Several years ago, I completed burned out in my work. I had started to feel a dimming of interest in a work project I’d been involved in. I'd been co-running a yoga program in San Francisco with a colleague for five years, and I had stopped feeling that magical feeling. I kept bumping into a kind of been-there-done-that fatigue along with a nagging sense that there was something else out there, something unclear waiting for me. I'd had these sort of feelings before. I'd been started yoga programs like the one I’d been co-running for more than fifteen years, so aversion was not new hat. I thought this one would fade like the previous times, but in this case, my frustration persisted.
Sorting Through the Confusion
It's often hard to detect when feeling associated with burnout are just a passing reaction or when it's a message from the deeper interior that change in needed. We all have periods of time when our jobs or our relationships are just kind of blah. That's normal. The notion that we're always supposed to be happy all the time is b.s. Even the best of job or relationships can go stale on us or just irritate us to the core. That's normal as long as it doesn’t last forever.
When that difficulty is prolonged, however, it can be a message that it's time to slow down and reflect on what we're bumping into. Sometimes it is a message that it is time for a change. Deciphering burnout can be difficult, though. It can be immensely helpful to have wise counsel we can trust enough to help us distinguish the wisdom of our inner callings from the voices that deceive us.
I shared the experience with my coach. I said, "Okay, I'm feeling burned out. I'm starting to wonder if it’s time for me to let this project go. I want to name this urge, but I don't want to make a decision just yet. I want to use these next two months to see if, in fact, I am done, or I am just a little fatigued or bored."
Sure enough, after two months, the feelings had passed. I felt reinvigorated by some responses I'd had to some blog writing I was doing about the intersections of yoga and life coaching and started to see that the project I was in was a great platform for the expression of this cross-breeding.
Then a friend contacted me and said, "I'd like to partner with you to do some consulting work in corporations.” I'd really wanted to explore that possibility, but I was too tired to take on another project. I just could not muster the energy to begin. My days were too filled with teaching classes and working with my coaching clients that I couldn't possibly give it the attention it deserved. Not being able to do this left me completely frustrated. Once again, I began thinking that it was time for a change, but somehow I wasn't quite ready.
And then I had this experience that absolutely changed me forever…
Letting Go
After an arduous bike ride to the top of Mt. Tamalpais, I stood on a hillock overlooking the Pacific Ocean, San Francisco Bay, The City of San Francisco, and the East Bay. As I stood there taking in the scenery, I felt a sense of gratitude for the beauty that surrounded me. I started to do a little, improvised gratitude jig, somewhere between a yoga sun salutation and a dance.
As I did so, I started to hear a clicking noise behind me that kept the rhythm. And when I turned around, I saw this raven standing only a few feet from me with a seed of sorts in its beak. The clicking was coming from the raven's beak making contact with the seed, and I had this clear sense that the raven was relating to my movements by keeping the rhythm.
I continued to dance my gratitude dance around the hillock. Each movement I made to the left, the raven moved to the right. Each movement I made to the right, the raven moved to the left. We were in a dance together, and the raven was keeping the rhythm. At the same time this dance was taking place, I'd had this intuitive sense that the raven had a message for me. Who knows whether I was making it up or not, but it was a message that moved me:
"It's time to let go, to stop dancing someone else's dance, to dance you're own steps, and to trust them."
For me this was code. I'd spent the last 20 years being faithful to my yoga teacher and the tradition he taught me. I'd been his student and I’d taught hundreds of people his method. The crow’s message for me was that it was time to let go, to trust a deeper and more personal wisdom, rather than following someone else’s path.
Gulp. I'd been a student of and run these sorts of programs for so many years because they had given me access to deep teachings, the security of a teacher, a community, some sense of authority to back up my own teachings, and an identity. Now, the raven-teacher was giving me the the sage advice, “Let it go!"
My need for change wasn't so much about leaving the program or about being burnt out. Rather, it was about making room for something more personally truer to enter. I realized that I had to make space for that to come about. And for that brief moment, I felt released. Released from the burden that by leaving, I was betraying my students, my business partner, or the tradition. It was a visceral experience, this clear sense that not only was it okay to make a change, but I was being called forth to make it. And while I'd been preparing for this moment for the nine months of back-and-forth, the inner teacher's message had clearly arrived.
Living with Uncertainty
Within a week of this experience, my partner and I met. I shared my decision, and we both wrote a public announcement about that decision. By the way, this doing, this action required little to no effort. The challenge was living with the uncertainty for almost nine months. One of my teachers used to call this form of waiting, "holding the tension." Holding the tension is another way of saying, living with uncertainty. It's called holding the tension because it feels uncomfortable to live between a question, to live in ambiguity.
Each of us has a propensity to try to get ground underneath our feet by wanting certainty or clarity. That's why we turn to self-help programs, gurus, yoga traditions, techniques, methods, and philosophies. But if we're following our inner guidance, the messages come in only when we're really ready. Sometimes we must undergo a trial by fire before the message is clear. You can't always coax the interior into a "yes or no decision."
But when the message is announced, it comes in declarative tones from what the Quakers call that still small voice within: "Call her." "Go to New York." "It's time." "Let go!" And when we disregard these messages because they're inconvenient, we sometimes find ourselves in the throws of depression.
My doubting voices continued to peep up, even after I had made that decision; in fact, the moment I made it, I started to really enjoy teaching, again. All of the previous feelings of burn out completely vanished. In fact, some aspects of my teaching, which previously had been driven by a proving energy, altogether diappeared I no longer had to prove anything to anyone anymore. And as that went away, I began enjoying the process again.
But I knew at a much deeper place of my being why I was doing this. This decision was not whimsy. I had struggled valiantly with it. I had endured lots of back and forth while continuing to live with uncertainty. And since that certainty came, I had to be willing to trust it in spite of the fact that I wanted to second-guess my decision.
If we want real and substantive change, we have to be willing live for sustained periods with the discomfort of ambiguity and doubt. In fact, one might say that most of life requires us to get accustomed to uncertainty. The sooner we get that message, the less we'll fall prey to quick fixes and the more our lives will become aligned with our higher calling.