“The antidote to exhaustion is not rest but wholeheartedness.” —David Whyte
Whether we like it or not we are all learning how to live. This started early in our childhood and continues until we die. A lot of how we see the world is shaped by what happened to us when we were young and we seem to spend the rest of our lives searching for something (that may have been damaged) and seeking the pieces of our self that seem to be missing in our life.
Generally, people have a sense of incompleteness, and we believe that one more piece of the puzzle (that is us) will make things right. A new purchase, a new degree, a new job, a new partner, a new location. If we can figure this out, then the parts of us that are wounded will be healed – even though, having been through this many times during our life, this has never worked to bring about complete wholeness. In the end we can adopt a pattern of defensive thinking that always ensures we stay bogged down in unhelpful behavioural patterns.
If we carry a wound with us it requires a tremendous amount of emotional energy to manage ourselves and our environment. People in helping professions (such as nursing, welfare, pastoral ministry, counsellors, doctors and teachers) are often the worst at seeing their own wounds and can find it very difficult to examine self and change. Sometimes it’s just easier to get defensive, angry, blame others, binge, make excuses or turn inward.
We start to develop defensive patterns early in life. If we don’t adapt and change these then our life can become one long adolescence and we never quite mature into adulthood. We get older, but don’t grow up. Defensiveness protects us from external and internal pain: pain caused by others; and the pain of having to deal with some ugly parts of ourselves.
Of course, some people are defensive because they have been accused of something they didn’t do. They are telling the truth. Then there are people who have done what they are accused of and don’t want to admit it. They know the truth – but they are lying to others. Then there are people who have done something wrong but have rewritten history in their own mind, twisting reality. So, they are telling the truth as they believe it – but they are lying to themselves. In many ways the most harmful and wounded is the last kind of person. Lacking self-awareness, they become incapable of learning and are more likely to continue to cause pain and turmoil to others.
But defensiveness means there’s a cognitive/emotional tension going on between our internal and external selves. Ideally, when we are mature, our internal and external selves are intertwined in a complementary way to function as one whole person. But defensive people aren’t whole – they are divided – and exert an enormous amount of emotional energy to provide a masquerade of having it all together. At their emotional core they may be dominated by anxiety, fear, anger, confusion or other qualities and we only occasionally see when the mask drops, when they are overwhelmed or under pressure.
These strong feelings are contagious. Anxiety is the response of a group under threat (whether real or perceived). When anxiety rises, the members of the group react to each other and everyone has a role in keeping the high level of emotions going. As Herrington et al. (2020) writes:
Our thinking becomes less clear and more reactive. Some of us withdraw; others engage in conflict. We begin to place or accept blame in an effort to avoid taking responsibility for making personal changes. We begin to see ourselves as the victims of others’ actions. We assign motives to others behaviour, or we take it personally. Demand for conformity in thinking increases. We look for a quick fix to the symptoms that develop. (p. 41)
Stephen Smith’s (2012) research with 108 people helpers helped devise the following model: Savouring life—the leader’s journey to health, resilience and effectiveness (see the figure below). So many research participants had experienced stress, boredom or emptiness as a result of working harder and harder, like on a treadmill, hoping that somehow things would get better than they were today.
In contrast, the concept of the optimum functioning of a leader was referred to as “savouring life.” This was about being fully present in the moment, single-minded, focused and highly engaged – not so much about doing as about being. This is where the whole person—head (cognitive, thinking) heart (emotional, feeling) and hands (physical, doing)—is fully absorbed in what they are doing. This state of savouring has a positive effect on physical health, psychological well-being, workplace safety, personal resilience, cognitive functioning and life satisfaction. The capacity for savouring life supports the many attitudes and actions that contribute to overall human flourishing.
Figure: Savouring Life
The two dimensions of this model (see figure above) are challenges and capability:
Challenges are the range of issues that potentially drain inner resources (this is not necessarily positive or negative). They may be external (situational) or internal (psychological/spiritual).
Capability is essentially the inner resources people use to learn and adapt to the challenges they face. Capability is more than skill/competence.
The need to continuously adapt, savouring life, rather than merely enduring work, is exhibited in the following story.
John takes a job as the manager of a division in a welfare organisation. He is excited about the new adventure—it will be a fresh experience, stretching his capabilities as he faces new and unknown challenges. He has the ability to try creative ideas, apply things he has learned from different contexts and build relationships with a large team who are looking to him to be a significant leader who can help them move ahead. Expectations are high. John is absorbed in this new role—it is fun and energising. He knows he is making a real difference in the lives of the people he leads and the clients he encounters. He is focused, fully engaged, healthy, resilient and effective. This is the Savouring Quadrant (1).
Being in the Savouring Quadrant (1) is not merely being happy in what you are doing. Aristotle argued that there were two forms of happiness: hedonia (the life of pleasure) and eudaimonia (the life of purpose). Hedonic well-being is about maximising pleasure through indulging in the pursuit of appetites and desires. Eudaimonic well-being is optimum functioning based on the pursuit of goals and meaning. Aristotle viewed this as the higher pursuit. Each needs the other for holistic wellness. Pleasure without purpose is empty and meaningless. Purpose without pleasure is sterile and joyless. Seligman (2002) explores this duality:
The good life consists in deriving happiness by using your signature strengths in every day in the main realms of living. The meaningful life adds one more component: using these same strengths to forward knowledge, power or goodness. A life that does this is pregnant with meaning, and if God comes at the end, such a life is sacred. (p. 260)
Being in this quadrant is a meaningful experience for John. It is reflected in his overall wellness and effectiveness. Over time, John hits some limitations in his ability to keep going. For some reason, the role is no longer energising him and projects do not have the same excitement. They are now just regular events and start to have a feel of sameness (to him and others). To remain in the Savouring Quadrant there must be discovery and growth, being stretched to find inner strength and resources that were previously untapped. If the leader does not continue to learn, adapt proactively, and remain connected to the deeper values that brought him to the role, she or he will start to slide into the Stressed Quadrant (not having enough leadership abilities to deal with the significant challenges he faces) or the Bored Quadrant (having high capability but low challenges to face). At this point, the ‘honeymoon’ is over.
In the Bored Quadrant (2), the leader simply does not have enough challenges to keep the role interesting. One pastoral minister in this situation commented, ‘I can do what they expect of me in about two days a week’. The leader may create other ancillary roles to alleviate this state, focusing on those things that provide them with some form of energy—perhaps writing, social activities, creative expression, research study or service projects. Many para-church organisations have been effectively established by ministry leaders who were bored in their local ministry setting and redirected their energies into a new challenge. However, remaining in this state for an extended period will likely shift the leader into the Empty Quadrant.
In the Stressed Quadrant (3), leaders do not have the capability to meet the challenges they face. They may never have been up to the challenge, or may have been effective in leading the church to its current state but now feels somewhat lost, not knowing what to do next. Situational context is important—there may be a range of issues that now limit the capability or capacity of the leader (such as lack of work resources, shift in health status, change in family situation and lack of personal finances). As this realisation mounts in the leaders and in those around them, the stress is significant and, if unchecked, will push the leaders into the Empty Quadrant.
In the Empty Quadrant (4), the leader has mentally and emotionally ‘checked out’. Unresolved, chronic boredom and/or stress have a natural entropy towards living on ‘automatic pilot’. Often depressed and burned out, they are now barely hanging in there. Preoccupied with coping, they are unfocused, apathetic and disconnected from those around them. Their resilience is low and they are no longer professionally effective at all. To ease the pain, they may ‘adventure seek’ in ways that would normally be out of character, seeking small reprieves to an inner woundedness. These activities may be self-destructive as they move to a point beyond caring. Derailing activities may involve addiction or pleasure seeking. With a lowered ability to experience pleasure, they are robbed of joy and feel an emptiness within. While it is obvious to many it is time to stop, have a break and move on to something else, issues of financial security become significant and ministers sometimes hang on beyond the point of healthy closure. An inability to think clearly, process emotionally and limited options can result in feelings of being trapped.
Every leader moves through these quadrants, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly and not necessarily in a particular sequence. One research participant said, ‘I can go through all of these in a day!’ However, it is the chronic states of these areas that can prove troublesome with stressed or bored sliding, over time, into emptiness.
Human beings all run better on a full tank. But sadly, we are all full of leaks. We fill ourselves up with food and water and eventually we always need more. We are full of energy and then we need rest and sustenance. Our bodies are designed to do this automatically. Breathing, drinking, eating, sleeping – and we need sustenance in our souls as well. If we don’t fill up our emotional and spiritual tank, we will be empty. Soul nourishment is as important as body nourishment.
So often people helpers can be starving in their souls. They lose the deeply held values that drove them to close a profession where they felt they could do some good – helping others – and end up drained of their passion for living and serving. Leaders who feel swamped, stressed or bored will find that they easily slip into automatic pilot, a kind of sleepwalking, where daydreaming, ‘zoning out’ or ‘black-and-white thinking’ all seem to make life a little easier. This is not a new phenomenon, as almost 100 years ago William James (1911) wrote that ‘compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake’ (p. 237).
This soul starvation may manifest itself as depression or, as Kets de Vries (2001, p. 107) suggests, a quasi-anhedonia (a mild form of mood disorder) where an individual can no longer find pleasure in a previously pleasurable activity. This emotional numbness is also characterised by the loss of ability to concentrate and enjoy living. He writes, ‘While hedonism reveres pleasure, it’s obverse, anhedonia, negates it. Anhedonia is characterised by a sense of apathy and loss of interest in and withdrawal from pleasurable activity’ (Kets de Vries, 2001, p. 106).
It might then seem easy to think that if we just stop caring then the potential for negative experiences as a people helper will go away. But there is evidence to support the opposite. Benner & Wrubel (2009) found that:
A peculiarly modern error is to think of caring as the cause of burnout, the cure being to protect oneself from caring when, in fact, lack of caring leads to illness, and the return of caring means recovery.
There is another variation of burn-out called rust out. Where burn-out is over doing, rust-out is under being. The common factor in both is stress. Burnout is a result of too much negative stress, while rust-out is a result of not enough positive stress to keep us challenged and interested. In this way, chronic boredom can be as much of a killer than overwork as it is soul destroying. Leider and Buchholz (1995) describe it this way:
Rustout is the slow death that follows when we stop making the choices that keep us alive. It is the feeling of numbness that comes from always taking the safe way, never accepting new challenges, continually surrendering to the day-to-day routine. Rustout means we are no longer growing, but at best, are simply maintaining. It implies that we have traded the sensation of life for the security of a paycheck. It often signals the death of self-respect. (p. 8)
It is easy to continue to serve but losing interest in who we are serving – going through the motions without passion or fulfilment. This soul-destroying lifestyle occurs when our sense of purpose in helping others is diminished, while still putting on the show of helping others.
An undernourished soul is surely the greatest occupational hazard of being a people helper. But in knowing this, we can plan on how we refresh and refuel ourselves to ensure we are savouring life rather than just living it. This requires intentional thinking and planning. It doesn’t happen by accident. If we nurture our own souls, surely we will be better equipped to nurture the lives of those in our care.
Stephen Smith’s (2012) research with 108 people helpers helped devise the following model: Savouring life—the leader’s journey to health, resilience and effectiveness (see the figure below). So many research participants had experienced stress, boredom or emptiness as a result of working harder and harder, like on a treadmill, hoping that somehow things would get better than they were today.
In contrast, the concept of the optimum functioning of a leader was referred to as “savouring life.” This was about being fully present in the moment, single-minded, focused and highly engaged – not so much about doing as about being. This is where the whole person—head (cognitive, thinking) heart (emotional, feeling) and hands (physical, doing)—is fully absorbed in what they are doing. This state of savouring has a positive effect on physical health, psychological well-being, workplace safety, personal resilience, cognitive functioning and life satisfaction. The capacity for savouring life supports the many attitudes and actions that contribute to overall human flourishing.
Copyright © 2020 The Colloquium Group.
This is an adapted excerpt from the upcoming book: Savouring Life: The Leader’s Journey to Peak Performance By Stephen Smith, Murray Bingham, Catherine Kleemann, Anna Reznik and Carol Salvadori.
Benner, P. And Wrubel, J. (2009). The primacy of caring: Stress and coping in health and illness. Addison-Wesley/Addison Wesley Longman.
Herrington, R., Creech, R. & Taylor, T. (2020). The leaders journey. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
James, W. (1911). Memories and studies. New York: Longmans, Green and Co.
Kets de Vries, M. (2001). Struggling with the demon: Perspectives on individual and organisational irrationality. Madison: Psychosocial Press.
Leider, R. & Buchholz, S. (1995). The rustout syndrome. Training & Development, 49(3), 7–9.
Seligman, M. (2002). Authentic happiness. New York: The Free Press.
Smith, S. (2012). Savouring life: The leader’s journey to health, resilience and effectiveness. In M. Dowson, M. Miner & S. Devenish (Eds.), Spirituality and Human Flourishing. Charlotte: Information Age Press.
Whyte, D. (2002). Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity. Oxford: Riverhead Books.
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