Sometimes your body sends off warning signs that you are taking on more than you can handle:
• Brain fog
• Fatigue
• Headaches
• High blood pressure
Unfortunately, ignoring these “warning sirens” can end up being quite detrimental to your overall health and wellness. In fact, sometimes it can even be deadly when excessive stress and anxiety lead to a heart attack or stroke.
Here are five big signs that you need to improve your work/life balance because your body is being overworked.
1. You are no longer taking good care of yourself
If you want to be healthy and have a good quality of life, you need to take care of yourself. Unfortunately, it can be easy to neglect your body’s needs when you are working at a stressful job or have a lot of overtime. For example, you might go ahead and go to work even when you are feeling a bit under the weather. You might feel too busy to cook a nutritious meal, so you settle for fast food or even snacking on junk food. Often, people who feel swamped from work don’t take the time to exercise.
All of those things can cause your body to eventually break down.
Therefore, no matter how busy you feel, you still need to find/make the time to step away from work to give your body a rest. Start getting in the habit of going for a walk every day. Enroll in a class or activity that you find interesting. Find ways to relax, as well as “pamper/reward” yourself after a hard day’s work.
2. You are not getting enough sleep
Not getting enough sleep at night is another common sign that you are overworking yourself. For instance, the average adult should get seven or eight hours of sleep every night. However, if you find yourself getting just four or five hours (or even less) a night, then you are putting your health in serious jeopardy.
No matter how much you still feel like you have to do, make yourself go to bed at a decent time at night. Even if you can’t accomplish everything before going to bed, you still need to give yourself an adequate night’s sleep to be able to function well the next day.
3. You are not eating enough
Often, when people overwork themselves, they begin to eat much less — and even skip meals. For example, the stress from working all the time might take away their appetite. Unfortunately, when you skip meals, you end up depriving your body of the vital nutrients that it needs to stay healthy and strong.
Even if you don’t feel hungry at mealtime, you still need to eat a healthy meal. One way to improve your appetite is to exercise more — which will burn off calories that your body will want to replenish.
4. You are allowing important relationships to falter
A big part of your quality of life comes down to the quality of your relationships with the people who are most important to you:
• Partner/spouse
• Family members
• Friends
• Colleagues
If you notice yourself neglecting important relationships, it might be a sign that you are overworking yourself. Once again, it can be tough to find free time when it seems like all you do is work. However, it’s important that you find/make the time to spend with friends and loved ones. Don’t pass on opportunities to get out and socialize. Sometimes getting out of the house for a night with friends can be just the thing that your body really needs.
5. You are turning to substances to help you cope with feeling overwhelmed
Lastly, one of the biggest mistakes that people make when they feel overwhelmed from being overworked is turning to substances such as drugs and alcohol to help them cope. While booze or narcotics might offer you a temporary reprieve from all of your work-induced stress and anxiety, you can end up with some serious health consequences — like addiction and even diseases. Furthermore, heavy alcohol and drug use will end up causing more harm to your mental health as well.
Therefore, instead of turning to drugs or alcohol as a coping mechanism, you should seek out the support of good friends, loved ones, or even professionals like counselors and therapists. Sometimes just talking things out with someone willing to listen can lighten your load.
In short, when you start to neglect your health and wellness, it’s often a sign that you are trying to take on too much. Furthermore, not getting enough sleep and nutrition can also be signs that your body is being overworked. Sometimes people allow work-induced stress to hurt their important relationships. In extreme cases, people turn to substance abuse to help themselves cope with being overworked.
