Watch this if you're feeling overwhelmed.

[0:00]I want to share with you an idea that I find very helpful whenever I feel overwhelmed. It's just a framework, a lens if you will, through which you can look at things that can provide a lot of perspective that I think is so easy to lose, okay? It's this idea called the Four Burners Theory. You might have heard of it before, or maybe not. It's this idea that was I guess created by the writer David Sedaris. It's this idea that in all of our lives there are four burners, okay, like a stove top. Okay? Um, and each of those four burners represents a core aspect of your life. So, one is family, one is friends, one is health, and one is work. And the four burners theory states that you can only have three of those going at full blast. And so, that kind of introduces this interesting idea of like, okay, only three of those going at full blast. It's sort of basically implies that no matter what in life, there are always sacrifices, there are always compromises that are taking place. Um, and this is something that I think at least for me, I struggle with this a lot because I want it all. I want to do it all. I want to have the amazing friend group. I want to be connected with my family. I want to be crushing it at work and I obviously want to be healthy, right? But it's so difficult and what I've noticed is that I never had them all working at full blast. Um, in fact, I don't even think it's possible to have three burners going at full blast for very long. It often feels like I have maybe two going at full blast, while, you know, two, two areas of my life at the very least are kind of on the back burners. Um, and so what, what what can we do about this? Like, what is this provide in terms of insights? Uh, James Clear has written a little bit about this. Um, and I've always just loved having conversations about this with people to see their interpretations. Um, but I think my favorite answer to this conundrum is this idea of the seasons of life, which is that there are phases of your life where you're really focused on one thing, and other phases where you're more focused on the other. And it's a balancing act, you know? Um, when you're excited about a particular endeavor, like a new project, a new business that you want to build, absolutely in the beginning is going to be a sprint, it's going to take up a huge chunk of your life. You can't live like that forever, but it's going to be one of the burners going at full blast. And if that means sacrificing a little bit some of the other burners, if you can do that conscientiously, and knowing that this is not how you want to live your entire life forever, then it might be a risk worth taking. Conversely, sometimes it's much more important to focus on your health, or focus on family, or reconnecting with friends, and something like work takes a little bit more of the back seat. And I find this really helpful because at least in my life, I feel like there are absolutely seasons where there's periods where my output is greater, and there's periods where I need to reflect and slow down and recharge and absorb new inspiration, or reconnect with old friends, or what have you. And I find it helpful to think about things this way, because it's so easy to see, you know, so many of us have now realized that social media is not real life, right? And yet, it's still so easy to see other people and think, oh my God, they have it all. They figured it all out. But knowing that we're all dealing with the four burner theory, we're all playing this balancing act that is life. Is helpful because that way I think you can have at least a level of awareness and not always spend your entire life chasing that perfect balance. And just recognize, you know, I'm going through this season of life, and in a few months, or next year, or whenever, I'll be in a different season of my life. Um, and so, yeah, I just thought I would kind of give a little breakdown of this idea and provide it as a helpful mental framework if you will. If you're feeling overwhelmed, if you're like, oh my God, I can't keep up with everything, maybe certain areas of my life are going well, but others are not, or maybe everything feels like it's falling apart and I'm just trying to do too much. I don't know. I think it's good food for thought. I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts in the comments. If you agree with this, if you have techniques or strategies to kind of balance this balancing act that is life. And, um, yeah, thanks for watching, uh, and I'll see all of you very soon. Yeah. That was good, man. Yeah. That was super good. That was actually much better than the first one. Really? Oh, yeah. Fuck yeah. Nice.