How can a philosophy of life make any difference when it comes to beating job burnout? Well, kirism can. Here’s how one convert to kirism explained the relationship between the core tenets of kirism and his new-found ability to beat job burnout.
I want to thank Scott Ginsberg ([email protected]) for sharing his story. (If you have a story of kirist living, please send it along to me at [email protected])
Scott explained:
If you want to make yourself a prime candidate for early burnout, it’s simple. All you have to do is accept the world placed in front of you, rather than challenge it.
It sounds simplistic and extreme, but this is the error millions of people make every day. Myself included. Especially as a recovering workaholic. The challenge is, we’re not in the habit of questioning what is ordinarily not questioned.
Look around. Have you ever worked with people who acted like well-oiled machines that were just spinning their wheels all day? Blindly marching like a pack of cattle being led to the slaughter?
You are better than this. It is possible to nip burnout in the bud by questioning the nature of things, rather than taking it for granted like everyone else.
Eric Maisel wrote in his groundbreaking book Lighting the Way, which describes the contemporary philosophy of life he calls kirism, that we can decide what’s important to us. We call those choices our life purpose choices, he says, and we can live those life purpose choices for portions of each day, even on those cloudy days full of errands and nothingness.
With this type of existential framing, even the soul-crushing work environment can become our platform for meaning.
The secret is seeing everything as a choice. Having worked at a diverse number of jobs in my career, both as a freelancer and an employee, many of these choices have come across my desk at one time or another. They are hard to notice and ever harder to make. But once you train yourself to parse out the pieces within your locus of control, the amount of leverage you have is astounding.
Here is a short list. See which ones most resonate with your own situation:
- You can drive yourself to your breaking point out of a feeling of inadequacy, or you can accept that you are already enough and learn to set healthy boundaries.
- You can fetishize hustle and solely derive value from your work, or you can diversify your identity with meaningful and uniquely relaxing nonwork activities.
- You can use weekends to recover from your storm of workdays, or you can pace yourself daily by building in mini-vacations into your routine.
- You can acquiesce to burnout because everyone at the office is drowning too, or you can take a stand for your values and guard your energy more vigilantly.
- You can accept this unnecessary suffering as the norm at your workplace, or you can be the minority that creates meaning instead of waiting for some external source to provide it for you.
- You can work nonstop until you’re too fatigued to even think straight, or you can match that intense action with deep recovery and rest before you’re tired.
- You can allow clients and coworkers to ping you around the clock to soothe their manufactured emergencies, or you can very clearly make yourself unavailable and trust that the world won’t fall apart between now and when you return.
- You can decide that the whole universe is pitted against you and that’s why you didn’t get any work done, or you can commit to complete abstinence from complaining about time and crack on.
- You can wait until the sheen and glamour of your job wears thin after a few years, or you can embrace the reality of your job from day one and either strive to coax more meaning out of it, make meaning outside of work, or both.
Which life purpose choices of this sort might you make? This is the leverage question most people aren’t asking. But in my experience, approaching life with this filter can be deeply empowering and energizing.
Thanks, Scott!
No philosophy of life can reduce a workweek from sixty hours to forty hours or turn your boss into less of an authoritarian. But you may be surprised to discover how much a solid, sensible philosophy of life that takes your genuine experiences into account and that provides you with powerful tools for coping can help. I invite you to learn more in Lighting the Way: How Kirism Answers Life’s Toughest Questions. Kirism takes the challenges that come with work seriously—and it can help you cope with those enduring challenges much more effectively.
READ MORE: Why It’s Time for a New Philosophy of Life
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