Grow With Soul: Episode 114 - Burnout, Limbo and Finding Abundance
Hello and welcome to episode 114 of Grow With Soul. Almost everyone I know is in a kind of limbo right now. Whether it’s where they’re going to live, what they’re going to do, who they’re going to be, what their next steps are, there is this sense of not quite being the old them and also not quite being the new them either. That’s how I feel right now too; I have restarted this episode three times already because I don’t quite know what to say, being neither the old podcast host or the new podcast host. I have a sense that I am living in the shadow of the self I want to be: the girl who doesn’t have a knee injury and who has fully stepped into the clarity of what she wants.
Here's what I talk about in this episode:
The limbo of living in the self of the person you used to be
Burning out from thinking too much, as opposed to doing too much
Downscaling your goals in order to deal with both limbo and burnout
Reframing the mental block of ‘starting again’
The role of abundance
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Read the episode transcript:
Hello and welcome to episode 114 of Grow With Soul. Almost everyone I know is in a kind of limbo right now. Whether it’s where they’re going to live, what they’re going to do, who they’re going to be, what their next steps are, there is this sense of not quite being the old them and also not quite being the new them either. That’s how I feel right now too; I have restarted this episode three times already because I don’t quite know what to say, being neither the old podcast host or the new podcast host. I have a sense that I am living in the shadow of the self I want to be: the girl who doesn’t have a knee injury and who has fully stepped into the clarity of what she wants.
What the pandemic has done for many of us is separate what is and isn’t important. In my work with clients, I’ve seen a discernible shift in priorities - before, they wanted to talk about growth, and neither of us really questioned why. Now they want to talk about how their business can help them have a better life. I think the trouble is that lockdowns have provided a very easy “when” point - “when things open up again” or “when this is all over THAT’S when I’ll be able to make changes”. And it was very comfortable sitting in that waiting, knowing it was out of your hands for now, but when lockdown was over it would be easy. And now lockdowns are easing and we don’t know what to do.
And so here we are in limbo, having shed the old skin of ourselves but not knowing how to put on the new one. Plus, we have all the heightened emotions and stress responses of living through a pandemic.
When people talk about burnout, we usually associate it with doing too much; taking on too many projects and working long hours and not spacing out deadlines and having a lot of responsibilities. But I also think we can burn out from having too much on our minds.
There have been three times this year where I’ve started to feel the creeping sensation of burn out. For me this takes the form of lethargy and hopelessness - I feel exhausted to the point at which I find it physically impossible to not lie down, and making any food is a Herculean effort, while also not being able to access any joy or point to my days. When I’ve felt like this this year I’ve thought “I don’t get it, I’m not even doing anything”. And no, I wasn’t doing much but I was thinking a lot.
I was thinking about managing financially, about making my work more truthful, about selling my house, about where I was going to live, about how I wanted to spend my days, about what I wanted long term, about my health. At any point I had four or five pretty life-defining topics on my mind whilst also trying to keep a business afloat. So, although I wasn’t doing too much, I was holding a lot, like a waiter with plates up each arm.
This may not be a burnout you feel you’re “allowed” to have because it doesn’t come off the back of a surge of productivity. Our hustle culture makes it almost a badge of honour to be able to point to a pile of tangible stuff and say “yes I’m burnt out, but can you blame me? Look at all the stuff I did”. Dealing with a lot of abstract concepts in your head doesn’t feel like a good enough reason to be burnt out, which may make you keep trying to push through thereby exacerbating the burn out and extending the limbo.
For Q2 and Q3 I downscaled my goals in order to focus on putting some of those plates down. Prioritising getting my health back on track, getting this house sold and finding somewhere to live while trying not to worry about what was next for the business. You can’t deal with it all at once effectively; rather than stack them all on top of each other, lay them out like dominoes.
For me, starting with what was stopping me doing other things (my health) and with what was most time urgent (housing) meant that I was able to give myself permission to put the other things in the future. That permission thing is key; to be able to say “all we’re doing now is tying up these loose ends so we can better deal with that other stuff in a few weeks” immediately makes it feel more manageable. Because remember, you decide this. You’re the one who set the goals and the timelines and the parameters - you’re allowed to change them.
One thing that can be a mental block when you’re in limbo or burnout is this feeling of going backwards or starting again.
Funnily enough, I experienced this most acutely through my knee injury. Over the winter I got into exercise in a way I never have before; for the first time it was not because I wanted to look good according to societal markers, but because I wanted to feel strong and I was enjoying it. By May this year I was hiking or running every day, as well as an hour workout and yoga; it was a huge part of the rhythm of my weeks. I was physically doing things I’d never thought was possible for me, my confidence in myself and my body was higher than it had ever been - and yes, although I don’t weigh myself, I had gone from a size 16 to a size 10.
After injuring my knee though, all that abruptly stopped as a 15 minute walk down the road became the limit of what I was able to do. At first I was mournful that my summer hiking plans were out the window and just acutely missed tramping around in the hills, but soon another thought began to plague me: I’m losing all my progress. I remember gingerly heading out for one of my flat tarmac walks and thinking “I’m going backwards, this is the kind of exercise I was doing in October, I’m having start all over again”. It is a defeating feeling.
But really, “starting again” only exists if life is one long linear march toward perfection - and it’s not (or at least, I choose that it’s not). This isn’t supposed to be linear, I was never supposed to progressively get better and better. That doesn’t happen to professional athletes - they have injuries or off seasons, they get dropped and come back. It doesn’t happen to any business, any human. We have this idea that anything that is not an improvement on the day before is a failure, but nowhere in real life is this shown to be possible. It’s not a starting again, it’s a recircling, a pause, an unexpected twist in the scrawl of life. And if nothing else, you already know you can do it.
Somebody on Instagram asked me about embodying abundance when you’re struggling. I’m not sure I know a lot about embodying abundance in general, it’s not something I spend a lot of time being conscious of. But, when I think about it, in spite of all the limbo burnout struggle I’ve spoken about here, I do think that in amongst it I’ve maintained a pretty abundant mindset.
And by that I mean: I don’t think this is going to all go wrong. I don’t think it’s going to end badly. I don’t think I’m never going to get through it. I don’t think it’s over forever. Even as, as I wrote in my Q2 review this week, my income has plummeted over the last couple of months, I don’t feel very stressed about it because I know, unflappably, that abundance is ahead of me. I trust completely in myself and my capabilities, I know absolutely that once I’ve dealt with the limbo it will all free up again.
Because to me, that’s what abundance is: belief. Belief in myself, belief in my abilities, belief it’s going to happen. Being able to see it even if you can’t do it right away. Knowing you’ve done it before and can do it again. Openness to the possibility and opportunity in everything, even the bad stuff. Optimism. Trust in your self. As always, it comes down to trusting, and backing yourself - then giving yourself exactly what you need to do exactly what you know you can do.