A good way to burn yourself out is to fight every battle in your life. Stubbornness and pride contribute heavily to stress. One that I have found out the hard way is to listen to God. When we follow a path other than what God wants for our life, it will start to get rocky. Sometimes God lets things happen in our life because he wants us to change course. When you fight every battle, you end up wasting a whole lot of time on things that are unimportant.
It is stressful wasting time and energy on all of the small insignificant battles in your life. The best term that I can think of to describe this behavior is nit-picking. Most of us by nature are competitive. We like to win. When you obsess over winning all of the time, you create more battles to simmer to the surface. Take the covenant of marriage for example. If you approach your relationship in a way that you always have to win each fight, you will eventually battle yourself into a divorce. Marriages are made to be a give and take. You are supposed to put your partner's needs above yourself. When you fight every battle to win, you disobey God's design for marriage.
When you fight every battle, you draw yourself away from God.
If you find yourself fighting every battle, you will wind up drawing yourself away from God. Instead of focusing our mind on what God wants for us, we focus on what we want instead. Anytime you get to the point where winning is the sole motivation, you are most likely not pleasing God.
Fighting every battle shows a lack of faith in God. Pushing ourselves to the max because we do not want to lean on God will get us nowhere. When we put our faith in God, he will open doors so that we can accomplish the task at hand. With God all things are possible.
Hebrews 11:6 NASB And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.