I don't think it is a surprise that we are very production based in our culture. Everything seems to revolve around what do you do? Are you successful? How do you contribute? For someone like myself who likes to be busy and produce, this has rarely been an issue but I started seeing the conflict it can create when my moods went to the shall we say, cranky side.
I used to love crunching the numbers and finding ways to produce more than seemed possible or inspiring others to draw more out of themselves in productivity but then something happened. I hit a wall. I hit a proverbial wall. One that was not surmountable and one that I had no interest in going around. This wall was one of exhaustion with a little bit of the poor me thrown in for good measure. It was the great wall of production shut down.
Imagine my surprise that I might be tired. Who had time for tired? I had a business to run where I was the commodity, I had a house to keep functioning and the animals had grown accustomed to eating every day, as had I. However there was no option. I intuitively knew that if I didn't slow it down and learn to be, I was facing something that was going to knock me on my kiester and anyone who knows me knows I'm good for one day of loafing around, but any longer, and I get ready to do something. So, ironically, the very idea that I might have to rest helped me to rest.
Another irony was I had the perfect statement for it when I said to a friend that her willingness to see herself as having value even when she wasn't producing was going to help her land her next best job. Jeez, universe, just smack me upside the head why don't you? At this point I had already adjusted my schedule to have a summer and to enjoy being outside while learning to be in the moment. I was doing a pretty good job too so this statement gave me an insight to what was behind the resistance in the first place. It seems I was trying to go over that wall anyway. I'd like to say I'm surprised but I'm not....I love a good challenge....after a rest.
Seeing value in self when not producing can be a challenge but it is so worth it. When you know that allowing yourself to be will create an opening somewhere down the line, it can ease you into learning how to trust as well. Preventative action is how I am looking at it. I could have kept up the pace of the last twenty years. I am strong, I know I could do it, but I wasn't happy doing it and what is the point of doing anything if you aren't enjoying it?
This preventative action is why factories shut down. They go through the machines. They do clean up. They get rid of the broken pieces and they give the workers a break to come back fresh and ready to work. Where can you apply this to your own life? It doesn't have to be all at once. I took a smaller piece of the pie. I eliminated all but one evening a month and I stopped offering sessions on Saturdays. Twenty years of working nights and weekends at sometimes three jobs was enough!
You know what happened? I not only rested, I discovered I like being outside and riding a bike. I trusted that my business would be ok, as it had in the past, and I get to pass the knowledge on that my value does not come from how much I produce work wise, it comes from how much love of life I produce. I'd much rather be that factory.
What machine of yours could use some TLC? What action are you willing to commit to that will help you be in restorative mode? Where do you want to have fun and enjoy life? Do you value yourself enough to give the gift of presence? It's ok if they aren't a complete yes or an I know what to do. I can help with that if you like, but at least hear that it is possible and that enjoying life is a prerogative, a choice, but a choice you must make for you because you are the only owner of your factory!
I am grateful for the cosmic two by four that gave me the heads up that I could be on my butt. I am grateful I have learned to hear such messages and then to act on them and I am so grateful to be able to share what I have learned so that you don't have to get whacked upside the head with the great wall of exhaustion. If you listen for yourself.
I'll see you on the bike trail! Wave as you go by!
Vicki
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