People often describe their hectic lives of racing around for other people, having too much to do in too short a time or dealing with difficult relationships as stressful. They would be exactly right. Earlier this year I found myself maxed out by stress and it wasn’t a good place to be.
I’ve experienced quite a number of stressful times in my life with varying levels of intensity. For example, many years ago, when I was told that a $1.5 million payment was not coming, I found myself under a lot of stress. What was really strange was the stress I recently experienced far exceeded that event and yet, it didn’t involve any money at all.
The crazy thing is that when you’re going through a lot of stress, you’ll convince yourself that your decision making is spot on and your behaviour towards others is perfect. Nothings changed right? Wrong!
What was I doing? I hadn’t been walking around the house in a rage, or yelling at the kids….I’d done something almost worse than that, I’d retreated into silence. I may as well not have been at the meal table each night as I silently ate dinner while my mind raced through all the myriad of things I was juggling. What I realise now is that it was terrible for the rest of the family to watch me as I closed off towards them.
It just so happens I have the best wife in the world who is incredibly patient, kind and very, very direct. She explained to me in no uncertain terms that I was behaving badly. Initially, I tried to argue back and if you know my wife then you’ll also know that’s pretty futile…..eventually, and I mean eventually, I started listening.
Everyone needs someone they give permission to speak into their life. What do I mean by that? If you take the attitude that, “no one can tell you what to do”, then you’re going to end up in a mess as you believe your own crap. I have a few people in my life that act as my circuit breakers and can call me out….and one of them is Roselyn.
I didn’t like what she was saying to me but by the end of the conversation I was booked into a hotel on a golf course for a couple of days to get my head in the right spot. Yep, just me with the goal of sorting stuff out. I’ve done this numerous times over the years and when I look back they’ve been transformational points in my life. When Roselyn made the booking, I found myself immediately beginning to relax.
Amongst many issues I was stressed by a problem that shouldn’t really be a problem at all and that was too many opportunities. I was trying to juggle a huge number of great opportunities that were each awesome, but they also took up my time. BTW, when I say too many, the word “swamped” comes to mind.
There I was, staring at a golf course (I don’t play btw) and having nothing to do other than think. It was quite an experience. If you’ve never done it before then I would highly recommend you find somewhere where you can do some serious thinking about your own life.
The first thing I did was dump all of my emotions and feelings into a document. I type really fast, so I just used my laptop for this. That the process began slowly and then with a rush I was typing away at 120 words per minute…..just getting everything out of my system. It was raw, it was visceral, it took several hours but it was cathartic.
The next things I did was look at all the people, opportunities, tasks, stuff that needed to be resolved. There were a lot of things but there was plenty of capacity in my laptop, so I was good. I then began to make decisions…..yep, right then and there.
I sent of emails off to opportunities and wished them well, but it wasn’t for me. I made decisions about some unhealthy relationship issues and resigned from several organisations. I cleared the deck and kept on mopping the floor of my life until there was only a handful of items left. These were the really important ones and day one was almost over.
This is the first in a two part series on my personal journey this year. I've never done a series for Saturday Musings so I would invite you back next weekend for the second installment.