It’s not burnout you need to be afraid of, it’s not having lived in the first place.

The reason you always struggle with burnout is lack of achievement, not because you need to lead a slow life in order to be happy and fulfilled.

You know deep down that if you go about things in a sustainable business as usual manner, you will eventually make it without feeling like you’re done or without getting exhausted every single day, but for some reason, that can’t happen. Every day you try to work, you end up in the same situation. You end up not being able to stop and say that’s enough for one day. I can leave now and be at peace.

Notice that others have other interpretations for this being always the case with you, like an intrinsic feeling that you are not good enough that stalks you wherever you go and prevents you from ever feeling good about yourself no matter what you do. And because you feel worthless because of not feeling good enough, you need to prove to yourself otherwise by showing yourself that you are good enough through being hyper-productive and a very high achiever. By working more and accomplishing more, you can then think you are good enough. And since you don’t feel good enough intrinsically by just existing, with disregard to how much you work, how productive you are, or how much you achieve on the regular, you will start feeling worthless the moment you don’t feel like you’re productive enough or achieving enough for the past few days. And because of that you always end up overworking and doing too much until you hit burnout.

The problem with such interpretation is that it doesn’t explain why you can still feel like you’ve never done enough despite feeling good enough. And it comes from a perspective that is centered around studying happy people, noticing what they have in common, and trying to ascribe your failure or misery to only not having what they have in their life in your life as well, or to not doing exactly what they do in their life in your life as well. These people socialize, and they get a great deal of sunshine on the daily. This must be why you’re sad all the time. Because you’re not doing what they do, even if what they do has nothing to do with your problem, or why they’re happier in the first place. It’s the way of the timid, who try to mass produce a solution that is simple and can work for as many people as possible, with disregard to the few who never end up improving who like always, get left behind.

What if I told you that you have an internal mechanism or counter that tracks down how much you’ve lived your life to the fullest, how much you’ve achieved or accomplished so far in your life, how much stuff you’ve done, how much enjoyment you’ve had so far in your life, how well your life has been spent or lived so far, and how much you’ve done, achieved, or accomplished in total so far throughout your entire life up until today, just as you have an internal mechanism or counter that determines your position in the dominance hierarchy and accordingly sets or determines how much Serotonin you deserve and shall have in a sustained manner? If the math doesn’t add up, if you always feel like you didn’t do or live enough so far ever since you came to this world, you will feel like you’re worthless all the time, because whatever dopamine you get from any source will never be sustained or good enough to regulate negative emotion without the help of any Serotonin whatsoever, or at least enough Serotonin.

To picture how could someone end up being in such situation, imagine someone spending the very first thirty years of their life in solitary confinement in prison for example, where they have done absolutely nothing throughout their entire life so far, not even entertaining activities or having fun of any sort. The amount of enjoyment they’ve had so far is zero. So it is important to understand that I’m not just referring to a lack of serious contribution to society or total absence of achievement only, but this is a case of total absence of everything there is. This is what you can describe as a perfect case of I haven’t lived, ever.

Imagine telling someone like this no problem, you’re still extremely young and you still have your whole life ahead of you. You should be grateful.

Even if they have endless self-esteem, and feel that they’re totally good enough, there will always be something that is dragging them and weighing them down no matter what they do, which is a feeling of never having done enough, never having lived at all in the first place.

Deep down inside, you know that you haven’t done enough in the past, or up until today, compared to what you could’ve or should’ve been able to do in that duration of time, which is since you came to being until right this second, which even if you’re still twenty-five years old, that is still decades of absolute nothingness. Imagine how could that impact your energy.

That contributes to developing a sense of emptiness and feeling that you have never done enough before compared to how long you’ve lived so far. And because of that you feel you’re always behind no matter what, and you feel like no matter what you do, it’s still not enough, and can never feel enough, and you still feel worthless and not good enough, because you’re trying to cram what should’ve took place in twenty or thirty years in one year or two, and that might be impossible to achieve. And so you can never get yourself to stop working or even enjoying yourself doing low energy pleasurable activities, and that’s why you always end up burning yourself out.

It’s not dying you need to be afraid of, it’s not having lived in the first place.