Why are we all burnt out? How can Mindful living help?

Growing up in a small town in India our daily routines were pretty simple. The Internet was not a thing yet. Most of the jobs that my parents, uncles, aunts and neighbors did were manual essential sort of work. Each job was a supportive service to another. Since everyone’s job was a service to others in person, the job was predictable and manageable. Burn out at a job was not a term yet.

You see, physical burnout is sort of an exercise and you are just growing stronger while you get access to tangible touch and feel of products or tools in your hands. Whereas with the advent of automation and computer revolution, human beings are expected to work with and on processes that are not physically tangible. Most of the jobs now involve analytical thinking thus leaving hardly any room for emotions or physical interactions with other humans including dealing with ourselves based on how we interact with other humans.

Despite hardly lifting a pencil and moving from their chairs the whole day, people are exhausted. Why? The modern electronic and automated world was expected to make our lives comfortable. Did the world misunderstand the word comfort and relate it to doing less physically? Unlike the life I led growing up, where I knew my vendors in person who brought me groceries, now we can buy stuff with a click of a button. Thus missing out on simple basic interactions with another human. Or even a physical engagement of our senses involved in selecting our groceries.

New world which is now tipped all the way to one side of relating comfort to doing less physically is what I feel is the basic reason for burnout. Human minds long for touch, feel, smell, sound and taste along with emotional support. You need to participate in your daily activities with intention engaging with focused attention. Many small daily routines and interactions are what makes life pleasurable and less exhausting.

We are in dire need to find this balance. First and foremost we need to pause. So we can become aware of our current state of mind. Through mindful living. We have to now create special wiring in our minds to live around the artificial Intelligence driven machine worlds. Introducing mental health awareness, resetting and pausing to feel and touch to find ways to enhance the amount of time we have that enhances your parasympathetic mode is key. Something like cooking or creating jewelry or creating sand art. 

That is exactly what I do at Doturminds to provide a space for burnt out women and men to come break the cycle of burn out in their mind to take a pause and shift their attention to feeling the sand. Creating something with their own hands. Learning to get to the basics is as simple as a dot. Getting us closer to mother earth where we all came from. As this ancient Indian sand art teaches us, when we bend down to create the art on the threshold each morning. Mindful awareness leading to emotional connection could be what we need more of in our families and your teams need to feel alive, less burnt out and feel more. Leaving us alive and ready for the automated existence of a human life. 

Burn out can be prevented. With Mindful living.