Go all in, and then rest all you want afterwards.

The reason you hit burnout too frequently or so easily is because you either are doing something that you hate for a living because you’re out of options or because you think since you’re following your passion, you’ll never hit burnout.

If you are doing something that you hate, against your will, because you are out of options, you will definitely hit burnout before you even get started, just by thinking about it. That I understand, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Your feelings are valid, and you either need to switch what you’re doing or hang in there just a little bit longer until you can. Until you can afford to make the jump. Until you can finally do what you’re meant to be doing on this earth for good unchecked. Unopposed. You are exhausted here because you’re not supposed to be stuck in here. You know you can do better.

But what drives people crazy is hitting burnout despite doing the right thing. Despite following their passion and doing what they’re truly meant to be doing. Not only that, but they hit it sooner than expected. They burnout prematurely, all while saying the same thing: I no longer feel good afterwards. I do everything like I used to when I first started, but I can feel nothing. I don’t feel anything at all, despite doing everything right.

The problem lies within the fact that you almost always leave working on what you’re passionate about, what you love, or what you’re truly meant to be doing with your life prematurely, before you start feeling good. Before the floodgates open. Before any reward kicks in. Before getting any intrinsic reward from what you’re doing. Because you leave when you feel exhausted. You determine whether or not you’re supposed to leave based upon your battery. Your energy. How exhausted you really are at the moment, in order to pace yourself, and sustain yourself in the long run. You judge everything in terms of how you run a marathon. Forgetting along the way that your ultimate purpose of life isn’t running or winning marathons, and ignoring the physical limitations humans have when it comes to running a long distance. And you treat your passions and the only things that make you feel and come alive the same way.

You quit based upon how tired you feel, or how much you’ve accomplished today, with disregard to how good you feel, or how rewarded you are from working on what truly makes you feel like yourself. You quit before you experience that high, that makes it all worth it. You leave before you feel any different from where you started today. You leave before you achieve enough, and your body cannot release more reward than it thinks you deserve, but you leave anyway, settling for or even ignoring the reward breadcrumbs that got thrown your way today. You leave before you get your fair share of Serotonin and Dopamine that you need to stay sane. You leave before you get intrinsically rewarded enough for what you did today, because you don’t want to link when you should stop working on any given day to how good you feel when you stop working. You want to treat it as if somebody else is doing the work and you just give the order.

There are many complex processes that take place that determine when is the right moment to leave. And your intuition doesn’t know what your north star is or what you value, and so doesn’t know when exactly to compel you to leave work this day. And in order to reach that state, you have to succumb to your perfectionistic tendencies, where all your reward can naturally come from, because it means that we know there’s no reason for not giving you maximum reward today for what you did today. Because everything is perfect. And you really deserve it. And we know it, and there isn’t a part inside of us that thinks otherwise or has a different opinion. There isn’t a part of you that wishes you gave them the chance to do something more or better. You didn’t deny yourself or suppress yourself because you had to finish fast today to catch something else and have a balanced life. You didn’t leave before doing everything as perfectly as humanly possible or as you could, because you didn’t factor in fatigue, and so you didn’t quit prematurely because you were too tired to carry on. You did everything according to your highest standards. You didn’t leave before everything was perfectly done to the best of your ability. You lived up to your true and full potential. You fully expressed yourself. And that my friend, is true authenticity. Others could have done it better, but not you, so you can’t blame yourself. You did it, and you did your best. And now it makes sense to give you all the intrinsic reward there is. The thing that makes you truly alive and totally yourself and who you really are as a living being. The thing that you gave up everything for. The thing that you tasted once before and know fixes everything. The thing that makes you come alive. Now your body has no reason to assume you don’t deserve any of it or you shouldn’t have any of it. And thus you won’t be denied any of it.

In order to feel it, you need to not treat this with control like you’re parenting yourself. You need to give in. You do not need to give the inner child full control and just wait for things to happen on their own and take care of themselves. Both the adult self and the inner child have to work side by side together, not like a team, but like one. One entity, in complete unity. Anything else feels like either pure inhibition, where the grown-up parts of you are the ones in charge taking care of business and running things, or your inner child running around doing everything alone, unopposed, and unchecked, leading to chaos you cannot seem to be able to control. This is what makes your passion special. Everybody gets to participate, everybody gets to work, and everybody gets taken care of. No one got left behind.

Wait until there’s absolute and total alignment concerning the right moment to leave today. Wait until you’re satisfied and fulfilled. Make sure there’s no resistance. And the impulse to quit and call it a day is totally unopposed. Wait until leaving is a no-brainer. Don’t leave before you start feeling good.