What does life after burnout feel like?
What does life look like after burnout? In some ways that picture is a little different for us all, largely depending on how significant the burnout was and whether it was work burnout; life burnout; or some combination of the two. Generally speaking though, the most significant visible difference can be seen in the level of “busy” people are.
I sat recently with a wonderful woman I’ve come to know through church and our homeschool group. While we were chatting the other day we were both commenting on the level of busy in our lives now vs. before.
Leading up to our burnout we were both living what I like to call an over processed lifestyle. We both kept taking more on. Overworking, high achieving, committed to personal excellence, and 1000% operating under the assumption that the longer our “to do” list was somehow meant we were “crushing it” in life easily.
We were both slammed. We operated feeling incredibly proud of how many things we could cram into one day. We lived life convinced that the more things we exposed the kids to, the more we presented, the more places we had to run, the more we were doing them a huge service in exposing them to a well rounded way to life.
Ironically now we both sit and laugh at the obsurdity of our thoughts. The horrifying reality that we both came smack dab into was, more was just more at the surface level. More didn’t mean deeper. More didn’t mean wisdom. Turns out, more largely just meant the cheapest possible experiences we could give the kids. Not financially, Lord knows that many of the extracurriculars we had the kids involved in were quite a financial investment.
But they were the cheapest because they were somewhat shallow. Shallow because in our effort to expose our kids to so many things, what we really taught them were a million different ways to distract themselves from making meaningful connections with those around them, meaningful connections with real experiences, meaningful connections with the lessons they were learning.
We were too busy hectically racing them from one thing to another, they never had time to process things. They didn’t dig into things, evaluate, chew on them, wade in them. We, too, were that example to them. We raced and ran from one thing to the next in businesses and in the community organizations we served.
Our one time best intentions of serving others became a resentful chore because of how over extended we were. This was the example we showed our kids, and this was the example we taught them in the lifestyle we had created.
The difference between our pre burnout/burnout life and post burnout life is, perspective and mindset.
In our post burnout lives a level of appreciation exists for not being busy. We value the freedom of not having most of our week structured by extracurriculars. We can forge deeper relationships as a family because of the intentional time we create daily to do so.
In our post burnout lives we understand contentment. We understand we don’t have to be consumed with being in everything, or being everywhere. We have a healthy perspective and have left behind FOMO (fear of missing out).
In our post burnout lives we can handle difficult situations with a level of inner calm rather than the fight or flight responses that used to be present in our daily high stress lives.
Mostly, we have joy. Not because everyday is perfect, because it isn’t. We have joy because of the intentional pursuit of the things that are truly valubable in our lives- relationship with God, relationship with spouse, relationship with children, relationship with employees, relationship with community organizations.
These relationships are deeper, and more meaningful than they were before. We lacked the time to truly connect appropriately, with ourselves and others, in our previous burned out life. Though, if you had said that to us back then, we would have denied it sheerly because we didn’t understand the difference.
Do we have extracurriculars now? Yes. Do we still serve and participate in community organizations and fundraising efforts? Yes. Do we do so now proceeding carefully about which ones we commit and attend? Yes. Do we make difficult decisions about which extracurriculars to take on and which to say “no” to? Yes.
Post burnout life in its essence is about intentional living and alignment. You choose your word. You figure out what feels good to your particular family and you proceed in that. It’s often hard to shut down the society norms. It’s hard not to look at those and compare who you are or what you want to accomplish to those norms.
What is freeing, and wonderous to me now is that I am finding more and more people who turned away from that “norm.” More and more people who resonate with a life of intentional pursuit of deeper meaning and connection.
We’re all still pretty busy. We all still have days where that quick meal is the best we can get to the dinner table. We’re all still able to be successful according to what that word means to us.
Living a burned out life isn’t the only option. I hope each and every day that the intentional pursuit of the lifestyle we now have as a family will teach the legacy of hard work and fulfillment to my children; that they will know racing around feeling stressed out and empty inside isn’t the only option for their lives.
I know this. I lived it. I began to thrive after my burnout. It’s my wish for any of you reading this who are still in that burned out phase, that you can embrace hope from this message and start to make the changes you need to get to the other side.
Join us in the post burnout world, it’s pretty nice over here.
