Kintsugi: The Art of Broken and Imperfection
Philosophy Behind The Japanese Art of Embracing The Wounds
In a world fixated on perfection, it's easy to overlook the beauty and value that can emerge from flaws, brokenness, and imperfections. But what if flaws, brokenness, and imperfection can be even beautiful and valuable?
In today’s newsletter, we’ll explore the idea of “Kintsugi”, Japanese art and philosophy, and how we can use its principles and core message and apply it to our health and embrace it.
Kintsugi: The Art and Philosophy of Broken and Imperfection
Kintsugi, also known as kintsukuroi (in English "golden repair"), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, which makes the pottery even more beautiful and valuable than before.
As a philosophy, Kintsugi embraces the flawed, broken, or imperfect: it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.
When a piece of pottery gets broken, it's seen as worthless: it doesn't serve its purpose, and it can't do anything.
But then when the broken pieces and pieced back together with gold solder, the pottery is even more beautiful and valuable: it's seen as a piece of art and it's more valuable than it was ever broken.
Mat Fraser: Broken to Best
I first encountered the idea of Kintsugi by following Mat Fraser, the 5 time CrossFit Games champion and the fittest man in history.
Kintsugi is at the core of Mat’s philosophy of “Broken to Best”: Mat’s journey from his lowest point of having broken his back to his career highlight of winning his 5th Crossfit Championship.
Ever since he was a teenager, Mat had one singular goal: to compete in the Olympics. After high school, Mat moved to the weightlifting training center where he could dedicate his life to Olympic weightlifting and achieving the goal of competing in the Olympics.
In one training session, a few weeks from a big competition, while doing clean pulls, something in Mat’s back pooped and he felt how the pain and inflammation started to spread from his back throughout his body. He felt that something was wrong, but he was forced to continue the preparations for the big upcoming competition in Romania, Europe. A couple of days later, during a heavy squat session, Mat reinjured his back. Later he found out that he’d broken his L5 in two sports and he needed surgery.
It took Mat one year to fully recover and get back to where he was physically before the injury.
Mat says that people don't realize how bad his injury was and how “broken” he was. After his surgery and as he was healing, the doctors were telling him that his sports career was over and that he would be lucky if he could ever walk, jog and function normally again.
Mat’s lowest point was the realization that his dream of going to the Olympics was over and that he might never be able to lift anything heavy ever again. Just the thought of not being able to play with his future kids, not being able to run, or always worrying about his back slipping was horrible to him.
Because he wanted to be healthy again and have a functional life, surrendering and coming to terms with his condition wasn't an option for Mat. He refused to believe that that would be his life. Instead, he decided and made the commitment to heal and come back, even stronger.
And he did. Mat holds the record for the most wins in Crossfit: he won 5 back-to-back consecutive CrossFit Games.
Resilience and Anti-Fragility
The back injury made Mat more resilient. In the podcast, Mat said:
"I broke my back and I bounced back. What else can you throw at me that's going to stop me? You'll throw another obstacle in my way and I'll get over that one too."
Mat says that now he's built better, that he's better at what he does than he was before his injury, and the reason why is because of the life lessons he learned from the injury and because of the grit he got from it.
He embraced the injury that broke his, healed it, and got better and stronger because of it - just like he identifies so much with the art and philosophy of Kintsugi.
Embracing the Wounds
One of the long-term consequences that burnout left in me is tough days where I struggle both physically - physical energy and well-being - and mentally and emotionally.
Although there are far fewer tough days than in the past, they are far less dark and challenging, and I’m able to snap out of them much quicker, sometimes they’re still quite challenging.
Through recent tough, bad, hard, or dark days (whatever you want to call them) I realized two things:
The Gift of Hard Days Is The Revealed Gap
Tough days show us what we’re struggling with, what unconsciously causes us problems, what things we need to work on, and the gap between who we are and who we want to be.
For me, bad days reveal to me what I’m subconsciously struggling with (eg. seeking approval and love because of the belief that I’m not enough and won’t be loved) and remind me to work on those things.
Embrace The Wounds
Some wounds heal fast, some wounds take a lifetime to heal, and some unfortunately don't ever completely heal. But we shouldn’t treat these unhealed wounds as a weakness: we should be proud of them and wear them as a badge of honor because they make us beautiful and valuable.
It’s just like with Kintsugi art: it is the golden cracks that give the pottery the beauty and value that it has.
I often emphasize that burnout is a blessing: It is an opportunity to make an inventory and to reinvent our lives.
We can take burnout as an opportunity to take a step back and analyze what caused us to burn out, to fix the reasons and causes for burnout, to leave behind things that don’t serve us anymore, and to start living differently. This way, we’ll first overcome burnout, learn its lessons, and become stronger than we were before the burnout.
The Process of Rebuild
The process of healing the wounds and brakes takes time - sometimes years - and a lot of patience and perseverance.
In its traditional form, the Kintsugi technique required more than a month, recovering from physical injuries or burnout could take months or even years.
Mat described the process of healing his back as a step-by-step process:
"From that hopeless low of 'Your sports career is over, your fitness career is over' to then coming back and competing was going bit by bit: getting a bit faster, lifting a little bit more, doing a little bit more high skilled stuff and gaining that trust and ability back.”
The process of healing may be slow, and it may require immense patience and perseverance, just as in Mat Fraser's back injury recovery. But in the end, we discover that it is the golden cracks, the scars, and the lessons learned from adversity that truly make us beautiful and valuable.
So, let’s remember that in our imperfections, we find our unique strength and that, like Kintsugi, our lives can become masterpieces of resilience, courage, and growth.
If you want to learn how to figure out the root causes behind burnout and how to overcome it, you might want to check out my online course called Master Fatigue, Exhaustion, and Burnout.
In Master Fatigue, Exhaustion, and Burnout, I'll be sharing with you everything that I've learned and has helped me master fatigue, exhaustion, and burnout and achieve lasting well-being in every facet of my life.
In the course you will:
Learn what are the underlying factors behind the fatigue, exhaustion, and burnout that keep you from being your best self and achieving the state of well-being,
Develop awareness of the unknown and unconscious factors impacting your well-being,
Learn how to tackle physical, lifestyle, mental, emotional, and spiritual triggers,
Acquire practical tools to take control of your energy and vitality,
and Achieve well-being in all realms of life!
If you’re interested in learning more about the course, comment with “I’m interested”, reply to this email or check out the article below:
