Kurt Cobain famously quoted Neil Young’s song “Hey, Hey, My, My” when he declared in his final words that “It is better to burn out than fade away.”

Although both artists hold considerable cultural and artistic caché, is the above statement true? Whether we consciously have considered the statement or not, most of us probably live like it’s true: we want to push the throttle of every day to the maximum speed available and we feel weird when lay down to sleep after a day where we didn’t go full speed.

While achievement and working hard can be a very good thing, we can have certain hairline cracks forming under the surface of our mind and heart due to unmanaged stress, workplace and familial tension and exhaustion.

While stress is normal and ultimately manageable, burning out due to stress is more worrisome and can cause much larger problems for you and those in your family and at your places of work. Serious consequences can result from overwork, as Japan, a highly focused and driven work culture is finding out.

The good news is that if caught, burnout risk can be managed and even reversed. If burn out threat is caught once we can learn to catch ourselves in the future! There is indeed hope.

To identify if you are at risk of burnout we have linked to a simple, 10-minute-long survey published by Scientific American:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quiz-are-you-on-the-path-to-burnout/

If you score in the range where you are concerned about your burnout risk please consider scheduling some time with a counselor at Aspen Counseling Group or for a consultation at Aspen Neurofeedback. You do not have to be alone in the work managing stress and mitigating burnout.