How to stop burnout - the unexpected solution (it’s not more self-care).
I was burning out every second week, sleeping the weekends away, burdened by the guilt of letting people down when I couldn’t keep my commitments, and I was pissed off that I had zero energy for me.
‘Enough!’ I finally snapped. With a mission to become more productive, consistent and in control - I began researching burnout. I was going to hack my way out of the vicious cycle that was stealing my confidence.
Boundaries (saying ‘no’ to others) and self care (saying ‘yes’ to yourself). That was what the internet told me to do. I found that attempting to hold boundaries and maintain rigorous self care routines without first dealing with why you’re people pleasing yourself to death - is a recipe for even more burnout! Next.
Inconsistent vs Cyclical, that was my big discovery and the quick fix I wanted. My research led me to what every female used to be taught at the initiation of their first period. This is what I learnt:
The moon has a 28 day cycle in which it changes from full, to half, into total blackness, and then to half again. Females also have a 28 day cycle. This is not an insignificant coincidence. Men’s hormone levels (where they get their energy) rise high in the morning and fade into the evening - just like the sun. Meaning everyday they have the same amount of energy, they’re designed to smash out workouts or work earlier in the day and switch off into the evening.
Women’s hormone levels are very different, they rise and fall according to where they are in their 28 day cycle. We need different hormones to menstruate and a very different hormone cocktail to ovulate. Like the moon, sometimes we’re full of energy and other times our light fades. We are designed to be reflective and still in the week that we bleed, then a powerhouse of energy the week we ovulate, an abundant nurturer the week after we ovulate and then more reclusive or nurtured in a premenstrual week.
If you compare a woman’s energy to a man’s it seems very inconsistent, changing rapidly from day to day. But if you zoom out you’ll see that we are extremely consistent to a rhythm of our own. When you know what’s coming and what you need in each phase of the cycle, it doesn’t have to be a rollercoaster!
The hero’s journey. This was a very important piece of the puzzle that helped solve my burnout problem. The hero’s journey is a metaphorical story used to teach the universal truth: we need to go through some shit, shitty experience that brings us face to face with our fears, that challenge us, makes us want to quit but force us to reach inside of ourselves and overcome, emerging from the darkness stronger than before, as a hero. (The premise of not only every movie you’ve ever seen but also all ancient mythology and religious teachings).
Our culture today glorifies the easy and convenient, struggle is something to be avoided at all costs, making us unequipped to deal with difficulty. The hero’s journey normalises hard times and reminds us they are an important part of life, because on the other side of heartache there is wisdom. It’s a lesson.
It took me a minute to embrace my cycle. I wanted to skip the slow energy side and just ‘man up’, be in that addictive fiery ovulation energy all day everyday. So of course I continued to burnout, but, each time I would wonder what was the lesson in the burnout. Each time I sat with the discomfort I began to uncover mind blowing, empowering truths. Such as:
Productivity is overrated.
Without taking the time to get clear, slow down and reflect, ask why we’re doing it, what is working and not working, is there a simpler way, is it making us happy - we just make more and more of the same old boring shit. We end up creating more work for ourselves rather than results, we make silly mistakes that could have been avoided if we just cleared our heads, and we fail to notice great opportunities that are right in front of us. Action without rest is insane, it’s imbalanced, unsustainable and suicidal. Realising this illuminated to me how toxic my work environment (and mind) had become. Everyone jacked up on testosterone, trying to work harder and faster, doing more, more, more. To rest and reflect was considered lazy and not okay. It was killing us all, but especially the women whose health is jeopardized by too much testosterone. It was a problem deeper than stress, the toxicity was rooted in misogyny. It’s not just women who have been labeled inferior but feminine traits like sharing emotions, nurturing safe spaces and taking time to reflect. I began to value mental clarity over busyness, I stopped trying to do everything and just excelled at what made sense. I saw and felt it working which gave me the confidence to push back whenever the ‘more, more, more’ voices started nagging.
Consistency is boring.
When I stopped fighting my cycle and accepted that I wasn’t designed to perform consistently at the same level everyday, I realised how clever the patriarchy was. To my surprise the slow times were not wasted time at all, on the contrary! When you align your energy with what’s happening inside you, you tap into a huge power that I will struggle to put into words. If you’ve ever had a difficult mediation experience where you couldn’t slow your mental chatter, it’s like the opposite of that. It’s easy stillness, wombing, where healing and release can happen, which gives you greater cleaner energy, truths and next steps reveal themselves, and you can feel a magnetic pull from inside you making it easy to manifest what you desire. It’s a dreamy place that I’d choose over hustling and grinding any day! It may not look like much from the outside but it’s powerful, it recharges you in a way that 50 billion coffees never could. Your actions may be slower here but they are magnetised. If you really embrace the slow times you will emerge with what feels like superhuman capabilities in your ovulation week, which will more than make up for the perceived loss of productivity. They lied to us. The very thing they told us would make us weak, IS the very thing that holds our power. It hurts to see that they conditioned us to devalue our innate strengths so that we actively disempower and exhaust ourselves. It hurts. But like in the hero’s journey, this hurt is the source of much healing, wisdom and empowerment.
Control is the root of all evil.
After a few hero’s journeys the answer was staring me in the face, the way to stop burning out and feeling like I wasn’t in control of my energy, was to surrender. It wasn’t necessarily my work, or the fact that I had a cycle that was burning me out, it was the way I kept fighting the current of my own nature, trying to control it. It takes way more energy to suppress nature than it does to go with it.
Every time my body told me I needed rest and I refused, I was adding fuel to the fire. On top of that I spent precious energy punishing myself for not being able to keep going. Now if I feel really tired I might take a guilt free mental health day and recharge, rather than pushing through for another week making myself sick and needing to take a few days of sick leave. It wasn’t just me that I wanted to control. If things didn’t unfold the way I envisioned, I burnt way more energy being frustrated and trying to force things back. When things unfold differently to what we expect - that’s interesting. Who’s to say it’s worse and not better, who’s to say the lessons learnt through that experience aren’t more valuable than if everything went to plan? Also, that’s life, nothing goes according to plan so lamenting it or forcing it is a waste of your limited energy! It’s asking for burnout. Instead of seeking to control the uncontrollable, it’s healthier to practice belief in yourself, resilience and compassion for when the plot inevitably twits.
Surrendering, especially for a recovering control freak, is easier said than done. It’s terrifying. But just as it’s a myth that rest is lazy, it’s a myth that surrender is defeat. Surrender is freedom. As you release the energy spent worrying about everything that could go wrong, you feel that energy returning to you. More focus, more clarity, more you.
So my quest to conquer burnout didn’t go as I expected. Instead of finding more productivity, consistency and control, I found balance. By matching my very masculine perspective of action taking and goal seeking with a gentler feminine perspective of reflection and surrender I found a powerful balance. A balance that has stopped me from falling into a heap over and over again.
Now I move like the tides. I flow freely from high energy to slow energy, trusting my body when it tells me to rest or to run, knowing there is a reason for every season. Hallelujah.
Practical ways to find your rhythm:
Download a period tracking ap (Clue is my fave)
Download a full moon ap (especially if you don’t have a period, run on the full moon, rest on the new).
Listen to the Period Queen Podcast (4 episodes, one on for each phase of the cycle)
Read Goddess Wisdom by Taniska
Get less artificial light after dark, light a candle, get a red light lamp and do more moon bathing.
Spend time with mother nature (feminine energy).
Purchase Failure Friendly Action Cards to learn self belief and self compassion.