The self-care delusion.
Wake-Up Call #19
This time, last year, I was in a lot of pain.
I kept it private. Even though the evidence was visible in the early days.
Shingles. Wrapped around the left side of my face and head, even on my eyelid. Thankfully, not inside my eye. Ended up in the emergency room.
It was brutal. Not so much the rash, that was mercifully mild. But the nerve pain and hyper-sensitization. The slightest breeze against my scalp felt like an electric current being shot across my head. Every time I blinked, I was reminded I wasn’t okay.
Took four months and mega-doses of nerve-meds to wash out of me.
Thankfully, it did.
Hiking with a friend on the tail end of recovery, we were catching up on life. He turns to me and says, “dude, you’re like the chillest person I know, how’d this happen to you?”
Spent a lot of time thinking about that.
I’m not someone who typically buys into the age-old personal development trope that everything happens for a reason.
Sometimes bad or hard stuff is just bad or hard.
But, for some reason, this felt different. Something about this particular happening led me to believe there was, in fact, a message being delivered. Something to be learned.
Shingles, if you’re new to this delightful mid-life condition, is a re-emergence of the chicken pox virus. I’m of a generation where we all had it as kids. The virus has been in me my whole life, laying dormant. Apparently, waiting.
When it comes back as shingles, it travels through the nerves, inflaming and, at times, creating long-term, even permanent damage. The opening move is a rash, but it’s the nerve stuff, with no clear expiration date, that gets you. Both physically, and psychologically.
Having no idea if, how, and when you’ll recover, not fun.
Made me curious.
Why does it find a way to smack you again, often decades later in life?
No one know, for sure.
But, it is commonly agreed that stress, along with a dysregulated nervous and immune system, play a meaningful role.
Which is where my friend’s question came from.
He was basically saying…
“you always seem so relaxed, so capable to navigating life, even when you’ve got a lot of plates spinning and things are hard. You’re the one who seems to have everything dialed in, the one who even talks and writes about how to do that. And, interviews the greatest minds in the space. So, like, um…wtf?”
By then, I’d been asking the same question.
What was happening within me that led my system to crash on a level that’d let this nasty bug rear it’s ugly head? Was there some message I needed to listen to, in order to avoid a bigger and scarier one down the road?
What was I missing?
My relationships were deep and strong. I’d been taking better care of my body, eating cleaner, taking all the right supplements, tracking my sleep, steps, and heart-rate variability. I had longstanding mindset practices. Hiking, meditating, and breath-work were a part of the mix for years. Living in nature was a daily balm.
I’d become, more or less, a walking, talking self-care cliche.
And, still, my system crashed hard enough to let this happen.
What about my work?
In the month’s leading up to it, I’d been…
Running two companies.
Producing two podcasts, three episodes a week, and mapping out a return to high-production video.
Working on a book.
Developing a new suite of products for the Sparketype® brand (coming very soon btw).
Facilitating a three-month professional certification, while redesigning it mid-flight.
Starting to think about the visual, mixed-media art I wanted to return to, and
Speaking
Nah, I was fine. ;-)
Except for one minor thing. It was wrecking me.
Any of of these would have been a full-time endeavor. I’d have been joyfully immersed in the process of creation. Centering my inner Maker on a level that let me lose myself in the process in the best of ways, and close the gap between taste and expression. Working hard, but also working well.
Therein, lay the problem.
I wasn’t doing any one, I was doing all at once.
My Maker’s mantra has always been:
Fewer things better.
I can’t speak for anyone else. But, for me, I’m happiest, most productive, most alive, when I’m not juggling a shit-ton of big projects and, instead, just pouring myself into one, maybe two. Three, at most, if that last one is more of a minor jam.
I was violating one of my cardinal rules. Doing many things worse. Not poorly, but for sure, not well, either. At least nowhere near what I knew any given project was capable of becoming. Nor anywhere near the level of creation that made me feel good and connected, nourished by purpose and possibility.
The insanity of the load I’d taken on was dizzying. And, the weight of it all, crushing.
My wife noticed I’d gone a bit ornery or, at least, depleted, in the month leading up to it, and mentioned it to me? Was I unhappy with my work?
I told her, not exactly. If I’d been doing any one or two things, and not the other ten-hundred-zillion, I’d actually be pretty happy and fulfilled. But too much of even a good thing can become a bad thing. I was tipping into obsession, overwhelm, then burnout.
Still not listening.
So, my body decided to send me a love tap. Knee-capping me with nerve-pain. Ensuring I’d have a months-long reminder, to keep me honest as I reimagined my work and life.
Brought me to a powerful realization.
I’ve got self-care practices out the wazoo. But…
You cannot self care your way out of a fundamental misalignment in a core area of your life
Relationships are one of those areas. If you’re tethered to a toxic person, you can’t meditate or journal that away.
Same for mental and physical health. If you have a condition, syndrome, or disability that requires certain fundamental choices, interventions, support, accommodations, or lifestyle adaptations to be well, doing everything but those things won’t cut it.
Work is one of those core areas, too. Which is where I was falling down.
Sure, I was doing a lot of Maker work, which, on the surface was well-aligned with the kind of work that makes me come alive. But, the way I was doing it—the mode—was where things fell apart. Where the fundamental misalignment was.
All the veggies, meditating, breath-work, and hiking couldn’t fix this.
In fact, in a weird way, I’ve come to believe my self-care deluge may have unwittingly, at least in part, masked the slow-motion shingles car crash that was setting up inside me.
My practices were so good, they let me keep telling the story of “all is good, I can take this, even if it’s way past my normal happy place.” They let me believe I could push a lot farther into a core misalignment than I should ever have gone, before finally tapping me on the face and telling me, “yeah, dude, no.”
Self-care doesn’t make up for the damage done by violating a core norm, value, belief, or way-of-being. Nor does it compensate for the profound dilution of purpose, meaning, connection, and joy we invite when we do what we believe to be the right things, but in the wrong way.
So, a year later, have I fixed all the work-mode misalignments?
Am I doing fewer things better now?
Well, I did for a hot minute. Maybe even a hot few months. During my four-month recovery, I had a constant reminder, in the form of physical pain, of what happens when I go work-life dark side.
But I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t found myself drifting back into overlapping big-project Maker mode lately.
It’s not that any given project is bad. Some of the new things I’ve added into the space I cleared last year are incredibly exciting. Doesn’t matter. Too many good things that require my energy to make them meaningfully manifest, all at once, is still a bad thing.
So, I’m getting back into rejiggering mode.
Trying to figure out what really needs to happen, in what order, and why. What’s a now thing, a then thing, and a maybe never thing. Then, spreading out the timeframe to allow me to work my way back to fewer things better.
And adding that new mantra into the mix…
You cannot self care your way out of a fundamental misalignment in a core area of your life
With a whole lotta love & gratitude,
Jonathan
Wake-Up Call #19
Consider the two mantras:
Fewer things better
You cannot self care your way out of a fundamental misalignment in a core area of your life
Remember, it’s not just the content of the things we’re doing, but also the way we’re doing them that leads either to a sense of alignment and flourishing, or misalignment and dysfunction.
Think about what’s going on in your life right now, especially in the domain of work. Ask yourself how commitments and efforts line up with the two mantras.
Are you doing fewer things better? Or more things worse? Or, have you found a truly nourishing and sustainable middle-ground (and if so, can you please tell me how?!?!)
If you’re in “more things worse” land, what’s that doing FOR you, and TO you?
What changes might you make, not just to your self-care, but to fundamentally realign what you’re doing with who you are, and what makes you come alive?
Noodle on it. Journal on it. And, if you’re inclined, share in the comments.
For me, it's the near-constant pressure for MORE - more writing, more clients, more savings, more books, more offerings, more posting + replying + engaging, more scaling, more visibility. And this year, my menopause-confused body/brain/Soul just said NO. The question of "what is all this <<waving hands all around>> FOR?" And ever so quietly my Spirit whispers, "Not WHAT, my dear, but WHO." And that begins my inquiry and leads to manswer: the WHO doesn't want more. It actually wants less of EVERYTHING except love, connection, community, and quiet. I'm typing this out for myself and am grateful your post led me here again, Jonathan. 🙏💗
FACTS. We can't self care ourselves out of a systemic oppression & near constant exploitation. It has taken me forever, and I certainly need tune ups now and again, to integrate the "less is more," "one task at a time," "slow is fast" wisdom. I clocked three hours of molding on the couch this weekend before I shook the impulse to check my phone and for my somewhat dormant imagination to kick back in. Staring at a tree is my number one relaxation task and go to remedy.