What’s the Point?

Burnout and the Why of it All

Blake Estape, L.Ac.

You! Life ain’t gonna hand you success, you gotta fight for it. The ones who make it are the ones who are on their grind all day, every day. The ones who visualize their goal and fight past the bitter because they know the pain will pay off! Success is a measure of how much you’re willing to suffer! So dig in, buckle down, grit your teeth and push yourself to the limit. That’s the only way.

You might be seeing more messages like this on your Instagram feed. We get so pumped during the summer when energies run high, but now as the summer wanes we find ourselves slowing down whether we want to or not. In modern Western society we’re measured by our ability to produce so Fall and Winter are a challenge. But we slow down for a reason, ignoring the downturn is asking for trouble.

Exhaustion is so common that even the idea is monetized. I’m willing to bet you can come up with five products off the top of your head that are marketed for energy. Hustle culture has trained us that if we aren’t progressing then we’re dying, but don’t buy into it.

A line from the Dao De Jing says “A violent wind does not last the whole morning; a heavy rain does not last all day.” The lesson is that anything forceful and excessive will quickly burn itself out. Burnout, that thing we all experience from time to time.

You know how I know we fell for the hustle nonsense hook line and sinker? Search Burnout on google – dozens of articles about what it is, because we can’t even recognize the symptoms! If we’re tired it couldn’t possibly be that we’re expected to produce constantly, we just need a new mattress. I’m depressed because I need a vacation, not because I’ve aligned myself to an idea of constant achievement no one can accomplish.

So let’s all get on the same page and see what burnout looks like:

·         Apathy

·         Fatigue

·         Lack of interest

·         Depressed mood

·         Short temper

·         No motivation

·         GI problems

·         Immune suppression

·         Headaches

·         Blood pressure issues

·         Poor appetite

·         Insomnia

The list is by no means exhaustive. A quick glance reveals that many of these are typical of life in the modern world. Part of what can make burnout tough to diagnose is how it shares these symptoms with other things. It’s also how we can chalk them up to something else and ‘power through.’

Now we know what burnout looks like, but what about its causes? Some are obvious, like overwork and underappreciation. COVID-19 put the nature of work under a microscope and the ensuing conflicts are common topics of discussion. We all feel and see the rising levels of dissatisfaction. But it’s not just work. Many other things contribute to that universal sense of bitterness.

Let’s start with the easy one, stress. We’re all so tired of hearing about stress and its negative effects on the body, but the truth is most everyone lives under higher levels of stress now than they did in 2019. Things are more expensive, there are more restrictions, general fear of illness is higher. In regards to burnout, stress makes everything harder to deal with. Eventually we run out of steam.

My next point will earn a few scowls I’m sure. The inclination lately is to look outside, but poor expectations are a huge driver in levels of dissatisfaction. Studies have been conducted that show unmet expectations – not just circumstance – predict higher levels of depression. Specifically, the expectation is that things will get easier, smoother, or even just remain the same. Sadly that just isn’t true. Sometimes things go backwards, or the job doesn’t work out, or the house is too expensive. The disparity between the reality we want and the reality that is wears us down.

At this point in time these seem to be the defining characteristics of the Western zeitgeist. What can we do about it? To borrow again from Lao Zi and the Dao De Jing, "To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day." Here are my thoughts.

Eliminate -> Reduce -> Realign

Eliminate means to identify those things that contribute to burnout and removing what you can. Maybe the upkeep of your bonsai garden is more trouble than it’s worth. Or a toxic relationship is weighing you down. For many of us our jobs don’t align anymore with our values, and if you can afford to look into a change in career then it’s something to consider.

One of the most difficult things to address and eliminate are expectations. We all struggle with this, myself included. I am a professional with a degree who works over 50 hours a week, and while I’d like a house I can’t afford one. I know, first-world problems. When I’m talking about expectations I’m not saying ‘I need food on the table,’ I mean the irrelevant stuff we think improves quality of life but really doesn’t. I don’t need a house, for all my arguments of ‘building wealth’ and ‘throwing away rent money.’ If I fixate on how difficult it is to get one then I become bitter and unhappy.

This applies to expectations of work and relationships, not just material things. Do the hard work of examining expectations and policing the ones that aren’t service anything. Accept the reality of what is, then you can look at feasible ways to make things better.

Reduce those things which you can’t eliminate. Maybe you can’t change your job, but instead of those twenty hours of overtime to pad your bank balance, do something that is more fulfilling with your time. Maybe you aren’t ready to give up the expectation of owning a house, but perhaps you can spend less time scrolling through Zillow.

Realign to the things that really mean something. There’s always a reason to get up in the morning. If you want to fixate on something, fixate on that. Even in those jobs which are difficult there can be parts that are worth doing. Hobbies that are harmful, that consume rather than nourish, can be replaced with something else.

This post is being published in Autumn, the perfect time to reassess and eliminate what we don’t need according to 5-element philosophy. Take some time to sit with the idea and see if recalibrating toward something more meaningful doesn’t help with the feeling of burnout.