You Are Better Than Burnout
Excerpt from The Comeback Stack
LIFE ASSETS: The Only Way to Light Up Your Life
and Love It Again
You Are Better Than Burnout
Author’s Note. Read This First.
Before you begin with this excerpt, I’ll lay out what’s already been covered. In Sections One and Two of the book, readers discovered the inner framework that makes every comeback possible. Both sections are devoted to recognizing your Life Assets (the inner resources you’ve accumulated that enrich your life, and that are valuable and exchangeable with the world around you).
Within your portfolio of Life Assets, we focused on two:
- Your Values. The personal ideals, organizing principles, and natural priorities that keep you sane and true to yourself.
- Your STACKWINS. The unique collection of your Skills, Talents, Aptitudes, Competencies, Knowledge, Wisdom, Insights, Nature, and Strengths.
Together, these two Life Assets form the foundation of who you are, and give you the tools to experience success and satisfaction in everything you do.
This excerpt begins at a turning point in the book: the moment when readers come face-to-face with the twenty global pressures – megatrends – that I refer to as hurdles in the race you didn’t sign up for. They are the invisible forces that are shaping how you live, work, and feel. Each one is real, measurable, and personal. Each one tests Your Values, challenges your energy, and threatens to drain your vitality if you don’t realize it’s there, and how to meet it in your own way.
What you are about to read gives you the opportunity to face these pressures in your own way. You don’t have to be swept up in someone else’s notion of how to live, who to be, or what success or happiness means.
Excerpt Series: The Comeback Stack
LIFE ASSETS: The Only Way to Light Up Your Life and Love It Again
You Are Better Than Burnout
Excerpt Table of Contents
Part 1: Your Shield Against the World
Part 2: The Systems That Profit from Your Energy
Part 3: Sovereignty Drift
Part 4: The Extraction Economy
Part 5: Broken Bonds and Busted Foundations
Part 6: The Body and Spirit Hijack
(You’re reading Part 1 of 6.)
Your Shield Against the World
Way back in Section One, when you were clarifying Your Values, I said, “Your Values are your shield against the world turning you against yourself.”
I meant it.
Your Values serve many purposes, but this may be the most important: they protect your sanity, your mind, and your heart.
And just as Your Values serve as your shield, your unique collection of Skills, Talents, Aptitudes, Competencies, Knowledge, Wisdom, Insights, Nature, and Strengths – what I call your STACKWINS – are your tools. Together, these Life Assets keep you steady and capable no matter what pressures surround you.
Why do you need protection? Whether you see it as a battlefield or a race, you’re contending with forces that steal your attention, energy, and even your sovereignty. One thing is certain: Something in you already knows that what is happening around you is not natural.
The pressures of this era are
unlike anything humanity has ever faced.
Yes, life today appears full of comfort, convenience, and endless options. But is it true? Do you feel comfortable? With all that convenience, do you feel at ease? Do you really have the choices you think you do?
Truth sees beyond illusion. The same forces that make life easier also narrow what you can decide for yourself. Hidden in all that comfort are currents that push, pull, and shape you before you even know it is happening.
If you do not name what is pressuring you, your effort to express your own individuality and to live purposefully will be thwarted. Your system will let you know something is off. That is feedback, and the general name we have for that kind of feedback is stress. Your body and mind do not want to be deceived.
Your system is intelligent.
It is not conjecture that your body and mind register these forces long before your thoughts can name them. Part of the frustration you feel is that your natural inclination and effort to comprehend your world and your life is not being satisfied. As cognitive scientist Steven Pinker describes, perception is the gateway through which your knowledge begins. In this case, your system knows what is not welcome before words ever form. That awareness creates the tension we label as stress.
Today, I am going to name and describe the major forces behind the pressures sweeping you away from your own life. Once you see them, you cannot unsee them. Though the list may stir its own kind of upset or fury, seeing the words on paper will calm your nervous system. These are the words that complete what your perceptions have been struggling with. They close the open loop of feeling unsettled and restore your power to choose. That is what this chapter is for: to show you exactly what has been robbing you of your own selfhood.
As a Collaborative Futurist, it is my job to track the historical, current, and emerging forces that continue to shape society, business, and the individual. Of the dozens that matter, twenty have affected nearly every one of my clients and patients. Odds are, they are affecting you too.
Before we name them, let us get clear on what a megatrend is, and what it is not.
Is a Megatrend a Real Thing?
Megatrends are the world’s deep currents. Most people never think about where trends originate, or what they are causing, or how they are impacting everyday life, because everyone is caught up in them.
They are global forces that influence and transform everything from language to economies. They unfold over years – often over decades – and touch every sector of life by challenging the social, economic, health, business, technological, political, cultural, and religious norms.
Megatrends are not short-lived fads or passing disruptions.
They are enduring forces that reshape how humanity thinks, behaves, and plans. As you can imagine, identifying and staying on top of megatrends is a priority for powerful organizations and governments that want to stay ahead of the curve. It is no surprise that vast resources are devoted to researching and tracking these shifts. Megatrend data is used to predict what will happen next, from human behavior to the structure of governments, the value of currencies, and the stability of nations. Their exact trajectory may be uncertain, but their influence is undeniable.
You Have the Power to Say Yes or No to How a Megatrend Impacts Your Life
Megatrends are happening whether you notice them or not. They are already shaping your business, your relationships, your finances, your health, and your peace of mind. You feel their pressure every day.
Without you realizing it, these global forces influence your behavior, language, expectations, and even your self-talk. Even if you disagree with the principle of one or more of the trends, you may have been pulled in deeper than you ever imagined. It is not your fault. Without having the awareness and the words, it is easy to lose your sovereignty to them before you have even had a chance to think.
By contrast, when you are one of the few who knows what they are (who can name them), everything changes. You can see not only what these forces are doing to you, but also what they are doing to others – your colleagues, your family, and your community. Only then can you choose how you will allow them to affect you. Only then will you have the insight to understand how they are impacting the behavior, actions, and emotions of others.
Knowing which megatrends are most pressing on you gives you personal power. You gain the ability to say Yes or No to how they make their way into your life.
My clients tell me they feel immense relief just from reading the list.
For many, it is the first time they realize that what they have been feeling is not weakness but intelligent caution; their personal sovereignty resisting surrender to an uninvited master. Before seeing the megatrends on paper, they believed they were simply “stressed all the time,” “unable to keep up,” or suffering from depression, anxiety, or anger-management disorder. When in truth, their bodies and minds were responding reasonably to being pushed and pulled without permission.
One client said, “Until I read this list, I felt like I was being swallowed up by the world but couldn’t put my finger on what it was.”
The list will help you, too. It allows you to zoom out and see yourself within the wider web of megatrends. From that perspective, you can decide how to respond within your own family, business, career, and personal life.
Seriously? Twenty? Huh?
There are twenty megatrends putting pressure on you every day of your life. They are the hurdles you keep jumping without realizing you were thrown into the race. You just keep going, going, going — and you are so capable that you do it, day after day. But even a trained Olympian can’t jump more than ten hurdles in a race.
It is not a personal failure to want to stop.
You have been in a race your legs are running,
but your heart refuses to pump for. Good.
That refusal is your body’s wisdom sounding caution.
Your body and mind are your trustworthy aids, not your enemies. They are telling you to get off this track. Take a look. See what race you really want to run, and which hurdles are worth leaping over.
In 1997, when I wrote my first list of megatrends directly impacting women with an entrepreneurial spirit, there were three that most affected my clients. One big one was looming : Y2K. By 2010, my list had grown to five. By 2019, I had amended it to seven. Today, it stands at twenty: you could call it Stress Inflation.
I have been tracking megatrends for years, connecting them to the pressures my patients and clients have been feeling. As the list grew, I kept thinking, no wonder people feel so uncomfortable. When it came time to write this book, I considered leaving some out, to save space, or to protect you, my dear reader, from feeling so overwhelmed you’d throw this book against the wall and walk away. Then I realized, that is the point. These are real. They are already taking up space in your life and pressing on you. You must look them squarely in the face and see what you are dealing with.
So, stick with me.
Knowing the truth about the pressure will set you free from it.
As you read through this list of megatrends, you will notice that some hit you harder than others. Some may feel distant or irrelevant. That is normal. The point is that this list lays it right out there for you, so you can see it in black and white. You will experience your own reality check. You will begin to see what each pressure has been doing to you. And as you feel the words fall into place, matching the feelings already present within you, you will be reminded of just how wise you are.
Postscript: End-of-Part Reflection
You have just completed the orientation to the twenty megatrends shaping your life and the world around you. They are happening without your permission, and likely without your even having had the chance to respond. What you are feeling is not weakness or confusion; it is your intelligence appropriately responding to pressure.
In the next part of this series, I will introduce you to the first of four clusters of megatrends. I call it Sovereignty Drift. It describes the forces that make you doubt yourself, rush through life, and question your own worth. Once you can see these six forces clearly, you will begin to feel the first real sense of relief, because that is the first step toward reclaiming your own path.
