Archive for January, 2015
Give Yourself a Break
If you’ve set goals or made plans and haven’t exactly followed through on them, give yourself a break. Beating yourself up isn’t going to deliver your achievement.
There are all kinds of reasons why progress slows down and sometimes comes to a stop. Maybe your immune system is lowered by the cold and flu season or because of extra stress in your life. Maybe you’re going through a challenge or transition and you have less energy than normal.
You could power through the fatigue and stress – for a while. Eventually your body will overrule your ambition and you’ll find yourself with less energy and strength than you had in the first place.
Instead of blaming yourself for not powering through your body’s requirement for rest, you could choose to accept it. It is only a temporary phase, after all. You could choose to acknowledge what is happening: “I am tired and have less energy. I need extra rest.” Then, you could allow yourself a break while you regain your strength.
This is not laziness. It is demonstrating self-awareness and self-value by placing your health among your highest priorities.
You may have created a deadline in your mind, or hoped for an achievement by a certain timeline. However, your body has its own reactions to your external environment, and its own ways of gauging what your mental, physical and emotional status is.
As a personal example, early this autumn I hired an editor to refine my manuscript. When she sent back her recommendations, I was excited and planned to finally finish my book within a month. Then my cat died, my business demanded extra attention and I had unexpected stressful events to deal with.
I wanted to work on my book. I’m so far past the time when I thought it would be published that I’m embarrassed when people ask me if it is available for purchase yet. Despite my wants and my ego, I decided to listen to my body when it told me I needed a break. I cut back on my obligations, slept a lot more, and stopped thinking about my book.
Two and a half months went by – not my ego’s timeline, but my body’s. Then I was ready to pick up my manuscript again.
As it turns out, putting it aside for a while made editing easier than in the past. I looked at my writing with a fresh perspective. I came up with a method of giving myself a small editing assignment each day that followed the same pattern. I keep a running list of each assignment on a piece of notebook paper and write “done” next to each task when I’m finished. Then I jot down the next assignment.
I wonder how much better my editing is now than if I had tried to force myself to do it when my mind and my energy weren’t ready?
I hope that you are full of good health and making progress in the areas of your life that make you happy. If not, maybe it is time for a break. A break without self-judgment or letting your ego make you feel disappointed. Maybe it is time for a healthy, restful break that you will emerge from better than ever.
The Success Stories We Don’t Read About
My friend sent me this link to a Malcolm Gladwell article that discussed the differences between early geniuses and late bloomers. It is nice to see a nod to the people who have worked hard at their professions for many years, and finally attain the level of success they dreamed of.
I liked this article. I also think that the media’s love of the big success stories leaves out a lot of inspiring people.
There are other ways of looking at career success beyond the young genius and the older achiever. Some people might be successful in multiple parts of their work life from youth to old age.
That success might be in the form of earning millions of dollars, or by introducing a product or service that positively impacts a large group of people. The success might be satisfaction from achieving a high level of skill in topics they are passionate about. Maybe it is pride in taking a career risk that improved the quality of their lives. It might be a feeling of contentment from diligently pursuing work that allows them to support family members.
I would like to read inspiring news stories that feature the success of people who do well but aren’t famous and didn’t generate top hits in their fields.
Thinking about success more broadly leaves room for people that have patchwork careers or successive careers in different areas. Without a single-minded focus they probably won’t be among the highest level of experts in a field and may or may not have a lot of earnings, but they amass a breadth of knowledge and skills and may be successful in many other ways.
So here’s a shout out to all the people who work hard to achieve their own definition of success. Cheers to your achievements!
You really can go after what you want in life and get it
This evening as I was leaving my client’s office, I ran into a friend that I hadn’t seen for a few years. She asked how my life has been since I quit my job in the summer of 2013. I gave her the highlights of going to the Jack Kerouac School for a month of writing classes, starting a business that didn’t work out and then doing consulting work and realizing I love it.
She expressed how glad she was that my career has gone well for me in the last year and a half and I was touched that she was happy for me. She said something else, though, that made a big impression. She said, “You are proof that people really can go after what they want in life and get it.”
My career isn’t perfect. Finding great clients can take time and be nerve wracking. Running my own business comes with a whole set of accounting tasks, licensing and taxes that I didn’t have to deal with when I was a full time employee.
And yet.
I went after what I wanted in my work life and got it. More flexibility and autonomy. Less bureaucracy. More enjoyment of my day-to-day work life. Less stress. More opportunities to use my skills set and keep learning.
You really can go after what you want in life and get it.
Something Beautiful to Look At
Last spring I planted flowers in the pots in my backyard. Nothing extravagant. There were Bougainvillea, Chrysanthemums, and some filler plants that I don’t know the names of and that I hoped would live through the heat, the shade, the bugs and the squirrels that always want to hide their peanuts in those planters.
Every time I walked past my back door, I saw the flowers in their pots and felt a rush of happiness. It was like looking at the beautiful flowers gave me a boost of positive energy.
I noticed this feeling again when I had wrapped Christmas presents for my family and set them under my little fake tree on a cabinet. Every time I walked past the cabinet I thought the presents looked so pretty sitting there, and I felt more cheerful. I’m no expert with wrapping paper, and don’t go wild with Christmas decorations. In fact I didn’t put a single ornament on that tree, but the presents made it pretty enough.
It made me think about how useful it is to have something beautiful to look at throughout the day. It adds a little spark of happiness that stays with me and brightens my day.
It also made me wonder why I don’t get the same boost of happiness when I look at the things that are more permanently in my house – paintings, the cheerful yellow bedspread that took me months to pick out, or my grandmother’s chandelier. Well, the chandelier makes me feel good because it reminds me of my grandmother and her unique taste. Turquoise blue painted over brass! But that is a different kind of beautiful that comes from family love.
I realize that part of the joy of looking at something beautiful is its temporary nature. The flowers die and nothing much grows in the backyard until it is warm again in spring. I enjoyed looking at the wrapped presents because a few days later my family unwrapped my handiwork. I asked them to “sufficiently admire the packages before opening them!”
The flowers and wrapped packages don’t last long enough for me to get used to them like I do with my paintings and bedspread.
So now that I am without flowers on the deck, and have no pretty presents to look at, I am making an extra effort to notice any pretty thing that I see while I’m out for a walk, or in a store, or if I catch a glimpse of a bluebird that sometimes rests on a branch outside my office window.
Little beautiful things to look at to brighten my day.
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