Once again we want to thank you for taking the time to engage with this course over the last nine weeks. We have covered a lot information over that time and discussed some of the hard realities we face as a movement and species. We deeply appreciate the care and energy you have all put in to create this space even though the topics can be draining.
The climate movement, like many other activist movements around the world, are dealing with deeply systemic issues that call for huge amounts of change in culture, economics, and politics. These issues are overwhelmingly large, abstract, and complex and require huge amounts of energy, change, and time to move. Progress can feel minuscule month to month and year by year, and our individual efforts can feel too small, too slow, and too difficult to sustain overtime. We can get mixed up in thoughts and questions of: Am I doing enough? Where do I fit in? And what is the point? These questions can be demoralizing for individuals and movements as a whole.
Burn-out, especially as it applies to compassion fatigue, is characterized by physical, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion that causes a decline in your ability to experience joy and feel and care for others. Burn-out happens when you give more energy and compassion than you receive, and as a result, you lose sight of the light of hope at the end of the tunnel.
Evan's Personal Story of Burnout
I joined Sunrise last year with a large amount of pessimism around the future state of the world. I had looked into the science and was dismayed. As I wondered what to do, I retained the singular hope that growing the number of engaged and educated young people who understanding the reality of climate change would be a net positive on the world no matter the eventual outcome of the warming planet. Sunrise seemed like this amazing cool organization where I could slowly work on that long term hope.
Instead of pacing myself, I like many new activists I threw all my time into organizing, learning, and educating after getting inspired by the community, actions, and energy. Overtime my long term motivations turned into short term motivations of organizing a brilliant local team, creating great national media communications, and prompting drastic change inside large tech companies. Overtime I painted a glorious picture of how I was going to help change the world with Sunrise and it was going to happen right here and right now. But life is harder than that. Life has some unexpected turns. Sometimes no one shows up to your meetings and sometimes your candidate for president is fundamentally undermined by an intrenched media state.
After months of spending the majority of my time on the movement, every personal setback and movement setback I experienced organizing felt like a personal blow to this new vision of hope I had painted for myself and the movement. I felt personal shame, anxiety, guilt for not doing enough here or there and that every less than stellar outcome was a reflection on me. I felt tired and alone in my struggle and I was confused about what I was feeling and how to change this without burdening others or destroying what I built. I finally knew I was burned out when I was sitting at a meeting I organized hoping no one one would show up so I finally could call it quits and slowly ghost myself into the back of the movement. I took a bit of time to do it but I finally took some of the steps listed below to deal with my burnout and start repairing.
Activist Burnout Is Real - And You Probably Need to Read These 4 Ways to Manage It
One of the core reasons that many people burn out is unknowingly getting attached to their own personal constructions, expectations, and desires of reality. Without knowing it, powerful patterns of thoughts and emotions related to our attachments or cravings for a specific version of reality (often our perfect version) can cause us to slip into habits and patterns of behavior. Sometimes these habits can turn out to be helpful, but often they can be quite destructive. Frighteningly, it is hard to even notice these mental habits in the first place.
Tyler and I, among countless others across social movements, have found value in mindfulness and contemplative practices that help center ones mind and separate fleeting thoughts and feelings from reality. This can help you see yourself and reality more clearly to overcome burnout, depression, and fear and find more hope, joy, gratitude, and curiosity in your daily life and all the waking seconds it's comprised of.
What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.
While mindfulness is something we all naturally possess, it’s more readily available to us when we practice on a daily basis.