How To Change Our Internal Patterns?
What are the Internal Patterns that lead to burnout and hold us back from living a happy and fulfilled life and how to break them?
Last week, after a long time, I got sick — and it was just for my vacation.
Being sick on your vacation is not exactly pleasant — not physically, mentally, or emotionally…
Although the past week has been quite difficult and I have not fully recovered yet — I still feel weak, mentally down and a bit burned out — I try to remind myself to stay positive, to be grateful and reframe the fact that the illness happened for me — although I was far from being grateful for it while on being sick on my vacation, quite the contrary…
The “gift” of illness and obligatory rest was that I was forced to take a good look at my own sh*t about myself and my life, which opened the door to new insights and knowledge, which represents an opportunity for personal growth and improvement.
In this article I’m going to talk about some of my key insights from the past week.
My Key Insights from Illness during my Vacation
1. Illness at the beginning of vacation is becoming a pattern for me
It’s not the first time that I got sick just when I went on vacation: it happened twice last year, so this is the third time in a row.
In the weeks leading up to the vacation, I pushed a little too hard and my body subconsciously knew that last Sunday would be the end of work and obligations, so it decided to stop and got sick.
I believe our bodies are very intelligent and have knowledge of their own that is beyond our comprehension.
In our mind we know when we can finally take a break, we will then unconsciously take that knowledge to our bodies which will know when they can slow down, release all the accumulated stuff and heal.
So my goal in the future will be not to push too much all the time and to take a better job at releasing and letting go of the things that I’ve been accumulating in my body, mind and soul.
2. High expectations
Over the past weeks and months, I’ve had too high expectations for myself, which has led to me put a lot of pressure on myself, not being satisfied with what I’ve done and achieved, and not loving and accepting myself the way I am (see next point).
This then led to negative energy, workaholism, dissatisfaction and ultimately led to sickness and physical burnout.
There are a lot of ways to break the cycle of hight expectation, including exploring the reasons behind them, trying to be more patient and compassionate with yourself, practicing Mindfulness and Meditation, developing a Self-Love practice, etc.
In the future when I’ll notice I’ve gotten caught in a snare of high expectations, I’ll try to remind myself of Don Miguel Ruiz’s Fourth Agreement: “Always do your best!”
“Under any circumstance, always do your best, no more and no less. But keep in mind that your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next. Everything is alive and changing all the time, so your best will sometimes be high quality, and other times it will not be as good. When you wake up refreshed and energized in the morning, your best will be better than when you are tired at night. Your best will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick; it will depend on whether you are feeling wonderful and happy, or angry and upset.”
Don Mihuel Ruiz, The Four Agreements
So I’ll try to do and give my best, the best I can do and give at any time and any given circumstance, and nothing more.
3. Lack of Self-Love
Over the years, I have noticed in myself that general good physical and mental well-being depends very much on the love I have for myself.
When I am too far away from cultivating self-love for an extended period of time, I fall into my old patterns of perfectionism, workaholism, high expectations, limiting beliefs, internal pressures and contempt.
Also, when I was too far off from cultivating love for myself for too long, I had a mini episode of burnout.
At the same time, I also felt the best and with no signs of burnout when my Self-Love was high.
I believe it’s because Self-Love is a “better” mental groove and it enables us to operate out of and live with joy, gratitude, compassion, love and patience which positively influences our thoughts, actions and behaviors, which then positively impacts our overall life and general health — including the burnout condition.
So regular Self-Love practice will be one of my main focuses in the future. I’m planning on writing about this Self-Love practice in the future, so stay tuned for that!
4. Swapping Happiness for Meaning
On a recent Aubrey Marcus podcast, Chris Williamson talked about how a lot of people mistake happiness for meaning — I relate to the idea a lot.
I’m a type of person who gains a lot of energy, well-being and ultimately happiness from feeling and sense of purpose and meaning — but I was overdoing it. I focused too much on working on my purpose of building the platform Conquering Burnout to help people prevent and overcome burnout, being of service to others and you my readers.
I forgot about happiness in the now.
I wasn’t focusing much on activities that would make me happy now, because of that I was unhappy, which made me look for a sense of meaning and purpose even more, which led to overworking, high expectation and mental pressures.
So it’s about balancing happiness and meaning. I will try to achieve that by following the Vishen’s Lakhiani’s Formula for Daily Bliss and Magic, which consists of:
Happiness, Bliss and Magic = Happiness in the now + Pursue of the goals and visions of your ideal future
I’ll cultivate happiness in the now — by choosing and engaging in the activities that bring me happiness, ganging out with people that I love and full me up, doing things that I enjoy doing, cultivating Gratitude practice, doing the Self-Love practice — and pursue big goals and bold visions of my ideal future, which will a sense of purpose and meaning which will result in happiness in the now.
How to change our internal patterns?
As my mentor and coach Ryan Munsey says:
“Awareness Creates Chooice.”
We must become aware of our internal patters and how we operate in our everyday life.
Then, when we come to these big personal insights about our patterns and our own lives, we have two choices:
We can choose an easier path: we forget the lessons learned and go back to the old way of doing things, which in the long run means that we will most likely encounter the same problems and stumble over them again, just in a more painful way.
or we choose the difficult path of accepting responsibility for our actions in the past and commit to changing our patterns and behaviors for the better.
I once heard Tim Ferris say on one of his podcasts:
“Life is either easy now and hard later,
or hard now and easy later”
Changing patterns is never easy: it requires a lot of commitment, daily work, persistence and patience.
But only in this way can we make long-term changes and change our lives for the better.
So in the future I will try to:
Put less pressure on yourself by lowering my expectations for myself,
Constantly release and let go of the things that I’ve been accumulating in my body, mind and soul,
Cultivate happiness in the now by doing things that bring me happiness and having big goals and bold visions of my future,
Cultivate Self-Love practice and transfer Self-Love into my thoughts, actions and behaviors.
What are some of your internal patterns that lead you to burnout and hold you back from living a happy and fulfilled life?
Let me know in the comments below!
That sounds like a good list for changing internal patterns. I can improve on all four, which can change lots of other patterns.