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Life is exhausting. No joke.
All we do is work. Or think of work. Or talk about work.
Work, work, work.
It wears on us after a while. We get burned out. Some of us develop unhealthy addictions (like watching endless reruns of “Friends”). We even get sick.
Want to know what the best remedy I’ve found to battle burnout?
Do more.
(One of my favorite artists has this tattooed on his arm.)
The reason we burn out isn’t because of this thing called “activity”. Life is action. Movement. Stillness is an illusion.
We see the proof in nature itself…
The glassy pond, under a microscope, is anything but still.
Even as we sleep, our hearts beat, our hair grows, and our brain zooms full-speed ahead.
Life never complains. It just goes and goes because that’s its nature.
The problem we have is alignment. Things go awry when we get out of alignment with what we’re doing. This is how things die.
Whether we’re just-not-that-into-it or we outright hate it, our intentions are somewhere else while our bodies, brains, and egos are trudging along with a slowly dying battery.
So we do things out of obligation. We feel coerced. Like we have no say in the matter.
We just go through the motions. There’s no soul behind it. No presence.
No wonder we’re burned out.
Want to turn the ship around?
Get into it.
Start doing as much as you can—even the smallest things like washing dishes, mowing the lawn, or doodling—with your full intent behind it. Like it’s the most mindful, enjoyable thing you’ve ever done.
Move through your day with purpose. With direction.
Soon, things will shift. You’ll start happening to life so it can happen back. You’ll feel alive again (and will probably sleep better too).
Align with life and allow it to use you as a jackhammer to obliterate your apathy.
Life is a ping-pong game. You’re serving. Until you move, it’s just gonna stand there and look at you.
You gonna bring the heat or not?
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This post was originally published on medium.com, and is republished here with the author’s permission.
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Photo credit: Getty Images