Burnout isn’t weakness. It’s the opposite.

For the reader who’s been told to slow down and isn’t sure they want to.

When we face a moment of decreased motivation, research from Pfeffer and Sutton (2000) shows we tend to gravitate toward one of two things. We give up and stop. Or we grit our teeth and push forward. With the former, we arrive at regret. With the latter, we arrive at burnout.

Burnout is real, and on the rise. By perpetually persisting in pursuit of progress, without stopping to ask whether we still want to continue or reminding ourselves why we’re doing it in the first place, we will run out of fuel.

But burnout isn’t a sign that we’re weak. It’s the opposite. It’s a sign that we’re strong enough to persist for long periods of time, even when we’re disconnected and misaligned.

Self-awareness gives us a third, more sustainable option. When we stop because, informed by self-awareness, we made an active decision to stop, we regret it less. The decision is ours. When we continue because of that same self-awareness, we find a way to reconnect to the work. Burnout becomes less likely, because now we’re persisting from a choice we made and can see clearly.

Tasha Eurich’s research (2017) on thousands of people found that 95% of us believe we are self-aware. Only about 10 to 15% actually are. The exact numbers vary by context, but the size of the gap is significant either way. Most of us are walking through life with a version of ourselves that doesn’t fully match who we really are.

David McRaney offered a definition of anxiety I still use in coaching, in teaching, and in everyday conversations:

Most of us see that formula and immediately ask, “How can I get to one hundred percent certainty, so I can eliminate my anxiety?” It’s the wrong question. There is no one hundred percent certainty. As poker champion Annie Duke (2018) reminds us, life isn’t chess or checkers, where we can see all the pieces. It’s poker, where we’re always working with incomplete information.

So the opposite of uncertainty isn’t certainty. It’s clarity.

The difference between moving on and letting go.

For the reader holding regret, guilt, or an old failure they haven’t released.

Self-forgiveness is the hardest work we can do. Sometimes significantly harder than forgiving someone else. The guilt we carry from our mistakes is some of the heaviest weight we hold, and the most exhausting. If there’s anything worth pulling out of our backpacks and setting down first, it’s that guilt.

In 2010, researchers Michael Wohl, Timothy Pychyl, and Shannon Bennett published a paper called “I forgive myself, now I can study.” They studied 119 first-year university students before two midterm exams. The students who reported high levels of self-forgiveness for procrastinating on the first exam procrastinated less on the second. The mechanism: self-forgiveness reduced negative affect, which in turn reduced avoidance.

The effect generalizes far beyond exams. Deniz Cerci and Erminia Colucci’s 2018 meta-analysis of thirteen studies on PTSD found that in twelve of the thirteen, greater forgiveness led to lower PTSD symptom severity. Only one study showed no statistically significant link, meaning even there, forgiveness didn’t hurt. It just didn’t help as much.

Self-forgiveness doesn’t just feel good. It clears the way. It takes the guilt of the past off your back so you can carry the responsibilities of the present. Your energy returns. Your focus sharpens. Shame no longer runs the show.

There’s a big difference between moving on and letting go and then moving on. Moving on without letting go is counterproductive. We’re still carrying all the weight because we haven’t set anything down. We’re just moving forward with more, for longer.

Building a social support circle. Authentically finding religion. Finding the right therapist. Those are real and meaningful. But they aren’t switches we can flip instantly, all by ourselves. Self-forgiveness is.

It works for something as common as procrastination and something as significant as trauma. The mechanism is the same: when negative emotions are forgiven and set free, energy and focus return.

Caring without carrying.

For helpers, caregivers, leaders, parents. Anyone whose empathy has started to weigh.

When you care deeply, it’s easy to confuse empathy with responsibility. But carrying someone else’s pain doesn’t lighten their load. It just adds to yours.

The word empath first appeared in a 1956 sci-fi story by McIntosh, where characters who could feel others’ emotions were exploited to suppress dissent. Star Trek’s 1968 episode “The Empath” featured a woman who absorbed others’ pain so completely it harmed her. These stories were meant as warnings. Somewhere along the way, we turned empathy into a virtue, thinking more about the moment of empathy than the mechanism of caring.

Carrying someone else’s pain became an expectation and a badge of honor. Generation after generation, we failed to offer anyone guidance on what to actually do with the pain you end up carrying. No surprise then: anxiety is climbing. Burnout is more ubiquitous. Empathy, miscast and loosely defined, is a key driver of both.

Demonizing empathy isn’t the answer. Empathy connects us. But empathy alone is incomplete.

Amy J. Wilson (2022) and Kim Scott (2017) each landed on the same better way forward, which I have adopted:

Without action, we trade connection for shared burden and make no progress. With action, the dynamic changes. Research on behavioral activation by Cuijpers, Straten, and Warmerdam (2007) shows that moving from intention to action reduces depressive symptoms by twenty-five to thirty percent and anxiety by ten to fifteen percent. Moving from intention to action cuts depression and anxiety nearly in half.

Paul Bloom calls this rational compassion in his 2016 book Against Empathy. A thoughtful, intentional way to care without losing objectivity. Because the truth is: we can take on other people’s pain. We do them no service by carrying it alone. What we often have that they might not is objectivity. That’s a gift, not a burden. We can be both their confidant and their guide.