Written by a human, for humans, always.
There is a podcast, The BibleProject, that I like to listen to that had a fascinating concept they discussed...
They called it the Upside-Down Jubilee in the podcast episode...
But you could also look at it as the Reverse Jubilee Curse.
For context for those who are not Bible-Nerds (No, you do not need to believe in the Bible to appreciate the lesson here)...
The "Jubilee" was a mandated period every 50 years (That may never have been followed)...
Where all land rights were to be restored to their original families...
Servants and slaves were all to be set free...
And the land was to be given a period of rest...
For a full year...
And in doing this, the people would be blessed.
But here is the thing...
As was discussed in the podcast...
There was also a curse that would be placed upon the people if they failed to live the Jubilee Years.
What would happen?
The "Reverse" of the Jubilee...
The people would lose their land...
They themselves would become slaves and servants to others...
And the land would gain a recuperation year for every year it was denied Jubilee.
Now, you may or may not believe in the idea of blessings and curses...
But there is a value in considering the idea of purposeful rest...
And there are very real consequences of failing to rest.
As I thought about this...
I immediately thought about the human body.
Our bodies absolutely require rest.
Different types of rest.
Sleep.
Active recovery.
Mental recovery.
Emotional recovery.
These are all necessary types of recovery that our bodies physically need.
And...
If you fail to recover in these different ways...
We end up experiencing a form of "Reverse Jubilee Curse" physically.
Look at Burnout.
This is a psychophysiological state that occurs when we fail to get proper recovery.
The worse our Burnout becomes...
The worse our "Reverse Jubilee Curse" becomes.
If we think about our bodies as a metaphorical "land"...
But we fail to provide the "land" rest...
We begin to experience Burnout...
Where we become...
"Slaves" to fight-or-flight states of existence...
"Slaves" to our work...
"Slaves" to physical sickness.
Here is what most people fail to understand about Burnout...
The longer the Burnout persists...
The longer recovery our bodies require before we can gain access to our full human potential.
How much recovery?
Based on the research...
Simply "light" levels of Burnout require "at least" 3 weeks of significant recovery...
And "higher" levels of Burnout can end up requiring "over" a "full year" of significant recovery.
That is right...
We can lose access to our potential as humans...
For over a year...
If we fail to properly recover.
For each "Jubilee Year" we fail to give the "land" of our bodies...
Our bodies will enact a "Reverse Jubilee Curse" against us until the balance is paid.
It is really interesting to imagine this as a metaphor for how our bodies work.
In Burnout...
Our "Productivity Potential" drops to 5% or less...
Which means that we are losing "at least" 95% of our ability to get results in any given moment...
And we can, and frequently do, go into "Negative Productivity".
For all the effort we put into things when we are already exhausted...
Often that effort ends up working against us and setting us further back from the goals we have.
The result...
Is that we end up in these vicious cycles where we feel trapped and unable to escape...
Because, from a psychophysiological perspective, we actually are trapped in those situations.
Do not fall under the "Reverse Jubilee Curse".
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