At least once a week someone asks me what the trick is. What is the solution to stress, anxiety, burnout? What is the way out?

The secret is there is no way out. Wanting out is wanting to go back to where you came from. When we find ourselves in crisis we need to understand that what we call crisis is actually not the crisis. The crisis took place before it ‘all went wrong’. If things become unbearable and we know we need to act, our healing path has begun and the crisis is actually over.
At this point we will have to come to terms with the idea that things will never be the way they were, because that’s what brought you here in the first place. Things will be better from now on. Even if we feel we’re losing it all, we have to choose to trust (yes that simple – you choose to trust) that we will only lose what is not serving us. Better things will fill the gap. This is how evolution works, this is how life works.

There is no way out. There is only a way in. And the way in is silence.

We are not used to silence, we are even afraid of it because we do not know it. There is always noise, always a conversation going on, either in real life, on television or texting, emailing, even in our heads. This conversation has to stop once in a while to allow silence. How about not talking or texting for an hour once in a while? Or a couple of hours? A mini silent retreat just for you, to get to know silence. To find your own way in. To find an answer to all those questions you fill yourself up with and get stuck in frustration and no answer. Why are things this way? Why can’t I do better? What should I have done better?

Often we are unable to get what we need because we do not know what we really want, and therefore are unable to ask for it.
And why do we not know it? Because we try to find words for it. We try to find answers in words, we try to find words for everything, because we believe things are only real or have meaning when we can express them. But the power of nature, and therefore our power, exists in its silence.

Human language cannot encode meaning, it cannot say anything about your true nature, about the way you really feel. Our answers have to be felt in our own silence, and there they must stay, to remain powerful and our own. Who am I? What do I like? What do I want? How can I serve myself better? How does it feel to love myself? How does it feel to be kind to myself?

We all have our very own center, this means our own nature, our own silence. Take the way in, get to know it. Feel the answers. It won’t solve your problems, but it will show you another way to deal with them.