burnout

Reflection: Places to be. Things to fix. Stuff to do. The lists grow long and the burdens grow heavy.

That’s why, every so often, it helps to pause and step back from the fray – to tap into a fresh perspective on the countless should’s and pressing have-to’s of our lives.

In my presentations on balance and renewal, I often challenge participants with an exercise that invites them to generate their own life wisdom and insights. I invite you to take ten minutes and give it a try yourself. Here’s how the exercise goes.

Action: On a blank sheet of paper, write the date and year of your 80^th birthday. (Hopefully you won’t need a calculator to figure it out!)

Next, bring to mind a ten-year-old boy or girl sitting at your knee looking up at you with admiration. Give that child a name – real or fictional. Imagine the youngster saying, “You’ve lived a VERY long time. What can you tell me about what really matters in life?”

Your task is to put pen to paper starting with the words:

Dear (insert his/her name), You’ve asked me to tell you what really matters in life. Here’s what I’ve learned so far…

Give yourself ten minutes to jot down every idea that pops into your mind. (more…)

Reflection: When a busy toddler grows weary, he or she simply lies down and falls sleep. Doesn’t matter where. Doesn’t matter when.

When an elderly person grows weary, he or she simply nods off in the middle of a visit or the middle of a sentence. Doesn’t matter where. Doesn’t matter when.

As for the rest of us somewhere between toddlering and doddering, when we grow weary, we shake the cobwebs from our heads, grab another cuppa java, and will ourselves to wakefulness.

We power on. We don’t power down. Pressing …pressing …and rarely pausing. Because, after all there are important places to go, people to see, and things to do.

Sadly, this ends up working against us instead of for us. While we may be nominally awake and at work – it is with diminishing capacity and diminishing returns! That’s why, in a wearied state, so many things feel tougher and take longer. We’re neither fresh nor focused.

Now I’m not suggesting nodding off in a middle of a business meeting would be a good thing. However, I am suggesting that ignoring the body when it calls for rest can be a bad thing.

A study at NASA on sleepy military pilots and astronauts found that a nap improved performance by 34% and alertness by 100%. Although you and I may not be flying jets or spacecraft, how much more effective might we be if our performance and alertness improved that much because we took a rest when we needed one?

Action: What to do? (more…)

Reflection: Epiphany:  A moment when you suddenly see or understand something in a new or very clear way.

Ariana Huffington had an epiphany. She fell asleep at work, hit her head on the edge of her desk, sliced open her cheek, and came to in a pool of blood. One hospital trip and several stitches later, she set about changing her habits and adopting a saner, healthier way of being in this world.

Some years ago, I had an epiphany of my own. As a young Mom, I left the house on a deep freeze of a winter morning. Burdened by tote bag, gym bag, child’s backpack, briefcase, and clamping a wriggling snow-suited toddler in my arms, I tried in vain to lock a reluctant front door.

In the end, the entire load, including screaming daughter and me dropped to the step. Freezing tears streamed down our faces. In that moment of overwhelm, I knew there had to be a better way, and set about discovering what that might be.

Fictional news anchor Howard Beale had an epiphany. In the movie Network, he punctuates his on-air rant about the state of the world by declaring, “I‘m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.”

Maybe you’ve had an epiphany or two of your own. Or maybe you’re working up to one at this very moment.

Epiphanies are rarely unheralded. If we pay close attention as life unfolds, we might notice the small occurrences that signal a need for change. But, heh, we’re busy, we’re preoccupied, and we’re on a roll! We get in a groove and it morphs into a rut that’s not apparent till it trips us up and down we go.

Action: The challenge is to tune into our ‘epiphanettes’ – those small wake up calls that surface day to day. (more…)

Some messages seem to touch more of a nerve than others. Many ezine and blog readers responded to the recent Pause message about disconnecting from technology and reconnecting with humanity.

In case you missed it or might like to refresh yourself on the content, here is the link to the original message: Where Is Everybody? Where Are You?

Here’s what Pause readers had to say about their own experiences with this issue:

LL writes: I started to leave my phone upstairs when I go to bed at night. I used to use it as an alarm clock but not anymore. I just felt like this was starting to be a heavy bedroom partner and got rid of it! My husband is now my alarm clock!

LC writes: I know what you mean!  It’s not just the young people anymore either.  Yikes – I think we are caught up in the hype and the allure of technology.  The most likely response is that the makers of the devices will ensure they can be smaller so people can’t see when you’re on them. It’s going to be a long time before this pendulum swings back the other way I fear.

(more…)

Reflection: I’m an inveterate reader – always on the lookout for new ideas or unique expressions of old ideas stated in fresh engaging ways.

Today I flipped through my collection of recent blog posts and articles by other writers who focus on the importance of stepping back and taking time out.

I’ve picked three articles to share with you. You’ll find them in the Resources Of The Week section of this posting.

Think of it as my ‘Welcome to Spring and Fresh Ways of Doing Things’ gift.

Action: The articles are all great. But here’s my anti-overwhelm suggestion. (more…)

Reflection: In painting, there’s a guiding principle loosely referred to as “A lot of this and a little of that.”

The concept in the art world is that all one thing can be boring, and that even equal measures of two separate elements may not be that engaging. To create a work of art with a more satisfying sensibility you need a ratio of elements that is often less than equal.

For example, a great work of art may feature:  a lot of warm color and a little bit of cool, a lot of light values and a little bit of dark, a lot of sharp edges and a little bit of softness.

Here’s how the principle could be applied outside the world of art to create a more satisfying balance in our everyday lives:

• If you find yourself swamped by a whole lot of work, even adding a little bit of play can shift the experience in a more satisfying direction.
• If your diet has you filling up on a ton of veggies, even adding an ounce of chocolate can sweeten the scene.
• If you’re heavily involved in other-care (whether children or elders) planning a personal ‘just for you’ adventure could improve your outlook.
• If you find yourself wholly office bound (suffering from filing cabinet fever), a coffee elsewhere with a client or colleague could lift your spirits just a little.

Action: What are you experiencing a lot of in your world these days? (more…)

Reflection: Why this? Why me? Why now?

Do you ever find yourself reacting this way when things go sideways in your world?

It’s no surprise that stuff happens. You know it. I know it. We all know it.

Cars don’t start. People don’t finish. The weather blows. You find yourself out of patience, out of milk, or out of time!

Although the universe may be unfolding as it should (or so the Desiderata would have us believe), it’s not always unfolding as we think it should or as we hoped it would.

And so we’re left to deal with our reactions to what can feel like a stealth attack on our expectations.

Action: What to do?

(more…)

Reflection: If you happened to view any of the three short videos I shared while the regular Pause ezine was on hiatus, you would have caught one or more messages about the value of stepping back to step ahead. Just in case you missed it or them, today I’m sharing a ‘summing up’ and a link to the complete article.

I have come to understand that nonstop action is a dead end strategy for success. When we nix time-outs, we just hit the wall – not the mark. Sometimes we really do have to step back to step ahead. Making the most of our days involves building strategic pauses into everyday experiences.

When we step back, stand down and chill out, we tap more readily into renewal, appreciation and perspective.

Action: Here are nine (3 x 3) pause practices that will help you generate more energy, enthusiasm and insight. (more…)

 Reflection: I don’t know about you, but I like to start my day with a hot cup of coffee. Well, truth be known, I like to sip coffee all day long. Decaf – for the most part – so I’m not jangling from a high wire by high noon.

This morning I set the coffee to drip as usual, and went about getting my day started elsewhere in the house. Hearing the beep that signaled the coffee was ready, I returned to the kitchen to pour my first cuppa java. What I discovered was an empty pot and a kitchen counter covered from one end to the other in a slick of steaming brown liquid. Apparently the flow-through flap on the pot lid jammed, and the coffee had nowhere to go but over the top.

Cleaning up a swill-spill was not how I’d planned to start my day – especially before my first cup of coffee. I muttered a few choice words as I mopped up the mess.

I also recognized the situation as one of life’s moments of choice. I could feed my frustration, let the annoyance overflow, seeping into the rest of the day like the coffee itself; or I could take things in stride and let it go.

Action: At the root of our frustrations about life’s unexpected challenges lies a quirky little belief that we’re somehow entitled to a world that runs smoothly all day every day. In fact, speed bumps, detours and breakdowns are a normal part of life. The real challenge is to keep it all in perspective.

Here are five ways to let it go and sidestep a frustration hangover that can set a downer tone for the rest of the day. (I used all of these this morning!) (more…)

Reflection: At this time of ‘let’s be jolly’ pot-luck dinners, concerts and parties, it’s pretty easy to separate the extroverts from the introverts.

The extroverts sport big grins and boundless enthusiasm for the events of the season. A party tonight? Excellent! Another gathering tomorrow? Awesome! Three more events on the weekend? It doesn’t get any better than that!

Introverts, on the other hand, struggle to keep pace. It’s not that they’re anti-social. Introverts enjoy their friends and family just as much as their more extroverted siblings, co-workers, cousins, and partners.

It’s just that large gatherings of people are exhausting for introverts. Being out and about and socializing exacts a huge toll on the introvert’s psychic and physical energy.

Action: If there was ever a time or a season for introverts to be attending to energy, this is it. (more…)