stop and smell the roses

Stop and take a deep breath.

“There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.”
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The economic crunch has come and people all over the world are starting to feel its effects. Food prices are up, petrol is going up and people are losing their jobs at an alarming rate. I was until recently unaffected by the credit crunch. Yes life was swell I had a well paying job and I was doing alright in it.

Then came the meeting! My bosses and I and some other staff had a meeting recently to discuss how we can make more money, setting targets for each staff member and putting procedures in place to help enable us to meet those targets. Of course when there are targets to be met, a plan has to be made to meet those targets.

Looking at my portfolio I realised that it wasn’t good enough to ensure a constant stream of revenue, thus something had to be done. I had to generate a larger client base and ensure that the jobs I was working on were a success. So I started burning the midnight oil, those of you know me well know that this is not necessarily an uncommon thing, but this time it was different every waking moment over the last while has been spent thinking about ways to ensure my targets are met, and I have been working thirteen hour days. My point is I was getting tired.

I needed to generate income and I needed to rest. Fortunately this was noticed by one of my staff who pointed out that I wasn’t working smart only hard. I’m in recruitment so when we have an interview it takes an hour of our time, what she said to me was that I need to pre-screen my candidates better. In other words don’t just bring everyone in for an interview ensure I have the best coming in thus reducing the amount of time I spend interviewing and increasing the time I have to do other important tasks like admin and if I get admin done at work then I don’t have to do it at home.

Which is what I started doing; this did allow me more time but didn’t change my attitude. I was still on the war path to bring in as much business as possible and work as hard as I could; now I’m not saying this is a bad thing. Setting goals and working hard will always make you an achiever so never stop.

What I did change was the way I was looking at my problems. I was viewing all of them as being of the utmost importance so I was frantically trying to do everything at once. I have now found a system for prioritising my work which enables me to only think about the most important tasks at any given time. Although this has not decreased the amount of work I have but it has taken off some of the pressure I was putting on myself, thus giving me piece of mind.

Now being in an environment that I find myself, it’s quite fast paced so often I tend to feel overwhelmed by how much I need to get done at a given time, which has at times caused me great stress but has also caused me to become frantic and provide sub standard work. What I have found is taking the occasional breath helps. This could be done literally, which does give you a sense of release, but what I really mean is stop and smell the roses once in a while. Take a walk. I find taking a few minutes to drink a cup of tea outside once a day changes my whole outlook for the rest of the day. It’s a time to align my thoughts and get my A into G while relaxing my eyes, because I work at a computer and relax my mind.

Don’t try to pass life by and get ahead of yourself, I believe we need to make plans but sometimes it’s nice to just let plans make themselves.

“Never lose sight of this important truth, that no one can be truly great until he has gained a knowledge of himself, a knowledge which can only be acquired by occasional retirement.”
Johann Georg von Zimmermann

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