"Burnout" is a persona suffering from severe stress, fear and pressure. While Poetry in Business™ cannot replace burnout prevention programs, it can help you reconnect with your inspirational powers.
According to a 2017 survey of the American Psychological Association, money, workplace and family responsibilities are the three major sources of stress in a time where performance metrics and benchmark cultures rule. Numerous stress prevention programs are in place, people of all ages are in treatment, and yet, mental (and physical) exhaustion is on the increase.
Yes, we need to take action.
We need to provide more space for creativity inside and outside our organizations. And we need to find ways to reconnect with our inspirational powers.
Poetry can be a powerful tool to do so. If we believe the American philosopher Richard Rorty, who
thinks that our reality - our truth - is no more and no less than what can be framed with language, we can create our reality with our thoughts and with our style of communication.
Exploring new ways of doing and being
While poetry certainly cannot prevent moments of unhappiness and we definitely cannot produce sheer abundance by using different vocabulary, both poetry and language can give us a fresh impulse, evoke positive emotions in us, create awareness and lead to fruitful discussions that allow us to describe and implement concrete steps that bring our future forward. We invite our learners to examine their truth from different angles, with curiosity, and describe their future stories, thereby framing new ways of doing and being.