Worried About Burnout
Dear Books,
I have a very high-pressure, stressful job that has potential to lead to burnout—for real. At the same time, I love it. But I'm trying to set myself up with healthy habits that help me cope and manage, so I can stay in this job without getting burned out.
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Dear Potential for Burnout,
What are healthy habits that keep anyone from burning out at a high-pressure job? I suppose the logical answers would be yoga, meditation, eating good food, etc. There are books on all those things, certainly.
But there may be a healthy habit here that transcends all of those things, and that is the regular practice of tuning into yourself and just … listening.
That might seem like a strange recipe for survival, I know. It’s easier to just think that there’s a prescriptive path that outlines, step by step, how to keep the snapping dog of burnout and fatigue from nipping at our heels.
But the work of creating sanctuary and rest and stillness inside of ourselves is critical. This is the place where we get replenished in the way that actually matters.
This is why I’m recommending to you Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May.
“People admired me for how much I got done,” May writes in the beginning of the book, about her willingness to throw herself into her work in order to feel accomplished after having her son. “I lapped it up, but felt secretly that I was only trying to keep pace with everyone else, and they seemed to be coping far better.”
This leaves May feeling “like prey, believing that everything is urgent, and I can never do enough.”
Feeling like prey. Can you relate to that, Potential? I feel like you can.
May’s addiction to busyness is so understandable, and so is her story of learning to turn off the white static of performance and listen to herself. To see rest and hibernation in nature, and to understand that people need this, too. That SHE needs this.
Winter can also be a bare, cold season. It can be harsh. May leans into this, I think because we live in a culture that eschews feeling the truth of our emotional seasons. Our culture would rather have us work until we break our bodies than actually become present to “the winter of our discontent,” as Shakespeare put it.
In allowing herself to experience winter, May finds the healthy habits that sustain her. Walking. Baking. Cold water swimming.
I hope she will help you find the things that will nourish you as well.
Much love,
Lara
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