You keep calling it burnout because it sounds better than the truth, right?
It sounds a little softer… maybe more acceptable… like something happened to you instead of something you’re participating in.
But if you slow down for just a second… I mean really slow down… you’ll notice something…
You’re not exhausted from doing too much, you’re exhausted from the weight of carrying what you won’t face!!
The conversations you keep putting off…
The decisions you already know you need to make…
The direction you keep pretending you’re still “figuring out.”
That’s not confusion… it’s avoidance!
Burnout usually comes from overextension… from pouring too much out with nothing coming back in. But what you’re feeling right now… that heavy, stuck, restless feeling… that comes from friction. From resisting what your gut has already told you… trust it.
You’re not tired because life is too much. You’re tired because you’re dragging shit behind you that you refuse to put down or deal with.
And it leaks into everything!
You wake up already drained and tired.
Simple tasks feel harder than they actually should be.
You start things and don’t finish them.
You doom scroll your phone instead of being productive.
You say you need rest, but rest doesn’t even feel like rest.
To be honest, the thing you’re avoiding is costing you more energy than actually facing it ever would.
It’s like holding your breath all day and wondering why you feel like you’re suffocating.
You don’t need a vacation… you don’t need another plan… you don’t need to “find yourself.”
You need to tell the truth… to yourself first!
What are you avoiding right now?
Don’t give yourself the polished answer or the one that sounds good. The real answer… the one that makes your chest tighten up a little bit when you think about it.
That’s the doorway in!
And yeah… opening it might suck. It might be really uncomfortable. It might actually force you to make moves you’ve been dodging for a while.
But on the other side of that is clarity.
Because nothing drains you faster than faking it all the time.
You’re not burnt out… you’re stuck in the cost of not facing it.
And the second you do face it… things will start moving in the right direction again!
Jeff
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