Our healthcare system is designed to burn us out.

We are exposed to human suffering every day but are taught to establish professional boundaries to keep ourselves from getting sucked in and feeling that experience. This practice of constant disengagement is stressful. This daily fight to protect ourselves from suffering by attempting to remain emotionally numb to it is hard work and it never works.

Many of us work for organizations that have mission, vision and values statements. Have you read them? Often times they will be written on a placard in the board room or in the lobby.  This may be a good time for us to check and see if our own personal mission, vision and values are in alignment with the place where we spend so much of our precious time.

Personal Mission Statement

• What would you like people to remember you by?
• If people who knew you well were having a conversation about you after you had gone, what would you hope they would say?
• What inspires you?
• Do you have a calling? This idea of a calling can be so simple. A meaningful calling could be…”she made the best apple pie. There was obviously so much love and attention given to each one of those pies. You knew when you ate one that you were truly loved”.

Personal Values

• What about your life is most important to you? Is it family, friendship, health, wealth, learning, career, community, culture, creativity, adventure, sustainability, faith, self-determination, etc.?
• When you make a personal decision about something, who or what do you consider most importantly before you choose?

Personal Vision

• Imagine a life where all your daily activities are in alignment with helping you achieve a life where you can focus more and more of your attention on experiences that are most important to you.
• When we make little decisions all day long; we are shaping our lives. When we make decisions and take into account our mission and our values, we are shaping a life that we actually want.
• Even during the most mundane tasks of our lives, if we can focus how it impacts what we desire for ourselves, the task in usually quite painless. We tend to not ‘sweat the small stuff’ when we know we are working towards a higher mission.

How to address burnout.

Do you believe that every human on this planet has a right to their own mission, vision and values? Without judgement, shame or guilt do you believe that individuals would feel better if we respected each other’s life experience?

It is our labeling and judgement of others that burns us out. It is exhausting. We are constantly separating people as being worthy or not. The reason this will always get us into trouble is that we, ourselves have our own worthiness issues. We are also being constantly judged by others. It never ends.  We experience shame, guilt and judgment in our own lives and we shame, guilt and judge others.

This is a choice.

When we decide to practice living our lives without judgement, shame or guilt we do not need to numb ourselves from the suffering of others. We can experience what is happening, respecting that others have their own mission, vision and values.

When someone comes to you saying that they are suffering and looking for help from you, try the following:

• Remember that you responded to a calling to work with the population.
• Remember that your job pays you the money that you need to do the things that matter to you the most.
• Remember that the person in front of you has their own story and try not to judge it.
• Remember that it is impossible to change other people’s behaviors. The only way people’s behaviors change is if they believe that another behavior is better for them personally. Someone must trust you deeply for your words to change their behavior.
• Connect to build trust. When meeting with someone with whom we have a duty, practice deep listening with the intention of understanding their suffering. This is the exact opposite of what we are taught. It will take practice. We are so skilled at half-listening to what is being said and creating the plan in our heads while the person is still talking that we loose the connection and the trust.
• Notice, after the exchange, does the individual seem to be experiencing a state of appreciation? They may not say the words. There are many, many years of distrust that we need to overcome.
• Do you sense that you are appreciating your own capacity for connecting? It is though the experience of this state of appreciation that we heal ourselves and our communities.