Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle QUOTES

1 " For instance, feeling helpless and hopeless after watching news about the state of international politics? Don’t distract yourself or numb out; do a thing. Do yard work or gardening, to care for your small patch of the world. Take food to somebody who needs a little boost. Take your dog to the park. Show up at a Black Lives Matter march. You might even call your government representative. That’s great. That’s participation. You’re not helpless. Your goal is not to stabilize the government—that’s not your job (unless you happen to be a person whose job that is, in which case you still need to deal with the stress, as well as the stressor!)—your goal is to stabilize you, so that you can maintain a sense of efficacy, so that you can do the important stuff your family and your community need from you. As the saying goes, “Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something.” And “something” is anything that isn’t nothing. "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

2 " But sometimes you’re aiming for a clearly defined, concrete goal that can’t be redefined. For these, you will need a nonstandard relationship with failing. You may do all the things you’re supposed to do, without getting where you’re trying to go, only to end up somewhere else pretty amazing. Or, as Douglas Adams’s character Dirk Gently puts it, “I rarely end up where I was intending to go, but often I end up somewhere that I needed to be.” Widen your focus to see the inadvertent benefits you stumble across along the way. "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

3 " This is the tragedy of the madwoman. She whips us, and we achieve things. And so we think the whipping is why we achieved things and we’ll never achieve anything without the whipping.

This is the most common reason we hear when people resist self-compassion. They’re worried that if they stop beating themselves up, they’ll lose all motivation, they’ll just sit around watching Real Housewives of Anywhere and eating Lucky Charms in a bowl full of Bud Light.

This argument doesn’t stand up to even the most superficial investigation. Are we really working toward our goals only because we’ll torture ourselves if we stop, so that as soon as we put down the whip we’ll sink into eternal apathy? Of course not. In fact, it’s the opposite: We only whip ourselves because our goals matter so much that we’re willing to suffer this self-inflicted pain if that’s what it takes. And we believe that because we’ve always done it that way, it must be why we’ve accomplished as much as we have.

Diligent practice of self-compassion works; it lowers stress hormones and improves mood.8 And many years of research have confirmed that self-forgiveness is associated with greater physical and mental well-being.9 All without diminishing your motivation to do the things that matter to you. "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

4 " Novices who are thoroughly incompetent rate themselves as very confident in their ability to do a thing they’ve just learned to do. By contrast, genuine experts know how difficult their work is, so they are realistic about their competence and thus rate their confidence in their own abilities as moderate, even as their performance is, of course, expert-level. "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

5 " Most of us have spent our whole lives being taught to believe everyone else's opinions about our bodies, rather than to believe what our own bodies are trying to tell us. For some of us, it's been so long since we listened to our bodies, we hardly know how to start understanding what they're trying to tell us, much less how to trust and believe what they're saying. To make matters worse, the more exhausted we are, the noisier the signal is, and the harder it is to hear the message. "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

6 " The moral of the story is: We thrive when we have a positive goal to move toward, not just a negative state we’re trying to move away from. "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

7 " The good news is that stress is not the problem. The problem is that the strategies that deal with stressors have almost no relationship to the strategies that deal with the physiological reactions our bodies have to those stressors. To be “well” is not to live in a state of perpetual safety and calm, but to move fluidly from a state of adversity, risk, adventure, or excitement, back to safety and calm, and out again. Stress is not bad for you; being stuck is bad for you. "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

8 " It’s true that rest makes us more productive, ultimately, and if that’s an argument that helps you persuade your boss to give you more flexibility, awesome. But we think rest matters not because it makes you more productive, but because it makes you happier and healthier, less grumpy, and more creative. We think rest matters because you matter. You are not here to be “productive.” You are here to be you, to engage with your Something Larger, to move through the world with confidence and joy. And to do that, you require rest. "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

9 " All your body requires of you is that you turn toward it with kindness and compassion, with nonjudgment and plain-vanilla acceptance of all your contradictory emotions, beliefs, and longings. "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

10 " The belief that the people around us will reciprocate in proportion to what we give them is called "trust. "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

11 " So how much rest is “adequate”?

Science says: 42 percent.

That’s the percentage of time your body and brain need you to spend resting. It’s about ten hours out of every twenty-four. It doesn’t have to be every day; it can average out over a week or a month or more. But yeah. That much.

“That’s ridiculous! I don’t have that kind of time!” you might protest—and we remind you that we predicted you might feel that way, back at the start of the chapter.

We’re not saying you should take 42 percent of your time to rest; we’re saying if you don’t take the 42 percent, the 42 percent will take you. It will grab you by the face, shove you to the ground, put its foot on your chest, and declare itself the victor. "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

12 " Relax your belly. It’s supposed to be round. The Bikini Industrial Complex has been gaslighting you. "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

13 " White men grow on an open, level field. White women grow on far steeper and rougher terrain because the field wasn't made for them. Women of color grow not just on a hill, but on a cliffside over the ocean, battered by wind and waves. None of us chooses the landscape in which we're planted. If you find yourself on an ocean-battered cliff, your only choice is to grow there, or fall into the ocean. So if we transplant a survivor of the steep hill and cliff to the level field, natives of the field may look at that survivor and wonder why she has so much trouble trusting people, systems, and even her own bodily sensations. Why is this tree so bent and gnarled?

It's because that is what it took to survive in the place where she grew. A tree that's fought wind and gravity and erosion to grow strong and green on a steep cliff is going to look strange and out of place when moved to the level playing field. The gnarled, wind-blown tree from an oceanside cliff might not conform with our ideas of what a tree should look like, but it works well in the context where it grew. And that tall straight tree wouldn't stand a chance if it was transplanted to the cliffside. "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

14 " Not knowing why is, itself, a profound type of suffering. "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

15 " The problem is not that women don’t try. On the contrary, we’re trying all the time, to do and be all the things everyone demands from us. "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

16 " Raise your hand if you've asked yourself, How much more do I have to do before I've done enough? How much of myself do I have to give? How smoothly do I have to polish myself before I can move through the world without friction? "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

17 " Human givers must, at all times, be pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive to the needs of others, which means they must never be ugly, angry, upset, ambitious, or attentive to their own needs. "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

18 " No one is “complete” without other people—and we mean this literally. To be complete without social connection is to be nourished without food. It doesn’t happen. We get hungry. We get lonely. We must feed ourselves or die. We don’t mean you “need a man” or any kind of romantic partner. We mean you need connection in any or all of its varied forms. And it is also true that the lifelong development of autonomy is as innate to human nature as the drive to connect. We need both connection and autonomy. That’s not a contradiction. Humans are built to oscillate from connection to autonomy and back again. "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

19 " Bodies are imperfect, and sometimes they let us down. They are susceptible to disease and breakage and entropy. Our bodies can disappoint us, and the world can punish us when our bodies aren’t what they “should” be. So we are not suggesting that you “love your body,” like that’s an easy fix. We’re suggesting you be patient with your body and with your feelings about your body. "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

20 " Science is often expensive, and who pays for it can influence the outcome and whether or not the results are published. As enthusiastic as we are about evidence-based practices, it’s important to remember where that evidence comes from and why we might not see contrary evidence. "

― Emily Nagoski , Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle