Most of us are perennially engaged in our routine lives, which today is more than tiring or perhaps exhausting. Once we are entrapped in this vicious cycle – we rarely get the opportunity to step back and reconcile. We are either too tired or too engaged in the hustle.
And this is pretty much the reason I use the analogy of Hamster Wheel or the Treadmill. Once you step on to it, initially it’s fun, the burst of adrenaline with increasing pace and occasional doses of endorphins every time you hit a mile, but after sometime things start to change.
Initial miles maybe challenging as you get in the rhythm, but after a certain point, things start to plateau as the enjoyment fades and gets replaced by a mechanical feel. If you are an avid runner, you know that beyond this point it makes no difference to the feeling whether you run a 10k or a full marathon. And it is only after you finish or stop – you get to feel the muscle spasm and dehydration to kick-in.
And this is also what happens in our routine lives. Initially when we begin something new, we are dealing with the challenges to get in to the flow but once we are in to the flow, we are overwhelmed with incoming fire of opportunities and task deadlines and constantly churning out work to perform at our best.
And once we are engrossed in this endless pursuit of to-dos and priorities, we rarely take the opportunity to step back and reconcile. Although it may sound trivial, but unless you take these realisation or reconciliation breaks once in a while, it may drift you away from your intended plan or destination.
Has it happened to you that after you finish your stint at a particular job, or pass through a certain phase in your life, or accomplish your entrepreneurial milestone – you get a sudden hit of realisations?
Is it where I wanted to be? Is this what I wanted to create? Am I still enjoying my work? Oops I missed out on this! and most importantly What’s Next?
To ensure that you do NOT encounter all these suddenly, it is good to take a break and reconcile what you are doing and whether it is taking you to your planned destination. Whether you need to recalibrate your trajectory or re-think upon your destination.
Sometimes you may need a weekend off but you should do this on a regular basis. Meditate every morning, meditate, till your mind is calm and you have dealt with the thoughts of all ongoing matters. This will help you to stay in control of your plan and destiny.
But most importantly, you will require external perspective. The most damaging thing about long distance endurance running is the loss of perspective. You develop a single fixed perspective of what’s in front of you and gradually over time you lose track of everything around you in the other 300 degrees.
This happens even in our routine. We know everything about things at our work – but nothing or too less of everything else. Hence getting external perspective once in a while helps you to reconcile the bigger picture of your existence – going from whole to part of how you fit in this complex clock work of our entwined lives.
And staying in touch with family, friends and ex-coworkers will not only give you the benefit of perspective but also the much needed help or assistance where’re required.
If you could relate to this, read the blog on Career Sabbaticals and if you want to learn new subjects, visit our Udemy page – for best selling Management Courses. Or access thousands of courses on SkillShare, just join using this link and get the first month FREE!
Savvy Munshi 