Disrupting Burnout and Reclaiming Your Life with One Change
So much of our lives are on auto-pilot and, honestly, have to be. We are taking in more stimulus and content than ever before; we are managing individualist day to day tasks; most of us are now ‘netizens’, citizens of an ever growing Internet, with more oceans of data than we can ever possibly wade through in multiple lifetimes.
Our brains were evolved to live much more straightforward lives. We could live much of our lives on auto-pilot if our world was centralized and local. We were designed for that. Once you acquire a skill, you let its use fall to your automatic systems. For example, when you first learned how to walk—it was very hard. You fell a lot. You held on to objects to keep your balance. You had to practice every day. People cheered for you when you took your first steps independently. Now, you walk without even trying.
We can do so much on automatic, and it’s often based on our first or most significant experiences of it. Our brains and bodies can detect danger, learn multiple languages, and train to acquire all kinds of skills that fall into the background of awareness. But today, the landscape of all 3 of these areas (danger, language, and skill) changes pretty much daily, if not minute by minute in some cases. Our world continues to change, and we find ourselves having to ‘relearn’ skills constantly. Imagine if you had to relearn how to walk or speak, just as you did when you were a baby, every single day. It would be no surprise how exhausted you’d feel.
If you’ve felt overwhelmed and burned out, it’s not something you’ve done on purpose. You were responding to your day to day life with the best approach you had.
So how do we disrupt it?
If I could boil the entirety of therapy work down to one concept, it would be this: resetting your way of being and doing in order to live a life with authentic intention.
The scales of our lives are tipped heavily in favor of being on auto-pilot. Our choices no longer feel like our own. The algorithms of our Internet platforms choose what we see, when we see it, and how we see it. Work decides our routines, our healthcare, our deadlines, our tasks. We try harder and harder to balance our personal lives with work and family and obligations, and we feel like we’re always failing. In response, we keep trying harder, pushing away the shame and guilt with more and more tasks. It feels like we are making our own choices—but instead we are continuously bound by our obligations, furthering our burnout.
I’ll make a quick caveat here: when we try to tackle the entirety of burnout at once, we will feel just as overwhelmed as trying to maintain it. As the common saying goes: “We cannot solve problems with the same thinking that created them.” (My quick research on the Internet says there is no definitive source on whether Albert Einstein said it or not, but it is widely attributed to him.) If we try to solve burnout with the approach of doing more, we have created a self-defeating loop—we’re not tackling the root of the issue.
Instead, I recommend each person approach creating more intention in their life in the way that we approach planting a seed.
How to Plant the Seed of Intention
Find the smallest possible way to make a choice that is yours. Perhaps as you do this exercise, you’ll realize there are more things you do with intention than you realize. There are infinite possibilities, and I’ve got a list here to help you get started:
Breathe in and out, at whatever pace you choose
If you’re standing, sit down - if you’re sitting, stand up
Being curious about a new topic and then reading up reliable sources about it
Go to a window and observe outside for a minute
Take a small walk and notice something new
Listen to a new song from beginning to end
On social media, choose a friend first and then find a funny meme to send them
Journal about anything
Try a coloring page
Write a silly 5 sentence story
Play an instrument for 20 seconds
Add a small amount of a different ingredient to something you eat
Take a bite of food as though it’s the first time you ever tried it
Take one different turn when you are on your way home
Logging off your work email at the end of the day and taking a moment to notice “I’m done for today”
Looking back on your day and noticing a small win
You can see how literally anything you ever do can be turned into an intention practice. It’s all about the “how”, as you’re doing things in life while awake rather than asleep. Staying small at first is key. When we plant a seed, we don’t drown it in water and vitamins in order to speed up the process. It grows in its own time, and we adjust as it gets bigger. Our bodies and brains can do the same. We don’t have to consciously choose everything. We just have to choose what matters, re-orient our bodies and brains, and then let them do the rest.
Burnout at its root is simply using more energy than what gets replenished. And this often happens because too much of our energy is being used on auto-pilot and being focused on doing too much over and over again, like being automatically subscribed to a bunch of things draining your bank account without actually using or needing them. With small moments of intention, it can feel like snipping little cords or unsubscribing one thing at a time. Not only is this more manageable for us when we are already drained to our maximum, but also this is disrupting burnout at its core. We need our auto-pilot to work when its aligned with what we need. It’s not practical nor necessary to overhaul the entire thing.
With small changes, we will erode the system overall.
Instead of burnout, we come back to center.
Instead of burnout, rest actually feels like rest.
Instead of burnout, our lives feel more like ours again.
