I’ve experienced burnout a few different ways, but thankfully nothing like some whose lives have become completely derailed for a year or more. My bouts into the darkest storm of exhaustion were often fleeting little seasons of several weeks. Not that it’s a competition.
But I’ve also experienced burnout’s opposite: FLOW.
Flow is a state of poetry in motion, that place of being where thought has been somehow replaced with a symbiosis with action. Like touch-typing these words; hardly a thought. It is intent trained into the moment, a symphony of action where consciousness melds into the present where action is joy and peace.
Burnout is probably the worst depression. For me it was accompanied with a loss of mind; I lost my ability to cogitate. Mental exhaustion that completely swept over my body and left me wrecked. With all defences down, one is vulnerable to all manner of attack.
Everyone should experience burnout’s opposite, flow. It is the best of humanity. It is pure confidence but nothing brash. Utter humility and connection with gratitude for the gift flow is.
For me flow is about being in the absolute right place and right time in your life, functional in every possible way, succeeding without a single doubt. As a Christian, it’s doing things absolutely in God’s strength—no external effort.
The benefit of flow is there’s so much that can actually be done without any sense of exhaustion—there may be tiredness but not exhaustion. It’s a way of living where every day counts with cognisance that our days will be over one day. That fact ought to humble every single one of us… but it also motivates us to do what can only be done now.
For the one suffering burnout. Recover from today, one day at a time. One thing being in burnout teaches us; our craving for burnout’s opposite, flow.
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