Valerie Brown on the importance of taking care of ourselves, while taking care of others.
I recently offered an all-day program on mindful leadership to twenty Black public administrators. They work on the front lines of life-threatening situations, managing essential services such as food, health care, and housing for underserved and low-income Americans—folks on the brink of disaster or facing full-blown crisis. At or near burnout themselves, these leaders met online with me to learn and practice mindfulness to support them in this work and in their lives.
Although they’ve devoted their entire careers to serving people in need and work long hours, they all shared that their actions are not enough to keep up with the pressing needs of their communities, and they feel driven to work even harder, to do more. Their overwork, combined with their strong moral compass of service, keeps them locked in an exhausting spiral of physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological exhaustion.
“The middle way involves coming back to ourselves and finding a true home that embraces who we are.”
This is personal too for these Black leaders. Many of them were once recipients of the services they now administer, so they know all too well that their decisions could mean the difference between someone eating or going to bed hungry. With this awareness, they push on beyond their limits. For myself too, as a Black person raised in the U.S. under conditions of poverty, I can identify with these leaders and can understand the imperative to do more and ignore my own exhaustion. For those working on the front lines of social justice, burnout has become normalized, and may even become a badge of honor.
All twenty leaders were already aware of mindfulness before participating in the mindful leadership program. They knew that practicing meditation could support their well-being, so they’d been doing their best to breathe and calm their nervous systems when feeling stressed. They’d all witnessed firsthand how colleagues, friends, and relatives—under too much stress—had died young from conditions such as cardiovascular disease, stroke, and untreated high blood pressure. For these Black leaders and many others, mindful calm, peace, and balance feel very distant from their lived reality. These leaders—like so many of us—are searching for practical wisdom when caught living under extremes. In this case, the Buddhist teachings on the middle way are useful guidance.
The middle way is about the importance of moderation. The Buddha came to this understanding through his own personal experiences. Born Siddhartha Gautama, he lived his early life surrounded by wealth and indulgence, but it didn’t make him feel truly happy or fulfilled. Then, when Siddhartha decided to embark on the spiritual path, he went to the other extreme. He hardly ate, and he practiced meditation so much that he hardly slept. Finally, close to death from his ascetic practices, Siddhartha encountered Sujata, a young woman who offered him a serving of milk-rice, thus restoring his energy and saving his life. It was then that Siddhartha realized austerity was an extreme that didn’t support him. What allowed Siddhartha to attain true spiritual awakening—and help others—was existing between the two poles of asceticism and sensual indulgence.
Though the Buddha’s teachings about moderation may be ancient, they remain relevant to the modern demands of these Black leaders. The question is: What’s the path of moderation for these Black leaders caught between their own strong desire to serve, their own health and well-being, and the real needs of their communities?
The middle way is a guide to daily life, a roadmap to balanced living and self-stewardship of one’s energies. Self-stewardship is not the same as narcissism or self-inflation. Instead, it is about cherishing and accepting ourselves while also not avoiding the suffering around us.
The teachings of Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh (often referred to as Thay) and the Plum Village community point to the importance of the noble eightfold path—right view, right thought, right speech, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration, and right action—as a path of practice that supports navigating between extremes.
The path of practice begins with cultivating right view—a mind that is open, curious, and receptive. This is critical in recognizing whether our lives are in or out of balance and knowing that we don’t need to do more, work harder, or be better, because by virtue of our very humanness, we are worthy of balance. In other words, with right view, we accept ourselves as we are and hold ourselves with dignity and kindness. Moreover, right view enables us to acknowledge the reality of suffering, without avoiding it, while also admitting when we’re pulled to extremes. With the wisdom of interbeing and the middle way, we see that taking good care of ourselves is taking good care of the people we serve.
In this group of Black leaders, many came to the realization that saying yes to creating space and stewarding their own vital resources is no different than supporting the people they serve. So, what does this look like in practical terms: Begin by acknowledging the needs of others and also acknowledging one’s own need for self-care. Set a reasonable boundary, such as saying something like, “I cannot do this today. I can work on this at this date/time.”
The middle way involves coming back to ourselves and finding a true home that embraces who we are. Extremes of burnout and exhaustion are addressed by recognizing and honoring our needs for healthy boundaries while not denying the larger needs of the people we serve.
(Sources: Lion's Roar)
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