Tiny Buddha

Tag: work

  • Making Big Decisions: How to Discern the Whispers of Your Soul

    Making Big Decisions: How to Discern the Whispers of Your Soul

    “Intuition is the whisper of the soul.” ~Jiddu Krishnamurti

    “I can’t believe they are taking her side over mine. I gave this job so many years, and she decides to walk in and mess it all up for me,” I said to my husband.

    A few years back, when I was working full time at my corporate job, I got into a disagreement with a team member. It spiraled out of control to the point where my boss then had to have a sit-down with us. I was so humiliated and angry that he could not see my side.

    They will realize when they lose you, whispered my ego.

    That was when I decided to leave. I started to look for new jobs and got offers.

    Now here is the thing—I did have a great job, I had a great team, no long hours, and I liked what I did. But at that moment, due to that disagreement, I made a decision to leave it all from a place of anger.

    Tony Robbins often says It is in your moments of decisions that your destiny is shaped. I wish I knew this back then. I took the new job, but the moment I accepted the offer, I realized the colossal mistake I had made. I remember going to my farewell party and feeling like I might throw up. I remember trying to hide my tears.

    Your intuition often speaks to you through your body, and my body was clearly saying no. Unfortunately, the voice of my ego was stronger. It was too late to turn back. That wrong decision cost me two years of my life that I could have used toward my personal goals and business.

    Instead, I was stuck at the wrong job, working long hours, in misery, and hating every minute of it.

    There are many times when we feel the need to react, and the need to feel validated. The untrained mind often reacts the way I did, from fear and from anger. This is where the process of discernment comes in—discernment between whether you are making a decision to sate your ego or to truly evolve and expand yourself.

    The primitive, reactionary mind is not the best for making decisions because we are in a downward spiral and are tackling multiple negative thoughts in our heads. Nothing good can come out of this space—we are neither neutral nor can we listen to our intuition.

    In the grand scheme of things, when we ignore our intuition, we introduce complexities to our path. The reality is that in order to get to the next level, we must get out of victim mode and learn to take
    responsibility for our actions. There is always a choice in any decision that you make. That choice is between fear and love, between blame-shifting and personal responsibility.

    The easiest way to listen to your intuition is to ask yourself if you are making the decision out of fear or out of love. While this experience was unfortunate, it also taught me a very important life lesson. I rarely make big decisions in my life without “consulting” with my inner guidance or when I am not in the right headspace.

    The tool that I use for this is meditation. Over years, I have learned to use the art of meditation to hear the whispers of my soul. Anytime I get into a conflict or my life spirals out of control, I turn to my
    meditation pillow.

    Before I get into the meditation, I ask myself: Why is this happening to me? What is the lesson that I need to learn from this? Help me see the way. I am willing to do what it takes to feel and do better.

    And then I go into silence and complete surrender, without expectations that any insights or solutions will come through. The answer usually comes quite unexpectedly when the world around me is reduced to a silent hum. It is usually not the answer I was hoping for, but the answer I need at that moment.

    I often get asked what to do if the answer does not come. This just means that you are not detached enough and that you are still expecting an answer to come. This is fear itself.

    “Why is the answer not coming?”

    “Am I not doing this right?”

    “Maybe my intuition is broken?”

    Intuition comes when you are in a place of faith rather than fear.

    If this happens, try working out or watching or movie, anything that helps you not think about your problem. Then go back into meditation again with zero expectations, and you will be surprised at how soon the answer comes to you.

    It will be a quiet whisper, an inner knowing. It will happen in complete silence or when you are thinking about something completely different.

    It is akin to that little whisper that tells you that it may be a good idea to take the umbrella before you leave the house. But then you choose to ignore that whisper, and you later wish you hadn’t because it
    rained so much.

    One of the biggest benefits of meditation aside from intuition is that it helps you silence your mind. This helps you take bigger and bolder actions because there is no silent critic in your head judging and second-guessing your every move. Meditation helps you become more mindful and present. What others say or do does not affect your as much.

    Over time, you start experiencing the “observer effect,” where you feel as if you are directly experiencing life as a series of moments rather than evaluating and analyzing it.

    If you cannot meditate, journaling can help with this process too. Put on trance music in the background and free write. The trick to journaling is to let your pen flow without thinking.  You will notice that twenty to thirty minutes into it, your handwriting will start changing and your words will start looking different. The message will become more loving and compassionate. This is when you know that you are tapping into your intuition.

    Intuition is a powerful gift, but one that you can experience and learn how to recognize only in silence.

  • How I’ve Dealt with the Shame and Embarrassment of a Failed Career

    How I’ve Dealt with the Shame and Embarrassment of a Failed Career

    “If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.” ~Brené Brown

    The embarrassment you feel upon realizing you don’t actually have what it takes to make a success of yourself. The shame of knowing you spent years training to do one thing and then you bailed right at the finish line. The fear of what to tell people when they ask you what you’re up to.

    Of course, you don’t tell anyone how you feel, as you’re too embarrassed to admit you even have these feelings, so you just bury it all away.

    I know these feelings all too well, as I’ve been through them all. It took me years to finally face up to what I actually felt and deal with it. As a coach once told me, “Buried emotions never die.”

    I knew I always wanted to be in the arts. I loved dance and drama, and I wanted to be an actor. I could feel it so strongly that I never even considered a different career.

    I started dance classes at the young age of six, and at eleven years old I went to a performing arts school. So my training began.

    After school I went to a reputable college where I did a further three years of training. I was sixteen years old and was told to lose weight and wear heels and make-up. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this wasn’t the healthiest thing to tell a teenager.

    After three exhausting years I graduated. All the training, the hard work, the sacrifice had led up to this moment. I was going to get an agent, start working in theater, and move into TV and film.

    But that didn’t happen.

    Instead of going full steam into my career, I froze. The last term of college crushed me.

    The last term all led up to our final show. The show ran for a few weeks in different locations around the city, and it was meant to be an opportunity for us performers to show off our talent. Everyone was meant to invite agents in the hopes of getting signed.

    However, I didn’t invite anyone. I was so ashamed of my performance. I felt I had been cast in utterly the wrong role, and no matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t make it work, and no one seemed to care.

    I remember wishing I would fall down the stairs of the tube station so I would break my leg and not have to perform; I was so humiliated.

    Rather than leaving college confident and excited, I left with my confidence at rock bottom.

    I never did anything with my training. All those years, all those dreams, all those aspirations, but when push came to shove, I didn’t do anything with it.

    For years I told myself that the last term was so tough that it broke me, and that is why I never continued after college. I blamed everyone else.

    It took me years to admit that it was actually my decision to quit. It took me even longer to understand why that was. I realize now I was scared.

    In fact, I was petrified that I wasn’t as talented as I thought I was. I knew if I put myself out there and tried to make a career out of it and failed, I would have proof that I wasn’t talented.

    If I blamed everyone else and quit before I got started then, in my head, I could always be amazing and could have always potentially had a career in the arts.

    Emotions are so complex, though, that it took me a long time to dig deep enough to find this truth.

    Thus, I found myself aged eighteen years old, with no formal education, and all I had ever wanted to do was perform, so what now? I was totally lost.

    I just froze. I didn’t get an agent; I didn’t go to auditions. I just quit.

    I had spent my entire life working toward this moment, and at the final hurdle I fell. It really shook me up; I felt like an utter failure and was humiliated.

    I was so ashamed and embarrassed that I stayed in contact with no one from college, except two friends.

    I remember walking down Oxford High Street and seeing two of my former classmates. I jumped into a shop to hide from them because I was afraid they would ask what I had been up to.

    All I could think was, “What would I tell them?” They were probably off in West End Shows, and what was I doing? I was a failure. Of course, this was before social media, so no one knew what I was or was not doing.

    Eventually I decided I would take some time out and go to Thailand. I ended up spending a year there. I became a diving instructor, and I met the man that would become my husband.

    Once back home, I got a job in recruitment and my career went from strength to strength. I thought I had moved on and was happy with my life.

    Yet whenever I would meet someone who asked about my education or what I did at school, I would panic. “What do I tell them? How do I explain that I trained, but never turned it into a career?” They would know my dirty secret, that I was an untalented failure.

    I would lie and make up stories as to why I decided to change careers after my education.

    I couldn’t understand why I still cared so much about this. Why did I feel I had to lie?  Although life was great, deep down I felt that something was missing. It sometimes felt like there was a dark mass in the pit of my stomach.

    I had a session with my coach about this feeling, and what came up? The arts, my love for dancing, my failed career, my shame, my embarrassment. I remember breaking down in tears. I was so angry that twenty years later I still hadn’t moved on.

    I was so angry that this was still such a big thing in my life. That it was still there with me. I just wanted it to go away. It felt pathetic that it still had such a huge hold over me; what was wrong with me? I just kept saying, “This is so ridiculous, why can’t I just let it go?”

    But remember what I said earlier? Buried emotions never die. They never leave you; they’re just festering

    I was so confused by it all, I didn’t understand why it still had such a hold on me. Why I felt so embarrassed and full of shame. My coach helped me unpack it all.

    The lies I had told myself had become so much a part of me; I had to work hard to pick it all apart to find the truth.

    After so many years, I was finally able to face up to what had happened. I was just a scared teenager. I was so scared of failure and rejection that I found a way to protect myself by making up a lie and quitting.

    I needed to make peace with this, and I needed to accept responsibility. I found this hard to do, as I didn’t like this version of me. It was much easier to blame everyone else than to see it was my fear that stopped me.

    I needed to forgive myself.

    I stopped telling myself lies and admitted that when I graduated, I was petrified of failure, so I quit before I could fail. I realized I still had a love for the arts and I needed to find an outlet in my life.

    It was hard work and took many sessions to really dig into the truth, but once I did, I was finally able to talk about the arts and my past without shame or embarrassment. I could finally move on.

    I did a lot of work re-connecting with teenage Alice. Writing letters to her, forgiving her, and showing her compassion. I also did a lot of work on acknowledging what I had achieved and who I had become.

    I know I’m not alone in what I felt and what I went through. I wish I could have started this healing process a long time ago because as much work as I have done, I know there is still more to do.

    For anyone who is experiencing what I did, know that you’re not alone and you’re not silly for feeling the way you do. Also know, you can change it.

    I learned so many things in the process.

    You can’t just ignore what you feel.

    At the time I was so confused by what I felt. Instead of trying to understand what was happening, I just buried everything.

    Eventually I had to look my shame and embarrassment in the eye and understand what they were telling me about myself. What was the message?

    There is always a message behind your feelings and emotions; you just need to be brave enough to hear them. I found journaling really helped with this.

    It takes time.

    If, like me, you have already spent years ignoring what you felt, that also means you’ve likely spent years telling yourself lies. What you are feeling is complex, and it will take time to work through it. Don’t expect an overnight change.

    Things still come up now that I have to work through. Human beings are extremely complex, and it takes time to break through all our barriers.

    Share what you’re feeling because you won’t be alone.

    I remember telling my old manager about how I felt. He had the same background as me, and he said, “Alice, I felt exactly the same way.” He told me he moved cities just to get away from people he knew.

    Just hearing that made me know I wasn’t insane. It was amazing to hear he understood.

    We hear it all the time, but sharing what you’re going through really does help. So share your story.

    Stop punishing yourself and have fun.

    For anyone reading this who can relate, you have likely boxed away something you loved. It’s time to take it out of the box and allow yourself to have fun again. You don’t need to keep punishing yourself.

    I didn’t allow myself to dance for years. It was too painful. However, my body was screaming out for it. I realized it wouldn’t be a career, but that didn’t mean I had to cut it out of my life completely. I could still enjoy it.

    —

    It’s been a long journey for me. Mainly because when I quit twenty years ago, I had a rush of feelings and emotions, and I didn’t know how to deal with them, so I pushed them away and lied to myself. It took a long time to undo all the stories I had told myself.

    You don’t need to be embarrassed or feel ashamed, but also know it’s okay if you do feel this way. Just don’t hide from these feelings. Understand them, embrace them, and make peace with them. That way you can allow yourself to move on.

  • One Question for Anyone Who’s Stuck in a Rut: What Do You Believe?

    One Question for Anyone Who’s Stuck in a Rut: What Do You Believe?

    “You become what you believe, not what you think or what you want.” ~Oprah Winfrey

    What do you believe? During the forced stillness of the pandemic environment we’re all living in, this is a question I’ve been faced with more intensely than ever. In particular, I’ve come to question what I believe about myself, and how that impacts every element of my life.

    Coming out of years of self-help for social and general anxiety, a long-standing eating disorder, and several dissatisfying personal relationships, I had to come to question what these external realities reflected back to me. For what you believe about not only your life, but more importantly, yourself, will show up again and again, and yes, again, until you’ve finally addressed the root of the problem.

    In my case, my lack of self-value resulted in many dysfunctions and setbacks in my personal and professional world.

    My deteriorating self-image led to my eating obsessions, a lack of confidence exacerbated anxieties, and the low value I placed on myself was most likely written all over me, judging by the way others showed disrespect toward me in personal relationships.

    Not only was I devaluing who I was, but I also operated from a place of being closed off to others, afraid that if I showed my true self I wouldn’t measure up to their expectations.

    This all came to a head when COVID-19 emerged and led to a global lockdown. Going off of numerous negative relationship experiences, I visited a doctor to discover I had a pelvic floor condition called vaginismus, which results in involuntary vaginal muscle tightening that makes sex and physical exams like pap smears either impossible or extremely painful.

    I spent the next four months going through physical therapy to heal my body from this condition, breaking off a new relationship to focus completely on my own journey. It amazed me how the mind and body go hand-in-hand; my muscle tightening felt like a total embodiment of years of being closed off to others and remaining safely isolated from sharing my true self.

    As I mentioned previously, prior to being diagnosed with vaginismus I’d spent years healing my mental health problems and gaining strength in my career experience.

    After high school, I was lost in my career path for a solid period of time, making lukewarm attempts at artistic endeavors such as acting and modeling, never fully prepared to take a leap and fully immerse myself in any one field.

    Again, this would require a bearing of my true self that would frighten me just to think about. Not only that, it would mean that I had the nerve to believe I was worthy of attempting a profession that’s reserved for an elite group of “special” people, a group I never considered myself to be a part of.

    I did muster up enough courage to move to Los Angeles, however, where I felt I could start a new identity. My Northern California roots felt outdated, and along with some family I sought to better myself with a fresh start.

    One of my first steps toward positive changes was a hostessing gig at a bowling alley, which forced me to get out of my shell and be more social for a change. I still felt very self-conscious, but the more I worked on interacting with customers and coworkers, the more I learned how much I loved people.

    This further developed when, following a chance Intro to Journalism course I took at Pasadena City College in Southern California, I found a new joy that I wasn’t expecting.

    I began to love writing, and not only that, my favorite element of this new career path was interviewing—something I never thought I’d be able to conquer with the severity of my social anxiety, which prevented me from going into grocery stores at its peak

    Deep down, I started to believe that something different could be possible for me. Maybe I could break out of my old mindset and turn into the person I’d always felt I was inside: someone who loved people, longed for and accomplished successful interpersonal relationships, and stood in her power, unapologetically.

    By January of 2020, I had gained a local job news writing in my home base of Burbank and felt optimistic about the future. After the pandemic hit, however, I went through a time of feeling down during isolation. This paired with the vaginismus diagnosis made me become initially quite frustrated.

    “Why is this happening to me?” I wondered. I had done a lot to overcome other personal issues, but now having to do months of diligent, and sometimes extremely painful, physical therapy felt like a punishment that I didn’t deserve.

    After a short bit of contemplation, however, I had a real and sudden shift in perspective. I simply thought, “I’ve been through more than this in the past. I’ll get through it.” I believed I could, and from that moment on dedicated myself to healing not only physically, but emotionally as well.

    Within four months I made enough progress to end in-person physical therapy appointments, I started blog writing and continued with news writing in Burbank, earned a journalism scholarship over the summer, which I contributed toward my studies, and now have just started my own independent journalism writing website.

    The more I believed that I could accomplish my goals, and the more I felt I was worthy of such things, the more I saw everything in the universe work for me, and not against me.

    Today I continue to improve my self-image, and I have a long way to go. But overall, I feel healed from where I once was.

    I’m pursuing my passions, now unashamed to show and share who I truly am.

    I demonstrate a great deal of self-respect in personal relationships, no longer tolerating poor treatment from others who don’t consider my worth.

    My diet and exercise habits are healthier, my vaginismus treatment is complete, and, although I still have to maintain physical therapy exercises, I feel grateful for where I’m at in that regard and in every aspect of my life.

    If you had asked me five years ago, prior to all of this self-improvement, what I believed about myself and my life, I probably would have said I had a promising future ahead, although my actions and interactions continuously showed otherwise.

    This is why I feel I’m at a much more positive place in life at this moment.

    Not only do I propose that I believe positive things about myself, but I now show it through my actions.

    I no longer want respect, I demand it.

    I no longer want to pursue my goals wholeheartedly, I now do it as much as I can every day.

    And not only do I dream of expressing the truth of who I am, I embody it.

    So, if you too feel like you’re stuck in a rut in your life, if you feel that the world isn’t treating you fairly, and if you don’t like what the universe is showing you, then I urge you to ask yourself:

    What do you believe? About yourself? Your worth? Your life? Your potential?

    What do you believe about what you deserve, in relationships and in your career, and what you can accomplish if you try?

    How do those beliefs affect how you show up in the world—the decisions you make, the chances you take, the things you tolerate, and the habits you follow each day?

    What would you do differently if you challenged your beliefs and recognized they’re not facts?

    And what can you do differently today to create a different outcome for tomorrow?

    These are the questions that shape our lives because our beliefs drive our choices, which ultimately determine who we become.

  • How I Overcame the Stress of Perfectionism by Learning to Play Again

    How I Overcame the Stress of Perfectionism by Learning to Play Again

    “What, then, is the right way of living? Life must be lived as play…” ~Plato

    I am a recovering perfectionist, and learning to play again saved me.

    Like many children, I remember playing a lot when I was younger and being filled with a sense of openness, curiosity, and joy toward life.

    I was fortunate to grow up in Oregon with a large extended family with a lot of cousins with whom I got to play regularly. We spent hours, playing hide-and-seek, climbing trees, drawing, and building forts.

    I also attended a wonderful public school that encouraged play. We had regular recess, and had all sorts of fun equipment like stilts, unicycles, monkey bars, and roller skates to play with. In class, our teachers did a lot of imaginative and artistic activities with us that connected academics with a sense of playfulness.

    I viewed every day as an exciting opportunity and remember thinking, “You just never know what is going to happen.” My natural state was to be present with myself, enjoying the process of play

    Unfortunately, my attitude began shifting from playfulness to perfectionism early on. Instead of being present and enjoying process, I started focusing on performance (mainly impressing people) and product (doing everything right). The more I did this, the less open, curious, and joyful I was.

    Instead, I grew anxious, critical, and discouraged.

    I first remember developing perfectionist tendencies when I was in elementary school and taking piano lessons. For some reason, I got the idea that I had to perform songs perfectly, or else I was a failure.

    Eventually I became so anxious, I would freeze up while playing in recitals. I started hating piano, which I once had loved, and eventually quit.

    My perfectionism spread into other areas of my life, too. In school, I pushed myself to get straight A’s, and if I earned anything less, I felt like a failure. I often missed out on the joy of learning because I was so worried about getting things right.

    My perfectionism also negatively impacted my relationship with myself. I believed I had to look perfect all the time. As a result, I often hated the way I looked, rather than learning to appreciate my own unique appearance and beauty. I also remembering turning play into exercise at this time of my life and using it to pursue the “perfect” body.

    Movement, which I loved when I was a child, began to feel exhausting and punishing.

    Perfectionism also hurt my relationships with other people. I felt like I had to be smooth and put together and that I always had to put everyone else’s needs above my own. Not surprisingly, I often felt unconfident, anxious, and exhausted around other people.

    At this time in my life, I believed that if I tried and worked hard enough, I could do everything right, look perfect, and make everyone happy.

    My perfectionism increased in young adulthood until eventually it became unsustainable. In my early thirties, I became the principal of a small, private middle school where I had taught for eight years. I loved the school and was devoted to it.

    In many ways, I was the ideal person to do the job. But I was also young and inexperienced, and I made some big mistakes early on. I also made some decisions that were good and reasonable decisions that, for various reasons, angered a lot of people.

    To complicate matters, the year I became middle school principal, the school underwent a massive change in our school’s overall leadership, and we suffered a tragic death in the community. I worked as hard as I could to help my school through this difficult time, but things felt apart.

    My school, which had largely been a happy and joyful place, suddenly became filled with fighting, suspicion, and stress. These events were largely beyond my control and were not the fault of any one person, but I blamed myself. For someone who had believed her whole life that if she worked hard enough, she could avoid making mistakes and could make people happy, my job stress felt devastating.

    I felt like my life was spinning out of control and that all the rules that once worked no longer applied. I crashed emotionally, and I remember telling my husband at this time, “I will never be happy again.”

    That was one of the darkest times of my life.

    It took me several years to find happiness again. One of the major things that helped me to do so was recovering a sense of playfulness.

    After my emotional crash, I decided I was done with perfectionism. I understood clearly that focusing so much on avoiding mistakes and pleasing-people was the source of much of my suffering. 

    I realized I needed a different way to approach life.

    About this time, my friend Amy and I started taking fencing lessons together. I was quite bad at it, but it didn’t matter. Because I had given up perfectionism, I didn’t care anymore about impressing people at fencing class or performing perfect fencing moves.

    Instead, I cared about being present with myself in the process and staying open and curious, and focusing on joy.

    I had a blast. I felt free and alive, and something flickered to life inside me that had felt dormant for many years. I felt playful again. And I realized that I had been missing playfulness for many years, and that it was part of what had caused me to become so perfectionistic.

    Playfulness is the attitude we take toward life when we focus on presence and process with attitudes of openness, curiosity, and joy. Perfectionism, on the other hand, makes us focus on performance and product and encourages anxiety, criticalness, and discouragement.

    Fencing helped me rediscover play and leave perfectionism behind.

    I fully embraced my newfound playful attitude. It touched every area of my life, and I hungered for new adventures. I began reconnecting with dreams I had put on hold for a while. Eventually I decided to leave my job as a middle school principal and return to graduate school to earn my PhD in philosophy, a goal I’d had since seventh grade.

    Earning a PhD in philosophy may not seem like a very playful thing to do, but it was for me. For six years, I immersed myself in the ideas of great thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Rousseau, Herbert Marcuse, and Paulo Freire.

    It felt like I was playing on a big, philosophical playground. But I also faced some significant challenges.

    I was thirty-seven when I returned to grad school and was a good ten to fifteen years older than most of my colleagues. Most of them had a B.A. and even an M.A. in philosophy, while I had only taken one philosophy course in college. I had a lot of catching up to do, and I faced some major challenges.

    One of the biggest challenges I faced early on was our program’s comprehensive exams. We had two major exams over thousands of pages of some of the hardest philosophical works ever written. The exams were so difficult that at one point, they had over a fifty percent fail rate. If students didn’t pass them by the third time, the graduate school kicked them out of the program.

    I was determined to pass these comps and spent all my Christmas and summer breaks studying for them for the first several years of graduate school. But I still failed both exams the first time I took them, and I failed my second exam twice.

    It isn’t surprising I failed them, given the high fail rate for the exams and the fact that I was still learning philosophy. But it was painful. I had worked so hard, and I was afraid of getting kicked out of the program.

    I was tempted to revert to my old perfectionist habits because they had once given me a sense of control. But I knew that would lead me down a dead-end road. So, I began applying all the lessons I had learned about playfulness to the comprehensive exams.  

    Rather than focusing on performance and the product, I focused on presence and process. I also focused on practicing habits of openness, curiosity, and joy. Mentally, I compared the comps to shooting an arrow into the bull’s eye of a target. Every test, even if I failed it, was a chance to check my progress, readjust, and get closer to the bull’s eye.

    This turned the comprehensive exams into a game, and it lessened the pain of failing them. It helped me accept failure as a normal part of the process and to congratulate myself every time I made progress, no matter how small it was. This attitude also helped me focus on proactive, constructive steps I could take to do better, like meeting with faculty members or getting tutoring in areas I found especially challenging. (Aristotle’s metaphysics, anyone?)

    I also taught myself to juggle during this time. Juggling not only relieved stress, it was also a playful bodily reminder to me that progress takes time. Nobody juggles perfectly the first time they try. Juggling takes time and patience, and the more we focus on openness, curiosity, and the joy of juggling, the more juggling practice feels like a fun game. 

    I began thinking of passing my comps like juggling, and it helped me be more patient with the process. I eventually mastered the material and passed both my comps.

    Studying for the comps taught me to bring playfulness into all my work in graduate school.

    Whenever I felt stressed out in my program, I reminded myself that perfectionism was a dead-end road, and that playfulness was a much better approach. Doing this helped me relax, be kind to myself, accept failures as part of the learning process, and to take small consistent steps to improve.

    This playful attitude kept me sane and helped me make it to the finish line.

    Playfulness was so helpful for me in graduate school that I have tried to adopt this spirit of playfulness in all areas of my life, including the college classrooms in which I teach. I have noticed that whenever I help students switch from perfectionism to playfulness, they immediately relax, are kinder to themselves, and increase their ability to ask for help.

    I am dedicated now to practicing playfulness every day of my life and to help others do the same. Playfulness isn’t something we must leave behind in childhood. It is an attitude we can bring with us our whole life. When we do so, life becomes an adventure, even during difficult times, and there is always something more to learn, explore, and savor.

  • The Joy and Power of Realizing I Am More Than My Job

    The Joy and Power of Realizing I Am More Than My Job

    “Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.” ~Brené Brown

    “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

    “It’s so nice to meet you. What do you do?”

    These are the questions we are asked our entire life. When we’re children, everyone always asks about the future. They excitedly ask, “What will you do?” The subtext of this questions is:

    “How will you be productive in society? How will you contribute?”

    Being asked those questions all the time as children turned us into the adults that ask them. We are in the same cycle and do not seem to know to ask instead, “Who are you?”

    For a long time, my focus and self-identity was tied up in what I did. I would tell people, “I am a filmmaker.” When I was young, I knew I wanted to make films. I loved to tell stories. “I want to be a movie director!”

    When I grew up and actually got jobs in Hollywood, I realized that most people are not movie directors. Most people are not even filmmakers. They work in film. It takes many people to make one, but only a handful of people get any recognition or able to consider themselves filmmakers.

    “What do you do?” people would ask. I would struggle to figure out how to explain that I was a production assistant who worked on films. I was basically a glorified secretary, a personal assistant. But I was not a filmmaker.

    I worked on other filmmaker’s films. I personally had not made any art or films for over six years. I was so busy and tired of trying to work in the industry I wanted to work in that I forgot about myself.

    When I could no longer define myself as a filmmaker, I became disillusioned. If I wasn’t one, then what was I? People always got excited when I said I worked on movies. Their eyes would light up, and they would pester me with questions about the famous people I knew or inside secrets.

    They never wanted to know how much sleep I missed or how many friends and family events I sacrificed for the bragging rights of Hollywood. They didn’t want to know what excited me about life or who I was. They only wanted to know “what I did.”

    This discontentment grew. I became angrier and angrier at the film industry as a whole. I felt used. Worthless. The world was nothing but egos and money. I would never be them unless I sold myself and played their game.

    I wasn’t willing to play the game, find the back doors, penny pinch, or be downright cruel. I was beginning to see that the industry was soulless. The art and stories were being dictated by companies that wanted to earn as much as possible.

    The stories were not chosen for their value and need in the world, but by which would make the most money. They profited on these stories and off the handwork and sacrifices of the below-the-line workers that were seen as disposable.

    Celebrities made millions, and I made minimum wage, but I didn’t have the luxury of a free jet ride back home and an apartment for my girlfriend. I was reprimanded for refusing to work on a Saturday after only five hours off.

    Slowly, I began to question if this was who I was. If this “works in the film industry” was really. me. And I felt guilty! I felt like I was being ungrateful. I was working on big movies! How could I not be happy? I had “made it.”

    I could only go up from here. I could get to be the next Stephen Spielberg, the next Tarantino, the next Lucas? Then I worked for one of these types of famous guys. He was just a human. He wasn’t the god I held him up to be. He was flawed.

    Sure, he got the adrenaline rush of making art, but at my expense. I was lucky to have my name in the credits. I wasn’t part of the golden ones, the actors and producers who were the “real” movie.

    If I didn’t want to play the “Hollywood” game I could go independent. But I felt guilty that I called myself a filmmaker when I hadn’t made a film in years! I didn’t even have any desire to even come up with one.

    I had friends who were making films on the weekends. They dedicated every free second to it. All I did was sleep. Then drag myself for dinner or a date and pretend I had a social life before I had to be back at work. I felt guilty and afraid that if left the industry I would be seen as a failure.

    I was afraid that I would be seen as weak or people would think that I couldn’t hack it. The more angst I felt, the more I turned to my unhelpful habit of Googling advice.  There is nothing helpful about hours of reddit and self-help blogs. They are all contradictory.

    This Googling, however, led to some articles with actual facts. This is when I started to read about Americans’ tendency to identify with our jobs. Our self-worth and identity are wrapped up in what we do.

    We say things like, “I am a lawyer.” “I am a physicist.” “I am a teacher.” We don’t say, “I practice law.” “I study physics. “I teach.” We put the emphasis on the job and not the I.

    I started the long, tedious process of separating myself, the me, from the filmmaker and the woman who worked in film. I realized that I was uncomfortable calling myself a filmmaker because I wasn’t one.

    I struggled to define my title to other because I didn’t really believe that it was who I was. I am a woman who enjoys movies and stories. More importantly, I am energized by stories.

    Filmmaking was just a job. The intense zealotry aspect of the film industry had always sat wrong with me. Now I know why. I am not a job. I am more than the work I do.

    Through this process I came to slowly accept that I wasn’t happy with the work I was doing. There was a disconnect between it and the way I saw myself in life. I needed to walk away for a bit and allow myself to heal from the harm I and the toxic industry had infected upon my soul.

    It is not just the film industry that is toxic. American work culture is. We have created an environment where work has to be our passion. Confucius said, “Choose a job you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” I disagree. Work is work.

    You might enjoy it, but as long as you are giving your time for money you are participating in a business transaction, and it is work. Just accept it as work and accept that you can be a whole person outside of your job. Your job is only a small sliver of the much larger person.

    Our work culture throws around the phrase “We are like a family.” It is encouraged and suggested that your team members and colleagues are family. They aren’t.

    You can get along with them, be friends with them, but by labeling them as family there is a pressure to feel loyal and not let them down. Our alliances are manipulated to be given first and foremost to work. Any time spend doing something for yourself or your actual family is seen as selfish.

    A year after my last film job I still struggle to see myself outside these identities. I am now enrolled in grad school and I want to label myself as a student. But I am not. I am Dia. I study mythology.

    Sometimes I am a storyteller, but that title does not and cannot encompass the whole and vastness that I am as a person.

    Identifying ourselves by our work is like trying to fill a mug with the ocean. At some point the ocean will overpower the mug, and we will be left wet and feeling bad about ourselves.

    The next time you are at a party, after the pandemic, and you meet someone new, maybe don’t ask, “What do you do?” Instead ask, “Who are you?” Create the space to meet the real, whole person; the person who is vast, deep, and full of wonder for the world.

  • How to Audit Your Life by Asking the Right Questions

    How to Audit Your Life by Asking the Right Questions

    “Don’t let your fear paralyze you. The scariest paths often lead to the most exciting places.” ~Lori Deschene

    I first learned about the concept of focus creating reality in 2004 when I was given William Whitecloud’s book The Magician’s Way.

    The first chapter is about the main character having a magic golf lesson. He learns that when people play golf, most of them think about how to hold the golf club, how to stand, and how to move the club. He calls this the “swing circle” and recounts how golfers often get caught there, rather than just focusing on where they want the ball to go. By shifting their focus, they could shift their results.

    What’s wonderful is that the process is entirely replicable for us all in any situation.

    At the time, I was two years into being an investment property consultant and part of a team of fifteen consultants throughout Australia. I was driving all over the place seeing clients in their homes—mostly evenings—earning just enough to get by, but I certainly wasn’t thriving.

    In fact, I was considered one of the poorest performers. I was working long hours and working hard, and while I believed in what we were doing, I wasn’t really enjoying it that much. So, having read The Magician’s Way, I started to use the ideas to improve my work life.

    I visualized having better meetings with my clients; I imagined my clients going ahead with property solutions I proposed; and my results started to improve.

    But I thought, there has to be more to this. I felt a very strong pull to study these ideas further. So, I decided to attend a course facilitated by The Magicians Way graduates where they taught clients to realize their dreams by connecting with their authentic selves and innate creative spirit.

    One of the things I learned was that we are all intuitive beings. When we tune into our intuitive selves, we become powerful and expansive.

    I discovered that when we give ourselves space to tap into our intuition about what we want, it comes through us from our higher selves. By shifting our focus to what would improve our lives and by using our intuition, we are infinitely more powerful and can create a life we love.

    For the first time, I was truly creating space to see what I wanted in my life from my unlimited self. I realized that I could choose the direction of my future. That I was the creator of my life.

    With this knowledge in hand, for the first time ever, I looked critically at all the different areas of my life to see where I was limiting myself and where I could change the story I had running through my head. I categorized my life into the following areas:

    • Career & Business
    • Finances
    • Relationships
    • Health & Well-being
    • Home
    • Possessions
    • Travel & Adventures
    • Social life
    • Spirituality
    • Giving Back

    To create change, we first need to be aware of our starting point. In order to move forward we must be honest with ourselves about where we are and face into our current situation.

    When I assessed my life I found that, other than my social life, none of the areas were in the shape I wanted them to be.

    Usually, we don’t create change without a reason. Change typically takes place when dissatisfaction arises or when we become aware of wanting a solution to our current problem. Being really clear about what we want to change and understanding where we are in relation to that is crucial.

    So how do we do that? How can we be objective about our current circumstances?

    Most people don’t regularly evaluate all areas of their life and give themselves a reality check. It can be hard to own up to the mediocrity or negativity. But this kind of ‘life audit’ is vital to understanding your current situation so you can then assess how far you are from what it is you desire.

    By creating space to see where each area of your life is, you are creating a starting point for change, for expansion and growth. You are allowing yourself to see what’s working, what isn’t working, and what could be improved.

    This may be confronting to begin with, but the more you allow yourself to go through this process, the more you will create reason and momentum to move forward in creating the life you love.

    A really powerful way to work through this process is to section off the different areas of your life and give yourself a rating out of ten for each—ten being amazing, you couldn’t get any better, and zero meaning that it is nonexistent or lacking.

    Here is an opportunity to go deeper with each area of your life and give those areas an honest rating so you will have a starting point for change.

    Relationships

    Let’s use an example. You might have given your romantic relationship a low rating. Start with what you feel is lacking from your relationship and partner.

    Some examples could be:

    • We fight too much
    • The passion is gone
    • We don’t spend enough time together
    • They don’t respect me
    • I feel like I am being controlled
    • We don’t have fun together

    Then flip it around. What are you, or aren’t you, contributing to the relationship?

    • I lose my patience with them
    • I don’t give them respect
    • I get angry with them
    • I feel like I want to control them
    • I don’t instigate quality time together

    The more you can analyze how and if you value your relationship, the more you can take responsibility. So, the more you own up to where you are, the more you are able to create change. Focus on yourself first: How am I behaving? How am I responding? Then ask yourself: What can I do differently to help create the kind of relationship I want?

    And since there are two people in your relationship, you’ll also need to ask yourself: What would I like my partner to do differently? How can I communicate that without attacking?

    Finances

    How do you rate your finances? Most of us have blocks around money and money flow, usually because of the beliefs our parents have instilled in us. Unless we are clear on where our finances currently are, how can we change it?

    Ask yourself why you rated your finances as you did:

    • Do I have enough money?
    • Do I just make ends meet?
    • I am in debt?
    • Do I fight about money with my partner?

    Knowing your numbers is crucial. Most people don’t have any idea what their financial position is. Remember, it’s impossible to move forward without knowing where you are right now. I review my full financial position three times a year—at the beginning of the calendar year, the end of financial year, and when I do my taxes.

    After you get clear on your numbers, ask yourself the following questions to ascertain how you can improve your financial situation:

    • Am I living beyond my means?
    • Am I trying to fill an emotional void through buying things?
    • What can I scale back on in order to save more money?
    • How can I increase my earning potential, if not immediately, in the future?

    Health & Well-Being

    List out the reasons you rated your health and well-being as you did.

    Maybe you are telling yourself:

    • I’m unfit
    • I feel overweight
    • I am not exercising enough
    • I eat junk food
    • I drink too much

    You might bring awareness to what you’re consuming each day. Are you conscious of what’s going into your body or are you unconsciously consuming food and drink? Now it’s time to consider your movement. Do you take regular walks? Are you going to the gym or participating in sports?

    Career or Business

    How do you rate this area of your life?

    Consider these questions:

    • Do you love what you do? If so, why? If not, why not?
    • If you do love what you do, what areas are there for improvement?
    • Are you clear on why you do what you do?
    • What is the why?
    • Do you feel energized by what you do, or does it deplete you of energy?
    • Does your work align with your values?
    • Do you enjoy working with your colleagues?
    • Are you happy with your marketing and reach?
    • How is your time management?

    Most of our waking hours are at work, regardless of whether we work for someone else or ourselves. So, if you are not enjoying what you do, that means you are spending most of your waking hours doing what you don’t want to do.

    Of course, it isn’t easy to change careers, but the first step is acknowledging your dissatisfaction and getting clear on what might be more fulfilling, and why.

    Knowledge & Learning

    Are you expanding? Are you learning new things and trying out new experiences?

    Ask yourself:

    • Am I closed off to new ideas?
    • Do I have an open mind, or am I relying on what I already know?
    • Do I proactively seek new knowledge for my career or business, or do I only seek new knowledge for fun?
    • When was the last time I actively sought out a situation where I could learn something new and expand my horizons?

    Travel & Adventures

    Ask yourself:

    • Am I giving myself space to travel, to see new things, and to have adventures?
    • Do I even know what’s out there?
    • When did I last go somewhere on a whim?
    • If I can’t afford to travel, how could I be more adventurous in my daily live?
    • How can I be a “tourist” in my own area—what could I see, do, and explore?

    Home

    Ask yourself:

    • Do I love where I live?
    • Is my house a home?
    • Do I feel comfortable, safe, and happy in my home?
    • Is my home a sanctuary?
    • Do I love the city, the suburb, or even the country I live in?
    • Do I enjoy inviting people to my home, or am I embarrassed by it?
    • Do my friends and family feel comfortable in my home?

    If you don’t love where you live, you may be able to change that easily, or you may need to work toward the long-term goal of moving somewhere new. But it might just be a matter of making changes in your environment—decluttering, infusing your home with your personality, or keeping work out of certain areas to make your home more relaxing.

    Spirituality

    How do you rate this part of your life? Did you even give it a rating? It’s an area that is often neglected. I know when I started my personal growth journey, I considered my spirituality non-existent.

    Spirituality doesn’t necessarily mean organized religion—it’s whatever it means for you. Simply take time to consider how your spirituality is being nurtured—or not—and what it could mean for you if you positively changed this aspect of your life. Ask yourself:

    • Am I part of a spiritual community, and if not, would I like to be?
    • Do I allow myself time to connect with nature?
    • Do I make time for spiritual practices that renew my spirit?
    • What does spiritual self-care mean to me?

    Giving Back

    Giving back isn’t just giving gifts or donating money or time, it’s also about how much you give yourself; how much you give in service to others, your community, or the environment. It’s also about how well you think of others, your community, or the environment as well as our actions.

    Ask yourself:

    • Do I give as much to myself as I give to others?
    • Is there a balance of giving and receiving in my life?
    • How am I serving my loved ones, my community, and the planet?
    • How do I want to give back, and why?

    Final Thoughts

    Now that you’ve reviewed your current reality you might feel a little uncomfortable. This is a good thing and should be embraced. As I said, facing into where you are is so important, as it represents the starting point from which you can grow. It’s this truth that will set you free. Well done for going there.

    You may also feel a little overwhelmed if you’ve recognized you’re dissatisfied with multiple areas of your life. That’s okay. You don’t need to change everything all at once, or even any time soon. You can start with the one area that feels most pressing and identify one tiny step to create positive change. Then from there, you can take another step. And another until you feel more satisfied in that area of your life and ready to focus on another.

    When I first did this exercise, I realized I didn’t want to continue the way I was living and I wanted things to look different. I knew then that I had a choice. We are at choice all the time.

    By owning up to where you are, you’re already moving forward into your vision. You can now begin to really shift your focus on what you want to change—and then start taking action.

  • How Redundancy Can Be a Blessing in Disguise

    How Redundancy Can Be a Blessing in Disguise

    “If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done.” ~Thomas Jefferson

    To most people, redundancy is a dreaded word.

    It conjures up thoughts of hardship, of scarcity, and of struggling to make ends meet.

    I have twice been made redundant, and at both times, it was difficult to accept.

    Throughout the redundancy process, and for some time afterward, my emotions were all over the place, making it difficult for me to think straight.

    But I’ve discovered that when we’re able to look back, we can sometimes see that redundancy might not have been the worst thing that could have happened to us.

    Redundancy: Was it A Blessing in Disguise?

    The first time I was made redundant occurred when my employer failed to hang on to our most profitable contract. Losing it resulted in my team and me transferring to the contractor that had outbid us.

    Regrettably, my new employer didn’t need another senior manager. So after just a week, they terminated my employment.

    I felt angry and upset.

    I fought back.

    But the truth is, at that point, I needed a break from work.

    My wife of thirty-five years was terminally ill.

    Redundancy meant that for her last few weeks, I could take care of her, 24/7.

    After her passing, I continued to fight the employer until we settled.

    However, I soon realized that grief would have made it impossible for me to perform to my usual high standards.

    My wife often said that everything happens for a reason.

    And I came to see that, in some circumstances, even redundancy can be a blessing. A blessing in disguise but a blessing, nonetheless.

    Six months later, I started a new job.

    Redundancy: Reason Gives Way to Emotional Turmoil

    My second redundancy was due to organizational restructuring.

    I was leading a multidisciplinary team in a national organization, but restructuring meant there were now fewer teams than managers, so my job was at risk.

    I had several new projects underway, and it seemed to me that a change of leadership at that point was untimely and potentially damaging.

    But that didn’t seem to count for much.

    Despite my indisputable performance, I was made redundant.

    Again, I felt aggrieved, upset, betrayed and angry.

    Compared with voluntarily walking out on a job without another one to go to (as I have done several times), being made redundant feels very personal, which it seldom is. And, in my case, feelings of helplessness, and loss of control, made me want to fight back.

    I’ve seen staff display similar emotions when, as their manager, I’ve led them through redundancy consultations. I always tried to soften the blow by pointing out that it’s the post, not the post-holder, that is being made redundant.

    But when we’re on the receiving end of bad news, we’re unable to comprehend the difference; our minds churn with negative and frightening thoughts.

    Restructure: Redundancy and Reluctant Retirement

    By now you’re probably thinking, this guy has anger management issues. I assure you, I don’t. I am usually an easy-going person, but for some reason, the thought of redundancy brought out the worst in me.

    I guess it’s the fight-or-flight response.

    But this time I didn’t fight.

    Even though I dreaded being jobless, I wanted to get on with my life.

    I was beyond state retirement age, but I felt too young to retire.

    • I was in good health and still had a lot to give.
    • I had been working for more than fifty years and couldn’t imagine life without a job.

    In time, I came to recognize this redundancy as a blessing too: the organization’s values were drifting further apart from mine. If I hadn’t left at that point, it wouldn’t have been long before I left by choice. At least, with redundancy, they paid me to go.

    Redundant? Stop the Panic! Reflect and Regroup

    Bereft of my job, I immediately started applying for new positions.

    I applied for two jobs and received an interview for both.

    I felt good: two interviews from just two applications!

    Here was proof that employers were looking for someone like me, with high-level qualifications, skills, and experience. All I had to do was play the numbers game, keep submitting job applications, and sooner or later the right job would be mine.

    The interviews went well—or so I thought.

    I didn’t get either job.

    But instead of being disappointed, I felt such a deep sense of relief that I just knew I needed to think seriously about why I felt that way.

    That was a turning point.

    Gone was the panic of not having a job; I was thinking clearly.

    I decided that if I worked at all, it would be for myself, on my terms.

    So, I stopped searching through job ads and binned my CV.

    Now I could spend time with my pre-schooler grandchildren: another blessing.

    I felt free.

    Redundancy: Impact on Self-esteem and Self-belief

    If your job is at risk, you might think me naive to suggest that redundancy can be a blessing.

    That’s a fair point: I am not commenting on redundancy in general, only on personal experience, and even then, with the benefit of hindsight.

    Your experience is unlikely to mirror mine, and your circumstances will be substantially different. Nevertheless, I’ve tried to be open and honest about my feelings to show you that:

    • Redundancy can evoke intense emotions which are likely to cloud our judgment;
    • Acknowledging and embracing our feelings is better than burying them, or pretending we’re okay when we’re not;
    • We are more likely to feel differently, and to see the best way forward when we are thinking clearly.

    When we’re in a state of shock, our self-esteem suffers, and self-belief goes through the floor. Which probably explains why I immediately started looking for another job. Maybe subconsciously I was trying to prove to myself, and the world, that I still have what it takes to be successful.

    However, once my mind quietened, I could think more rationally.

    I decided to deliberately explore opportunities for which I had little or no knowledge or experience, options that would push me well beyond my comfort zone.  And for that, I needed to learn new skills, which I have done, and continue to do.

    Redundancy: A Chance to Chase Our Dreams

    I acknowledge that not everyone is in a position where they can choose not to seek paid employment, and I’m certainly not advocating it.

    But, regardless of our differing circumstances, redundancy provides time for reflection, time that we might not otherwise have, and which we could put to good use.

    Some of us are so busy that we never stop to wonder if what we’re doing is what we truly want.

    Others might knowingly be sacrificing their dreams rather than risk not having a steady income.

    In either case, it’s good to stop occasionally to think about what types of work would give us the most satisfaction and fulfillment.

    As Thomas Jefferson said, “If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done.”

    I don’t have many regrets, but I wish I’d pursued some of the things I’m doing now, much earlier. Because I’m discovering that careers like writing and coaching would have been possible even when holding down a demanding job.

    To conclude:

    There’s so much about redundancy that I still don’t like.

    But I did like being given the time in which to think.

    And I saw that I had a choice.

    I could see redundancy either as a disaster or a blessing: I chose the latter.

  • What You Need to Hear If You Work Yourself to the Bone

    What You Need to Hear If You Work Yourself to the Bone

    “Quiet the voice telling you to do more and be more, and trust that in this moment, who you are, where you are at, and what you are doing is enough. You will get to where you need to be in your own time. Until then, breathe. Breathe and be patient with yourself and your process. You are doing the best you can to cope and survive amid your struggles, and that’s all you can ask of yourself. It’s enough. You are enough.” ~Daniell Koepke

    A couple years ago, a colleague of mine died from overwork.

    In the days leading up to the event, everything was normal. Everyone was working and getting things done. Things were hectic, but there was nothing out of the ordinary with sixty- to eighty-hour workweeks.

    Then one day, she said that she wasn’t feeling well. She disappeared from her desk and checked into a hospital. A few days later, she passed away.

    Sometime later, the hospital determined the cause of death. She had been suffering from heart problems, which had been caused from working long hours. She was in her late twenties.

    When people heard about it, there were widespread feelings of loss and sadness. But there was also another feeling: shock. Death from overwork?

    It’s one of those things you hear about in the news, or somewhere far away. But to hear about it firsthand from someone you knew? It struck home.

    Then I got to thinking: Was I working too many hours? What if I was pushing myself too hard and didn’t realize it? What if the things that I considered normal weren’t normal at all?

    Being surrounded by people with high aspirations gives you certain conceptions of how things “should” be. Yet after the incident, I started to see work in a different light.

    Like so many others, I previously thought pulling long hours was a point of pride. People would brag about how much they work they did on a given week. Feeling exhausted, drained, and stressed were part of the routine.

    That is, until something drastic happens to shatter that belief.

    Lately, I’ve been practicing self-care more and more. I’ve started to value the importance of stopping once in awhile and enjoying the scenery, rather than always rushing forward to the next spot.

    If you’re exhausted from constantly pushing yourself, perhaps these lessons I’ve learned can be valuable to you as well.

    1. Schedule in regular “me” time.

    Someone I know has a “no work” policy on the weekends. That means no emails, no working on projects, no meetings until Monday. To emphasize how strongly he believes in this policy, he expects the same from his employees as well.

    When I heard this, I was skeptical. How could someone get things done if they simply went off the grid like that? I had always equated working longer hours with better results.

    And yet, he said that ever since he dedicated weekends to himself, he is happier, more productive, and more energized overall. Plus, he gets more time to spend with family and pursue his own hobbies.

    So I decided to try it. I scheduled in time dedicated to myself. That meant I could take a walk, watch a show, or whatever, as long as I wasn’t working.

    Setting aside rest periods meant I was forced to get work done during my designated work periods. It took a while to get used to, I admit. But eventually, I started feeling more focused when I was working and more peaceful when I was resting.

    Now, you might not be able to take the whole weekend off or choose your work schedule. Still, you can set aside time for yourself. Try dedicating one hour on a given day to do anything you want.

    You might be surprised at how refreshed you feel afterward.

    2. “No” can be the best answer.

    When someone asks you to do them a favor, how do you respond? Do you dive in, ready to help? Or do you take a step back and evaluate what to do?

    Whenever anyone asked me for assistance, I would feel obligated to help. If I didn’t give the person some of my time, I would feel guilty and think I was a bad person. Even if the person didn’t really expect my help in the first place, I would still feel as if I should have done something, somehow.

    But I’ve gradually realized that it’s okay to say “no.” I can’t agree to every single request or help everyone who asks for it. I only have a limited amount of time and energy, so I have to choose how to spend it.

    Of course, we all have obligations that we need to fulfill, even if we don’t feel like it. Certain people in our lives rely on us. For instance, I need to answer an email from a client, or you might need to pick up your child after school.

    At the same time, you don’t need to carry the world on your shoulders. Declining an invitation or a request doesn’t make you a bad person. It simply means you’re spending your time on the things that matter most.

    3. You deserve a rest.

    For the longest time, I was hesitant about taking holidays because it meant I wasn’t working. And if I wasn’t working, I wasn’t making progress. I felt the need to simply keep going.

    However, I have since found that those periods of rest can be periods of immense growth. When I step away from my regular routine, it gives me the opportunity to try new things and explore. It enables me to see new ideas that I can integrate into my work and life.

    For instance, traveling has shown me there’s more than one way to live and be happy. While many spend their lives running to the next big thing, many more choose to make the most of what’s around them.

    It can be addictive to run yourself ragged, I know. Your heart beats faster, you feel the thrill of a rush, and your brain feels like it’s about to burst with all your ideas and plans. You’re constantly going, going, going, with no stop to it.

    But chasing that feeling is also damaging your health in the long run.

    If your head is hurting or you feel tired, take a rest. You are not lazy for needing a break. It’s your body’s way of telling you that it’s been running at full speed for far too long.

    Listen to your body.

    —

    It’s not a waste of time to pause work.

    I’ve been trying to balance out that desire to keep pushing forward, while stopping to soak in all the good things around me right now. It isn’t always easy, but I’ve been making it a point to dedicate some time to myself regularly.

    I hope that you have been achieving things that you’ve been working on. But I also hope that you’re taking care of yourself and taking a moment to appreciate all that you’ve achieved already.

    When you stop and look around, your surroundings come into clearer focus.

  • Lost Your Job? Here Are 4 Things That Might Help

    Lost Your Job? Here Are 4 Things That Might Help

    EDITOR’S NOTE: You can find a number of helpful coronavirus resources and all related Tiny Buddha articles here.

    “Life isn’t always fair. Some people are born into better environments. Some people have better genetics. Some are in the right place at the right time. If you’re trying to change your life, all of this is irrelevant. All that matters is that you accept where you are, figure out where you want to be, and then do what you can, today and every day, to hold your head high and keep moving forward.” ~Lori Deschene

    Like millions of people these days, I have lost my job. But unlike millions of people, I’ve now lost the same job twice within a year. Which, strangely, makes me feel somewhat prepared for it. And that’s why I’d like to share with you how I dealt with the situation then, and how I’m dealing with it now. 

    I learned I was being made redundant the first time on March 26, 2019, and this time on the  March 26, 2020, both times due to a “lack of business.” The law in Sweden says the last ones to join a company should be the first ones out, and I happened to be one of the last ones in.

    After being let go the first time—having an uncertain future in front of me and dealing with feelings of unworthiness, lack of direction, and grief—I was told I would be rehired a couple months later due to an increase in the volume of business. 

    What a relief. After all that inner turmoil, I was considered worthy again and welcomed back. Back to a life that I knew well, that I would return to refreshed, after having had a break from it—and having been “on the other side,” looking at what I’d lost, now appreciative for what I’d regained. Not a perspective many have had. 

    It felt like a rollercoaster of an experience that made me braver in the face of abysses. I began to stare down from the top realizing that if I’d felt pushed to it again, I’d eventually fly. Being laid off, after all, was not a fatal fall. Not even a failure. It was a test for my wings. 

    You can have many different reactions to being laid off, depending on how much you like your job, how much you depend on it, and how much you have invested in it. I believe that for most of us there’s a bitter feeling, a sense of betrayal and failure. That after you have dedicated yourself to your company’s mission, day after day, hour after hour, you are suddenly seen as disposable, unworthy. 

    And it’s a strange thing, that even for those who didn’t enjoy their job, there’s a certain nostalgia when they think that they won’t be returning to that place again, and won’t meet the people they used to despise seeing on Monday mornings. 

    Pretty much like one of those breakups when all of a sudden, the person you hated when you broke up, turns into a person you can’t live without.

    That wasn’t the case for me when I got laid off. I enjoyed my job and wasn’t happy about the news. 

    However, I have done enough personal development work to help me to take what happens in my life with a grain of salt, and just enough distance to handle the situation gracefully. That’s why I want to share my perspective with you.

    Here are some of the thoughts that have helped me through being laid off, both times.  

    My job is not my life.

    I have always strived to create a routine that would remind me that my job is a part of my life, but not my entire life. 

    It’s easy to get immersed in all that’s happening at work—all the personal dynamics, all the challenges, victories, projects, meetings, trips, etc.—to such a deep level that we perceive our work as our entire life. After all, many times work is what we do, what we talk and think about, the whole day, every day.

    But I noticed that every time I would feel most frustrated with work, I was doing precisely that: looking at work as if it was my entire life. And if things were not going well at work, I’d feel as if my whole life wasn’t going well. Every time I put things in perspective and saw work as just one part of my life, my frustrations would soften.

    At the moment, after being laid off, this kind of strategy is absolutely essential. We need to see our employment as one part of our life (an essential one, of course), and we need to see what our lives are beyond our job. Now is the perfect opportunity to see what’s there, beyond that big chunk of time and energy we call work. 

    And if you feel like nothing is left, pay more attention. Who do you have around you? What are the things that interest you the most? What are the things that you’re happy to do even without a paycheck? And what gives you some pleasure or relief when you’re feeling down? This is a time to pay attention to yourself and discover who you are under the veil of old routines.

    My career doesn’t define me.

    To a certain extent, you might feel your career defines you, especially if you feel that your job defines your life, or if you have spent most of your life building a career that aligns with your interests. However, the status of your career doesn’t make you a better or worse person, or a more or less valuable person to society. And this is a crucial point to take in.

    Losing our job might make us feel that we’re no longer useful in the community, and that can give a deep sense of unworthiness. But, how the world is being shaped right now, hopefully, we’ll return to work that is more conscious, relevant, and less harmful to all. 

    If you feel like you lost your sense of identity when you lost your job, work on finding your identity in this crisis. Aren’t these the times that truly define us? How we deal with uncertainty and tough times?

    It’s okay to grieve.

    With so much advice on positivity everywhere, it’s not surprising that we feel bad for feeling blue or lacking energy and patience, and we think we should somehow be instantly productive. When we’re struggling, it’s helpful to stop and ask: Is it reasonable what I’m demanding of myself? Is it reasonable today? Can I take a break? Can I be a little kinder? 

    No matter how well you take losing your job, you’re still going through a massive life change. The people you used to meet, the places you used to go, and what you used to do every day will all change. That’s massive. So it’s okay to grieve that loss. Give yourself space to experience the pain, without judgment and unrealistic expectations.

    The unknown is the birthplace of possibility.

    Every time I took a leap of faith in my life, I was met with both tough times and gratifying achievements. And life has always felt sweeter in the face of those setbacks and victories because it was then I felt truly alive.

    Sure, it’s great, and necessary, to have security in life, but our true nature is wired for uncertainty. In reality, every morning, no one knows what the day will hold. You might fall in love that day or lose a loved one. You might be promoted, or maybe lose your job. That’s the nature of life, unpredictable. But it’s also that unpredictability that holds space for great things to happen. Or else, why would you buy a lottery ticket, take a trip to an exotic place, or start a new relationship with a stranger you fell in love with?

    Can we rewire our thinking to see this tough time through the lens of possibility? I believe so. 

    We just have to have faith in the unknown and be patient and kind to ourselves. We can believe the world is ending, or we can believe the world is transforming. We can cry because we have lost our job or smile because we have gained an opportunity.  

    After all, the universe is always hiring, and you’re only a short time away from being rehired. 

  • What to Do If You Want More Purpose, Passion, and Meaning

    What to Do If You Want More Purpose, Passion, and Meaning

    “I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.” ~Joseph Campbell

    Do you ever feel like there’s got to be more to life? More purpose, passion, meaning—whatever your word of choice is?

    It’s happened to me twice. The first time was during the early years of my legal career, and the second time was just a few years ago (after battling an aggressive breast cancer).

    Each time I craved more meaning, yet these two experiences couldn’t have been more different.

    When it happened to me as a young lawyer, I didn’t know what to do.

    I’d wanted to be a lawyer since I was ten years old, and there was purpose behind the choices I’d made up to that point. Decisions that had gotten me where I was, such as:

    1. Majoring in economics (with a business minor) in college because I wanted to be a business lawyer, and
    2. Choosing corporate finance law because my ability to quickly see patterns and solutions was beneficial to structuring deals.

    In the early days of my career, I had a deep sense of fulfillment. But over a period of four years, that gradually changed.

    I didn’t realize how bad it was until the morning I stepped off the office elevator and suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was having a panic attack.

    I walked to my office, shut the door, and cried. That’s when I admitted to myself that I felt trapped in a purpose-less life that I’d worked hard to create.

    And that brought questions such as: How could I have once felt passionate about this life? Had I been wrong? If not, what had changed?

    After allowing my self-doubt to paralyze me from doing anything for a few months, I finally decided to do something about it.

    I wrote down a laundry list of things that I didn’t like about my life, which included:

    • Regularly working eighty-plus hours per week (for over a year)
    • Averaging only five hours of sleep per night
    • Feeling like I was easily replaceable and wasn’t making enough of an impact in the work I did
    • Not having spent meaningful time with friends in over a year
    • A wandering mind that was almost never present
    • Snapping at my husband (a lot!) for no real reason and being sour with peers who interrupted my work

    My list of woes was embarrassing, and I didn’t like who I was becoming. But it provided me with a roadmap for how to fix my problems. Moreover, it helped me recognize what purpose really is.

    Up until that point, I’d been looking externally for solutions and thought that I needed to find my true calling.

    The idea that purpose comes from one thing is a myth. And so is the idea that you find your purpose. You don’t find it; you create purpose in life by:

    • using your strengths to make an impact (in an enjoyable way),
    • aligning your life around your core values, and
    • having a sense of belonging.

    Let’s talk about what these mean and how I course corrected in each area.

    1. Utilizing your strengths to make an impact (in a way that’s enjoyable)

    Most people understand that purpose comes (at least partially) from making an impact. But there’s more to it than that.

    If you want to make an impact that’s meaningful, then you need to utilize your skills to the best of your ability (and that requires that you enjoy what you’re doing). That’s how you get and stay motivated.

    My problem was that I felt like my strengths weren’t being fully utilized in the work I was doing—and that I was stuck in the same role, stagnating.

    So, I asked to do more and sought out work from new people. Eventually, I changed firms to work in a different area of corporate finance that was better suited to my abilities.

    2. Aligning your life around your core values

    Core values are principles that make you uniquely you. They affect how you see the world around you and how you make decisions (even if you’re not consciously aware of it).

    When your life doesn’t align with your values, you’ll feel like something’s missing.

    One of the biggest reasons I was so unhappy was because I wasn’t living according to several of my core values. One of my values is family—not only was I not spending much time with them, but I wasn’t exactly present when I did.

    Another one of my values is to connect (which, for me, means connecting deeply with those around me and to stay connected with myself). My quest to do more and work harder make that almost impossible.

    I felt disconnected from family, friends, and peers alike. And my lack of sleep and high stress made it difficult to understand my own thoughts and emotions.

    To fix this, I first set work boundaries and reduced my workload.  Then, I prioritized self-care and time with family and friends.

    3. Feeling that you belong

    Having a sense of belonging is key to happiness. It brings meaning to your life.

    Belonging includes feeling needed, accepted, and loved. To have a sense of belonging requires active effort on your part. It requires that you seek to connect with other people that give you a sense of belonging.

    Unfortunately, the way in which we live often disconnects us from one another. We choose technology over in-person contact and hurry through life to get to the next thing.

    That’s what I had been doing. I was disconnected from those who had always understood me, and even worried that they wouldn’t understand what I was going through. But how could they when I rarely saw or talked to them?

    Luckily, this was fixable—the things I was already doing to better connect with family and friends helped to increase my sense of belonging. Plus, I rejoined organizations that I’d previously been too busy for (and missed).

    This experience gave me a blueprint to follow for life.

    One that helped me figure out why I craved more meaning in life after battling breast cancer (turns out that how I defined one of my core values—service—had changed). But the second time was different because I was confident that I could figure it out.

    It’s easy to get caught up in society’s expectations while climbing the ladder of success that’s set before you. Don’t let that happen, as you’ll likely lose yourself.

    Instead, use the blueprint above to help you create a life that’s meaningful to you.

  • How to Move Forward When You’re Out of Work and Feeling Lost

    How to Move Forward When You’re Out of Work and Feeling Lost

    “My attitude has always been, if you fall flat on your face, at least you’re moving forward. All you have to do is get back up and try again.” ~Richard Branson

    Let’s face it, losing a job sucks! Over the last couple of months, I have been chatting with friends who have recently been affected by organizational changes resulting in being out of work involuntarily. This is a situation all too familiar to millions of people, frequently through no fault of their own. Often it’s a result of an economic downturn, restructuring, acquisitions, and cost savings.

    A couple of years ago, while I was on a business trip, I found out my role would be coming to an end. It wasn’t completely unexpected, and I was actually relieved. However, as an expat it was overwhelming.

    Would I have to move back to my home country? Would I have to leave the place where I’d started to build a life? What about my volunteer commitments? This and so much more spun around my head.

    Thank goodness for re-runs of How I Met Your Mother. Upon finding out the news, I spent hours obsessed with the saga of Ted and Robin while indulging in cookies and ice cream. After a few days, (and before my jeans got too tight), I picked myself up and started moving forward. I was reminded of some valuable lessons along the way.

    Feel the feels.

    Likely you will experience a range of feelings. Allow yourself to sit in it. You may find yourself grieving. This is natural; after all, something that was a significant part of your life has come to an end.

    Elisabeth Kubler-Ross made famous the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Recognizing these stages can help with the coping process.

    Breathe. Do yoga. Meditate. Write in a journal. Create a vision board. This will help ground and center you and soon enough, you will start having clarity about how to move forward.

    Your tribe will always be your tribe.

    Connect with friends and family. Let people know what’s going on. Your tribe will rally and embrace you no matter where in the world they are—or you are. They will love you, encourage you, help you, and still think you’re great, even when you don’t. They will drag you out of the house, drink a cup of tea with you over a video call, and make sure you get to that yoga class. As tough as it is, talking about it helps.

    Ask for help.

    As a fairly independent person, I find asking for help uncomfortable. In the spirit of “be comfortable with being uncomfortable,” I reached out to my network and asked for help.

    One particular situation will always stick with me: I called someone I’d met at an event and told him the news. He asked me to call him back the following week so he could think about suitable connections. Sure enough, the next week, he was ready with a list of ten people that would be valuable to connect with. This blew my mind. He spent time in the following weeks crafting up personalized emails and making introductions. This was a reminder of the human spirit. People want to help—ask!

    Create a routine.

     Not having to wake up and be somewhere messed with my routine. Having a routine can help anchor us, while providing structure, building good habits, and creating efficiency.

    I found it helpful to design a new routine.

    I woke up at the same time every morning, did an hour of physical activity, meditated, and created a to-do list for the day.

    I found a neighborhood coffee shop that became my “office.” When I was not out meeting someone, I would go to the coffee shop and work on applications, networking requests, learning modules, goals, and volunteer projects.

    I ended my “work day” around the same time daily and would have an evening activity lined up. This helped me have structure, kept my mind engaged, and ensured I was making connections.

    Set goals.

    When a job loss hits, it is easy to feel as though your purpose has been lost too. A way to counter this is to set goals and reflect.

    Setting goals helps provide clarity and gives focus, motivation, and accountabilities. Examples of goals could be setting up a meeting or two per week, fixing up your CV, applying to two jobs weekly, or getting involved in volunteer work.

    Goals give you something to work toward, and at the end of the week you can take stock of what you’ve completed and feel a sense of accomplishment. Taking the time to reflect allows you to see your progress and be grateful for the support you have received, and it also gives you something to build on.

    Create a personal board of directors (PBOD). 

    This was a concept introduced to me a few years ago by one of the members of my own PBOD. They’re a trusted group of people who you can turn to for advice, who will share helpful resources and offer different viewpoints.

    As Lisa Barrington explains in her article, Everyone Needs A Personal Board Of Directors, “Your PBOD exists to act as a sounding board, to advise you and to provide you with feedback on your life decisions, opportunities, and challenges. They provide you with unfiltered feedback that you can’t necessarily get from colleagues or friends.”

    Companies are careful to select their board of directors, and you should be too. Some roles you may want to consider are: an accountability partner, someone who will ask the tough questions, one of your biggest fans, a connector, and a mentor.

    Your PBOD does not have to meet all together. You just have to stay connected to all of them regularly. I speak with at least one member of my PBOD weekly. It helps keep me on track and provides pushes me to think differently.

    Play.

    This can be a time filled with high highs and low lows. Take time to play. Laughter and play release endorphins in the brain. As stated on NPR’s podcast All Things Considered, adults play for many important reasons: building community, keeping the mind sharp, and keeping close the ones you love.

    Explore the city you’re in—check out all of the free things you can do. Spend time outside. Go on a vacation for a few days. It can help you gain perspective and reconnect you to what’s important.

    According to Dr. Stuart Brown, Founder of National Institute for Play, “What you begin to see when there’s major play deprivation in an otherwise competent adult is that they’re not much fun to be around.” Put yourself out there. Talk to strangers. Say yes. Have adventures.

    Celebrate.

    Yes, this sounds counterintuitive. You’re walking into the unknown, what’s there to celebrate?

    It’s not every day you get to put life on pause and recalibrate. Be grateful for the downtime. Think of this time as a gift. Be thankful for the experiences the job gave you. Celebrate the success and the struggles. Embrace the lessons—you will take these with you as you move forward. Be thankful for the relationships you formed and the people who helped you and will help you.

    While this period in life may sting, remember, it’s temporary.

    Take this opportunity to hit the pause button, reflect on what’s important, renew and build your network, and set new goals.

    Trust the process—this journey will add a richness to your life, give you empathy, and will build your resilience. The turbulence might shake you, but space is being created for new opportunities, and chances are it will work out better than you thought. Keep moving forward and enjoy all that this time will bring.

  • The Beauty of Doing Nothing: Why I’ve Embraced Being Unproductive

    The Beauty of Doing Nothing: Why I’ve Embraced Being Unproductive

    “Every good cause is worth some inefficiency.” ~Paul Samuelson

    I made a mess yesterday. The mess is still there. Who knows when the mess will disappear.

    The mess provided me with one of those sense-pleasing plates of food that lingers in the mind long after the last bite. The kind that makes you wonder if there is a rhyme and reason to our world after all. A plate of food so delectable it provided a raison for my être. (If only for a little while.)

    But this story is not about the art of nourishing oneself. It is about dirty dishes and unfolded laundry. And also a little about unfulfilled potential and the beauty of living in the maybe.

    You see, I have been living rather inefficiently lately. To-do lists have been decorating the inside of my recycling bin. I’ve been measuring my progress by the amount of naps taken, and I have forgone the opportunity to expand my productivity. Because productivity requires focused effort. And lately, effort has been spilling left and right, wasted a little here and a little there.

    I’ve consciously decided to use my time frivolously, dipping in and out of idleness like a bag of crispy treats.

    This newfound way of organizing my days still feels very fresh and raw to me. It comes after years of optimizing every aspect of my life. Formerly, I neatly arranged my life into one-hour timeslots in an attempt to mold a perfect career, body, and even perfect relationships. I tracked my success with a meticulous timesheet. And success I had (or so I thought).

    I was ticking off one accomplishment after the other and always strived to be, do, and have more. Although strenuous, the method worked. Until one day, it didn’t.

    About two years ago I woke up and nothing worked anymore. My body had decided to no longer cooperate with my frantic behavior. It had simply been worked too hard for too long, and it had nothing left to give.

    Stubborn as I was, I treated my worn-out body like a new project. I took every vitamin in the book, quit sugar, quit gluten—basically quite everything tasty—did #yogaeverydamnday, went on social media detoxes, and hopped from one alternative healer to the next.

    Nothing helped, and I became increasingly desperate. I had developed stubborn back pains, anxiety-inducing tinnitus, and crippling insomnia. My concoction of remedies did pretty much nothing for me. My will to live plummeted with each misshapen step to health.

    And then a little (and at the same time big) miracle happened.

    I decided to simply let go. I surrendered to the sleepy eyes and the fuzzy brain and the profound, yet inexplicable sadness inside of me. I let go of trying to make it go away.

    I tossed my strict diet and exercise regimes in the bin. I didn’t meditate anymore at times when I would rather sleep, or spend money on health practitioners at times when I would rather spend money on a movie ticket.

    I simply let go and accepted my current reality. I gave in to the impermanence of life and accepted that I could no longer do what I was once able to do. In return, I have received a gloriously inefficient approach to life and a deep sense of the present moment.

    Let me illustrate what this means with a typical Saturday in my current life:

    6.30 AM – I wake up in accordance with my natural body clock. I vow to no longer wake up so early on weekends.

    9.00 AM – I am still in bed.

    9.15 AM – I get up and make myself a simple porridge. I proceed to eat this for the next hour and a half. The porridge gets cold halfway through. I vow to eat a little quicker next time.

    11.45 AM – I proceed to alternate between reading my book and dosing off for short periods of time.

    2.00 PM – I have a short lunch and contrast this with a long stroll in the park afterward.

    4:00 PM – I make an attempt to write, but mainly just stare at a blank piece of paper. I vow to stare at a blank piece of paper more often.

    5 PM – I start preparing a meal. I don’t use a recipe, but the dish is surprisingly tasty. I vow to use fewer recipes going forward.

    7.00 PM – I pick up my book but decide to do a mindful stretch instead.

    9.00 PM – I wanted to do a meditation before bed, but the stretching has lulled me into a sleep-like state. After a day of doing nothing much at all—especially not the dishes—I go to bed early.

    I vow to do the dishes tomorrow. Or perhaps the day after tomorrow. (I have no intention of keeping any of my vows.)

    I know there are still so many runs to be ran, works to be worked on, and loves to be loved.

    But lately all the runs and the works and the loves have had to wait. Wait in order to make room for all the nothings I have been neglecting for too long. The nothings that have been patiently accumulating in my mind and are now pouring out with urgency.

    Nothing has been more important than those nothings and the inefficiencies that come along with them. There are, of course, still occasional runs and works and loves. But mainly a lot of naps.

    When life doesn’t move forward it moves backward, they say. But was life really that backward, back in the day? What I mean to say is that it seems silly to me. To run around and produce all of the greatness. Greatness that allows us to be seen, and heard, and held, and kept. By our friends and our lovers, our colleagues and our neighbors. Yet is it good to be great? Or is it greater to just be? Like a two-year-old child. Like back in the day.

    The neighbors’ grass might be greener, but I wonder if they have time to lie on it.

    To look at the clouds passing by. To feel the breeze on their cheeks and hear the birds in their ears. To dream about the life they’ve lived so far. The life to come. And the life better left for another round. The neighbors might have cleaned their dishes, but I doubt their naps are as glorious as mine.

    Perhaps tomorrow I will be productive again. After all, balance is key. But not today.

    Because today, I risk wasting my time for a chance at feeling alive.

  • There’s More to Life Than Work: Goodbye Hamster Wheel, Hello Balance

    There’s More to Life Than Work: Goodbye Hamster Wheel, Hello Balance

    “Most of us try to do too much because we are secretly afraid we will not be able to do anything at all.” ~Rick Aster

    I’m standing in my art studio. My palette is loaded with paint. My canvas has been prepped and ready. There is a paintbrush in my hand, but I can’t move. I don’t know what color to pick or what shape to make. I start questioning my color selection, the size of my canvas… and everything else under the sun.

    A few months ago, I wrote myself a reminder to allow my art to flow through me. Making art is a refuge for my mind—a mind that struggles with anxiety, depression, and “Hamster Wheel Syndrome.” You’re not familiar with that malady? Let me explain it to you with an example of what my brain sounds like when hamster wheel syndrome kicks in:

    “Do people really like pinks and greens together? Is it too feminine? Should I make my shapes big and bold to contrast against the girlie palette? Maybe I should do a test on a smaller canvas first? Maybe I should just pick a different pallet. It’s cold in here. I’ll get a hoodie. I think I need more coffee… Man, this art table is messy. I’ll organize it first… I only have three hours until my dentist appointment… The grocery is near by the dentist. I’ll plan on going there too…” And on and on it goes.

    According to UrbanDictionary.com, hamster wheel syndrome is “when someone just keeps running in circles (and making the same mistakes) in their life instead of progressing.”

    I believe that this only really scratches the surface about what it truly means to feel my wheels spinning, with no break in sight, for days at a time.

    When I’m in my studio, brush in hand and ready to go but I can’t move forward due to my brain throwing ten different options at me every three seconds, I feel paralyzed.

    I am a highly efficient person with a creative mind. I’m an abstract painter, essay writer, and fastidious business owner. I can get more done in two hours than many get done in a day. And I’m not saying this to brag. It is a blessing and a curse.

    If you’re like me, you know how exhausting this type of hamster wheel efficiency can be. IT NEVER STOPS. If I’m not checking things off my to do list, I’m compiling them into spreadsheets, using new methods of organization that I thought of while I was trying to sleep at 3am.

    I am addicted to efficiency. It makes me feel productive and useful. But as there can be too many cooks in the kitchen, there can also be too many ideas and tasks to process at once.

    When the multitude of ideas leads to overwhelm, paralysis is the result, and for a person like me, when I’m stagnant, I get even more anxious. If I stay in that state for too long, depression kicks in. Then I’m really in trouble.

    I begin to feel guilty that I’m not getting enough done; like rest is a failure. Sometimes it’s hard for me to sit down at the end of the day, so the pace continues until bedtime, even though I know where it will lead.

    Now I’m no psych major, but I believe hamster wheel syndrome is a compulsive disorder that at first makes me feel efficient, but then yields the same negative result every time—an inability to move.

    I’m so addicted to coming up with things that will keep me busy in order to have a feeling of accomplishment and, more importantly, for others to see me as accomplished. I put a lot of pressure on myself!

    I am a wonder of time management and productivity. I get up early in order to exercise before making breakfast and getting everyone off to work and school. Then I’m in my office at 8:00am, checking off tasks from my to-do list, and yes, I’m the type that if I’ve done something not on the list, I’ll add it just so I can cross it off.

    Then, when I’m nauseated because I forgot to eat, I shove food down my throat and move to the art studio where I now have to flip into thoughtful and creative mode, and there I stay until 5:00pm.

    The problem is that when I’m not moving at that horrendously cray cray pace, I’m comatose, lying on the sofa, binge watching Law & Order and denying the fact that I will, indeed, have to get up and be productive again. And if I get to this point I’m happy, because it means that hamster wheel syndrome hasn’t reduced me into a tornado of indecision, just that it has made me too tired to function.

    I have two speeds: To-Do List Annihilator and DEAD.

    After just coming out of about a four-month depressive period due to over working myself, I realize that this pace isn’t healthy or sustainable. So, what do I do? Well, I’m way too fired up about my art and my business to slow down. I think the solution is to be rigid about both my work time and my relax time.

    I work with a business coach and recently, she has put us into three-people “accountability groups.” These groups are meant to help us stay on task. I realize that a common problem for artists is that they just can’t get themselves out of the art studio to give their art business attention. This is not my problem.

    At first, the others in my accountability group were proposing only evenings and weekends for our weekly meetings. Since diving into my own business, I’ve heard many people say that I’ll now be working twenty-four hours a day and through the weekends. That entrepreneurs have to work longer hours to yield any sort of progress. That we are supposed to eat and breathe our work all the time.

    I have one thing to say about that: SCREW THAT.

    I didn’t start my own business to hamster wheel myself into a constant, walking panic attack.

    I am passionate about my art and I want it out there, but I also love my family. I love to surf and hike. I love to watch movies and lollygag at coffee shops. What I don’t like is the exhaustion that hamster wheeling causes and the expectation that in order to be successful, I don’t have a choice in the matter. I’ll say it again: SCREW THAT.

    So, in an effort to calm the rodent, here are five ways to slow the hamster wheel down:

    1. Exercise, yoga, get outside and play

    This really is on every single list I write. It is so important for me that when I don’t get up to do something active four or five days a week, I can feel myself getting wound up internally and eventually depressed. Just moving my body releases the bound-up thoughts and allows more grace to seep into my day-to-day life.

    It’s easy to get caught up in our heads when we spend all our time staring at work or screens. Getting outside and being active transfers all that energy from our brains to our bodies so we can feel energized and balanced.

    2. Meditation

    I would think that due to my hamster wheel, seated meditation would be hard for me, but it’s not. I relish in the fifteen minutes when I sit, breathe, and be still. I’m pretty good about being consistent with it, but I’m also human, so I try not to be hard on myself when time goes by and I haven’t been active in this practice. I’ll start to notice that wound up feeling after a few weeks and start a daily meditation practice again.

    The beautiful thing about meditation is that we can do it many different ways. If not seated meditation, try walking meditation or deep breathing exercises, even painting or gardening.  Any mindfulness practice can help pull us from big picture overwhelm to a present state of calm and relaxation.

    3. Lists, lists, and more lists

    It helps me go into my day with less anxiety by simply knowing what I would like to accomplish in the next eight hours.

    I have a huge master to-do list that I update on Mondays. Each morning when I get up, I make a daily list from that list.

    Now, before you roll your eyes at me, hear me out: My daily to-do list is only time-sensitive items that need to be accomplished that day and pieces of larger projects that I’ll give some attention to knowing that it won’t be completed as a whole. The result is a slow and steady progress.

    It’s so easy for us to get overwhelmed by the litany of to do’s associated with the big picture.  By breaking it down into smaller pieces, we are able to look at projects in more manageable baby steps.

    4. Stick to a realistic work week.

    My workday is from 8:00am to 5:00pm. I put everything down at 5:00pm, with few exceptions. My weekends are my own. I shut down the computer on Friday evening and don’t turn it back on until Monday morning.

    I simply refuse to allow my business to take over my whole life. My art is my work and I’m lucky I feel so passionate about it. When I stop on the weekends, it allows excitement to build for Monday morning. Plus, playtime is an important recharge!

    Being passionate about our work is a gift, but when that passion takes over everything else, our self-care, family, and friends tend to get neglected. Playtime is important to recharge and we should all prioritize it as much as we prioritize our work.

    5. Judge progress in years, not weeks.

    For a while, I was thinking about growth in terms of what I’ve accomplished in the past month or two, and I felt a need to cram as much as possible into my days because it didn’t seem like much. As a result, I was living in a constant state of fear, overwhelm and a feeling of failure.  It wasn’t until I compared my current situation to where I was at this time last year, that I realized how far I’ve come.

    We don’t need to work ourselves to the bone to see progress. Slow and steady wins the race, and it’s much easier to see accomplishments built over long periods of time than in the seeds planted over just the past couple of weeks.

    —

    I think that the above can be applied to anyone, in any type of work.

    In the end, we all want the same things: success in our work life and a healthy, happy home life. I have absolutely no doubt that stay-at-home moms, lawyers, restaurant workers—really anyone—can fall prey to hamster wheel syndrome. We must take care of ourselves, mind, body, and soul. Otherwise, we fall out of balance and fall prey to anxiety, depression, and a host of physical ailments.

    I yearn for the day that I don’t have to give so much attention to being a balanced person. However, I also want a career, to spend time with my loved ones, to go surfing and skiing, to cook my own meals, and to be able to tend to all the errands that come with life. That’s a lot to want, and so I have to put equal attention to the activities that will feed my energy.

    I have to remember that the hamster is not in charge! The wheel doesn’t have to spin twenty-four hours a day. In fact, it isn’t reasonable to think that it can. The hinges that support that wheel will burn out quickly if they don’t get a break and some oil.

    While I like to burn bright, I must remember that fires need to be fed. And with that, I’ve just reminded myself that I’m hungry, and so I stop. To be nourished so I can nourish.

  • Why We Push Ourselves Too Hard and How to Work Less

    Why We Push Ourselves Too Hard and How to Work Less

    “Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.” ~Unknown

    I was sitting on the beach with my wonderful girlfriend, trying to relax on our vacation in Florida, yet I was racked with anxiety.

    We were lying under a large umbrella, taking in the beautiful waves and swaying palm trees, attempting to recover from the past months (and years) of overwork and overstress. But all I could think about was a marketing initiative I was working on for a client.

    The more I tried to chill, the more nervous I became. My girlfriend lay peacefully, dozing off occasionally, while I was busy fending off a full-blown panic attack.

    Did I hurry back from our beach session to get back to work? That would be crazy, right? Well, it was worse. I pulled out my laptop and went to work right there on the beach.

    I was so addicted to my computer and so stretched thin with commitments that I couldn’t even enjoy this highly anticipated vacation with the love of my life. In fact, the only thing I can remember when I look back on this trip is my stress. I don’t remember enjoying the beach or ever feeling present.

    When I got back from Florida, I didn’t feel refreshed at all. I more desperately needed a vacation after it than I did before it. Not only had my over-commitment to work prevented me from enjoying my time away, it led me to operate at below my best for many months following.

    Why did I do this to myself? It was a combination of things. I was insecure and using money to mask it. I was correlating my self-worth with the amount of money I had in the bank. I worked more to distract myself from my anxieties. But most of all, I was working myself to death because of how the human brain works.

    The Psychology of OverWorking

    The benefits of working less are counterintuitive but well documented. There are the obvious benefits—such as having more time for hobbies, friends, family, health, or even working on bigger and better projects—and then there are the less obvious benefits, such as improving creativity and productivity.

    Tim Ferriss’ proposition of a “four-hour workweek” is attractive to our rational thinking brains, but in practice, it’s surprisingly difficult to work less.

    The reason we work more than we need to—sometimes to the extent of actually hurting our productivity, health, or personal relationships—may lie in how humans have evolved.

    In their book Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire – Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do, Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa postulate that our brains are shaped by evolutionary pressures to survive and reproduce. We’ve adapted to recurring problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

    “Our human nature is the cumulative product of the experience of our ancestors in the past, and it affects how we think, feel, and behave today,” Miller and Kanazawa write. People who showed no anxiety to threats would not have taken the appropriate steps to solve the problems and therefore may not have survived.

    In his book Evolutionary Psychology: Neuroscience Perspectives Concerning Human Behavior and Experience, William J. Ray describes how these evolutionary adaptations can actually hinder us from properly interpreting reality:

    “Consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg; most of what goes on in your mind is hidden from you. As a result, your conscious experience can mislead you into thinking that our circuitry is simpler than it really is…our modern skulls house a Stone Age mind.”

    In the context of work-life balance, our brains didn’t evolve to determine exactly how much we need to work. Our brains simply want us to survive and reproduce, and working more seems to contribute to those end goals. Our brain’s anxiety about survival and reproduction motivates us to work more, even though it’s not usually in our best interest over the long term.

    Similarly, our brains crave sugar because in the past, calories were scarce, and we needed to eat as much as possible to account for extended periods without food.

    Sugar has a high calorie density, so it was very economical for our ancestors. As a result, many people today have a tendency to overeat unhealthy foods, even though we don’t face a problem of the scarcity of food like we did before the agricultural revolution. Unfortunately, sugar contributes to a number of health problems over the long term, but our brains don’t understand that.

    Our brains think working excessively to gather resources contributes to survival and reproduction. But it doesn’t know how to moderate. More work doesn’t always lead to more money, let alone a more fulfilling life. At its worst, excessive work can lead to burnout, depression, panic attacks, and a lack of meaningful relationships.

    Here are four signs you may be working to the point of your own demise:

    • Working far beyond what is needed despite the risk of negative consequences
    • After reaching a goal, you immediately set another more ambitious one.
    • Refusing to delegate work, despite the opportunity cost of doing the work yourself
    • Creating more work that doesn’t add value in order to avoid feelings of guilt, anxiety, insecurity, or depression

    To be clear, there are benefits to working hard. Working more can help you get more done, and, assuming you are doing the right work, that can help you make more money. And there are times when anxiety is rational and you legitimately need to work more in order to survive. But more often than not, working too much can do more harm than good.

    The counterintuitive reality is that working more does not always mean working productively if it means you’re going to burn out.

    Simple But Hard Choices

    We have a choice about how to deal with working too much. Like so many other challenges, there is the simple but hard solution and a complex but easy solution.

    For your health, the simple but hard solution is to eat more healthy food and less unhealthy food. This solution requires discipline, but it doesn’t cost money, and it’s proven to work. The complex but easy solution is to pay for the latest diet products.

    The simple but hard solution to workaholism is to work less. This means saying “no” to unnecessary projects and responsibilities. However, I call this the hard solution for a reason. First, it would be a bruise to your ego to admit you can’t handle something. Second, it requires introspection and change in order to address underlying anxieties or insecurities that may be the impetus for pathological working habits.

    Fear or frustration with executing on the simple solution incentivizes us to change course. So we add complexity.

    These complex but easy solutions include productivity apps, time management processes, or even prescription drugs. They can help us eke out a couple more units of productivity on a given day, but they often have negative side effects over the long term, and more notably, they enable us to avoid blaming ourselves or putting in the hard work of conquering our anxieties and insecurities.

    These solutions are like playing whack-a-mole—they only solve the surface-level symptoms. James Altucher provided an apt analogy in writing about the power of saying “no” to bad opportunities:

    “When you have a tiny, tiny piece of sh*t in the soup, it doesn’t matter how much more water you pour in and how many more spices you put on top. There’s sh*t in the soup.”

    Often times, continuing to work excessively, even while using the latest and greatest productivity apps, only leads to burnout, which results in an extended period of low productivity or, worse, an unfulfilling life, void of meaningful relationships or even physical and mental health problems.

    How to Work Less, Survive, and Prosper

    Your brain doesn’t know or care that working less won’t prevent you from surviving or reproducing in modern times.

    It doesn’t know how much money you have in your bank account or how many hours you need to work in order to retire in thirty years.

    It definitely doesn’t care about helping you achieve higher ambitions like finding love or having fun on weekends.

    You feel anxious about working less because your brain only cares about surviving and reproducing.

    But we’re not slaves to our lizard brains. The idea that working less can help you accomplish more requires some critical thinking. However, with awareness of how our brains work, we can make decisions that are healthier and more productive.

    So, how can you counteract your brain’s adaptive impulses? I’ll share two strategies that have worked for me.

    First, know your priorities. Every time you say “yes” to more work, you’re saying “no” to the other aspects of your life that you value. By taking inventory of your list of priorities and where work lies on that list, you can make decisions that will help you live a more fulfilling life.

    Second, address the underlying issues. Oftentimes we work to avoid thinking about our insecurities or shortcomings. Or, we think we need to have more money in order to be loved. I’ve been guilty of both of these.

    Once I gained awareness of these issues, it was easier to make healthier decisions about my work. I worked to conquer my anxiety instead of making it worse by burying it in work, and I’ve dispelled the myth that I’m not worthy of love unless I have massive amounts of wealth.

    Since doing this work, I’ve said no to many great opportunities in order to keep my life in balance. It’s difficult at the time, but I’m healthier and happier for it.

    It may sound idealistic to work less, but if it can help your health, productivity, and life, isn’t it worth a shot? If it doesn’t work for you, keep in mind that there will always be more work to do!

  • Unreasonable Boss? 8 Ways to Honor Yourself in a Toxic Workplace

    Unreasonable Boss? 8 Ways to Honor Yourself in a Toxic Workplace

    “Good bosses care about getting important things done. Exceptional bosses care about their people.” ~Jeff Haden

    “I’ll need you to log your work down to the minute on this spreadsheet,” she said pointing to my computer where an elaborate timesheet was swallowing up my entire screen.

    I looked up at her, confused—nope, more like utterly stunned. Was she for real? My body seemed to know before my mind that I’d just entered some sort of workplace twilight zone.

    I had a sinking feeling in my gut, and it was sounding some sort of alarm deep in my chest, making my heart do somersaults. She was serious. Clearly the shock was holding my throat hostage because all I could muster was a single word…

    “Okay,” I replied quietly, and off she went, oblivious to the impact her passive aggressive requests were having on me.

    I had just returned to work from maternity leave, and with three children aged six and under at home, I needed some flexibility in my work schedule.

    I was clocking in while it was still dark outside, long before anyone else so I could get home to my little ones with enough time for quality cuddles before tucking them in for the night.

    I was trying to achieve motherhood level 100 while still trying to conquer my career. Did I mention I was also pursuing my second master’s degree? Yes, I was on a mission to prove that I could still do it all.

    Of course, I knew “doing it all” was the age-old battle of every modern woman trying to be equal parts supermum and Sheryl Sandberg, but despite my husband’s very real concerns, I was doing it all.

    In fact, I was working harder, longer, and smarter than most people in my department because, like most mothers returning to work, I had that unshakable guilt inside telling me that I had to prove I was bringing my very best and not taking advantage of my “mum status.”

    So when my new line manager insisted on tracking my every move, decision, and waking moment I was utterly confused. I mean, there I was, delivering the project deliverables and meeting each and every deadline, and her biggest worry was that she wasn’t squeezing every possible work minute out of me?

    So, I did what so many of us do to prove our value to a superior: I went above and beyond to show her I was worthy of my pay no matter what it took. But the more I gave, the more she pushed, until finally, late one night, after yet another night of venting to my poor, put-upon husband, I found myself sprawled out on my living room floor, no longer able to hold back the tears.

    I was broken like a shattered glass. I realized that I had allowed her constant micromanaging to bring me to the brink, and that no matter what I did, she was never going to stop.

    My health was suffering. My relationships were suffering. I was suffering. I went from optimistic, happy, and loving my job to moody, stressed, and miserable. I dreaded going into this space where I never felt good enough.

    Work had begun to feel like a torture chamber. A place where the person charged with helping me succeed at my job was slowly but methodically chipping away at my confidence, and it was spilling over into my personal life.

    I finally accepted the reality: I had allowed her actions to steal my joy, and it was breaking my heart with every passing day. I felt so defeated.

    It became very clear to me that she didn’t seem to trust me, and seemed to like me even less. I was at a loss for what to do, but I knew that I couldn’t survive in this environment for much longer, so I had to figure something out.

    I went on a mission to remove the poison that had engulfed my workplace experience and bring the light back into my life. Because the truth was that in that moment I couldn’t leave my job. For now, at least, I had to deal with her and I had to find a way to cope, no matter what.

    So I went on a journey to figure out what I could do to honor myself and my happiness, because as far as I was concerned, suffering was completely optional.

    I had a family that needed me to get back to the old me. And frankly, I needed that too. I needed to survive my unreasonable boss. I’m guessing if you’re reading this, you have your own unreasonable boss whose overwhelming negative energy is causing problems in your life.

    I’m here to share with you the eight tools I used to get through one of the hardest times in my life so you can conquer your own “horrible boss.”

    1. Find your community and ask for help.

     Dealing with an unreasonable boss sometimes takes an army, or in my case a community, to survive.

    The truth is with any toxic relationship, whether it’s your boss or someone else, you go through a period of wondering, “Wait, am I just absolutely crazy that I feel this way? Is it all in my head? Am I silly for letting this mess with my emotions?”

    I needed someone to give me perspective. Someone safe who would give me the space to explore, without judgment, what I was feeling–an objective observer who could reflect back to me what I was really experiencing.

    What’s interesting is that even when you feel all alone, you’ll often find that you’re still surrounded by amazing people willing to help you weather the storm. I found that safety net in friends, family, and colleagues, in and outside of work, who were all willing to lend an ear.

    They were quite incredible really, offering advice and helping me figure out where things may have gone wrong. They allowed me to express my anger, frustration, and even let me cry. More than anything, though, they were objective and honest with me, gently leading me toward making the right moves for dealing with my boss.

    In their own unique ways, all of these people were empathetic and supportive. They were the break in the ocean keeping these waves of intensity from knocking me out cold.

    If you are at a loss for whom to turn toward, though, you can always turn inward. Journal about what you’re experiencing. Journaling often allows us to work through our issues on the page. And, of course, there are always tons of wonderful mental health professionals who can help give you a safe space to talk.

    2. Make relaxing rituals a part of your “job.”

     Being in a workplace with such high-pressure demands meant I was under a lot of stress. Sadly, there were days that I found myself bringing my boss’s energy home with me. The conflicts of the day ran wild through my mind, and the fear of not meeting my boss’s demands left me in constant flight or fight mode.

    My anxiety was high. I knew that I needed to create rituals that would help me break away from work and make my free time mine again. Because here’s the thing: Our wind-down time is when our minds and bodies recalibrate and restore, which is especially important when you’ve spent eight hours in a toxic work environment.

    In fact, I came to think of relaxing as a part of my job like meeting a deadline or completing a daily task. Because relaxation can do so much for honoring your health, including lowering blood pressure and heart rate, reducing anxiety, and improving mild depression.

    For me, a long warm bath was my me-time. But relaxation can come in so many forms: reading, yoga, a brisk walk, listening to your favorite Adele tune, watching a hilarious comedy, meditation, mindfulness, T’ai Chi, Chi Kung, or even spending time laughing with loved ones.

    Whatever it is, make it a big part of your self-care routine, and you’ll start to preserve your sanity in the midst of your workplace chaos.

    3. Let physical activity soothe and re-energize you.

    While I was dealing with my manager, there was one thing that helped me release all of the extra adrenaline I had running through my body: running. Throwing on my sneakers and hitting a long path lined with big, beautiful trees was one of my favorite things to do. Not only was it another form of relaxing me-time, it released the endorphins that I was desperately in need of at this time.

    Endorphins are feel-good hormones, released through physical activity, that elevate our moods. Hacking into your happy chemicals with exercise is an incredible way to combat a stressful work environment.

    Physical activity can be any number of things: dancing, trampoline jumping, cycling, baseball, skateboarding, or just simply going for a run. If you can find a community to do this with, like a team or running group, even better!

    4. Focus on the big picture of abundance.

    It’s true that the little things remind us how insignificant some of the tougher things in our lives are.

    Have you ever stared out at the stars on a quiet night and for a brief moment remembered how truly tiny you are in this great big universe? It’s in those moments that we’re reminded that the harmful energy of one bad boss, in the grand scheme of things, is really insignificant.

    We realize that it’s only a blip in our long lives on this earth, and that knowledge and perspective brought me peace.

    Finding these types of moments in our lives is so crucial. It can be found in so many unexpected places and moments. For me, I found it with my loved ones—my wonderful husband, six-year-old giggly daughter, four-year-old full-of-beans son, and two-year-old love-bug baby girl. They all kept me busy and grounded and reminded me that work was such a small part of this amazing life I was leading.

    There were other parts of my life that deserved my attention and energy as well, and that reminder helped me re-center over and over again.

    There are so many things that can bring these awe-inspiring moments fully into focus during a difficult work phase in your life: volunteering with those less fortunate; creative outlets like painting, sewing, or cooking, camping; or any activity that brings you into nature. These are not only distractions from a difficult work environment, but also reminders that life is fun, beautiful, and worthy of your attention.

    5. Feed your calm, not your stress.

    Dealing with a passive-aggressive, micro-managing boss meant not only dealing with a lot of stress, but also with tons of anxiety. And with lots of anxiety, sometimes my automatic reaction was to self-soothe with Ben & Jerry’s.

    Yes, I know we’ve all been there, that point of utter disappointment where all we can think to do is dive headfirst into the cookie jar.

    This is where being a health professional helps. I knew using food to manage my stress and deal with my emotional issues would be a slippery slope. On top of that, foods like ice cream and cookies would only make my plummeting moods worse.

    Here’s the thing: a sugary snack or baked goodie will send your blood sugar on a wild rollercoaster, which will further negatively affect your stress, anxiety, and depression. I was already dealing with one mood-enhancing rollercoaster (my boss!) I didn’t need to make things worse with my diet.

    I made a plan to eat in a way that supported my stress relief by eating foods that kept my blood sugar on an even keel. I incorporated whole grain products like brown rice, protein, and berries, and avoided stimulants like caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine, which could make mood swings worse.

    I also increased my omega-3 intake, which has been proven to reduce feelings of sadness, pessimism, indifference, sleeplessness, and low libido. You can find omega-3s in some pretty yummy foods like seafood, walnuts, flaxseed, and leafy green vegetables.

    6. Worship at the altar of sleep, because it’s sacred.

    With three kids, and a fourth in the form of a grouchy boss, I spent many sleepless nights stressed out. My mind would be constantly racing. The more I lost sleep, the worse things would be for me the next day.

    I grew more and more irritable and angry, and was just plain exhausted, which meant going to work the next morning to face my boss was getting more difficult.

    Lack of sleep meant my filters were down, and my ability to balance my mood was completely compromised. Basically, no sleep = falling into a spiral of self-loathing even at the smallest criticism from a difficult boss.

    “Switching off” the stress to get a good night’s sleep can be difficult, but making it a priority can make the difference between a good day or a bad day at work.

    A few things that help include trying to keep a regular sleep cycle (sleeping and waking at the same time every day) and avoiding stimulating activities before bed like TV, tablets, computers, or phones. The light given off by these devices suppress melatonin, which supports sleep.

    You can also include a night-time routine that helps you get into a relaxed state, like an end of day warm bath, a massage from your partner, aromatherapy, or a night-time meditation that lets you release tension.

    7. Take a step back and handle what’s yours.

    When we’re in a difficult circumstance like I was with my boss, we can spend a lot of time in our heads trying to figure it all out. I would always wonder, “Did I do something to cause this? Could I have done something differently?”

    The reality was that I could keep spinning my wheels trying to figure it out, but not everything was in my control. I learned to take a step back, reflect, and objectively look at the situation. I identified the real stressors I was facing, and then I went about the business of figuring out what was in my control and what wasn’t.

    What wasn’t in my control I accepted and tried my best to let go of, but what was in my control I approached head on.

    I looked at whether or not my coping strategies were effective and whether any strategies from past experiences could be modified to fit this situation. I also kept a close eye on my self-talk. It’s so incredibly easy to fall into negative self-talk, but I made it my mission to be kind to myself. I gave myself plenty of positive pep talks and pats on the back for any small victory. Make sure that you are doing the same to help combat stressful situations.

    8. Make the right moves, confidently. 

    Ultimately, your happiness and health should always at the top of your priority list. If you can’t deal with the situation with your difficult boss using any of the above, then it’s time to deal with the problem in the healthiest way possible.

    In my case, I did everything I could to remedy the situation on my own, by explaining to my boss the impact her behavior was having on me and by going through grievance channels at work, which meant mediation with my boss through Human Resources, for example. But in the end, I knew that staying in the situation was causing too much harm.

    When the opportunity came up to take voluntary redundancy, I jumped at it, and I spent some time with my family while I figured out my next steps. Building an exit strategy that puts you first is always something to applaud. Sometimes, the healthiest thing we can do for ourselves doesn’t look like the most practical, but it’ll save us years of heartache, stress, and ultimately, bad health.

    —

    These eight strategies helped me move through a toxic environment with a little more ease. What I came to find out, though, was that my boss was dealing with some of her own stress that she was bringing to the workplace. She was projecting her personal problems onto me, the mother with three children who seemed to “have it all.”

    She was roping me into carrying the burden of her issues in these micro-aggressions of control she was laying on me. Because of this, the truth is, I was never going to win her over, and I’d venture to guess that whatever is pushing your boss to keep you down is something you may never be able to fix either. Just remember that you are not required to carry someone else’s baggage.

    Your health matters, which is why I hope these tips help you find peace and health on your journey.

  • How to Improve Your Work/Life Balance and Reclaim Your Time

    How to Improve Your Work/Life Balance and Reclaim Your Time

    “You will never feel truly satisfied by work until you are satisfied by life.” ~Heather Schuck

    When I was two years old, my parents got divorced.

    In other words, I’ve never seen my biological parents spending loving time with each other. I never had the chance to experience the small things most children take for granted.

    For example…

    • I don’t remember my mom and dad ever sharing a loving kiss after a long day at work
    • I don’t remember ever having both parents around to tuck me in at night
    • And I never overheard simple “how was your day?” conversations between my parents in the kitchen

    As a kid who didn’t know any different, I thought this was normal. I’d stay with my mom during the week and visit my dad on the weekends. No big deal, that was that.

    Looking back, I’m lucky that even though my biological parents were separated, both my parents loved me unconditionally, and supported me whenever I needed it. (And I’m happy to say they still do!)

    But, truthfully, the reason for the divorce still saddens me to this day.

    The primary reason my parents divorced is because my father was a workaholic.

    Because I’m expecting to be a first-time father myself in a few months, “workaholic” is a word that’s at the top of my mind. I’ve thought deeply about how to avoid being labeled a workaholic, especially in today’s world where being a workaholic is synonymous with success.

    The biggest question I’ve asked myself recently is, “Should I spend more time with family or should I focus more on my career?”

    But, as I’ve thought about it more, I realized that’s the close-minded, dualistic way of looking at things. My shift in mindset from an “either/or” to a “how can I be creative to incorporate both?” has been the first step.

    And, as I’ve continued to grow and reframe my limiting beliefs, there have been a few more realizations about maintaining a work-life balance. Here’s what I’m learning.

    Making My Time on This Planet Count the Most

    No matter how I slice it, I only have twenty-four hours in my day.

    In the past, I’ve naturally gravitated toward being as efficient as possible during work hours and doing everything myself. This approach has been supported by an endless amount of tactics to maximize my productivity during the day—tactics that, if I’m being honest, only marginally approve my efficiency.

    Efficiency only carries us so far. Even if we’re the most productive person the world, we have a limit to the energy we can spend and a limit on our output.

    As I’ve learned, focusing entirely on efficiency and trying to do everything is the wrong approach.

    In reality, the people who have figured out how to integrate their family and professional success have done one thing very well: letting go.

    Caring for Ourselves Means Saying No

    One of my idols, Warren Buffett once said, “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.”

    A couple of years ago, I had reached out to a mentor of mine asking him for advice. He was a highly respected, gregarious person and was pivotal in my early career.

    And even though we had an established relationship, he told me, “No, I can’t meet then. Evenings are reserved for my wife and daughter.”

    I was blown away. It stung a little, but after a bit I realized his “no” made me respect him even more.

    Instead of talking in the evening, he had asked me to call him in the morning, or to email my questions and he would get back to me within a couple of hours. He defined his boundaries and “let go” of having to please me (and sacrifice time with his wife and kids).

    In another example, Caryn Seidman Becker, the chairman and CEO of CLEAR, said: “You can have it all, but each person needs to define their personal ‘all’ because you can’t have everything.”

    For my mentor, having it “all” meant saying “no” so he could have a successful career during the day and cherished family time in the evening. He knows his time is limited, and reduces his obligations to the core of what he wants to accomplish.

    “Letting go” Also Means Letting Other People Help

    One of my favorite theories is the law of diminishing returns. Sometimes, this shows up when I work more than fifty hours at my day job and seeing my output decline. Other times, when I say “yes” to too many people and can’t spend quality time with my family.

    In other words, when I reach a point where the benefit gained is less than the amount of energy invested, it means I’m doing too much.

    At a certain point for all of us, we need to stop exerting effort to maintain our balance, health, and important relationships, even if it means we’ll stop short of perfection.

    When we understand the law of diminishing returns we favor progress and learning over perfection.

    The metric for balance varies too. Sometimes the optimal level of effort is when we’ve achieved “good enough” on a project at work, which allows us to focus our energy on family. Or, other times, it’s achieving “good enough” with family so we can focus more energy on a massive project we’re excited about at work.

    And once you know what your “good enough” is, you have the ability to ask others to support you so you can free up time and energy for more important things. Whether it’s hiring someone to help you grow a business, having your laundry done for you, or even getting someone to come change the oil on your car at work so you don’t have to waste time driving around.

    It’s important to note the goal isn’t laziness—it’s effectiveness. For example, there might be times when we have to put in extra hours to get the job done. The differentiating factor is recognizing when to do something ourselves, and when to delegate.

    The Power of Using Deadlines

    Have you ever noticed the power of deadlines?

    In college, when I had professors set a project deadline, I knew it had to get done. I could cram all I wanted the night before, but no matter what it needed to be finished on the due date. On the other hand, when I have something I need to do “eventually” it gets pushed off…again…and again…and again.

    When we use deadlines strategically, we’re following Parkinson’s Law. Here’s an excerpt from Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Body on what the Law means:

    “Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for it’s completion. It is the magic of the imminent deadline. If I give you 24 hours to complete a project, the time pressure forces you to focus on execution, and you have no choice but to do only the bare essentials. I give you a week to complete the same task, it’s six days of making a mountain out of a molehill. If I give you two months, God forbid, it becomes a mental monster. The end product of a shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater focus.”

    In short, Parkinson’s Law pushes us to take action and focus exclusively on the most important items, and nothing is wasted.

    And when we use Parkinson’s Law (or ask for help, or say “no”) we’re making sure to spend our energy and time in the places that matter the most to us.

  • The One Purpose We All Share in Life

    The One Purpose We All Share in Life

    Purpose

    “We are each gifted in a unique and important way. It is our privilege and our adventure to discover our own special light.” ~ Mary Dunbar

    I sat staring at myself in the mirror.

    All I saw was failure.

    And for the first time in a long while, I cried.

    All I could think about was having to get up the next morning and force myself through another day. Force myself to put on a smile and pretend to be happy. Force myself to act like everything was moving in the right direction.

    I’d been putting on this façade for months by this point.

    My fitness business was finally growing at a good rate after years of struggle, finances were the best they’d been in a while, and I felt like I was helping a lot of people.

    Yet I felt stuck, broken on the inside, and like I was massively holding something back in terms of what I had to offer the world.

    And in that tear-filled moment with the mirror, I knew I had to let go of the business and life I had worked so hard to gain momentum with.

    I spent the next year trying to work out what the hell was going on. I suppose you could say I was trying to find myself, but the cliché-ridden nature of those words makes me cringe even now. So I prefer to say “working s**t out.”

    I stepped back, traveled, sought connection, read, listened to podcasts, and dug deep into my soul for answers to questions I had previously written off as too time wasting for a busy business owner to deal with.

    But a key question that kept coming up for me was “what is my purpose?”

    I would muse on this for days, weeks, and months at a time, desperately trying to figure out the answer and looking for some Eureka moment.

    Almost every book I read, every podcast that I listened to, and every video I watched all seemed to keep coming back to this question in some roundabout way. Each moment of consumption giving me more information on systems, steps, and questions to find out what my purpose is on this earth and what I am “here to do.”

    I became obsessed.

    And in that obsession I created confusion.

    Who was I? What did I want to start? What did I want to talk about? How could I help and serve others without draining my own life force?

    After traveling to various parts of Europe and South East Asia, connecting with others and trying to figure my own stuff out, I still felt completely lost. Like I was just wandering the globe, going from place to place without any reason, and simply shuffling through life with a black hole continually expanding inside of me.

    I would dive into things headfirst and keep them going for a few weeks before deciding I was on the wrong path. Some idea would catch my eye and I’d take steps forward before getting bored and slacking off.

    Until one day I had what I lovingly like to call a “f**k it” moment.

    I just couldn’t take any more listening to other people tell me how to find this purpose thing that was supposed to be so great.

    I’d gone from never thinking about my purpose, to being obsessed with finding it, to just getting fed up with it all. In fact, I was pissed off that all these other people seemed to be living “in line with their purpose” while I was left stuck and still asking questions.

    It was like when you’re a kid and your weird uncle does that crappy magic trick, and you just want him to tell you how he did it so you can stop trying to figure it out and get on with your life.

    Then almost as soon as I gave up trying so hard, things became a lot clearer.

    And I started to realize what a poor, vague, nothing kind of question it is to ask “what is your purpose?”

    Because, when it really comes down to it, we as human beings all have just one, universal purpose.

    To create.

    Think about it. We create thoughts and knowledge and content and books and podcasts and TV programs and websites and furniture and iPhones and apps to go on those iPhones and other phones to rival those iPhones and slightly bigger iPhones we call iPads and all sorts of other inventions and relationships and businesses and lives for ourselves….

    We even create other human beings!

    But we also create fear and negativity and judgment and perfectionism and evil and other bad stuff.

    So “What is my purpose?” is actually a pretty poor question when it comes to the kind of answer most of us are really looking for. The answer to that is simply to create.

    This brought a huge perspective shift for me. All of a sudden, I stopped asking myself the same question over and over again and expecting a different answer every time.

    Now I had a new question: What did I want to create?

    Screw purpose! Screw this elusive, intangible, nothing of a question. What did I want to create? And I mean really want to create?

    No longer did I feel like I had to find this one thing that I was put on this earth to do. No longer was I searching for this magic moment that would give me a sign that I should definitively label myself as this or that.

    All I had to start doing was creating something, anything, several things that would make me feel purposeful.

    But this then posed another problem.

    What did I want to create?

    It’s all well and good saying to go create something, but if you don’t know what or how then it’s still meaningless. Surely, if we truly want to feel purposeful, we must know ourselves first.

    So I took a deep internal dive again. Only this time, with this new angle to my questioning at the helm.

    I wanted to look deep into the depths of my heart and soul in order to find out what was really in there. To peel back all the pretending, all the bravado, and all the BS so I could just know what was really going on in there.

    I asked myself about my beliefs, my fears, what I love, what makes me feel passionate, what doesn’t, my strengths, my weaknesses, and what I would say to the world if I had everyone’s attention for just fifteen minutes.

    I wrote everything down, even if it was uncomfortable. And I didn’t settle for superficial, meaningless answers.

    But the biggest thing of all, the thing that opened my eyes the most, was getting clear on my values.

    Our values are the very essence of who we are as individuals. They are what guide us when it comes to making decisions so that we don’t end up feeling like a tangled mess inside. And they act as our inner compass when it comes to what we should create and put into this world.

    So the act of creating something that made me feel purposeful became rather straightforward.

    What knowledge or skills or expertise do I have in my head and heart? What do I love? And how can I bring all this together to create something that helps and serves others?

    Suddenly, discovering “my purpose” became inconsequential.

    Why do we need this one, single purpose? The real answer we want to that question, the feeling we want to garner, comes from creating purposeful and meaningful things. Things that make us feel like we are adding to the world and like we are helping in some way.

    But we can only know what we class as “meaningful” and “purposeful” if we take the time to discover ourselves and know who we are.

    So, if you’re like me and have struggled, or are struggling, with this whole purpose thing, I invite you to just give up looking. Instead, try going deep with yourself on two questions:

    1. Who am I?

    2. What do I want to create?

    Maybe shifting your perspective like this can help get you unstuck, as it did with me.

    And it may enable you to go and create something truly meaningful, whichever way you define that yourself.

    Now, I know there may be some people out there to whom this all seems a bit over the top, or maybe even irrelevant.

    We all have jobs or businesses to focus on, bills to pay, families to feed, and general life stuff going on. Thinking about all the bother of creating this big, elaborate, purposeful thing may be pretty close to bottom of the to-do list for a lot of people.

    But that’s the thing—it doesn’t need to be a big, elaborate thing. You could choose to create happiness, or connection, or laughter, for example.

    Sure, you could create a billion-dollar company, an international movement, or a charity helping millions of people. Or you could create joy by volunteering at a children’s hospital, or by making it your personal mission to lift other people’s spirits when they’re feeling down.

    We don’t need to go into this with an attitude of having to create something huge and entrepreneurial if we don’t want to.

    We can garner that feeling in smaller, yet equally as significant, ways.

    Simply bringing ourselves to the present moment and asking “What can I create right now that would make me feel purposeful and meaningful?” can be pretty powerful.

    Start small. And maybe you’ll get hooked from there.

    Because, after all, we are all worthy of feeling purposeful. We just need to decide what this looks like to us.

  • How to Promote Yourself Authentically to Gain New Opportunities

    How to Promote Yourself Authentically to Gain New Opportunities

    Self Promotion

    “If you really put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price.” ~Unknown

    I have always been a smart, dedicated, hard working person. I was raised to believe that those were characteristics required for success. So imagine my surprise to reach the working world and find unexceptional colleagues getting promoted above me.

    There’s one memory that particularly stands out.

    When I was twenty-five, I was on a team that consisted of amazingly smart, ambitious, hardworking people, plus one mediocre guy, Tom. His mediocrity stood out amongst a high-achieving team, but Tom thought he was a rock star.

    Infuriatingly, all the right people noticed Tom. And they didn’t notice me.

    In hindsight, the biggest difference between Tom and I was our mindset around self-promotion. We were both ambitious, but he was willing to push for it. Meanwhile, I was waiting patiently for my turn.

    I couldn’t get past the idea that self-promotion was sleazy, manipulative, or desperate, so I refused to do it. I didn’t go in to a meeting with sweaty palms ready to ask for the promotion that I wanted. I just did nothing.

    I waited and hoped that someone would notice how hardworking and deserving I was. But it never happened. I lost out on opportunities that would’ve helped me make a bigger difference and feel more fulfilled in my work because I refused to raise my hand.

    Now, I’ve built my career on my skill for authentic self-promotion and have found tactics to promote myself in ways that feel in perfect alignment with who I am. These are the things I’ve learned along the way. I hope these work for you, whether you work for yourself or have a traditional job.

    1. Find a role model for authentic self-promotion.

    You can probably picture the kind of person that you don’t want to be when you’re promoting yourself. But do you know whom you do want to model your self-promotional behaviors after?

    Look out for examples of people that promote themselves with honesty, integrity, and personality.

    One of my role models once told me a story about going to a networking dinner and being pestered by someone who wanted her to quit her job and come join his company.

    When her boss asked how the networking event was, she said: “It went well. I got offered three jobs. Actually, I got offered the same job three times. See how in-demand I am?”

    She told me that it felt like a light-hearted way for her to tell him that she’s highly sought after. It both matched her cheeky personality and how they usually interacted with each other every day. If she tried to do it any other way, it would have seemed awkward and insincere.

    Your mindset around self-promotion will dramatically change once you start looking for positive examples of people who practice authentic self-promotion. You’ll be surprised how many role models you can find.

    2. Remind yourself how self-promotion can help you make a difference.

    Self-promotion has a bad reputation for being egotistical. But it’s only egotistical if you’re solely focused on what it can do for you. Try focusing on how it allows you to help more people.

    How many more people will you be able to help if you promote yourself and more people discover your work?

    How will landing this new job or client help you make a bigger contribution to the project?

    Getting the job or landing the client gives you the opportunity to change their lives or business for the better.

    Thinking about how your work makes a difference takes the focus off you so that you feel less egotistical and reminds you that your work (no matter how menial you may think it is) helps others.

    3. Realize that no one else is paying as much attention as you are.

    In the past, I believed that if I truly deserved that new opportunity, then the people in charge would have already offered it to me. But that’s rarely true.

    They have a lot on their to-do list and it’s easy for them to forget everything that you do. That’s why you need to regularly remind them, whether it’s a boss or a client.

    All it takes is getting into the habit of a quick knock on the door to say, “I just wrapped up that project and wanted to let you know about the great feedback we’ve had so far.” It can be casual, honest, and low pressure. Don’t be afraid to let them see how valuable you are.

    4. Ask yourself how satisfied you are with your work right now.

    Feeling the need to raise your hand for new opportunities is a sign that there’s something missing from your current work. By raising your hand and advocating for yourself, you have an opportunity to find greater fulfilment in your career with minimal effort.

    Ask yourself: what kind of projects would bring me more job satisfaction? Then, proactively ask for those projects.

    Employers love it when their employees are engaged and fulfilled by their work, so there’s a good chance they’ll want to hear what you have to say. It’s helpful to you and it’s helpful to them.

    5. Approach it like an equal.

    I noticed that one thing that I disliked about self-promotion was feeling like I was asking for more than I was offering. It dramatically lowered my confidence and triggered the quivering, insecure voice that’s a dead giveaway that I’m nervous and unsure.

    Now, before I even start on the path toward authentic self-promotion, I get clear on what I want and what I will bring to the table that is of equal or greater value than what I’m asking for.

    It removes the feeling of powerlessness and helps give me confidence that I’m making a difference with my contribution. Even better, it means that I can easily explain how I’ll make a positive impact for my boss or client.

    6. Notice what your fear of self-promotion is masking.

    Your fear of self-promotion masks something much bigger. It could be fear of success, failure, judgment, or not being good enough. You’re not afraid of self-promotion itself; you’re actually afraid that if you promote yourself and it doesn’t go well, it’ll prove that your real fear is true.

    For me, I’m usually afraid that I’m not good enough to get that big project or land that new client. If I raise my hand, promote myself and get rejected, it can feel like evidence that proves my fear—I truly wasn’t good enough.

    What is the underlying fear for you? Where does that come from? When you dig deep into what the fear truly is, you can start to question its validity and build your personal growth muscles.

  • How to Thrive at Work (Even If You Don’t Love Your Job)

    How to Thrive at Work (Even If You Don’t Love Your Job)

    “Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.” ~Jim Rohn

    We spend so much of our days at work, it makes sense that we should enjoy it, but many of us are not that lucky.

    Too many people work in jobs they dislike or for people who make them unhappy.

    Perhaps we don’t get the meaning of our jobs or are caught up in the corporate rat race. So quit, our friends say, but it’s not that easy. I have bills to pay, kids to feed, or things I need the money for. So how do we strike the balance? What’s the secret to thriving at work?

    I learned the hard way. Working long hours, if I wasn’t in meetings I was in the car driving. I’d grab fast food because it was quick and I could eat in on the run. After getting in late I was so exhausted that exercise was the last thing I felt like doing, so I’d crash on the sofa and then get my laptop to catch up on emails.

    I spent my weekends sleeping in and catching up on all the housework I’d let slide during the week, and I was usually sick during my vacations, as my body struggled to cope with the constant demands.

    I knew it wasn’t healthy, but wasn’t sure how to change it, how to find balance. When I looked around, I realized everyone else seemed to be doing the same. Eventually, I hit a wall and burned out. This ultimately led to a fork in the road where everything changed.

    I quit the corporate world to follow my dreams and became a writer and yoga teacher. It’s something I love, but it doesn’t pay well, so I found myself having to pick up contract work to put food on my table and a roof above my head.

    I still write and do what I love, but I also have to have a day job back in the office to pay the bills. The difference now is that I’ve learned the art of balance. Here’s how I thrive at work, and how you can too.

     1. Adopt a healthy routine.

    I found that adopting a healthy routine made things easier. I get up early so I can meditate and do a bit of yoga. This sets me up for the day and makes me feel good before I even get to work.

    Getting up early means I have time for breakfast and to walk to my office. It’s a challenge at first, and the snooze button is always tempting, but once we feel the benefits, it’s a no brainer. And after a few weeks of doing this, it becomes a habit.

    2. Take care of your body.

    Work can be stressful, which is why paying attention to the basics of good health and prioritizing this makes our workdays better.

    What we eat, how much water we drink, how much we move, the lighting, ventilation, how we sit—it all adds up. It may seem simple, but it’s also important.

    The meals we chose fuel us throughout the day; we know we can feel lethargic and short of energy if we’re not eating right. We are what we eat, so it’s critical we’re putting the right things in to help us thrive both at work and at home. It has a direct impact on our mood and how we concentrate, and therefore, how much better we’re likely to deal with stress and colleagues.

    Exercise is also key, especially for those of us who are deskbound. I ensure I get up and move around regularly, either to get water, talk to a colleague, or when I’m on the phone. I also make sure I get outside every lunchtime for a walk and some fresh air, and head to the gym some evenings to counteract all the sitting my job requires.

    3. Make it a priority to have fun with your coworkers.

    Human beings are social animals, and our colleagues can be the source of great company (or sometimes irritation!) Taking time out to ask people how they’re doing over the water cooler, chatting about your plans for the weekend, or asking about their latest trip is a pleasant addition to the workday.

    There are many ways to bond with your colleagues—Friday night drinks after closing, lunchtime walking groups, social sports teams, quiz nights, and office morning teas (where everyone brings something in). It’s a great way of getting to know your colleagues better, without the pressure of work.

     4. Treat yourself.

    Every week I treat myself to dinner at my favorite restaurant, or a takeout if I’m tired. It’s usually on a Friday, and I often spend the week looking forward to this.

    I also have a massage once a month, partly to offset the sitting at a computer, but also to treat myself and show my body some love. It’s the little things that I look forward to, that my wages allow me to buy, that makes working more worth while.

    5. Spend time in nature.

    This one makes a big difference, particularly if we live and work in cities, as many of us do, and may be confined to the indoors for most of the day, without natural light or ventilation.

    Get out during lunchtime for a walk in the park, or spend the weekend camping at the beach or in a cabin in the woods. Whatever it is, make sure you get some time in nature. It helps us unwind, relax, and reconnect, not just to the natural world around us but also to ourselves.

    Science is proving that nature really does have healing powers, and I know it’s a vital part of helping me thrive at work.

    6. Strive for balance.

    I learned the hard way, and now work/life balance is one of my top priorities.

    I see many people who seem defined by their jobs; this is their life and who they are, and this mantra often takes over their life.

    If we spend all hours at work, there are areas of our life we’re neglecting—perhaps time with loved ones, time to ourselves, or social events or hobbies. Work/life balance is so important. After all, one of the reasons we go to work is so we can afford to have a life!

    7. Do what you love.

    They say that if you love what you do you’ll be successful. While not all of us have the jobs we’ve dreamed of since we were young, we can often find things within our jobs that we enjoy—dealing with people perhaps, training others, designing posters, solving problems, or organizing events.

    If there is that long-time ambition you’ve had that involves a change of career, then think about how that may happen. It’s all about small steps, as I’ve found out, and can often mean we’re doing two jobs simultaneously for a while as we transition or retrain. But the important thing is that we start taking those small steps toward our dreams.

    When the hard days at work come, I put them into perspective and ensure I find a positive. I also make sure I find time to do something I love, whether it’s writing, walking outside in nature, or having lunch with friends.

    8. Never forget the why.

    Probably the most important thing is to not lose sight of our reasons for going to work. Yes, we need to earn money, and preferably we could do this doing something we love. But sometimes we have to do X in order to get to Y.

    Remember your “why.” This could be your kids’ education, that trip of a lifetime, your first home, or a medical treatment for a family member.

    Put a photo up on your desk that’ll remind you every day what you’re working for. It’s not that boss that shouts at you or the company that cares more about its bottom line than its workers; it’s for your hopes and dreams and all the things we do each month with the wages we’re lucky to earn.

    —

    We spend so much time at work, it makes sense that we make it as happy as it can be. It doesn’t have to be detrimental to our health. By mastering the art of balance, we can thrive at work.

  • How Short Rests Can Make You Healthier, Happier, and More Productive

    How Short Rests Can Make You Healthier, Happier, and More Productive

    “Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” ~John Lubbock

    Do you ever fear taking breaks?

    Maybe you think that if you stop working, everything is going to come crashing down?

    Sometimes it feels like you’re riding a train of momentum, and if you try to stop or slow down you’re just going to come off the tracks.

    I know the feeling. Believe me, I used to feel the same.

    I wanted so badly to achieve everything I could, and would beat myself up if I didn’t. Coffee would fuel my mornings, deadlines and adrenaline my afternoons.

    At the time I wasn’t completely oblivious to the problems with my lifestyle. No matter how tired I would get, I still wasn’t sleeping well, and I’d often spend weekends thinking about work.

    I could be out at lunch on a Sunday, only half engaged in a conversation with friends because I was already mentally rehearsing Monday.

    I knew that I was always just a little bit too stressed. And to make it worse, I was confused, caught between the fear of slowing down and the fear of allowing stress to damage my health.

    The problem is, it already was. I started getting headaches at work and waking up with chronic tension in my neck and my back. At a certain point I realised it just wasn’t worth it.

    Finally I decided it was time to do something.

    So I read a few books on how to better manage my energy. Once I started learning about how important breaks were to my body, mind, and well-being, I began to start taking them seriously. And I noticed something strange—I was becoming more and more productive and I had less stress.

    So today I want to tell you something, and I really want you to listen.

    You need a rest.

    I know what your brain is telling you. How will the kids get to school? How will the bills get paid? I have three to-do lists—and that’s just this morning. How on earth am I going to find time to rest?!

    Fortunately, short rests can become a part of anyone’s lifestyle, no matter how busy they are. And the truth is that if you don’t rest, you’ll never feel like your body is recharging properly.

    You might collapse at the end of the day and fall into a deep sleep every once in a while, but that feeling of being refreshed and ready to take on the day when you wake up just won’t be there.

    So Why Is Rest Important?

    Our modern idea of success is to work longer and longer hours until we crash. Companies who praise the ‘hardest workers’ fuel this. It sets a precedent where everyone gives all their energy, but very little of their best work.

    The result is that we have a society where rest is considered to be a reward, or even worse, indulgent. But this is not the case at all; rest is a cornerstone of a healthy, happy, and productive life. In fact, rest throughout the day is as important as food, water, and sleep.

    Getting in Tune with Our Natural Rhythms

    In the mid-twentieth century physiologist Nathan Kleitman discovered that our energy levels rise and fall in ninety-minute sleep cycles. What isn’t as widely known, though, is that he also found that we have ninety-minute wake cycles.

    These are called our ultradian rhythms, and if we don’t take proper rests to manage our arousal, we end up less creative, our stress hormones stay elevated, and our dopamine levels can get out of balance—leading to mental illness.

    What happens with most people is that as their focus starts to wane, they continue to push themselves to work. In the process they start to draw from their reserves of adrenaline and cortisol to get through the fatigue and maintain enough arousal to work. While some release of these stress hormones is natural, if you don’t rest enough to allow your body to balance them you’ll end up fatigued and unproductive.

    So what you need to do is make sure you take mindful, non-work related breaks, at least every ninety minutes.

    Here are some ways to make sure you take effective rests throughout your day.

    Take decent size rests.

    Rests should be at least five to fifteen minutes long. They should also include an activity that is completely detached from work or technology.

    Some effective ways to rest are through mindfulness practices, deep breathing, yoga, light walks, or exercise. Creative activities are also a good way to clear your mind, such as sketching, free-writing, or journaling.

    Add it to your calendar.

    Treat your commitment to rest with as much respect as you would any other daily task. Put the restful activity in your schedule or to-do list and try to find an accountability partner to make sure you stick to them.

    Time your work.

    If you can time your work and follow the natural cycles of your body you’ll immediately see a huge improvement in how you feel. Try to stick to the advice above and do no more than ninety minutes of straight work without a break.

    Get to know yourself.

    We all have certain periods during the day in which we experience dips in our concentration. For a lot of us it is between 2 and 4pm. This is a great opportunity to take a slightly longer rest, such as a short nap, if the option is available.

    Remember, rest isn’t an excuse to work less, it’s a natural method to help you work better, and more importantly, feel better!