Japanese wisdom on burnout, regeneration in service to life, and photography that made me feel in love (weekly wrap #22)
“Only by also caring for self can we effectively and over the long-term care for our human community and the community of life.“
Welcome to Under My Turban. Part cultural commentary, part personal deep-dive, part no-nonsense guide to leading, communicating and working like a real human. At least once a week I share reflections and stories with soul, and tools you can actually use both at work and at home.
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A unique perspective I’m considering
I discovered this video (and Azumi Uchitani) through the random magical recommendation of the YouTube algorithm gods, and I loved the sincere, humble approach Azumi takes to communicate this wisdom. To be honest, it’s quite clear that English is her second language, and whilst it is partly endearing it can also be understandably difficult to hold attention on, especially if you’re multi-tasking while listening to it.
So, I felt inspired to share some snippets in writing of what she shares in the video. I haven’t edited, simply included the transcript of parts I wanted to share, so please excuse where it might not be perfectly clear.
Please do also watch the whole video to show your support for her efforts and wisdom about the Japanese perspective she shares on dealing with burnout.
But, in any case, I hope it makes you think about your own relationship with work, effort, validation, rest, and some other things.
“So one of the cause of burnout is often seeking approval, seeking validations and of course the fear of not receiving them or fear of being punished.”
“…when we create something we [believe?] it should be something helpful it should be something to be useful. However, if we really too much focus on external result, then automatically it start feeding more pressures and reducing our own authenticity.“
“Then at one stage I was just looking at outside the flower. So flowers - beautiful - but it just comes itself, and they are not seeking to be praised, to be said “beautiful” or maybe some flowers, herbal or even herbs, they have some healing effect. However, they just blossom as they are.“
“And so one of the exercise is to let go really let go of this validation and approval and praise seeking which is very difficult but how can we do that? So what I realized and also following the Japanese life philosophy, it's about really creating the flow in our internal and also external work. The easiest thing that we can start doing is to take care of our daily living space. It sounds like “why it's related to burnout?” but when we started even just taking care of the kitchen top make it clear and table clear after you do some work or after eating - really when we are really busy and we forget and we actually cannot invest or allocate time to do such a thing and then it gets really worse and worse then it's neglecting ourselves. So really to take care of ourselves and of course taking care of ourself is like our hygiene and our clothes etc. But also the space we are in. And when we start taking care of - really consciously start taking care of - our living environment every single day even letting the air in and then focusing not for the guest but for yourself for ourselves and then start a beautiful feeling of self-love and compassion start emerging inside.”
There’s more in the video worth listening to that I’m not going to transcribe here, but I will summarise because I think it’s important to share these takeaways for others I personally know could also benefit from them.
Take care of your inner world but also your immediate living space to make it comfortable and enjoyable for yourself.
Let go of the desire to get approval or validation for your work or achievements, and learn to enjoy the flow of simply doing the work. As Azumi says, “The value of our life is being alive every day. It’s not something that we have to achieve. Just being on this earth is really our value.”
Get comfortable asking for help and seeking support. You don’t need a lot of friends, but having friends and colleagues you can actually trust to support you and who you can also support is really important.
Azumi Uchitani also has a book coming out in late July called ‘Yoshuku: The Japanese Art of Manifesting’. I’ll probably check it out when it releases and have a feeling it could become very popular and you’ll be hearing about Azumi a lot more in the second half of 2025.
Something I’m reading to inspire self-care
A dear friend of mine recently shared this article (which is also a summary of takeaways of an interview!) with me saying it reminded her of my recent podcast with Josh Stinton about ‘reconnecting with yourself’. Ironically, it took me a few days to finally get to reading it and turned out I still needed this message as much as anyone.
SEVA: Regeneration in Service to Life
Rather than describe what this is about, I’m going to just share a couple of snippets from this that resonated with me, which speak to the above mentioned irony, and also complement, in my opinion, Azumi Uchitani’s wisdom on burnout.
“Only by also caring for self can we effectively and over the long-term care for our human community and the community of life.“
“What is most important is to do the work that each one of us is supposed to do. We get guided by what is in our best interest. And in serving others, we will find ourselves”. — Anil Sachdev
Some art (photography) I’ve been loving
Have you ever seen a piece of art that made you feel the feeling of falling in love, even if just for a brief moment? Maybe it’s a piece of music you hear? Maybe it’s a poem or passage you read? Something that you take in with your senses and it makes the dormant butterflies in your heart start to flutter in a joyfully appreciative way that is beyond ranking, scoring, comparison, envy, jealousy, or any such normally petty human logic, emotion or classification?
This happens to me sometimes with art in many different forms, but I think I feel it most often and strongest with visual art, and most memorably with photography. Don’t know why, it’s just always been that way.
This past week I was very lucky to come across 2 artists who’s work I hadn’t seen before and some of it really took my breath away.
The first is Markus Naarttijärvi. If you’re interested in checking out his work you can Google him, but I recommend watching this mini documentary about his debut monograph ‘A Surrender’. This film itself is very beautifully made.
The other is San Francisco based fine art portrait and editorial photographer Nirav Patel. I encourage you to check out Nirav’s work on his website.
I thought about copy-pasting one of his photos here (with credit of course) but honestly, I couldn’t choose. His entire portfolio is just amazing.
Both of these photographers inspire me deeply to go and take similar photos. And to borrow from Azumi Uchitani’s wisdom - not for any validation or approval, but just to enjoy the flow of creating something beautiful myself that might make me appreciate a little more alive, and in doing so, to honour life itself.
That’s it, that’s the wrap for this week.
Have a nice weekend.
Dev
P.S. I watched Sinners the other day. Been a while since I saw so much ‘art’ in film that made me feel so impressed at so many different scenes. It might not be your cup of tea because it’s a genre film, but it’s technically brilliant and very captivating!