Thank God For The Burnout
Wu-wei and the Taoist art of doing absolutely nothing.
I mustn’t be burned out. I have too much to do.
So I forced myself to stare at a glaring screen and push dull words out of my fingers in an attempt to stay above water. But the heavy cotton wool that’d replaced my brain had other plans. It felt sticky and thick and empty. After making the cotton-wool even denser, I eventually caved, closing my laptop, succumbing to the heaviness, allowing the guilt to be there and resting anyway.
It’s been the same in this UK heatwave. I tried, at first, to force myself to make something of my week, to work as normal, to move as normal… until I just allowed it to be heavy and hot and sweaty and succumbed to what’s here.
You can replace ‘burnout’ and ‘heatwave’ with anything challenging, really. The trick, I’ve found, is in allowing the current to take me rather than desperately battling upstream against it.
Inside Joyful this week: the Taoist concept of wu-wei — how to flow like water around whatever's in your way right now. What my recent burnout actually taught me (spoiler: thank god for the burnout). A tiny experiment for your week. And a 10-minute stillness session, because you likely really need it.
It isn’t just the heat, when you’re dealing with a heatwave. We’re also researching the best ways to keep a British building cool. Tweaking our schedules so we don’t have quite as much to do. Planning different meals so the oven isn’t cooking us in our houses. Prepping, anticipating, helping. And that’s before our brains start to bake and we attempt to sleep in this mess. There’s no wonder we feel about as useful as a shallow puddle when it’s this hot in the UK.
I spoke to a girlfriend the other day, Sarah, who told me her seven-year-old boy has turned into a psycho. Yelling, tantrums, throwing things. Almost daily. He even hit the dog. Her brain is doing what mine does in hot weather — researching, problem-solving, anticipating, worrying… it’s not just the tantrum, but everything around it.
It's never just the thing. It's everything the thing brings with it.
Wu-wei is a Taoist concept of effortless action. And I’ve been thinking about it a lot this week (the heat, you know). When I burned out recently, the best thing for my body and brain was to accept the burnout and soften into rest. The best thing for me in this recent heatwave has been to accept the temperature and soften into rest.
I’ve read in the deepest part of the shade (nothing worthy, either. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve been reading Dan Brown’s latest), watched Gilmore Girls, listened to this gorgeous audiobook about woodland folk tales, and done naff-all work.
What if the best thing you can do right now is what feels most natural?
My friend Sarah — she’s likely holding a lot more than she gives herself credit for. Just as I did in my burnout week, as I did in the heatwave. But our modern-day inclinations are to muscle on. Power through. Force ourselves and contort ourselves into a shape that seems ‘appropriate’. But what if we allowed it to be really fucking hard instead?
This is where wu-wei comes in. It’s acceptance in a gorgeously simple idea from eastern philosophy: stop swimming against the current, and accept what’s here in front of you.
As soon as I allowed myself to be fully, properly, deeply burned out recently — watching tv in bed all day, eating whenever and whatever, slower walks, zero work — even despite that little edge of guilt that crept in, I was able to rest properly, actually recover, and even find the magic on the other side.
That magic itself is interesting, too.
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