Over the last 90 days, more and more people have shared with me during executive coaching sessions that they are exhausted. They are tired mentally and they are tired emotionally from the roller coaster of 2020. And as a result, they are now physically exhausted, too.
“I am way past my edges,” one person recently shared, “and it just keeps coming and coming. This is a year that I do not want to repeat again in my lifetime. I know I can not control so much that is happening. I also know that I need to change myself but how do you actually do this? How do you change yourself when you are this burned out?” The question is an excellent one and the answer is not simple or easy.
Upon reflection, I am reminded of an insight from many years ago that James Autry wrote in his book, Confessions of an Accidental Businessman: It Takes a Lifetime to Find Wisdom (Berrett-Koehler, 1996): “Burnout is not a matter of working too hard. It is a matter of finding no meaning in what we do: not a problem of mental/physical energy but a problem of emotional energy; not a crisis of time but a crisis of spirit.”
Given the current challenges before us at home, at work and within our communities, I believe more and more people have lost a sense of meaning in what they do and how they live. Life has just become an endless list of things to get done and continual adaptations to be made. Furthermore, most of these adaptations are being driven by factors, people or situations over which we have no influence, control or even the opportunity to have input. Instead, we just react and try to move forward the best we can.
A life of constant reactions and adaptations without any meaning to it all is a life of concerns, worries and exhaustion. We got to this point not by choice but doing our best within a continually challenging and difficult environment. And when we look at the future, we just see more of the same. Thus, we begin to give up hope. Without meaning, life is draining and painful.
Personally, I have lived in this space more than once in my life. It was very hard. I did not know where to go and I did not know how to change. I knew I needed to change but I did not have a clear sense of how to go about it.
This is where the words of my late mother come to mind. As she would often say to me, “let go, let God” and “count your blessings.” The former was a reminder that my faith needed to be the foundation of my life, not just my work and my list of things that needed to get done. When I put this at the heart of all I do, then I remember that I am supported unconditionally at all times and surround by love and grace through it all. The later of her common phrases reminds me to look at the big picture and refocus on what I do have rather than what I have lost.
This really became clear to me one morning recently when I listened to a young couple being interviewed after surviving Hurricane Sally when it blasted the southern coast of the United States. With their home totally destroyed and being surrounded by downed trees and broken power poles, the woman said, “We are fine. We have our two dogs, our health and each other. The rest can be cleaned up and rebuilt.”
I just stopped what I was doing in the kitchen when she made these remarks. Here was a person who just went through a horrible night and in the morning, she could still find her blessings in the midst of it.
I walked to the kitchen window and watched the sunrise. Quietly, I started counting my blessings. We have our health. We have a good home. We have a family who we love most dearly. They are all healthy and safe this morning. We have good friends who we love and whom love us. The list was long. And when I was done, I felt more at ease. The world had not changed but I had changed on the inside. I had rediscovered the meaning in my life and was grateful for this reconnection to it.
Changing oneself is not simple or easy. But it is possible when we put our faith at the center of all we do and routinely pause to count our blessings.
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