Read the Goddamn Book

Navigating burnout through Self-compassion, Fact Checking, Rest and Boundaries

Burnout and I are very well acquainted.  We have danced together often and, if/when I forget all the things I know (and teach!), we still dance occasionally. It takes one to know one, and I am seeing the symptoms of burnout everywhere at the moment. In my friends, in my kids, in the dude who owns the local burger bar – all at different stages and all with slightly different symptoms, but all finding themselves in some kind of struggle.

As the bizarre year of 2020 continues to unfold, and we find ourselves faced with new and sometimes scary or overwhelming circumstances, I am noticing us struggling with the emotional ups and downs of this time. So many big emotions can leave our beautiful bodies exhausted and we can be left wondering “why am I so tired?”.

 We also find ourselves faced, well, with ourselves. There is very little to distract us from our own fears and neuroses or from the continual “what if?” thinking that whirrs and whirrs around our minds all day (and all night!). With very few answers and very little clarity on what the future holds - we find ourselves in these “thought loops”.  

I wonder if now might be a really good time to get to know ourselves and our habits more intimately – many of us have the time, if we make it. We can build our self-awareness through meditation, therapy, journaling, chatting to friends and loved ones – there are a lot of roads to the same destination.

 I would like to share some of the very specific things that continue to help me to manage my levels of energy and motivation. But first, here are some reminders of the things we may have heard before, but are worth mentioning again (you know, with COVID brain - we forget stuff!):

BODY

1. Activity - Exercise - 20-30 mins a day

2. Nutrition - Make sure our nutritional needs are sorted (try to reduce alcohol which is a depressant and coffee which is a stimulant - perpetuating the states of emotional ups and downs that we are trying to treat by drinking wine/coffee!)

3. Sleep – get 7-9 hours a night - Google “sleep hygiene tips”

MIND

1. Thoughts and emotions - track them and mind your mind. Which thoughts/emotions are we feeding?

2. Mindfulness - Try some meditation – download the Smiling Mind app, it’s free

3. Mindset - Cultivate a positive mindset – gratitude, kindness and awe are our superpowers

HEART

1. Values – remember the most important thing/s

2. Others - Connect to someone else every day – family/friends or even a neighbour

3. Self – take a few minutes a day to feel yourself in your body, to feel your ‘home’, you could even say a gentle ‘hello me’ and if you are feeling brave ‘hello me, I love you”

Now, here are the mental health heavy-hitters when we feel burnout arriving or looming. I have also suggested some little sayings (affirmations or mantas, if you like) that we may all like to bring into our minds and hearts to support us to ride these emotional waves.

1.     Self-Compassion – “I have my own back”

Many of us are so hard on ourselves. This is not our fault, setting high standards has had massive evolutionary benefits (like, being the most powerful species on earth!) but it also has its downsides (like zapping our vital energy when we continually berate ourselves). So, can we lean towards loving (or even liking) ourselves as much as we do our friends or our kids? Can we remind ourselves that we have our own back? That we have done and felt hard things before and we can do it again? Becoming my own best friend is the most radical and transformative thing I have ever done, it allows me to take care of myself. Please try it.

2.     Fact Check - “Is it true?”

Our beautiful minds create stories to explain the unexplainable – it is part of their job. I don’t know about you, but I am finding myself faced with many confusing or unexplainable things at the moment, like:

-       Being told to stay home and not see loved ones - weird

-       Wearing a sweaty piece of cloth on my face which is rubbing makeup off my red nose - embarrassing

-       Being a school teacher and debating with my kid about….too much to add in this blog

-       Preparing my 10000th meal in one day - annoying

So, when I find myself creating stories to explain these very odd circumstances like “I have no friends, life or career, I hate my clothes and I will never have time to myself again”, I stop and check the facts and the evidence.  Usually I have let myself jump on a train of catastrophizing or blaming - no wonder I find myself freaked out or bummed out.  So, to pull ourselves back, we can ask the simple question “is it true?”. Usually it isn’t and man, that is good news. Credit to Byron Katie for this magic question.

3.     Rest - “Read the goddamn book”

Many of us simply don’t know how to rest and rest is absolutely what our bodies need at the moment – to recover from 6 months of fear-induced adrenaline running through our system. Please allow yourself to rest. Do a Yoga Nidra deep relaxation (find one on YouTube or Insight Timer), take a nap or read a goddamn book. Do these during the day, walk away from the emails/phone calls/washing or children and take 15 minutes to rest.  The world will keep spinning without us – I promise.

 4.     Set Boundaries - “No, I value myself more than I value your opinion of me”

Listen to yourself and your needs and if something doesn’t work for you, say so and say no. This is a marathon, not a sprint, we need to keep ourselves well for the long run.

There is no denying it, things are weird, sometimes scary and often annoying but I do know, from my own experience, that we always have a choice when it comes to how we respond to the world and the challenges we face. Please take good care of you and your little people, love yourself stupid and rest like your health depends on it.

“Who are you? Who are you? I am a walrus……”

MINDFULNESS AS A PATH TO SELF AWARENESS AND AWAKENING

Originally posted 2014 

For those of you growing up in the 80’s you will know this is a quote from “The Breakfast Club”. As you will remember, the key characters (all teenagers in a weekend detention) are asked to write an essay describing who they think they are. The “nerd” of the group sticks two pens in his mouth and says “I am a walrus”…….makes me laugh every time!

Anyway, from the wisdom of the “Breakfast Club” to the insights of one of the most incredible spiritual leaders of our time….Eckhart Tolle. One of my all time favourite quotes from “The Power of Now” is on page 4 of his book (I probably remember it so clearly as I have started to read this book about 300 times – finished it only once….). He is describing his long battle with depression. He goes on to detail what he noticed to be happening in his mind during a particularly dark time for him.

“I cannot live with myself any longer”, this was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then, suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. “Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self’ that ‘I’ cannot live with.” “Maybe” I thought, “only one of them is real”

Every time I read this, it helps me to remember that ‘I’ am so much more than what I and other people habitually “see”.

‘I’ am not the car I drive, the books I read, the way I do my hair or the relationships I have (sounds a bit like a quote from Fight Club). All of those external things belong to the ‘self’ that I have created to allow me to live in this physical modern world.

It has taken me forever to grasp this concept. I have always had a sense that there was “more” to this whole life thing. That surely there was more to it than the colour of my jeans, the career I choose or the handbag I carry. And so, I have finally understood that we truly do have many parts (body, mind, heart and spirit). And so often, these parts are so disconnected from each other that we are not truly functioning at our best.

For the purpose of this blog, lets just focus on two of them – the ‘I” (spirit) and the ‘self’ (mind).

Mindfulness is a tool that supports us to discover direct access to the ‘I’. How do we find this ‘I’ in the madness of our lives? I can assure you it is lying somewhere between the phonecall to your boss and the dinner you are about to prepare……

 Think of a time when you have felt truly and deeply content…when time seemed to stop and you felt like you were just in “flow”,

 When the incessant chatter of your mind took a break,

 When your body felt whole and complete and truly divine, perhaps even a little tingly.

For most people, this happens when they are doing something they are passionate about like dancing, singing, painting, playing an instrument, listening to music, connecting with nature, doing yoga or cooking. For some lucky people, they even experience this when they are working….

A time you feel the worries, the planning and the obsessing just melt away. When you feel clear headed, stimulated but calm, when you feel aware and tuned in.

A time you feel connected to another – you feel your hearts meeting, you no longer feel separate or alone…..

This all happens when you are in touch with your ‘I’ and when you allow your ‘self’ to take a back seat.

I am hoping to paint a picture of where mindfulness can bring you. The irony is that you are already there, some of the time, you just are not aware of it.

So, the question remains, who are you? Do you really know your true essence? Who would you be if we took away the money, the relationships, the body, the career? Mindfulness is one path that can help you to find out. You never know, you may discover you are not actually a walrus after all.

What is Mindfulness?

MINDFULNESS IS SIMPLE BUT SIMPLE DOESN’T MEAN EASY

Originally posted 2012

“Mindfulness is the awareness that arises through moment to moment, non-judgement awareness” Jon Kabat-Zinn

Mindfulness is simple but simple does not mean easy.

The simplicity lies in the fact that to be mindful we do not have to DO anything, we just have to BE. Therein lies the difficulty. We are so conditioned to DO that we don’t remember how to just BE. Mindfulness is about attending to what is really going on, not what we think is going on. It is about being aware of what is happening now and not being carried away in the past or absorbed in a fantasy of the future. Take some time to observe a 2 year old. They are not stuck in the past or obsessing about the future, they are wholly and solely focused on this very train they are playing with, or this very bug they are crushing! And then observe the pure happiness or joy they experience from the smallest things – wouldn’t it be great if we could all remember how to do that? We were all 2 once (a very long time ago for some of us!).

 According to Jon Kabat-Zinn (and the broader Buddhist tradition) there are seven key areas to focus on when cultivating mindfulness in your life. These are:

1.       Non- Judgement – adopting the role of “observer”, an impartial witness to your experience
2.            Patience – knowing that things will unfold in their own time
3.            Beginner’s mind – noticing that no moment is the same, reveling in the wonder of the now
4.            Trust – developing a trust in yourself and your feelings
5.            Non-striving – letting go of the desire to “get somewhere”
6.            Acceptance – a willingness to see things as they really are
7.     Letting go – allowing thoughts, feelings and situations to be what they are and not attaching a desire to control them

These seven areas are all good and well I hear you say! But what about when I am stuck in traffic with a screaming child in the back, running late for a music class I don’t even want to go to, on the phone to a demanding boss and trying to each lunch…..how do I adopt a non-judging, patient, beginner’s mind, accept, trust and let go while releasing my desire to “get somewhere”? I hope to cover each of these seven attitudes in more detail in my blog in the future but in short, you just be where you are…..you remove the additional stress of worrying about not being where you would like to be…..you just allow yourself to be there – in all of the chaos. Step back mentally and watch it all happening, as though it were happening to someone else. Remove the pressure and just watch……and breathe, God, don’t forget to breathe. 

The breath is a key tool in cultivating mindfulness. Our breath provides a trusty refuge for us in the chaos of our modern lives. In the past, I would become so annoyed when people would lecture me about the wonderful qualities of the breath….”the breath this, the breath that, bla bla bla, yadda yadda, yadda…” I used to think. But after a very long sales process, I have finally bought into the idea of the power of the breath. It truly does provide the bridge between body and mind and is a very excellent tool that is there for us to use all the time.

So, there it is - a quick definition of mindfulness. Seems far too short for such a massive topic. However something that has constantly occurred to me is the feeling that we tend to use so many complicated whizz-bang words to explain such a simple topic. I think one of my early teachers captured it in three simple words “awareness, awareness, awareness”.