Preventing Burnout

Con­tem­po­rary life is like a finely tuned machine, and that is the prob­lem. We are not machines. We are cre­ated cre­ators - not robots. Sys­tems love con­sis­tency. They love the steady rev­enues of an even-flowing econ­omy. The moment an orga­ni­za­tion is invented, it has one agenda: per­pet­ual sur­vival. The tool becomes the taskmas­ter. The owner becomes the owned. The employer becomes the employee.

How do we get through life with­out feel­ing like we are slaves to our own orga­ni­za­tions? How do we keep from emo­tional and spir­i­tual exhaus­tion? Is there some way to rise above the all of the processes so that we do not feel like we are on some sort of grand con­veyor belt?

I have a few tips that work for me: Never let what you own own you. Be will­ing to give it all away and just dis­ap­pear. Do things that get you in trou­ble. Stop look­ing up at insti­tu­tions. We cre­ated them. They exist for us and because of us and we can pull the plug on them any­time we want to. Dare intim­i­dat­ing forces to come after you. At the same time, be so peace­ful and sim­ple that you are not worth the effort to be some­one else’s enemy. Give your­self time to let your spirit find a way to want to do things instead of feel­ing like you have to do things.

There are some other tips that I will pass along another day. These are suf­fi­cient for now. I am part of a rev­o­lu­tion started by a lowly car­pen­ter a cou­ple of thou­sand years ago. He is the model for liv­ing inside and out­side of sys­tems simul­ta­ne­ously. He went down in his­tory as a rev­o­lu­tion­ary. His fol­low­ers are still all over the world. For no longer than he lived, he sure pulled the plug on a lot of fail­ing con­cepts. You can tell who his secret fol­low­ers are. They have a wry smile and always look like they are head­ing some­where else. Some­how they are in the world but not of it.