Check yourself before you wreck yourself! Or: why your wellbeing needs to support your well-doing, to prevent joylessness, burnout and delusion
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If you had an animus for radical change before the most recent wave of crisis - pandemic, uprising, climate breakdown - it’ll hardly have diminished by now. But the particular frustrations of the moment - isolation, inability to effectively assemble in public, our strange new social rituals - are beginning to take their toll on anyone conspicuously seeking a better world
Here’s two interesting reports from this week on the necessity for people’s wellbeing to support their well-doing, and how to prevent strain, delusion and burn-out: one from the World Economic Forum and the other from Open Democracy.
First, this WEF blog:
Social entrepreneurs are disruptors in the services of others, especially in situations where the traditional actors or the market have failed. The Schwab Foundation Impact Report, showed how social entrepreneurs in the Foundation community alone have made an impact on the lives of 622 million people in more than 190 countries.
Social entrepreneurs are tackling the world’s most urgent issues, but they often work under intense pressure in chronically under-resourced environments. As they seek to address the needs of the most vulnerable, marginalized and forgotten, social entrepreneurs and their staff often overlook their own wellbeing, which in contrast can seem trivial.
The result: high incidences of burn-out, serious mental health issues and personal relationship breakdowns, which have a severe impact on organizations and the whole social change sector.
Nearly 50% of social entrepreneurs who attended the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in 2018 reported to have struggled with burnout and depression at some point.
The article also features the Wellbeing Project, a multi-agency collaboration aimed at addressing exactly these issues - in particularly through a session title called The Centred Self (which has the best titled blog: “check yourself before you wreck yourself”.)
This piece from Open Democracy’s excellent Transformation is one of many where they attend to the inner lives of changemakers, with great tips to help and a deep sensitivity.
This piece is authoritative and studded with links to multi-disciplinary research, but is particularly notable for being written by a young Rumi scholar and Iranian exile, Ari Honarvar.
In this passage from the OD piece, Ari combines her terrifying but transcendent childhood wartime experiences, with wisdom about how worthwhile it is - even in the most extreme conditions - to expand your capacity for joy.
One thing I’ve learned from spending much of my own childhood in times of war and political upheaval is the importance of cultivating joy during crises.
While it is critical to be informed about the trajectory of the new coronavirus via reliable sources, to practice physical distancing, and to care for our most vulnerable populations, it’s also time to infect each other with love and fortifying stories. This is actually really hard to do, because we humans are naturally inclined to focus on bad news.
During the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, which killed over a million people, life was far from joyful. We Iranians had become accustomed to daily funerals, food rations, political oppression, and an ongoing threat of bombs and missiles.
On top of that, consuming alcohol, dancing, and playing non-sanctioned music had suddenly become illegal under the post-revolution laws.
But even with these external challenges, I observed a few adults’ ability to become scrappy and use all available resources for the essential task of nurturing joy, stability, and a sense of humour.
Faced with food rationing, they experimented with new recipes. Faced with wartime blackouts, they told stories and recited poems. As the threat of bombing loomed, they told jokes and made everyone laugh until our eyes watered.
Sure, this made us all feel better in the moment, but what research is discovering is that joy and laughter are essential for building the superpower of resilience, and even boosting our immunity and overall health.
Psychologist and trauma expert Peter Levine says joy is an experience of expansion, whereas fear is one of deep contraction. Cultivating joy is an important component of resilience as it increases our capacity to face difficulties.
“Imagine if every time you stretched a rubber band, it would become more resilient, so rather than wearing out, it would increase its capacity, able to take more stretches without breaking,” he says.
So even when there are obstacles which cause contraction, that expansion afforded to us by joy comes to our rescue. “The more we increase this capacity, the less overwhelming emotions will be,” Levine says.
For instance, trauma stretches us beyond our capacity to deal with a certain challenging situation, and we become overwhelmed with sensations and emotions.
The problem isn’t that the sensations and emotions are too strong but that our capacity to hold and process them is maxed out. When we continue to cultivate joy, we gain the ability to feel the overwhelm without becoming overwhelmed ourselves.
For Persians, one of our most precious ways to summon joy is with poetry. I remember one night, in particular, in my home city of Shiraz, Iran, during the war. While sirens blared and the electricity was shut off, warning of an imminent attack, my family and I (feeling especially brave) snuck to our rooftop to watch the anti-aircraft missiles shoot into the air.
To my 7-year-old eyes, the brilliant red patterns in the pitch-black sky rivalled the most magnificent fireworks display. But underneath the awe there was a simmering terror brewing in my belly of not knowing who was going to die next. Was it going to be me? My best friend? My sister in Tehran? My teacher?
And then someone from another rooftop shouted a verse of Rumi’s poetry into the clear night air:
Even if, from the sky, poison befalls all,
I’m still sweetness
wrapped in sweetness
wrapped in sweetness…
This was a poetic challenge to the bombers, but it was also a gauntlet thrown down to any Persian in hearing range. The verse soon was rejoined from another rooftop:
While others sing about love,
I am the Sultan of love!
Even as a young child, I could feel the ecstasy of these verses in my heart, radiating to every cell of my being. In an instant, my world not only became sane, but infinite and glorious. And what bomb could ever touch that?
Ari goes on to cite neuroscience and psychology that backs her stories up. This from clinical psychiatrist Carla Marie Manly: “We are far more effective, supple, and self-optimized when we face times of crisis with a wise, joyful attitude than when we cower in destructive fears and anxiety,”