Dear Hard and Dedicated Worker,
I am writing to you today as our data highlights that you have not been spending time taking care of yourself. While we acknowledge that you do good work, we also want you to remember that you need to rest and take time to treat yourself with tender loving care. In case you got too busy being an exceptional worker, we wanted to remind you that you need to make time for yourself every day to do what brings you joy. You should never wait for a vacation or retreat to take meticulous care of your body, mind and spirit. They need to be fuelled regularly.
We recognize that this is not an easy task as there has been no holistic wellness manual given to you, so we ask that you stop what you are doing right now--whether it is email, meetings, offsites, more meetings, PowerPoint decks, Excel spreadsheets, collaboration spaces, blogging, conferences, planning, strategizing, writing, feeling busy--and take a few minutes to breath and think. Please grant yourself time for you every day.
Please understand that work-life balance has always been a myth that is unattainable. You are one whole person who has a life and in it you get to work, play, learn and live. You have been born with free will, which grants you a choice, for example, to be a workaholic or lifeaholic. You can choose how to define your own success--whether it is pursuing work-life balance or seeing yourself as a whole person living a whole life, with its ups and downs. To be human is to feel deeply. Nature does not rush. Nature is fierce. And so are you when you give yourself the space to emerge.
To be fully human requires you to treat yourself with extreme gentleness and meticulous care. Your life is about the choices you make. Please grant yourself permission to play. Expose yourself to healthy food, people, thoughts, experiences and work that fuels you. When you take meticulous care of yourself, you set the bar not only for yourself but for everyone around you, about how you treat yourself.
You can choose to make excuses for why you can't do it, or you can just do it! It's always a choice.
What do you choose?
Love to my fellow lifeaholics,
Ayelet
Sanity Dose #207: We have more choices than we can imagine and the ones you make matter deeply. Your state of mind is key to healthy living.
Creativity is conceived as a reproductive act with a tangible result--a child, a book, a monument--that has a physical life going beyond the life of its producer. Creativity, however, can be intangible in the form of a good life, or a beautiful act, or in other virtues of the soul such as freedom and openness, style and tact, humor, kindness.- James Hillman