#091: Creative Burnout and the Courage to Take a Breath

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Welcome to another edition of the For the Love of Creatives podcast. I am your Connections and Community Guy host, Dwight, and I'm going to share with you a few things about what's happened in the past week or so.

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It's been a roller coaster of a week filled with all kinds of things that have made me stretch and grow. And seeing it from a certain lens, that stuff can be a little frightening.

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Let me tell you, I have enjoyed getting out on the water and doing things outside, getting away from all of the to do's and the things that make me crazy from having to be so busy. But I've also stretched and expanded a lot of the things that I've been working on to get to where I want to go.

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I am in the middle of an intense program that is helping me to grow as a facilitator, as a connector, being really smart about how it is that I can make the most of bringing, well, making people bring their best to the table when I'm in a facilitation situation, speaking to their heads, to their hearts.

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And it's forced me to do a lot of looking inward. And this week I experienced something that made me just feel exhausted. In addition to that program,

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I'm in the middle of doing a lot of reading and studying to understand a lot more about the impact of the arts and why they're important and also doing some independent exploration of my inner space. If that wasn't enough,

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I have also been working on my craft as a speaker, a presenter. And part of that was getting an e-speakers remote presenter certification. That was actually a bit of an exercise.

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I learned about eSpeakers through my connection to the National Speakers Association, North Texas. And it's been quite an experience, a little bit of a learning curve. All of this to say, I've got a lot of fires lit, a lot of plates spinning, and it can seem like a lot.

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but I always remember to come back to my North star of thinking about the things that are really important. So to me, the most important thing is showing up, being a real person and being the kind of person that I would want to look to as someone that's dependable, someone that's caring, someone that I would want to show up and be in my corner.

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And I do that because I know that if I show up that way, it's going to naturally make those people show up for me. Dealing with all the things that I've had to have pulling at me has made me come to the breaking point a few times.

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I gotta share that there was a moment when Maddox was sharing some exciting news with me about another one of the things that we're getting into. We're going to be kayaking a lot. And so there's a lot that goes into

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making sure that we have all of the equipment. We are looking at all of the things that we can do to prepare because we're gonna be out in nature, out in the elements. And how do we ensure those things? How do we guard them against being damaged or stolen? A whole lot on that. So all of this pressure

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has been mounting on me. And there was a point in the middle of the week where I was in the midst of doing something that had to do with every single thing that I touched in my life. And when Maddox was sharing with me this news about how we were this much closer to actually making the kayaks happen, and we're actually in the middle of doing that right now, I was just

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a zombie. I was dead to the world. I had nothing in the tank. And after a while, Maddox was so gracious in the way that he did this. He could tell that I was hurting. I was not feeling well. And he told me that I needed to just

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go to bed early. And he was so right. I slept like the dead. Like I cannot tell you what it was like to one moment be in a state where I was halfway through kind of the routine. I shut my eyes for just a moment. And when I opened them, it was the next day. It was...

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it was one of those kinds of things i was exhausted so here's the thing that i'm i'm learning about this i'm a big believer in how if we don't step outside of our comfort zone it will shrink and so much has happened to push me out of my comfort zone i am in the middle of learning how to water ski as an adult and

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I've been told by those who know, it's the kind of thing that's much harder to learn as an adult than it is as a child. And I have to be comfortable with being really bad at it.

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I have yet to actually pop up on skis, but I am doing exercises where I am in the water, I'm working on keeping the skis stable because they want so badly to wobble off of me. And there are times whenever I do try to pull up for whatever reason, my head goes under and I'm still learning. The thing is, I know that with several subsequent repetitions,

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I will gain information. I will learn a little bit more. I will strengthen in a few more areas, have a little bit more of a feel in my body. And probably within a few months, I will be having great fun on the water. So many more things are like that.

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I am doing things to spread my wings to become more established in the area of speaking to different groups and learning about the things that they need, their attentions. I'm learning more about the arts and their impact and a lot of arts issues around funding and attitudes, the politics.

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and the actual ways that they impact the way that we show up as people.

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And that world is rich, profound. The sciences that are involved are numerous and they explore different depths. There's a philosophical realm that is just as intense and it really forces you to take a deep look inward. And the thing is...

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Through doing all of this, I know that I need to pace myself. I need to take a breath because if I don't, just like when I am trying to stand up on those skis and I find my head underwater, I will reach a point where I will have had just too much. My body will actually tell me, time out, you're done. You can't do anymore. And I need to listen. And I'm learning to listen earlier.

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Part of that is taking breaks, taking care of myself, having those moments where I take those deliberate pauses. Nature's a big part of the way that I recharge. And I do a lot of that by going in and visiting the local trails and just taking moments to step back and appreciate my small part in something that is so large

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and will go on long after I am no longer thought of. And just sitting with that feeling, the awe, the wonder of what it's like to know that I, for a brief moment, get to be a part of something so wonderful. So as I share all of this, I want you to think about how it is that

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You may have to wrestle with your own tensions in your world. We all have them. Yeah.

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Everyone's situation is a little different. Here I am sitting firmly in my middle age, never having had a family. And so I don't know from personal experience what it's like to have children who depend on me.

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And I know for those who are listening that are parents, that's a really big deal. That's, as some have put it, like a piece of your heart is on the outside of you in everything that you do.

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has to be in support of making it so that that little human can grow into someone that's going to be productive and happy and healthy. There are a lot of mediums I have not yet explored and as much as I want to absorb

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Everything that is in the arts like a sponge. I know that my time is fleeting. I'm here for just a moment in the grand clock of everything that has to pass. And there are several things.

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wonderful visual art forms, a lot of experienced art forms, a lot of forms of literature that I will never have the opportunity to experience. But for some of you, I know that that's your world. You are in the thick of it and you are having to deal with those trials.

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And I try my best to be as open as possible. I try to make myself available. If there's something that you're getting into and you would love a partner to explore it, reach out to me, come at me. I'm, I'm there for it. Curiosity is, is my calling card. And I love learning new things.

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I would like to invite you to take an inventory of all of the things that you have going on right now and do a little bit of an evaluation. I know that there are those that just think of things from a harsh business perspective about looking at your return on investment. Well, here's the thing.

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There is something other than dollars and cents in life. We can't always think of everything as transactional. If we did, that would still be an extreme and be something that would drive us into the ground. We need to think holistically, take a look at the whole picture, do an entire inventory. Here's a useful exercise. If you were to

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draw something that looks a little bit like a clock face. And I realized that for some of my listeners,

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that might be a bridge too far because we're just used to looking at the time in the corner of a screen or on a screen and it being represented as numbers. But bear with me. There are these things called clocks. They are circles. And if you go around the circle, there's different numbers. There's different positions on the clock.

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In this clock face, we can put all of the things that are obligations, things that are important, and also think of all those things that fill us up, those things that recharge us, that replenish us. And there's no judgment about what those things are on your clock.

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But it's important to make sure that we have a balance that is sustainable, that makes sense for us. And that's to say that for some people, they may need a little bit more of things that might make someone else uncomfortable. We are all built differently. We all have different ways that we move about the world. So

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I want you to do you. I want you to take an honest assessment of where you are now. And here's the thing. This is something to repeat at different points because we change over time. It very well could be that a year from now, the thing that makes it to where your clock face is showing that you have everything running all on all cylinders.

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isn't going to be the same. So here are the kinds of things that I have on my clock. I've already shared that one of the things that charges me up is time in nature. So I make sure that that's something that shows up in my days. I also shared with you that I have an innate curiosity

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I'm a seeker. I love to learn new things. I read books and articles and journals. I also know that there are things that I have to do to sustain myself. I work for a large company that is the way that I pay my bills.

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And so I make sure that I show up, I'm attending and I give them everything that they need for their mission so that they can take care of me. I also put a high value on relationships. So in all spheres, I make sure that, as I said before, I'm someone who shows up.

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I'm someone who is the kind of friend that I would like to have so that the people that I encounter will know that it's safe for them to show me who they are and they can show me that they're true friends as well. As I share these, these should give you an idea of the kinds of things that you should have on your clock. And I call it the image of a clock because

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It's more about making sure that you have the proportions and you can have as many different areas on your clock as possible, but calling it a clock kind of is a general reminder that

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We need to pull from all of these buckets and walk through a little bit of a buffet line of all that life has to offer and make sure that we're pulling things in in a way that is balanced. So you want to have a clock that has some variety on it. And the reason that we do this is because of the way that the brain works.

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we love a pattern we love to find ways that we can make things automatic because we're doing them all the time but here's the thing we also tire out we fatigue so the way that we can keep things fresh is by making sure that we introduce novelty if we have a whole bunch of things that we're drawing from on our clock

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then it's automatic that we have that novelty. And even better, since we're talking about clocks, if we time bound the things that we're doing so that we have more beginnings and ends, we can approach them with a fresh set of eyes more often.

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Here's why that's really important. I alluded earlier to how if we do something for too long, we start to not be as present. And years ago, the Navy did some experiments that illustrated this incredibly well.

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What they were having the subjects in the experiment do was attend to a radar screen. And what they found was that after long periods of people doing their best to concentrate and look at things that were important on this radar screen, it was as if they had checked out because they couldn't see things that were important until it was too late.

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But what they discovered was that if they forced these operators to take more frequent breaks, when they were attending to things that were on the radar screen, they were sharp. They could see things that were happening right away because they came to it with a fresh set of eyes.

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want to make sure that you fully show up so that you don't miss something that's important, whether it's the opportunity to meet a new friend or an insight that would just slip by if you were in that mode of being hypnotized by what was right in front of you.

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We all show up better when we've had something of a pattern interrupt, something that's made it so that we are a little bit more of a person that's more awake because we're more curious or we're shifting from one way of being to another.

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I enjoy having these conversations with you in these little moments and it's an honor for me to be in your ears or if you're watching this on the YouTube stream, having you take a look at me. I wouldn't normally wear such a wild pattern when I'm being shot on video, but

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This, this was the, the way that I chose to show up today and I hope you're here for it. Uh, I hope that pattern doesn't make too much of a weird illusion on your screen. If it does, I apologize.

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I enjoy getting to spend this time with you and I look forward to joining you in future conversations. If you'd like to get in touch with me for

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any kind of a workshop or any, any kind of a coaching engagement. I'm here for that as well. You can always reach out to me by using the links that we have on our website. I am always glad to hear from new listeners and I'm always eager to, to make a new friend.

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We'll see you on another edition of community and becoming for the love of creatives.