The Essential Mid-Year Reset to Avoid Burnout
By: Bec Harris
How to beat the mid-year slump.
Author, Mentor and Speaker Amanda Viviers explores the mid-year wobble, when the energy has worn off, resolutions aren’t prevalent, and many of us are tired and feel like we’ve failed at what we set out to do.
The Essential Mid-Year Reset
Amanda explained why a reset in the middle of the year is essential to avoiding burnout before the year is over. She wrote her master’s thesis on burnout, especially in ministry.
She pointed out that getting her marks back from her thesis was a goal done, as part of her new year aspirations.
“That was one of my goals for the year, right? But if you had have spoken to me three months ago, I was definitely questioning my life choices. Why am I doing this study? Does it really matter?”
Inner Dialogue
Amanda had convinced herself that there was chance she wouldn’t pass.
“I think what I realized in the midst of that is our inner dialogue, the way that we speak to ourselves, actually drains us more than we give it credit for.”
She said a great way to manage this is by setting ourselves smaller, simpler rhythms in our day-to-day in order to curb the pressure and negative self-talk.
“Finding ways to be able to reflect well really changes our relationship with the bigger things in our life.”
Name the Areas
Amanda said that naming the areas that are preventing us from succeeding is part of the goal.
“I think actually naming what’s stopping us from really leaning into the good. So really good reflection and prayer and meditation practices change our ability to be able to do the hard things.”
As an example, Amanda said she has a list of six things she is focusing on.
“Every day I come back to that list and I ask myself, what’s one small thing that I can do to really lean into that?”
Last year she suffered from burnout, so she found that the rhythm of friendship on top of parenting teenagers and volunteering at church reignited her sense of connection.
“So, one of my goals for 2026 is to feel more connected to my friends. So a micro goal around that for me is as simple as call someone today.”
She said that she can wait for other people to contact her when she is busy, but there is a desire to feel connected. Calling her friends is an actionable way to meet that goal and find what she is looking for to reset as she faces the next six months of the year.
Reset and Reframe
“I think it’s really important that we look holistically at our whole life. There’s really good research around burnout and we think it’s workload, I’m doing too much or there is a lot of stress in one area of our life, which is true.”
She continued by zooming out onto the whole picture, in order to reframe what is causing burnout.
“What gives us energy and what drains us? And for all of us, it’s really personal. It changes. All of us have a different relationship with different things.”
Amanda has been holding classes where people write and journal.
“For a lot of people, they think, oh, yeah, journaling, just another thing. Add another 20 minutes, 50 minutes onto my day. Then I have to think deeply about my life and reflection.”
Amanda said that the beauty of journaling is getting out of your head and putting thoughts onto paper in order to gain perspective,
“I’ve had some of the clients that I’ve been working with who are saying to me, I have been struggling with this for three years and the simple act of just writing it down, putting it out on paper, getting some perspective, doing it with someone else, that sense of common clarity together as a group and just feeling like I’m human, I do get things wrong. Just that sense of failure.”
Lean into Failure
Leaning into failure is such a valuable way to learn.
“Often we don’t do the things that we desire to do because we feel so afraid of failing. But the possibility of us being able to really lean into our failures and what are we learning from that failure? What are we learning about why we get stuck in that place? What is God saying to me in this season of my life when I’m sitting with humility with the things where I get stuck?”
The greatest learning stems from that, according to Amanda.
“That is where the energy fires… that aha moment. It’s like, I’ve carried this for so long and it’s now time to put that weight down and to reframe it in a new way.”
The Right Club
The right group of friends will determine how far you take your goals and what effects of burnout you are dealing with.
“There’s some really interesting research around burnout from a researcher called Christina Malak. And she speaks about workload, she speaks about autonomy, that sense of being able to be self-directed. But she speaks really clearly around the power of encouragement and the power of words to be able to really impact us in the positive as well as the negative.”
She said there is power in self-talk, but also in the way that we speak to our children and their schooling. There’s importance in positive reinforcement towards what is good.
Think About Such Things
“How do we get out of our own sense of our inner critic or the imposter that tells us we’re not good enough?”
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.” – Philippians 4:8
Amanda said, if someone is outside of that, able to speak with encouragement, exhortation, reminding us who we are in Christ, we can lean into that.
“That is the power of community.”
Make it Smaller
When we are dealing with lofty goals, it is important to start small.
“The world tells us to make our life bigger, so make your life smaller. What is 10 minutes that you could do today? Is it 10 minutes of reading the Bible and asking yourself one question? Walking the block rather than an hour at the gym? Is it 10 minutes of a conversation on a phone with a friend rather than going and staying overnight somewhere.”
She reiterated, we cannot tackle the big things before we start with the small.
Amanda used an analogy of starting small with the big dreams. When she has discussed dreams with her teenage son, he said after school he wants to go to the NBA.
“Okay, mate,” she said, “Let’s just start with 20 baskets in our driveway.”
Top Tips
- Get out of your head
“Make it physical. At the moment, we have a new puppy. Her name is Cashew. We’ve never had a dog before. And we are trying to train her to go to the toilet outside, you know, all the joys of puppy. We made a bingo card on the fridge and because we want to get the kids involved, they initial each time they take the dog outside.”
2. Gamify it
“How can you put up next to, on the mirror in your bathroom, one thing that you’re going to do and really attain that and do that really simply and find a way to be able to gamify it in a really good way?”
The Importance of Grace
“We are meaner to ourselves than anyone else is to us, and those voices of condemnation actually come from our childhood,” said Amanda.
Perhaps an authority figure said something to us and it frames our inner critic. Amanda said there is a chance to ask if God would show us His thoughts around that part of our life and reframe it with compassion.
“It was really funny, I was speaking at a conference recently and I was talking, got off stage and then another speaker got up and they looked at me and they said, ‘Amanda, God speaks to you so much kinder than he speaks to me.’ And I just sat there and I was like, I have worked so much on reframing how I hear from God as a compassionate, loving father rather than a harsh judge.”
God is Kind
“God is kinder than what we give him credit for. And the way that we hear from him is actually reflected in the way that we speak to ourselves as well. Finding ways to be able to reframe that through scripture, through beautiful worship, and also just reminding ourselves that God loves us, that we are enough, and that he really does believe good things for our year.”
“Grace looks like beginning again through the lens of compassion. It is a powerful way for us to live our everyday.”
Article supplied with thanks to Sonshine.
Feature image: Canva
