The burnout taught me to see myself

I have spent my entire working life in managerial positions. And actually always in places where there was a 'crisis' at the time. A team that was not running smoothly, a department where there was distrust in the management, a unit that had to be 'pulled together' again, an organizational unit that had run into financial problems and therefore no longer felt seen or taken seriously, there was always something going on. And looking at my design, this is exactly what I am seen on. So that piece, that wasn't the problem. What was a problem was that I didn't take good care of myself in that. Because while I am perfectly capable of seeing in a short period of time where the shoe pinches, what is going on 'below the waterline' and how to get out of it, I did not always ask 'at the very beginning', i.e. before I started something, what my expectations were. And then subsequently feeling myself whether I could live up to those expectations....


It didn't add up...
Because this level of expectation, the images that were there at the outset about me, what I radiated and on which I was selected (or not), it turned out that this did not always match my own reality. The ego is enormously flattered as soon as you are seen somewhere and you can get to grips with it. But what turned out to be extremely important for me is that I have to ask very clearly in advance what the intention of what I am going to do is AND that I need some time to process it. I have far too often made a decision about it in the moment, without sleeping on it for a few nights. My "spontaneity" and the fact that I was very decisive and knew how to resolve issues were nice traits, but not for myself.

 

An itch
As a result, I could not stay in an organization for a very long time. Because at a certain moment there was an 'itch' somewhere. Either in the person(s) I was working with or in myself. I had put an expiration date on myself without being aware of it. I don't like people telling me what to do and how to do it. And yet I then let that happen. I looked for the path of least resistance in that. Sometimes that was bending, other times cracking. And eventually it was at the expense of my health. I am very capable of keeping many different plates in the air and doing that for a long time without any kind of effort, but if one plate falls, then everything falls and that actually happened. I ended up in burnout.


Off course
Burnout gave me insights into myself that I had never seen before. Of course, it wasn't always fun when something happened again that made my course suddenly go radically in the opposite direction, but this was always something that could be fixed and that did allow me to pull myself together and move forward again with full speed (enthusiasm and resilience). But if you push your willpower and perseverance to the limit, at some point it's done.


Respect, Attention and Appreciation
Human Design has taught me to appreciate myself for who I am. What I can and cannot do. And in it I also saw that as a manager I had mainly put my energy on my limitations and not on what I most enjoyed doing: working with people. This always came very easily to me and gave me a lot of job satisfaction. Having conversations with people to help them grow but especially to see them flourish. And that, in my opinion, is the only thing a manager must be good at. Because all the clichés are true for a reason. The people in an organization are the capital and if you respect, pay attention to and value those people, the rest will come naturally. My intuition always helped me with this. And somehow I often managed to hit the right chord. But I could never put my finger on it. And that made it difficult at times. Because really coaching people also requires the ability to let them see their dark sides. Without letting them sink into that. And vice versa.


Intuitive touch
When I started experimenting with Human Design for myself, as a way out of my own burnout situation, I also saw what I had always been missing in coaching people. That my intuition could very often show me just fine where I could see people, but that now I could actually point this out. That using the BodyGraph I could actually accurately tell people what they were up against because they were not doing what they were here to do, but what conditioning was affecting that. The accuracy of the system is so striking that it almost scares many people. And I can understand that. Really looking in the mirror where you get back not only the reflection of yourself but the actual image and not with a filter over it is quite intense and scary. I speak from experience.


Your experiment
But the result of this reflection is that you become aware. That you become more in tune with life and therefore experience life much more intensely. The Human Design system entails that you as a human being can experiment with your own roadmap. That you are your own authority and that you no longer let it be taken out of your hands. And that when you do, you immediately feel that you have gone off course and then you can lovingly return. Because that is what experimentation brings. It is about learning, experiencing, living, becoming aware and looking at it without judgment.
Living your design is a challenge and it takes courage and guts. And it is my passion to be able to guide people with courage and guts in that journey. Because that's what I do. I am a tour guide. The tickets are ready, the suitcases are packed. Enjoy the ride!