Is Work Ruling Your Life?

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Work, home, eat, sleep, repeat. In between those items, you race around to do everything to keep the household and everyone in it going. You are Super-Woman (or man)! There are never enough hours in the day to do the things that you would like and what you wouldn’t give for a little “you time”. This endless cycle can make us feel exhausted and unhappy.

If this resonates with you at all, the good news is that there is a way out of this. So many of us allow things to get to the point where we are just barely keeping our head above water. We:

• Don’t have time for exercise, to do the things that we want to do or take time for ourselves
• Are constantly bogged down with things at work
• Struggle to make meals that are healthy choices
• Feel miserable, overwhelmed, overworked
• Feel like we have lost ourselves
• Don’t take time for ourselves - Spouse, kids & job are our life
• See our relationship with our spouse going downhill
• Don’t have any meaningful relationships left with friends.
• We get to a point where we feel exhausted and burned out.
• Health issues are popping up that are impacting your quality of life

If you’re anything like me, the balance in your life feels off, like something is missing. Perhaps it is the part where you get some time for yourself?

Here is how making time for you will change your life. “You time” helps you to:

1. Feel happy again
2. Feel alive again
3. Improve your relationships
   1. Seriously, the better care you take of yourself, the more of you there will be to share with the people who matter most.
   2. Let’s think of self-care like a rechargeable battery – you need to charge it up in order to use it. If it loses power, then it just can’t do what it needs to do properly. If you don’t make time to take care of yourself, you won’t have any energy or love left for yourself or for the people who matter most to you.
4. Increase your efficiency at work
   1. Taking proper care of you makes you better equipped to build/sustain a successful career work – refreshed, focused, efficient at work

In my early 20’s I set my mind to creating a successful career. “Once you got a job, then you climb the corporate ladder”…this is what I had heard I was “supposed” to do, so that is exactly what I set out to do. I worked my butt off taking extra projects, not turning down any learning opportunity and working long days. If you define success as working anywhere from 9-14 hours a day, making a reasonable living, getting more responsibility and more work on my plate and not having much of a life...then hell, I was successful! I wanted to be the absolute best and make as much money as I could.

That is when my health problems started. I started getting tension headaches that would turn into migraines on a monthly basis which would lay me out for anywhere from 2 days up to a week requiring a dark, quiet room, sleep and pills. I always felt stressed and the quality of my life was diminishing.

This hyper-focus on work resulted in me coming from work to complain about work. Eat, sleep, repeat. I was exhausted, burned out, had no interests, had nothing interesting to talk about with my friends when I did get to see them…when did I become like this? When did I become so lifeless, boring? I felt like an empty skeleton of the person previously known as me. If I didn’t run myself into the ground for the company would I lose my job and the respect that I had earned?

Over the course of a few years, I had lost the delicate balance in my life, stopped taking care of myself and lost me. Something needed to change, stat. So I took action:

I re-assessed my life.

• What was working for me?
• What wasn’t working for me?
• How could I change the things that weren’t working for me?

I created work boundaries.

• I learned to say “No”.

“No” more unpaid overtime hours as a common practice. I made the following promises to myself:

• To work 100% hard while I was at work.
• To leave the office at home time.
• Only accept more work/extra hours as an exception and not an every-day rule.

“No” more extra work on my plate when it was already full. This didn’t mean that I crossed my arms, dug my heels in and refused to help anyone. Rather, it meant that I tracked and managed my tasks and deadlines better which helped me to negotiate and collaborate with my Project Manager to determine where my time should really be spent more effectively. The benefit to this was if someone asked me to do something else, it was easy to see if I had time available or not. If not, we could discuss my current workload and deadlines in comparison to those of the new task. The following questions were used:

• If the new task is important, which task can that replace on my to do list?
• If all tasks on my plate are equally high priority, is there anyone else available to help out?

I stopped defining myself by my career.

I realized that my “success” wasn’t defined by my position, title or salary. If I died today, my money wouldn’t make up for the regrets that I would’ve had for putting off the things that mattered to me, trying the things that I wanted to try and building the relationships that I wanted to build. Also, if I died today, the company would still go on; it may stumble a bit at first, but the company would be just fine.

Also, “success” isn’t defined by how people see us, but by how we define success personally. It was important for me to live a life that would leave me with no regrets and make an honest effort with the people I cared most about.

So relating this back to you, think about how you define success – Is it making a positive impact on the lives of others who are less fortunate? Is it being a millionaire? Is it having enough money to do the things you want to do? Is it where you are happy and self-accepting internally? There really is no right or wrong answer.

I gave my priorities the attention they deserved.

I reconsidered my roles in life and reminded myself that I wasn’t my career – I was a spouse, daughter, sister, aunt, friend, co-worker, dog owner and keeper of myself. These were roles that were priorities to me and represented the areas that I wanted to put more time and energy into.

I started taking better care of myself

As I better managed my stress levels, my overall health improved and my headaches started the slow road to improvement:

• Attending yoga class regularly
• Acupuncture/massage
• Getting out to have fun
• Taking a walk over lunch
• Learning how to eat healthier/cleaner food

I carved out time for myself each day/week and kept my curiosity for life open. I officially started my “Bucket List” and tried different activities – I belly-danced, learned to run, ate gelato, skied, went for a massage, made memories with my loved ones, bungee-jumped…the list goes on. I allowed myself to live.

Here are the amazing results I experienced by taking better care of myself:

• My life improved.
• I felt happier.
• I liked myself more.
• I felt alive.
• I had more energy.
• I was able to provide the love and support to the people in my life who mattered most.
• My relationships started to improve.

As with the circle of life, all of us will pass on eventually. We each have a limited time here on earth and very unique strength and gifts to share with the world. I don’t know about you, but I want to make the absolute most of my time while I have it! No regrets.

The great news is that you can create positive change your life and it is never too late to start.

Here are 4 simple steps to start the path to creating a life you love:

Step #1 – Assess Your Life

• Step back and answer these questions:
  • What is working for you?
  • What isn’t?

Step #2 – Select One Area of Improvement

Out of the items that you listed as not working for you, select one item that you most want to improve on.

Step #3 – How Can You Improve This Area?

Brainstorm a list of ways that you may be able to positively impact this area.

Remember: Brainstorming is a creative activity where no answer is wrong. If it comes to your mind, write it down!

Step #4 – Start On It Now!

Select one item that you have listed above that you can start on today…and start now. Take a few minutes today to take the first step towards improving your life. The great thing is that these things may be able to be done without completely changing your career and uprooting your life. You can start one tiny change at a time.

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You are fully qualified to take your life back and you can do this. I can help you to create a life that is happy, satisfying and meaningful to you. Using a proven, successful process, I can support you in:

• understanding your priorities, stills, values
• learning who you are and what interests you
• defining and getting where you want to go
• taking manageable steps forward
• acquiring tools and techniques to create positive change in your life
• breaking the negative habits and thought patterns that are currently holding you backtoo!