Striving, yet not thriving

Recently, I shared with my coach that a colleague approached me and invited me to join him in a collaboration. I take EVERYTHING to my coach. EVERYTHING. For me, coaching is not just something I do, or another meeting in my calendar. It’s the time I use to recalibrate, to think, to work through difficult emotions, to confront the patterns of thinking and behaviour I don’t like in myself, to consider difficult conversations I need to have, or difficult decisions I need to make. And thankfully my coach knows that for the past month I’ve complained about how tired I feel.

So, she gave me an assignment. She invited me to make a list of 50 things I would do if I had two extra hours in the week. The first thing I that popped into my head, was I would sleep. And then it hit me. I’m starting to feel burnt out again. I’ve been here twice before. The first time was in 2011 and then again in 2013. So, it’s been 10 years since the last time I burnt out.

As a recovering workaholic, I’m someone who can easily fall into a pattern of overwork and of taking on far more than any human can realistically handle. And often I juggle all the balls. Whether I juggle them well, is a completely different consideration. And that is one of the reasons why I chose to give up overworking. It didn’t serve me, my family, or anyone else in my life. And it was simply a way I chose to hide from the things in my life and in the relationships that I found hard to deal with. These days I’m more likely to choose to face the difficult relationship or situation in my life, than to simply hide from it in my work.

However, I do want to slow down for a second and talk about overworking and striving. Recently, I posed the question, can you handle the effort shock? And there was quite a reaction to that article. So, today, I want to speak to those of us (myself included) who tend to overdo it and who tend to not know where the line is between effort and burnout.

The world has likely instilled in you the importance of passion and persistence. Angela Duckworth’s research has brought the concept of grit to the foreground. Yet so many of us have a distorted perception of what grit actually means. In 2021 on a podcast called Psychologists Off the Clock, hosted by Dr Diana Hill and Dr Yael Schonbrun, they discussed the concept of “striving”. They explained that there is a difference between healthy striving and unhealthy striving.

I want to slow down even more here and share with you MY distinction between these two states. Healthy striving would be equivalent to the effort required to create worthwhile things, and the patience and persistence to know that some things take time. Healthy striving involves taking consistent small steps towards your goal every day. There is ambition and persistence in healthy striving. Unhealthy striving, on the other hand, equates to running yourself into the ground to attain your goals. It’s moving from effort into overdrive. It’s when we push beyond the point of joy into a place of deep exhaustion, overwhelm, and dissatisfaction. We forget they WHY behind the goal we are pursuing, and we focus only on the WHAT.

Susan David highlights that success — in life, in work, in creative pursuits — is often synonymous with keeping our noses to the grindstone as we rack up the requisite 10 000 hours of mastery that Malcolm Gladwell popularised.

There are many reasons to celebrate grit. The things we value most in life, like meaningful relationships, and pursuing work that matter to us, or building the requisite skill to thrive in life and work, those things require commitment and persistence to get you through challenging times. Sometimes persisting even when faced with failure and disappointment, delivers incredible results in terms of innovation or personal growth and transformation.

I’m sure most of us have heard the story of how Thomas Edison churned out more than 1 000 unsuccessful prototypes before inventing a working lightbulb. Where would we be today, if he had thrown up his hands in exasperation and quit after his 500^th unsuccessful attempt? Thankfully, Edison had a bigger vision. He did not consider his failed attempts failures. He saw them as progress towards the final invention and we owe him such gratitude for his tenacity.

However, despite its many virtues, it is possible to overvalue grittiness. Susan David postulates that the self-awareness to know when to quit is just as important as the discipline to hold on and grit your way through. There are times in your life, when perseverance doesn’t lead to you thriving, but instead to you burning out. This is when healthy striving turns into unhealthy striving.

Perseverance is a necessary ingredient for human thriving, but we must be thoughtful about what we’re persevering at and why. There’s nothing admirable about working doggedly toward a goal that no longer matters to you, or staying in a relationship that no longer serves you; just as there’s nothing shameful about re-evaluating your path and course-correcting. The most successful among us, also know when to quit. They don’t buy into the sunk-cost fallacy – i.e., where we feel like we’ve already spent so much time, energy, or money, we might as well see it through.

The sunk-cost fallacy is misleading, because it has you justifying needlessly persisting at something that no longer serves you or brings you joy, because you don’t want to “lose” the time and money you spent on it, even though you logically, rationally, and truthfully KNOW that the course of action is no longer beneficial. The truth is that the time and money has already been spent, and spending more time and money just means you are losing MORE time and money, instead of identifying something more worthwhile, or simply cutting your losses and taking the life lesson.

Both history and life experience tell us that an unwavering grittiness and a commitment to the sunk-cost fallacy can bring as many negative consequences as positive ones. As early as 1965, Lyndon Johnson privately admitted that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, yet his stubborn determination not to “be the first American president to lose a war” pulled him deeper into a conflict that dragged on for another bloody decade, and traumatised thousands of soldiers and civilians.

And on a more personal level, think of how many people pursue careers that don’t bring them joy only to please their parents, or how many women sacrifice their own dreams and careers to fulfill homebound duties out of a sense of obligation? No one can doubt their strength of will or character, but what sacrifices were they called to make along the way that left them resentful and less fulfilled? When we sacrifice what’s important to us, we often encounter resentment somewhere along the line.

In 2021, I wrote about this too in my article, You don’t need to burn out to succeed. At the time, the COVID pandemic resulted in many people losing their jobs, and those that remained employed, working harder than ever in abnormal circumstances. We saw people working from home while juggling parenting and household responsibilities.

Sarah Hoek reminds us that this is not a trend unique to the current pandemic era, though. The pandemic simply amplified the problem. As early as 2014, James Surowiecki wrote about the cult of overwork. Surowiecki postulates that overworking has become a “credential of prosperity”; perpetuating the idea that we are only successful when we are pulling longer hours and achieving more than we did the day before. In 2019, the World Health Organization formally recognised burnout as an “occupational phenomenon” resulting “from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed”. For most of us, exhaustion has become a status symbol.

Nathaniel Branden explains that our society is set up that way. When you run into someone at the grocery store, and they tell you how hard they’ve been working on a project at work, or how much overtime they’ve been putting in – and sometimes they even brag about how they are surviving on very little sleep – you are impressed. You praise them for their efforts, and you think they are successful. You might even think that this is what effort should look like – i.e., long hours, grinding away with very little rest or sleep.

Yet, if you were to run into someone at the grocery store, and they tell you that they took a week off to spend time with their wife, and they share how they start their mornings with a coffee outside on the veranda, and that they might go for long walks, or cook dinner together, you feel at a loss for what to say about that. You wouldn’t praise them for prioritising their relationship. You might even secretly think they are lazy or lucky to get time off. What a luxury. You couldn’t afford to do that.

Recently, I spoke to a client who was beating up on herself for not being a go-getter. She was judging herself as lazy and as simply not having what it takes to succeed. So, I asked her what a go-getter is, and she shared that it’s someone who wakes up at 4 am to go to the gym for two hours. They read the newspaper whilst eating breakfast so that they can stay productive, or they might even skip breakfast altogether so that they have more time to spend on work. They work all day without breaks, and then they come home in the evening and mow the lawn before bedtime.

This was both hilariously funny and incredibly sad at the same time. When did we start treating ourselves like machines? In fact, I don’t even think machines would sustain under the kind of pressure some of us put on ourselves. We get annoyed when our cars won’t start, or the coffee machine won’t work, or the printer acts up. Even machines need downtime, or maintenance.

I shared Robert Holden’s recording of The Manic Society with my client, and she actually seemed lighter and brighter in our next call. She felt reaffirmed that she wasn’t crazy for not wanting to be a “go-getter”. She has started to see the wisdom in her resistance to overworking, and to appreciate that she is not lazy for wanting to include rest into her schedule.

 In the Psychologists Off the Clock podcast Hill and Schonbrun explain that striving is that internal push you feel to simultaneously be the perfect employee, parent, partner etc. It’s an attempt at keeping all the balls in the air no matter what. This does not mean that having goals or desires are bad. Goals are valuable, until they are not. When we get to a place where we are aiming for perfection, or we insist on having all the balls in the air at all times, we have lost the plot.

As I’ve said above, there is a difference between healthy and unhealthy striving. In healthy striving we work towards what we care about most. We are honouring our deepest core values through the effort we are choosing to put into something. The work is deeply meaningful to us, and we still honour our humanness and allow ourselves time for rest and recovery, so that we have the energy to continue to strive.

In unhealthy striving on the other hand, we are battling against ourselves and against the present moment. We make ourselves wrong or bad for getting tired or getting it wrong. We buy into the sunk-cost fallacy, and we push ourselves beyond breaking point. We judge ourselves as weak or lazy. We fight against ourselves instead of honouring our deepest values.

So how do we know if we are striving in a healthy way or not? Hill says it’s not so much about what we do, but rather how we feel when we are working towards our goals. Unhealthy striving is feeling like you are doing a lot, but you still derive no satisfaction or contentment from what you do. You are simply going through the motions. Signs that you might be striving in an unhealthy way, include feeling nothing you do is ever enough, regardless of how many tasks you tick off, feeling guilty for taking time off and resting, and when you do succeed, feeling like that still is not enough or that you could have done better.

In contrast, positive striving cultivates “feelings of contentedness and wholeness”, where there is value in the processes of life, and not just in the outcomes. When we are striving in a healthy way, we are pausing to take in the view, we are present to the moment. We might be working hard, but we also know when to surrender the hard work in favour of balance and rest. We feel proud of our output, and we can celebrate our achievements or milestones as we make progress on our most important goals.

In healthy striving, I feel well spent at the end of the day, but not burnt out. There is a difference. If I go to bed feeling tired, but proud of the work I’ve done, and with a sense of joy and contentment that I spent my time on something worthwhile, then I’m well spent. In unhealthy striving, I would probably not go to bed, or I might toss and turn all night worrying about all the work I still need to do. There is no joy. There is no rest. There is simply more exhaustion and eventually burnout.

And sometimes, we can turn something joyful into something painful by pushing too hard. For the past four months, I’ve been participating in one of the best coaching schools in the world. Attending the school requires travelling to in-person events once a month. At the same time, I’ve also been serving my clients, taking care of my children full-time, and running a household. And I started working with a personal trainer to improve my fitness.

In the first month or two with the personal trainer, I felt it was hugely beneficial. I was finally giving my body the attention it so needs and working on increasing my strength. Over the last month, attending the sessions with my personal trainer have become more and more challenging. Why? Because I’m not sleeping. I’m working long hours. I’m travelling. And I haven’t removed anything off my plate. In fact, my coach pointed out that I keep adding things to my plate, without deciding what to say NO to. And she is right.

And not surprisingly, I’m finding less joy in the things I am doing. Why? I’m tired. That’s the truth of it. I’m pushing too hard. And I’ve forgotten why I’m doing all of this in the first place. Thankfully, I have a coach who points out to me when I’m out of integrity. Thankfully, my clients share their stories of overwhelm and burnout, and it makes me look at myself and consider where that is true for me too. And thankfully, I am clear about my intentions and commitments to both myself, my family, and my business – and even to the school. I’m clear on who I want to be and what I want to get from attending the school. And it’s been like a guiding light that helps me find my way back to integrity.

So, I’m choosing to consciously slow down in a world that is constantly insisting that we speed up and move faster. I’m choosing to drop some balls and to let go of what no longer serves. I’m choosing not to beat up on myself for not doing everything perfectly. I’m choosing to love myself through this time in my life. I’m choosing to make the list of 50 things and to say a gracious NO. I’m choosing to notice and appreciate the beauty and the abundance in my life, and I’m consciously slowing down to savour it. Soon the days will change again and something new will be on the horizon. And every experience has embedded in it learning, growth, and inspiration.