Hi Joe,
You talk about resilience. I think I’m resilient but I’m always exhausted and discouraged. There seems to be more and more to do and I’m already feeling empty. Do you have any suggestions?
Burnt Out
Hey, Burnt Out.
I know how you feel. I experience this as well. And I hear this often. It seems like we are asked to get more done, but with less time and resources. And our current global context tends to keep us distracted. We find ourselves pitted against each other and caught up in an emotional and mental whirlwind. This burns us out. With so little time to get things done, how can we carve out time to rest, restore and take care of ourselves?
I talk about self-care and resilience in a way that takes you beyond enduring and surviving, allowing you to tap into internal energy, so that you can meet challenges with grace and skill. What kinds of self-care practices can you do to cultivate physical vitality, emotional grounding, mental clarity and spiritual grounding? With this, you can meet challenges with confidence and finesse. This is an empowering way to look at resilience. Before we can thrive, we need to cultivate within ourselves and with our relationships some sense of balance and stability.
Let’s look at how self-care increases a sense of internal power and balance.
Because of feeling pressured, or because of judgements about self-care, we jump to the conclusion that it is too time consuming or costly. We may hear ourselves say, “I don’t have time to go to a gym. Self-care is for the privileged. I wish I had 45 minutes to waste! It’s too expensive.” Such narratives undermine and sabotage us as we seek to understand the true purpose of self-care – rest, restoration and rejuvenation.
Shifting perspectives on self-care, and permitting the wisdom of your heart and body to reveal what’s good for you, will allow you to discover that the practice of self-care is a moment-to-moment creative process of getting your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual needs met.
Here are some tips that might help you move forward with some self-care commitments:
1. Release distractions. As you let go of distractions (too much time on our devices, too much time following the news, unbalanced diet, not enough time in nature, to name a few), you regain a connection to yourself, quiet the internal storm, and increase your capacity to listen to your own inner wisdom and the parts of you – your heart and body – that are always informing you of what’s best for you.
2. Commit to 1-5 minutes each day. Devoting your full attention to 1-5 minutes of self-care will have more impact than 45 minutes of exercise while you are distracted, complaining and worrying that you are wasting time. I call this “The 1440 Challenge.”
Have you ever considered how many minutes there are in a day? There are 1,440 minutes in every day of your life. During those minutes we work, sleep, eat, interact with others, travel from one place to the next and many other things. But how many of these 1,440 minutes do you use to nurture yourself? If you can take one minute out of 1,440 to nurture yourself, and do that every day, you will see the quality of your life change.
As you do your one minute, you may notice that you want to add a couple more minutes to your practice. Great! Other days, doing your one minute will be enough.
3. Expand your notion of self-care. It should include the nourishment of your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual self. Imagine finding the time to devote one minute a day to each of these parts of you.
4. Find things that work for you. Be creative. What can you do to increase physical vitality, emotional stability, mental clarity and spiritual grounding? There are so many sources of information on self-care practices. I offer a number of exercises and processes in my book, “Mastering Respectful Confrontation.” Feel free to take a look. In the meantime, here are some suggestions of ways to nurture yourself:
- Do some jumping jacks, or take a walk without looking at your phone for the physical.
- Ask for a hug, eat your favorite dessert or find other ways to pamper yourself for the emotional.
- Meditate or do a crossword puzzle for the mental.
- Go into nature, or read excerpts from inspirational writers, spiritual teachers or your bible of choice for the spiritual.
I understand that I’m suggesting you put more time into a day that already seems full, Burnt Out. That’s why I suggest one minute a day. If you can make that happen, you are on the path to increased internal power, balance and vitality.
And you are worth it.
Joe
Learn more about Joe Weston and his work here. Make sure to c heck out Joe’s bestselling book Fierce Civility: Transforming our Global Culture from Polarization to Lasting Peace, published March 2023.
To Ask Joe, please submit questions to: AskJoe@Fulcrum.us.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.