Growing fast may not always be the best option
The number one excuse people give when they have to decline a catch up with friends, a birthday party, watch a movie or go on a holiday is… drumroll… “I am too busy”. Well, this definitely could be the case if you have young kids. Time can never be enough when you have young kids.
But in most other cases we are not busy. We have come to normalise the hustle culture. Eat, sleep, work, repeat. Whatever your profession, a doctor, a consultant or a yoga teacher; none of them are burnout proof. In the famous hustle culture that we are now witnessing (ramped up thanks to the pandemic), we are made to believe it’s totally normal to work overtime. If you love what you do, a complaint about self-sacrificial workload is disregarded.
As a result, people who really ‘love’ their job take work too seriously and don’t have a life outside of work. And I too have been guilty of this. Always feeling busy and not having time for the things that matter. The pandemic sort of exposed this. Me and wife had to work (non-stop calls) and entertain our 4-year old whose world had suddenly come to a halt as his daycare was shut. The kid was bearing the major brunt of the work culture we currently live in.
That’s when I realised, things had to change. And it took some time. Life is a marathon and not a sprint. What if you said no to that one project at work and got to spend more time on the things that matter, would you really lose out? Yes, you most certainly could at work. Someone else at work could get that new role or promotion before you. That can make you feel a little upset for a short while, but when you look at the larger picture, it may not really matter.
By saying no, we come to embrace slow growth. That goal you set out to achieve quickly with little regard to health and life in general, will not happen as soon as you intended it to. It WILL still happen though. If you find joy in whatever you do with a degree of self-control, you can do it for a very long time.
So say yes to that dinner or movie invite and it will make life far more memorable. Slow down, be mindful and remember to enjoy a life outside of work.