2:00

burnout. I'm Shirley Leung. On

2:03

the last show, we talked to

2:05

Cal Newport about burnout at work.

2:08

This week, I want to

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go deeper because burnout is

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more than just being overloaded.

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It disconnects us from each other.

2:18

When we were planning this series, people

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kept telling me I needed to talk

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to Krista Tibbitt, the creator

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and host of the On Being podcast.

2:27

At first, I was a little

2:29

confused. Her focus is on spirituality.

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What does that have to do

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with burnout? Turns

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out, the Krista fans were spot

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on. These things

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are deeply connected. Burnout

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is a spiritual issue. Krista

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says our minds and bodies

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are fried. What I

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know is coming through the pandemic,

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those years, that very dramatic experience

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we had. We

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had, among other things,

2:58

really distressed nervous systems.

3:01

Each of us and all of us together had

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a stress response. The

3:06

full stress response and the way it

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works when we're healthy and when we're

3:10

regulated is that it goes up and

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then our body brings us back down

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to calm, to equilibrium. What

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we had is years on

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high stress response, no

3:23

relief, a lot

3:25

of fear, and a lot of uncertainty.

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It's important to remember that our bodies

3:30

internalize uncertainty itself as a

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threat. When I look

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at what people are talking about when they

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talk about burnout, when they talk about exhaustion,

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I don't think we

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have even begun to fully metabolize what

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we've been through or metabolize

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what's going on still in our bodies in

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a way that we can really get to a new kind

3:55

of health. That's what I see. Yeah,

3:57

I can relate to that. I feel like

3:59

I've been on a roll. roller coaster. It's

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been four years. Yeah, and you

4:03

have. Right, we have. So

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how is your nervous system? I

4:08

mean, have you struggled with burnout

4:10

yourself? Oh, yeah. I mean, I,

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yeah, during the pandemic, I

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certainly went through a really dark

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period. And it wasn't

4:20

right at the beginning, because I think for me,

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and I don't know if this was true for

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others, I think in the beginning, and by which

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I think maybe the first six months, six

4:29

to nine months, you know, I

4:32

was powering through. And, you know, I was

4:34

actually in my work offering what I could.

4:38

But then I certainly hit a point of,

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I would say, what felt really

4:43

like depression. And I have, am

4:45

somebody who's experienced clinical depression. And

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so that was scary. It

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was mood, but it was also not being

4:53

able to think clearly, right? Not being able

4:55

to concentrate. It was hard to read. It

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was hard to sleep. And

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of course, a lot of anxiety which

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manifests in different ways. I

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think I've certainly been

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helped because I was

5:09

specifically focusing on pursuing

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this question of what

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was happening inside us and

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how we could,

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I don't know, how I

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could not just kind of make peace with

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that, but kind of befriend what

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was happening inside me. And

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that actually is my definition of

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spiritual life at its best is

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is befriending reality. And that means

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reality in all of its

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glory and its messiness. So

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let's talk about that. I mean, what

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role do you think faith

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and spirituality have in helping

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us cope with these feelings of burnout? I mean,

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or do they have a role at all? If

5:54

we really try to break down what spiritual

5:57

life is at its core, it's

5:59

really into. life, right? It is

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the inner work of being human.

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I think, you know, quite irrespective

6:07

of pandemic and

6:09

the particular stresses

6:12

of being alive right now,

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we also inhabit

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a very noisy, distracting

6:20

world, right? Also to an extent

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that our species truly has never

6:25

experienced before with our technological

6:27

devices. And so this

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work of getting just

6:32

getting quiet inside, it

6:35

is work, right? It's not

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something that automatically comes to

6:39

us. You

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know, I interviewed once a wonderful,

6:45

I think he was an

6:47

acoustic audiologist or something like

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that. Yeah, this is Gordon

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Hempton, right? Hempton talked about,

6:54

he was out to preserve silence, which

6:56

is an endangered species, he says. He

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had this wonderful line that silence is

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the jukebox of the soul. Wow,

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I love that. But,

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you know, silence, again, we really

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have to create,

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make space, like carve

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out time. This

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thing, silence, that our

7:18

21st century world is really

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doing its best to vanquish

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is something that

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we need. I really think we need it

7:28

like we need water and like we need

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food. And, you know, to

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your question about burnout,

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this may be a huge, huge

7:40

part of it, just this very

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elemental thing we're lacking. Yeah,

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that's one of my pet peeves

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with my, you know, my 11 and

7:49

13 year olds, they both have cell

7:51

phones and their

7:54

cell phones are always on. Like this morning I

7:56

was telling the 11 year old, do you really

7:58

need to be watching YouTube while you're there? while

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you're brushing your teeth? Why

8:02

can't you just brush your teeth? So

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what advice do you have? I mean, how do

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we achieve silence in

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our modern lives? I mean, we

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have push notifications, alarms, everything

8:16

else. I mean, I usually

8:18

walk around with like six alarms on

8:20

my phones. I can't even keep straight

8:22

which one's going off. And so, I

8:24

mean, how do we achieve, silence is

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so hard. People

8:29

I know who have cultivated interior life

8:34

tend to have some

8:36

kind of morning practice. And

8:39

that can be really

8:42

modest. And I think my

8:44

morning practice is very modest,

8:46

right? It truly

8:48

doesn't have to be meditating twice a

8:50

day for 20 minutes or spending an

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hour in silence. But if you can,

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and you know, this is tricky

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at different times in life when you've got little

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children, right? All I've had and I've been through

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all of those stages, teenagers have

9:04

another thing entirely. But if you

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can just commit

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even to two minutes of

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some kind of practice of just getting

9:13

still, you know, shake it

9:15

up, try some different things. Of

9:17

course there are apps, which turns us

9:19

back to technology. But

9:22

I think a lot of people know like the Headspace

9:24

app or the Calm. I really like the

9:27

Plum Village app, which is very low

9:29

tech. It's from the Plum Village community

9:31

of Ticanat Hahn in

9:34

France. And they have beautiful body

9:37

practices and just kind of meditations.

9:42

Yeah, I would say for making a home inside

9:44

yourself. And some of them are five minutes

9:46

long and some of them are 20 minutes long.

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So you don't have to figure

9:51

this out by yourself. Something

9:53

else that I have done across time

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and this could be instead

9:58

of that or...