Workplace burnout: What’s the antidote?

How many times have you heard of someone being made overly tired or frustrated by their work? Or maybe you’ve felt this yourself. “Workplace burnout” is becoming a common phrase.

Since I love multitasking, I usually thrive on lots of activity at work, but there came a point when the sheer volume of my responsibilities and the hours I was devoting to them left me feeling strained. I rarely saw my husband when he was awake and I was missing many of my children’s extracurricular activities. Even when I was with my family, I would often be talking to, texting, or emailing colleagues. I had never experienced before such a consuming sense of being worn out from work.

I thought of an article I’d read by Shelley Prevost, cofounder and CEO of a business. One of the points in the article, titled “5 Ways to Distinguish Your Calling From Your Ego,” seemed especially relevant: “Ego manifests as burnout. Calling manifests as fulfillment” (Inc.com, Dec. 12, 2013). I love the idea that opens up from this: Focusing on our ego, or self, hides our sense of calling, purpose, and fulfillment.

Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, wrote, “When we reach our limits of mental endurance, we conclude that intellectual labor has been carried sufficiently far; ...” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 387). That’s exactly where I was: concluding that my mental endurance, or my personal sense of self, had taken me as far as it could.

The sentence continues, “but when we realize that immortal Mind is ever active, and that spiritual energies can neither wear out nor can so-called material law trespass upon God-given powers and resources, we are able to rest in Truth, refreshed by the assurances of immortality, opposed to mortality.” Being assured of immortality is a radical way to think about oneself, and after a few weeks of feeling as though I were slogging through a mental mud pit and not finding relief (or less work), I was more than ready to dig into this idea more deeply.

I started to claim for myself that guarantee of immortality. For me, this began with thinking about Christ Jesus’ work. Jesus was a great leader, teacher, and healer; had many followers; and did so much for humanity during the relatively short time that he walked this earth. I thought about how Jesus’ example thrilled his disciples, and how disappointed they were after his crucifixion.

But then two of them, thinking Jesus was a stranger as he walked with them on the road to Emmaus, found their hope rekindled in a big way (see Luke 24:13-35). As Science and Health explains, “In the walk to Emmaus, Jesus was known to his friends by the words, which made their hearts burn within them, and by the breaking of bread” (p. 46). I like to think of this burning within as one of inspiration – a calling!

During the Passover meal on the night before his crucifixion, Jesus referred to the bread he was sharing with his disciples as his body. This communion was a holy imparting of the Christ, which represents Jesus’ true identity, identifies each of us as God’s spiritual sons and daughters, and is for us to claim, accept, and live by. It’s a divine calling we each can heed. Christ speaks to us of our real nature as the immortal, spiritual expression of God’s strength.

Praying with these ideas, I finally glimpsed a clear truth that led to my freedom: I am an immortal idea of God and not a mortal prone to wearing out or failing. Very soon I was free from the feelings of exhaustion. I felt invigorated at work and inspired to fulfill my true calling: to perceive myself and others as God’s children. And this sense of invigoration has continued.

We each have that divine calling to eat of Christ’s bread – to claim our inheritance as God’s immortal children and accomplish the holy work He gives us to do. “Spiritual energies” and “God-given powers and resources” are always active, even when the appearance is one of exhaustion. As we accept this fact, we find that nothing can truly impede or exhaust our ability to do whatever we need to do.

Adapted from an article published in the Aug. 19, 2019, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.