourself again and start enjoying it a lot more. So I want to start off by saying and you've probably heard it a lot less or less is sometimes more. More is not always more. I know that's kind of confusing, but just let me clarify it. Let me clarify a little bit, but the majority of athletes who experience burnout tend to have what I call a strong athletic identity. And I've talked about it so many, so many times on this podcast. If you're an avid listener, you probably know what I'm talking about by now, but when we have a strong athletic identity, we have a really strong association to our sport. We kind of identify really strongly with our role as an athlete. Okay, our sport takes up the majority of our time. We're really passionate about it. We're thinking about it all the time and it's just everything that we are. That's what it means to have a strong athletic identity. And if you have a strong athletic identity, you probably have like I mentioned earlier, a perfectionist mentality, meaning that when you have high expectations and you aren't meeting those expectations, you think that you have to kind of push through any feelings of anger, any irritability, any sadness, any fatigue, any tiredness. And this kind of behavior only serves to deteriorate our mental health, aggravate these issues further and of course negatively affect our performance. So I want to stress to you guys this episode that a little time off, a little mindfulness, enjoyment of other activities, interests or even meditation can not only rejuvenate your mental health, your mindset and rejuvenate your enjoyment of your sport, but rejuvenate your performance as well. So first, I want to talk about the symptoms of athlete burnout and these are physical, behavioral and emotional/psychological symptoms that you guys might be experiencing. If you are experiencing athlete burnout or if you're experiencing any of these symptoms at all, just so you know, you can identify them because the first step in anything mental health and performance is always awareness, being aware of the situation, the problem, so you can formulate a plan to combat or solve these problems. Okay, so some symptoms include constant fatigue, even after a full night of rest, decreased energy level, increased levels of illness or injury and consistent performances, lack of enthusiasm or enjoyment from practice or competition. And I remember when I started to feel like sports was a chore to me, I really, really hated practice. I always dreaded it. I always procrastinated getting ready and that's a red flag of burnout right there. More symptoms include inability to focus, making excuses for a bad performance, frequent absence or resistance from practice, expression of the desire to quit. I heard all the time in college, I want to quit. I want to quit and these guys would still play and still do and still continue to be burnt out from a sport that they used to enjoy. More symptoms include decreased confidence. Feeling their performance is insignificant to them or their team. I always felt like that. I always felt like I didn't matter to my team. Anger, irritability or apathy, not caring about the game, association of practice or games to negative emotions, like thinking about practices and games and having fear come up, maybe having like the sense of procrastination, the sense of kind of sadness when you think about these things. These are all symptoms of burnout. Just because you experience these things does not necessarily mean that you should stop playing a sport or that you should quit. If you're listening to this podcast, you still have a passion for the game. You still want to improve your mental health and your performance and you want to succeed in your sport. That's okay if you guys have these symptoms. We can remedy them with a little rest and a little mindfulness and some techniques that I'm going to talk about right now. Like I said, the first thing is to know when to rest. I said less is sometimes more. Know when to stop pushing your mind and your body. Not only when you're feeling these symptoms that I'm talking about, these symptoms of burnout, but after days or performances that are tough on your mental health or your mental state. So if you have a bad game, you have a bad performance or you have a bad day, just know or you're feeling tired or fatigue, just know that it's okay to rest a little bit. Maybe schedule a personal day or two each week. We can't keep blending these negative emotions and like our emotions associated with sport and burnout to perpetuate. We need to take some time off. We need to take some time off for our mental health and well being. Obviously proper sleep to ensure that we're focused. Our energy level is high and our attitude towards the day is positive. Guys, time off is absolutely necessary. If you guys have maybe like maybe you're either you could be in collegiate sport. You could be in a sport that requires you or a sport or a level that requires you to be at practice five days a week and that's okay. Just make sure that you guys are taking off properly that Saturday and Sunday. Taking some time to like meditate to sleep to get rest to stretch. Do things that you love. The stuff is super, super important. Do things completely unrelated to your sport. We talked about strong athletic identity earlier in the importance of developing a multi-dimensional self because when we're when we have a strong association to our sport, we probably haven't explored any other avenues or hobbies or interests in our life that can serve as kind of an emotional and psychological buffer for us when we struggle in our sport. So I encourage you to explore other avenues in your life or hobbies or interests that you've never had the time to do before. Do these things on your personal days. These days that you decide to take off from your sport. Decide to take off from thinking, practicing or competing in sport. This can serve as a physical and emotional buffer like I said earlier for hard times when you compete. Think about it as like an athlete for an outlet for your outlet. We always like to think about our sport as like an outlet for our competitive side, right? But sometimes we need an outlet for our outlet. If you guys kind of see what I was saying where you can take your frustrations and something that you can do to kind of rest your mental and emotional state from the rigors of sport from your competition, okay? Do things like reading, like writing. I can't believe I just said that but do other things completely unrelated to your sport. Maybe pick up skating, maybe pick up surfing, go hiking, okay? Get an animal, get a dog, spend some time with your friends or family, okay? Practice an instrument. Anything or video games, it can be anything completely unrelated to your sport that you can use as an outlet for all your frustrations, for all those emotions that you build up during sports and games and competitions. This is kind of going to rejuvenate your energy level and kind of let you appreciate your sport a little bit more, okay? Kind of alleviate the symptoms of burnout that you're feeling, all right? So do things completely unrelated to your sport and no end to rest. Those are the first two. The third thing I'm going to talk about is learning to separate sports and life and life, okay? When you're done training or competing for the day, symbolize this, I talked about this before, I'm pretty sure, but symbolize a moment, a specific moment in which you won't carry the successes, the failures of frustrations or the anxieties throughout the rest of your day. The, all the feelings and emotions and emotions that you accumulate during your games and competition, kind of wash all that away with a specific moment, okay? This can be like a shower. This could be like leaving the field, the court, the court. pitch or taking off your uniform, your sports clothes, or even a post game meditation. Do something that symbolizes you exiting your sports life and entering your life. Your other life. Okay, it kind of sounds wooly-woo when I'm talking about this, but when we do this, we kind of, the importance of separating sports in life is so that we can assure that we don't take the emotions, even the highs and the lows from our sport into our life, because I can lead to, you know, feelings of unmotivation, of low confidence, feelings that we accumulate during our sports career into, you know, our day-to-day activities, into our work, into our school, into our social life. When we kind of have our feelings and emotions and all the negative things that happen to us in our sport, kind of bleed into other areas of our life, it's going to negatively affect our well-being as a whole. So we need to learn to kind of separate our sports life and our life life. Okay, so again, this could be like a shower. And symbolizing that you're washing off all the frustrations and the worries of the day, it could be like leaving the corn be like, okay, I'm done. I'm done competing. I remember all my teammates would tell me that they'd be like, I talked to them and I'm like, why weren't you mad that we lost it? Why aren't you mad right now? And he's like, when I leave the field, I leave the field. Nothing matters to me after that. And that is a great mindset to have. And I know a lot of professional athletes love to explore out their avenues and hobbies in their life and love to kind of separate their sports and their kind of occupation from the rest of their life. I know Mookie Betts is an American baseball player and he does so many other things. He bowls. He plays basketball. He's like a 300-buller. He could be a professional bowler, but he does all these things. And just because you want to separate your sports life and your life life and you want to pursue outside interest does not mean that you aren't dedicated to your sport. There's professional athletes everywhere that have outside interest. Okay, and it's important to explore these things. It's important to separate your sports life and your life life. It's not like a broken record again, but I just want to stress you guys the importance of it. So this can be a shower. This can be leaving the field or court taking off your sports clothes or even like I mentioned a meditation. Okay, meditation is a great way to release. I know you guys are probably like, oh my god, it's talking about meditation. Again, meditation is a great way to release expectations, emotions and frustrations. I have a post game meditation. It's just like the pre-game meditation. I've been giving you guys the one where you kind of listen to that meditation to let go of all the expectations and the desires and the wants for your upcoming competition. How important that is for kind of adopting a freedom of outcome mindset. I have a post game meditation one just like that one. And it just helps you release the emotions and feelings related to your practice or your competition that day. Okay, helping you separate sports and life. So if you want that meditation just DM me, I'll send it to you right away in an emotional state. I want you to go to the field or your games or your competitions or your practices with one goal in mind. I want you to go to have fun and enjoy the little things. Okay, we're not just playing the game we love to play just to play well and succeed. All right, we're playing it as an outlet for our competitive nature and for our personal enjoyment and overall happiness. Okay, guys, we started playing the game because we love and enjoy it, not for stats and not for coaches and not for others. Okay, the sooner we remember this, the faster we can rejuvenate our mental health and performance. That's all I have for you guys today. I hope this guy, I hope this helped you guys out and I hope you enjoyed the episode. Just a reminder guys that if you want to support me and my work and of course the psych athletes podcast, you can go ahead and subscribe to the psych athletes Patreon in the description below. Okay, remember to follow us on Instagram @psychathletes. If you haven't already, leave us a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify and I'll see you guys in the next episode. Peace.