Nurture your green shoots

Spring is springing and Winter is already starting to feel like a distant memory.

I’m a few days into a much-needed time-out and am so rested and full of beans that I can barely recall the recent malaise that prompted my pause.

It’s a funny thing about humans: as soon as we leave a painful experience, we find it hard to remember the discomfort we have left behind. When we are in the thick of distress, the pain is all we can think about - but as soon as the unhappiness stops, we move on and past it.

This is why runners are able to complete more than one marathon, how we manage to convince ourselves to keep going back to the dentist, and why so many of my burnout clients tell me that they are sure they were imagining their misery the moment they start to feel better.

Once those glimmers of life and optimism return to us, we forget how bad we were feeling while in the grips of the burnout. We forget how sad or grumpy we were, how hard it was to start, let alone finish anything, how unmotivated and despondent we had become.

When we have managed to rebuild ourselves even a little bit, we start to overlook the obvious things we need to do to keep ourselves rebuilt - and resume doing things that wear us out. We eat badly, work too hard, rush too much, rest not enough…

 …and then we go back to being burned out.

Just as the tiny green leaves that emerge after a veld fire need to be protected from being worked too early to prevent the grass being destroyed again, we need to allow ourselves to rest and replenish before rushing back into action.

If we allow ourselves to nurture our green shoots – and feed and water and respect them, we will return to being our strong, creative, and resilient selves. But if we don’t look after, nourish, and protect ourselves, we will burn out again and again and again.

And each time it will take longer to recover.

I have been scorched enough times to know this, and to be mindful of not rushing in and trampling on my progress. So, I will continue to rest and refresh my energy and enthusiasm until the middle of the month when I will be returning to work with vim and vigour – starting with a Make Work Work For You workshop in Cape Town on 14 September (2 places left!).

We have just under a quarter of the year left. I’d love to hear what you are doing to make sure that you keep protecting and nurturing your green shoots so that you can finish the year strong?