What is Burnout Actually About?

I recently had tea with a friend of mine, and I asked her "What does a week, or maybe a day, look like for you and you are exactly where you want to be?" 

And she shared what this would look like and how she wouldn't be working at her corporate job and instead would be focused on her coaching career to help women achieve their higher selves. She would have 1-2 clients a week where they could do deep soul work in her modern glass studio in her house. 

I loved this vision for her and I could see it, I could visualize it. 

I also recently had a lunch date with another friend of mine who also has a sustainable clothing line and we discussed the ways our "ideal week/day" looked like. 

And something I realized during these two conversations with these women is their dreams are so attainable but we're all experiencing major burnout. Not just with our jobs/careers/pursuits but just feeling tired and worn in general.

I've really been thinking a lot more about this--why are we so tired? Why do we feel so fatigued? Why do I feel this way? 

Then it dawned on me that we are inundated with SO MUCH INFORMATION every single day. We have to make so many decisions every single day. We have too many options. Too many lists. Too many to-dos. Too many e-mails and notifications. Too many apps. It is overwhelming! We are overwhelmed with all of this clutter, all of this noise.

When have we normalized the expectation that as women, we can and must carry all of it and that growth and expansion is the most important virtue as a small business owner and the main signifier of success? 

What does enough look like? Why is our culture so obsessed with climbing ladders (social, work, money) and attaining higher and higher levels? More money, a larger audience, a bigger e-mail list, bigger launch, more sales, increase your AOV, higher engagement, increase ROI, get a promotion... it is exhausting!

And on top of that we must also care about everything and everyone that we read about in the news and yet feel a sense of helplessness and guilt. We feel called to action but do not know what to do because we also have our own lives to manage. And why isn't that enough? Why do we feel this intense pressure to "show up" all the time? And I ask myself "But who is showing up for you?"

What does it look like for you to let go of things you cannot control? What does compassion look like in your own local community, in your own circle? Can we have empathy for the wrongdoings in a world we do not live in day to day and also not feel guilty about our own existence if we're not experiencing intense hardship? 

I read a post from a psychologist that in the last 10 years, the amount of information we receive and have to process in ONE DAY is equivalent to what our great-grandparents had to process in months, even a year. That absolutely blew my mind because I knew it to be true. I read this post on Threads around the times of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena fires in Los Angeles. We were experiencing the news and people's trauma in real time. Whereas 100-150 years ago, it would have taken weeks to get the news, and you would only know a few personal stories, if any, especially if you didn't live anywhere near California.

The information overwhelm also isn't just the news, it's media in general. I come across so many articles every single week about how one brand of food that I thought was ok is actually now not ok. Oat milk now leads to cancer, how dare you consume seed oils, this food dye is toxic. I cannot process it quickly enough and this is all contributing to my feelings of burnout.

While I'm not advocating for ignorance, far from it, there is some truth and merit to the saying "ignorance is bliss" and I know some people will disagree, I'm in the current mindset of "this is too much, and I am feeling extremely overwhelmed and extremely burned out and I want to change things." 

And it begins with me, my mindset, and how I let outside factors affect me and have access to me. You must tend to the care and keeping of your own spiritual and mental house before you can tend to the care of someone else's.

Cover Image: Eugène Viala, "Eternal Refuge", 1899-1906, French