Rest
When arbitrary deadlines threaten the survival of a living world
I just came across some resources as I was recognizing that deadlines have become triggers for me. It feels like stress has accumulated in my body over a lifetime of performing to meet other people’s expectations of what a high-performance human looks like.
After decades of trying to perform at this level of expectation, I came to an epiphany.
On Monday morning, after 45 minutes of silent meditation, and being in tears, I realized how much deadlines stress me out. They remind me of all the times connection, support, and community evaporated when I could not perform fast enough to meet a deadline without putting in more time and effort than was available to get the job done. In reality, I was performing beyond expectations to meet deadlines, but it was resulting in shrugs and a lack of recognition. I would quit a job out of frustration or desperation, and suddenly lose income, colleagues, and friends, and have to start over. That message of not performing well enough to deserve love has led to this deep fear of rejection, abandonment, and loneliness, and the constant struggle to survive, starting over again and again without a clear path to a sense of rest and of feeling at home with myself.
I have been in a process of learning that It’s enough for me to be able to say to myself, “It’s okay. I am worthy of love.”
I just came across a book, The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World by Ajay Singh Chaudhary, listening to the Upstream podcast. And I listened to an episode of The Daily podcast from The New York Times about the shift from the outrage and protest of 2016 to the resignation and exhaustion of 2024: “From Resistance to Reflection.”
Yesterday, I was in a People Need People conversation, organized by the Bateson Institute and Warm Data community, where my conversation partners were talking about a book called Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily & Amelia Nagoski.
This morning, Insight Timer offered a meditation called “Burnout Unveiled: A Deep Dive Into The 12 Stages” with Dee Hennessy.
So, for the first time in my life, I am coming across a description of why I have been in a state of collapse for a dozen years.
The 12 Stages of Burnout
Psychologist Herbert Freudenberger and Gail North developed the 12 stages of burnout to help people identify and understand the signs of burnout:
Excessive ambition: Taking on too many responsibilities
Overworking: Working beyond regular hours
Neglecting needs: Prioritizing others' needs over your own
Ignoring conflicts: Focusing on work instead of addressing conflicts
Changes in values: Prioritizing work over family, friends, and hobbies
Denial of new problems: Blaming others for problems
Social withdrawal: Spending less time with friends and family
Impact on others: Family and friends notice behavioral changes
Identity crisis: Feeling worthless and emotionally distant
Inner emptiness: Feeling useless and anxious
Depression: Feeling lost, hopeless, and exhausted
Final stage: Physical and mental collapse
In the midst of personal collapse and burnout, if feels like the problem became much larger, as we are witnessing civilization collapse. It feels like a sign of collective burnout.
All we know is entropy. When we imagine the ultimate heat death of the universe and we are fearing the heat death of our planet, this seems to be resulting in a kind of collective insanity, where the majority of the population votes for more of what led us to this late stage of collective insanity and burnout.
What we need and what the Earth needs is rest. We need to learn that the living world thrives because of a basic principle of nature: syntropy.
It just so happens that Ganga Devi Braun shared her work with the Design Science Studio community today: The Syntropy Sequence, a practice and a process for times of chaos and change.
Syntropy Sequence
Entropy, decay, collapse, and unravelling are realities within our universe, but they are not all there is. Syntropy is the dance partner of Entropy, something that only happens when living systems open to one another, communicate, and interact.
The Syntropy Sequence first emerged in the context of hospicing my father and another beloved elder in the Summer of 2018. Since then, I have taught it to hundreds and applied it into countless contexts where chaos and change have presented immense challenges.
This sequence helps us shift from a state of internal and/or external chaos into a state of clear participation in the self-organizing universe.
This is a key tool in the times we are entering, times of collapse and rapid change.
Thank you for joining. Thank you for being an agent of syntropy.
Sunday, December 1, 2024, 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM PST
Full Disclosure: I am currently working with Ganga Devi Braun, who is a development advisor offering support to create Systems for Flow.