The Surprising Cure for Burnout

(air hissing) (mouse clicking) (gentle music) Headspace Studios. (gentle music continues) (gentle music) Hey, welcome to "Radio Headspace," it's Dora here. So there was a season not too long ago when I was moving through what I can only describe as a quiet kind of heaviness. Not a crisis, but a kind of internal winter, a stretch of time where I felt dull, flat, disconnected from joy. The colors of the world were muted, like I was walking through life in low resolution. I was still showing up at work, for friends, for daily tasks, but inside me, it felt like I was waiting for something to shift. But then one morning I took myself to Pacific Spirit Park, one of my favorite places in the world. The forest was soaked and still, the kind of damp that seeps into your bones, moss covered trails, old growth trees, and the very first signs of spring, tiny buds, soft greens and something new. It wasn't loud or dramatic, but standing there, I felt something open inside of me. It was like seeing the world in 4K for the first time in months. And I remember thinking, "This is what aliveness feels like." Again, not the loud kind, but the quiet kind, the kind that says, "You're still here and you still get to witness things like this." (gentle music continues) When we talk about burnout, we often talk about what's missing, motivation, energy, joy. But what I've learned is that what we're really missing is connection to ourselves, to each other, and to the beauty of the world around us. Sometimes what we need isn't a grand gesture or a perfect plan. Sometimes we just need a patch of light through the trees, a bird call, a breath, a sign that life is still happening, even if we can't feel it yet. As author and activist Parker Palmer writes, "In the muddy mess of early spring, the conditions for rebirth are being created. And even when it feels like nothing is growing, something is, quietly, persistently, beneath the surface. Spring has always held a kind of medicine for me. It's slow, messy, and honest. It doesn't pretend to bloom before it's ready. And it reminds me that healing can be like that too." Parker Palmer writes that, "Before spring becomes beautiful, it is plug-ugly, just mud and muck and slush. And yet that's where the magic begins, in the rot, in the decay, in the places we'd rather skip over." He also points something out that I've always loved, the word humus, the rich decayed matter that feeds the soil, comes from the same root as humility, and it's a reminder that the messiest parts of us can also be the most fertile. So when I think about my time walking through Pacific Spirit Park, it wasn't just the budding branches or sunlight that brought me back, it was the acknowledgement of the mud, the in between, the not quite bareness...