Stop Ignoring the Check Engine Light
When my sister turned 16, my parents let her drive an old green ‘79 Toyota Corolla. It was the best kind of first car for a teenager. It was a regular “rust bucket” that would have been a proud recipient of the “heap of the week” award at our high school and my sister loved it. It had a bumper sticker that read, “Honk if you’re dazed and confused” and we got many delighted honks from cars behind us. This car was old enough that I’m not even sure it had seatbelts for rumble seat in the back. Either way, no one would claim it was a pretty thing, but it sure was a reliable car. As many dads have said, “they don’t make ‘em like they used to.” It was a perfect car to get my sister from place to place. However, being young, she thought the only thing the car needed was gas. This means, she never changed the oil and eventually, the engine seized up and old reliable could purr no more.
When thinking of my burnout journey, I realized, this car is a great metaphor for how I’ve treated my body of the years. I love my body, but I haven’t always taken great care of it. I’ve pushed it hard to get to places that I wanted to go. I would fill the gas tank only when the empty light came on, and I didn’t take any extra time to build in regular maintenance such as changing the oil. After years of ignoring my check engine light, my engine seized up. I was only able to admit that I needed to change when my body literally stopped functioning from my mistreatment of it. That was the hardest part of burnout for me. I couldn’t just use my mind and will power to push myself to keep going anymore. My body used exhaustion to force me to slow down.
However, I’ve come to realize this exhaustion and the adversity I’ve faced have been a gift because it forced me to take a better look at myself. And to paraphrase Carl Rogers, “We have to accept who we are in order to change”
The difference between my body and this car is that my seized engine is reparable. Repairing and maintaining my engine now is a priority that I accomplish through my self-care routine. The TA of my well-being class, Daniella Devarney, told us yesterday that she believes “You can’t change your mind with just your mind. It needs movement and your body too.” I agree as my self-care routine has needed behaviors that are married with ideas from wellness in order to work. I’ve connected with the power of physical movement in yoga, meditative breathing, dancing, and gardening. I’ve found joy and comfort in my religious practices. I’ve adopted the idea of “working at a natural pace” so that my default focus that prioritizes achievement doesn’t take over and become so narrow that I miss the beauties of my surroundings. Over the course of the year, these things have slowly been healing my body and the feeling of exhaustion is melting away.
I didn’t turn a corner into truly running well again, however, until I began using change talk with myself instead of sustain talk. This notion comes from Motivational Interviewing and I’m only just beginning to understand it. However, it’s also an active way to practice the difference between Carol Dweck’s growth mindset and a fixed mindset. I noticed that if I used the phrase, “I’m broken. I’m not capable of what I used to do.” I was using sustain talk or talking to myself in a way that encourages me to stay where I am. It’s hard because I needed to do some radical acceptance to assess what I needed, and I was broken for a time, but Carol Dweck would recommend that I add the word “yet” to my phrases. For example, “I’m not capable of what I used to do… yet.” That gets you moving in a growth mindset direction.
My mentor, Meg Wheatley, however helped me unlock my growth mindset even further. When she asked me to explore my gifts from adversity, I realized that telling myself, “I can’t wait until I feel like myself again” was missing the point of growth. I’m not supposed to go back to who I was before burnout. I’m supposed to grow into someone new and the experiences I have had in the last 13 months have not been a broken struggle to overcome, but instead have been molding me for my next chapter. I’ve come to appreciate that the lessons in adversity are exquisitely valuable because of the change they can catalyze. This reframing has helped me practice the belief that every experience contributes to our growth. It means I’ve had to learn to be trusting about who I’m growing into and that very well may be different than what I had in mind a few years ago. I may have come into this experience like a beat up ’79 Toyota Corolla, but I’m changing into a much better vehicle.
Thanks for reading with me today. I hope you take some time to look under your hood and care for the things that keep you moving.