How to Prevent Burnout and Live Authentically: the 3-Selfs Framework
When I was researching my first book, Protect Your Spark, one of the most stunning insights I reached was that burnout is not the individual’s fault.
In fact, burnout is your mind and body’s intelligent response to chronic workplace stress.
To end burnout completely, we need to start and sustain major systemic and cultural change. This will require involvement from governments, institutions and organizations, and some bold individual leaders to light the way.
But you and I don’t have time to sit and wait patiently for this change to happen. We need to take matters into our own hands. Life is too short and systemic change is too slow.
We need to take an individual approach to prevent burnout, live authentically and thrive — starting right here.
To truly prioritize your own wellbeing, prevent burnout and live authentically requires commitment and a sprinkling of fierce energy. It’s not a once-off, either. It’s an ongoing investment in your health and wellbeing.
This approach is not simply about more self-care, or getting up 30 minutes earlier to do a morning ritual. The 3-Selfs is about fiercely prioritize yourself and your wellbeing.
Starting now.
Taking care of your wellbeing is a long game
Chronic stress is a subtle, insidious experience. It plays a long game. To prevent stress from becoming chronic, and avoiding burnout, we need to play a long game, too.
Protecting your spark from burnout requires fierce and persistent vigilance. It also involves raw yet gentle honesty about yourself and your situation, and the willingness to evolve in small, doable ways.
Protecting your spark is an ongoing approach that has three aspects:
Self-Compassion
Self-Knowledge
Self-Awareness
Let’s delve deeper into what these 3 Selfs are, and why they matter so much.
“The 3 Selfs position you to take care of yourself in a way that helps you grow, and live a fulfilling and authentic life.”
What is Self-Compassion?
Self-Compassion is a foundational aspect of protecting your spark. Self-Compassion means you believe at a fundamental level that you have intrinsic value, treating yourself with kindness, respect and dignity and ensuring that your self-identity is derived from multiple areas of life.
When you lead with Self-Compassion, you take care of yourself because you matter. Because you have intrinsic value. Because you are enough.
“Self-compassion is showing yourself tenderness, courage, vulnerability, and kindness.”
Self-Compassion means that you continually work on yourself because you want the best for yourself. It means that your motivation for protecting your spark is NOT to hustle harder, ignore the signals from your body to slow down, be more productive, or shush the voice in your head that’s telling you you’re miserable.
Self-Compassion ensures that the motivation for all the work you do in fostering Self-Knowledge and Self-Awareness is truly healthy and nourishing. It means the drive that propels you into action comes from the right place.
You have intrinsic value.
You matter.
You are enough.
Just as you are, right now.
What is Self-Knowledge?
Self-Knowledge means knowing who you are, and what you need and want, as the unique human being you are.
Not your parents or caregivers. Not your mentors, peers, friends, or social media followers.
YOU.
Self-Knowledge is understanding the kind of circumstances that cause you to thrive, and those that cause your soul to die a slow death.
Knowing yourself means being clear on your own, authentic values. Your values drive your decisions, and your decisions shape your life. That’s why knowing yourself and your values helps you make choices that feel right, aligned, and authentic.
Getting clear on your values, what matters to you, and how you want your life to look and feel helps improve your self-confidence and decision making. Knowing and acting from your values helps you to start feeling empowered and authentic.
What is Self-Awareness?
Self-Awareness is the capacity to tune in to instincts, emotions, and physical signals as they arise in the moment in daily life.
Self-Awareness is founded on a strong connection with your body and the signals it gives. It also involves understanding the thought patterns and habits that shape your responses to experiences and emotions.
Self-Awareness is tuning into instincts, emotions, and physical signals as they arise.
When we are affected by unhealthy work cultures, it can be difficult to be honest about the signals we receive from our bodies. We resist slowing down, resting, or recovering because it’s inconvenient or uncomfortable. Yet, our body is a wise alarm system, desperately trying to get us to prioritize ourselves. If we override this system for long enough in a work context, burnout can become inevitable.
Emotions, too, are wise signals that are usually trying to help us. Tracy, a former ER nurse, told me that she used to be an expert at ignoring emotions, whether it was anger, sadness or even joy. “I bottled emotions. I was uptight and tense, but I refused to admit I was anything but ‘fine’.”
Working with a therapist helped Tracy learn to recognize and allow emotions. Now, she lets emotions be there, share their message, and pass, rather than burying them or becoming overwhelmed.
In doing so, Tracy allows her emotions to be wise guides that inform her decisions, words, and actions in a healthy way, rather than drive her behavior without her even being conscious of it.
A fulfilling and authentic life
To get a picture of how these aspects interplay to protect your spark, let’s think of them in the context of boundaries.
Self-Compassion is the reason you set and enforce your boundaries.
Self-Knowledge helps you know what your boundaries are.
Self-Awareness is how you know whether your boundaries are being crossed, or respected.
Self-Compassion, Knowledge and Awareness are not selfish. Nor do they guarantee unmitigated joy, or an end to suffering. They position you to take care of yourself in a way that helps you grow, and live a fulfilling and authentic life.
How do you cultivate Self-Compassion, Knowledge and Awareness? There is no fast-track or magic pill. It’s a process. The great thing is when you commit to the 3-Selfs, the process of protecting your spark can be brilliantly rewarding.
If you’d like to learn more, join us at Human Leaders for the Renew program, where we’ll explore the 3-Selfs Framework in depth in a 4-part online course series. Learn more and register here.
