Healing is as much a gift for us as it is for you.
Don’t ever sacrifice time to heal because you think it’ll upset people…
It’s you feeling like you don’t have time to heal that’s causing all of the upset.
Make healing a part of your daily routine.
Why? Because pain will continue to be a part of your daily experience.
Waiting until you completely breakdown isn’t a good strategy—yet it’s what most people do.
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, eh?
Well, here’s the reality: we’re all broke. If this weren’t the case then we’d each be perfectly unbroken.
Which, of course, isn’t true.
We all have pain. And we’ll all continue to have pains—it’s one of our shared realities in life.
When our pain is left un-confronted it metastasizes—until eventually it takes over our entire experience.
It’s only when our pain is confronted (via healing practices) that it may finally fade—and eventually leave our daily experience.
P.s. I also published an article in “In Fitness And In Health:” 11 Lessons For Life From 21 Years of Martial Arts Training (8min read). I’d love it if you checked it out. :)
How do you tell someone How to break free from the grips of hell When they’re the one With burns Cuts Scrapes Bruises And gashes; And all you’ve got are words From unblemished pages And pure intentions
Burnout generally happens slowly, slowly, and then all at once.
It’s sneaky.
It isn’t obvious that it’s happening. But, once it happens, it’s already too late.
The question to consider is, how can we notice the burn before we become all the way burned out?
My thought? By noticing whether or not we’re taking time away from what’s required for a full recharge. Here it is in three steps:
Because here’s the thing about recharging: if you don’t mange this yourself, eventually your body will force you to do it—in full—without your consent.
And burnout never has good timing.
“Burnout is sneaky because you don’t realize you’re borrowing from tomorrow to push through today.”
Emily Leahy, Twitter
And when you borrow too much from tomorrow (or from too many tomorrows), you’ll eventually have nothing left to give in the current day.
And when that happens—when you’ve reached your “credit limit”—your body cuts you off from future energy supplies and shuts down.
Hence why burnout often feels like life in a vegetative state.
And hence why burnout often looks like an absurd number of hours spent sushi rolled up in your fuzziest of blankets while Netflix plays reruns of shows you’ve already seen as you fill yourself up with the emptiest of calories you have stored in the darkest of corners in your kitchen as emotional music plays softly in the background of your dimly lit rooms.
It’s not because you’re lazy, a failure, or because you suck at life—it’s because the energy from each of those “absurd hours” has already been spent.
And until you get current again with your “energy payments” it’s likely that “sushi-ed up” is how you’ll remain.
Until eventually, you become current, have a renewed source of life energy and get another chance to start spending again.
Except this time, hopefully you’ll only spend what’s within the limits of your current day—one day at a time.
Today marked one of the first times I can recall…
Where I felt irritable and anxious…
And told myself…
I’m going to need to double my meditation time today.
This, I’d say, is an excellent marker of progress for my own mental health awareness.
Healing doesn’t come from passing on pain.
At first glance, the idea of taking pain, packaging it up, and giving it away sounds sensible.
In the same way that taking garbage that’s overflowing, packaging it up, and sending it out to the curb might relieve your nose of the pain it’s stench thrusts upon you when you near it.
But, pain isn’t garbage that you can just dump off at the curb for another person to carry.
In fact, pain isn’t something that’s removable at all.
Pain is the crack in your house’s foundation. It’s the constant flooding of your basement. It’s the leaky roof, the broken plumbing, or the rotting wood.
It’s structural.
And there’s no moving out of this house. This body, this mind, this spirit—is the only real house you’ll ever have.
The only way this house heals, is if you do what’s required to get it fixed.
The information for healing is out there—for houses and for humans. It has never been more accessible.
It’s the solving—the doing of the work—that’s hard. And if you’re not up to the task of fixing something structural with your house alone—just admit it!
…And then get someone who can help.
Ideally, someone who knows how to fix structural problems and is a professional in their field.
You wouldn’t hire “just anybody” to fix a crack in your house’s foundation, right? So, why would you ever consider doing that for your most sacred home?
Ignoring structural problems and spewing the pain of it all on others—is no solution at all.
And only adds more wear to the houses of those in your own neighborhood.
This post became the introduction for: 28 Poetic Quotes from Inward by Yung Pueblo on Healing, Pain, and Love