The Importance of Purpose, Celebration and Letting Go of Results and Expectations
The Importance of Purpose, Celebration and Letting Go of Results and Expectations
My Personal Insights, October 2022
Welcome back to the "My Personal Insights" section inside the Conquering Burnout Newsletter.
"My Personal Insights" is a place where I'm sharing my recent insights and reflections about life, nutrition, wellness and well-being, but mostly about my burnout journey.
My goal with this with section of the Conquering Burnout Newsletter is to share valuable information and insights that I found useful and might help you in your own life and your own burnout journey.
I haven’t done one in a long time, but here we go: here are my three personal insights from October.
#1: Having a sense of joy, excitement, passion, purpose, and fulfillment in our daily lives is one of the most important aspects for our overall health and well-being.
When we live and operate with a clear sense of mission and purpose for our life, we feel great, we’re happier, we feel less stressed, we have the energy that we didn’t know we had in us and we have the feeling that we can do anything.
Every time I lose these feelings of joy, excitement, passion, purpose, and fulfillment, I remember how much worse I feel without them and how important they are to me.
So find out your why and you'll conquer your burnout!
#2: Lack of celebration and rewarding for completed tasks and milestones
One of the reasons why I was feeling empty, stuck and depressed the last few weeks, was because I just worked, grinded and pushed myself without celebrating and rewarding myself for the wins, completed tasks and milestones.
This insight came to me on Saturday when I was reading a book called Forever Athlete: Connect with Your True Identity Daily, which is a collection of stories of former athletes, what they faced at the end of their sports career and how they implemented the “Forever Athlete” spirit and mentality in their further career.
As Darci Smith wrote in her chapter of the book,
“You must put action to the celebration to make it feel real and worth striving toward. Make each small celebration something to look forward to and keep you motivated.
All the milestones you have laid out to reach your goal are important. If you celebrate the small wins along the way, you are more likely to keep pushing yourself all the way to your ultimate goal.”
So in the future I’ll try to incorporate regular daily and weekly celebrations and rewards for completed tasks and milestones - even if they are small.
#3: Something magical happens when you let go of expectation and let go of results and outcomes
One of the things that I struggle a lot with is my attachment to the desired results, the outcome, and success in life.
It turns out that it is a universal law that is preventing us from achieving success and happiness: the more we want something to happen, the less likely we are to actually achieve it.
This idea of not chasing and letting things happen to us, is deeply enrooted in many Eastern philosophies - including Taoism, the Ancient Chinese philosophy: Wu Wei, Effortless effort or The Backwards Law. When we stop trying, we’ll have what we want: give it all you’ve got, but don’t try to succeed, let it happen on its own.
So lower your expectations for yourself and your reality, let go of the desired results and outcome and allow it to happen!
Read more about this idea in my article on Medium.
That’s it for this edition of “My Personal Insights” . I hope you enjoyed it, found it interesting and insightful!
I would love to know your thoughts about it and if you would like to read about this on a regular basis - maybe once a week. Let me know in the comments below or by an email response.
See you again very soon!
I like #2. And used to struggle with that a lot.
I have found journaling pretty helpful for that.
I have a note on my mobile which is called “Steps in the right direction”.
At the end of every day, I write down at least one beneficial thing I had done.
It could have been anything. From small things, like booking a call, to bigger activities, like publishing an article on my Substack (including one on this topic).
Pretty helpful to keep sense of progress and motivation.
Thanks for sharing about your journey.
Love this! With regard to the second tip about celebrations, there’s something special about it being a nontangible experience. Something you enjoy, and then is gone--just like the experience of working. So you then have to get back to work again afterwards to get the next celebratory experience :)