Wake Up And Change

Back to reality.  Ok well maybe not reality, maybe just a full 5 day work week.  I am trying to prevent my brain from remembering the regular chaos of my usual work day and instead focus on how nice the last few weeks have been.  My schedule has been so flexible and I have gotten so much done with all of my free time. Vacation and sleep are awesome.  I woke up every day with that thought – sleep is awesome. On a non-vacation day, I find myself moving at a zillion miles an hour while cramming more into my awake hours than I should while sacrificing sleep hours.  Between work and taking care of things non-work related in my life, if I slow down, I tend to THINK I am being lazy and/or unproductive.  When in reality, I usually need more rest than I allow myself – how silly is that?  My norm of 6-hours of sleep is really sub par.

As I sit here still in a mode of relaxation after two stress free weeks, I can see the forest from the trees.  I am hardly a lazy person yet I will push myself out of bed every day because I “have to get moving!” I have tried to get away from that for the last few weeks by staying in bed till 9:30am or 10:00am – something I have not done regularly since college. Usually I feel like I am going to miss out on the day or will never accomplish what I feel I need to do in the time I have.  However, today, I got out of bed at 9:30am and did everything I had planned to do and have plenty of free time tonight.  I follow @sandikrakowski on Twitter and Instagram and something she posted today (slightly edited by me) resonated with me:

“REST- it’s a spiritual principle that so many people forget or misunderstand…Rest is emotional, physical and spiritual. It’s when we purposefully lay aside things so we can be renewed, elevated and given strength…It is not on laziness. To push ourselves and feel false guilt when we should rest is an evil spirit…Rest will set you apart. It dissolves anxiety and all negativity trying to infect your life…Rest then solidifies the growth…take time to just BE.” Sandi Krakowski

I am very guilty of hardly spending time to just BE – partially because my brain never rests, partially because I put guilt on myself, partially due to the corporate culture I work in.  I definitely allow my frenetic work environment spill over into my free time and that is less than ideal for many reasons.  I know I am not a lazy person and yet I often resist the opportunity to rest, unless I am forced by illness or exhaustion.  There is always something that needs to be done.  Must plow through.  Must do as much as possible.  My work schedule is so rigid, people in my company are constantly working all hours of the night, and I definitely get caught up in a mentality that hardly promotes rest. I am sure many people are this way.  Many people get wound up in the rat race and get swept away by the lunacy that can be a corporate environment. That said, I do what I have to do because I love my paycheck.  Stress, exhaustion, pressure to an extreme hardly benefit the emotional, physical and spiritual self.  I do feel a moderate amount of stress and pressure drive the motivation for success; however, when you feel like a doormat at the end of every week, it is too much and something needs to change.  I think the biggest issue I have is setting boundaries.  My parents and my friends have been telling me for years I work too much and need to set boundaries with my job.  I finally agree.  I tend to think corporate culture today wrings the life out of its people for margins and investors. There are no boundaries – I have had conference calls as late as 11:30pm for the almighty dollar…which might make sense if I were earning millions of dollars…but nah.  Welcome to Capitalism?  Or is the corporate culture just outdated and very disjointed?

What to do with this?  Well I guess I will look at the year ahead and work to keep myself in check.  Know when to lose my Blackberry.  Know when to take a day off and learn to better prioritize my free time…or something.  I have to keep these thoughts top of mind as this needs to become part of my daily practice.  Some may say this is New Year’s resolution.  For me this is an unplanned realization as a result of stepping away from the day to day.  It is time to change things up, set boundaries and change my thought processes about the obligations I place upon myself.

Thank you for reading this blog!

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