As purpose-driven leaders, we understand the critical shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy in the physical world. We expect the factories in our communities to ditch their reliance on extractive, dirty fuel because they pollute our world and can’t replenish themselves.
Yet, aspiring heroes try to run themselves the same broken way. They try to power themselves with the pursuit of greatness itself — through deficit, adrenaline, and shame. They tell themselves they must do more, more, more, burning dirty fuel, polluting the world and their own internal systems, running themselves into the ground.
This can work, at least for a time. But eventually the well runs dry. Eventually, the pollution burns them out.
In contrast, antiheroes run their internal systems on goodness, on the renewable, solar energy of awareness and presence — a source that isn’t ours to deplete, and keeps arriving whether or not we’ve earned it.
This is an excerpt from my upcoming book The Antihero’s Journey: From Burnout to Real Contribution in Polycrisis Times. To read other excerpts, go here.
