I previously wrote several candid posts about my journey after leaving my business law & dispute resolution consulting practices along with several leadership posts for a 2.5-year sabbatical to heal from “burnout,” that I didn’t even know I needed.
Like a “Fish Out of Water,” sometimes our environments & what we “know” can prevent True Growth and actually hinder our learning. Even worse, sometimes we can stagnate & dip into encrusted patterns, becoming a jerk at work at not even knowing it.
While choosing to be Happy may seem simple, it takes some discipline & focus, which at first seems like sacrifice & grueling efforts. Any rigidity precludes fluidity, which is necessary for the unfolding paradigm shift we are facing in the business realm. For instance, I chose to part from many dear friends and colleagues at the outset of my Sabbatical, and moving on from familiarity was scary & rocked my Faith — after some space, you may realize some no longer serve or you’ve transformed and organically grown apart (waking up conscious took effort)
What I see now in hindsight, especially with much advanced first-hand experience with medical & healing efforts around the symptoms of burn-out, when unaddressed, result in further dis-ease (that I’ve dubbed #ToxSick).
There are steep costs to the old paradigm “Go, Go, Go mentality”. You would think eating clean, exercising, meditation and exclusive personal growth training would be enough; it is the silent & subtle factors that creep-up on us and cause burnout. If I were to have continued ignoring the coping mechanisms of chronic stress, adrenal fatigue, lack of proper sleep, go-go-go lifestyle without much reflective pauses or rest, inefficient breathing, bio-functional problems, and emotional constrictions, while pursuing my “entrepreneurial hustle,” “work-hard and play-hard,” and “power thru” adopted ignorant beliefs, I would have ended up dead like my brother, a very successful interventional cardiologist with a multi-million dollar high-impact practice, whose demise was at the hands of burnout resulting in him becoming ToxSick and developing irreparable dis-ease, culminating in his tragic death.
In other words, I am very fortunate that part of what I do and my Craft overlapped with my own personal entrepreneurial experience with burnout and the chronic disease epidemic around the Globe — being ahead of the proverbial “curve” on this one has allowed me to see that we are only now beginning to see the tsunami of latent life & systems-threatening symptoms percolating throughout our business ecosystems and society at large.
Burnout is real
If left unaddressed, beyond a no-turning-back-point, it can kill you literally.
By pushing yourself too far & flying too high you may be at risk of “blowing a gasket or frying a fuse”
Like the mythical Icarus, there are serious risks of flying too high & too fast
We can no longer deny we are energetic beings that inhabit a bio-electric vessel
Performing beyond our capacity or continuously pushing ourselves beyond balanced energetic states has led to the burnout epidemic
With this scientific truth, consider that the recent burnout epidemic is premised on an outmoded concept of “entrepreneurial hustle” or “powering thru” in the business culture
Like the Tale of Icarus: Icarus’ father creates wings for him to fly, and beforehand, Icarus’ father warns him first of complacency and then of HUBRIS, asking that he fly neither too low nor too high, so the sea’s dampness would not clog his wings nor the sun’s heat melt them
Icarus ignored his father’s instructions not to fly too close to the sun; when the wax in his wings melted he tumbled out of the sky and fell into the sea where he drowned, sparking the idiom “don’t fly too close to the sun”
I myself flew relatively too high & too fast in my early legal & dispute resolution career launches, catching my dire symptoms in time before the burnout became irreversible
How had I coped with my success & related capacity issues?
Was the strenuous effort & toughening up method of achieving success inefficient & dangerous over the long-term?
Is there another way that we’ve overlooked in our business/executive/leadership space to be successful sustainably & mindfully?
In particular, it appears that many of our closely held beliefs about success are unsustainable or premised on unhealthy beliefs about the capacity
In a sense, going back to basics reaps exponential benefits
By honing & strengthening the foundation of our Leadership: energy, mindset, heart space & inSpiration, we can ensure optimal capacity & sustainable performance
Avoiding the lessons of Icarus by hustling too fast and high, we risk falling to our demise by crashing & burning-out
This is near & dear to my heart, so feel free to let me know if I can be of service to you as a Leader or your Team — I intend that you find inspiration & learn from this wisdom!
Must-read Articles:
***Dedication: Tim Pownall (RIP) was seminal in planting the Seed to shine my Light as a force for Collective Good (as an Agent of Change, which he embodied for many of us), so I am extra enLightened to cocreate with Mark & his team here, furthering a Torch passed to us by Tim as a Wayshower: using ADR as a Force to bring peace, ascension & harmony to the world.
- Healing The Energy of Conflict by Hass Sadeghi - September 22, 2020
- My Healing Journey Back from Burnout & Facing the Myth of Hustling to Success - September 16, 2020
- The Power of Clarification - September 14, 2020