“We need to change the delusion that we need to burn out in order to succeed” —Arianna HuffingtonOne of the biggest challenges to finding time for meditation—and balancing ourselves mentally, physically, and emotionally—is the burnout complex. Many of us feel the need and pressure to “operate at maximum capacity” from the time our eyes open until we go to sleep. That doesn’t even make sense for a machine, let alone a human being. You wouldn’t expect a car to run at top speed 100 percent of the time without its engine exploding, so why do we expect it of our minds and bodies?
Why We Need to Slow Down
While real physical dangers are rare today, most of us suffer from internal perceptions that create stress. Our brains are registering these as incoming threats, triggering our body’s fight-or-flight response. This is that jolt of energy you feel at the top of a rollercoaster or when a barking Doberman starts charging toward you. This physiological response narrows our focus and energizes our body to deal with a physical situation. However, for most of us, the threat we face is an urgent email, a heated argument with our partner, or climbing bills from an over-budget renovation. These daily (or hourly) stressors are triggering a biochemical shift in our bodies. The clinical explanation of what’s happening is that our brain perceives, our nervous system activates, and our adrenal stress systems prepare our body to react to incoming danger by changing our biochemistry.The problem with many of us experiencing this stress response on a regular basis—besides that it activates a survival mode not intended for an average workday—is that it performs a variety of short-term, life-saving actions that harm our bodies when triggered too often. Those actions include pumping extra sugar and insulin into our bloodstream, constricting blood vessels, directing energy away from daily bodily functions, slowing digestion, deregulating our immune system, interrupting fertility, and more.
