How to Navigate Burnout

First: a burnout definition.

If you check 3 or more of these criteria, hit the pause button, buddy.

1) Tired even after sleeping
2) Things you used to enjoy seem more like a chore
3) You just feel a bit negative and/or pissy a lot
4) You make more mistakes/feel really clumsy when you’re usually not
5) Physical and mental health symptoms like tummy aches, racing thoughts, etc.

Usually, these things would persist longer than a week for it to signal burnout-status. Each of us will definitely experience those things from time-to-time just being human. And… I’m not your doctor or therapist or anything. I am a fellow human being that can use logic and common sense to deduce… that you don’t want to be experiencing those 5 things!

In the past 5 years, I have experienced being burned out a few times.

[Trying to ensure the yoga community/business I worked at succeeded during COVID, saving money to have a child, performing stand-up comedy, supporting my wife through the IVF process, dealing with a huge mental health crisis during her pregnancy, still working, then having our first kid, full time job, performing at night, teaching yoga by day, doing the whole social media shit game to grow my comedy career, raising our wonderful daughter, cooking, cleaning, wiping, changing, and very occasionally washing my face. (Not washing my face is my toxic trait)…]

Amidst all of that, I went through all 5 symptoms of burnout on the list up there more than once and had to navigate that intense inertia while still keeping my life afloat.

It may be perfectly possible to live a life where burnout just doesn’t happen. Cool. I’m going to speak to those who either are heading toward it or currently in it. If you’ve never been burned out, read on to support someone in your life who has or will.

The world will keep moving. You can pause.

My biggest fear for a long time was thinking that if I paused, I’d lose momentum and I’d lose so much of what I worked so hard to attain.

That’s just simply not true. The nature of life is change. Embrace the season of stepping back if your body is calling for it and ask for support from your loved ones. Y’all, friends and family are just waiting to have your back. It is a gift to be able to support someone. Give them that gift and ask for a few days to reset, breathe, sleep, cry, go to therapy, take walks, be in nature, etc.!

Stepping back is the equivalent to when an artist steps back from the canvas after deep concentration. It is absolutely necessary for the next wave of genius and work.

So, yeah: Ask for help.

Sure, if you have a shitty employer or you’re really living paycheck to paycheck with no way to take time off and pay rent, then I get you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.

There are still solutions to weave into your current life, and they’re going to sound cliché as fuck, but the reason they’re cliché is because they work.

1) Be off screens for the 1 hour you go to bed. If you notice that you resist doing this (like it just feels sooo knee-jerk must-have-my-phone), that’s likely because you’re afraid to really feel and sit and be with your thoughts and be with yourself. Which leads to the next point…

2) Feel your feelings. Failure, despair, hurt, heartbreak: they fucking suck to feel. And this is where you could ask for support; not someone to trauma-dump on, but someone who could just be physically present while you cry or sit there or journal. Your feelings will not kill you, even if they are extremely painful. Again, I’m not a therapist, just what I learned.

3) Do physical movement once a day for a minimum of 20 minutes. Even if you already feel tired, it will be an energy-giver. Yoga, walk, push-ups/sit-ups/jumping jacks, shoot a basketball, follow a Tae Bo class on YouTube…

I know a lot of this takes something called… self-motivation! “Omg nooo!” …omg YES. It is a muscle to grow like any other. I’ve got a tip on self-motivation back in the body of the email. If you’d like a more structured way to build this muscle, keep your eyeballs peeled like my grapes: I’ll be launching a little how-to-cultivate-self-motivation course soon. Gotta feed dat baby ok! And also, it’ll be extremely good content, so hush now, you’ll like it. We need to put more positive things like this on the market, mmkay?

K love you, ttyl.

-J