Burn Out

Why is it that we have become so comfortable with running out of breath? Running so fast that we can no longer see the wheel that we are running on; racing to catch up with a future goal that remains in the future, a position in time that we can never quite reach... 

The endless To-Do list that is full of tasks waiting to be ticked off. But as they are ticked off, it is not often a reward that follows but another item, churned out of our mental factory that so rarely takes a break. By the end of the day, some of the items have been ticked off and we too feel ticked off with them. As we run out of steam, our body finally has the chance to catch up with our tired mind, whose wheels are spinning slightly slower now.

I inhale deeply, feeling the breath nourish every cell in my body with oxygen that my lungs have needed all day. We forget to breathe when our minds steal the show. The working day is over and I am finally able to let go. I step outside, close the door behind me and sigh the breath out, releasing all of my worries and forgotten thoughts. 

My body craves rest and I wonder whether I should go home and have a night in. A long bath perhaps, followed by a netflix and chill? But my rebellious spirit shouts louder than the soft voice of the nurturer. It guides me along the path of my unconscious habits and leads me to that familiar place of respite.

I hold the big, round glass in my hands and take my first sip of the warm, red liquid. As I swallow, I feel the days thoughts draining out of my mind and into the depths of my belly; digested slowly with the conversation that ensues as we all take turns to release and recover. My endorphins begin to dance their merry dance and I look around the room and feel connected to all of the other people who are also enjoying their post-work wind down. 

I can hear the faint whispers of the soft, nurturing voice in my head telling me that it’s time to go home. The journey back is inevitable but the thought of having to get there somehow puts me off moving out of my comfortable seat, in the loud and overcrowded room with it’s blended conversations. But soon enough the bell rings, the bar closes and that is the end of that. 

The composed crowd who originally entered the room, connected by the shared feeling of accomplishment and relief are now staggering outside looking disconnected and forlorn. We disperse into our separate pockets of the city, crawling to the finish line on empty tanks. As my head hits the pillow and my eyes close, I allow my mind to take me out of my body to a land far, far away. 

The sound of the alarm jolts me back into reality. I sit up with a foggy head and the race begins again. On the way to the tube, I charge up with a strong cup of coffee; the oil for my machine. My mental cogs begin to turn, churning out items for the daily to do list. I can feel my breath shortening and moving steadily into my chest. I step onto the platform and pick up the pace, warming up for the endless rat race. 

The adrenaline is surging through my body now and I begin to run as fast as my feet can take me; spinning the wheel faster and faster. As the clock strikes 12, I begin to count down the hours but while the time was ticking, my ticker was slowing until one day, I ran out of breath. The alarm bell rang but this time, I could not turn it off. My machine had malfunctioned; with no oil in the engine, I had burned out.

So I got off the wheel and removed myself from the city in which the cycle took place; enjoying freedom from the mundanity of the endless rat race. When I returned at the start of the year, I began the race again but slowly this time; mindful of not wanting to repeat history. 

I dedicated some time to abstain from my comfortable coping mechanisms and consciously nurture the seeds of positive habits that I had planted whilst away. Instead of feeling the day's stress slowly slip away with glasses of wine, it would sit with me at the table; forcing the confrontation that I had become a master at avoiding. But with patience and persistence, as each day passed I felt my relationship with the machine grow stronger; my mind and I.

‘Tilt theory’ proposes that our energy is always tilted to one side of the scales; riding one of the waves of life as opposed to the idealised space that we rarely inhabit, in which we float in between  the two. Constantly subscribing to the ‘work hard, play hard’ capitalist values of our society is not sustainable - when we spend so much time pouring energy into the race, we also need to spend time maintaining our machine in order to run. Burn out is not the position that we should need to reach in order to realise that we need to slow down. Burn out is game over.

The Buddhists call the human experience ‘the cycle of samsara’ i.e. the cycle of suffering and the way to break free from this is by developing one's awareness. Take some time out once in a while to step off the wheel and catch your breath. Feed the voice of the nurturer, your intuition, the archetypal mother who will always guide you back to the righteous path if you have lost your way. 

But also allow the scales to tilt once in a while; indulge in rebellion with presence and joy knowing that it is all part of the human balancing act and that too, is OK. Remind yourself that you are the driver of your own machine and every day when the alarm bell rings and the race begins again, you have another chance to consciously choose how fast you run, how much you breathe and what fuel you pour into the engine. Take 5 minutes today to reflect upon what your soul fuel is:

Challenge:

1. Sit comfortably in a cross legged position. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths to nourish your cells with oxygen. With your inhales, allow your belly to expand with all of the stress from your day and with your exhales imagine your stress being sent back into the earth, releasing the pressure from your chest and every cell of your body. Continue this for a few minutes. 

2. When you are ready, open your eyes and smile. Think of a few things that you feel grateful for, no matter how big or small they may be. Connect to that feeling of gratitude; to that expansiveness that characterises heart energy.

3. Now get a pen and a piece of paper (or diary) and write down a list of things that truly make you feel as you feel right now. (Remember to write from the heart and not the head!) Set the intention to dedicate some of your time and energy this week to make at least one those things happen. Find your healthy release and come back to this practise whenever you feel disconnected and out of balance. Remind yourself that if you have done it once, you can do it again and if you need some support, reach out to someone because more often than not they have been through it too.