PREFACE:
This article is part of a special series by Mode Healthcare inspired by the Lululemon Global Wellbeing Report 2024. Drawing from international insights and grounded in our clinical experience, we explore the tension between modern wellness culture and the real, sustainable practices that support a life well lived. Our aim? To help Australians navigate their health with clarity, calm, and confidence—without the noise.

Modern life has given wellness a branding problem. Once a quiet practice of self-tending—eating well, sleeping deeply, moving daily—it has become something altogether louder: a lifestyle to optimise, a status to project, a benchmark to meet. The irony? The more we chase wellness, the worse we seem to feel.

Lululemon’s report lays it bare: nearly half the global population is experiencing burnout, not from overwork or existential crises—but from wellbeing itself. The data paints a curious picture. People are meditating, moving, journaling, drinking green juice.

Yet 63% of those burned out feel powerless to improve their wellbeing. We’re stuck in a cycle of trying harder and feeling worse.

This phenomenon has a name: wellbeing burnout. It’s not laziness or lack of discipline. It’s the product of relentless external pressure—social expectations, curated lifestyles, contradictory advice, and the creeping sense that if you’re not feeling amazing all the time, you’re doing something wrong.

At Mode, we take a different view.

Wellbeing, to us, is not a performance. It doesn’t demand perfection. It thrives in quiet rituals, in seasonal rhythms, in the space between “should” and “enough.” We don't chase metrics for the sake of it. Instead, we help patients understand the deeper systems—hormonal, metabolic, neurological—that shape how we feel day to day. Our approach is rooted in clinical science, but it respects the human need for softness, slowness, and rest.

So what’s the way out of the burnout loop?
It might start by subtracting, not adding.

Taking a break from the performance. Saying no, more often. Not to wellness, but to its commodified, pressurised cousin. The data supports this too: wellbeing scores are 13% higher among those who set boundaries. They rise again—by 12%—among those who meditate. Even a modest step like moving your body a little throughout the day increases wellbeing by 16%.

That’s not a call to do more. It’s an invitation to do less, better.

The Burnout Loop Why - Trying to “Be Well” Is Making Us Sick

Yet 63% of those burned out feel powerless to improve their wellbeing. We’re stuck in a cycle of trying harder and feeling worse.

So what’s the way out of the burnout loop?
It might start by subtracting, not adding.

At Mode, we’re redefining what it means to feel well.

The Burnout Loop Why - Trying to “Be Well” Is Making Us Sick

Yet 63% of those burned out feel powerless to improve their wellbeing. We’re stuck in a cycle of trying harder and feeling worse.

So what’s the way out of the burnout loop? It might start by subtracting, not adding.

At Mode, we’re redefining what it means to feel well.

The Ocean Always Knows What to Do.

Meet the humans of Mode - Maddison, Practice Manager

So what’s the way out of the burnout loop?
It might start by subtracting, not adding.