How to stay young and vital – Part 2 – Overcome burnout
I almost rowed at the Olympics. He was so dedicated. I trained and trained and trained. But I worked hard, not smart. I eventually had two major burnouts within two months of each other. They had to give me iron injections in my butt. Unpleasant.
So it wasn’t a lack of strength, skill, opportunity, commitment, determination, and dedication that brought me down. It was for those things. I was too committed, too determined, too dedicated to realize that I was working hard and not smart. I learned everything, but too late. I was selected but withdrew.
Most of the people I know are incredibly dedicated to improving their lives. They want the best for their family, their friends and their country. Most of the people I meet want to be kind and supportive, raise families, and have resources to educate their children. Most of the people I know also want to change the world, to make it a better place. So in reality, the motives of the vast majority of people around the world are the same.
Where we all differ is in how we do it all. In reality, it all comes down to choices and the use of time. And in this, we have a bit of trouble. Because, like me with my oar, good intentions, good ambition and commitment mixed with bad decisions make endings foolish.
Most of the people I know are burning out. Some young people I know can’t get through a busy week without looking and acting exhausted. There really is no excuse except poor self-management. Bad eating, bad sleep, emotional badness, and too much of a lot of unproductive things.
Burnout is very dangerous. Burnout is cumulative. If we consistently mishandle ourselves week after week, we burn out. What makes this a very extreme problem is that we can mask the symptoms until it is too late. The core of burnout is premature aging. This is where the body and mind begin to break down, as both are designed to, sooner than necessary.
These masking techniques are very dangerous. When we have symptoms of exhaustion, nature is giving us guidance to change our ways. But with masking, we don’t change our ways, we get burned and that burn is irreparable.
The masking of exhaustion also prompts us to seek anti-aging remedies that appeal to the external. Breast lift, face lift, skin this and biologics that. It’s all cosmetic, and while it has a positive outcome, the premature aging that burnout has caused can never truly be reversed.
Burnout never comes from overwork. Burnout comes from mismanaging lifestyle, work process, and emotion. We have the capacity to do a great deal of work, but for most people, like me and my rower, they think that long, hard, arduous hours of boring repetition are the right answer to a heavy workload. They are going to learn the hard way. They are wrong, stuck, unevolved, dumb.
It’s 2006 – almost 2007. We have computers, phones, the internet, we have so much technology that we are falling on top of ourselves. High workloads are a call for automation, systems, smarter practices, more focus, less wasted time.
I have worked with companies around the world refining their businesses. I help them select the ideal customer for their business and guide the rest to a competitor. I have helped people work fewer hours and get more done in less time simply by focusing and creating conducive environments. Smart is the new tough. We can take on huge workloads, but the answer to the workload isn’t more time, it’s less.
Due to masking technologies, people tend to work longer hours and work harder when under pressure. Or some fools, they actually retire on the field because they “want out”, that’s complete masking.
Masking means that we incorporate substitute energies to achieve a result. For example; coffee helps us work longer hours. Wine helps us to disconnect. Herbal substitutes help us have more energy. Ipods help keep us excited. Computers keep us busy. We can use a thousand substitutes and think that this is normal. But is not. Normal is smarter. Not harder. The normal thing is to think about how you can do more in less time using technology. The normal thing is to double the workload in half the time. It is not herbal formula from the local health store.
There are four masking elements.
Emotional masking where we create an ego pump, gratifying identity, wins of the week to create an emotional high that we always crash and burn from. When people tell you how wonderful it’s going to be, how beautiful it will be in the long run, what a wonderful vision you or they may have, they are really using their ego to mask their exhaustion.
Chemical masking is food, coffee, alcohol, drugs. You will see people in offices eating chocolate, drinking coffee, chewing gum, smoking cigarettes, and much more, all to avoid the truth that they are bored to death, overwhelmed, overburdened, and out of their league. Any manager who sees an employee working under this mask has an ethical responsibility to teach the individual a new science of work or release him from some of the “responsibility” for it; otherwise, exhaustion is a guarantee.
Spiritual masking is the last bastion of resistance on the path of exhaustion. Exhaustion mounts, the body begins to crumble under the strain, the mind begins to lean toward depression, the heart breaks and becomes disabled by true love, hope begins to fade that any real proximity to a person’s dreams will come true, spirituality becomes the focus. Here, the individual masks exhaustion with “otherworldly” explanations of reality. Past lives, universal languages, gods, ghosts, spirits, energies, and all manner of karma are held up as shields against the reality that this person has been burned. They really are dying young and spirituality masks the symptoms.
Material Masking is the most common mask against exhaustion. Look, look what I’ve accomplished. Pride and greed replace any semblance of reality. The individual justifies his overweight belly, his wrinkled face, his bald scalp, his shaky hands, arthritic joint, his sore back all on the basis of “look what I have accumulated” Greed is not a crime, it is a privilege of who dominate wealth creation, but when greed and materialism act as a mask to divert real attention from a person’s lack of vitality and youth, it is a sham of the highest proportion. “I did it for the children” – “I worked too hard to help the family” – says the man with stroke problems whose children bring him a drooling cloth instead of a cricket ball. “I did it for you” is as big a lie as the “I didn’t know it was killing me” quote you hear from those with 70lbs of excess body weight after their inevitable heart attack.
Burnout isn’t caused by TV, MacDonald’s, or a bad diet. No, burnout is masked by products, lifestyles, health spas, vitamin pills, new cars, spiritual and religious philosophies, and ego-driven emotional justifications. Masking is what prevents a person from using their incredible abilities to work smarter instead of harder. Masking helps us fool ourselves into thinking that everything will be fine in the long run, but it isn’t. Burnout is cumulative.
Burn a liver, burn a kidney, burn some brain cells, burn a relationship, you may never know those things happen, all you’ll recognize is that you’re not the person you used to be. Tired, frustrated, nervous, disappointed, alone. These are the long-term effects of masking. They are the long-term effect of health supplements, substitutes for good management, a healthy and loving life.
Live with spirit.
Be real
