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Joan
feels exhausted and her day has hardly begun.
In fact, she feels fatigued most of the time.
“What’s wrong with me?” she asks herself, realizing
that her good friend Marian works the same number of hours and
seems to have more energy than anyone she knows. What Joan feels might be described as burnout, and it is
often a sign of much more than overwork.
Burnout
occurs when we experience a separation between the most
essential part of ourselves and circumstances as we perceive
them in the world around us.
That “essential” part may be described as our
“soul,” but whatever word we attach to it, it is the
embodiment of a set of innate motivators that bring meaning to
life.
I
believe there are three parts to this set of motivators, and
they are somehow emblazoned upon us just as clearly and uniquely
as is our DNA. The
first is a set of spiritual lessons that we chose as assignments
for this life. Although there will be overlap in lessons that our whole
culture is working on at a given time, some are uniquely our
own, resolving incomplete work from former lifetimes.
When we assess the places in our lives where things
don’t work...and may never have seemed to work...it will give
us a clue about those lessons.
My
own lessons most certainly include primary relationships and
premature commitment, but I suspect they also include allowing
myself to be accepted and loved just as I am.
I’ve had clients who knew what they wanted to do but
consistently seemed paralyzed when facing action.
Some feared judgment of others so deeply that they were
afraid to bring important new approaches to their work in the
world. Still others
were so frightened of abandonment that they avoided
relationships altogether or sabotaged ones that were going well.
The
feeling of hopelessness on a “treadmill of life,” which is
often associated with burnout, I believe to be our failure to
learn our spiritual lessons.
When we don’t learn them, the Universe has a way of
continuing to present them to us, over and again.
Circumstances which may overwhelm us with their
repetitive and fruitless nature if we have forgotten this part
of our BEing, are perceived much differently from a soulwork
perspective. If we
are aware that learning the lessons are part of our reason for
living, then when a circumstance presents repeatedly, we begin
to consciously seek to identify and learn the lesson.
Rather than simply defeat and despair, the hopeless cycle
then has meaning.
The
second category of soulwork is to develop our gifts and talents
as fully as possible, because they were given to us to help us
in our life purpose work. We
may not be able to see how we will use them, but a gift for
singing or dance or stand-up comedy that brings us to life most
certainly will be critical to our greater Work.
I
haven’t a clue how I will end up using it, but since I was
six, I had wanted to dance.
It was only when my neck broke spontaneously at 46 that I
pursued my long buried passion.
Almost from the moment that I moved beyond the simple
1-2-3 of trying to get my feet in the right place at the right
time, I could be so exhausted that I could hardly stay awake
driving to a dance and within a single dance feel like someone
had shot me full of uppers.
Many is the evening that coming home from a dance that I
was writing feverishly on the lined pad that I have learned to
carry with me, and I would write for two or three hours in the
middle of the night when I got home.
Similarly,
when I am writing, I will often work for five or six hours at a
time without a break and feel more energy than I did at the
beginning of the day. How
different this is from the days of writing policies and
procedures or doing accounting when I was totally spent at the
end of eight hours. If we will listen, we are designed to be guided toward our
soulwork by what brings us to life.
If something enlivens us, it is probably a clue that we
should do more of it.
The
third category of innate motivators is to pursue our life
purpose Work. Our
life purpose may or may not have anything to do with what we do
for a living. I sincerely believe that, however it manifests,
rather than a fixed activity, our life’s purpose will be a
gradual unfolding of “assignments.”
Each will prepare us for the next.
Burnout
then occurs when the circumstances around us prevent us from
pursuing one or all of these essential parts of who we are.
The fatigue that characterizes it, even after a weekend
or vacation, might be described as our inner guidance system
attempting to slow us down, so that we will pay attention.
By
midlife, most of us have had a brush with our own mortality.
If we have had the good fortune of avoiding serious
illness or injury, we have generally lost one or both parents, a
sibling, a friend, or perhaps even a child.
Our soul clock is ticking as we begin to realize, at
least on a spiritual if not cognitive level, that we don’t
have forever to complete this life’s work.
What we experience as burnout is the great divide between
what we came here to do and what we are actually doing.
Burnout
offers us a clear “choice point.”
We can keep pushing ourselves through life as if there is
nothing we can do. I
call this our karmic legacy.
It is rich with excuses, or stories we tell ourselves
about what we’d do, “If only....”
You can fill in the blank, but it often includes being
vested in retirement, getting kids through college, paying for
the house, having more (or occasionally less) education, and
stage fright, among others.
The
other alternative presented by the choice point is our divine
legacy--learning our lessons, developing our gifts, and
performing our purpose--for which we chose this trip through
life. We give up the excuses and the “if onlys...,” in exchange
for the courage to take whatever step that we can take right now to move in the direction our soul would lead.
Our
divine legacies grow us. They will almost always require that we take significant
risks, approach life differently, and make decisions based on
our inner wisdom, rather than any way that we have learned we
“should” make them. AND,
doing so is what will bring us to life.
Burnout
has been described as a grieving syndrome.
We are grieving is the loss of the Self that we came here
to be. When we are
in the “flow” of our BEing, we often find that we work
longer and harder and, miraculously, have more energy.
Editors Note:
Kay Gilley, M.S., PHR, is an author, keynote speaker, and
development consultant for successful executives and
professionals. Her
company is Intentional-Leadership Systems and her email is kaygilley@intentional-leadership.com
www.intentional-leadership.com
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