How to Avoid Fall Burnout: Stop Reacting! Start Responding!

"Reactionary life flow" is one of the key culprits of sickness, stress, and exhaustion. It’s a dangerous loop that we all get sucked into from time to time yet never really question what it’s about until its too late.

Here’s a post about what it means, and what to do about it.

Reactionary Life Flow Prevents Whole-hearted Living:

Do you respond to emails as soon as you get them? Do you feel compelled to write back to a text the minute it hits your inbox?

This is what Scott Belsky (author of Making Ideas Happens) calls “reactionary work flow”. It’s when you respond immediately and automatically to day-to-day work stimulus that are thrown your way (emails, memos, phone calls, and other work-related tasks).

After reading Belsky’s book this summer, I began to realize that we also live in a world dictated by what I call “reactionary life flow”.

In reactionary life flow we react immediately and unconsciously to whatever demands, crises, requests, or even opportunities get thrown our way. For better or worse, we are, most of the time, acting on a default setting that ceases to question what’s coming in and automatically leaps to a patterned response or action on the way out.

We have a constant stream of this stuff each and every day. To help manage it, we have designed a way that works for us to filter it all out. However, acting on default prevents us from living a whole-hearted, fully conscious life!

Do you Seize or Shut Down Opportunity too Quickly?

Here's a very simple example. Imagine an old friend emails you up to have a “catch up” coffee date this week. Do you drop what you’ve doing to write back “yes!” right away? Or do you write “no” without even considering it?

Most likely, you respond in less than 24 hours and you have your default reaction that doesn't take time to consider all the options. Either you think you are too busy and don’t want to even consider the idea or how to make it work, or you may be too excited and say yes even if it means cramming your schedule even more.

In both cases, you are making a decision based on a patterned behavioural response that doesn't pause and ask what’s good for YOU right now. Rather it might be a decision based on initial excitement to see that person, or a feeling of not wanting to make that friend unhappy. Alternatively, you feel you can’t cope with another thing on the menu and react with a “no”. Either way, taking more time to respond could be beneficial.

A more recent example from my life, was when a young couple asked if I could teach them an in-home yoga class once a week. I was so excited that I said, “yes” immediately without thinking twice. I later realized after a class that it wasn’t going to honour my schedule or my needs by taking this on. I simply dealt with the request as it came because I was excited by the opportunity and didn’t want to give it up.

I realized that my patterned reaction to new opportunities has always been “seize them right now because they won’t be around later”. But this is false.

Opportunities are not always there to be seized right away. Sometimes they are there to be considered in the moment and to plant the seeds for more opportunities to come later.

Just because I CAN do something, doesn’t mean I SHOULD do it (at least, not right now).

What I am learning is not to live in reactionary life flow, but in “response-ible life flow”.

Time to Pause and Prioritize:

Just like with work, we need periods of non-stimulation in our lives where we can re-group and prioritize our next steps. Even if this means taking a day or even a week before making a big decision.

We’re so accustomed to responding in real-time that even pausing to take 10 deep breaths before giving an answer seems like eternity.

When we’re being carried along a current of stimulus that is outside of ourselves, we just want to deal with the flow of life situations, demands, requests, and opportunities RIGHT NOW so that we feel some control over what’s going on.

I’m learning to avoid this reactionary-ness that can either shut me off from opportunity right away or fill my glass so high that I drown.

I’ve learned that first and foremost, it’s about looking at what’s important RIGHT NOW.
Try pausing, taking a breath and deciding: what is important to pursue RIGHT NOW, what CAN WAIT, and what IS JUST NOT FOR ME.

Despite the culture of urgency we’ve created since the rise of mobile technology, you never need to decide on the spot.

Sometimes drawing a mind map helps me to illustrate everything going on in my life. When faced with the flow of things coming my way, I’m more able to discern how full or free “my stream” really is.

Time to Harvest What You Have:

I think being aware of reactionary life flow is particularly pertinent for fall, because in this season we get bombarded by all sorts of “newness” – new opportunities at work, opportunities to reconnect with friends after the summer, and chances to take new courses or start new projects.

Maybe it’s the crispness in the air that whisks away the summer heat and makes room for autumn, or maybe it’s the feeling leftover from years of being programmed at school that September signifies a new beginning.

But in reality, fall is actually the time to “harvest” what you’ve already started. It’s the time to reflect on what you have and use it over the winter before planting new life seeds in the spring.

It’s no wonder so many people get sick or exhausted by November; they falsely (and maybe unconsciously) take on way too much in September/October.

By being more aware of the life flow, and knowing that you have the ability to pause, reflect, and decide what’s important now, later, or never.

This applies to everything. It can be as simple as assessing what to do with an email from a friend who wants to catch up with you this fall, to larger decisions around work, relationships, money, or family.

Please remember, fall is the perfect season to be practicing the art of responding thoughtfully, living in “response-ible life flow”, not automatically in “reactionary life flow”.

This will ensure a healthy and happy few months!

All the best!
Court



 

How Mindfulness can help you SPEAK UP!

Have you ever thought of your body as a chat room? Have you ever thought about the thousands and millions of conversations that your body hosts in every given moment?

Your body is like a huge conference centre and there are ongoing panel discussions between your physical body, your emotional body, your mental thoughts, and your spirit every single second of the day.

This is something I’ve been learning in my yoga practice. In yin yoga we hold poses for up to 5 minutes each, giving us an opportunity to feel our physical body, hear our mental thoughts, and notice our emotional responses.

We say, “listen to what your body is saying to you, and listen to what your mind is saying back to your body”.

But who’s talking?

If you can imagine for a moment that you are in an intense leg lunge, and you’re holding it for 5 minutes. Here’s what might happen…

Speaker #1 (physical body) says, “Oh man, my hip really hurts, it feels quite stuck”. It puts that statement out there for all the other panelists to respond to. Speaker #2 (the mental body) might pipe in with it’s opinion first. It might say, “Well, my hips are always tight and they always hurt and there’s no point trying to stay here any longer because nothing will ever change.” To which, Speaker #3 (emotional body) might say, “This is making me feel really frustrated, I hate being in this pose, I’m getting really irritated and want to be doing something fun instead. This sucks!”

This dialogue shows us that in the blink of an eye, we could be having all sorts of conversations amongst multiple speakers that we’re not even aware of.

This brings us to the foundation of a yoga practice. The word “yoga” comes from the root, “to yolk” or “union”. This means that we come together.

However, to me, it also speaks to what one of our life goals should be – oneness with ourselves.

So why is this helpful?

When you start to get comfortable listening to this "conference" dialogue, you get clues as to the general TYPES of conversations that YOU tend to have. Once you know this, in an everyday life situation, you can become a better moderator of that discussion.

Here’s an example:

Imagine you’re at a table with a bunch of loud, outspoken, and over-powering people (for example, a meeting with big-wig clients or dominating co-workers, at dinner with a bunch of extroverted friends, or at a huge gathering with your entire extended family). Everyone at the table is going back and forth loudly giving their opinions but not leaving much room for anyone else to speak.

You try to butt in but no one listens. You start to feel frustrated. Maybe you start to feel hot in the face, maybe your chest clenches a bit. You want to chime in but no one is listening. You keep wanting to open your mouth but there’s no point.

This is a major conversation going on inside your body.

Here, your mind might be saying “No one is listening to you, your words aren’t worth being listened to, don’t even bother”, your emotions might be saying “this makes me feel like I’m a 5 year old again and no one is listening, I’m frustrated and sad and don’t want to be here”, and your body might be saying “ya, you’re right, I can’t relax, I need to clench my chest and close off my heart”.

What do you do?

If you KNOW this conversation is going on, if you KNOW because you’ve experienced this pattern in a safe space before (e.g. on a yoga mat, meditating, or elsewhere), then are better able to shift it. You can see that it’s not what’s going on outside that's making all of this happen, it’s the dialogue that’s going on inside.

As moderator you can change gears.

In this example, you could first change your mental statement to – “I AM worth being listened to, my ideas and opinions ARE great, and I AM confident in my voice”.

This then forces your emotional body to respond with a different emotion, “Oh, you are? Ok, well in that case, I feel a bit better. Actually I feel kind of good. Yah, I totally feel worthy of being here”. And then your physical body might say, “Well you guys seem to be doing alright, I guess I can relax a bit now”.

And so, in my opinion, it’s really important to start listening to this dialogue, because no matter what the situation, can always step back and take a look at what your speakers are saying, and which one is directing the conversation and shift it.

It’s important to love all of these speakers, but then guide them in the direction that you desire when things get a little off track!