To the Successful Do-ers
What you need to do when you are moving too fast
“You do everything for your job. What does your job do for you?” — a powerful question jokingly asked by the Moroccan tour guide who was calling on me to stop delaying our departure because of emails. This was the era of the Blackberry and the internet was not as fast and harder to come by so I felt compelled to get my work done above all.
I didn’t answer then, because, in truth, my immediate thought was ‘Nothing.’
That question spurred a whole period of deeply thinking about my career and my life in all its different facets.
This is one of the powerful questions that begs us, the successful Do-ers of this world, for an answer. As Do-ers, we make things happen. We devote ourselves to a goal or a dream, and we work on it with all our might. We are leaders in the workplace, achievers in our field, and recognized for the impact that we make.
As successful Do-ers, we are also susceptible to overwhelm, exhaustion and burnout. Doing is usually quite rewarding so we crave more of it or we just get into habits of doing that we don’t notice how it affects us until it has affected us in not-so-good ways. We start to carry ‘busy’ as a badge of honor. We are constantly striving or hustling to get the results we want. We cannot take a real break from even thinking about our to-do’s or checking our devices. Our activities begin to take precedence over our relationships. So much of our identity becomes intertwined with what we do. It becomes hard for us to simply BE.
While we cannot remove stress and challenges from our lives (we need it!), we do not have to live like we have to muscle your way through anything. We don’t have to be working ourselves tired, just to feel like our work counts. A quote I read online offered a friendly reminder that doing our best doesn’t mean working ourselves to the point of a nervous breakdown. We can give ourselves permission to not have everything be perfect and everyone be pleased.
I heard a priest tell an interesting story that goes:
“An archaeologist once hired some Inca tribesmen to lead him to an archaeological site deep in the mountains. After they had been moving for some time the tribesmen stopped and insisted they would go no further. The archaeologist grew impatient and then angry. But no matter how much he cajoled the tribesmen would not go any further. Then all of a sudden the tribesmen changed their attitude. They picked up the gear and set off once more. When the bewildered archaeologist asked why they had stopped and refused to move for so long, the tribesmen answered, “We had been moving too fast and had to wait for our souls to catch up.”
When what’s inside us is not in sync with what we do outside us, it is hard to move forward. Perhaps that’s why we find ourselves running round in circles in our lives. Like being stuck on a treadmill — moving fast, but still being stuck in the same place. And though we may be able to progress with an inside-out disconnect, it isn’t sustainable and is unlikely fulfilling.
Like the tribesmen, taking a pause to pull the parts of our life back together gets us ready for the journey.
When we take a break from the doing, we can think and reflect on powerful questions like the tour guide question, or simply the question ‘why?’. We give ourselves space to (re)discover our values, what we want for our future, and how we wish to show up in the present. We make our intentions clear again, and we operate out of that clarity and focus.
This way, we save our energy for things that truly matter, and avoid unnecessary stress. We don’t try to do everything and spread ourselves too thin. We can define our boundaries and not compromise the stuff we say value. Our actions become directed again and have enough internal power to go for (meaningful) gold.
Since the tour guide question, I have made choices that have led me to a career that looks a lot different, a pace less rushed, and a lifestyle that works for me and my family for now. I try to live as intentional a life as possible, though I often still go auto-pilot, go soft on my boundaries and struggle with stubborn habits. I’d like to be more mindful and do more self-care. Overall, I feel at peace with the choices I make knowing that as I go out ‘doing’, I’ve managed to be mostly in sync with my soul, not trading-off my ‘being’.
Originally written on August 3, 2019
