And because I’m in Bali, I feel it is only appropriate to quote Elizabeth Gilbert here, who so perfectly sums up this seemingly eternal bind:

You are afraid of surrender because you don’t want to lose control.
But you never had control; all you had was anxiety.

But back to the cows.

I sat with them for two hours. At first, my mind was yelling at me all sorts of burnout related intrusivities and giving me all those secondary feelings we spoke about in May. Those feelings of guilt and shame and frustration that sit on top of the actual feelings underneath. If you saw me there, for those first few minutes, you would have seen a woman sitting cross-legged in a paddock ripping up the yellowed grass around her trying to find the perfect little stick to dig into the dirt frantically. You know – the stuff you did during an outside timeout in primary school after getting in trouble. Rip rip rip. Dig dig dig. Internally fuming.

Then a Part of me began to talk back. “Woah there cowgirl. You’re getting ahead of yourself. Just let me in on how you’re feeling right now.”

Slowly, the Part was able to answer out loud, and eventually, when my voice was calmer and slower, the little black cows hobbled up near me. They were cautious at first. Understandably. I was attacking small bugs and innocent patches of dirt just a minute ago.

“I feel [insert secondary feelings here]” the stick stabber says.
“Ok. I hear that. Is there anyone underneath who wants to tell us how they’re feeling as well?” my Self says.
”Me?” a smaller voice asks.
”Yeah you! What’s up?”
“Well. I feel. Really. Um. Really, really overwhelmed, and I’m afraid I’m losing myself. And that’s scary. Because I see how beautiful everything is and yet I can’t feel it. I’m scared that I can’t feel it.”

And so the conversation continued between my Self, my Parts, and the cows’ occasional opinion. We listed out all the possible aspects that were causing stress and overwhelm, and for each, listed out all the solutions we had available ranging from immediate to cumulative.

It is so easy to experience Parts of yourself, or all of yourself, becoming completely covered up by burnout, or anxiety, or panic, or paranoia, or confusion, or depression, or intrusive thoughts, or anger, or overwhelm.

But the you that is underneath? They do not disappear. They just need to be given a chance to chat with you. To come up to speed. To have a seat at the table. To be given what they’re asking for.

The thing is with happiness – that thing I thought I had lost – when you look up its definition it is split in two: The first is transitory happiness, which is just like any other feeling that comes and goes, stays and leaves, lingers and drifts. Get comfy with that happening because it’s safe and ok and normal. The second is more like overarching contentedness. This second kind of happiness tells you where in your life you may be unbalanced. It nudges you to reflect broadly on your values. It asks you in a whisper, underneath all the shifting emotions, “am I ok?”

Sitting there with the cows showed me just how out of whack I’d become, and helped me, slowly but surely, put the pieces of myself back together again. Surrendering is a daily practice for me, the hardest thing I’m trying to do, and the biggest reward. Agreeing to come to Bali was a huge step in the learning-difficult-lessons direction. Play is just as more important.

PS – if you're curious about how your second type of happiness gets warped from the scarcity loop and burnout modern society leads us into, here are some seriously good books to help you get your life back: