Rabbi's Musings

These past couple of years have challenged us in so many ways. Resilience has gone from being a nice attribute of character to a basic need in surviving. Maintaining our core purpose in life, including family, friends and work, and keeping our integrity intact, while facing dramatically changed circumstances, should not have to be managed daily, and yet here we are.

Burnout, or its contemporary cousin, quiet quitting, is endemic to this era. I am fortunate to feel anything but burned out (thank you, members, leaders, and staff of CBSW!) because clergy are particularly at risk when it comes to burnout. This is logical in that we want to meet the needs of others. But this also means that burnout is more likely. Especially for mid-career colleagues.

Those who work in many fields serving others are in the same boat. A suggestion: Try taking the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) — easy to find online — to see your level of burnout.

Recent studies show that the biggest reasons for work burnout are unmanageable workloads, lack of support from management, insufficient rewards, and lack of burnout recognition. There indeed is so much in our work beyond our control. But the question remains: What change in perspective will help us become more alive and thrive in this new and strange environment? What can we learn from the past, and what shall we take into the future?