What A Reality TV Princess Accidentally Taught Me About Burnout

Netflix’s “Love Is Blind” just wrapped up Season 11 with zero lasting relationships and the surprising cheat code for living your best life. If you too have been struggling amid the exhausting grind of hustle culture, keep calm and start living “soft.”

Hang on. This trend isn’t just about draping yourself in cashmere and journaling by candlelight. Soft living is an intentional state of mind, meant to cultivate the gentler flow of simply being. The storms of life remain, but we choose not to freak out about them. I guess.

This kind of “softness” was new to me when the concept popped up during the “Love Is Blind” reunion. You’re free to judge me because I watched the whole ridiculous season — 13 hours of my life I’m never getting back. But, onward.

Couple Wilnie Louis and Wilson Monteiro — who had gotten engaged sight unseen after several “dates” spent talking through a wall, and called it quits during the cohabitation leg of the experiment — arrived at the cast reunion uncoupled. Thirty-three-year-old mental health counselor Wilnie’s constant desire to be pampered didn’t jam with 35-year-old senior compliance manager Wilson’s hope of an equal partnership. Or finding someone more like his mom.  

Looking back on the experience, series co-host Vanessa Lachey, along with her husband, Nick Lachey, asked if Wilnie’s princess-like attitude had possibly been overplayed for the cameras. Wilnie responded in nonchalant Valleyspeak, “I think in society we kind of put this label on black women to be very strong and independent … I don’t subscribe to black women having to not be spoiled, or [having] to be strong and independent all the time. I choose to live softly and I will continue to be soft.” 

Mic drop. If the microphone were made of marshmallows and placed tenderly on a pillow.

Regardless of the eye-roll-worthy claims about society, the “I choose to live softly” part stuck out to me. But wait. Have the rest of us been living life too hard? I pictured the yolk running out of some kind of high-maintenance soft-boiled egg. Was that it?

For his part, Wilson heaped praise on his immigrant parents who came to the United States from Cape Verde and each contributed “100% to that relationship and to the household to ensure that me and my brother had everything that we needed.” He added, “The whole, like, entitlement attitude kind of turns me off.” To that, Wilnie demurred, “I think entitlement is a strong word. I’m not entitled by any means.” Hmm. Debatable.

Earlier in the season, while they were still technically engaged on the show, Wilson confirmed that he loved living in his parents’ basement because he just had to climb a set of stairs to eat his mom’s cooking. Wilnie bragged about her collection of designer bags she (proudly) never spent a dime on amassing. At least she owned a home that she saved up for while living with her Haitian immigrant parents. She hoped her knight in shining armor would bring home enough bacon so she could give up her six-figure job.

OK, maybe both parties were entitled. But Wilnie was the self-reported “softest” about it. I had to know what this style of living really looked like.

Among posts featuring Louis Vuitton shopping sprees on Rodeo Drive, Wilnie describes her lifestyle on Instagram as something like “ease, joy, luxury, and softness” that might be “offensive to some people” of lesser enlightenment. In its purest form, it’s not lazy, it’s just, y’know, easy. She adds, “There’s a much bigger conversation to be had about the unconscious biases we carry, who we allow to be soft, and why certain expressions of womanhood are celebrated in some women but criticized in others.” She would have us believe that boasting about luxury vacations means softies like her are “thriving in their power.” 

Just please don’t go around thinking you have to ask permission to be soft unless you’re a bag of potato chips “living in your power” as sour cream and onion.

Ever on a quest to be a better person — but without the budget for a bougie mindfulness-adjacent trend I heard about from Netflix (hello, I already got too into sourdough because of Michael Pollan’s “Cooked” doc) — I was glad to discover that the idea has been around for decades, for free. Establishing boundaries to preserve time and energy, resting when you need it, untangling your intrinsic value from some perfect ideal, reducing stress where you can, living according to your personal values, and seeking joy are all core tenets of the “soft” lifestyle, now rebranded for social media.  

I don’t need a platinum credit card to exit out of fight-or-flight mode to be present in the moment, communicate with clarity, and regulate my emotions around distress, acceptance, and change. Instead of avoiding responsibilities, soft living invites us to redefine success according to our morals, work through past trauma and face new challenges, nurture relationships with loved ones, and cultivate authenticity in a culture that cashes in on our own self-doubt. 

Burnout — the hamster-wheel-induced feeling of fatigue, irritability, and jadedness in the workplace — has become a crisis in the United States. A study from the University of Illinois found that at least 61% of the workforce is “languishing” in their careers — a stat that’s only risen in recent years, led by Gen Z and millennials blurring the lines on work-life balance.

Even overscheduled kids experience achievement fatigue. An abundance of homework and extracurriculars designed to foster the social skills to succeed can also lead to anxiety, depression, and anger in the school-aged set. The statistics remain the same across all income brackets.

I’m guessing you’re probably the kind of person who believes hard work is an essential component of success. Many of us spend our days buzzing at max capacity to realize our dreams and launch those of our children. I’m not here to push “softness” all over the life-giving benefits of grit and resilience. But for workaholics, Type A people, and anyone else who’s accidentally joined the cult of busyness, all that potential can become a suffocating weight. Whatever you’d call the opposite of the soft life, it has overrun most of America. 

If you think about it, a solution to burnout that doesn’t involve drilling down harder or relying on self-soothing material comforts starts sounding pretty good. Maybe we could all use a little more “soft living” in our lives.

***

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

More from this network:
Domains for Sale · GOTPeople.org · TheDSAPlatform · The Truth About Socialism

Donate to GOTPeople.org