This morning I had the good fortune to be invited to a breakfast where I was able to hear Dean Savoca speak about the pressures of a career in hospitality and event management for those that choose to be a part of this industry. He spoke about recognizing the tipping points of burn out.
Perfectionism. Check. Worry. Holy hell, double check. Busyness. Check, check, check. And it got me thinking about my own tipping points. And I think I had been denying that the above tipping points for me had been reached years ago. During the last few years in my career I had started breaking boundaries I had set when I moved to Colorado and started working remotely. Leave work in the office. Don’t answer calls or emails after 6 PM. Practice daily mindfulness. Work smarter, not harder. More is not more. And slowly, I’d slip comfortably back into my old ways. The yes person. The people pleaser. The work horse. My boss would email me at 11 PM EST on a Sunday night that he’d need that executive PPT summary by 9 AM EST Monday morning. And I’d work into the night to finish it and have it ready by 7 AM MST. And I was so hyper focused that I couldn't see how abnormal that was. To be asked to jump and ALWAYS say, how high? It's not a badge of honor. It's not a calling card to proud of. It's a fast track to burn out. I had stretched myself so thin in my own role, that I couldn’t offer my team the leadership that they relied on me for as their manager. Tipping points. Boundaries. Non existent. And I think why I have struggled so much these weeks since losing my job of 17 years is that so much of my identity was wrapped up in the idea that work equals purpose. That getting up every morning to a full day of busyness defines success. I was so wrong. Busy is a comfort zone. All the lists, all the deadline reminders in my calendar; all the risk mitigation, spreadsheets, contingencies and fail safes…none of them kept me from losing my job. There was no amount of control I could exert that could have changed that outcome. And because I have tied busy work with success for so many years, I felt like I had failed. That somehow, this was my fault. I swear, until this moment, I would have taken accountability guilt to my grave. What a mistake that would have been. I believe the universe has been screaming at me for years to learn how to let go of control. And, for the past 17 years I could not squeeze those handlebars tightly enough. So the universe put a massive cliff in front me to get me to stop. And only then did I realize that busy does not equal productive. Work does not equal purpose. The universe did a fantastic job of making me so fucking uneasy with all this time on my hands that I finally understood that busy is my comfort zone. So effective immediately, I am halting applying for jobs. I’m closing the planner. Uncoupling myself from my phone and computer. I’m going to sit with all this time and be uncomfortable. I’m going to sit and figure out, as Mary Oliver so eloquently states, “What to do with this wild and precious life”. Certainly it's not answering emails at 11 PM. It's definitely not tied to a desk. It's not in bottom lines, or CRMs, or ROI, or town hall meetings. At least not for me. Not anymore. Thank you universe, for the gift of unbusying me. The control is yours. I think I'll let you steer for a while.
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