Category: Letting Go

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Wealth and Work: Are you Burned Out?

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Wealth & Work - Are You Burned Out?

Are you Burned Out?

We all experience burnout at some point.  I left a 17 year career because I sensed it creeping up on me.

At the time I left I had well over 15 years left before I could qualify for early retirement and I knew I could not last that long just for the full retirement benefits.  So I left, and even though my income has been substantially less, I am less stressed, much happier in general, and able to actually encounter the world in a way I would not have been able to if I had stayed.

I am not recommending you all go out and quit your jobs by any means, but I do have some recommendations from what I observed in looking back at my career that might have helped me avoid the impending burnout:  take vacations, observe a Sabbath day, and delegate more (read: do less).

Vacation

First things first, take a vacation!  Vacations (from the Latin vacare – “to be unoccupied”) are necessary to rejuvenate our mind, body and spirit.  We weren’t meant to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

And take an “unoccupied” vacation – don’t plan out an itinerary that rivals your pace at work!  Take a vacation where you unplug, spend time just reading, spend time outdoors just observing and soaking in the the fresh air and, hopefully, some natural sunlight.

Unplug from your phone, your TV and the internet, at least for the majority of the time.

If you are married, with or without children, enjoy the time with your family and spouse, allow yourselves all the flexibility in the world for that time. Linger longer somewhere that is enjoyable and leave the next destination for another time.

Be present for your spouse and family – don’t spend your vacation worrying about work.  It will still be there when you get back.

Taste the food.  I’m serious.  When was the last time you can remember tasting your food?

Try something you have never tried before.

When you return from vacation and before the relaxed calm wears off, take a look at your schedule and set some clear work boundaries.  Block out times for future vacations, family outings, time to read, time to spend outdoors, and set a specific time to end your work day, every day.

Sabbath

The Sabbath in the Judeo-Christian tradition has long been made out to be a day of restrictions, but it was meant to be a day of rest each week – a gift to us – a day that we did not have to toil under the curse but could trust that God would provide.

In New England sports vernacular, you might consider the Sabbath day as a “reverse the curse” day.

A Sabbath day is essential whether you are religious or not.  It is also difficult for many of us to observe properly.  Relaxation is an elusive concept for me, but as I continue to get older, I recognize its importance for my health more and more.

Think of your Sabbath day as the day you get to enjoy the fruits of your labors, spend time with family and friends, and experience the wonders of nature.  It should be a day to recharge your emotional and spiritual batteries, and give your brain and body a rest.

Treat it like a weekly vacation – unplug, be present with those around you, take a break from technology, enjoy some nature or even yard work (yes work of this sort is fine, as long as it rejuvenates you)!

Delegate More

We can all find things to delegate.  These are things that other people can do as well or even better than we can, and distract us from doing the one or two things that only we can do.

This is a lesson I didn’t learn until after I exited my previous career.  I took on way too much and got stuck in the self destructive mode of continuing to do things myself because it was faster and easier than training someone else to do it.

The fallacy in this is that I was killing myself to get all these things done, while the things only I could do were not getting the full attention they deserved.  One of these things was developing and leading my team.  I didn’t know how to draw the line between being productive and helping others be productive.

The first thing to do is set limits on your work hours and prioritize your work schedule to get your work done in that time.  This might mean clarifying with your boss whether the project you are working on takes priority over some status meeting, especially if you arrange for someone to brief you on anything important to your project.

Then take a hard look at the tasks you are still trying to cram into your schedule and ask yourself two questions.  Can someone else do it?   Is this task taking up time that could be better spent on those things that only I can do?

If you answered yes to both questions it is time to delegate.

Wrapping Up

Unplug.

Taste your food.

Be present in the moment with the people in your life.

Do less.

Do nothing, on purpose, at least once a week.

…and just plain smile more.

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Wealth and Work: In it for the Money?

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Work and Wealth: In it for the Money?

Are you doing your job just for the money?

Our jobs can easily become a simple means to an end.  We work to get paid so we can pay for shelter, clothing, food, transportation and a bunch of other things we may or may not need.

The good news is we have the power and the capacity to change our attitude toward our work, without needing to change the work itself.  Of course if you have an opportunity to change jobs to better align your work with your calling, by all means seize it.  In reality, those opportunities rarely present themselves if we haven’t already adjusted our attitude in our current situation.

We have the power and the capacity to change our attitude toward our work.  [Tweet]

A Simple Attitude Adjustment Exercise

For starters, try beginning your work day writing down different ways you can best serve your customers, clients, colleagues, supervisors, and anyone else you might interact with that day.  If thoughts come up like, “I’m not getting paid enough to do that,” or “that isn’t part of my job,” write those thoughts down on a separate column or page.

Review your lists and ask yourself

  • Which person would I rather work with?
  • Which person is more likely to be given more responsibility?
  • Which person is more likely to be promoted?

Make sure you follow through on at least one of the ideas for serving others during the day.

At the end of the day take 5 minutes to write down then names of those you served, and how you served them.  Reflect back on their responses.  How did it make you feel after serving someone well?  As you do this day after day you will find your passion for your work will slowly increase, and your concern about money decrease.

You may find that your change in attitude toward your work and your increased passion to serve others well will present new opportunities or promotions, and money will no longer be something you worry about.

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Wealth and Work

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Wealth and Work

Vocation: A Calling

Our work, our vocation (from the Latin vocare – “to call”), is meant to be a source of wealth for us.  While financial compensation is one way for our vocation to be a source of wealth, it is not the sole source, and our pursuit of financial gain over and above every other aspect of our work may make us rich, but seldom wealthy.

The pursuit of financial gain at the expense of one’s calling may make one rich, but never wealthy.  [Tweet]

 

Finding meaning in our work and ways to positively impact the lives of others through our work is the true measure of wealth in our work.

When we continue in a job we hate, regardless of the money it pays, there is little wealth in or produced by that job or ourselves. We go through the motions, miserable and creating misery in everyone around us. This is the opposite of wealth – it is poverty.

When we do not give our all to the work set before us we are stealing from those we are meant to be helping, and robbing ourselves of the wealth gained by a job well done.

There are several reasons why we might find ourselves in such a state of vocational poverty:

The good news is we can counteract each of these with discipline and some help from friends, counselors, or coaches.

We’ll examine each of these in greater detail in upcoming posts, exposing the poverty in each, and in doing so discover the way to wealth.

 

 

 

 

 

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My One Word for 2017 Is…

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SeveraMy One Word for 2017l years ago I started a practice introduced to me through the book One Word That Will Change Your Life (Britton/Page/Gordon).  At the end of each year I do some reflection and pick a word that will be the main focus for that year.

My One Word for 2017 came to me with some difficulty, partly because I was resisting it.

Discipline.

Yuck, right? But as I was reading a similar book called The One Thing (Keller/Papasan), the authors described discipline in a way I had never considered it before. Discipline for me was always a long term continual process that was necessarily painful in some cases, but nearly impossible to maintain and ultimately resulted in crashing and burning and starting over.

This new way of looking at discipline was as a temporary intense effort, reduced to as simple an action or practice as possible, that would eventually become habit, done automatically, no longer requiring the same discipline energy to do it.

For example, two of the big hairy audacious goals (BHAGs) I set for myself in 2017 are:

  1. Read 36 books (3 per month) and
  2. Drop my weight to 220 lbs by 2/20/2017 (I started the year at around 255 lbs – more than slightly overweight for me).

The discipline I instituted was going to the gym on a consistent basis 4-5 times per week every week. To keep it simple, I decided to focus on just getting to the gym and walking on the treadmill for 50 minutes or so while reading e-books on my iPad’s Kindle app.

After about 2 weeks I started to enjoy this time at the gym. It was no longer a dreaded thing that required the same amount of discipline, but a habit I looked forward to and actually miss when other responsibilities take precedent. I converted what I thought was time consuming to something enjoyable and productive for my health and brain.

Of course I missed my 220 by 2/20 goal and am now on my 220 by 5/20 goal, but I have made progress, tracking my weight daily (“what gets measured gets managed“), and as of the past few weeks I am weighing in around 240 lbs – that’s 15 lbs since the beginning of the year.

More important than the weight loss, I feel better about my health and about myself, and hope this successful use of discipline will continue to help me with my other BHAGs for 2017, which I’ll save for a later post.

Oh yeah, what about the books?  So far I have finished 16 books and almost finished with 2 more (4 Fiction/14 Non-Fiction). that’s a pace of at least 4 books a month, so I am well ahead of my goal.  (If you want to know what I’ve been reading let me know with a comment and I’ll include in a future post).

“Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.”
??Proverbs? ?12:1? ?ESV??

 


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Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of More

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We can’t be content with more if we have not yet learned to be content with less.

Interestingly, once we become content with less we seldom want more, but are better equipped to manage it when it inevitably comes our way.

When we are content with less, more seems to come our way, and we are more likely to give it away or share it with others. Our generosity increases as our contentment grows. When we no longer find ourselves in the pursuit of more, and begin to pursue less, our focus inevitable shifts away from ourselves and towards others.

No one can be generous while they are selfish. We can appear generous to others, but if we have ulterior motives – like having others think we are generous – this is selfish. When we do something for our own benefit it is by nature a selfish act.

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A Brief Reflection on Clarity, Purpose and Passion

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In the midst of dusting off my resume and moving toward the next phase of my career, I have been thinking a lot about purpose, and just how hard it has been to figure out.  A long time ago I read Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, and have been searching for my purpose ever since.  I still don’t know my what it is.  I’ve read at least 5-10 other books about purpose since then and they’re all great, but…

Then not too long ago I was either listening to a Tim Ferriss podcast, reading one of his blog posts, or perhaps it was reading his most recent book, Tools of Titans, when I came across this great quote:

Forget purpose.  It’s okay to be happy without one.  The quest for a single purpose has ruined many lives.
-James Altucher

 

Thanks James, I mean Mr. Altucher.  That statement kind of freed me a little bit.

I also read a lot of other books about business, building a client list, how to be successful, yada, yada, yada…and they all talk about following your passion.  If you look up passion in the dictionary you’ll see a picture of me listed as an antonym (that means the opposite for those of you who were snoozing through english class).  Seriously.  A friend and client of mine even nicknamed me “Flatline.”  So following my passion never quite made sense to me – I didn’t really see my self as passionate about anything.

Then I was listening to another podcast and heard this gem:

Never follow your passion, but always bring it with you.
-Mike Rowe

 

Cool.  I can definitely move forward without following a passion, but I know I come across things occasionally that get me fired up, and it’s good to know passion will be there when I need it.  It’s in my car, but it’s not driving.

Then the other day I was simply going through some past journals and notebooks gathering quotes to type into Evernote for future blog posts, and I came across this last gem, that pretty much inspired this post:

Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of…I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust.
– Mother Theresa

 

I have never had clarity either, and I always thought something was wrong with me.  It’s nice to know I’m in good company, now all I need to do is work on trust…something I have had to do a lot of in the past five years.

 

 

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Control your emotions - or they will control you.At what point is it okay to to let loose, be angry and cuss someone out up one side and down the other?

If some something sets me off in the morning do I let it impact my whole day? Should I?

My unscientific hunch is it’s not healthy to let negative emotions impact our whole day.  If we are angry in the morning and that anger becomes our traveling companion for the rest of the day, chances are we won’t be very productive

We may lose respect or even a few friends or clients if we can’t rein it in.

So how do we leave the negative thoughts or feelings behind?

Here are some things I do:

  • Exercise – whether it’s a trip to the gym, a brisk walk outside or even some airsquats or push-ups, it helps
  • Take a cold shower or bath. It sounds crazy but you’ll definitely have a change of attitude when you are finished
  • List things you are grateful for – you can’t be angry and grateful at the same time
  • Pray or meditate – spend time just quieting your mind – take deep steady breaths.
  • Write down what happened to get it out of your head. Looking at things on paper gives us a different perspective and helps us detach in a healthy way from our negative thoughts and emotions
  • Go out of your way to be kind to the next person you come across

Control your emotions – or they will control you.

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It’s Your Choice: Are You Victim or Victor?

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Action cures fear.

Anxiety creates fear.

Action then also cures anxiety.

By action I don’t mean occupying ourselves with busywork as a coping mechanism.  Action as a cure is action taken to achieve an outcome in direct opposition to the fear or anxiety we experience.

So our action needs a direction. It must have purpose.  That purpose we can find by reflecting on our fears, our sources of anxiety.

If we are anxious about having enough to eat, then maybe we decide to fast.

Then maybe we think about how to feed others who have less food than we do.

Then maybe we go to work, or we go looking for a job, and if neither of those choices is available we seek out someone who can help.

If we are anxious about money, then maybe we decide to give more away and try to live on the rest.

Then we figure out how to help others who have less than we do.

Then we work more hours (if paid hourly), or get a job, or get a second job if necessary, but not out of anxiety or a fear of not having enough.

Then we get rid of the extra stuff in our lives, the stuff that takes up space without having a purpose.

Then we get rid of cable so we aren’t watching so much television and filling our minds with images of unrealistic lifestyles and other crap that makes us anxious about what we don’t have.

Clutter amplifies anxiety.

Three Takeaways

“As he mused about these things, he realized that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure.” Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist (p.45)

We all have the power to choose to be a victim or a victor.

“And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?”  ?Luke? ?12:25-26? ?ESV??

We are more likely to lose an hour of our lives by being anxious than to add one. (See Google search results for the effects of anxiety on life span.)

“And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.”  ??Luke? ?12:22-23? ?ESV??

Life is more than food and clothing, money and possessions.  Worry less about these things and choose to start living.