Do You Have a Burnout Recovery Plan?

Are our supercharged lives the best thing for us and our children?  Or is the constantly striving and never arriving recipe a guide to unfulfilled hours, days and lifetimes?.  

I’m not against setting goals and working towards achievements.  I’m a driven person by nature and I’m guilty of overreach in both my personal and working worlds.  I didn’t just have that fear of missing out but I also had an anxiety about being idle.  To feel good about myself I felt I needed to push in every direction to the edge of endurance and my beautiful children came with me.  

Have you been there?  Or are you there now? Are all your social-media posts of summits of self-worth, aimed at convincing yourself and others that you are marching with the masses, at an unsustainable pace towards a never arriving goal?  

If it is you, how is all that striving and pushing working out for you?  

I have now witnessed and experienced that true satisfaction and quality of life seems only achievable when an ample emphasising of restorative practices and rest are brought into the mix, to improve performance and overall health. 

In May 2019, The World Health Organisation included “Burnout” in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as an occupational phenomenon, resulting from “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” It is characterised by feeling depleted, cynical, and unmotivated. Many experts also understand it as a concept of charging too hard without adequate recovery in other spheres of life, including parenting, exercise, and passion-based pursuits.

I speak with people who reminisce about the days when post-graduates took a year or two off to discover other parts of the world, to live outside of the institutionalised confinement that had enveloped them from age four to age eighteen or twenty-one.  They would hitchhike, backpack, work odd jobs to keep themselves afloat.  Now, I think it is only the rare and courageous Millennials and Generation Z’s, that haven’t been helicoptered by their parents, and persuaded that if they veer too far off script (you must constantly strive to survive) and dare to choose experiences that don’t offer quantifiable revered gains, that allow themselves to experience and gain from stepping off the expected path.  The result for society? Malaise, disaffection, disconnection.

In the relentless pursuit of achievement, we do appear to “get stuff done” but sustaining the win of the race, the influx of money, meeting socially expected deadlines and passing the tests very likely damages our health and the systems that bring quality to our existence - relationships, breath, sleep and presence.   

Without a recovery plan, we’re prematurely ageing ourselves. And the disallowing of ourselves from being present, tuning into the needs of our own bodies, and enjoying the people around us is perhaps behind many diseases that could be prevented.

Changing your focus from the well entrenched capitalist norms, breaking down your barriers and choosing to look at your life, your human animality need not be an absolute rebuff of political cohesion.  But allowing yourself to chill out, to harness the spirit of play and to take ourselves less seriously appears to be an antidote to burnout.  

My current little injury has been the inspiration to allow myself to wander.  I’ve strengthened my everyday actions with who I am and who I want to be!  I feel proud, grateful and so magically free!  I’ve found my playfulness and capacity to solve problems creatively, rather than looking towards a life absent of problems.  

Your burnout recovery plan is the tool that allows you to listen to the right voice.  Join me on a hike, for a cold plunge, an infrared sauna, a beach yoga practice, a relaxing elixir and meditation or find your own sublime riposte to modern life!