Dear Readers,
Work. Such a small word for something that takes up so much of our lives, our energy, our identity. In this week’s letter, we’re exploring what happens when the work we’ve been called to no longer feels sustainable—and how we might begin to untangle the beliefs that keep us stuck in cycles of burnout and misalignment.
There’s no easy path through this terrain, but there is a way forward—one rooted in clarity, reverence, and deep inner recalibration.
Let’s begin.
In everything we trust,
Sylvia
Questions
Q
Hi Sylvia, I am a female healer suffering from burn out and I want to transition into a career in finance. How do you recommend I heal my belief systems with “work” so that I stop burning out and attract an aligned opportunity in finance?
A
I have sat with this question for several weeks because it is complex, layered, and reminds me of my own journey.
Burnout as a healer is real. There are ways to mitigate this phenomenon—tools of self-care and protection—but even the best healers will occasionally face burnout despite excellent energetic hygiene. In part, this is because all healers are working within a cultural group belief system that spiritual work should not be highly compensated. This is a side effect of our divorce from the divine.
We have separated money, compensation, and reward from spiritual work, draining the income-earning potential of healers along the way. We have a knee-jerk negative reaction to seeing a healer make money, while we celebrate founders, CEOs, and businesspeople earning vast sums. This is one of the most prevalent symptoms of our spiritual divide from the divine that we can see in our culture today.
Why do we diminish the importance of those helping us heal and amplify the importance of business? Many people would criticize and shame a spiritual leader who makes a million dollars a year from her work, and yet a CEO of a Fortune 500 company earning the same is considered woefully underpaid.
I have been looking at these questions for two decades from many angles. I had beautiful intentions when I shifted from healing to finance, but it has not been easy. I underestimated how difficult it is to bring healing to money. I underestimated how people behave when they have fear around money (which is most people), and how chaotic that behavior is in investing. Markets are driven by fear and greed, and many investors behave in deeply unconscious ways.
As hard as it is to work as a healer in our culture—because we do not pay healers adequately—it is just as hard to work consciously in finance, because you find yourself in a machine of investing driven by fairly reptilian instincts. I have seen it all. Some of the most challenging times in my life have been the result of being in the middle of hugely unconscious investment deals.
This brings us to the essence of your question, which is how to heal your belief systems about “work.” I love this question because it is the only thing we can actually influence—our own mindset. As a healer, I could not change the system in which healers are not well paid. As an investor, I could not change the system in which people behave in abhorrent ways when an investment doesn’t go according to plan.
What I did change in my lifetime was my understanding and appreciation of work itself. We are here on this planet to work. It is part of our sacred birthright. Without work, our lives are empty.
There are many forms of work—it can be at home, in an office, in a garden, or anywhere, really—but as long as we are able, it is our sacred duty to contribute. Even though it has been trickier and more challenging than I had imagined to connect healing and finance, this is still a significant part of my life purpose and a passion I remain deeply devoted to pursuing.
This is my work, my purpose. My life purpose is to bring the intelligence of love and awakening as an organizing principle to investing. I love this work.
When we are in our life purpose, work does not feel like work. To heal your belief systems around work, explore their origins much like you would any other patterning or conditioning you’ve inherited. What were your family’s beliefs around work—specifically, your mother’s and father’s? Journal extensively about what you saw, heard, and observed as a child, and what meaning you made of those observations. Extend that same journal exercise to the culture you were raised in; perhaps you were part of a religion or another organization that fed you messages about what work is. As you empty these beliefs onto the page, burn away the ones you know no longer serve you. Be ruthless and complete in this exercise.
This will create an empty space in your awareness—a new void for fresh information. In place of the conditioning you carry around work, replace it with beautiful prayers. Let the universe know you are here to work. Let the universe know that you love to work, and that you are available. Surrender entitlement, laziness, and comfort-seeking at your altar, and instead invoke the prayers of hard work in service to your life purpose. Pray that your work illuminate a corner of the universe.
The solution is not in deciding to work as a healer or in finance. The solution is in reversing your narratives around work—not becoming a workaholic, overly busy, or insanely occupied human, nor a purposeless, drifting, just-getting-by one. Become a purpose-driven, fulfilled bringer of profound intentionality into all you do.
May your work be the blessing to the world it was always destined to be. May your work feel like rest, and your rest be embedded in your work. Purpose and prosperity are the path ahead.
