When you’re exhausted, overwhelmed and running on empty, even the most basic tasks can feel daunting. Here are the best moves to make to give yourself a break.

Awesome Step #1: Get Help at Home

First, get your family members to take on more things around the house. You probably don’t need me to tell you that women still spend more time caring for children and doing domestic work than men. Many people find it difficult to have these sorts of conversations with their spouses.

You may also want to hire someone to do the additional work for you: stylist, house keeper, cook, nanny, gardener, groceries. Many grocery stores now offer delivery. You put your order in, they deliver it. If money is an issue, consider how much time those chores take and assess the value of your time. If you value your time with family more than say, scrubbing a toilet, the investment could be worth it.

Awesome Step #2: Get Help at Work

Job pressure is the number one cause of stress. And if you’re like many of my clients, you spend the vast majority of your waking hours at work being stressed out. It’s time to have a conversation with your supervisor about your workload. Here are some links that can help you with that:

Awesome Step #3: Pay Attention to What You Tell Yourself

How often do you say, “I can do this!”? What about, “Just breathe”? Or, “This too shall pass”? Pay attention to how often you tell yourself your favourite motivational phrase. Is it several times a month? A week? A day? If you notice that you’re saying it more frequently, it’s one of the signs that you could be headed for burnout, a state of mental and physical depletion. When it happens more frequently, all of the other steps in this list become even more important to follow.

Awesome Step #4: Feel What’s Happening to Your Body

Notice how your body is doing. How much energy do you have? How relaxed or tense are you? Need to go to a registered massage therapist a lot? The stress response, fight or flight, readies our muscles for action. They don’t know when we’re under pressure from work or whether we’re in physical danger. They’re ready to go either way.

What’s your digestion like? A lot of people complain about stomach upset (and worse) when they are stressed out. How much sleep do you get? Or how little sleep because your mind just won’t shut off?

How are you breathing? With your diaphragm or with your chest and shoulders? Pay attention to how your body moves when you breathe. If your chest and shoulders move, you’re taking shallow breaths. Instead, take a deeper breath using your diaphragm. You’ll know you’re doing it because your tummy and lower ribcage will expand. This helps to calm and relax you.

Awesome Step #5: Get Professional Help

Being exhausted and overwhelmed all the time can have serious implications for your physical and mental health. It’s important to have a professional’s support to ensure you don’t slide further past depletion and into depression, and so you can get to a place where you have energy, and where you feel alive and happy again. It could be a counsellor or a life coach. Learn whether a counsellor or a life coach is the best fit for you.