The burnout phenomena is very well documented and very popular nowdays. Many people talk a lot about it and seem to suffer from it. I’m here to introduce the approach I use, which I see as its counterpart: blazein, as I like to call it.

The main goal of this post is to describe it, which overall strategy I use, hence it is easier to explain to people when they ask me details about it.

Foundation

Before talking about how blazein differs from burnout, it is important to establish the common foundation both approaches share, e.g., what the common vocabulary means and which premises both hold.

In both, flame or burn symbolisms to mean effort or energy applied onto some activity, both of which are ways the Will is manifested. Both recognize that you can overshoot yourself and suffer damages because of it. After all, in both approaches you are putting yourself into a situation of great stress and effort. If you can’t handle the consequences of doing that level of investment, punishment is severe and without mercy.

You can understand such process in terms of an analogy: if you try to accomplish the life-style and goals of an Olympic athlete you won’t able to sustain it (even if you can do it in the beginning), due to the health damages you would inflict onto yourself. You were not prepared and overdone yourself, thus countermeasures follow.

Differences

First of all, many aspects of the description I am about to present will look very similar to pre-stages of burnout. And that is to be expected: both approaches are putting the individual as a resource that can be burnt. Both assume there are stages of such burning process.

The crux of the matter relies on the understanding of the outcome: burnout understands the individual being burnt or consumed by the flames as a bad outcome; the exhaustion that comes from it should be interrupted and a healing process is advised in order to recompose the ashes back into human form. blazein, on the other hand, sees the burning, especially the continuous burning, as a sign of success; the ability to hold control over the flames you produce is seen as a good outcome.

When suffering from burnout, the flames onto the individual are coming from the effort from within himself, however the side-effect of the flames is consumption of the body. It is an incineration process that destroys. The recommended healing comes from the understanding that you suffered damage beforehand.

In the process of blazein, the flames also come from within the individual’s effort. However, the emphasis here is in the fire being produced and no consumption follow-up process taking place. In fact, the individual knows he is on fire and keeping that situation is his desire. Holding on to your flames without penalty is a sign of virtue: you know your limits, you are pushing towards increasing them in a wisely manner, and great effort is being poured into something else.

Meaning

Lots of witnesses of burnout argue that after the burning process has ended, in hindsight, they regret the effort they put into the activity, whatever it was. Their assessment is that they overdone themselves into something that was not worth all of that energy. In their view, their investment didn’t pay off due to the side-effects of reducing themselves to ashes, i.e., the tiredness and fatigue must be replaced with resting and pleasure to keep things balanced. The so-called metaphorical homeostasis taking place. It is simply not acceptable to continue on this manner because, they claim, it puts things off-balance.

In contrast, the blazein process dictates that having flames on yourself is a sign that good effort is being put into something meaningful. If you are a serious religious person, or a denier of nihilism, or a fellow logotherapy follower, or all of the above, you probably already have a solid notion of what meaning means. It is worth more than ourselves, sometimes more costly than everything else, including our own lives. Family, intellectual life, art, volunteering, you name it. Although few, there are things that those people (including myself) see as meaningful. Exhaustion, tiredness, and fatigue are easy trades to make when you have meaning on the other end of the exchange. The blazein life-style ignores hedonism: the pain and stress are all worth it if it means you are getting closer to the meaningful goal, and followers of this approach will gladly do it. The smile in their faces represent satisfaction. Perhaps, they are indeed sufferring, but that is nothing more than another form of investment into something greater.

It is important to note that blazein does not work if the meaning being pursued is not being pursued honestly. That means being assigned a meaningful goal by other people does not work for this approach. Either it is something that you truly believe in or just forget it. You will never be able to give your truly 110% onto something if you are doing it because of what other people think. You may say that you believe and even act like you do, but only you will truly know your judgment on this matter. There is a reason why it is so much more impressive when we see someone doing whatever demanding because they want to do it versus if they are being forced to do it.

Steadiness

An additional effect of blazein is the continuous progression. It is known that you cannot start progressing towards the goal by bold steps immediately, otherwise you will indeed be consumed by the fire. You start small, day by day, with the amount of heat that you can handle. Enough to allow you to survive at the same time as being demanding for you to execute. By living on the edge of being too-much, you force yourself to slowly, but surely, extend your capacity to sustain the fire.

It does not matter the pacing in which you improve that resistance; it may be a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, it really does not matter. This implies that the blazein approach requires a great deal of patience: immediatism is not tolerated. But this is really a non-issue; blazein is the continuous act of handling the maximum amount of heat as a means to achieve a meaningful goal. Meaningful goals are all long-term goals. For Frankl, caring for his family was the cause propelling him to survive literal hell on Earth. For me, the craft of programming and the pursue for philosophy are enough to sustain all my years on Earth.

Comparisons between other users of blazein are useful to the extent of knowing what is possible to achieve; just like you can understand what is possible in sports via the Olympic athletes. You can’t expect to compete with them if you are starting now and they are gaining steadiness for multiple decades. However harsh this may sound, it is the truth: you gotta have the humility to start small if you envision to become big.

Conclusion

I would like to start the conclusion by stating that it is possible for someone committed to blazein to migrate into a burnout. How? Simple: meaning got lost during the activity. Throughout the execution, the individual stopped seeing how the activity is aligned with the meaningful goal or, a more extreme case, the individual decided to pursue a completely different meaningful goal. It is important to highlight why it is recommended to stop the burning in this case: it is not because you are buying into the equilibrium metaphor being argued, but because there is no more meaning justifying that energy being spent. In this situation, you are looking for another cause to put your flames on (did you get it?).

Finally, it is never too late to start looking for the activity that allows you to be closer to the purpose you carry. Nothing is more fulfilling than being tired over something that you see as worth it. It is exactly when you understand the needle is moving that all of that pain, stress, and fatigue become all worth it.

If I had to summarize the difference between burnout and blazein, it would be this: in the former, the fire is the reason for despair and complete reconsideration, and in the latter it is something to be proud of, after all, you are able to sustain it as a means for a much greater end.

“I may fail, I may fall
I may drift away like smoke
But you’ll see my burning flames before I go
I will break every wall
Till I’m six feet under stone
You’ll be calling out my name before I go”