If you have ever tried to create life balance and reduce burnout, you know how hard it can be to maintain it. You might read a book or hear about a new method and go gung-ho on it, but two or three weeks later you’re back to your old ways. Why does this happen? It happens because you’re trying to change habits without changing the underlying mindset that put those habits in place to begin with.
I’m going to break it down here so that you can understand why your subconscious mind will sabotage your efforts of life balance if you try to create life balance without first upgrading your success mindset.
In the 21st century, we are bombarded by images and notions that influence our own perception of what having a truly successful life looks like, and you know what? It is a very different perception of success than ever before in history.
In the 21st century, busyness is worn as a badge of honor and well-being has been put on the back burner. In order to understand how it got to be that way, you must first realize that the psychological building block that this busyness badge of honor was built upon is one of the most basic concepts there is, the sense of self.
Achievement, accomplishment, status and success are a core part of your sense of self, and there is a good evolutionary reason for this, a little thing called “instinct to survive” AKA survival. Whether an individual was living in a world with a product-based socio-economic system, before a currency became the norm, or in the modern world where we have a currency base culture, accomplishment and success have always been an important part of survival, to either grow food, create products or generate currency, but in today’s world, far too many people are experiencing toxic symptoms resulting from having too much of one’s identity based on achievement and not enough value being placed on well-being.
Achievement, accomplishment, status and success. These notions help to define who it is you are to the world, which in turn helps to define who you are to yourself AKA “sense of self”. If your sense of self is too wrapped up into being a high achiever, being highly accomplished, having a certain type of status and or success, and not enough of your sense of self is connected to taking time for your well-being, it will sabotage your efforts to create realistic life balance because your core identity is wrapped up in who and what you are to the world outside you rather than who and what you are to yourself. When too much of your self-worth is based on how much you have achieved or accomplished this week, and not enough of your self-worth is based on how well you take care of your well-being, it sets you up for failure and ultimately in the long run, burnout.
Over time, because of the role that adrenaline and your adrenal system has with achievement and accomplishment, you can become addicted to “being on” and actually become too accomplishment oriented because you may feel like you need to have more and more achievement and set the bar even higher for yourself each time, in order for you to feel a sense of self-worth. I call this model of success, “The Toxic Success Model”.
Now here’s where it gets even more interesting, achievement and accomplishment are “Masculine Energies”. If you look at the ancient yin-yang symbol from China and the energies associated with it, active, “Yang” energy is associated with masculine energy and passive, “yin” energy is associated with feminine energy. That is an overly simplistic view of the feminine/masculine energy balance, but it works for illustration purposes right now without going into all of the complexities involved.
So things like working, accomplishing and setting the bar higher for yourself professionally, are associated with masculine energy and things like taking care of the home front, raising children and taking care of your own well-being, are seen as more of a feminine energy. According to the ancient Chinese, everyone has both yin and yang energy. Women and men have both feminine and masculine energies within themselves.
Both women and men can have issues with feeling overwhelmed and placing too much of their self worth in the hands of their fluctuating feelings of accomplishment or achievement. When more and more women started entering the workplace in the late Twentieth Century, many of them simply took on more roles outside of the house while still taking care of all of the household duties and raising children rather than creating ways to share those responsibilities, which leads to the Superwoman complex, which is where a woman feels like she needs to be on and active all the time in order to feel like a worthwhile human being.
This is simply an unrealistic and short-term way to live and sets women up for eventual burnout. And with the pressures that men face to succeed in business, as well as trying to help out around the house because their partners may be working as well, more men are experiencing burnout than ever before.
Everyone has their own individual subconscious reasons behind why they are allowing the toxic success mindset to rule their lives. It didn’t happen overnight and the habit of toxic success is not going to go away overnight, but the first step is to acknowledge that you want something more out of life than living with a toxic success mindset.
Which raises the question, if Toxic Success is an unhealthy model of success, what is a healthy model?
I like to call the healthy model of success, “Holistic Success”. Holistic Success is about being exceptional at your career, while having a life too. It’s not about sacrificing your well-being for the sake of your career or business.
If left unchecked, extreme busyness and overwhelm can lead to burnout, which can erode your well-being in ways that eventually affect your entire life and your family.
If you are experiencing the symptoms of burnout, I invite you to make today be the day that you take action to create burnout solutions so that you can kick burnout to the curb and reclaim your well-being.
Cheers, J.D. WildFlower
Founder, Holistic Success Institute / Burnout Coach / Holistic Success Coach / Celebrity Burnout Coach
Have you heard about Burnout Bootcamp? It’s my 4 Week Online Mastermind Program designed to help you kick burnout to the curb and reclaim your well-being. Book a call for a complementary Burnout Strategy Session to see if one of our programs is right for you.
Want Some Help With Reducing Burnout Symptoms and Reclaiming Your Well-Being?
Now I’m sure that you have tried all sorts of techniques to try to help you reduce stress, curtail your excessive busyness or get connected to your authentic self, and you “know” these techniques, but the real question is, are you doing them on a regular basis? So many High Achievers tend to know a lot about the techniques, but fail to have a proper framework in place to really help them cultivate and maintain their well-being while having high-powered careers.
The Mission Of Holistic Success
The experience that you have in your life is dependent upon your commitment to your well-being and in today’s fast-paced world, it requires undertaking it as a mission. Because if you’re not undertaking it as a mission, then it’s just an interest. And if it’s just an interest, when you get busy in your life, interest can get easily pushed aside, but a mission of holistic success helps you make it a priority in your life.
Today, I invite you to embark upon the journey of a lifetime. The journey of Holistic Success. Holistic Success is not a destination, but rather a meaningful lifestyle based on cultivating a deep relationship with your authentic self, which helps to fuel your passion for life so that you can pursue your goals and have room in your life for your well-being.
Ready to grab the reigns of your life back from busyness, overwhelm and a general feeling of “bla” in your life?
Introducing the 4 Week “Burnout Bootcamp” Online Mastermind Program at Holistic Success Institute
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There is no obligation and we provide these calls free of charge to people who are interested in seeing how we can help them kick burnout to the curb and reclaim their well-being.
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